Slow stitching , fast cleaning!

This week has been rush rush rush with no time for getting the machine out. First I was working every day which was a little annoying as I'm supposed to be part time. There was also meetings to attend in the evening which seriously affected my stitching time. Finally having celebrated my birthday it was time to get the house all clean as a new pin ready for Christmas. Over the weekend I've been vacuuming, polishing, putting things back to their proper place and in between times I've iced and decorated my Christmas cake and made a gingerbread house.  

I was given a kit to make the gingerbread house. The instructions for the gingerbread itself and for using the templates to cut the pieces before baking were fine and all worked well. There was some gingerbread leftover which I cooked and it was very tasty with my tea this afternoon. The problems started when I put the pieces together. I don't like really hard gingerbread so I baked it for the minimum time but of course this made it slightly more difficult to put together. I also had the icing too thick when I tried to make icicles. I could have added a little more water but I didn't have any more icing sugar so decided not to risk it. As a first attempt ever I'm happy with the messy result.

Of course it's not a patch on the gingerbread house we saw at Anglesey Abbey last weekend.

I put the Christmas tree up this afternoon and also got the nativity set up. Earlier in the weekend Richard had put together this little Lego Christmas train. It is so cute.

Although there hasn't been any machine stitching this week I have been working on the christmas tree cross stitch piece. The last time I showed this it looked like this.

It hasn't grown a huge amount but it now looks like this.

The blue sky really does go on and on. Later on I have some stars to add to the sky but I'll leave that until everything else is done. I will continue working on this over the Christmas period but it won't be finished this year. The little donkey is going to be very cute when I finish the stitching on him.

I'm linking this post with Kathy at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching. Why not pop over and see what everyone has been stitching. 

Lyndsey

Cake, pudding and more.

Last Christmas the house was in uproar having had the heating system completely renewed (all the pipework, the radiators and the boiler) as well as rewired and the kitchen was pulled apart in preparation for our new kitchen being fitted in January. Christmas happened and was fun but not like our usual celebrations. So this year I decided to start early and so earlier this week I made my Christmas cake. I don't usually make the dip in the centre deep enough to ensure the top stays flat but it worked perfectly this time. 

Today I made Christmas puddings, four 1-pint puddings to be precise.. We'll only use 2 of the puddings and the other 2 will be gifts.

The 4th pudding is in the steamer.

Yesterday evening was Big Gig. This is a pop concert organised by Girlguiding UK for the guiding membership over 10 years of age. They do one earlier in the year in the north of the country and yesterday there were two concerts at Wembley Arena in London. We had tickets for the evening concert. This is an ear splitting event as the arena holds 12,500 and when they are teenage girls they have a tendency to do a lot of screaming after each act.

It was a good evening even though I only knew one of the acts. Guess I'd better admit to getting old, that and the fact that I'm not a lover of pop, rock is more my style. The girls had fun and didn't stop talking about the show all the way home.

A busy but enjoyable weekend but this evening I need to chill out and do some slow stitching. I decided to do some work on my millennium sampler. This has been stuffed in my embroidery box for ages and it is time to pull it out and try to get it finished before the end of the year. This is where I left it. Now I'm going to watch TV and finish the stitching of the knight at the top of the piece. I'm linking this post with Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathy's Quilts.

I hope you've had a good weekend and Happy Thanksgiving to readers in Canada.

Lyndsey

Cake and Crochet

As July moves ever closer I'm getting more and more excited about having time to indulge myself in a frenzy of quilting and embroidery. All the courses I'm involved with at work are slowly winding down either as the course ends completely or for the summer break. Today one of my student groups celebrated the end of their course. The real end is next Friday but they have a test to complete on that date so decided that a little party was needed this week, including cake.

Tracey, one of the students makes cake and she bought this delicious creation for us all to share.

The cake was a heavy vanilla sponge with a cream topping. It was delicious and didn't last very long!  

When I got home this evening I hunted out my crochet hooks and some double knitting wool. I had seen a crochet along at Sophie's Universe and decided I wanted to have a go. I haven't done any crochet for several years so it took a little time to find the crochet hooks. I found the pattern was easy to follow and completed the first 7 rounds this evening. I need to check the number of stitches I have before I carry on.

You are supposed to start the piece off using the 'magic circle' start but I found it difficult with the thick wool but I'm happy with how it looks. I have a lot of this thick wool so I'm going to continue but I think it would look great using a thinner gauge.

I'm using my phone camera for quick pictures like this one and the cake and that seems to be working out OK. My phone automatically backs up my photos to dropbox so they are ready and waiting for me when I come to write a post, which means no need to find the cable to connect the camera to the computer. I have a Nikon 1 that I usually use but it stopped working recently and I was getting an error message saying the lens wasn't attached properly even though it was. The good news is that when I phoned the Nikon repair office they told me this was a known problem and the lens would be fixed / replaced free of charge. So the lens has been sent off. I'll be pleased to get it back as I usually have it in my bag just in case a good photo shot appears. We have a Canon digital SLR but it's a bit heavy to carry around all the time.

I'm planning on getting some quilting done today but need to walk up to the sewing shop for thread supplies first. I also want some fabric so I need to spend a little time thinking about what I need before I go. I know I'll come back with something I hadn't planned on but it would be good to get all the bits that I actually need to get on with projects.

It's a very hot sunny day here so before I do anything else I'm off to slop on lots of sun screen, then a walk to the fabric shop, then who knows......? I hope your day is going well


Lyndsey

A fun week and a finish

This week has been a fun week. To start with the only day I needed to go into work was today. I still had quite a bit of work I needed to complete but it is more fun to work from home. Lucy has also had holiday this week so we got to hang out together. I've already told you about our trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the Wedding dress exhibition but we also had fun playing in my new kitchen. We tried out several new recipes.  The boozy baked chicken with peppers proved very popular. It looked very colourful and appetising as we prepared it

Yes there are whole garlic cloves in it. Once it was cooked the baby onions had a lovely caramelised finish and the whole meals was yummy.

The recipe was in the Sainsbury's magazine for February and was a recipe that was put to the test. The original recipe was by Gennaro Contaldo and Aggie MacKenzie tested it for the magazine. Often on these tests she tweaks the recipe but this time she didn't need to.

Serves 4 Prep 35mins Total time 2 hours.

150mls dry white wine
1 tablespoon English mustard. (I used dry mustard powder)
4 chicken thighs and 4 chicken drumsticks. (I used chicken breasts)
100g prosciutto, roughly chopped
10 baby onions or shallots peeled
225 baby vine tomatoes halved
1 yellow pepper and 1 red pepper deseeded and thinly sliced (I used a green pepper instead of yellow)
2 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole. (I added a couple more)
2 tablespoons of port
2 tablespoons brandy
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. Combine the wine and mustard. Set aside

2. Put the chicken pieces in an ovenproof dish with the prosciutto, onions, tomatoes, peppers and garlic, sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss together. Pour over the white wine mixture, port, brandy and olive oil and toss. Cover with foil and set aside to infuse for 20 minutes.

3.Preheat the oven to 170C, fan 150C , gas 3

4. Place the chicken in the oven and bake for 1 hour, basting from time to time. Remove the foil and cook for another 30 minutes.

5. Remove from the oven, garnish with the parsley and serve.

I must remember to take some photos of the kitchen over the weekend so you can see how it's progressing. I need to decide on the tiles and flooring so I can get it finished in the near future.

On Wednesday John and I went to Kathryn's MA graduation. It was a lovely  with lots of sunshine  but unfortunately Katy wasn't feeling too well. However she managed to enjoy her day. I couldn't find my camera charger so I had to take photos on my phone so unfortunately the shot of her walking across the stage is rather fuzzy.

As she wasn't well we didn't go out for a celebration meal but we will do that in the near future.

Finally this week I managed to complete the baby quilt for my colleague. I missed her baby shower but will give her the quilt on Thursday as she doesn't go on maternity leave until next week. I decided to bind the quilt with polka dots. The fabric is part of the same collection by Michael Miller. I'm really pleased with how this quilt has turned out.

The quilting is a meander over the elephant and white fabric. The red and blue stripes are left unquilted. The binding was machine stitched to the front and hand stitched to the back.

I have also been working on my Votes for women quilt. I'm not sure I'll have it finished for the end of the month but it is well underway.

Tomorrow John, Tony and I are walking. We are heading out to Maidenhead by train and we'll walk back to Datchet along the Thames path. The weather forecast has changed from sunny all day to cloudy with a chance of rain so I'm going to leave Scamp at home.  

I'm linking this post with Amandajean's Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts and Richard and Tanya's Link a finish Friday at Richard and Tanya's Quilts

I hope you week has been fun and you've had a chance for some sewing.

Lyndsey

Pin wheel fun

Although yesterday was Saturday I still had work to do so no sewing time at all but today was different. First I had a lot of cleaning to do as this week was very busy with limited time for housework. Once that was out of the way I set about stitching the pinwheel blocks together for the June schnibbles quilt. I still have the borders to add but I'm pleased with the quilt top so far.

Opps where did Picasso come from? As quickly as he appeared he was gone again. I must try to get some photos of him soon. Here's the quilt top minus the fur baby.

I love that the pattern creates different patterns depending on where you look. I kept worrying that I would sew the blocks together the wrong way but I managed it without any mistakes.

After that it was time to cook dinner and while I did that I took some time out to make a favourite treat of ours The Great Vanishing Malteaser Cake. You can serve this as an after dinner dessert but we tend to eat it as a snack and it vanishes very fast!

You are supposed to wait for it to set but we always end up eating the first slice whilst it is still sticky. Here is the recipe to make this cake.

225 g digestive biscuits, crushed

125 g margarine or butter

225 g Malteasers

3 tablespoons Golden Syrup

Chocolate to cover

1. Melt the butter or margarine and syrup in a saucepan over a low heat.

2.  Remove from the heat and add crushed digestive biscuits and whole malteasers and mix well.

3.  Press the mixture into a well-oiled baking tray and cover with melted chocolate.

4. Cut into small pieces and watch as it magically disappears.

This recipe is from a cookbook called Bread and Justice which is a book of favourite recipes from the Iona Community Centres. The Iona Community is an ecumenical Christian community of women and men who seek to live out the Gospel in a way that is radical, inclusive and relevant to life in the 21st century. You can find out more about the community here Two or three years ago members of our church went on a week retreat there including my husband John. Unfortunately I couldn't go as I had work commitments. Iona is a small island in the Inner Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland renown for its tranquillity and natural beauty. 

Finally today I did a little more work on my cattitude cross stitch. I have done a little work on this piece most nights this week but it is very slow going as there is no area of one particular colour.  The areas of white and very light grey fade into the background fabric in the photo. As I finished for the evening I put this away until next week and swapped in my millennium sampler. I was hoping to get some of my hand quilting done on my holiday quilt but unfortunately I ran out of thread and no where local stocks it. Oh dear I shall have to visit my favourite quilt and needle craft shop this week!

I'm linking this post with Kathy's Quilts Slow Sunday Stitching. Although my stitching today wasn't all hand stitching it was a very relaxed experience. This was an extra sewing day as my older daughter had been planning to visit for Father's Day but was unfortunately unwell so I was able use the time for stitching. Unexpected sewing days are always most welcome.

I hope you had some time for the things you wanted to do this weekend.

Lyndsey