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

Supergoof Trunkshow

Earlier today I went to the Ingrid’s (Supergoof) trunkshow at the Hertog-Inn Bed &Breakfast run by Karen.

Unfortunately it was raining outside, so no outdoors pictures, but inside it was cosy and warm and after a good cup of coffee (and sweet treats for the other ladies, I declined, watching my weight at the moment), we were ready for Ingrid, her quilts and her stories.

The quilts were patiently waiting in baskets….

And one by one, Supergoof showed her quilts and told the stories behind them:

Baskets

The famous Klosjes quilt that started a klosjes craze in the quilt world

Her Dear Jane quilt

Her thimble quilt, 6552 (!)tiny thimbles, this one started another craze in the quilt community

Some great fabrics in there!

So many tiny pieces in this one

Lovely labels

What a wonderful pile of quilts!

And this is one of the things that she is working on now.  There were many more quilts and just in case you didn’t know this yet, she does everything by hand, patchwork, applique, broderie perse and quilting,  e v e r y t h i n g !

Dorry was there as well with some goodies from her shop, this is how nice it looked before we all went shopping J !

And we were well looked after by Karen in the lovely kitchen of her Bed and Breakfast, look what we saw there….ahhhhhh……Aga!!

Ingrid, it was great to see you again, listen to your stories, see and touch your quilts again (soooo soft) and Karen, can’t wait to come here again to one of your Quiltcafedays!

Phyllis

Bloggers Bee Day

Oh, I had a great day yesterday, I was invited to the second Bloggers Bee Day with Hubertine.

More of those present have and will blog about it, so you can see pictures there as well, so I will just say it was wonderful, I enjoyed meeting new people, seeing their work, enjoying their food (pot luck lunch), receiving their presents (thanks Carina, Lida and Yvonne) and sharing tips and jokes. Here are some pictures:

A big, big Thank You to Yvonne, Rennie and the other girls of the Stitchinbitches!

Phyllis

Frustration

Or should I call this blog post ‘Disappointment’?

I spent quite some time putting the first borders on the centre piece of my Phebe quilt. And then the third border… and then this….look.. too much fabric.. it will not lie flat.

The problem must be in the dogtooth border, I did not notice it when I put that on and I can just kick myself for it. Classic mistake. It will all have to come off and be redone, but I just cannot get myself to do it right now. So Phebe is shelved for a while, while I find the courage redo those borders…..

Meanwhile of course there was s*n*o*w, which DH and myself don’t like (we must be the only Dutch persons who feel this way), but which Whopper loves. When he is inside he can’t get enough of it

And when he is outside he just runs and jumps and eats the snow and looks really annoyed when he has to sit still for a second so I can take a picture.

With Phebe shelved, I turned to another project, the King George III quilt and made the circle of the 4^th block.

I piece the centre circle of the block, but wonder if there is anybody who appliques these and if that is any better. The block does lie flat, no problem there, just wondering.

So I now have 4 circles of the King George III quilt, on to # 5.

And – very therapeutic – I started cleaning out my cabinet with fabrics and books. I am de-stashing , look for it over here the coming weeks.

Phyllis

New Year's resolutions

I don’t really have any, do you?! I just plan to have as good a time as I can, spending time with loved ones, friends, enjoying good food, the occasional tipple and of course a lot, an awful lot of patchwork and quilting, yesss!

What I have always loved at the beginning of a new year is that brand new diary, putting fresh ink in my fountain pen and writing in those special dates first, birthdays, wedding anniversaries etc.  The next dentist appointment always comes last for some reason …..

The Americans have very many special days in their calendar, some of my favourites: National Margarita Day (February 22), National Cheesecake Day (July 30) and National Fried Chicken Day (July 6)!  This is all bit of fun but today I came across one that made a lot of sense to me:

Visit YourLocal Quilt Shop Day!

January 24 appears to be the day, but let’s face it, any day will do. Let’s support our quilt shops this year, let’s give this economic crisis a good kick up the old ‘behind’ and buy a bit here and there if you can as a thank you to the people in the quilt shops for always helping us out, supplying us with cups of coffee, tea and sympathy, cookies, fun and inspiration!

Always room for a few more fq’s !

First bee date was at mine last week, I thought a few bubbles where in order, to make those stitches go more fluently…

A bit more on quilting next blogpost, did not get a lot done over het Xmas period and right now my evenings are taken up by watching this with DH and DD, all 20 hours of it:

Missed it when it was on tv (too late in the evening for us), but it is great!

‘See’ you soon,

Phyllis