My first of the farmer's wife quilt blocks - I decided to start with some that were relatively simple, the Kitchen Woodbox and Basket Weave. Even still, I had to do them over because they didn't come out the right size the first time. Lesson learned, cut the templates bigger rather than smaller, and check your seam allowance regularly. Hopefully I've worked out the kinks and it won't be too much trouble on the fussier blocks. The links and resources that Karyn posted are pretty helpful - especially the link to the templates all laid out on just 15 pages. I've started machine sewing them. I might do some hand pieced at some point but since it's the third week of January I think I'm already behind, if that's possible, so I'm sticking with the machine sewing for now. #54 Kitchen Woodbox #4 Basket Weave

I started this pinwheel quilt top in 2003 I think - one of the first quilt projects I ever started. The finished top has been in a closet for about six years, I'm not sure why I couldn't ever finish it. Over the holidays I pulled it out a resolved to just finish the darn thing as is. I pieced together a backing and pinned it together - now just for the quilting.

It isn't quite maple syrup season yet but I love these tins. Turns out, they are not so practical to pour the syrup out of but they sure look nice.

This might be the only knitted project I finished this winter season, but I've been wearing it every day. It's based loosely on the Hurricane Hat pattern, but I made it a bit bigger and slouchier because that's the kind of hat I wanted. It's been perfect for the mild weather we've been having, just the right amount of warmth to keep the wind off my ears.

Karyn posted about joining the farmer's wife quilt-a-long and got me started thinking about joining in. I've bought the book and I think I'm going to try - maybe just for a lap quilt size, we'll see how it goes. I'm struggling a bit with fabric choices though. I wanted to try to use stuff I've already got and resist the temptation to buy new, so I started pulling out fabrics from the stash. I wanted to go with some neutrals, so I've got a bunch of grey and beige and then maybe olive green and blue for the accent colours. Still not sure about it though - I might just start with this and then add colour/pattern as I go along and get a sense of what's working and what isn't. Decisions, decisions!

We spent the week before Christmas on vacation in Cuba - it was a dreamy vacation and seems like too long ago already. We spent most of the time lying on the beach and getting some much needed relaxation but also managed to get out and about a bit too. Such a beautiful and interesting place, I couldn't put my camera down. Here's a few of the photos I took, more are on flickr.

We stayed in for New Year's Eve - as we usually do - and made a nice dinner from Dori Greenspan's Around my French Table. I don't get to use this book much for everyday type cooking, but it's an excellent cookbook so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to stretch our cooking muscles. We made the pissaladière - an onion tart with sardines - and a delicious gâteau basque with sour cherry jelly. To keep us going while we were doing all this cooking we had a beautiful cheese plate with a terrine and made tuna rillettes to go with it. It was dead easy - tuna, scallion, creme fresh and a little curry powder - and so good. We added a pinch of cayenne as well instead of the allspice and it was quite nice. There's a salmon rillettes recipe in the book that looks really good as well - next time we go to someone's house for dinner I'm thinking of bringing it along. Tuna Rillettes Adapted slightly from Around my French Table 2 - 5 to 6 oz cans of white tuna 1 shallot, thinly sliced, rinsed and dried 1/2 to 1 tsp curry powder 1/4 tsp cayenne 3 Tbsp creme fresh or 3-5 Tbsp heavy cream 1/4 tsp salt, or to taste freshly ground pepper fresh lemon juice to taste Put all the ingredients except the lemon juice in a food processor and blend until it becomes spreadable. Taste it and adjust the seasoning and ingredients as needed. Add a splash of lemon juice. The flavours will blend if you let it set, so try to keep it in the fridge for at least an hour before serving - it tastes even better the next day too.

I hope you enjoyed as nice a start to 2012 as we did - it involved some delicious food, bubbly, board games and the last Harry Potter movie, which was all just the right way to spend an evening in my opinion. And now we're into January, appropriately with some snow on the ground and weather so cold it activates my hibernating instincts. Ah well, it is good quilting weather though. Ian has made us a dynamite soundtrack to listen to this month, some exceptional songs if I do say so myself. Maybe you'd like to give them a listen while you're doing some sewing of your own. Please check it out in the right hand column, all free, legal mp3 downloads as usual. Hope you enjoy! THE WEEKND – d.d. SHARON VAN ETTEN – serpents BOWERBIRDS – tuck the darkness in ST VINCENT – surgeon THE DUKE SPIRIT – don’t wait (live) CASS MCCOMBS – county line REAL ESTATE – it’s real DAMIEN JURARDO – nothing is the news GIANT SAND w/ VICTORIA WILLIAMS and EVAN DANDO– music arcade (neil young cover) KATHRYN CALDER – arrow BON IVER – beth/rest (solo piano)

I've been reading a bunch of photography books lately and thinking about making some kind of new year's resolution about taking pictures. I'd like to push myself a bit more in that area. But one of the main reasons I take photos is that I have a lousy memory - it helps me to recall the feelings, smells and tastes of an event if I can look back at the visual. So on New Year's Day it seems like a nice time for me to also look back at the year that's passed - here is, briefly, the year in just 13 photos: January: We drove north a lot to go cross country skiing. February: A glorious week spent in Mexico. March: We kept ourselves busy through the dregs of winter by eating good food with friends. April: First glimpses of spring, and we went to the Brickworks Farmers Market. May: We explored Philadelphia, ate the best sandwich of my life, and fell a bit in love with the city. June: My proudest gardening achievement! July: This was the hardest month to choose just one photo, so I picked two - we did so much this month! Lots of biking adventures, trips to the island, family visiting, camping, time at the cottage, Montreal and a wedding. August: An amazing trip to Nova Scotia, including my first lobster dinner. September: We manage to get in one more camping trip and some time on the beach. October: Played bocce in the park before our Thanksgiving feast with friends. November: Visiting with family in British Columbia. December: We spent a week in Cuba, but I haven't finished processing the photos yet. Otherwise, enjoying a relaxing Christmas holiday.