Tea and Cakes

What are the best things to do when you’re down from a lousy day?

In no particular order I suggest the following:
Have a cup of tea made for you.
Spend some time with a person you love.
Spend some time with friends. (You can love them too, if you like, but just as friends)
Bake.
Finish a good book.
Knit.
Spend more time with friends.
Make things.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon baking, making cheese and tomato scones, sweet fruity scones, and a fruit and nut tray bake thing that’s sort of like a flapjack but not quite. Yummy. I love baking. It’s so methodical, and I also have some lovely new mixing bowls that are stainless steel with rubber bases that grip the worktop and are a pleasure to use. And, of course, the added bonus of spending time baking is that you get to sit down afterwards with a nice pot of tea and enjoy the fruits of your labours.

The knitting was more of the Jaywalkers – I’m almost done with the first, so will show pictures later on.

Today Kate (blogless), Sara and I got together over at Sara’s house for a day of sewing, with a little tea drinking and cake eating thrown in. (Note: Kate makes wonderful cakes. Lemon drizzle today. Mmmmm.)

We decided to all tackle the same project: The Everyday Tote from Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter. This was an ambitious project for three novice seamstresses, but I think we did well.

Yes, there are three sewing machines on the table

We all used different fabrics, so our bags all look quite different.

Kate’s is bright and colourful with a simple black lining that contrasts the outside nicely. It’s very chic.
Sara’s is tweedy linen on the outside and bright and patterned on the inside. It’s the floppiest of them all which works really nicely for the look of it.
Mine’s dark blue on the outside with a pale blue patterned lining.

The pattern only has one small inside pocket, so I added a larger one and some pen loops too.

Overall a lovely and very satisfying weekend.

p.s. Happy Canada day to the Canadians!