It's been awhile

I had a great three weeks in New Zealand visiting family and I arrived back in Australia last weekend but it seems I never left apart from trying to get back into some sort of routine.
Indulge me while I drag out some Nana brag photos.

Here are the three youngest grandkiddos, I don't think the twelve year old would appreciate a photo on my blog. The girls are wearing the dresses I made for them and they fit perfectly. Sophie on the left is six and wants to grow her hair like Rapunzel on Tangled. Ella is our polly pocket rocket, she wants her hair long but it just won't grow! She helped me make bread and is very good at shaping balls of dough so she's the little baker. Noah is two now and is just mad about anything to do with the movie cars.

Being the youngest of four kids means Noah watches everything and then copies so when I was taking a photo of the stick insect, he raced to find the toy camera and copied my close up style, lol.

The weather was fabulous, not too hot and not cool except for at night so we did get to go to the beach which is not far away and dig for pipis. I suppose the taste would be like clams and we even got a few cockles.

When you dig for pipis that are not far into the ocean and when the tide is going in, you have to  twist  your toes to feel them under the sand, it's quite a sight and good exercise.

We soaked them overnight in sea water for them to spit out the sand and my DD made some delicious pipi fritters for dinner the next evening. It took me right back to my childhood with every summer at the beach doing the same thing.

My older sister and I had a couple of nice lunches out together and both of us chose a beef and pear salad with blue cheese dressing for lunch on one of those days. It was so delicious that I had to try and make it at home. It turned out to be really delicious but I could have added a few cherry tomatoes and it would have been perfect. I served it with my sourdough which I've missed so much while away.
It has salad greens, red onion, avocado, red capiscum, avocado, pear and roasted pine nuts along with the beef.

The dressing was so delicious that I just have to share. After it's been in the fridge, it goes thicker and would make a rock star dip.

Blue cheese dressing

75g Costello blue cheese, chopped

125g (1/2 cup) creme fraiche

1 green shallot, end trimmed, thinly sliced

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tbs white wine vinegar

1 tbs light olive oil

1 tbs good-quality whole-egg mayonnaise

2 tsp Dijon mustard

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

To make the blue cheese dressing, place the blue cheese, creme fraiche, green shallot, garlic, vinegar, oil, mayonnaise and mustard in the bowl of a food processor and process until mixture is almost smooth. You can also use a mixing wand.Taste and season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl or jug. Serve at room temperature. Cover with plastic wrap and store in the fridge until required. It will keep for several days.

So what about the sewing? Well there wasn't too much of that but I did prep all my leaves for another panel on the Trailing Vines quilt before I left and I only have a few more leaves to sew on.
I don't think anybody is in a rush for the next panel to download so when I've drawn it up, I'll let you know here on the blog.

I did stuff another trapunto block for the Coxscomb quilt, each block takes me about four or five evenings to do so it's not a quick job.

You get the idea of what it will look like from the back view without the yellow pen I used. I was too lazy to iron it so it might look a bit rough. The only thing I didn't get to work on was the snowball quilt from my last post but better to have too much than not enough sewing to do.

I tried to keep up on my blog reading while I was away even if I didn't have time to leave comments.

I'm looking forward to catching up. I do have a couple of Coxcomb and Currant blocks to email to some of you so that requested it so if you don't recieve them within a day or two, could you flick me another request please.

Until next time, Janet