A display box for Seaside Tags

Lesley, Cathy and I have now all made special 'containers' to house and display all the wonderful Seaside Tags we sent each other during the summer.  

This is mine - a Dorset Cereals muesli box, cunningly disguised with calico, silk and deck-chair striped fabric, an old photo, a few bits of driftwood, a shell or two and some free-machine stitching.

I wanted to put the tags in something that could be left out for people to have a rootle around in and not worry about keeping them in any particular order.

Don't the girls' tags look lovely housed in here?

You must go and see what the other two have done (click on their names at the top)- you'll love them!

Here's some little brooches I made last week, using some gorgeous ceramic buttons I bought when I went to the quilt exhibition at the V & A Museum earlier in the year.   The buttons remind me so much of the little broken bits of blue-and-white domestic pottery I'm always digging up in the veggie patch.   I hand-felted some blue merino to make a sturdy backing, appliqued some vintage lace snippets on and made a few delicate brooches to put in my Etsy shop.  

And this is a bloomin' great hairy-chested moth which landed on my workroom window one night.   The picture's not brilliant, because it was taken with flash through a rather dirty window pane.    Anyway, Googled it, and discovered that it's a Red Underwing.  So now you know.

And like most of the rest of the British Isles, we have a glut of plums this year, so besides giving them away to unsuspecting friends and relations, sharing them with the hens and wasps, I have actually made some plum cakes (Nigel Slater) and a couple of frangipane and plum tarts.    And Autumn Plum Chutney.   Oh and stewed some to put in the freezer to remind me of summer during the long winter months.   And, Anne, PLEASE come and pick some more and take them away!

Got fed up waiting for any sunshine and warmth to ripen my tomatoes, which when they did turn red and yellow, weren't all that tasty for some reason.   So picked them and made them into Green Tomato Chutney to a recipe my mum used to make, which might have belonged to my paternal grandmother.   Whatever - it's gorgeous and we've got pounds of the stuff now.   Am I alone in loving a sup of sweetened vinegar stolen from the preserving pan while the chutney's reducing...?   OK, maybe it's an acquired taste!

The ones that 'ripened' went in a slow oven to dry out and intensify the flavours.   They've been great scattered on baby leaf salads.   Yum.

So that's about it for today.   Except to apologise to some lovely bloggers that I try to follow.   I'm having mysterious problems trying to sign into my blog every now and again and therefore can't leave comments on other people's, but I am as always enjoying reading all my faves.  

Tomorrow we're taking some visiting Aussie rellies to Cambridge for the day, so we're hoping for sunshine.   Hope it shines on you too!

Love from