More sewing,More food, best of all More Sunshine

A really warm sunny day, Ben has had 2 good walks and I have 2 loads of laundry blowing in the gentle breeze.

I completed my November swap block and it will be in the post to Switzerland in the morning. My sewing is better traveled than I am. My partner this month asked for Grey, purple and white, BINGO, I have plenty of those colours. As for the block pattern, as it was so fresh in my mind I made a zigzag rail post block.

These colours have come out pretty true, the grey Pearl Bracelets print has featured in several things, I need to get some more and the mistletoe print is a favourite of mine, I have had it in about 5 different colours but only have this one left now. I may have a search on line to find some more, it is a very good blender. The light print is a very fine light grey polka dot which reads as a solid. The dark purple is a remnant from a long ago Trip Round the World Quilt, I made it in 2006 from a book by Eleanor Burns.

I set to with all my Christmas fabric  and pressed and bagged all the strips and bits and bobs, it will be much easier to work with now. I want to hand over a nice bag full of things to sell.

My Brother in Oz always goes out to celebrate Australia Day, there are big public events everywhere, free breakfasts are to be found in parks, there are gas operated barbecues in most parks as well and whole families gather to have a fun day and watch the fireworks as soon as night falls. There will be around 25 in his group next year so I thought that I would make him a throw quilt for the little ones to sprawl on when they get tired. It is at the end of January and the grass will be dry and very scratchy. I pulled these fabrics, vaguely patriotic but not a flag, I want them to be able to use it all summer. The top colour is a very dark blue, not purple, I am going to make the Rail Fence again, it is easy and a fast make, the post will be mayhem in another 2 weeks.

Dinner tonight was going to be a fridge bottom pie, but we have had pie this week so it will now be a hotpot. The slow cooker is on with an onion, 1 leek, 2 carrots and 1/4 of a swede all sliced up and simmering in the juices left from Sundays dinner. Later I will add the left over Brisket diced up, stir that in and cover with some sliced potatoes. Equally I had intended to serve cauli cheese and cabbage but now will just use plain cauli to go with the cabbage.

Pudding will not be needed but just in case there is a fresh dish of cinnamon and brown sugar stewed apple in the fridge and a jug of custard could be whipped up in no time.

Reasons to be grateful. 

1. A no pain day.

2. Warm sunshine.

3. Ben snoozing at my feet, dreaming of all the squirrels that he wants to chase.

4. Laundry done, dried and folded.

5. 3 days sewing organised.

I have blitzed the sitting room, all the wood is gleaming and all the glass is sparkling and boy is the sunshine bouncing about. Setting a list if "things to be done" each day is working well for me, I have to focus to get through the tasks to have time to sew. I do not mind what it takes, as long as it works.

Time to plug the iron in, I want to do that before I make more tea.

              TTFN                                              Pam

Cloudy with no chance of meatballs.

That,s because we had them yesterday, I could not resist that, I do not watch many animated films but that one was funny.
They were very good, I used a 450 gm pack of RTC posh beef burgers from the Co op, a 600 gm pack of minced pork that was on a promotion in Mr T,s little shop, a good 2 cups of homemade wholemeal breadcrumbs. I threw 4 carrots, 3 sticks of celery, a big onion and 2 peppers into the processor and blitzed them really fine and then added 3 tbs garlic puree, 2 tbs Cajun Seasoning, salt and black pepper. I tipped that into my biggest mixing bowl and mashed the meat and breadcrumbs into it. I shaped them into golf ball size and filled 2 roasting tins with a single layer and cooked for 25 mins at 200 c. I had a load of Tomato sauce in the freezer so defrosted about 4 pints and tipped it into the tins, back into the oven for another 30 mins. They were very good with spaghetti and a sprinkle of grated cheese, there are 8 servings in the freezer for future dinners.

I did my sewing and made 12 coasters, I dragged some Christmas fabric out and made a small table topper for a swap that I am in.

I am going to use up as much of my reds and greens as I can making these, they are a quick make and use lots of  the 5" charms that I cut.

I have just noticed that this is upside down, it is the Rail Fence Block assembled to form a zig zag, as a runner or quilt it is very effective. This is a 15" square so will hold a big bowl of fruit or a Table top tree. I am going to make a set of coasters in the same fabrics for my swap partner.

I managed to do a 45 minute walk in the dry with Ben yesterday afternoon, we alternated between very bright sun and very grey gloom.

A mountain of sugar beet glistening in the sun.

Within 5 minutes the clouds rolled in and it was grey, these field were full of potatoes last week, now they are ploughed and harrowed ready for the next crop.

 The tree line on the horizon marks the 1101 road, some of the vehicles from Spalding use the back roads as a rat run and come through the village. Not so much at this time of the year as there is a lot of farm machinery on the move, I always grin when I see lorries dawdling along behind a tractor and trailer at 10 mph. They should stick to the main roads.

Reasons to be grateful.

1. A pain free night.

2. A dry, if dull, morning.

3. No laundry or ironing, more play time.

4. My bookcase, tidy, dust free and organised.

5. A new dvd from my lovely neighbour Nev, Johnny Cash in his prime. lovely.

I am off soon to walk Ben, then I am going to sort out the Christmas fabrics. I want to polish and clean all the glass downstairs today, it will help to bounce what little natural light there is about. I have put daylight tubes in my kitchen and am going to see if I can get a sewing corner set up in there. It will be tight but the light is fantastic and will help my precision work no end. 

      TTFN                                       Pam

On Track Tuesday

A big hello and welcome to Frugal in Derbyshire, I have been reading your blog for ages and only realised yesterday that I was not "following", that has been remedied.

I had a stern talk to myself after reading your comments yesterday, I have only been off work for 12 days today, it felt nearer to 12 weeks, slight exaggeration there. Possibly because on the bad pain days my meds just about knock me out and on the good days I go round like a whirling dervish.

I have read your advice and set my day out to a rough time table.
Tea first, you have to get the priorities right, then a quick run through the shower etc etc. Ben is top of the list he gets as long a walk as I can do, this morning it was 30 minutes.

It was quite strange, the village is not huge and I left the cottage, turned right and after about 7 minutes walked into rain. That lasted for around 10 minutes and I gradually walked out of it, the rest of the walk was dry. Looking back I could see where the dark cloud had gathered over the next village and we must have walked through the leading edge as within 20 minutes of getting back it was raining in earnest.

I dried Ben off and fed him, had more tea and some cereal then cleared the kitchen and swept and washed the floor.

I had 30 minutes with more tea, priorities remember, and the lap top, blog reading.
I read Bee in My Bonnet written by Lori Holt and she had written a tutorial for some coasters, very cute. PING I have been asked to make some bits for a fund raising stall in 2 weeks time, so with no further ado i set my timer for 2 hours and started cutting and sewing.

Rather than use Christmas fabrics I picked reds and greens at random. These were 5" squares that I cut last week from my scrap bin, and the wadding is trimming from a quilt. I throw nothing away.

The first 4 finished, the red and gold star fabric is left over from a swap last month. This was a good way to use some of it.

I have made mine slightly bigger than Lori, she trimmed her hourglass blocks to 3 1/2 " before quilting, I quilted mine then trimmed to 4", I cut the backing squares to 6" but will use 5 1/2" on the rest.

My other scrap project is progressing nicely, I will be sewing again at around 4.00 and will start joining the rows of this.

It is going to be a Chequer Board quilt with alternate Penny Patch blocks and plain blocks. Mainly in Autumn colours but all from my scrap cutting session. The solid rust fabric was bought to back a quilt with but I changed my mind and used a print instead, the leaf one on the bottom left pile, that rust will be the borders as well to bring it to a full 72" by 80" quilt, the binding fabric has been picked from the stash, I just hope that I have enough. I am going to piece the backing out of whatever fabrics that I have, everything from 2" strips to fat quarters and some bigger bits. This is a stash busting project and I have had some of these prints for 5 years.

The rain has stopped and the sun is doing it,s best to break through, I will finish this and get Ben out while it lasts. When I get back I am going to tidy my bookcase, it looks as though someone threw a hand grenade in there. Then 2 hours sewing before I make dinner, meatballs in tomato sauce, enough to freeze 3 meals, with spaghetti.

Reasons to be grateful.

1. Support and help from all you peeps.

2. Sunshine after the rain.

3. 1 hour in the kitchen and 4 days dinners done.

4. Ben bounding round my feet in a mad rush to get out on his walk.

5. A happy and fruitful sewing session.

I swear that Ben can read my mind, as soon as I think about walking him he is there, in my face wriggling and squirming with joy. Dumb animals HUH.

TTFN                                    Pam

Structure in My Life

Since I cut back my work days to 3 a week I have been drifting through my days and after being hit by this latest sciatica attack, and attack is just what it feels like, I have drifted even more.

I do have days when I just plough through everything that needs doing and then some more, but there are too many days when I seem to lose track of the time and fritter it away on nothing. Okay some of that is when the pain is bad enough that I take the strong meds, I am sure that half is just because I lack the structure that a full time job gives to your life.

If you have all day to do a job then it generally takes all day to do it. I admit to enjoying surfing through the blogs that I follow, clicking here and there and finding lots of fascinating things to read about. Enough is enough and too much leisure time is making me feel dull and droopy. I need that structure, I really have to get a grip as at the end of this year I will be giving up my job. This is on the advice of my GP and on my own recognition that it is too heavy for me now.

Francesca moves to London in 3 weeks, I have drawn up a plan to work my way through the cottage, starting in her room, decorating and sprucing up. Her room will house my sewing paraphernalia and finally it will all be in one place. She will still be able to use the room when she comes back for a few days. I predict that after Christmas the trips back will become further apart and for increasingly shorter periods, this is natural as she will be building a new social life and growing a new circle of friends.

This opens a big window of opportunity for me and I want to be ready to embrace it. I still hope to move to Wales, I love it there, and want to be in a good place in my self. The house needs to go on the market in March, hopefully we will have reasonable weather, and I would like to be moved by the end of May.

I have just realised how I have rambled away from my header title. Without getting the structure in place I will not achieve any of this. I am worried that I will allow myself to drift along until I wake up one morning to find that the boat has left and I am still standing on the Quay.

I hope that I am explaining myself, I have worked just about all my adult life and in a way I have become institutionalised, as I think most of us have.

To make a start on this I am drawing up a rough timetable, if you like, a list of what I want to achieve each day and how long to allow for it. That looks so silly in print but I am willing to try it and if it works, great, if it does not then I will try something else.

I remember my Aunt Joan retiring and after about 3 months of drifting along ( it runs in the family) she would have her breakfast, put her coat on and go out for a walk. When she returned she "pretended" that she was now at work and got all the things done that she had to and then reversed the walk until she arrived home from "work". I can do that, Ben will get an earlier walk, I am sure that he will not object.

Reasons to be grateful.

1. No laundry, done and dusted yesterday.

2. A bright sunny morning to enjoy.

3. Ben is leaping around, he senses a change.

4. A new recipe for dinner last night was superb.

5. My latest sewing project is looking good.

Yesterday I cooked a piece of Brisket in the slow cooker, nothing new there I hear someone say. Well I saw this on a blog, no idea which one I was surfing, I mixed roasted garlic puree with paprika, cumin, cinnamon, dried Italian herb mix and some allspice and rubbed this over the joint, leaving a thick layer on the top. I put it into the slow cooker, cut 2 red chillies in half and put cut side down on top and then cut a third of a pack of butter and placed on top. Lid on and cook on low for 6 hours.

Here it is, there is quite a lot of room as my cooker is the biggest that  I could find, I have plans to use that space.

Four hours in to the cooking time I added potatoes, rolling them in the melted butter and meat juices., I turned the potatoes once more after another hour.

It was a resounding success, the meat was moist and fell to bits, the potatoes were just on the verge of breaking down and the juices were thick with spices and all were flavoured with a subtle hit of chilli.

I served carrot and swede mash, cauliflower and cabbage with it. We have leftovers for a repeat during the week and a tub of the buttery spicy juices in the freezer. Brisket is not a joint to eat cold, it tends to have a dry somewhat stringy texture on cooling but the butter has solved that and you could slice this for sandwiches quite easily.

I should have taken a photo of it cooked but we had washed up and everything was in fridge or freezer before I thought of it. The meat was so soft that I sliced down across the grain into chunks.

Now I can not put Ben off any longer.

                            TTFN                Pam

A Wallow In My Memories

First let me offer a warm welcome to Janice, a new follower, if you have been here for a few days then I aplogise. I am a bit lax in looking at my counting thingamujig.

I know that several of you joined me for afternoon tea a few days ago, I had so much fun baking that I did some more today. I was awake early and could almost hear my Granny saying " come on Pam the oven is getting hot and the tea is made"

She liked to do her Sunday baking in the wall oven, the sort where you light a real fire under it and stick your arm in the oven to see how hot it was. There was an indicator on the front but she preferred the arm test!

Just as we did then, 55 years ago, I started with sausage rolls and shortcakes.

I only made 900 gm of flour into pastry whereas we used to use about 5 lb.

The shortcakes are assembled like this.

Roll out the pastry and dab butter over 2/3 rds, sprinkle with sugar and dried fruit.

Fold up the naked bit halfway and then fold up again to cover the fruit.

Roll out so you can just see the fruit through the pastry, brush with a little milk and a final sprinkle of sugar, cut up and cook at 200 c for around 25 minutes.

Lovely with a cup of tea, when if they get stale warm them up and have with custard, we have not had them like that for as long as I can remember.

I also made a tray of little quiches, Granny called them Breakfast Pies.

I made 2 more Apple and Walnut cakes from Dirt Under My Fingernails, that is 4 since I read the recipe, Shaz you have a lot to answer to. 

 They are a little darker this time as I had some SR wholemeal flour to use up also this time I put the walnuts in the cake with the apple, I did not mean to I was distracted by Francesca walking through the kitchen and swiping a sausage roll and a mini quiche as she went.

Why is it that any baking swiped off the cooling tray as twice as nice?

Any way I picked up the walnuts instead of the apples and in they went, hey ho it still looks good, Nev has got one as well as some sausage rolls and quiches. 

My next baking day will be some of the latest recipes from Sharon of Miss Townmouse. Between them I will be lucky to get into jogging bottoms soon, never mind my LBJ,  Little Black Jeans.

Reasons to be grateful.

1. A bright sunny day.

2. Watching Ben running round with a sock in his mouth like a puppy.

3. A fresh breeze blowing my laundry dry.

4. My latest project looking good so far.

5. Planning a trip to do some Christmas window shopping, I do not need to buy anything but like to harvest some ideas ready for next year.

I do not like to do laundry at the weekend but in the winter I take advantage of every good day and today is perfect, strong sunshine and a lively breeze.

I will be sewing and pressing later so will get my laundry ironed in the meantime.

Francesca has just made more tea so .             TTFN       Pam

Sunny Saturday, Shopping and Sewing.

Oh what a beautiful morning, the sun has got his hat on, and all that jazz.

It is a glorious morning and I was up in time to see the sun rise and the early morning mist dissipate. That is because Ben decided to jump onto the Ottoman and then onto me. I flew up the bed like a greyhound from the trap. Ben led the charge downstairs, I headed to the back door to let him out, he headed for the sofa and leapt onto a pile of cushions. Hmmm

Well as I was up at......OMG.....5.00am I made tea, then I made tea and just to make certain that I was really awake I made tea. It could have been a "Bobby Ewing" moment after all. 

I looked at the housework and decided to make the most of my early start, so I got Little Gem out scooped up the 2 1/2" strips that I cut and started a new project. 

 Yes I know, all that wittering yesterday and I am at it already, guilty as charged.

This is my swap mug rug, it is perfect to sit here with my little scissors, a few pins, safety pins and a spare bobbin, my stitch ripper lives here as well, I use it to hold corners down as they go under the presser foot.

I separated my neutrals and then all my Autumn colours and sewed strips together.

Then I pressed the seams toward the dark and cut into 2 1/2" blocks.

The blocks were too big for what I want them for so I am trimming them down a little, it may seem like a waste of fabric but it gives me a perfect 4" block and all the trimmings get used as stuffing.

 Once they are all trimmed I will cut blocks and maybe strips from these fabrics. I am not sure how big I want this to be, but probably throw size. I am making it up as I go.

I popped into Wisbech and went to Button Up & Stitch where I found these pretties.

5 fat quarters, the middle one is a pale neutral and the one on the right is pale grey.

This is a nylon organza with a metallic sheen, it is for something that I saw on a you tube tutorial. I will try not to play until I have finished one of the things I have on the go.

When I told the lovely girls in the shop what I was planning they had a rummage in their scrap bin and found this piece of satin for me to incorporate. How cool is that? A perk of shopping local. I have said many times that I buy fabric from the US, well when I found this shop I made a decision to buy what I could from here. I used to buy from a different shop every now and then and it closed down.

 I try my utmost to spend a little every week in my village shop for the same reason, if you do not use it you lose it.

Reasons to be grateful.

1. Lots of scraps with a new purpose.

2. Some pretty fabric tucked away.

3. A sunny day in November.

4. Fran feeling much better.

5. No pain today.

Francesca was working her way through some reading material from work, some inconsiderate person had written notes here and there. She decided to tippex them out but ran out after a few pages. On the off chance she went to the village shop and they had some for £1.20 each, she bought 4 as it was a good price.

If we did not have the shop it would have meant driving to Sutton, and probably paying more plus the cost of the petrol.

Time to walk Ben and then think about dinner and some more trimming.

               TTFN                                      Pam

The Beast Is Tamed

Well if not completely tamed under close control.

He He, just kidding, Ben is just having a little snooze after a longish walk and the excitement of meeting a new dog in the village, a Beagle cross puppy. Lots of bouncing up and down and a little swing from one of Ben's ears.

You may not have noticed but I am a bit of a flibbertigibbet  I start a project and then new ideas come flooding in and I want to start another, rinse and repeat, I have to force myself to batten my mind down and focus. I still mange to have a few things on the go though. The real problem here is that when I finish one thing I still have more in progress, this means that I never get to grips with all the left over fabric. 

The smaller bits are no trouble they go into my scrappy crumb bin and when it gets full I make improvised blocks by sewing them onto strips of paper. When I have enough of these they are quick to sew together and tun into what ever I fancy.

It is the bigger bits that mount up, more than a 5" square and less than a fat quarter. I 'fess up to having 2 large bins full. I follow both Lori Holt and Bonnie Hunter, both prolific quilters and authors, both keeping their scraps under tight control. PING I have to buckle down and do the same, it will make my sewing storage neater and make it easier to use up my scraps as leaders and enders.

2" and 3" strips

3 1/2" strips and a pile of trimmings to be used for stuffing.

2 1/2" and 5" squares, the building blocks of many quilt patterns.

A pile of odd shaped trimmings for my scrappy paper pieced blocks and a pile of odd sized strips.

The latter will feature in some "wonky" Log Cabin blocks.

I normally make log cabin blocks with strips all the same width but saw one on a blog last week where the maker had just used every sized strip that she had and I liked it.

2 days cutting, pressing and more cutting, aching shoulders and a sore wrist, lots of tea breaks and Ben breaks. It is done, at least i have done as much as I can do for now, my newly sorted scraps need to be housed in separate containers. I have stacks of plastic and will sort through them later. 

The two boxes that I emptied? Oh I filled them before I started cutting so that I had to get the job done now instead of later.

Reasons to be grateful.

1. A job well done.

2. Order where once there was chaos.

3. Ben being as cuddly as he can.

4. A dry and warm day.

5. New recipes to try from a follower

The person responsible for my expected weight gain is Shaz Frugal Goddess. You can find her by looking at the comments on yesterdays post and clicking on her name.

I will be making pitta bread, oat bread and Apple and Walnut cake.

Dirt Under My Fingernails, very recently discovered, has to take some of the blame as I will be cooking her Grans Fruity Cakey Dessert as well. Thank goodness for Nev.

Now I am hungry and need a cup of tea before I walk Ben.

TTFN                                           Pam