Random Saturday

It's been a glorious sunny and warm week and I've been dying to get out in the garden and potter but our garden is still a weed-ridden tip, leftover from last year's building work, so I've been consoling myself with little views, like this one of my Narnia lamppost against a blue blue sky under which is my bird table, full of sparrows and baby starlings.

We have big garden revamp plans but Mr Moog has been having such busy, stressy weeks at work lately that he's done in by the weekend, and I've been extra good about not 'nagging' as the garden will still be there when we're ready.

I've been getting my flowery fix by pouring over gardening magazines and playing with flowery fabric. This week, I had a day off on Thursday and once I'd got the children off to school and walked the dogs, I had a very sudden and unexpected urge to stitch up a quilt top.

I've had this fabric for years - it's Chocolate Lollipop, Anna Maria Horner's first fabric range and I'm not even sure if it's still being made. I'd been saving all those fat quarters and quarter yard pieces for something and now its time had come.

It's my first attempt at half square triangles and I've since found out I should have trimmed them before piecing the whole thing but hey ho, it scratched the itch and I had a lovely day putting it all together. I'm now shopping for a very dark chocolate brown as it needs a border to make it a more useable size.

The leftovers are being put to good use with some English paper-piecing.

In fact, I do seem to have developed a bit of a thing for EPP patchwork just lately. I got an urge to do some apple core patchwork and spent far too much time on Pinterest looking for just the right template but nothing was quite right. Minx and I went shopping last Saturday at a local patchwork shop in the vain hope they might have a template, which they didn't.

So, I came home and had a play with a compass and a protactor but nope, still didn't quite get it. Then I Googled a bit more and all of a sudden I found the PERFECT tutorial on how to make your own template and actually laughed out loud when I followed the link - to my dear friend Thimbleanna's brilliant tute on making your own apple core template in any size you like!

I dug out a whole load of scraps of leftover fabric in reds, pinks and blues and so far, so good. They might be easier to piece had I been a little less generous with the basting glue but I'm getting there and these are destined for either a cushion front or a mini-quilt. That itch is nearly scratched.

This itch is ongoing and likely to be for some time.

 I seem to have decided to only do white hexies from now on, with the odd coloured hexie thrown in as and when the feeling takes me. This could be years in the making.

I seem to be amassing a nice little pile of summer holiday projects here....two and a half weeks left before we break up...not that I'm counting or anything...

In other news, the meat-free meals thing is going surprisingly well. Last Saturday we had aubergine lasagne and I was genuinely shocked that everyone loved it! My lot love a proper minced beef lasagne and this was a risk but it was obviously one worth taking. This was the least burnt looking photo of the dish in question - it wasn't photogenic but it was very very tasty.

Tonight's dinner was even more surprising. My lot don't share my love of blue cheese at all, not even a little bit but apparently gorgonzola risotto is the best dinner ever and a repeat performance has been requested!

I do plan on sharing some of these recipes but as most of them are from books or are slightly tweeked versions of online recipes I'm going to try to put them in PDFs to make it easier to print them off. That will take a little time as Mr Moog has upgraded various things on our PC and I seem to have lost my PDF making gizmo....amongst other things, like all my six years' worth of work folders and dozens of knitting/crochet/sewing files, ahem.

To round off a pretty random post, here's what my girl is up to right now - loom bands.

They're everywhere. I hoovered up several (dozen) today. She loves them and has made at least thirty bracelets so far. They're also helping her get through a pretty crappity and emotional weekend, all caused by one rather noxious little b**ch who claims to be her friend but has been anything but for the past couple of days, especially when cloaked behind the forcefield of Facebook personal messaging.

This child lives her life like it's an episode of Jeremy Kyle. Nuff said. She obviously doesn't realise that our girl can and does talk to her parents about things that worry her so we're onto her.

Teenage girls are horrible. I know because I once was one and I wasn't even keen on them then!

Moogs xxx