More Koalas from Melly and Me

Bonzer and Beaut are finished. As the leaves have all fallen from the apple tree they have moved into this pot plant in the dining room where I guess they are going to set up home for the winter. If they breed successfully I will have to open an etsy shop to sell off the babies, watch this space.

The next project from the Fat Quarters club was out last week, The Friends Needle Case from Rosalie Quinlan designs is lovely. On the finished sample Kim has in the shop, Rosalie's stitches are so small and neat, I don't know that mine will look the same. She uses a product I haven't seen before , Weaveline, it is an iron on backing to give the stitchery more stability and to hide all the knots and threads. I have found that stitching through a backing of wadding keeps the stitches neater but it is sometimes too bulky, so I am looking forward to trying it.

Leanne Beasley also recommends using iron on Weaveline on the back of the stitchery pocket for the Apron Strings pattern. Unfortunately I had started before I knew Kim was stocking it so I have used iron on Vilene. It is nice to sit all cosy on these dark damp nights doing a bit of hand sewing, just wish I could keep my stitches neater, any handy hints?
I can only show a snip of this because it is a Christmas present.

And finally, our Halloween picture, a bit belated. jenny and her friends decided they were too big to go trick or treating and so had a Halloween sleepover. We still had lots of little trick or treaters to our door, By 5.45pm we had run out of sweets so we took down the decorations, put out all the lights and went out. Spoil sports!!

Happy Quilting xx

York Trip

We started out with great plans for a family weekend in York, a visit to the Quilt museum for the girls and the Air museum for the boys. However my DH managed to get an abscess on his tooth, then he was allergic to the antibiotics and just generally feeling awful, the whole trip was abandoned. Well not quite...

When the boys went back to work on Monday, my DD and myself set out for the early train for a day trip to York. It was a lovely bright morning and walking in from the station we were greeted with this lovely view of the sun shining on the boats and the river Ouse.

The Quilt museum and gallery are shut on a Monday so there was nothing else for it but to shop til we dropped!!! We will have to go back again when the Quilt Museum is open (and the bank account has recovered). We found a lovely wool shop in The Shambles which had Rowan cotton yarn reduced to £2.40 a ball, so I purchased enough to knit a cup cake. With a pattern from Julie at Little Cotton Rabbits, I started knitting last night.

I am quite pleased with the result, and doesn't it look lovely sitting on this glass cake stand. The cake stand and table cloth both came from my granny. She was a great knitter but never bought quite enough wool. As children we grew up wearing cardigans with a mismatched band around the neck, where she had run out of wool and couldn't get quite the right wool to match it. Anyway she had also made this lovely embroidered tablecloth at sometime. Here is a close up of one of the flowers.

I have had a bit of a house wifely sort of day today. Carrots in Tesco were on special at 50p for a 1kg bag so I bought a big bag and made carrot and coriander soup. My DH is starting to worry about me now, when he had to wait until I took a photo of his soup before he could eat it. Perhaps am taking the blogging too far?

But here is the recipe anyway because I like to see recipes on other peoples blogs.

Carrot and coriander credit crunch soup.

2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 med onion peeled and chopped
4 large carrots peeled and chopped,1 large potato peeled and chopped
1 tsp ground coriander
750ml vegetable stock
salt and pepper
Heat oil in large pan, add onion and cook over low heat til soft. Add carrots and potato and stir again, Cover pan with lid and cook gently for 10 mins. Stir in ground coriander and stock, stir and bring to boil and cook for about 25 mins, blitz soup with hand blender (Note this is a new blender because the last one melted the last time I blitzed hot soup!)
Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with a swirl of fresh cream and a sprinkling of fresh coriander or parsley.

And finally a sneak preview of Jenny's pumpkin lantern,ready for Halloween on Friday.


Happy Quilting xx