Fruits of our labour

Hahha, that header is a bit of a duality, but I'm only going to tell one side ;-p

And I was going to show the YLI silk threads that arrived yesterday and - my first halting steps into the world of applique. But instead I show this:
At 7am I dragged my butt out of bed, made load if sandwiches while The DH made tea, packed us all (2 grown ups and two dogs) into the big car along with baskets, back-pack and extra plastic bags for a 45 min drive to "our" forrest and The DH's special place. And look, after a looooong walk we found the first spot and after that it only got better and better:

The DH's basket and Arwen on the lookout.

The dogs had soooo much fun; ran like crazy at RR top speed, chasing each other, wrestling and then off again. Impossible to catch on "film" but it make me heart brim with joy to see Fiona who turns 10 in a month, acting like a youngster :-D

My basket filled to the brim with autumn chanterelles and quite a few yellow ones.

After 2 hrs (with a nice tea break) this is the catch of the day - The DH is very proud and we had a lovely time together in the glorious Indian Summer weather. It got so warm that I could strip down to the camisole - heavenly :-)

OK it is fun to pick wild mushrooms, but cleaning them is another matter entirely.

Uncleaned.

Cleaned. At the end The DH gave up and chucked the tiniest one out behind our back fence. Ask me and I call that sacrilege LOL.
On the way home we dropped some of for my darling MIL. And at home we gave some to our neighbors.
Weighted  - 7.5kg!!

Right now my back hurts, so I do take a well deserved rest on my bed, but I need to get down in the kitchen to parboil it all and pack it for the freezer. Guess tonights dinner? "Lövbiff" (something in the vicinity of minute steak) creamed yellow chanterelles and garlic potato wedges = yummmm :-)

Tomorrow I might show some applique pictures. If I manage to get out of bed that is .....

Feathers and mushrooms

Yesterday The DH came home from another mushroom hunt with 5kg :-o  (round 10lbs I think) Autumn chanterelles:

Uncleaned

Cleaned

We sat down on the patio and spent round 2 hrs cleaning it all and got a nice dose of fall sunshine too :-)

After spending round 1hr to parboiling and packaging, I sat down at my Horizon with a glass of wine within easy reach (suggested by quilting people who really know their stuff ;-) and played some more with FMQ and this time I am kind of pleased with the outcome:

because I am in fact, a total noob at this .

Well first put a load in the washer machine, then sewing some unwanted jelly strips (that is strips I will never use cause I simply don't fancy the) together for more  FMQ test sandwiches.

Oh - almost forget to tell the best news of all (well from a quilting perspective that is) - my package with Butterfly Garden and basic stuff for embroidery and the two latest issues of Vignette magazine is on it's way from the shop with the best customer care I have ever encountered - Aztek-Rose in Holland. How exiting is that? :-D Wonder how fast/slow it will take for it to make the journey from Holland to Sweden??

Have a lovely Sunday.

Treasure hunting

You know I think we Swedes has a very strange relationship to mushrooms. Well not any ol' mushroom, but the wild ones found deep in the forests and to obtain them we go on serious hunts. And - you never ever tell a living soul outside the closest setting of your family where to found the mother load of mushrooms. You just show up at work on Monday morning gleefully telling everyone that you found XX kg of this or that kind of mushroom :-O

We "inherited" our place from my in laws, who generously took us to their favorite spot away from habited environments and we always found a lot of mushrooms there when it was a good year. No wonder, we where the only ones there. But as all things come to an end (minor one) if you see a car parked on the edge of the road close to a forrest, you know that the owners is probably on a treasure hunt. So one thing leeds to another and yesterday The DH took the dogs in the wee hours of the morning and drove down there and when they arrived they where the only ones, but when he left there was 5-6 car parked. And he said that there are clear sings that there are plenty of people who has been there.

But he went the furthest into the forrest than he had ever been and look what he came home with:

A plastic bag full with wild chanterelles - I think they weighted at least 5 kg!! Mostly fall ones but also round 10 big ordinary, yellow chanterelle = happy days :-) And no - I wont tell you where he found them LOL.

It took us some hours to clean them and then I parboiled them just enough to be able to deep freeze them - in my freezer now resides 4 containers with enough chanterelles to be used when November darkness turns our souls to mush;-)
For dinner yesterday we had a large serving of stewed chanterelles along with "Hasselbacks potatoes" and leaf beef (like minute beef). Must have turned out good, since there wasn't a smidgen left of anything ;-9

Today is the day when all media even here in Sweden reports on that 9/11 happened 10 years ago. Many "what do you remember" and "what did you do" from all sorts of celebrities, politicians and folks high up in financial institutions. I do recall what I did - I had just been put on sick leave and was laying on the couch watching some day time soap :-o when The DH called me and told me to put on CNN. I watched the first plane crash into one of the Twin Towers and then the next, with a great sense of unreality.....was this a movie shoot or?? But considering it being CNN I realized that it had in fact happened IRL, with devastated consequences worldwide.....and it still affects our world as it is.