This October...

Usually I post my monthly catchup posts on the last day of the month, or the first day of the new month in more tardier months. But I’ve surpassed myself this time as we finished the end of the month enjoying some sunnier days in Porto, which we booked relatively last minute, and I’m catching up with myself and typing this (offline) on our flight back, aiming to publish it when we’re back home.

It’s been a good ten years since we last visited Porto and it’s just as good as we remember. The temperatures were at highest 25 degrees, and so a lot warmer than home. It was good to see the city prospering, and notice what had changed. This time we stayed in the Ribeiro area and so that meant exploring some new to us spots, as well as plenty of steps and ‘hill climbing’ to get back to our apartment.

But before I share more about our trip let’s go back to the start of October, and a long weekend away visiting family in Devon. Once again we were lucky with the weather and enjoyed visits to Hestercombe Gardens, Killerton NT, and our first time back at the fully restored, and finished, Castle Drogo (also National Trust).

ENJOYING THE SUN AT HESTERCOMBE GARDENS

IN THE LIBRARY AT KILLERTON NT

I love the library at Killerton because you can stop and enjoy the books - and touch them too. The last time I was there I spent some time perusing a paisley book, and I found that one again, but this time it was this gardeners almanac which piqued my interest most. Perhaps I’ll dig out some more photos of the books there for another post.

YES PLEASE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE IRIS RHIZOMES AT CASTLE DROGO

Castle Drogo was magnificent and it was so good to see the refurbishment work complete and the collections back on display. I had a good find in the gardens too as I discovered a trug of unwanted iris rhizomes for sale, and at a bargain price of 5 for £3, so it was very much a case of yes please, thank you very much.

We broke the long drive back with an indulgent night at Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds in a fancy hotel. It was great, and so was the food, although the poor waitress caught MOH’s glass at one point and his red wine went flying, though rather remarkably he stayed red wine free, and I’ve actually no idea how.

Chipping Campden is a great little town with some fancy pants shops, and as we discovered plenty of crockery shops. I left with a second hand flan or quiche dish with the Evesham Vale pattern by Royal Worcester from a charity shop and a vintage Portuguese baking dish. I also persuaded MOH to go for a crystal decanter, so our port this Christmas will be more stunning than usual.

ISN’T THIS GLORIOUS?

Then with the good weather continuing we stopped off for an enjoyable saunter around Hidcote National Trust, a garden which has become a regular stop off point on our Devonian journeying.

AT HIDCOTE NATIONAL TRUST

Back home, we’ve done lots of the usual and mundane stuff ticking off ‘no further work required visits’ at the dentist, though that reminds me I need to book in for the hygienist, which is never as bad as I think it will be.  There’s been sewing groups, patchwork groups for me and darts and cycling for MOH, plus we’ve both been enjoying our Reformer Pilates.

We had a night out in Nottingham seeing Huey Morgan, which wasn’t as loud as we expected, but still a very good night - he’s a great artist and very charismatic with it. It’s the second time we’ve seen him in a small venue, and I’d absolutely sign up to do it again.

We’ve started to seriously think about the design of our garden here, and have had a garden designer around to visit to listen to our (my) ideas and see how they can help us make them work, and how they can make them even better. It’s early days but it’s exciting, and after the summer we’ve just had I desperately need to get the plants we brought with us, and those we’ve acquired since out of pots and into the ground.

Though our olive trees are happy, just look at those olives. I’ve a feeling MOH may be trying to make oil from them at some point soon, or sooner than we ever expected.

My crocheted efforts for the tree dressing next weekend are ongoing - I’ve a few days left to finish my super cute pigs, so they’re ready to join the other garlands I’ve already made, and rather annoyingly forgot to photograph before I left them with the organiser. All is not lost though as I’ll see them on the tree and will remember to take photos then - you have been warned.

CROCHETED PIGS WITH SNOUTS, CURLY TAILS AND GOOGLY EYES

I’ve been enjoying my crochet again so started to wind some of those skeins I’d dyed a while back and more. Of course I quite quickly got into a great big tangle and spent more time than I’d anticipated untangling the mess before finally starting a granny stitch cardigan for myself.

We put our garden furniture away ahead of the first named storm and managed that in a more orderly way so there’s more room in the garage than last winter, so that’s worked well. But it also made me realise that I need to crack on and sew those zipper storage bags I’ve spent the summer talking about. I’ve found a pattern for a much smaller pouch which I’m planning to road test and then road test resizing before I upscale it hugely to get the size I need - watch this space!

I’ve got the next village quilt top ready to assemble and quilt, and I’ve finally assembled, basted and tacked my block of the month quilt too. It was the deal I made myself when trying spectacularly badly to resist adding a new quilt project to my list! That and making progress with my geese, which I’ve also done.

That’s also bad news though as I’ve seen another mystery quiltalong is starting towards the end of November and I’m severely tempted by that one too. I know I’m a hopeless case!

But let’s finish the month in Porto where we did all the things, drank - and tasted - quite a few ports in various port houses (Kopke. Quinta do Noval, Fonseca and Grahams if you’re wondering), ate pinchos, bacalhau cod fish cakes/fritters, plenty of ham and cheese and obviously multiple Pastel de Nata. 

I photographed more doors and tiles than I care to count and picked up a few tins of sardines (both the chocolate and fishy sort) in duty free on the way home.  We even successfully navigated the EES entry/exit scheme, though more easily on the way home, but the queues were loooong.

Portugal, I know we’ll be back - it’s just a matter of when. But first I need to spend time as usual catching up with myself, and reacclimatising to this more seasonal weather we’ve returned home to.

Post Comment Love 30 October - 1 November

Hello there, welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they may be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

The weather here in the UK has been a bit grim with the first storms of the autumn, and two coming in quick succession. Ideally I would have liked to stay home and hunker down but we weren’t able to do that as we had plans to visit family. We decided that an early start would be prudent to avoid as much traffic as possible, especially on/around the Dartford Crossing and that plan worked pretty well. We managed both journeys there and back in good time and while the weather did its thing we made the most of it.

All of which means I don’t have many photos from this week, so I’m digging into my archives and sharing a favourite Portuguese tile, as it’s not long before we head back to Porto for a few days. Hopefully the weather will be more favourable!

Have a good week.

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My Teal Flying Geese have taken off

In my last Quilty update I shared that I had finally started my Teal Flying Geese quilt, which seemed like a momentous point in time and now that I’ve roughly calculated I’m about half way through creating the blocks I felt that I should share a progress update.

Shortly after my ‘starting announcement’ in September I had eighteen sets of four geese, these in fact and I couldn’t resist laying them out to see a) what they looked like and b) how big they were and therefore how many more blocks I would need to make.

I reckoned then - and agree now - that these are about a quarter of the number of blocks I’ll need to make for the quilt I have in mind. But I also realised when I laid them out on the floor, that I wanted a funkier layout.

Something more like this.

But enough of the playing with fabric and layouts, I needed more blocks. So more blocks have been made using complementing and contrasting colours, but always with the plain teal background.

And now I have 29 of these blocks, which is just under half of what I need by my very rough calculations.

I told you they were rough, and from this you can probably work out that I’m a visual person so doing the quilt math was easier for me this way. And to me, it makes perfect sense - even the ‘geesed’ terminology!

I spent an afternoon ahead of my patchwork group session cutting the next batch of squares to turn into geese - I love how this has quickly become my ‘take to’ project for the longer patchwork afternoon sessions, and in each of our group’s recent updates my entry has been ‘making a million flying geese’ (which of course is a little exaggeration).

After that afternoon of cutting though I’ve realised that I need some more of the plain teal fabric. I’d bought what I had in two batches previously, so I’m not too worried about the colour not being exactly the same and I know that it’s still available, as it’s a fairly standard item for this fabric provider.

Now I need to guesstimate how much I’ll need. I’ve guesstimated that I have enough for approximately three quarters of my plan, but I also want to have some (but not too much) leftover for any borders so I’m quarrelling with myself about just how much I need before I place that order.

But now that I’ve seen how it is likely to look (or similar-ish) my mind is racing ahead to backing and borders.

For the backing I have some fabrics in mind. The darker brown above I picked up for £6 at my patchwork group from one of the members downsizing her stash - and I optimistically hoped there might be enough for the back of this quilt. I’m not sure there is, but as I don’t yet know what actual size the quilt will be that’s based on instinct and mentally judging the material to the size of our bed.

The darker brown is a vintage fabric and no longer available, which is a shame as it’s lovely and perfect for my quilt. The lighter more mustardy version is one I saw while at the new fabric shop in Newark recently, and while I knew the colour was different, I thought the pattern might be similar.

It’s not as similar as I thought though! But I like them both, and I like them both together, so I think with plenty more pondering they could work together - but it’d need to be in a creative way.

For the borders my mind is saying there should be a smaller flying geese border, and I think my mind could be right - but for the time being I’m not committing to that, or even giving it too much more thought as there’s plenty of other flying geese pondering to be done.

And more blocks to be made, which is my priority (for this quilt in any case!)