Lots of cooking

Went out for a walk on Monday and picked a lot of fruit to make jam with. Doesn't it look pretty?



Not quite so pretty once boiled down.



Strained it over-night then boiled it up.



And made beautiful jam.



Then I used up some milk from the reduced section and made paneer cheese, flavoured with herbs and garlic. I didn't think to take pictures of it until it was almost gone.



I also made sunflower seed and honey bread, 3 different types of bread rolls, home-made pizza, lasagne and raspberry flapjacks. All of which were eaten before I thought about photos. They were delicious though.

What I'm working on.

I've not done a lot of sewing lately. I did have a bit of a play with foundation piecing though.

I'd had this Mariners Compass pattern sitting in my drawer for years. I can't even remember where it came from originally so can't acknowledge the designer of it. I think I might have traced it out of a magazine... maybe. I never did anything with it as the pointy points and curved flying geese looked really scary but I loved it and finally plucked up the courage to have a go. It's pieced onto Bounce tumble drier sheets and came together surprisingly well. It even lies flat.



I've got a big stack of 6" string blocks and I think it would work really well as the centre piece of a string block and white irish chain. When my cutting table is free again I'll have a go and see if it works.

You've shamed me into it!

Well Dotty has linked to me in her blog and a couple more people have asked why I'd not been blogging lately so I'm making a bit of an effort.

The obvious place to start is with the quilt that I made for Dotty.



A close up of the quilting.


The back. Foolishly I did it with black in the bobbin so the back shows every mistake I made. What was I thinking? :)


I also managed to get a huge tuck in the backing fabric which meant unpicking half a quilt and there was a LOT of quilting on this one. I am deeply endebted to whoever invented the quick-unpick.

It's back to school time for E tomorrow. He's going into Year 10, options have been sorted and it's the run up to GCSE's. Bogglingly he's also opted to take Latin as an afterschool course. This was totally voluntary. He came home and announced that he was going to do it. He's hoping to do something science based when he leaves school. When he was really little he decided he wanted to be a marine biologist and I think that's still in the back of his mind. Maybe Latin will be useful in that. :)

Y has now announced that his trainers no longer fit him, despite them supposedly fitting last week. I suspect he didn't actually try them on and has now realised that he's grown. I'm not quite sure where we are going to find the money for them. We had saved for 'back to school' stuff but that has been spent and there is no room on the credit card. I wonder if they make Tesco Value Trainers.

Just for you Miss Dotty

Here is a picture of the gorgeous lunch I had.

Pasta with homemade oven dried cherry tomatoes, chicken, garlic, fresh basil and olive oil. It was very yummy.

The green and white quilt which features heavily in the last few entries is finished and I'll take some pictures soon. It is stunning. I'm so please with the way it turned out.