One Big Achievement and Many Small Pleasures

I am very slow at making quilts so when one gets finally finished it's time for a heck of a gin and tonic. So excuse any typing errors!
This one has been a year in the making. It's single bed size and is for my parents. They have just celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary. I missed the deadline slightly, but then the Queen sent them a card right on time. To think they have been married 60 years. The quilt took me 1/60th of their married lives to make!!

Here is Isabel, my daughter, checking for stray threads.

Finally though I have made the decision to give up my allotment. This vegetable plot has been an ongoing struggle project for about 5 years. Finally my back has won with it's slippy disc and my knees protest a little too much and I have given in. I have finally lost the plot as it were!

However I cannot contemplate life without home grown veg so I have installed a small bed in the garden and several crops in pots. I am taking the Alys Fowler approach to having an edible garden. Tonight we had some wonderful french radishes sauteed in butter and garlic, with their green tops and courgettes with garlic.

It looks as if there will be a bumper crop of Victoria Plums this year.

A very small achievement for many, but a giant leap for me is that I have learned to do a colonial knot. Much better than a French knot, which I could never do anyway!

... and finally I thought I'd make something weeny. This little pair of fairy slippers was fun to make from a pattern by Annette Emms. They are about three inches long. Hopefully they'll keep a little character warm whilst they keep the slugs off my vegetables at the bottom of the garden at night!!

Mellow Fruitfulness

Here is the first book that I have made from scratch. I learned how to stitch the spine from Isobel Hall. I decided to make the cover topical as the Autumn colours have been astonishing this year.

The leaf has been glued on to the background of encaustic wax and Koh-I-Nor dye paint and the whole think acrylic waxed before stitching.

My journal has reawakened this weekend. We attended a memorial celebration for a family member at the beginning of October which I do not want to forget. The leaflet we were given  stuck on the left hand page has inside it some of the songs we sang and a poem which summed up Brigitte's attitude to life. I need to call this poem to mind often. I don't know who it is by:

I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

I will not die an unlived life

I will not live in fear of falling

Or of catching fire

I choose to inhabit my days

To allow my living to open me

Making me less afraid

More accessible

To loosen my heart

So that it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise

I choose to risk my significance.

To live so that which comes to me as seed

Goes to the next as blossom

And that which comes to me as blossom

Goes on as fruit.

This is the crab apple Evereste which we have just planted in our garden. It will have a wonderful cherry type blossom in the spring. The blackbirds eye the fruit.

 There has been an abundance of apples this year. I have two old trees in the garden - they are over one hundred years old and this time have flourished prolifically. There are two more in the allotment - one has huge eating apples and the other is a Bramley type cooking apple tree. Storing and eating it all has been the thing...

• I discover slicing and freezing apples on a tray with lemon juice on before bagging for the freezer
• shredding and mixing with orange juice for a better alternative to milk on home made muesli
• many apple crumbles
• more apple pies
• compost for the heap
• food for the rabbit and guinea pigs
• puree for sauce with pork

and today my son picked most of the grapes from the vine as there is to be a harsh frost tonight. They are a little tart but we juiced them with... you guessed it, apple juice, as a sweetener. This drink feels like energy on legs.

All these wonderful edibles need to be remembered and my daughter decorated journal pages with me.

That in itself is one happy, happy memory.

Plotting the Plot

Last night when everyone had gone to bed I got out my allotment file which hasn't seen the light of day for nearly a year and drew up my plans for the plot this year.

I have just got in from work, seen the ideas there on the page and felt very alarmed at the mammoth task I have set myself once again. The children don't like the dank vegetable plot at this time of year - harvesting is one thing but digging over in the chill February air is another, so it's always a case of juggling and fitting it in like a mad woman at 6am on Sunday mornings as usual!

Anyway I put my plans in front of me and sat down to eat the Borscht I made yesterday from some wonderful overwintered beetroots and I realised why it is all so worth it. YUM!

Here is the newly invented recipe for Beetroot Soup / Borscht:

Four large beetroots previously baked in silver foil and then peeled and chopped

One onion, chopped

Garlic, chopped or crushed I can't remember

Half a tin of puy lentils

A tin of chopped tomatoes

Stock (I used chicken stock I had in the freezer)

Butter and olive oil

Fry the onions and add the beetroot when soft. Add some garlic and the canned tomatoes. Let this bubble away for a few minutes and add the stock and lentils. Let this simmer for as long as you have time (20 minutes would be fine). Whizz with Brenda the Blender and enjoy.

This was even better after a night in the fridge with some homemade bread and lashings of butter. Anyone can dig an allotment over after this!!

Spring Has Sprung

At last Spring could have arrived - or is this the only day of this year's British Summer - who knows these days.

I have celebrated by visiting my long neglected allotment plot. Lo and behold I found these amazing beetroots lurking there which are now braising in the Aga. All is beginning to bud and shoot and the strawberry runners have taken root nicely. Yet the snowdrops are in fine display.

I feel renewed even after just an hour there and shall be inspired to finish quilting this quilt later once fortified with a big bowl of borscht.

Weaving into 2009

"An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle but it will never break. May you be open to each thread that comes into your life - the golden ones and the coarse ones - and may you weave them into a golden and beautiful life." - HAPPY WEAVING INTO 2009 AND BEYOND.

Well the decorations are down and in doing so the urge to dig over the allotment has surfaced - I shall start mid-January. This year, although not the best weather wise, has still brought a bountiful harvest and sprouts picked on Christmas Eve.

The nights are lighter (as yet indistinguishably so) and Spring is on it's way. I bought my husband a bird box with a web cam in it for his Christmas gift and lo and behold within 10 minutes of putting it in the tree and picking up the CCTV signal on the computer there was a long tailed tit in there. It snored away all night and left as the dawn approached. It was back again this morning and when I work out how to upload a photo I will have to post it here. Meanwhile you'll have to make do with some sweet little grape hyacinths as an image of the passing of the winter solstice and the move towards Spring. These were on my in-laws' kitchen windowsill on Boxing Day where we had festive gammon and the traditional family weep at E.T. !!

Produce in November

Ah at last I have had the nerve to quilt the trees on my new Bernina sewing machine! It was easy when I got going but the stitch regulator is so different from the "foot on the gas" style quilting I have done before. As one moves the fabric the machine automatically stitches at the same length whatever speed one goes. I think it's like switching from a manual Vauxhall Viva to an automatic step-tronic BMW (that's for any men reading).


Talking of trees I went on a foray to the much neglected allotment today with my 9 year old boy. We lit a fire. All boys should have compulsary GSCE fire poking homework. Then we picked apples, sprouts, he shelled the beans for next year's seed and finally picked coriander seeds. Off he went, bamboo cane in hand to see what was further afield whilst I dug up Jerusalem artichokes and red cabbage.
Anyway we came back with this lot.
We had a crowd for dinner so a shoulder of lamb was coated with the toasted and crushed coriander seeds with cumin (Rachel Allen recipe) and slow roasted for 4 hours and the red cabbage braised with apple, onion, garlic and spice (Delia Smith recipe). The sprouts were lightly steamed and some previously dug spuds mashed.
Madeira cake was drenched in Remy Martin and piled with fruit salad and whipped cream to follow.
The wine was not from the UK but was plentiful (hence I have to keep re-typing pretty well all these words) and my mother- in- law set fire to the table just to keep us on our toes.
I wouldn't touch the sewing machine after all that lot because it would bring a whole new meaning to meander quilting!