A little sunshine!

What a difference a day can make - Saturday we had flurries of snow again, which actually disappeared quite quickly, but the wind is so bitterly cold at the moment.  Sunday however was quite sunny, so Beanie dog and I went for a lovely walk in the sunshine, just our usual walk which is about 3 miles.  I wrapped up well as the wind is so cold, but once I got walking I was soon warm. It was nice to be out in the fresh air, but I was also looking forward to getting back home into the warm again as I had been baking....

....  I had made biscuits and a date, apple and walnut cake.  I had made the cake before (a recipe I often use from Delia), but trying to make it a little lower in fat content I added apple puree in place of the butter.  I pinched this idea from 'an almost no fat banana bread' that I found here - which is also yummy - so it was a bit of an experiment, but it turned out very well and the cake was lovely and moist and full of flavour.

The biscuits were a new recipe to me - Apricot and Almond cookies, they turned out lovely and soft and chewy.  This recipe came from Cake Days by the Hummingbird bakery. C and I found this book in a remainders book shop when she was home last week for a few days, it was incredibly cheap so we just had to get it!  We sat and looked through all the recipes and decided we would probably make most of them at some point, but I wanted to give these cookies a try.

I will certainly be making them again! So a little sunshine, a good walk and cake - what a great Sunday afternoon :-)

Spring Quilt

I had great fun making this quilt, but would never have attempted anything like this without seeing all the other really lovely 'scrappy trip along quilts' out there in blogland - they really inspired me to have a go!

Today has been such a lovely sunny spring day to take photos of it hanging on the washing line in the garden. It will be called my 'Spring Quilt' because of all the yellow and spring green fabrics, but hopefully it will get good use in the summer for picnics and generally lazing on in the garden.

I kept it really scrappy, my only rule was that no two fabrics should meet at the corners of the blocks when joined, and I think I managed to keep to that. 

It is backed with a pale green fabric which has little stars all over it and the binding is a spotty brown fabric.

I hope your day has been sunny!

Finished

Finished my latest pair of socks!

I even managed to get the stripes to match!

Just what is needed to keep my feet warm and cosy.....

.... especially as we woke up to this again today - and it is still snowing!

The wool I used is Regia 4ply and is appropriately called snowflake! I've used this wool for socks lots of times now,  I find it really hard wearing and it washes well - which is just as well as I live in my knitted socks in the winter.

I also screen printed a few more of my dip dyed bags last week at my screen printing course. No course this week as it is half term, but I'm busy with new designs for my next class.

Hope you are keeping warm and cosy.