Busy as............

Sewing, quilting etc. is on the backburner at present as we prepare for Christmas. Cookery is on the agenda. The plum pudding was made yesterday, with a little hiccup, but overnight I have come up with a solution. The mixture looked bigger than it did last year - and then I remember I did add lots of more cherries (cause we like cherries), so that would have done it. Weeell, it filled my plum pudding tin to the top, didn't it? A fleeting thought went through my mind "will I scoop a bit out and make a smaller pudding from it"? But, no, that was too commonsensical, I went ahead and boiled the crap out of it (because the recipe says to do that), and of course, it oozed out of the top of the pan. I do my plum puddings in a special plum pudding tin, as I am not fond of them done in the calico. The solution will be to get the darn thing out of the tin, and give it a shave, put it back in, and then boil the crap out of it again on Saturday at the family Christmas get to-gether at my sister's house. Wish me luck!

The Christmas quilt is going now at a snail's pace, so it won't hang on the wall til after Christmas after all. Oh well, I have decided to hang it anyway (whenever it is finished) and it can hang until "Christmas in July". By then, we will have had enough of looking at it.

Once this is completed, I had better get a wiggle on and start my part of the 2008 raffle quilt.

There are projects on my mind for next year - by the dozen. One of them is a bag, called a "bow bag". Have had the pattern and fabric and materials for over a year now, so that will be one of the first UFO's to tackle. Then there is my sister's birthday present, a journal cover. It is half made, only have to do the quilting and embellishing. Number 1 daughter, Rebecca, has asked for a table runner for her new side board which her husband has given her for Christmas. It will take a while to source a pattern and I will have to confer with her at Christmas as to what colours she would like for said table runner.

This is our beautiful "baby", BELLA, a border collie/cattle dog? cross. >

So, that takes me through to March probably, and there will be lots of pleasant distractions in between. A few of us in our quilt group

would like to have another"Strip Pary" in March. This is where everybody pools their strips of fabric (from about 3/4 " to 2 1/2") and
makes a strippy quilt from whatever strip they pick up. There are
rules to the game, and later on I will post the rules -
they are just a bit of a giggle - not serious rules.

Now, back to the kitchen.