Why a picture of fruit and veg when this is predominantly a craft blog? Well, because I snapped up one of Lidl's Waste Not boxes yesterday. £1.50 for this lot. I do love a bargain. After defrosting the freezer the other week I'm gradually refilling it, so made a slow cooker veggie stew with spuds, red onions, the courgette, some parsnips and carrots. That's been batched up and slung in the freezer. The bananas I'm munching away on. The cabbage, celery, spring onions and chillis are due to be stir fried, and I'll make a leek and potato soup with - predictably - the leek and rest of the potatoes.
I'm not always lucky with my timing as regards these boxes. Sometimes they're available, sometimes not. So it was pure chance I got this one.
I was mainly in the shop as I wanted bags of potting compost. My shabby faux-Victorian conservatory (tacked on to a 1950s semi detached. Not my choice.) is filling up nicely with seedlings all sprouting away like crazy. Lots needed repotting, so I spent a few hours yesterday doing that.
After an hour on the allotment today, I came home and sowed more seeds. Three varieties of dahlias, including pom-poms. I managed to ruin all my dahlia tubers over winter, having stored them in a damp shed and forgotten about them. Instead of, as per previous years, bringing them into the house and storing them in the cupboard under the stairs, nice and dry. So I'm having to start all my dahlias from seed, but luckily they're easy to grow this way.
As well as the dahlia tubers, I also managed to ruin a lemon tree in a tub. Leaving that outside during the worst of the snow and below freezing conditions. Maybe it'll survive, but for now all its leaves are shrivelled and dry as dust, crumbling to the touch. That'll teach me to take more care, won't it? Luckily I'd bought the two mini fig trees and lemon verbena inside over winter, so they're still live and kicking.
On the crafty front I've been making more blocks for my Colourwash style quilt, a long term project. As I add to my fabric stash, I use some of whatever material I've acquired to make another block. Slowly but surely the pile of blocks grows.
Apart from that I've been playing about with wonky log cabin patterns.
These two are hanging around on my mini design wall, and at some point in the future - when a million and one other half-completed projects are finally done and dusted - I'd like to make a quilt with vibrant wonky log cabin blocks, surrounded by white and off white plain fabric. I've seen an image of something along those lines, and the contrast between the busy, vivid blocks and the neutral background is very pleasing to the eye.
Tonight I'm being thoroughly and unashamedly middle-aged, catching up on episodes of Gardeners World, drinking vast quantities of tea and not moving far off the sofa. I'm debating whether to watch the latest episode of BBC1's 'Great Expectations'. I think, despite the mainly excellent casting and wonderful costumes, it's an appalling adaptation of a brilliant book. However, there's something quite compulsive about watching with a kind of horrified fascination about how dreadful a mangling Mr Dickens' novel is getting. Can I resist, or will 9.00pm see me tuning in? Only time will tell ...
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