busy post week

It is hard to believe that another week has gone by. The pleasant start to autumn is still with us, sometimes sunny, sometimes windy, but mostly dry. There is still plenty of colour to be found in the garden.

Our postman was really busy this week, having to walk the path to our house nearly every day.

The most important and exiting was a packet from Australia. This was the prize from a giveaway on Katherine's blog Rose Cottage, a needle case made by her.

This pretty little needle case has already found its way to my basket. 

No, I did not make the pin cushion either, this was another present from a friend. A needle case is something I have been promising to myself for a long time, but never got around to making one.

But as you see, this wasn't the only present from Katherine, there was also a nice little fabric card and a bar of CHOCOLATE! Well, I think we can take care of that! Thank you so much, Katherine!

What else did the postman bring this week?

Magazines, some new, some old and trusted.

                      

With the new Quiltmania magazine arrived latest "architect's" drawings for the next housing settlement in the Yoko Saito's Mystery BOM quilt.

This is the largest one to date, not in size of the block, but in number of houses to be "built".

While in the meantime I am still busy building block 4.

Another arrival this week are the instructions for the next block of Lynette Anderson's Fernhill BOM.

Last night we saw on our television the last of the re-run of Downton Abbey, both series one and two, as tonight starts the brand new one, starting with Matthews and Mary's wedding, with the appearance of Shirley MacLaine as Cora's mother. Can't wait! See you there!

I wish you all a happy stitching week!

Thank you for all your comments on my last post regarding the word verification problem.
Siri kindly showed me a button on her blog, which I have now copied to my blog also (see on the left).

Emi from l'alternativa summed it up beautifully:

It is crazy to prove to a robot that I am not a robot!

How true! Thank you, Emi, for that thought :-) It made me smile.

word verification

I want to add my support to Karen from Log Cabin Quilter and her post "Word verification is driving me nuts". The jumble of letters and so often unclear numbers is driving me nuts too.
I like to visit as many of you as I can and leaving a comment is a polite, friendly and enjoyable thing to do.
I am not a robot, and I don't think of myself as being stupid either, but sometimes it takes me 2, 3 even more tries to get it right; too often recently I have given up and moved on to the next blog. Life is just too short!
You have a choice of having any new comments emailed to your computer, so you can always go to your blog and press the bin sign under the comment to delete it, if it is a comment you don't like. Or you can choose to "moderate" all comments before they appear on your blog.
I know that more and more bloggers feel like I do, some don't comment at all on blogs with word verification. Just think how many friends (or potential friends) you are loosing. I don't have word verification on my blog and to date I have not received any unwelcome comments. May be a spam email now and then, which I just don't open and delete.
So, please consider changing your blog setting and say NO to word verification. If you don't know how to do this:  go to your "settings", choose "posts and comments" and NO in "show word verification?".

While I am on the subject of comments, I really like to answer directly all your comments left on my blog, because I value very much your visits and your friendship.
However, too many of you are still "no reply-comment blogger", which makes it impossible to send you a personal answer. To change this, you need to add your email address to your profile. I understand that some of you are reluctant to do this, but just think how much harder you are making it for anyone to have a friendly relationship with you, which is a shame.

Have a wonderful weekend, whatever you are doing!

bees, butterflies and mushrooms

We are having some glorious weather, warm, dry and sometimes even sunny. Could this be the start of the beautiful autumn we wished for ? I hope so. Even butterflies and bees have found our garden at last.

It has been an anxious time for the bees this year. Firstly a late frosts destroyed tree blossoms. This was followed by the wettest summer since 1912 (!), so little pollen for bees to collect. We like to buy a local honey, but until now there wasn't any in the local shops, it seemed that the beekeepers would have to keep most of the honey back, to keep their bees alive through the cold months. So it is so nice to see our little stripy friends busying themselves in our garden at last.

And yesterday I found the first jar of local honey in our shop.

                                                                 

Autumn has its own attractions and a good autumn can be wonderful!

One of the pleasures for us is picking forest mushrooms. 

The mushroom season starts for us much later then in the rest of Europe. Actually, it is much harder to pick them here, as they start growing about the same time as the leaves are changing colour and start falling from the trees, so the mushrooms are not always easy to see. On our walk this morning we spotted first signs,  something is growing at last!

And not long after that :

                    

We did not come home empty-handed. 

I know, I know, this is a very small find by some of your standards, but this is just the start of the season. 

In the past we had some good years for mushroom picking, lets hope this year will be a good one also.

But it was enough for a good breakfast.

Ahhh, the smell - you can't buy this in a supermarket!

start of autumn

So here comes September, the first of our autumn months. The garden is taking on a more seasonal look.

I have now finished the first five stitchery blocks plus corner log cabin blocks of Fernhill BOM by Lynette Anderson. Four more blocks are due, but you can already see the autumn feel of this quilt.

I have not yet stitched on any of the Lynette's buttons, I am leaving this to the end.

The house building on the block 4 of Yoko Saito's Mystery Quilt is also in progress.

The postman was kind to me this week, delivering two packages:

another pattern from Helena at Syverkstan, this time a Season Bag

and a delicious new fabric Phenomenal Fall by Sandy Gervais for Moda, which arrived from Thread Bear.

Can you see a possible connection here?

Have a wonderful week!