Laura Ann's Quilt?

For years, I've been collecting purples and greens to make a quilt for my friend Laura Ann in her favorite colors. I was thinking more variety would be more interesting, but then when i showed her a couple of examples, she seemed to prefer a color scheme more like this--not at all scrappy and with orange points. Now i'm worried that what she really liked was a detail like the exact fabric in the border, and not this overall color scheme. It is rather in your face, isn't it? So i'm going to canvas her views, now that i've made a few blocks. The border will of course have various greens and purples and more of the saffron in it, if i have enough left. I'm thinking of doing a pieced border.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Another Autumn bouquet. It cost me about € 7 to make these two bouquets. I figure the larger one would cost about €15 at a discount florist. The most expensive part is actually the greenery. All of these roses only cost €2. So the great thing is i can replace the roses as needed and have fresh bouquets for roughly €2 per week! And with this cool weather, they actually last closer to two weeks.

The Orchid Orphanage

The Orchid Orphanage
Originally uploaded by nhendricks

It started when I bought a couple of white phaelanopsis orchids at Ikea and mentioned this in passing to a friend.
Friend: "Ah, maybe you'd like to take my orchid! It never blooms." It turned out a number of friends were having bad luck with orchids.
Next thing I knew, i had a windowsill full of orphan orchids. I checked out a book from the library on how to take care of them. It took about a year, but they finally all bloomed.

Another Pincushion

I didn't manage to take pictures of my favorite pincushions before giving them away, but I can make more with the same fabrics. I like the fabrics in this one a lot, too. It still needs its button. I think it's also time to get cracking on hot water bottle covers again.

Baked Eggs

I've gotten into making Baked Eggs recently, after a recipe I found in Nigella Lawson's Nigella Express. She recommends drizzling cream over the tops. I prefer grated cheese.



Wild mushroom powder is good to add before the eggs. Also, tapenade. I found mushroom powder available here and here Wild mushroom powder



Put a bit of olive oil in the bottoms of the ramekins. Add freshly ground salt and pepper, plus wild mushroom powder, if you have it. Add chopped basil, an egg and dollops of Frischkäse or herbed cream cheese.


Sprinkle with grated cheese and lay slices of cherry tomato on top. Drizzle a few drops of truffle oil over this and bake at 350°F for 10 minutes. Nigella suggests serving baked eggs for a simple family supper or as a starter at a dinner party. I like to have them on a lazy Sunday morning or as an easy Dinner for One. Since you can bake these in the toaster oven, you don't have to fire up the big oven for this. You can even put bread in to toast with them, if there's space.

P.S. The original recipe is much simpler: just eggs, cream and truffle oil. I added most of these ingredients by experimenting, as Nigella recommends.

Imelda and George

Aunt Imelda and Uncle George came to visit on their way to France. Here, we'd climbed a hill overlooking Boppard in the Rhine Valley. Can you believe they're 75? They've known each other since they were 18.

Finished Piecing Tumbling Blocks

A few weeks ago, just before my aunt and uncle came to visit, I finished piecing the Tumbling Blocks. Hurrah! I'm going to use this orange for the borders.

Just after i finished, i made 5 pincushions from this pattern at Carpe Quiltem, but have already given away 3 of them so don't have pics of the best ones, but plan to make some more.