Winter Wonders

Well Winter is certainly in full swing here in the Southern Hemisphere.  We've been pretty lucky in that the last week or so has been brilliant blue skies.  Unfortunately the beautiful skies have been accompanied by some of the coldest weather we've had all year!  There has been gale force winds throughout most of our state and the wind chill really does make a difference to the temperatures.  I do love the blue days (a cold, bright blue day is one of my favourite kinds of days) but everyone can do with some cheering up - so here are the things putting a smile on my face at the moment.

We had some friends over for dinner on Friday night - it was a lovely night of food, wine and company - and they gifted us some beautiful Sunflowers.  We've positioned them so that as you walk down the hallway, I smile each time I see them :) 

Despite the cold weather we've had my plants are continuing to grow.  I've got mint, parsley, rosemary and thyme.

They are all still growing really well, the parsley in particular.  The last two months I've taken bundles of parsley to quilting to share around because we can't possibly eat it all!

I don't do a lot of knitting, but at the moment I'm working on a gift for a friend.  For a number of years I've given her a hand knitted scarf for her birthday, and she seems to love them, so I'm working on one for this year.  I just finished a ball of wool and I think I'm just past half the length I'll need - so I'll be done soon!

I thought I'd leave you this shot of Sir Pinkying and I.  You know that winter is here when you have to snuggle under quilts even with the heater on!!

While I've been gone....

So, I realise that it's been some time since I've posted, and it's really just that life has gotten in the way of me having some quite time on the computer to blog.

Sewing wise I've been working on my current projects, and also one more thing that I didn't share with you the other day... because we just moved house I've been wanting to do some new placemats for us to use for dinners and things like that. I absolutely LOVED the High Society range from Anthology fabrics, they have a good compromise feeling in that they are not too girly, but are quite earthy and fun.

So I've been making some placemats for us - just some little touches for our new home.  I picked 5 of the prints above to be included (taking out the ones that were too flowery) and added Kona solids in Coal (I think).  At the moment they look like this - stacked up waiting to be finished

But soon they will look more like this.  I had lay them all out to ensure that I had a "random" enough look in the designs of each placemat.  I've already bought the special thermal wadding and I'm going to use a dark brown for the binding, hopefully they'll come together!

The other thing that I've been doing is a little "gardening".  We have lots of outside space here and I would really like it to be a lush green oasis - but given my brown thumb past we decided that I should start small - 3 herbs - and see how I go with these!

p.s. don't forget to keep dropping in to Chasing Cottons to follow Rebecca's great beginner's quilt class