"All in a chutney"

This may be a bit of a sloppy post as we've been making chutney over the last four days.  Mr T does all the prep and I do the clearing up.  The fruits, spices and vinegar are left to soak for 24 hours and then it is simmered for hours and hours until it is thick and sticky.  It is easier than jam as there is no setting point, but you simmer it until 'dropping' consistency or when you can see the bottom of the pan when you stir it, like parting the red sea.  We both take it in turns to stir it and it is my job to do the bottling. But I must say Mr T does the hard graft - peeling all those onions!! Unfortunately our fruit trees let us down this year, no pears or plums, although we have got apples.  We love the pear and plum chutneys so much and our friends do to, that we went out and bought some.  We also had to supplement our home-grown shallots, as we are great pickled onion eaters too.  However we have lots of beetroot growing and they are next for the pickling process.

14 jars of chutney plus a couple of small ones, plus eight jars of pickled onions of various sizes.

 Meanwhile, although I have been doing some work on my C&G, I have been a bit fed up and realised how little of my own work I had done lately, so this week I have been working on some of my own projects.  Firstly this is page from my sketchbook showing some pencil drawings of different  seed heads.  I'm afraid it is not very clear, but no energy for better photography today.

I have reproduced the drawings with some free motion machining on some scrap strips of felt, as they are stable enough to stitch on without stretching.

Below is some pieced strips of my fabric with some tracings of the plants which I want to sew onto some cotton organza I dyed and layer up - not sure yet, don't hold your breath.

Here's another sketchbook page.

I also have decided to join The Sketchbook Challenge which offers a theme each month and the opportunity to post your contribution on their Flickr site.  I thought this would also give me a bit of a kick start.  There is no pressure, and the whole thing is up to you. This month's theme is ''Pattern'.  I have a Gustav Klimt  calendar in my kitchen which has some beautiful landscapes as well as his more decorative ladies.  I love looking at the patterns, but hand't really looked that closely, so I thought I would take a Klimt theme for a page in my journal.  I shall write over the pale section eventually.

Finally, last weekend I work on my next bit of piecing for C&G. This task was to stitch a Courthouse block using a template to stitch on. This was much easier than trying to piece together the triangles,

I just stitched this smaller sample without a template, hence the narrow strip, but included some prairie points.

Below is my course piece, I think the block using straight strips is called rail fence and is usually made with contrasting fabrics,mine is some of my hand printed fabric with organza prairie points.

It has been a glorious week weather wise, I do hope you have been able to make the most of it. 

Wishing you the best for the week to come,

Jill

Back to the Drawing board

Over the last couple of weeks I have been exploring the 'pieced' block as part of my G&G quilting course and hopefully I shall never have to make a quilt like this - I am totally pieced off, and full of admiration for those who achieve perfection in stitching blocks.

The sketchbook pages exploring the effect of different patterns was easy. However stitching this block took me hours with much cursing and use of a stitch un-picker.  However the finished result was not too bad with all of my points and corners nearly all lined up. This was made with purchased patchwork fabric and the yellow was home dyed.

 However things got worse when I tried to make a block using some hand dyed fabric to match my paper sample above.  I am not showing the back of this as the seams vary from a hair's breadth to well over the quarter of an inch you are supposed to use. Neither does it lie flat.  I suppose I may be able to quilt it with a nice thick layer of wadding.

I was much happier practising some free motion stitching.  I must say that Leah Day's blog is a great source of how-to's and patterns

I am probably finding this part of my course the least enjoyable - and I have some more piecing to do.  However I appreciate it is a skill that is useful to know.  I want to get this module over with, but I also want to do something more creative as I feel I have been coasting along for a couple of months now.

Meanwhile August has been and gone and as you can see calendar page soon gained some embellishments...

and here's September, ready to go...

A little story to end with

Yesterday I heard a commotion in our conservatory and found a wood pigeon behind the flower pots trying to escape through the closed window.  I confidently went to rescue it, firmly holding it round its middle, they are quite large and I could not pin down its wings, so I put it my other hand round its hindquarters hoping it wouldn't leave a warm deposit in my palm. With one movement I swooped round and held my arms up at the doorway, and it flew off - leaving all of its tail feathers in my hand!! It fluttered to the fence and then clattered into the trees.  I felt awful, but as the feathers had come away so easily I wondered if they were meant to do this ... and thanks to the wonders of Google, I found out that this is a defence mechanism that wood pigeons have. I have never heard of it before, and it was quite alarming, although more so for the pigeon I guess.

(One from my photo archives)

Have a good week, I guess it's back to school for some. So nice not to be involved any more!

Jill

A visit to Wrest Park

One of my favourite places to visit locally is Wrest Park, now owned and administered by English Heritage. I have written about it before, but it is a couple of years since I last visited and English Heritage have done a lot of work.  My fondest memories of the park are from the early 80's when it housed the local agricultural college.  The gardens would be open at the weekend and you paid 50p to go through a beautiful gateway into the park which was only minimally maintained.  It was a magic place only really known by locals.  We would take a picnic and spend all day there. In the overgrown woodland part of the park there were little pavilions and summer houses, a dogs cemetery, a Roman 'temple',  two small lakes, hidden statues, a chinese bridge and a 'Roman' bath house.  The park also has extensive croquet lawns. My U3A group went for a tree walk there on Thursday, so it was a good opportunity to visit for free.
The park has undergone many changes and has the hand of Capabilty Brown as well as other landscape designers. But Thomas de Grey built the present house in c1834 in the French style and had a formal garden laid out.

This is a view of the house from the other side of the crochet lawns. Ha ha! I think that should be croquet lawn!  Please click on the photos for a close-up - that ride-on lawn mower is worth a closer look.

The parterres have been restored and beautifully planted.  This is a view from the terrace down to the pavilion at the far end of the main lake.

The pavilion

Another view from the terrace.

This is the restored Italian garden.

Although the formal gardens are beautiful it is the magnificent of the trees in the park which seems to make it serene and tranquil retreat even when it was busy with many visitors as it was on Thursday.

New cones on an ancient Cedar

I kept getting left behind as I wanted to take photographs, must go again so I can linger longer.

The really long needles of the Pinus ponderosa - Western Yellow Pine - I did take in some of the talk.

Another view of the pavilion from the end of the lake.

The sun shining through the leaves of the Indian Bean Tree, which I always assumed came from India, but in fact is a native of North America like the mis-named red Indians.

Here is the Chinese bridge which spans the canal which forms a u shape perimeter to the park.

A red wood

This is a mulberry tree, it had lots of fruit on it.

Don't you just love trees? I could definitely hug them, if I could get my arms round them!

I have been to Wrest Park more times than I can remember but there were still treasures to be found.

I had never seen the Dolls' House before,  I wonder what lucky children played in here.

And below is a stained glass window from the dairy which houses a selection of statues from the garden.

Here are a couple of details from a lead Columbine who I was rather taken with.  It was very busy and I couldn't get any full length shots.

To finish my tour I leave with a few bumble bees.

You can see some of my other photographs taken at Wrest Park on my Fickr site here.

Now that's my advert for English Heritage over with, have a great Bank Holiday Weekend.

Jill

F.O.Q. Report

I had a wonderful, if exhausting day on Thursday at the Festival of Quilts, the first time I have visited this show.  I took a few photographs of exhibits, but I thought I would share my experience for those of you who couldn't make it.  The day started well when I picked up my friend who found out at the last minute she could join me,  and we arrived in Milton Keynes in good time for the train - that was until Sally realised she had left her mobile phone on the kitchen table and it had the pin number on it for her to obtain her pre-booked train tickets from the machine. We had to use my phone to ring her husband, who couldn't operate her mobile, who then had to wake her daughter to retrieve the number, and a sleepy fourteen year old is not always on the ball even when the train is due in five minutes and there is a long queue for the machines.  I left Sally in the queue as she had an open ticket and rushed to the platform, luckily the train was a few minutes late and we were fine - happy to sink into our seats.

If you have never been to the NEC Birmingham, it is a huge site, and after waiting over ten minutes for a shuttle bus we decided to walk.  This must take at least ten minutes including several long moving walkways.  I decided that £6 for the programme was essential and my friend and I split up and made a rendezvous for an hour and a half later for lunch.  I decided to have a walk round the space first to get my bearings.  I knew a couple of stands I wanted to visit and artists I wanted to look out for.  However although I knew one blog contact, Maggi Birchenough was on the SAQA stand until 11.30, I could not located it anywhere and it was not until reading the programme on the train home that I found out which stand this was - it was listed under something different.  So disappointingly I missed her.  I did locate the Kemshalls and it was lovely to be able to say hello.  Lunch was rather disappointing.  When I went to the Stitch show in March, they had one of the restaurants open and my friends and I were able to get a pleasant enough meal, this time there were only the smaller kiosks open or food trailers like they have at outdoor craft fairs etc - so, alright if you want fish and chips, a baguette or jacket potatoes - no nice salad or pasta so we ended up with a portion of chips. After lunch I took my time looking at the displays of quilts in the competitions and at the different artists who had stands. I was delighted to see this one by Alicia Merrett, which featured in the April/May Quilting Arts magazine.  I certainly lived up to my expectations.

Canal Country -Alicia Merrett

It was also easy to spot Stephanie Redfern's work - (close-ups only I'm afraid) whose blog I follow.

It was difficult to get decent pictures as there were a lot of people looking at the exhibits.

The Moth Pages - Stephanie Redfern

Beyond Dark Spaces - Stephanie Redfern

Stephanie was there on a stand and I had recommended her work to my friend.  When we met up to leave Sally said she had enjoyed Stephanie's stand and she had been there very busy talking to people  - I had missed it completely. I knew she was on stand Demo H but I could not find it on the plan anywhere!  Sally had come upon it completely by accident.

Here are some other quilts from the competition display.

A Tapestry of Canary Wharf - Mari-Theresa Fernandes

Fragments of Time - Hazel Ryder

Don't Go - Laura Kemshall

I had followed Laura making this quilt on her blog, so it was wonderful to see it.  the stitching was fantastic - all the whirls in the fingertips were stitched.

I was also fascinated by Kate Dowty's recent work, there was a big stand of her works

It was definitely worth visiting.  I can now see why two shorter visits would be preferable, but I will go again next year.  I think it would be worth buying a show guide in advance so you can locate what you want to see.  I found it difficult to concentrate on deciphering the guide when I was there, especially as I was unfamiliar with the show. I did buy a couple of gadgets and some supplies - well you have to, but the work on display was the real star of the day.

Hope you are enjoying some sunshine.

Jill