myBlock, a project worth supporting

A wonderful friend of mine has been working her tushy off to get a project up and running called myBlock.
I can't really describe how it works and I don't need too 'cos she made a bunch of videos that explain it all! Here is a link to it:
http://www.myblockonline.com/
(Note: to watch the videos I suggest running them minimised and go make a cuppa, then replay. This prebuffers them no matter what connection speed you have. And yes, that IS me and MrC)
I've supported it, I AM supporting it, because I believe in the importance of community, and of connecting with people.
I also believe in Anne-Marie (aka Maz) who is in the main video trying not to look nervous (she tells me that she imagined she was talking to me not the camera when she did it, what a honey!) I think she did an amazing job with these and they are a project all on their own. They are about showing how important being connected is for people. :)
Anyway gotta dash, more later!

PS re BOM

So quickly, thanks to the wonders of internet publicity, my BOMs have found a home and will be a queen size quilt after all. :) A friend is going to help complete it for her bed. I love collaborative quilts, they somehow seem more like what quilting was meant to be. Mind you I also love non-collaborative quilts. Heck I just love quilts!!!

My August winnings

I'm so excited! Every month my quilting guild has a block of the month, aka a BOM. Members who wish to make as many of these as they want to and each BOM enters you into a sweepstake to win the lot. We are given a pattern and a colour scheme indication. I made five, and 30 were submitted so the guild split them into two lots of 15, one of which I won! I got all of my own back as I got the darker, more antiquey interpretations of this block, which is my thing.

Here they are all laid out. MrC is very good at placing blocks and this is how he thought they should go. I can sew them up and edge them to make a lap quilt, or make ten more, add a border or two and make a queen size quilt. What should I do?

SPCA Cupcake Day fun

I've been making cupcakes for tomorrow which is SPCA cupcake day. To be honest I don't really care who gets the money for them, I just lurve making cupcakes. They are so insanely prissy and cute!

I've made my usual rose-flavoured ones, and a batch of chocolate for good measure. The white chocolate butterflies I made a few weeks ago have been augmented with pink and chocolate coloured ones, little flowers and chocolate pairs of leaves. A few silver balls on the choc ones to finish them off.

I am no expert in making decorations but I have discovered there are a few products that make it all sooo easy. Lustre powders that you can turn into metallic paint with the addition of some gin or vodka, baking paper and the one product that will turn a trip to Snotfight into a pleasure, disposable icing bags.

Here are the pink and choc decos, note the butterfly pics under the baking paper that I used as patterns.

These cakes turned out quite flat - in spite of having 2 teaspoons of baking powder to one cup of flour, which is twice the usual proportion, they really didn't rise into a nice curved top. I think this is because they are too big. Normally I make teency ones but these ones are muffin sized. So, by using a good firm butter icing, I made an initial 'pile in the middle:

then worked into the middle to form a wee Mt KauKau of icing.

A perfect slope on which to perch the butterflies.

The sad thing is that I think I've blown up my cake mixer, it just stopped working between one batch of icing and the other so I had to make the chocolate with a hand held one *sigh*. Perhaps it's time to get that Kenwood I've always pined for...

One of life's great mysteries

Am I the only person who has put two and two together on this issue?
Banksy is a famous and anonymous graffiti artist in the UK, he always covers his face and his identity is a closely guarded secret.
Stig is a famous and anonymous test driver on Top Gear, in spite of a bogus report that he was Michael Schumacher recently.
So, I find myself asking, is Stig Banksy? Is Banksy Stig? Are they one and the same? Just how many famous, anonymous people can one country have?
It's not as important an issue as world peace, but it did make me think..

Hello world

Cor this is a bit scary, my first blog post ever. Since reading Ben Elton's Blind Faith, I'd gone right off the idea, but recently I've found reading blogs about interesting people who do things that interest me...er.. interesting. So, why not.