Resurrected quilt - finished

I knew it wouldn't be long before the pink lily opened and yesterday it did just that - very pretty. It's a shame it doesn't have a heady lily perfume, but I certainly won't complain as the flower is beautiful.

Yesterday was a productive day as far as crafting is concerned as I finished the quilt that I resurrected. A very satisfying feeling that a long languishing project has been progressed and finished and will be of use in the not too distant future.

It's also satisfying to know that I only had to buy the batting in order to finish it off, everything else... the sashing, binding, backing etc came from my stash.

Here's the back - I did put the three leftover squares there.

I machine quilted it as I knew if I started down the route of hand quilting I'd never finish it. I also kept the quilting very simple and just did a border around each of the blocks, which I think highlights them quite nicely. It won't win any WI prizes as it's quite puckered, but I'm not going to enter it any competitions, so that's OK. It'll be fine to be lay on, crawled on, played on and eventually slept under.

flower update

I thought it was about time to have an update on the flowers that I've been growing this year - we've had a bit of a mixed success as a few things that I either planted this year, or which should have survived the winter, didn't.

The sweet peas are doing well - I'm sure they were meant to be a mix of colours, but have ended up being mostly on the purple side. I love the smell of sweet peas, I'm sure these ones won't stay outside for much longer, but will be cut and put into a vase.

I planted a few more lillies this year, which have started to flower (excuse all the weeds) - I can't remember what variety they are, but they're a really vibrant red/orange. The pink lilies from last year and a little bit behind, but their buds are starting to colour up, so it won't be long before they're flowering too.

And last, but not least the dahlia that I grew last year has survived its hibernation in our dining room cupboard and is putting on a show again - it poured with rain last night, so the older of the flowers is a little damaged, but it's still doing well, and there's at least one more bud coming.

I tried growing some dahlia's from seed this year, I was under the impression that they should flower in the same year as germination, but I'm not holding my breath (they're in the pot behind the flowering dahlia in the picture above and are only a couple of inches high, if that).

This week I feel like I'm turning a corner on Andrew's jumper: sleeve number 1 is done. Progress is definitely being made.

Resurrected quilt

While David has been at work this weekend I decided to have a bit of change of craft project. When my Mum came to visit back in March one of the things we did was organise my sewing supplies - in the organising, one of the things we came across was a languishing quilting project. I've been trying to figure out when I must have started it, and think it must have been sometime in the late 80's! I seem to have a habit with quilting and patchwork of starting with a very manageable sized project and extending it into something that stalls because it's too big/complicated.


It started out being this:

First change was to not want to do any applique, so these blocks were changed - so far so good, and then I think I must have gone on a family holiday somewhere in Scotland and came back inspired to try to piece together a border composed of Celtic knot work - this is obviously when it got out of hand.


We found about 4 blocks of knot work and 15 blocks of normal patchwork. My Mum's suggestion was to go back to the original plan and make the quilt up as per the book using the blocks I had as it would turn out about the right size for a cot quilt.


I've listened to this sane suggestion and have produced the quilt front:

I've still got 3 blocks leftover, which I might put on on the back just so they have somewhere to go, and the Celtic knot work, which I think might languish a bit longer!

Still growing

Nothing much new to report going on here - just continued progress on ongoing projects.

Andrew's cobblestone now has 5 balls of felted tweed on it and is about 21" long - so probably one more ball and then I can get on with the sleeves.


The weather here has been nice over the last little while, and the veg garden is growing with varying success. We harvested our first broad beans during the week and after a few hints to the chef that these needed to be showcased in something, he made a nice risotto. We also have one surviving sweetcorn plant, some florence fennel, leeks and brocolli plants doing their thing, so hopefully they'll continue to make progress. Our soft fruit is also doing well. We have a few blackcurrents and gooseberries and also some strawberries - the field fares have been eyeing them up, but despite some attacks on the netting they haven't managed to get in there yet.

My bump is also growing - I'm about 7 months now.

I'm starting to feel a bit as if there's a race between Andrew's cobblestone and the baby - I would really like Andrew's jumper to win as I'm sure knitting will take a bit of a hiatus once the baby gets here.

Under the gooseberry bush

Well, not quite under the gooseberry bush time yet, but we went and picked up my maternity package today, which I get from Kela as part of the maternity benefit. I think this is a fantastic idea - I think it might be the only social security system in the world that gives a box of goodies to prospective parents. The link shows what's in it - basically baby clothes and bits and bobs like blanket, bedding, hairbrush, picture book etc. Even the box it comes in has a little mattress in the bottom and can be used as a crib. I need to look at the contents a bit more, but from what I've read everything it contains is ecological and there aren't any disposable nappies, which I think is good - just washable ones.

I didn't manage 11" of knitting while I was away, by the way, am not really surprised. Too many other things to do - oh well, I'll buckle down to it now (promise!).

The rain will do the garden good

Anyone would think we were back in winter again with the darkness of the photos I'm posting - in fact it looks like it's about to rain, big heavy laden sky. We have had some good sunshine and hot weather recently, so the phrase, "The rain will do the garden good" is more true than annoying. Hopefully it'll help to swell the gooseberries and encourage the rhubarb to put up a few more stalks for us to harvest, and maybe encourage the strawberries to fruit (the field fares are certainly keeping their beady little eyes on the plants despite them being securely caged - the strawberries, not the birds).


So, back to the photos - just a couple of progress shots again. The first is another shot of Andrew's cobblestone sweater. One more ball of yarn down and it's definitely getting longer - I think I've got about 11" to go before I get to the armpits (I had thought I only had 4" to do, but my maths isn't very good at the moment so when I checked I found it was more). We're off to the UK next week so I'll take it with me to try to get those 11" done while sitting in the garden relaxing and while David's off walking with my Dad. I still like knitting with felted tweed, there's something about it that pleases me - not sure if it's the tweediness, or the soft but not fluffy soft texture, or how even it knits up - or maybe all three and some other reasons that haven't been verbalised right now.

The other progress shot is the pile of nappies that I'm making.

I had a bit of a slow start as I decided I didn't like how they looked when I overlocked the edges, and I was having some problems with the soaker pad bunching when I washed them. But after taking a couple of the first ones apart and putting them back together so that they're sewn and then turned and with a better constructed soaker pad, I'm starting to make progress. These are going to be too big for a newborn, but I'm hoping will be a good average size that the baby will be able to get some good use out of. I think we're going to try these nappies from mothercare for when the baby's very little.

Rhubarb cheesecake experiment

I thought I should update on the rhubarb cheesecake experiment. I didn't manage to get a shot of the whole cheesecake before we made a dent, but we did manage to stop before we ate it all.

I used the New York cheesecake recipe out of Sue Lawrence's Book of Baking as a starting point. The changes I made to the recipe, apart from downsizing it, were to use ginger nuts for the base instead of digestives and to add some stewed rhubarb stirred into the cream cheese mix. I used three stewed stalks and a little bit of extra unstewed, just to see if stewing was necessary. I didn't add any vanilla essence or lemon juice/zest.

It turned out to be a successful experiment, the rhubarb gave a fresh taste to the cheesecake that contrasted well with the creaminess of the cream cheese. I found that there was no need to have stewed the rhubarb before stirring it in, and I could have definitely put in more to make it even zingy-er.

So, definitely an experiment that will be tried again. Grow rhubarb, grow.