Herbing and sewing...

HERBING...

Herbing? Never heard of it before? I think I may have just made it up. ;-)

I have been herbing in the garden this past week, preserving and enjoying some of our fresh greens in various ways. We currently grow twenty-six different herbs in the garden, and whilst some will only flourish in our tropical winter, others bloom abundantly in spring, and the remainder prefer the hot and humid summer for displaying their bounty, it's actually a good system because we can harvest something tasty to add to meals, teas, or preserve all year through. 

This past week I wanted to do a bit of dehydrating so I began with the Tulsi (Holy Basil) leaves which we use in herbal teas...

The best time for picking is when the new leaves turn purple, and as Tulsi has numerous health properties I use them fresh, or dry them. In fact I made some herbal tea bags for my daughter Kezzie from many dehydrated herbs and they worked so well that I have just posted her a big batch.

I love having Dill growing through our winter season as it's wonderful chopped fresh for the Greek dishes I make my son-in-law, or stirred through fresh mayonnaise, or dried and crumbled for summer recipes. I also use the large dill seed fronds in a vase on the table with my roses...

Cinnamon Myrtle makes a beautiful tea, but also becomes a lovely spice rub when dehydrated and crumbled...

...and with such an abundance of Basil in winter, Pesto is always on the menu. Blossom's children could eat a jar of my fresh pesto with a spoon and still ask for more, so we make it go further by stirring it generously through pasta. 

Hubby loves salmon patties so of course I made some fresh mayo. In some of the mayo I added fresh chopped dill and it was so good we emptied the jar. Ha ha!! I told Blossom and now she wants some so I'll make more later today. 

Guilty confession. In between all the herbing I quietly finished off the last of a baked rice pudding (Nana's recipe) because it was taking up space in the fridge. Nah, just joking...I simply could not resist the temptation and gave in, adding some yummy raspberries for added health benefit. ;-)

SEWING...

I've been working on block one of Promises and it's coming along very nicely. I ended up doing two thin borders, instead of a second border of squares. As I explained last time, this is a gentle slow stitching project so I will take my time even with the bordering or fabric choices for each block. I chose the tealy blue second border because it blends with that same colour in the first border - oh, and I thought that vintage fabric was from a tablecloth, and now realise it's part of a curtain. Wish I had more, but I shall endeavour to make the small amount I do have go far. 

I chose the thread colour for the verse to match the tealy blue as well. 

Another lovely thing about stitching a slower project, is choosing the stitches along the way. For this block I've stem stitched the wooden borders, added double French knot buds around the applique flowers...

...and sewed my favourite blanket stitch embellished leaves. You can see the tutorial I made for those HERE and there's a free practice pattern as well. 

I've made a page for this project (link in the sidebar and also under my header) in case you ever miss a block. Go to the PROMISES of God page here.

The other bit of sewing I am currently working on is that cross stitch I began back in May. It's coming along in spits and spats, mostly in the evenings, but I will be very honest here and tell you that at this point I am quite over all those bricks...

...but I am pushing on to get the roof and steps completed, plus the mortar between the rest of the bricks (I have done about half of it so far) so that I can stitch the pretty bits. I took one break to stitch a leaf the other day because I have had enough of orangey bricks and needed to see some green. 

I am enjoying cross stitch again, after more than a decade of just hand embroidery, but I will be mindful of the patterns I choose in future. I really love this pattern, but I do not love sewing a million bricks. In the end it will be worth it, and Blossom keeps dropping hints about how much she loves it... ;-)

SOMETHING NEW...

I am trying a new sour dough bread recipe, a smaller loaf than all my other recipes as there's only the two of us here now, so hopefully it will work out well and become a regular bake. The instructions were very simple so I pray it really does bake deliciously. 

It can rise for the rest of day while I potter around and do other things, like visit the doctor for my echocardiogram results, water the garden, and cut up some old linen garments for usable stitching fabric. It's giving me a lot of joy to repurpose old garments this way and soon I'll have a shelf of them (after I sell some of my quilting fabric). 

I hope you have a gentle week, and that in those precious quiet moments when there's a quiet stillness all around, that you let the presence of God surround you and rest in His care. 

God bless, and big hugs,

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