Lucy's Allsorts

This is a post about lots of things - well quite a few anyway!
The first thing is that I have been tagged by Thimbleanna to list my 5 favourite places to eat and I'd better warn you that I am going to cheat for at least three of them! With three young(ish) children we don't get to eat out very often but here are my 5 top places.

1. Zulu's at The Black Horse - the most yummy and interesting food - my favourite is seared scallops in a potato salad with chorizo and black pudding (although I have to pretend that I'm not really eating black pudding - it does taste nice though!) and skinny chips served in a terracota plant pot.

2. Mum and Dad's house - my first cheat! But they really do the best roasts in the world. Dad's father was a butcher and a farmer and so they know all the right meat to buy and how to cook it so it melts in the mouth. Yesterday we had new season roast lamb, roast potatoes, fabulous vegetables,onion sauce, mint sauce and gravy - YUMMY. Followed by homemade summer pudding (but I forgot to take a photo of that!) All served with some delicious wine.

3. Mum and Dad's treehouse (cheat 2). They have had an amazing treehouse built against an lime (not oak - thanks big sis!) tree in the field opposite the house and this is where we had another birthday tea for Fred. The children loved hoisting the baskets of food up with the rope.
4. The Allotment (cheat 3). We spend a lot of time at the allotment and so eat lots of meals there - picnics, mini barbecues, toasted marshmallows etc, but on Friday I had the best meal so far. I had popped up in the afternoon with a shop-bought sandwich for lunch but then found that my friends Alison, Emma and Tricia had been gathering food from their allotments for lunch. We had freshly dug new potatoes, carrots (from my allotment) and salad made with a variety of leaves tossed with some freshly cooked bacon and dressed with olive oil and a little salt. The sun came out and it was the most delicious feast.

5. Now where shall I say for no.5? I don't really have any cheats left up my sleeve so I ought to think of a real restaurant but it seems so long since we went to one. Well this may not still be there but when we were going out my better half and I used to go to Heartbreak Soup on Newcastle's Quayside. We went there to celebrate our engagement and in order to get the table we really liked we had to sit there for the main course and then move for pudding - it amused us at the time.

(See the ring! Sorry - very old photo re-photographed!)

The second thing is to say THANK YOU so much to Nadine for sending me these wonderful fabrics for my star/house quilt. They are actually by the designers of the quilt - Blackbird designs and have been used in the original so it is wonderful to be able to include them in my quilt.

And then I thought I would show some photos of the quilts I have semi-designed myself:

First Dorothy's quilt - inspired by Caroline Zoob and her book Childhood Treasures and made using an IKEA pillowcase (that matches her bedroom) and some old tablecloths, napkins and doilies belonging to her Great-Grandma. We call it her Reading Quilt and it has sayings and phrases relevant to her stitched onto the hearts.


This is "Daisy's" - the central stitchery is a By My Hand pattern (I think) and the quilt just grew around it - you can see I like doing random strip piecing!

In the outer yellow border I have stitched her favourite things- bunnies, Barbies, sweeties etc!

This is "Fred's" quilt with a central stitchery adapted from an Anni Downs' pattern - hers had a little girl on so I made her a bit taller and thinner and turned her into a boy!
Finally this is the little quilt I made to go on the back of mum's chair in the kitchen. I took some Bronwyn Hayes patterns from some magazines and re-arranged them and then used all my blue florally fabrics. Mum and Dad have always had lots of chickens and although Dorothy christened them "Granny and Grandpa Dog" when she was tiny, her older cousins used to call mum "Granny Chickens" (and I think she preferred that!!)

Sorry for such a long post - but there will probably be different things to say tomorrow!