Sunday sewing and knitting

 After a busy week I was looking forward to a quiet weekend filled with sewing. It didn't disappoint. Let's scroll back to Friday, always a good place to start the weekend. Friday was the start of the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year as we tend to name it. As a family we love celebrations and every year we celebrate Chinese New Year with a meal. We could order from a take away but I prefer to cook our own. Years ago my line manager was a Chinese man and he would invite me and John to dinner on alternate Friday evenings. I asked him to teach me some recipes, which he agreed to. He also taught me some helpful hints on getting the right flavouring by using spices and herbs. He love playing with traditional English foods and flavouring them to be Chinese.  Over the years we have developed our own take on the recipes that we all enjoy. On Friday we celebrated with chicken style Quorn (Lucy is vegetarian) and broccoli in black bean sauce and vegetables in Hoisin sauce.

Any celebration needs cake and so we enjoyed a sponge cake with salted caramel filling for 'afters'. 

On Saturday the sun was shining even though it was very cold. I started the day with an hours yoga. At the beginning of the year I decided to try and do some yoga every day. I haven't managed that but I have managed several times a week and I'm more flexible now than I was when I started the journey. John was still asleep when I finished so I took him a coffee and he suggested we went for a walk whilst the sun was out. We walked round the cemetery three times and saw several species of birds whilst we were there. I really enjoyed the walk.

Having finished the ballerina quilt I decided to look at another panel that I was given several years ago. I'd like to incorporate this into a quilt.

I need to give this some thought. Do I use all the parts in one quilt or share them between a couple? I spent some time trying to come up with a good solution. Please let me know if you have any thoughts as my creative mojo has gone missing for the moment.

Today I spent time working on my project for the Show your Stripes blog hop which starts on the 22nd February. Everything for the top was cut and ready to sew. Chain stitching was needed to get the small bits sewn together.

Over the day I finished the top and tomorrow evening I will hopefully get the quilt sandwich made. I'm very happy with the top but can't show you yet.

This evening there was time for slow stitching. This week I've been doing my knitting. The pattern opens up when you stretch it a bit. I'm working on the left front of the jacket and I'm almost at the point of reducing some stitches for the arm hole. At the speed I'm knitting I may even finish the jacket before the summer.

I'm linking this post with Kathy from Kathy's Quilts for her Slow Sunday Stitching link up. The last two weeks have been very productive sewing weeks for me. I wonder what's in store this week?

Take care

Lyndsey