I've been handed a baton...

... or in Dutch: een stokje. I get to share 10 thoughts with you on my blog and then pass the baton to three other bloggers. Yvonne has whacked me over the head with the baton, exhorting me to blog more often. OK Yvonne, I'll do as you say - this time!


1. My first thought is for my mother and stepfather. Today is their 25th wedding anniversary. We had planned to celebrate this special day with a family outing to a hotel in beautiful surroundings on the Veluwe. However, due to the weather and traffic conditions, the trip has been postponed. It's been a great disappointment to us all not to be able to spend this weekend together. So, I send my love and congratulations to my mother and stepfather. We'll have our family weekend sometime soon!

2. Lately we've had a lot of snow in Europe. In the Netherlands, the snow has led to major traffic problems. Of course, there are snow scenes to view everywhere. This is a panorama shot from my balcony:

Unfortunately, there was no sun when I took the picture, while it was very sunny a little later when I was at the indoor shopping center. Oh well!

3. Little things can make a big difference. It's strange how often I forget that! Yesterday, I finally removed a green computer cable that had been nailed to the skirting board. I have always disliked the thing because the green color made it very noticable. For over half a year I've had a new wireless router, so this cable was no longer necessary. Now that it's gone, I love my sewing room even more than before. And all it took was 'just doing it', which took only about five minutes of my time :-)

4. Cats. I just love them! They are such experts at making themselves comfortable. It's an enviable skill. Here's Bennie in his most recent favorite spot, probably the warmest place in the house:

5. I enjoy doing cryptic cross word puzzles. There's a very good one in one of the news papers that I love to do (Scrypto by J.J. Steenhuis in NRC Handelsblad). This week, it's a double sized puzzle and my mom, sister and I co-operated to solve it. We had fun!

6. Did you wonder how far I would get without mentioning quilts? Only half way through this list! I hope you don't mind ;-) Last week, I tried to do some liberated piecing.

The letters came out OK, but the sashing is not to my liking. There's too much black, and probably too much of the black and white stripes. The thing definitely needs a lot more color! So I've decided to rip most of it out and try again. I'm not sure when I'll get to it, because I have something else I'm rather enjoying working on right now...

7. I'll be spending the Christmas weekend with my father. We still need to figure out the menu. Christmas dinner for two, and we have no desire to spend all day in the kitchen preparing food. It's as well that we love simple things. So I'm thinking Brussels sprouts, a nice cut of meat (we're considering venison or maybe ostrich), a fresh salad, some sauteed potatoes, and a rich chocolate mousse for desert... Oh, and I must do some stewed pears, too! Yum!

8. I wonder what Merel is up to. Today is the first day of her two week vacation. I imagine her curled up on her couch with a book (or several books more likely), quilts and cats draped around en on top of her. I hope you'll be able to enjoy your free time and relax!

9. I enjoy watching movies, especially ones with Johnny Depp. And I love spotting quilts in movies or on TV. In the movie Sleepy Hollow, there are some bed scenes (nothing racy, it's all very modest, more's the pity! LOL!) In any case, Ichabod Crane, portrayed by Johnny Depp, is seen to lay in and on a bed with a quilt. I've been planning to make my own 'Sleepy Hollow Quilt' ever since spotting the quilt in the movie. I took some screen shots from the dvd:

It looks like the quilt is an old one, because the fabric of some of the triangles has almost completely disintegrated. But what a wonderful, simple quilt!

From these picture, I have roughly estimated the height and width of the triangle units. I have adapted them somewhat to make them easier to cut using a ruler already in my collection. I think I'll want to eventually quilt this one by hand, using a very simple all over pattern. The one in the movie was quilted in a simple diagonal grid.

Here's some of my effort so far:

I think I like it!

10. Wow, I'm really making too much of this list. I've been trying way too long and hard to track just one more 'bloggable' thought... so this is it! I give up, this is my list and it's good enough for me.

I would like to pass the baton to Creatieveling Elly, Inge at Chevremont (both are Dutch language blogs) and any reader who would like to join in! If you do, please leave a message with a URL. I'd love to read your thoughts!