Winter Solstice

The winter solstice was here this weekend with perfect weather - the moon and Venus were very bright, heralding longer days for us in the Southern Hemisphere. Saturday I was out planting the garlic in a special garden and to keep the chooks from scratching the bulbs everywhere, I laid down newspaper under some grass clippings. Boy, am I glad I did that! We have had so much rain today the bulbs would be rotting away before long. This week is supposed to be very cold too - so I think lots of sewing will be done!

I Have Been Working On ...

a quilt for the Stamp Challenge for Quilt Symposium 2009 in Wellington. I've been obsessed with it lately, and I needed to get it finished so that something else could be started or even finished. Here is a teaser:

I have also finished quilting a couple of quilts for other people as well as working on a couple of pages for Sue's 'Wine' Art Journal. I'll show you some pictures when the pages are all finished.

The Best Fruit in Autumn

Yesterday was an ideal preserving day - overcast, sometimes raining and not too cold. So I set about making Feijoa jam. From 1.5 kgs of fruit I got 5 jars of jam - mmmm! yummy! Fortunately half the bushes we planted are the 'Mammoth' variety so some of the fruit is much bigger than what is sold in the supermarkets. Best source of vitamin C for this time of year.