My sister Jane wasn't feeling so well so I decided to make her a little quilt.  It was made (mostly) from the easy lap quilt directions from Bend-the-Rules Sewing by Amy Karol. I love the way it turned out. It's big enough to be cozy and small enough for me to quilt with my machine. I'm always a bit nervous quilting because things have a tendency to shift on me but I just went as slowly as I could stand and used lots of pins. I worked from the middle out - both in terms of the lines moving across the quilt and along each line of quilting - and it went really well.

It's made entirely of stash fabrics (including the batting) which was a lot of fun. It was kind of liberating to realize that I actually had enough fabric to make an entire quilt. It was also really fun to be remembering other, older projects as I went along; Jane even recognized one of the fabrics as being from our sister Claire's dress for the Jane Austen party a couple of years ago.

I really like this quilt and I'm sure I will be making it again.

Reusing seems to be the easiest of the "Three R's" but the least advocated. When was the last time the City suggested you donate your old clothes or make new pyjamas out of an old sheet or save your yoghurt containers? Fortunately thrifting is pretty popular anyway. I was over at my sister's on Friday and she sent me home with a few things that she no longer wears that I liked the look of.

One of them was this sweater. Jane said there used to be a button but it had gone missing somewhere. I threaded a ribbon through the button hole to hold the sweater closed under my coat when we went out on Saturday (because even though it was March is was really cold outside and I wanted the extra layer). As soon as I had the ribbon on I loved this sweater - it was comfy to begin with but now it was super cute too. I wore it for the rest of the day and all of Sunday too. Cute, cozy sweater are essential for cold weather.

 

My sister invited me over on Friday night to help her try out some new recipes she's planning for New Years day. She got an Indian cook book for Christmas and we had a lot of fun reading through it (so many yummy things). The recipes we were trying were for a kind of deep fried bread, the name of which neither of us could pronounce, and a caramelized carrot pudding.

These foods were both delicious and wonderfully simple. I think for both recipes combined we used a total of eleven ingredients (which includes a couple of extra spices and a substitution for self rising flour).

I don't have any pictures of the breads but they were cool. They start out as skinny pancakes of dough and then puff up like balloons in the hot oil. We discovered they were good all by themselves or with any manner of things on top (including the carrot pudding).

The pudding (pictured above) is fantastic. You stick grated carrots and milk together in a pot and just cook them until they make pudding and then you add some sugar and butter and some spices. It takes a while but is the perfect thing to cook when all you really feel like doing is having a cup of tea and some chatter in the kitchen.