On My Cutting Table

Yikes....another week just few by....I don't know what the heck I did all week but I know....I did stuff. A little sewing, cutting and puttering here and there. This is what I have on my cutting table "body parts". A friend was kind enough to point out the cutest Annie doll pattern in a magazine...well look what happened (what are friends for?). Soon Annie will have all her parts together and she will be a wonderful addition to my little quilt collection.

I hope you are having a great week and have a little time for sewing.

More Pictures and a Quilting Treat

Has it been a week already since I've been home....where did the time go??? It took me a few days to get back to my time zone and a normal routine again....what ever that might be. I thought a few more pictures of Portugal were needed, it's a difficult task of picking only a few from the over 700 photos we took. I'd go back to Portugal in a heart beat....such a beautiful place. If you want to skip the scenery photo's scroll down and you'll see the stitching I did while on the train trips we took.

This is Porto which is North of Lisbon. The boats are the old method of tranporting the grapes to the wineries. There are several wine caves we visited....and yes they gave us generous samples of port....we had a good time tasting.

More beautiful trees.

The green sign closest in the picture was our hotel in Faro, as far South as you can get in Portugal is the Algarve. When the hotel was renovated a few years ago they found Roman artifacts...pretty cool to be sleeping over a Roman Ruin site.

Lots of this blue tile work everywhere, both inside buildings and outside.

Just another street view. The narrow streets are fascinating. One door is the entrance to someones home and a bar right next door....how convenient for them.

This is Pena Palace in Sintra and the most beautiful I've ever seen, it's considered the Romantic period because of the ornate detail of the building. The palace dates back to 1839, walking around inside was amazing, I wish I could show so many more of this place.

This guy was over the main entrance, he would scare me away...for sure. I don't know how he fits with the Romantic period.

A little something I've made this week for a friends birthday.

Here are the bunny's I stitched while traveling around Portugal. Stitching with one colour made it easy to pick up and stitch whenever I had a few minutes.

I'm looking forward to getting these bunny's pieced into a quilt.

I'm BACK!

Warning: Lots of beautiful pictures and very long post.

We are back from our 2 week holiday in Portugal. What a fun time we had touring around the country. We took the train to different areas around Portugal. Our flight was into Lisbon and we stayed for 3 days before taking the train West to Sintra (my favorite place in all of Portugal, you'll see why soon). Isn't this blooming tree so beautiful, it's so full of flowers you can't see any greenery.

There are little cable cars to take you up to the St. George's castle that over looked the city, it dates back to the 6th century and was fortified by the Romans. We didn't take the easy way up, we walked up the narrow windy streets making a guess that we are going the right way. This was the start of many walks UP HILL and hoping we are heading to the intended destination, why is it that you can count on the place you want to go to always be uphill.

So many narrow streets to follow. We had to watch for coming cars because they couldn't be seen until they were right at the corner and cars in Lisbon don't watch for pedestrians anytime.

Oh look we found the St. Georges castle at the top of the hill. Here's a glimpse looking down at the city.

Other view of the city. One house seems to be added to the next and it just keeps on going as far as the eye could see.

Incredible views in every direction.

These were some stairs that went down to the main shopping streets, I guess we could have walked up these stairs instead of the street. I didn't go down to see, I was too afraid I would have to turn around and come back up all those stairs.

A fountain in one of "many squares" around the shopping district.

Isn't this the cutest train station, we are now in Sintra the most beautiful romantic place in Portugal, even the train station is lovely.

That's a little restaurant on the corner of the building, there is a cute little table with 2 chairs sitting outside. We tried to get that table for dinner but wasn't successful.

I was amazed at how narrow the streets are, see the handicapped parking, there's barely enough room for a car to get by never mind the pedestrians walking. See the clothes hanging out the window. I swear they don't have dryer's in Portugal, everywhere we went the laundry was hanging outside the windows. Even the 14 storey high rise apartments had laundry hanging outside the window. There seems to be a standard hanging line attached to all windows for drying clothes.

The castle of moors in Sintra, was built by the moors in the 9th century. And of course the castle is located in the high hill over looking the town, do you see more up hill walking for me. The next picture shows the town below and the castle on the hill.

See how beautiful and romantic this little town is. DH wanted to walk up to the moors castle and it really isn't as far as it looks in the picture but this time I had to say we are taking the bus as the incline is very steep. It turned out to be a good thing since we walked all the way around the castle walls, up stairs and down stairs. You can see in the picture above this one how the stairs are all the way around, I think it took us a couple of hours to get through this castle.

Another picture of the Castle of Moors.

This street is in a small town North of Porto, I know I've skipped ahead. I can't seem to get Picasa to load more than 4 pictures at a time and I've got some pictures a funny order....sorry I'm getting off topic. This small town is called Guimaraes, we took a 3 hour train from Porto to get here. This is one of the medieval streets we walked around.

I thought this sign was pretty funny, good illustration of what is expected when you have a dog. I wish some of my neighbours would do this.

Another castle, this one is a 10th century medieval castle with 8 towers 92 ft high. Again there was more up hill walking and we also walked around the castle walls. Every day we did about 10 to 12 km of walking. The food was awesome in Portugal and we sure ate well after all the walking we did. Sometimes ordering food was a challenge because most menu's were not in English and most people didn't speak English either. I was able to pick out the word salmon and ordered this I think at least 5 times.

I don't know anything about this church, I took the picture because of the blue tiles. The tiles were used extensively through out Portugal both inside and outside of buildings.

I think this is enough for one day....I hope I didn't bore you too much.....time for bed, I'm still trying to adjust to the 9 hour time difference.

My next post will have more Portugal pictures and I also have some stitching to show as well. Train rides are a good time for stitching.

Thanks for visiting.
Wendy

Lots of "Stitching" Going On

I liked this little basket stitchery so much, I stitched it a second time. The first one is at the quilt shop for a sample. I hope the person I'm sending this one to will like it. It's a bit hard to see in the picture, the dark brown and pink is a churn dash block.

I'm up to date on the bunnyhill redwork blocks. I have to stitch each one as they are posted otherwise it doesn't take long before I fall behind....I'm sure many of you know how that goes.

Since the next couple of weeks I'll have limited access to email and internet, I've picked this little project to stitch in my liesure time while enjoying the warm sun. Hopefully I'll have all the blocks done and ready to be pieced. I found the sweetest background fabric called Frosted Dots, I'm going to enjoy spending time in the sun with these sweet bunnies.

All my scattering moments are taken up with my needle. ~Ellen Birdseye Wheaton, 1851

New Bag

I had a wonderful relaxing Mother's Day. I talked to my youngest daughter for a while on the phone. Soon she'll be living only a few blocks from me...I'm looking forward to her being close to home again. My oldest daughter made me a fantastic dinner of halibut, roasted potatoes and snow peas. It was nice to sit back and let her do the cooking.

I made another bag to carry my stitching. I was looking for a bag with a zipper, this was the right size and I was amazed at how simple the zipper went in.

Inside view showing the zipper. The Little Red Bag pattern came from the Down Under Quilts Magazine, you'll see Lurline's featured in the magazine as well.

My whirligig quilt came back from the machine quilters and I finished sewing the binding. Lauren did a loopy loop pattern all over the quilt, I love how it turned out. I'm really loving this quilt for summer, it's fresh and cheerful.

Quilts, like friends are different, colourful, fun, warm and comforting.......And you can never acquire enough of either.

Stitching Garden

Stitching and gardening have been consuming my time lately. Here's a peek at what I've been working on today, since it's raining and I can't work in the garden...a beautiful basket of roses. I've been doing lots of weeding, planting, cleaning up and moving a few things. DH has also been planting bricks (as he calls it), edging around the garden. We had some old bricks from the house, it gives a nice edge between the grass and garden area.

A few plants blooming right now. The bleeding hearts do really well in the shade.

White bleeding hearts, they look so pretty right now. Oh look you can see some of the planted bricks in the background.

I don't know what this little guy is called but I really love how it looks in the planter.


Quilts, like friends are different, colourful, fun, warm and comforting.......And you can never acquire enough of either.

Garden, bags and UFO

Holy Cow!....it's been over a week since my last post. Where did the week go??? I've been cleaning up the garden, visiting the nursery and contemplating how I'm going to reorganize my sewing room. Since the sewing room is too big of a MESS to conquer in one day, I then decided gardening was much more manageable....I'll just keep procrastinating for a few more days. It's too sunny to be inside anyway....I'll have to get busy in my sewing room on the next raining day. Darlene has done a fantastic job in her room.

I promised my daughter a pretty bag she can take her lunch to work in. Here's what a came up with after looking through many patterns. This one was easy...YES....I like easy. I still need to put the plastic lining inside. She requested the plastic, it's the stuff used for table cloths, I picked the light weight plastic which won't be too stiff inside. I think she'll like it, her birthday is on Monday, I'll give it to her then.

I found this little cutie in my UFO pile. I only needed to add the outer x-stitch border and it was done. I have no idea why I didn't finish it, when I was so close to being done.

Happy Stitching.