Such a long time

It has been such a long time since I posted. Jim has been back from his meetings in Portland since Feb 13th. Jim finally decided to take the desk top computer to someone for a "redo" and it is back and working VERY well!! I am very happy to say that it is running much better and I can actually type whole words without the computer seizing up and crashing -- just wonderful.

This orchid is a plant that Andrew and Anri gave me for Mother's Day almost 3 years ago. It was in the kitchen window for a long time after the bloom had gone - just a few leaves and a couple of stems. A few months ago I moved it to the living room and it bloomed again! Amazing. Such a lovely flower. I was so excited I was able to get it to bloom again after so long.



Here is my fabric from The Door Mouse. I am ready to finish the baby quilt. I love the yellow with the daisies. The outer border of the baby quilt will be the purple with the baby faces.



The pictures have uploaded to the blog in the opposite order that I uploaded them. I am not going to try to move them today - so this will be the finished product.

Jim bought a pasta maker on his way home from Portland.



Homemade pasta with homemade pesto - which is made from the basil we grown on the deck in the summer. Very tasty supper! And the pasta was amazingly easy to make and turned out really well for a couple of first timers. We call ourselves "the Italian Wannabees"







Here is the new machine. There is one sheet of pasta on the cutting board there waiting to be finished. We used semolina and farnia 00 flour and watched a bunch of video's on You tube first. Next we plan to make ravioli from scratch.

Tonight we are having Turkey dinner for Andrew, Eric and Anri. Andrew's birthday is this week and we still haven't sang Happy Birthday for Eric from his January birthday.

Hopefully now that I have a usable computer I will be able to blog a little more regularly.

Another day of winter wonderland!

Again this evening on the News the stories out of Australia are terrible about the devastating fires. I hope and pray all the fellow Australian blogger are safe and I sure wish I could send you some of our weather to help you all out. Maybe if we could just meet halfway with a nice even temperature of 22 C. all the world over.

This is what I woke up to this morning. More snow!!


Poor Jenny, I had promised her a nice walk today as I went off to Costco with Eric yesterday - even though it was nice and sunny and I should have taken Jenny out yesterday. And today it snowed - again - and it was COLD.

Although I was very happy today as I found something exciting!



There is a story to these two bars of soap. Last summer I went to visit my friend and fellow quilter (and nurse from UBC days) -- who regularly travels the world - mostly Spain, Italy and Mexico. When I was there she gave me a lovely little package of writing paper and a bar of soap - from Italy. I put the soap in my bathroom and a few months later I opened it up. I remember the look of the packaging - sort of - and threw the package away and started using the soap. It was the most wonderful soap I have ever used in all my 50 years! Better than any body wash/body lotion soap. It was so creamy and soft and wonderful. And it lasted the longest time - months. Now the soap is gone and I phoned my friend to ask what was that soap and where can I get more. She emailed me the website for the company - Nesti Dante They don't have a great website but I looked around it and I found the soap. Il Frutteto - I can't remember the exact soap - I think it was the pure Olive Oil because it didn't seem to have a real fruity smell. But it was so soft and rich and creamy - ah.... I sent the Nesti Dante company an email through their website asking if they sold their soap in Canada - or if they shipped to Canada and I never got a response back from them. I was very unhappy - almost ready to call upon my blogging friends in Italy to search it out for me.

But -- today, I popped into Caulfield to mail of an envelope at the Pharmasave there and what do I find - but the soap! The Tomato soap smells heavenly - I think I will try that one first. They didn't have any of the pure Olive Oil soap but they had a nice selection of the Il Frutetto - I got the Pomegranate and Black current to try. That made the drive in the snow all worth it!

And now for something quilty.

Jim is away in Portland this week so I have been doing a bit of sewing. I have a few UFO's to work on. I have three UFO's listed with my quilt guild to be finished by June.



This table runner I started in November at the Bowen Island retreat. I layered it and started the machine quilting on it this week. I have been busy with the African Wedding quilt as well. The centre of the top is together and I am working on the rows and borders for it now.

A bit of Quilting this week

I am happy to say that I was very productive at QBTB (Quilting by the Bay) this past Saturday. I even carried over some of that productivity to home and I started on this little baby quilt. It is from a Moda Charm pack. I have a cousin that had a little baby girl and because there is a lot of pink in this charm pack I never used it for a baby of unknown sex.




It is cute fabric with little babies and bottles and stars and such. I had a bit of purple fabric I was going to use as a border but instead I decided to do a bit of a google search for the fabric and see if I could find a bit of yardage to match. The fabric is called "Peek a Boo" I was able to get some on sale for $6.00 yard from "The Door Mouse" I had ordered the Morris Garden fabric from there and I was very pleased with how quickly it was delivered. This time I ordered it and there was a bit of an issue with my credit card - my card had apparently been cancelled - because there was a concern that there had been a breach on my account. The Door Mouse was very helpful and it was sorted out quickly and they have sent out my fabric. So I certainly recommend shopping there. I must say that I really do enjoy this online fabric shopping. Even with the dollar being down a bit. It is just too fun!!

While I was at QBTB I laid all my Dear Jane blocks out on a table and took a picture. This is a terrible picture but it was fun to see them all together. I have 42 completed blocks. That is more than I thought. That is about 20 blocks per year -- I think I started it in February 2007 but I must check on that. Time can be pretty tricky in how fast it goes by......



What I did do at QBTB was finish all the blocks for the African Wedding Quilt -- I think that is what I will call this quilt.

I made 30 blocks all together. There are 3 different black fabrics in there but I don't think they are so different that anyone can really tell.



I have been sewing the blocks and rows together this week and then my next step is to make a row of Dancing Mama's for the top and work on designing the borders.

It snowed again here - the day after QBTB - I took pictures but I am not going to continue posting pictures of the snow - we all know what it looks like by now!!!