First week of February.

 And I'm back to work.

It's been a busy week, I've walked after work each day when it wasn't raining then sat with my crochet in the evenings. A friend tagged me on Tuesday pointing out a facebook post giving away fabrics. I was lucky and scored a huge bag full of quilting fabrics. It was advertised as scraps, but there were/are some very large pieces in the bundle.

This is what I decided I would keep, the rest I will take along to club next weekend and share with the ladies. The very generous lady had much, much more to sort out and give away. She said that she might reach out to me once she is finished, especially as I said that our club makes lots of quilts for charities.

Wednesday was an extra shift at work but also a bumper day for the garden, I brought in a huge haul including 3 more zucchini, so a new recipe was tried.

Roasted Zucchini, Tomato and Feta.

2 Zucchini cut to 1 inch dice

10 cherry tomatoes

3 cloves garlic peeled and finely sliced

2 red onions peeled and cut in to quarters

10 black olives

225g feta cheese

2 table spoons olive oil.

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons fresh thyme

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper.

Cut the feta cheese in to 1/2 inch cubes and lay in a shallow dish.

In a small bowl mix together 1 tablespoon full of olive oil, the balsamic, the lemon juice and half of the thyme. Pour it over the cheese and allow to sit for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 230C/450F

place the zucchini, garlic and onions into a greased roasting dish and drizzle over the remaining olive oil. Season with the salt and pepper and roast for 30 mins. Stir/turn occasionally.

Add the marinated feta cheese, cherry tomatoes and olives along with the rest of the thyme. Roast for another 10 - 15 mins until the veges are tender.

Spoon over the remaining marinade before serving.

This was very tasty.

I didn't have red onions so used whatever was in the pantry. And as there are only two of us I used only one zucchini and one onion and reduced the olives and tomatoes a little too.

I made it again the next day but I forgot to marinate the cheese. and I used  dried Italian herbs.

In our opinion it was much nicer without the vinegar and lemon juice, so we will stick to that way in future.

Thursday was Waitangi day here in NZ, a public holiday, so Tony was home. I had hoped we would get a day out as there was a free concert on down at the bay, but the weather did not turn on the sunshine. In fact it turned on the rain. The concert went ahead, without us. LOL I spent some of the day pottering in my room. I pulled out my Chookshed #10 and had a play.

This is an adopted project, I found it at an Altrusa sale last year. All of the fabrics had been precut and were all bagged up into bundles, light, medium and dark. And there was one block that had been started. I fiddled with that and persuaded it behave.

Look at how uneven those edges are...More about that soon.

Then I played about and made up a block of my own.

I have to say the fabrics are not very nice, oh they are pretty I do like the look of them, but they feel very thin and even the darker ones are see through. Hmmm, I wonder if that is why this project became someones UFO?

Then I discovered this.

A closer look at the seam allowances revealed that my predecessor had used a very generous seam allowance. That might explain why I had to use so much persuasion to complete the block....and those uneven edges.

I really wasn't feeling the love for this project and this discovery did not help it's cause.

I put it aside and decided to play with some French General fabrics instead.

Hmm, blogger wants this picture to be upside down!!

You don't get to see what I made, it's a secret. 

I'm off to buy a zipper later today so that I can progress along to part two of this project.

I spent some time with my crochet in the evening.

Friday saw Tony home for another day, he figured that as he was off on Thursday he may as well take Friday too and have a long weekend. We went for a nice walk, and did a little garden work though it was still damp from the rain, then I spent the remainder of the day with my cross stitch. I made some good progress, I'd share but there really isn't much to see as the area I was working is mostly the light around the lantern just a greenish yellow blob at this stage. 

Saturday and Sunday I was back at work.

And here we are at Monday. Another grey day in what has been a very poor Summer for us Southern Kiwis. We seem to get one or two beautiful days then a whole bunch of grey, wet days. Not like Summer at all. I have chores to do here today and also need to make a trip to town for some groceries and a very important zipper.

I will also need to decide what I'm to do with the #10 project, do I continue or swap it out for something else? If I swap it out do I stash it away for a possible revisit or pass it along to someone else?

I'm off to find my shopping list....