Happy April

Purples in the Garden

And on the house

Spring Brights

Yellows 

Outside

Inside

Happy Spring!

Blessed Sunday.

Lots of Years

Anniversary 

Today we went to celebrate in our favorite kind of place: rural, historic, delicious. This restaurant is not too far from our town …

…..what you see on the hillside in the back hills is our town.

The internet site for the restaurant says they like people to come on foot - that means they are on Wanderwegs, way out in the countryside. The road to get there is about a half lane wide in most places. But it was worth finding. 

The old house was part of an historic farm, hotel, bakery, and restaurant. The farm is gone, but the rest remain. 

You could get one of six rooms….

You can buy breads, cookies, and pastries, which we and others did, in the short time we were there.

Ruchbrot und Zopf, made on the premises, three days a week, with a pre-yeast, and old recipes. 

Then baked in a 150-Year-old Holzofen (wood-fired oven) that has the capacity for five pound loaves. 

Shortbread cookies “brought into the family collection by a bride” and nut sticks.

Cheese Wähe, sort of a savory flan.

Those were to be taken back with us. Then dinner, and wine….

From the Rhine valley nearby. 

All parts of the dinner were locally sourced, hand-made (e.g. cabbage fermented on site), and tasted farm fresh. It is noticeable when things haven’t been shipped and let sit for a long time. 

That is Bärlauch Spätzli. The spring Bärlauch is just coming out now in the forest edges in the last week or so.

And the desserts were noticeably handmade from their own recipes. 

Quark Torte, a kind of cheesecake. The cream is not Coolwhip. It was very much creamy cream. 

Schwarzwälder Torte, really delectable. 

Thank you, Old Folks, for building up such a place.

Where we sat.

The restaurant on a sunny day. A painting.




Come visit us sometime, and we would be glad to take you there.

Visit

With Gingerbread 

One son came to stay with us this weeklong work on projects with me. He brought these. 

He had just been there to see friends. 

Spring Has Sprung

It’s Official 

With Spring being officially here, we are out in the garden getting ready for the growing season. The pots are mostly out of the greenhouse now, except geraniums and avocado trees.  A few daffodils and lots of vinca minor are blooming. Including in my kitchen window. It should be outside, but I want to enjoy it inside. 

In Zürich, 

the shop windows are full of bunnies.

And spring chickens


And everywhere are flowers 

And more bunnies tucked amongst them

And the city fountains are getting their Easter finery. 

Happy Spring! 

Out and About

Frauenfeld

Before my eye appointment (No surgery needed!!), Better Half and I met Maria for dinner. She works here, and took the dog on her midday walk. This is an old city with remnants of historic buildings. 

Recommended eatery.

And I am missing the Garden Show in Zurich this week, and it snowed last night, and it’s COLD. Maybe it’s just as well I haven’t gotten the early seeds planted yet. 

Ocean color blocks

I've mentioned before that I joined a sub-group of my quilt guild that focuses on making art quilts. The group is called Beyond the Block. It meets once a month (the guild meets quarterly) and has ongoing projects, exhibits and learning opportunities so I find it very engaging and inspiring. These quilters have many non traditional techniques and generally do not use patterns. I find though that many of the ladies make "modern art" or expressive works as you will see from these examples. 

To keep everyone moving forward and thinking about projects there is always one or two "challenges" to work on. A recent one that was just completed and revealed at a meeting was the "Ocean" challenge. The ocean was an inspiration for color and not intended for the subject. The parameters for the challenge was simply "ocean colors" and "finished size 12 inches by 12 inches". This seemed simple enough so I did get a block made.

Here are the blocks that were made. There is quite a variety of ideas but also similarities...

 

If you can see here, the wave in the middle of the design
has bits of fabric in a loosely woven roll for texture and substance.

 

This uses a technique for making curves that I need to try. 
The raw edges of the fabric are finished with yarn that is sewn 

over the edge for a clean and easy way to make curved shapes 

(rather than some kind of seam between two fabrics that is much more challenging).

Notice the raised texture in the white area.

I'm always curious where the ideas come from.

This is my block. I started with the leaf fabric from another workshop 

we did learning to use Gelli printing techniques on fabric with natural 

leaves and materials. I liked that I worked with something new I had learned 

in the group. 

After seeing all the blocks, the group decided to plan on a future exhibit using them as well as two new similar challenges. There will be three groups of these twelve inch blocks, each with a theme. I suggested that the two new themes be "Mountain" and "Desert" for color ideas like this "ocean" but maybe that was too prosaic? One group will be based on paint chip color groups and one on "words". I think. Something like that. We'll see.  

 I also finished this quilt top and showed it to the guild during our "sharing" time. The shadow block was taught in a workshop several years ago so I was glad to finally finish this project. It has a 3-D effect that would have been stronger if I had made the shadow fabric (on the left and bottom of the squares) a little wider. Now I have to decide if I'm going to take my time to hand quilt this or send it to a professional machine quilter to get it done quickly. 

I hope you enjoyed this quilt show!