Happy Pongal 2020.

Happy Pongal from our home to yours.

First festival of the year.

A big thank you to Selvi who got up early in the morning to create this beautiful kolam at the main gate.

Had the good fortune to share a traditional Pongal meal with friends and neighbours.

There was ven pongal, chakra pongal, crisp hot vadas, coconut chutney and sambar on the menu. 

Nothing like a hot meal on a cold day. I have Rosalin our cook to thank for a scrumptious meal.

CQJP Block for January

I've finally got the basic crazy quilt block done, for the January page of the Crazy Quilt Journal Project (CQJP).
I've used pieces of solid coloured tussar silk, the colours are those I associate with the five day trek up in the Himalayas. I'll be drawing on things I saw on the trek to embellish the block too.
The block is 6" x 6".
My CQ (Crazy Quilt) blocks are going to be the illustration in a manner of speaking for a fabric journal of things, places and events which I participate in or are of some significance to me during the coming year.
Now to begin embellishing the seams of the CQ block. Should be able to show you some progress in a couple of days. I've given it some thought and decided to combine TAST ( Take a Stitch Tuesday) in this fabric journal rather than creating a separate fabric sampler. Two stitches  Fly Stitch and Blanket Stitch for the first two weeks of January have been announced. Got quite a bit to catch up with.  
Hope your weekend was good. I cooked up a storm for our annual Pongal brunch which was so much fun. Our guest list is constrained to ten because of the size of the vessels I have but the guest list is threatening to grow which means I'll have to invest in larger vessels.
Hope your week is good, I'll be tackling watercolours later this week during the day and embellishing a certain CQ block and scarf during the evenings.

Cups of Tea

Read about sharing images of your morning cup on Robyn's blog and decided to do the same.Batteries were low and this is the result.The first cup of tea in the mornig is a cup of green tea - Korakundah Organic green tea.

A second cup is with milk and sugar - conventional cup of chai drunk while getting started with the day's work. It was Pongal last week and this year too I made Ven pongal and Chakra pongal and we had a group of friends come over for brunch. That's my recipe book where I make a note of who came and what was different each year for the Pongal brunch.I know the quantity of Pongal I make each year is getting progressively larger each year.

Here's a look at a scarf I'm making which I like to call Encrustation. Its a beautiful colour this tussar scarf - a bluey grey, the photograph doesn't quite capture it.