Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Death by Chocolate (and Cholesterol)


I am helping DD Belinda out by making a couple of chocolate mud cakes for a wedding cake she is decorating - for this coming weekend in Canberra! The 30cm (or 12") cake took 1.68 kg of chocolate and 1 kg of butter. Oh yes, also a cup of Kahlua coffee liqueur, apart from what seems excessive amounts of ingredients. Just as well it's a wedding cake and only small amounts will be eaten by the guests. It's enough to clog your arteries just looking at it :-).
Daphne

Friday, September 25, 2009

Flaunting Again


This Friday flaunting thing is very good for me. I am actually working towards having something to show and what is even better today is that all of the fabric came from my stash. The flower heads have been machine embroidered on a nice quality osnaburg and are quite detailed. They are Thimbleberries designs from Embroidery Library. I think they're gorgeous! When I first started making the top I had a yellow in the middle of the nine-patches to pick up the stamen colours but soon realised they were a bit overpowering and I replaced them.


Here are a couple of close-ups of the flowers to show the detail in them. Enjoy!




Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Red Dawn



This is the world we woke up to this morning. Very weird and other worldly, it was due to red dust being blown across from a very dry western NSW. As I write this at around midday, thankfully our world is almost back to normal. Interesting while it lasted though! These photos were taken around our place but there are plenty more to see on the Sydney news sites.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Tulip Time at Bowral

Yesterday, we had a family GTG for lunch in Bowral, it being as close as possible a halfway point between Sydney and Canberra where DD Belinda and her family live. It was a belated Fathers' Day celebration, the first attempt two weeks ago having to be cancelled, due to Belinda's two dogs going walkabout (that is another story but suffice it to say that happily they were found together, alive and well). By yesterday it had become an extra celebration, that of DS David's birthday.

After an enjoyable lunch at Palate Pleasures, we adjourned to the local park where Bowral's

famous tulips were on display, with the Tulip Festival beginning on the 24th September. The tulips were a multitude of colours, along with violas, bluebells and daisies. Jenna (almost 8 year old step-GD) was quite fascinated with the ladybirds and other bugs on some of the flowers. She told us the flowers she'd seen were much prettier. "Why?" we asked. "Because they had bugs on them," was the reply. Children do see things differently, don't they?

The day was finished by filing into the local patisserie for coffee and yummy cheesecake or icecream. Naughty but nice!
I wanted to show a couple more photos but having enough trouble getting these photos into line. I am obviously missing something :-(. Oh the fun of being a novice blogger......

Friday, September 18, 2009

Another Friday Flaunt

Hope I can keep this up every week! Today's Flaunt is a wallhanging I have made for the baby girl twins of a friend of my daughter. As you can see by the birthdate, it's been a while coming but at last it's finished, save for a few little details. The giraffes were embroidered using a design downloaded from the internet (that's another story - I think I'm addicted to buying designs online, LOL). One was done as is and for the other one, I mirror-imaged it. Still a few little things to attend to - maybe a tiny Suffolk puff between the babies' names and the date, a label (machine embroidered) and a rod pocket. Hope Peta (Mum) likes it and still has a space to hang it!

Friday, September 11, 2009

First Friday Flaunt!

Here it is: my first Friday Flaunt. It's a bullseye quilt (top) which I've pieced for one of the groups I belong to which makes quilts for children with cystic fibrosis so that when they have to go to hospital for treatment they have their own quilt to take. It is going to be longarm quilted which will be great :-).

It is an easy quilt to piece and a good way of using up novelty scraps. The blocks are 10" finished (11" cut) and I cut the circles 8", 6" and 4". The 4" came from the centre of the 8" circle because I felt it would add more interest to the quilt to have three circles. At first I wasn't sure about the sashing colour but those who saw it loved it. It's growing on me. It certainly gives a bit of zing to the quilt.

Daphne




Sunday, September 6, 2009

Here I am at last with my very own blog - now what to say. I have quite a few ideas in mind but they will have to wait until at least tomorrow because in my part of the world (NSW, Australia) it's time to count sheep. In the meantime I will get myself ready for my first real posting. But I have started!!

I will tell you a little about myself first though: I am mostly retired, a former teacher, married to my dear Dutchman (Hans) for nearly 39 years and have two grown up children, one of whom is married and lives about three hours away. The other is still single and lives nearby. My interests are largely of the creative kind when I am at home - patchwork and quilting and machine embroidery mainly. I love to read and adore travel. Hans introduced me to it when we were first married and now he wonders whether he did the right thing because I'm always thinking about somewhere new to see!

Now I'm really going to bed! Talk again soon,

Daphne