Holiday!

Yes, my Christmas holiday begins today! No fear, I haven't mislaid any more of my marbles, it's just that at John Lewis (like most of retail), there's a 'blackout' period on holiday around our busiest times. For John Lewis, that's from the 16th Novemmber to the 17th January, and then again in June for the first week of summer clearance.

So this next week is my Christmas holiday.

Would it surprise you to hear my 'Christmas shopping day' was on the 26th of December??

Quirky, huh?

It's been bitterly cold out, with a good few inches of snow. Having grown up in Germany, and with friends in countries thatget a good deal of snow, I find it amusing that the country isn't prepared and grinds to a halt. Lots of people say, 'well, it doesn't happen often, does it?'. Well, no, but it does happen. It's thrawed out here quite nicely, so now we driving rain instead. I think I prefer the rain, though I'm bias as I live in a 6th floor flat and have no fear of flooding.

I decided I would try roasting a slow roasting a pork joint, to take around to the house of my friends' Hannah and Paul. I tweaked Jamie Oliver's method to suit me.

Mainly I adjusted it because I miscalculated how long I'd have to cook it. Ho-hum.

Early on, I ran down because I could smell burning and the house was getting slightly smokey. I had left it in for the high part of the cooking for a bit long.

But bizzarly, no burning to be seen. Thanks God, the heads up on that one, before it burnt! Possibly I just need to clean the oven. But who wants to think about cleaning kitchen appliances whilst they're on holiday?!

Looking good?



I thought so. Went down very well with Hannah and Paul too. We had it with mashed potato and carrots. Only two measly pieces left over.

So, I've been up to quite a bit, and written quite a lot of 'bits' of entries, but never finished anything.

The quilt is coming along nicely. A couple of weeks ago, on one of our many bitterly cold days, I went to Creative Quilting and bought the batting-the 'body' of the quilt. I chose an all-cotton blend, and have yet to get over how soft it is. It's like a heavy-duty cotton wool, and as such sheds all over everything it touches. When I got to little 2-platform station, I had to wait 30 minutes for the train; the batting, encased in it's bag, made a brilliant pillow for the otherwise icey-cold metal seat.



Bounded on by my new purchase, I managed to sew together all seven long strips in a couple of days. Desperate to see what my quilt would eventaully look like, I taped them all the top of my door.

My next step is sewing together all the long sides. I was doing alright with this, until I sewed one on upside down. Now it'll need unpicking before I can continue...blah. After that, I plan to add a border to make it wider (I'll try and use the batting width as a guide). Then we sandwich it altogether, baste it to hold the bread and filling in the right place, and then finally......QUILT!

I'm hoping I can get a long way into this project in the next week. I really can't wait to start quilting. Should I 'stitch in the ditch', where you just stitch into seems so it can't be seen,or go for a pattern of some sort?