Shawl...

Some super yummy gorgeous yarn and a really terrific pattern - can you tell that I liked both, a lot? - meant that I was able to knit up a beautiful small shawl for my MIL for her 80th birthday.    Started long before I knew about the cake baking and catering that I wrote about in my previous post.

This German made yarn consisted of 50% Cotton and 50% Nylon.  It was super soft and had a lovely hand feel.  With very, very long lengths of colour before the next one, the striping effect was subtle between colour changes and gave way to stripes.

Detail while being blocked of the eyelet edging.

A simple eyelet edging finished it off with pizzazz.  I had to make the eyelet edging twice.  I was overnight at my sister's house, looking after her kids, when the dog came into the room with makeup in it's mouth.  I took the makeup from the dog and put it away.  When I came back into the room, the dog had my knitting and the ball of yarn almost completely unravelled and was spinning circles, wound up in yarn, in the lounge room and having a great time - until he saw my face.  I put him outside and shut the door.  CRASH!  BANG! I jumped up and the dog had emptied his metal water bowl and was hitting the glass door with it, wanting to come back in.  No way.  Not until I was ready and the kids were home from sports.

The completed shawl.

Second detail shot of the edging.

The day I decided to take the photo outside it was over 30deg Celcius, so it was a bit hard to imagine needing to wear it.  :)









A simple, small shawl which nicely sits over the shoulders for those cool evenings or it can be wrapped and tied around the neck for tucking into a coat. 

The free knitting pattern for this shawl can be found here.

Cakes for 80 years!

Last weekend my MIL turned 80.  Lots of celebrating to be had.  First up on the agenda was the important issue of cake.  Cake is very important, especially when there is going to be more than one gathering of people over a couple of days.

First up was a family dinner on Saturday night.

"German" Apple Cake

The first cake was "German Apple Cake".  The recipe came from my husband's Grandmother's handwritten notebook that she wrote recipes into.  Her handwriting was beautiful cursive script, written in ink.  From what I can find out, I think the recipe is circa 1930.   Inside was a gorgeous concoction of fresh apple, cinnamon and sugar all layered in a type of shortcake batter.

The second cake, for show as well as taste and needed to feed 50 people was a delicious "Lemon and Coconut Cake" from a book that I purchased 19 years ago.  It's one I've made a few times in the past, so it was easy to double up and make it bigger.

Lemon and Coconut Cake.

Consisting of a large lemon/coconut sponge, sandwiched with freshly made lemon curd and finished off with lemon buttercream and shredded coconut - I will brag and say it was truly a taste sensation!  Yum, yum, yum!!

Paper Doilies, Log Cabins and a very quilty week...

Last week was so very, very quilty!  Lots of sewing time to be had. 😊

It was a wonderful week. Tuesday was 3 hours with a group, followed closely by Thursday which was slow stitching at a local shop for 2.5 hours.  I took an English Paper Piecing  (EPP) project.

My "doily" so far.  There's still another round to attach,
but I haven't chosen the colour yet.

The diamond spaces are left blank for the
background to show through.

This is my "Paper Doily" project which I started in 2019 at a class with Leesa Chandler.  I attended the class so that I could learn something new.  I had never realised all the other possibilities before of using paper pieces to make up patterns like this.  I had always attached them to each other and thought that was it.  Once the final round is attached, the whole piece will be appliqued onto a background.  Such a fun thing to do with some stash fabric and paper pieces.

Friday was the day for my local quilt group.  I had plans to take my machine and continue working on Specky Stars, however, other things called me away and I didn't get there.

On Saturday, 29/02 - Leap Year Day - I attended a 10am-10pm sewing day with a group 1 hour away.  I took a scrappy red/white log cabin of my own design to work on.  I spent quite a bit of time both before and after Christmas cutting into my red and white leftovers from previous projects (scrap) stash.  Being 100% cut out and having lots of chain piecing, which is very repetitive, was a fantastic thing to do while catching up with friends.

I stood up and looked over the back of my machine
for this shot.  Lots of chain piecing.

Plastic tub with each piece cut and in piecing
order from the centre out.

With a bit of luck, this log cabin quilt will hopefully be published into a pattern.  It's been quite a while since I last ran a class and wrote a proper pattern.

On top of pattern writing and making the relevant quilts, I have a self-imposed goal of completing 9 quilts by the end of July and 4 of those quilts I plan to exhibit.  A couple will become gifts, 1 is for a class and the other 2 I am not sure where they are headed to yet.

I'm feeling as 'pleased as punch' right now.  My goals are on track and I've spent some very precious time with some very special people.   Life is good.