straight backstitch, berries, spice,kindness and chickens

Well, lacking a sewing machine, and not wanting to fall back on drinking huge quantities of wine in the evenings in the absence of anything good on telly, I decided to start on son's quilt anyway. I chopped the material into 20X20 squares and 20X40 rectangles. No silly little bits this time. This quilt will be a super fast quilt, and an opportunity to practice sewing in straight lines. Plus, the material is really the star for him, all dinosaurs and airplanes, so lots showing is what he wants. I will get all fiddly with the quilting and binding, after all. Chopped up, I patterned it all out into one rectangle by 2 squares for each (big) block and commenced. My backstitch is now getting very tiny and straight: i'm pleased with it. And the blocks look nice anyway, even though they are big. I am doing 1 or 2 an evening and popping one in my bag for when the kida are busy at the park. So it might get done before Winter.

And then I started baking, or tried to, with the huge glut of blackberries we have. 25 bags in the freezer so far. I haven't found one cobbler recipe I like for them, they all seem to come out stodgy, but this could be the fault of my heavy hands, again. So crumble it is. Nobody else likes it, but I do, so soon I will be fat as well as balding.

As for the week of cooking 70's, it ended badly, with me yearning for spice and chillies. Everything was so bland, and whilst the kids can eat endless potat/cheese based meals, I cannot. I drew the line at a recipe that required spaghetti hoops from a can, and leapt into the arms of Rick Stein for his yummy malaysian broth, searing the roof of my mouth with chillis and making the kids cry. Mee Goreng tonight. Although it is VERY hard to source galangal in the Fens. Garlic is something they use to scare off vampires, the more exotic ingrediants simply don't get up here. Luckily, husband has a Chinese supermarket next to him when he goes to London.

And beautifully, a super act of kindness from a fellow set of Fenland bloggers. The kind lady here , Tina, rang me today to say that she has found a sewing machine for me, and I am overcome that someone who hasn't met me has been so kind! There are other ladies here in the Fens who are conspiring to get me sewing as an obsession, and I thank them. They are all too talented, they may have to show me how to thread the machine, let alone actually use it. you can visit their pages here to see their skills. http://fenlandtextiles.blogspot.com/2010/07/lists.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FenlandTextileStudio+%28Fenland+Textile+Studio%29

http://mixedmedia-jem.blogspot.com/2010/08/luttrell-psalter-exhibition.html I am not sure how to make the links look tidier.

And lastly, the coop is up and treated, the run is on its' way, and the chicken breeder sourced. In a fortnight, we will have our chooks. I have been reading up on redmite, lice, foxes, and the propensity of chickens to die, and frightening myself, but the kids will be sanguine should they kark it, I am sure.