Day 8

Unfortunately the different whites are not showing up as well as I'd like in the photo's but in reality if you look at them in the right light you can see the subtle differences between the three. Doing the white certainly is making the embroidery behave a bit better and stop distorting so I'm happy with that result and will keep plugging along with the whites to make the whole embroidery behave. Spaces left at the ends of the white lines of embroidery are to allow for colours I still need to do in the central bit. Again not too much done - I was so exhausted after not sleeping much on Thursday that I gave up and went to bed early. I can see the bits where I was so tired I messed up and I will need to see if/how I can fix it (hopefully without removing whole lines of work)

Colours finished:
None

Working with:
3865
White
B5200

Day 7 - First week is over!

As always it pays to save what you are doing on a computer - I'd been marking my progress on the pattern on my computer in Paint.NET but apparently completely forgot to save it *at all* and when my computer started acting up for other reasons I completely lost all progress that I'd made. After thinking about things for a long time and re-marking the colour I was working on at the time I decided to skip re-adding everything and just work on the colours I still had to do as I had kept the colours I still had to do separate from the finished ones. This caused a fair bit of lost time of course so I only completed the one colour yesterday.

I noticed that between the lines of the embroidery things are not as flat as they should be (yuk) so I decided that instead of leaving that space uncovered I'd add some stitching there too and chose to do a strip pattern in 3 shades of white. In the photo above the colours do not show so clearly but there is a tiny difference (I can just hear the guys say "Difference? There's a difference??") that is admittedly more obvious in sunlight (which of course is hidden behind the clouds right now).

Colours finished:
3772

Working with:
3865
White
B5200

Going to be working with these three for a day or so but I'll still post an update photo tomorrow :)

Day 6

I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped but then I'd forgotten that yesterday afternoon was the last chance to go birthday present shopping before oldest's birthday tomorrow so that needed doing as well (I hate doing it before then as it's rather difficult to hide stuff here so I end up putting it in the larder for the duration, with the obvious complications of doing that and having to hide the key). Admittedly the colours I'm did had more than 30 stitches each with the most being 103 stitches and the colours I'll be working with today will stay in that range.

Colours finished: 7
433
434
543
632
712
801
3860

Working with:
3772


There are 11 colours left that I haven't worked with yet for the main part of the embroidery.

Day 5

Yesterday after the sleepover party had ended I was able to put my feet up and have a rest, which meant I could zoom ahead with my embroidery while I did so. After I'd finished some of the colours with the most stitches I decided to work on the colours that didn't have many stitches as many have less than 30 stitches. As a result my list of completed colours is rather on the long side hehe.

Colours finished: 25
436
437
738
739
779
838
839
840
841
842
898
938
951
976
977
3031
3064
3371
3773
3857
3859
3862
3863
3864
3866

Working with:
801

With my joints playing up today (as predicted) I'm not going to be able to do much more than embroider so hopefully I'll put another dent in the list of colours I still need to do.

Day 4

As predicted I didn't get much done yesterday but I did get a bit done and managed to finish the colour I had almost completed yesterday and also get a bit done on the next colour.

Colours finished:
3770

Working with:
3064 (33% completed)

The sleep over kids are still here and will be wanting pancakes for lunch (not the small American kind but the large English kind) but I have a feeling it will become brunch because they are showing no interest in actually eating breakfast lol. Either way I'm going to be kept busy for a bit longer and will be more dead than alive when they are gone.

Birthday sleepover

It's almost my oldest son's 11th birthday and he wanted a sleepover party - I wasn't too keen on the idea but I decided to give it a go anyway and see how things went. (it's actually going better than expected lol) Any way - with a party there is party food and I spent the greater part of today in the kitchen baking, decorating and preparing food. First there was the afternoon party with a couple of friends who weren't allowed to spend the night but did want to come> I had baked a sponge cake and filled it with raspberry jam, made 4 kinds of cupcakes (melon, lemon, peach and popcorn) and 2 different types of biscuits (that's cookies if you are American ;) )  One batch was using an "Animal crackers" recipe and was first letters of the names of the kids coming to the party. The other batch was sitting dogs that due to the black splodges I gave them looked more like cows, stegosauruses and fish made with a sugar biscuit recipe. On top of all that I also served a "Chinoise" a French style "cake" made with mini rolled up brioches filled with French cream and then baked - I cheated and bought this in the shop though hehe.  I gave the kids a choice of orange, strawberry and blackcurrant lemonade to drink.

For dinner oldest wanted home made pizza - ones they could "decorate" themselves. So I spent an age cutting stuff up for them So I made the tomato sauce for them, red/yellow sweet peppers, spring onion, normal sliced onion, sliced cherry tomato's mushrooms, tuna, boiled back bacon (the dutch call this casslerrib) , raw back bacon, leftover kebab from last night, some mince I cooked specially, salami and ham. I offered 4 cheeses: old Gouda, young Gouda, a special blend of "gratain"  cheese and last but certainly not least: mozzarella. The kids had a load of fun making their pizza's and then spent the next 20 minutes complaining that it took so long to cook lol.

In a short while I'm going to be a good mum and make the kids a midnight snack, not entirely sure what yet but they will enjoy it :)

Day 3

Yesterday I didn't get as much done as I would have liked because I was up to my eyeballs in getting ready for my oldest son's sleepover party today - the house hasn't been this clean in ages - but that's mostly due to the kids *both* having their rooms clean at the same time for a change lol

Colours finished:
3861

Working with:
3770 (75% completed)

Not sure how much I'll manage to do today - got a load of baking to do for the party and then the party to deal with.

The Bathroom...

A couple of weeks ago I finally managed to get the landlord to see that the "wall" in the bathroom was about as safe as walking across thin ice over a tank of hungry piranha's and he sent a builder over to remove it. The guy got out a chisel and a hammer, put the chisel against the wall and leaned on it just before giving it a big whack and almost fell through the "wall". He was horrified at how bad it was - I suspected it was bad but didn't realise it was *so* bad. 

As you can see it didn't look too good after the builder went through the wall - he even took photo's because he said "My boss will never believe me if I don't take a few photo's." It didn't take him too long to take the rest of the wall down - it was water logged, mildewed and rotted through in many places and the only thing holding it up was the tiles lol.

Once the wall was gone we had the rail to remove and that left a nasty hole in the ceiling that I had to fix myself. Fortunately I CAN do that so once I'd worked myself up to do it I managed to do a decent job - it's not perfect but the only way to get perfect was to plaster the whole ceiling as the previous tenant had kindly used that nasty paint with bits in it and I just don't have the physical ability to do that.

Once that was dry and sanded I first painted the area's that needed it with anti mildew paint and then it was time to paint the bathroom a nice bright shade of green. As it's mostly tiled I could get away with a brighter shade than I could have if there wasn't so much white and I LOVE colour! 

Only about 75 cm / 30 inches at the top could be done and I chose to also paint the ceiling the same green as you can see in the image to the right

This is the bit to the right of the door above the sink and to the right of the shower.

 And this is the shower with the shower curtain that I installed yesterday after my shoulder had recovered from the painting - it's always fun to get out my power tools to do a job that far too many men *still* don't think that a woman can do - or should do in some cases. It was nice to have a shower with the shower curtain in place for the first time as I'd had to shower without for a couple of weeks before I was able to get started on this.

Day 2 of the project

I got a fair bit done on the project in-between doing other things around the house (more on that later). It's now 4 x 3 1/4 inches and for now that's not going to change too much as the basic outline is now done.

Colours finished:
3853 (will need more of this for the border)
301
435

Working with:
3861

A good friend of mine told me yesterday it looked like a slide with bacteria on it lol.

Secret project...

Or not so secret as I will be posting pictures...  however I'm going to leave you to guess what I'm making *wink*

What I can say is that it's small - the entire piece of 18 stitches per inch Aida I'm using (that's a type of embroidery fabric for the non cross stitcher's out there :) ) is 8 x 7 inches, the pattern is 81 x 96 stitches and I'm using 53 different shades of brown in it. I also didn't need to buy a single colour to make this hehe.

I started this yesterday (well the 2 stitches I did the night before don't really count ;) ) and this is what I have done so far:

Area done so far: 3 3/4 x 1 7/8 inch (which happens to be about the same size as my phone)

Next update: Tomorrow with a photo taken before I start embroidering :)

Update time...

So life has been busy and I've not really been remembering to post here... not that I've not done anything - just not posted it all here too.

Cooking wise I've mostly been doing stuff I've posted about already so you don't need to see it again ;)

I've lately been more into embroidery than into quilting so that's what I've mostly been doing. Below are some pictures of what I've been making instead - many of the pieces are inspired by humon's SATW comic which I LOVE.

Lemon Meringue Pie...

As always with culinary experiments where one completely ignores all known recipes and just goes for it things don't always go to plan. The taste however was brilliant even though the meringue wasn't given enough time in the oven nor was it whisked for long enough looking at the resulting structure. Next time I make this I'm going to do it *after* I have bought a new mixer as I whisked this for a good 20 minutes (with a bit of help from the kids) and it still wasn't as fluffy as it should have been.

I cheated a bit and used frozen pastry (which I blind baked in the oven first) and a jar of lemon curd to make this - then used 2 egg whites and 140 grammes (that's just about 5 oz) of caster sugar which I beat for ages in a bowl I'd wiped with lemon juice first to make sure any grease left in the bowl would be removed and not spoil the meringue. i then baked it for a bit in the oven. Not the best of methods as the resulting meringue wasn't completely cooked through (though the part that was cooked was divine!) So if you want to re-create this I'd advise looking for a real recipe lol.

Borders update

 

Not much to say here at this point - this is how far I am with the borders so far, still only using one of each colour as mentioned in my previous post about the borders Borders.... already?  I have done as much border as I can for each colour I used in the quilt so far and will be doing the orange, yellow and red as soon as I have finished making the blocks for each colour. I have found that I rather enjoy sewing these little hexagons together and then when I go back to the 1" ones the seem so very large lol.

Screaming Oranges

I don't know if there is a better way to describe how loud these oranges are but they are anything but shy and retiring. They are so bright they make the white background look bluish. They are however perfect as a colour to be sewing with during the dark days of January just after all the Christmas stuff has been cleared up and put away and things are seeming more than a bit dull.

I'm not really sure what's next - the reddish oranges require me to cut a load of red fabrics as well to see what suits and I don't think I have enough salmon to make a full block yet.. so there too more cutting will be required.
 
I won't be adding the link to the Imgur gallery view this time - I find it really ugly and you can see it better if you go to that site itself.


This is the 32nd block and the 2nd orange one.


For more information see:  The insane hexagon quilt
To see all the quilt blocks together look here:  Insane Hexagon Project

The ghost of Christmas past...

As always after Christmas the time comes to tidy up - somehow it's always a huge mess but this year when I looked at the piles of stuff I still had to tidy up it somehow had a balance to it that made me photograph it and I rather like the resulting image so I thought I'd inflict it on you.

Summer Sunset.

Just when you thought I'd forgotten all about my hexagons here I am back with a new block that I finished a few hours ago. Things had gone a bit more slowly due to me being busy with other projects and because I had some troubles getting the colours decided for this block and the block that is next.  This block is orangey yellows and I'm putting it with the oranges as it feels more orange than yellow to me.

This is the 31st block and the 1st orange one.
Next up: the second orange one - Screaming Orange

For more information see:  The insane hexagon quilt 
To see all the quilt blocks together look here:  Insane Hexagon Project

Time flies...

Goodness it's been a while since I last updated this - it's not that I didn't have anything to update it with - it's just that I lacked the time - below are some highlights of what I've been up to in the mean time.. Just images or I'll never catch up lol.


The WCD baking competition:

The 2+ meter strip of brown mini hexagons that I'd put in a jar for a competition elsewhere in early October.

Halloween cookies and mini cupcakes in odd (and not so odd) flavours (melon, cranberry, toffee and peach)

Taco's done our way:

The gift wrapping for oldest's "Sinterklaas suprise" for a class mate (she loved it!) that I made in 3 days flat including sewing the scraps together to make the fabric.

Christmas decorations:

 The Christmas eve bacon quiche:

Last night's dinner - Secret Chicken noodle soup:

Old favourites... Part 4 - Fish pie

Last week I made fish pie for the kids - normally I'd instantly blog about it but the IRS in my shoulder started playing up and I have been resting my arm as much as I have been able to, so blogging stuff had to be put on hold. Fish pie made like this is one of the kids favourite fish dishes and the love it when I make a mashed potato top instead of the more usual pastry one - not really sure why they like it more like this but well... that's kids for you *wink*

Ingredients for a medium large oven dish (2-4 people depending on size of appetite) :

•  Leftover mashed potato, enough to put a layer on the dish or 750 grams /  1 1/2 pounds potatoes cooked and mashed.
• About  100 grams/ 4 oz salmon
• About 200 grams / 8 oz cod
• 2 small onions, finely diced.
• Milk
• Pepper
• 1 small bay leaf (fresh if possible)
• Knob of butter
• 1 tablespoon of flour
• 1 - 2 fish stock cube ( to taste)

How to make it:

1. Put the fish in a pan with the bay leaves, some pepper and onions.
2. Pour in enough milk to cover and bring to the boil, allow to simmer for 10 minutes if fresh 15 if frozen.
3. Strain the fish, catching the milk in a bowl.
4. Preheat the oven to 220 C/430 F  
5. In a clean pan melt a knob of butter.
6. Add the flour stirring all the time till it bubbles.
7. Pour in some of the milk and stir till thickened, keep adding the milk till it's all gone, making sure that you don't stop stirring.
8. Turn the heat down low.
9. Crumble the stock cube(s) into the sauce - do one at a time and taste to make sure you don't add too much.
10. Add some pepper to taste if needed.
11. Take the bay leaf out of the strained fish/onion mix and flake the fish.
12. Add the fish/onions to the sauce.
13. Stir gently to mix and put it in the bottom of an oven dish.
14. Cover the fish with spoonfuls of the mashed potato.
15. Gently spread it over the fish where needed to make it smooth and about even.
16. Put in the oven for about 30 - 45 minutes depending till brown on top and hot all the way through.

Enjoy!

Tea time...

Every now and then I spoil the kids and we have tea as a snack and then later a supper with more healthy stuff. Tea being the mealtime in this case not the beverage, although admittedly I do like a nice cup of tea with my tea *wink*. In this case we had 4 types of mini cupcakes: "after 8", almond, apple & cinnamon and "stroopwafel" flavours. I had also baked another batch of the caramel/fudge cupcakes and to top it all off we had digestive biscuits and mini stroopwafels.

I had made the "after 8"cupcakes by adding a few drops of peppermint essance + chocolate chips to the batter along with a bit of green food colouring so they'd be the same colour as the ice cream the kids like so much.

The stroopwafel cupcakes were made by crushing some stroopwafels and adding them to the batter along with a hint of cinnamon to give the batter flavour.

The almond ones were made with ground almond and a few drops of almond essence to give a nice rich slightly nutty flavour (you can use any nut for this of course )

I "cheated" and bought the biscuits *grin*

Kitchen revamp.. or at least partly...

Last January after getting a new kitchen unit installed on the other wall I used the old lower unit to make a second work surface etc. by swapping the metal sink surface for a cherry surface to match the new kitchen. Since my health is iffy at best it took a while before I was ready to face the pain of painting the walls and I spent the last week slowly preparing and painting the entire wall (also behind the fridge and kitchen unit) a bit at a time. Although the picture here doesn't show it, it was in bad shape so needed a lot of prep work to make the surface almost flat and it didn't help that last time when ex painted he didn't bother with any prep work at all so the paint tried to come off when I used a roller so I had to use a brush instead (my shoulder wasn't too happy about that). The green was stubborn and so it needed 2 layers of paint to subdue the green completely.

I also needed some additional shelving to put all the jars/tins I use for flour/sugar/pasta etc., so I had bought some black shelves with ornamental brackets to fix them up with. You can't see it here but I haven't actually screwed the shelves to the brackets yet because the MDF is murder to hand screw into so I need to get an additional bit for my drill so I can use that.

This is the end result - the wall next to the window is still the same white it was before - it needs painting as well but that is a job for another day after I  have recovered from doing all this. I have space on the wall to add 2 more shelves, which I will do at a later date when I have the money to buy them .