hello again

While away I did manage a little knitting and have only the handbag flap and handle to finish before I attempt to felt the bag. We spent the week in Crete. My mother told me stories of the local crafts we saw way back in the early 70's and I had an idyllic idea of what we were flying into. We hired a car of a few days to wonder the island, going to Knosso and other ancient sites. I did manage to see some lovely crafts in a museum in Rethimno and in the wonderful tiny streets of Hania. Below are photo's taken at the museum, fabulously bright embroidery. And found large natural sponges in Agios Nikolaos, just by the harbour.


Have a great week!

finished quilt

I went over to Tikki for some quilt binding and the quilt is now finished, washed and just needs to be pressed before posting (subject to the post office being open as London has a postal strike).

Once I had finished the quilt I saw an off cut of denim and decided to make a mat for the dogs water bowl as they are very messy little monsters!

We are going away for some sunshine, now we are acclimatized! I'm hoping to take along my knitting (assume that this will have to travel in my suitcase), so I can tan, knit and have a stack of books ready to read too. A friend recommended a company who make fabulous things, that can be thrown into a case without any worries of needing an iron. Perfect! See you in a few weeks...

quilting

Just the binding to do now on the baby quilt, all the hand quilting has been done. I've never tried it and found the stitching really enjoyable. I decided to pick out the cute bunny with a circle of stitches every 4 inches as well as lines of quilting.

I also noticed on Craft Hope's site that the babies had tissues pined onto their clothes for cleaning their tiny faces, so decide to make 4 hankies in the spare fabric. Having a household of teenager this weekend that have so much, reading of tiny children with nothing is heart breaking and made it very real. So do click on the link and have a look at Craft Hope, they are looking for baby blankets, booties and beanies and have also mentioned hankies, pillow cases and fabric balls.

icecream cake

We decided to go for an icecream swirl, not a great photo sadly as speed was needed on such a hot day. Have a great weekend!

cupcake magic

OK, total insanity to bake on possibly the hottest day of the year so far, but Miss T thinks we should have a trial run on the cupcake! Yesterday Lakeland had the giant cake tin in stock and as its miss T's birthday this weekend off I dashed to Brent Cross for said tin. Apparently I need to bake 2 for Friday (for school), 1 on Saturday (party) and 1 for Sunday (b-day)! Its just the thought of putting the oven on, may be later on.....

Will post a pick of the finished cake later...

nb. probably best not to try on such a hot day, butter icing melted.....

baby quilt

I thought I better get started on project 3 for Craft Hope, a baby blanket. I went over to Tikki in Kew, she has a fabulous collection of quilting fabrics and I can spend ages choosing. This morning on the way there I had decided to make a simple machine patchwork quilt and then I saw this very cute fabric. With a lemon backing fabric and hand quilting thread, thought I could quilt around some of the animals may be, not too sure yet. Miss T's quilt is growing and I also had to buy a little more fabric to finish.

in the garden

This lovely fuchsia is named after the very beautiful Joanna lumley and is rather splendid. I have been mooching around in our 'garden', watering all the pots and am a little concerned that although raspberries are about to come into season. I have been tending to 3 raspberry plants and not a sausage to be seen other than leaves, does anyone know if these plants below are indeed raspberries or the best cared for weeds!

Have ordered lots of gardening books from the library and hope to learn more from them, but stumped about these. I can on the other hand keep Orchids, just one of those things!

Do hope you all have a wonderful Wimbledon week, Miss T has gone away on a school trip this week, so the house is going to seem incredibly quiet. Now to start the dreaded ironing......