New blocks and a visit

This week I finished blocks 7 and 8 of the King George III quilt.

My blocks (or rather circles) so far:

Then, at the Blogger’s Bee in February Hubertine and I were invited to visit the their weekly bee again, so that’s what we did one evening last week.

At the Bloggers Bee I also met Rennie for the first time and we have mailed a few times since. In one of those mails I promised to bake her a banana bread (which I had also made for the pot luck lunch at the Bloggers Bee) so this was a good opportunity to make good on my promise. Since Yvonne had invited me initially months ago and was also the host I of course could not arrive without making her one as well, and while I was at it decided to make a third banana bread for the other ladies to enjoy that evening. Phew!

I promised to put the link of the recipe on my blog, you can find it here.

There is one thing I add to the recipe: 50 grams of chopped walnuts for some extra bite and I always put 5 walnuts on top before I put it into the oven.

Waiting at the bee were the gifts Shannon made for the participants of the Bloggers Bee, but which unfortunately arrived too late for that, lovely crochet flower brooches. Such a nice gesture from Shannon, this is the one I chose:

The evening was great, lovely ladies (and two very well behaved dogs), nice projects, laughs and a glass of wine. More on this evening here.

Hubertine showing off her quilting skills at the bee.

Thanks ladies for your hospitality and also Shannon for your gift, it was a fun evening!

Phyllis

Special days

The past week brought some special days.

First of all there was the Chinese New Year, always a big celebration in Chinatown in The Hague. You may have guessed by now and my friends definitely know that I love Chinatown, shopping there and eating there, so at Chinese New Year I’ll always go to have a look at the celebrations.

The waking of the dragon is always a colourful spectacle, but as usual it was too busy to get  a good picture. Luckily I was able to make a picture of the dragon before the ceremony.

 

 

Another reason I was there was to do my shopping for that evening, last week was just to practice for this night: sushi night with friends!

It is great to share a friendship with a fellow quilter, but even better if the families have a connection too. Our husbands and Hubertine’s son share a love of music, rock music that is, drums and guitars. They played together for the first time this evening,  that was great, at some stage I am sure pictures will follow on our blogs. Our daughters each made loads of sushi and we all enjoyed eating it!

Hubertine showed me some of her mother’s quilts, that was very special.

Later in the week of course, Valentine’s day! The surprises DH and I had for each other  somehow went slightly different than intended.
After 20 years together (!) my DH told me the week before Valentine’s that one of his favourite cakes is lemon cake….  so I thought I’d make him one for when he came home from work that day.

As you see it is still in the tin… it would not come out, my very first ever lemon drizzle cake, too sticky, I should have lined the cake tin with baking paper….. But it tasted good.

DH came home with a lovely bunch of flowers:

 

To his surprise on Sunday morning (3 days after Valentine’s day!) by the time the flowers had opened up a little, he noticed he bought me tulips (which I love by the way) instead of roses as he had planned to…. “I wasn’t wearing my glasses when I bought them….”

And on Saturday, Hubertine and I treated ourselves to a day to Zutphen, Petra Prins’ shop of course. So much inspiration in that shop!

We spent so much time in there that at some stage Bep decided to make us some tea so we could have a little rest.

Bought fabrics for my King George and Jacob’s Ladder quilts, want to get on with those. Walking back to the car noticed an apron in a shop window that was made for a quilter……………

“Darling, dinner is in the cookbook”

J!

Phyllis

A block and a winner

No quilty news in my previous blogpost so this time I will start with my latest block of the King George III quilt, block 6:

As I mentioned before this was a BOM by Petra Prins, that means that every month you got a pattern for a block and a scrap bag. As the months progressed I got a better idea of how I wanted the quilt to turn out, so the first two blocks were made mostly out of the scrap bag, I mean that I looked at the scrap bag first and may have added from my own stash. After the first two blocks I first looked at what I wanted a block to look like: red here, blue there, some pink etc. and then looked at what fabrics to use, both from my own stash and from the scrap bags.

This month block 6 was a bit different, the red striped fabric in the scrap bag was just perfect for the points, so I started from there. In the end the inner sunburst circle is from my own fabrics and the outer circle, starting with the red points, is from Petra Prins’scrap bag.

I also worked some on my Jacob’s Ladder this week.

A few months ago I was contacted (via my blog) by an English quilter had moved to The Hague and was looking to meet fellow quilters over here.

And would you believe it, it turned out she lives practically around the corner from me. Since moving to The Netherlands, she has been infected with the Featherweight bug. So for Christmas her husband gave her a Featherweight, which means that now I can just pop around the corner with my own Featherweight and we can enjoy few hours of sewing, so that’s what we did.

 

And then it is time for……. the winner of my first giveaway!

I realise the flip side of this giveaway business, I only have one book to give away and I really wish I could give everybody something…. Thank you to my new followers for signing up and I am so sorry I cannot send each and every one of you a little gift, but there will be more giveaways, promise (love them myself, even though I have never won anything) so here it goes, DD drew from the bag of names….

Cisca!

Congratulations Cisca, please send me an email with your address and I will send you the book a.s.a.p.

Have a nice weekend, everybody!

Phyllis

Giveaway: 50 Followers!

Over the weekend I noticed I now have 50 followers! Wow! Thank you followers and also everyone else who reads my blog and have not signed up as a follower (yet). I really appreciate it.

Apart from the creative side quilting is also a social activity for me, as is blogging. Both give me a lot of enjoyment and  I have met so many new, nice people through both.

Soooooo, to celebrate this it is time for my first Giveaway!

On Friday I will ask my DD to draw a name among those of my followers at that time, he or she will receive this handy book! A mini encyclopedia on quilting, always ready to answer any question you may have.  If you are not a follower yet and wish to participate, you can still do so.

(If you do not, not to worry, I am planning another little giveaway for everyone in April!)

On another note, DD and I have been busy this weekend making sushi. In this household we all love sushi and sashimi. Even Whopper seems to get more exited at the smell of fish than at the smell of meat in the kitchen. It was DD’s first experience at making sushi and she took to it like a duck to water J !

First on Saturday afternoon we went to one of the supermarkets in Chinatown and to the fishmonger nearby to get our ingredients.

Back home it was preparing the rice the proper way (for me the most difficult part, the rice has to be moist and sticky, it is easily either too dry or too moist, in both cases it will not be sticky enough), making the Japanese egg omelette and the Japanese mushrooms. We bought the seaweed salad ready made at the fishmonger’s.

And then – DD’s favourite part – putting the actual sushi together.

After that, the best part, eating it!

This is DD’s picture, she often knows how to get a different angle in a picture.

Until Friday!

Phyllis