This year I'm a bit slow with getting the New Year cards mailed out. If your smailmail isn't in my address book and you don't get one of these little "origami" books in the post, you may want to fill in your answers under the headings - and perhaps act on them -
This "yule log" looked good in the magazine! I did read the whole recipe before starting, but the bit about it taking 10 minutes of beating to get the eggs and sugar trebled in volume didn't sink in. I don't have an electric beater, so it took rather longer - had to stop and rest quite often. 
After the eggs are voluminous, you carefully fold in a very little flour, some cocoa, and ground almonds. And the filling is made with mascarpone, melted chocolate, icing sugar, and liqueur. "Serves 12" - it's very rich and sweet.
The big tree set up in Queens Park -
And the little one at home, with traditional candles burning briefly -
It sent me hunting for more fabric houses.
Tonya has done a Hallowe'en quilt with various imaginative wonky houses; you can see the whole quilt on her website:
And there are all the quilt block patterns showing houses. If you google "house quilt" you'll see a huge variety; I do prefer the non-standard layouts, rather than repetitions of a block. This one by Kristin Pollen is made of Japanese fabrics:
Or how about a block of the month house sampler? Several are available here:
Schoolhouses are popular; the history of this historical "quilt of the month" is given on the Quilt Study Centre website:
Judi Gunter teaches a workshop on how to make this miniature schoolhouse quilt:
Even bird houses can be represented in fabric:
This birdhouse quilt is a jolly variation of log cabin:
When the trees first arrived, there was a heap of discarded branches waiting for the binmen - I took some home and put them on the landing
Sue said that, as the branches were salvaged and recyled, the decorations should be salvaged and recycled too. These fabric knots are made from scraps too small to use in patchwork - less than 1/2" wide - but even they have their uses!
Peel and chop the onion, potatoes, and carrots. Melt the butter in a big pan, and add the chopped veg - let it get a bit soft, giving it the occasional stir. Add the thyme (use a bit more than shown here - this was all that my windowbox could come up with!) and water to cover. Simmer till veg are cooked. Whizz it all up with a stick thing, or put it into the blender. Reheat, adding salt and pepper to taste, and enough milk to make it the consistency you like.
November's journal quilt represents a gathering of the "senoritas" - Julia did a yummy mushroom starter, the main was a vegetable gratin, Mary brought baklava and other goodies (on those fancy plastic plates the bakeries use for packing them) for dessert, and Linda brought the flowers (alstromeria that lasted for weeks). Wine and conversation flowed freely.
I pinned it up in my work space, next to the Klimt landscape torn from a calendar and a changing display of Winifred Nicholson postcards. The beloved mug came from Fenny Lodge Gallery, which is right on the canal (near Milton Keynes), and the chinese fruit bowl came to me via Rita's mother-in-law, in Halifax, NS. Everything has a story - even the stapler.
My response to marimbas (Steve Reich?)
In the second week, more and different music, trying to get textures:
I simply can't remember what the music for these was.
At the end of the class, Gershwin's "Rhapsody in blue"
One more session to come. This is so much fun!
This 12" square is called Be Like That Then! and is made from African fabric that Karol-Ann sent along a few months ago. It just fell together -- but the binding, which is floppy satiny fabric, took ages. However I did manage to figure out how to do those "perfect" mitred corners -- getting to actual perfection may take a bit of practice, but in theory....
Working away with our palettes and plates and brayers:
On the second day, most people were using colour:
Tony used leaves picked up in the street as a resist: 
The brayer leaves marks of varying weight:
I used black ink both days - and came up with a lot of "rain" prints, on paper:
and on fabric:
In the week between sessions, I stitched a little piece to be used for printing, first with ordinary thread and then with thread almost too thick to fit through the needle
and found the back went all loopy
Both sides were useful for printing - especially on tissue paper.
The oil in the ink will eventually rot fabric, but I printed some fabric anyway -
Overall, these are my favourites -
Here's the first layout, with brownish organza overlaying some of the more glittering stuff. It'll have an "oriental scroll" format:
The ginkgo leaves will be added once the squares are sewn together, as will some "confetti" of some sort:
But first, some smaller ones will be appliqued onto individual squares. The line round the edge of the leaf will be part of the quilting:
It's been lying on the floor, ready to roll, for a week now!
Enter personal information about yourself to be bar coded. All of the calculations in Barcode Yourself are based on real world facts, gathered from the Internet. Data like the Gross Domestic Product of each country. Lichtenstein is #1, USA #2, and Sierra Leone is last. From the Center for Disease control, [the site owner] used the Body Mass Index to figure out how healthy a person is based on height and weight. And from the Institute for Women's Policy Research [he] discovered the "Gender Gap" which states that "Women Average 72 Cents For Each $1 Earned By A Man."
This book was sitting quietly in the Oxfam bookstore; yet who could resist that cover? I flipped through and got very excited at the contents, but yikes the price.... It took a while to realise this was the work of a potter. This room might be a textile work -
So might these pieces, at a quick glance:
But these are undeniably pots:
And what pots! Enormous! Kaneko graduated from art college in 1971 and is still making huge work in ceramics. The caption to this photo says his pots are among the highest-priced pieces of ceramic art in the world.
I had to go back and buy the book, and am delighted with it, and to make the acquaintance of this artist. After completing graduate school in the USA 1971, he went back to Japan for a sojourn, and opened an exhibition in a friend's gallery, "underpinned by the idea of expanding his knowledge of the Japanese people. On the first day, he went to his exhibition of blank walls with a 35mm camera, an 8mm movie camera, and a tape recorder, to make a documentary, "in case anything happened." He had sent out invitations which were printed in white ink on white paper, crumpled almost beyond recognition, and stuffed into envelopes. It is difficult to read matt, colorless ink on a white background, so Kaneko knew that everyone who arrived at the exhibition had really tried hard to do so.
