Grow Your Own: Potatoes

It can be really difficult getting Mr 'I hate sunny days' outside, but today DH asked him to come and help dig up some early potatoes and he was really keen...

Getting your hands full of dirt in the search for spuds is clearly very satisfying...

He also ate so many potatoes at dinner because we kept reminding him that these were the ones he'd dug up!

DH ate the smallest one once I'd steamed them...

And they don't need any salt or butter, they are just so tasty.

Harvesting potatoes: A game the whole family can play :-D

Wordless Wednesday - Life on the Farm

I Love Red (again and again!)

Posh visitors...

I forgot to blog these photos of a visit by DH's friend's in his beautiful red MG car...

Ooooh...I'd love to go for a spin in it!!!

Ragdoll Rambles

When I was a child my aunt made me a rag doll and my mother still has it. I have never made a doll before, I guess I never had the need, but I have been wanting to try one and so I bought a pattern and tried it out...

I didn't want to go too pink, so it got a red dress, to go with the red baby quilt...

I had some issues with the pattern and it's lack of seam allowances on the dress as well as the overly full skirt etc, as well as some problems with the hair... but overall it wasn't a complete disaster so I might try another one at some point...

I signed up for a course called 'Create your Child's Summer Wardrobe', but it has unfortunately been cancelled due to lack of participation... Probably just as well as I don't need another hobby now, do I? :-)

Daily Traffic Jam

The King (& Queen) of The Compost

Not as much sewing as I would like going on around here
as we have had a busy time in the garden...

While we're outside, Abby likes to come and keep us company in the vegetable patch:

She has been a bad kitty again and has been catching lots of birds and small creatures so she now has 3 bells around her neck. I have a bag of biggish bells and have threatened that she'll get another bell for every bird that she catches!!!

We are also trying to get the children more involved in the planting and growing too:

Although sometimes a pile of compost bags can be more fascinating than a tray of seedlings,

but at least he is outside and not complaining that he hates sunny days! LOL

DH has extended the vegetable patch enormously in the hopes that next year there will be less building and preparing and more sowing and reaping...

I love clouds:

(nice fluffly ones always remind me of the start of 'The Simpsons' :-D)

And when we're not enjoying the garden we sometimes visit the village playground.

This was my view from the playground the other day:

A full day of blue skies!! Only lasted a day though *sigh*.

Just needs borders...

The story of my quilting life!
Just needs borders.
Just needs finishing,
just needs putting together...

I added more sashings and cornerstones to my charm pack blocks and have ended up with this:

Just needs borders (and basting and quilting and binding...LOL)

We went to Gardenmakers for lunch today and came home with a few plants to attract bees to the garden to help get our beans and vegetables pollinated and cropping...

I wanted to blog a photo of my beautiful little girl, but look what she has done to her ear!!!

She really is a little devil!

Duh!

Take a 5" charm pack and cut all the squares into 4 equal pieces.

Add 1" sashings and central corner stones.

Iron.

Measure the new block: 5"

Quilting, Shopping & Crawling on the Floor

Last night I had a wonderful evening with my dear friend Vicky. We talked about quilts and stuff and then she got me on my hands and knees laying out a quilt for her. What fun! I just wish I had taken photos! I delivered some quilt tops to Vicky for Project Linus that were kindly donated by Kate (Thank you Kate!) and I saw Vicky's WIP's and latest fabric accrual from a new-to-me patchwork shop that is actually very close to where I live. I will have to check it out soon...

After crawling around on the floor and browsing through patchwork magazines, I sewed a few more stitches on my NYB quilt...

Thank you for all the input with how to quilt it.... In the end, I went with following the circles in the darker thread and now I am filling in the borders and gaps with circles...

I do sort of wish I had machine quilted it, but then I would not have had anything to do while on holiday :-)

Today my husband needed to collect something in North Wales very near a fabric shop that I had heard about from my lovely bloggy friend Andrea. (Apologies Andrea that we couldn't pop in to meet you, but by the time we got there it was like a 20 minute trolley dash! I could have spent more like 2 hours there!! Next time!!!) Well, it's an amazing place and the fabric selection was great. I felt it would be rude not to purchase something (ahem!)...

Although the colours are not true in the photo, they are great in real life and they will be very useful for backings as most are about 2 or 3 metre pieces! I am pleased as punch as they say! And now I can get my Cathedral Stars quilt top quilted. (DH even chose the fabric for the back of that one - the teal with spots, although I may go with the brown swirls - ssh!)

Setting off on our road trip, we were behind some travellers with their beautiful caravans...

Appelby Horse Fair is over now for this year so they are all making their way home.

I just wish it would stop raining so they could have a more pleasant homeward journey!!

Wordless Wednesday

Seen here

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside....

We're just back from a week away at the seaside courtesy of my DMIL. It was wonderful.

The only thing better than all that sand between my toes was a trip to the National Botanical Gardens of Wales...

I have rather a lot of photos to sort through, but it was lovely to get away and get my sea view (and flower) fix for the next few months...