Hexagon patches and wind chimes.

I have embarked on a long journey. I started making patches for a quilt using hexagon blocks. It will be a hand pieced project and I have estimated that I may need a little over a thousand pieces. At this moment in time I have managed to make about 30 patches, so I clearly have a very long way to go. I decided to use my african fabrics. I had a lot of small left over pieces and figured this project was the perfect way to put them to good use. Of course I will need quite a bit of fabric for this quilt and so I have my pile of fabrics out and ready to go. I estimate that at this rate, if I worked on nothing else but making the hexagon patches I would have all the pieces I need in one month. But then I would still have to piece them all together, which I supposed would easily take up another month of solid work. and even then that would just be the front of the quilt finished. Perhaps this time next year I might have a hexagon patch quilt..

I have also started to get the wool ready to make a jacket. I am still very keen on the idea of making a ´bog´ jacket or a variation of it. You can read more about this kind of jacket here. A friend of ours Kent and his lovely parents came to visit us this week. I was very happy to learn that Kent knits. I gave him some burgundy, white and blue wool and he is going to make me a pair of mittens and a pair of knee high socks. I can´t wait to see what he comes up with. We have not figured out an exchange yet but surely it will be something woven, a bog jacket, who knows.

The rest of the week was spent making wind chimes to cheer up the garden and hopefully distract sneaky hungry birds from eating our corn and sunflower seeds. I hope that of course it does not have the opposite effect. I also took this opportunity to make the garden a little brighter and added some coloured strips of fabric. The town of Meimão is throwing its annual party next week so I may as well start getting into party mode. There will also be a cake contest and I am keen to enter it. I have not decided what cake to make yet. Perhaps the watercress cake would go down well, or maybe a zucchini or a beetroot cake just to use something seasonal. I hope I can make a winning cake. The prizes, if last year is anything to go by, are rather appealing as I am sure you will agree. The first prize may well be a whole leg of prosciutto or some cured meats like chouriço. If I am lucky I will get the second prize which could very well be some kind of blender, although a food processor would come in quite handy since I broke the one I borrowed trying to make nettle pesto. Even a small truck load of manure would be an excellent prize, perhaps I could suggest it to the organizing committee.