Not so domestic goddess

I thought I'd make my own mince pies this year. My mother always made it look so easy.

All the ingredients were in place - so no excuse there.

But once again, when faced with a choice of activities, I choose the one I'd like to do instead of the one that I should be doing.

So today I tidied out my sewing room - sorted stash, put projects into boxes - the whole shebang!

But that has mean that I've just finished the mince pies - and the Christmas cake has only just been marzipaned!!!!

EEEEK.

No chance at all that it will get iced by tomorrow - last year (there seems to be a pattern here) I iced it on Christmas morning at about 6am.

It was

a

DISASTER

The icing was still soft (of course) - but luckily the assembled guests were so full of Christmas lunch that they didn't want the cake anyway.

So here are my mince pies - somehow they really don't look like the ones in the recipe books

especially this rather strange one...

and heres my cake so so far.......

Christmas decorations

Here are a few festive items. I 'drew' the bell in a secret santa type, and I made the star...

Have a good Christmas.

Party Time!!!

I used to live in Nottingham but have now moved about 40 miles away - but I still go back for Nottingham Patchwork Group.

Last week was the Christmas meeting - and the reveal of the round robin.

I didn't take part - I knew that I wouldn't get round to completing it - all participants made a strip 24 inches by 6 inches. These have been passed around in Top Secret conditions - and the strips were revealed...

The challenge is now to sew them together....

Back Again!!!

I have been very remiss in keeping up to date.

Work completely swamped me. In fact, it still is, but with only a week to go until the Christmas holidays start, I'm starting to feel as though maybe there will be a short respite, and a space in which to assess what's really important.

I wanted to post some pictures of the only things that I've manged to do - some teeny tiny tree ornaments - but the camera appears to be in a bag - under my desk - at work.....

So instead, there's a couple of pictures from a workshop that I attended earlier this year with Nottingham Patchwork group.

It was led by Jenny Rolfe, and they are (very small) wall hangings.

These are ones done by members of the group:





... and this is mine.

I was once given some advice about what fabric to choose for a workshop - and the advice was that if in doubt, always use Christmas colours. That way, you may even finish it - and even if you don't want it yourself, you can always use it as a present.... Hence the Red / green / gold colour choice (and my local quilt shop often has Christmas fabric reduced straight after Christmas, which is ALWAYS a good idea).