Thank you ...

... Mary Berry.  I followed her recipe for a sponge cake, and look what happened.

For the first time ever, I have produced a Victoria sponge which looks good.  It could almost have been made by my daughter, Mrs Nomad.  Anyone for tea and cake?

Hello again ...

... thank you all so much for the help with my butter. Now I have the answer, I will be able to make all sorts of yummy looking things.  I started by making some Snickerdoodles, using Sunny's mother's recipe, which she kindly sent me.  I took some with me the next day when I went to play with my friends J and F, and we ate them all within a very short space of time, so there are no photos I'm afraid.  They were absolutely delicious, thanks Sunny,

On Saturday I went to a Sew-In day with a fairly new group called the Yorkshire Modern Quilt Guild.  This is a new group, started by my friend QuiltHaze, and a friend of hers, and this was only the second meeting of the group.  There were about 14 of us and it was great fun.  Most people had brought some show and tell items, but guess who forgot her camera?  Still, if you follow the link above, you can see photos there.  Most of the day we all worked on our own projects, chatted and ate cake - one of the members, Liz, brought some delicious cakes for us all.  I made two blocks over the course of the day, and managed to get one of them wrong!  I've shown both of them in the photo though, so you can see how they will go together to make diamonds in the quilt.  Anyone think the fabrics look familiar?

Help needed ...

... I keep seeing yummy looking recipes on the internet, but I have a problem.

Often they tell me that I need a stick of butter.  Here in the UK, we don't use sticks, so I wondered if someone would kindly weigh a stick of butter at some point and let me know the weight either in grams or ounces?

I have tried looking online and different sites tell me different things, which is very confusing and guarantees disastrous results!

By the way, have you noticed the new quilt in my header?  I reluctantly decided that my Crazy Christmas Trees had to be put away now we're in February, but couldn't decide what to replace it with.  Then I realised that February is Valentine month, so I really should have a red quilt.  So what did I do?  Turned Crazy Christmas Trees over!  Simple.  I have a reversible quilt that I am very happy with.  Mind you, It had been like this for several days before Mr Fixit looked at it last night and said "when did you make that quilt?"  It's good to have someone so observant around.

Lucky me ...

... and bad me too.  Over the past couple of months, I have won several giveaways, and received several gifts, and I haven't told you anything about them.  Today I will put that right.

I won this great little wall hanging from Rhonda at QuiltNut Creations.  Rhonda had a giveaway for it, which I did not win.  The winner however did not get in touch with her, so Rhonda re-drew, and this time it was my name that came out of the hat.  I was so happy, cos I had seen it before on her site and absolutely loved it.  I was even thinking of making one myself, and that's saying something, since there's applique involved!  Thank you so much Rhonda.

I have also been lucky enough to win a 6-month membership of The Quilt Show from Sue W Sews.  Sue gave this away to celebrate her birthday, but really, I am enjoying the shows I am seeing so much I feel like it is my birthday instead, thank you Sue.

Speaking of birthdays, it was my birthday recently, as you may remember, and just look what Trudi from Quilting Prolifically gave me.  Loads of gorgeous Christmas fabrics. I have already had some fun in EQ7 playing with ideas for these, and I think I have just the project.  Trudi called in with these, and it was lovely to see her, thank you Trudi.

I received these great kitchen towels from Joanna at Needle, Thread, Happiness recently.  They were a Christmas present but they must have taken the scenic route to get to me, cos they took about 6 weeks.  I think Joanna must have secretly flown over and had a look at my kitchen, otherwise how would she have known that all my "bits 'n bobs" are in red?  Anyway, I've put these away until next Christmas, when they will be brought out, but only for show - they're much too cute to actually use.  You can even see the pretty Christmas card that came with them, thank you Joanna.

Mary from Quilt Hollow sent me this cute little candle mat at Christmas, and I love it.  The colours are just perfect, and it's a wonderful size.  This little cutie has two photos, cos when I took the photo of it in use, I realised that you wouldn't see it properly although I have included that photo too so you can see what a perfect size it is.  Thank you very much Mary, I absolutely love it

There's really no doubt about it, bloggy friends are wonderful, aren't they?

Have you been thinking ...

... I've fallen off the face of the earth?  Well, I am still here, but we have had a sort of medical week, which has kept us a bit busy.

Mr Fixit had to see two different consultants this week, at two different hospitals.  The first one was really good news.  His scans have shown no changes to his pancreas, so no operation is needed, and they don't want to see him again for two years.  The second visit was almost as good, the biopsies following his operation last month have shown there is no cancer, so he has to go back next week for more tests and another scan, then we're hoping this consultant will also tell him to go away.  I have also had two appointments, one for the annual review of prescription drugs that our health service insist on, and one for blood tests as part of my annual diabetes check.  Even Mr Fixit's car got in the medical mood, and was due for it's annual test and service.  So a busy, but very positive week has kept me busy.

Hopefully, now I'll be able to get some sewing done - my Country Charmer blocks are calling me.

Country Charmer, Plan B ...

... or "if at first you don't succeed ..."

    Reading clockwise from top left,  I started with these and I made these, which didn't work, then I added the orange fabric to the mix and I made this, which worked,  followed by this, which worked, sort of.            

Try as I might, I just could not make those lovely fabrics work properly in myquilt.  My friend J came over to play on Monday, and we spent ages crawling round on the floor trying different combinations of the fabrics, different backgrounds, etc, and nothing worked.  We came to the conclusion I had two problems.  The first was that the fabrics did not have enough contrast, which I'd already worked out, but also the scale of the patterns on the fabrics were too large.  We therefore rejected several, and I was left with about three that would work, plus the background, which isn't exactly going to give me much in the way of scrappiness. (I did see the funny side of that, when you consider I wrote a quilt book called "Pick Four").  

So I decided to change direction and try again with my red and blue repro-type fabrics.  So far I've made four blocks.  I am using a plain cream background throughout, (mainly cos I've got a lot of it, so I don't need to buy anything) and have made four blocks so far.

I know we're only supposed to make Section A, but I couldn't do that, I had to see what they looked like as blocks!, Then, I had to see what they looked like as several blocks laid out together.  

I love them, and am having loads of fun with the pattern designed by Lynn at Sew'n Wild Oaks.  

If you want to see other people's posts about their Country Charmer adventures, then hop on over to our QAL hostess, Lesley, The Cuddle Quilter, where there is a Linky party going on.  I think I'm going to call my version "Charming Plan B".

Just as a little PS: I have promised my friend J that if I ever intend to buy fabrics for another scrappy project, I will take her shopping with me!