We have had a wonderful autumn with lots of flowers still blooming.

These are called “crazy daisy” I have never grown them so am very pleased I gave them a try as they are lovely!

Zinnia, who can resist their loud showy blooms.

Cosmos, the real star of the fall garden.

Sunflowers  blooming a second time after I cut back their first flowers.

A self sown verbena among the cosmos.

Perennial and annual sweep peas and Michaelmas daisy’s.

Some amazing fall colours!

Globe thistle and another thistle I grew from seed my son collected from Berlin botanical gardens last fall, every seed grew so I have a lot.

Last of all yellow raspberries fruiting, every morning I go out and pick a bundle for breakfast.

There is still a lot of colour in the flower border.

Acheilla, I love the deep pinks.

Lilies and Day lilies.

A very hardy Verbena.

Sunflowers and Tansy.

Coneflower.

Lavender.

The poppy seed heads just look so amazing I had to have another photo.

A new batch of soap.

Olive oil, nettles. tea-tree and rosemary.

I used 3 cups of fresh chopped nettles for this soap, picked with gloves on!

Being an olive oil soap it took ages to trace ( combine all the oils and lye) and was worried it would not set  but it did so I am a happy camper as the large amounts of tea-tree and rosemary essential oils in it make it a very expensive soap but a luxury worth investing in as the soap is great for all types of skin, lathers well and keeps its wonderful smell after its been dry for months.

Marigold and Chamomile.

Fresh Chamomile and marigold flowers from the garden and coconut oil soap.

I coloured this soap with a little of the spice turmeric, another favorite soap of mine, it lathers very well and is lovely and mild.

Lastly I used the left over oils from the above two soaps to make this rose soap.

When I added the rose petals to the lye they all turned a light brown, rather than waste the petals I carried on with the soap. I scented the soap with a rose fragrance oil as this soap is for keeping at the kitchen and utility sinks.

I am pleased with the colour it turned out to be in the end and cut it into big chunky bars easy to get a hold of with dirty hands.

Hopefully this batch should keep us going for a long time.

Its been very changeable weather, very hot then pretty cold but mostly wet!

After all the poppies last month came the beautiful seed heads.

Still standing even after all the rain!

Zinnia, marigold, tom thumbs and another poppy.

Perennial sweet pea and annual sweet pea.

Border flowers.

Sun flowers.

This is my sister Susan in front of her wonderful mosaic, she did for her local school in Twickenham  England. I think it is so beautiful, I hope that when I next visit her she will take me to see it and I will get more photos to show you.

My friend Gitte makes the most wonderful quilts, I persuaded her to give me some photos to show you.

This one is her Garden quilt with a pond in the middle, its a big queen size she designed herself.

Gitte does all he quilting herself on a domestic sewing machine.

Wow, wonderful quilting, I totally love the little fish.

Our little quilt group, The Perfect Quilters, challenged ourselves to make a modern quilt.

Gitte  quickly made this awesome quilt full of the most amazing quilting.

I love the way it changes from one design effortlessly to another.

A quick post for Mum, Strawberry Jam!

I also made Strawberry and Rhubarb jam, Strawberry and gooseberry Jam Strawberry and Blackcurrant jam and a a big batch of Blackcurrant jam as there was no more room in the deep freeze for them!

I grew a few annual poppies last year which were lovely and one poppy that must have blown in on the wind. This year 100’s of seedling grew so I decided to leave them to it and it was well worth it as they have been flowering  beautifully even although it has been raining buckets for the past two weeks.

Here are the pink poppies.

At the other end of the border the red poppies.

A yellow and a simple red.

They are all still flowering, amazing considering the rain.

My friend Maria gave me a frozen bag of Elder-flower juice she had made herself, it was delicious and so refreshing especially after an afternoon digging a new nursery bed for the garden! I just had to have a go at making some of my own.

I picked 30 sprigs of elder-flowers and picked out any bug that may have come in with them.

Popped them in a nice bug ceramic bowl.

Added the juice of 3 lemons and sliced up another 2 plus a sliced orange.

I boiled 3 and a half pints of water( about 2 ltrs) and added it to 2 lbs (900g) of sugar and once the sugar was dissolved completely left it to cool then added it to the elder-flowers and gave it a good stir.

I covered the bowl with clingfilm and left it  to brew for 24 hours.

Then strained it through a jelly bag.

I bagged up a half pint into freezer bags and froze them.

Each bag  is then diluted when needed using approx 2 pints (1.5 litres) of cold water, soooo good! I made another batch using only lemons, it was good too, I now have enough juice to last right through the summer and into the winter.

I felt I had not been in touch lately with my brother Bean (Iain) who lives in Portsmouth USA, its not that I don’t think about him and his lovely family I do, often, I have their children’s artwork dotted about the house and great photos of them. They built a beautiful new home and his kitchen is modern and minimalist quite the opposite of mine, his kitchen is the kitchens of dreams so I took inspiration from his kitchen to make him modern quilt.

OK, I know, but the wind appears out of nowhere when I try to take a nice flat photo of any quilt!

Its a double sided quilt, this side being a little more traditional.

I used a mixture of different fabrics, cotton satin is a favorite of mine and used it reversed for part of the quilt to lower the sheen. I quilted it with a simple all over modern design.

Front?

Back?

The fish print is the only non solid fabric in it.

I will send this to Bean later this year for his birthday, yes the one I always forget!

I really needed to brighten up the kitchen, we are renovating this cottage next year, we have the plans but I have to finish the studio first so while I wait for my revamped cottage I decided give the kitchen a lick of paint. I painted everything white then decided that the windows and beams should be teal blue.

Dining area, I made a fun pillow to go with the flag one Peter gave me and moved the dresser to the other side of the room. A summer neighbor, Helen brought me the flowers from  her garden.

Still the same old cooker but it works, sometimes! The same old floor, its easy to clean.

Same old sink but looks much brighter and feels much calmer.I am happy with it. On to the sitting/dining-room next!!!!!!!

I have had an incredibly busy month, I planned to post these photos a couple of weeks ago but did not get a minute.

The flower garden is looking lovely with lots of poppies and ladies bonnets.

The kittens have been enjoying the lovely weather and coming with me for long walks, looks like Toots has had enough! Horus too.

William did a lot of work in the woods over the winter and its looking good, so light and airy, I would like to build a tiny little summer house in there and get some floating tents too.

Some welsh onions.

Some more flowers.

And finally, Fluff, Isis and Pepper enjoying the warm weather.

We have had blues skies for days!

It makes everyone feel happy.

The blossom not only looks lovely it smells wonderful.

I have even had to cut the grass and the greenhouse is in use, full of seedlings.

There are flowers popping up everywhere.

Yes spring has arrived!

I finished my Row by row quilt and quilted it with an all over dairy design.

This quilt is made from scraps even the green border is a piece of leftover fabric from the back of another quilt, I used a lot of scraps from my jars of different sized squares and lots of white scraps.

It was a fun quilt to make, I wanted it to be bright and colorful for the summer.

I took a few closeup so you can see the daisy quilting.

My Mum’s 80 years old this year! Wow!

I was wondering how I could put her life in a quilt when I saw a pattern for a quilt called Farm Girl Vintage, my Mum is the original Vintage Farm Girl so had to make my version of it for her.

 I made a few changes to the quilt to make it hers.

Here are all the blocks.

I have started piecing the back so that the quilt will be reversible but I’m not sure how it will finish up yet.

I have at the same time made one similar for me here are a few photos, I used the discarded blocks from mums!

I have made mine a little bigger to see what that would be like and I’m using bigger half square triangles in the border, I’m not sure what colour the outer border should be.

My Mum only reads my blog once a year when I send it to her in book form so her birthday will be past by the time she reads this.

Poppet the wee kitten we rescued last fall has grown into a lovely cat.

She very independent and likes to stay out late at night and still eats enough for two cats.

 She loves to dig holes in my garden and is a fantastic mouser!

She’s adorable.

Well, maybe, its been so cold and although not very wet the rain that is falling is flooding our vegetable garden making it almost impossible to dig, although plants are beginning to shoot.

My favorite, mint! And finally some blossom and catkins.

We have a few daffodils but this one I thought was so beautiful.

The flower bed is just beginning to green up.

We moved the greenhouse to the vegetable garden and the rhubarb too which is doing very well in its new bed. I have been sowing some seeds for the flower bed but everything is very slow this year.

I have been meaning to make some soap for ages so I made a couple of batches.

Jeg har betyder at gøre nogle sæbe for aldre, så jeg lavede et par tæver.

The first batch is a basic white soap with citronella essential oil, I will use this soap as it is or I will mill it into soap bars. Milling the soap means that I will grate the soap finely, melt it over a double boiler and add water or flower water like rose water, I can then add dried flowers, herbs, spices or ground oats and some essential oils, really pretty much what ever I fancy.

Det første parti er en grundlæggende hvid sæbe med citronella æterisk olie, vil jeg bruge denne sæbe, som den er, eller jeg vil mill det ind sæbe barer. Fræsning sæbe betyder, at jeg vil riv sæbe fint, smelte det over en dobbelt kedel og tilsæt vand eller blomster vand ligesom rosenvand, jeg kan så tilføje tørrede blomster, urter, krydderier eller jorden havre og nogle æteriske olier, virkelig temmelig meget, hvad nogensinde jeg har lyst til.

The second batch I wanted to make a sweet smelling soap that would deter mozzies!

Det andet parti, jeg ønskede at gøre en duftende sæbe, der ville afholde mozzies!

I made the basic mixture, all vegetarian, and added dried marigold petals and chamomile flowers I grew last summer, some turmeric to give it a bit of colour and citronella and lavender essential oils.

Jeg gjorde den grundlæggende blanding, alle vegetariske, og tilføjede tørrede morgenfrue kronblade og kamille blomster, jeg voksede sidste sommer, nogle gurkemeje at give det en smule farve og citronella og lavendel æteriske olier.

I am pleased with the results, the soap is curing at the moment with only a week to go before I can start using it.

Jeg er tilfreds med resultatet, sæben er hærdning i øjeblikket med kun en uge til at gå, før jeg kan begynde at bruge det.

Jeg er ked af at mine danske venner, hvis min oversættelse er ikke godt!

I wanted to make a very special quilt for my sister Susan’s birthday this month. I searched through my fabrics for something just right for her. Susan is a wonderful sister, she is kind and generous and always there with advice sometimes hard to take, advice that always honest, no beating about the bush with Susan, advice I have grown to appreciate as I know it from the heart and pretty much always turns out to be good advice.

Jeg ønskede at gøre en meget speciel quilt til min søster Susan fødselsdag i denne måned . Jeg søgte gennem mine stoffer til noget lige ret for hende . Susan er en vidunderlig søster, hun er venlig og generøs og altid med rådgivning til tider svært at tage , råd, der altid ærlig , ingen omsvøb med Susan , råd jeg er vokset til at sætte pris på som jeg kender det fra hjertet og temmelig meget altid viser sig at være et godt råd .

I could not decide on which of the cotton lawn fabric to use so decided to use it all! Susan fills up her life with people, her house is always full of colour and life, she boards students and encourages them to make her home theirs, cooks for them good healthy and very tasty food, Susan’s cooking is always packed full of flavour.

Jeg kunne ikke beslutte, hvilken af bomuld græsplæne stof til at bruge så besluttet at bruge det hele! Susan fylder sit liv med mennesker, hendes hus er altid fuld af farve og liv, hun boards studerende og opfordrer dem til at gøre sit hjem deres, laver mad til dem god sund og meget velsmagende mad, er Susans madlavning altid pakket fuld af smag.

Susan is a wonderful artist, her work has been hung in many gallery’s including the Royal Academy of Arts but still she finds the time to share her talent and encourage children in her Art Clubs in London, where the children have the freedom to be themselves and the results are amazing and the children love her.

Susan er en vidunderlig kunstner, hendes arbejde er blevet hængt i mange galleriets herunder Royal Academy of Arts, men stadig hun finder tid til at dele hendes talent og opmuntre børn i hendes kunst Klubber i London, hvor børnene har frihed til at være sig selv og resultaterne er forbløffende og børnene elsker hende.

I wanted to make the quilt reversible and used one of my vintage sari’s to back it, I knew the quilting would not show on the patchwork side so quilted it back to front with the backing on the top and the patchwork on the bottom, I was very please with the result, the sari in shot satin so pretty slippery but it was no problem to my lovely longarm machine, Daisy.

Jeg ønskede at gøre dynen reversible og brugte en af mine vintage sarees til at bakke det, jeg nye quilte ville ikke på det kludetæppe side så quiltet det tilbage til forsiden med opbakning på toppen og patchwork på bunden, var jeg meget venligst med det resultat, at sari i shot satin så temmelig glat, men det var ikke noget problem at min dejlige longarm maskine, Daisy.

So Happy Birthday Susan, I hope you had a wonderful day, I  you will have many picnic’s in the park and at your allotment with your quilt.

Så Happy Birthday Susan, jeg håber du havde en dejlig dag, jeg vil have mange picnics i parken og på din kolonihave med din dyne.

Jeg håber, at mine danske venner kan læse min oversættelse, kan du have et godt grin på min bekostning!