I've made some more mug rugs - the leftovers from my cushions were just enough to make these. I made them to give to Katy who has been the driving force behind my sewing endeavours over the last year or two. The patchwork is the first I ever did so I thought it appropriate to give to her as a thank you.

Oops, how did that stray piece of cotton get in my photo!

Here they are, rolled together and ready to take to Katy's for Thursday's sewing day.

It's now only just over 6 weeks until Christmas and I bet you're all starting to think about Christmassy things, so I'd like to share with you last year's Christmas gingerbread cookies that I made and never got around to putting up here.

I remember that I made an enormous batch of these and slaved over them for a whole day. I left them on the kitchen bench for the icing to harden. On that same day, Ben accidentally knocked over a glass in the kitchen and it smashed on the bench top (not even on the floor - the bench top! Who does that!?), scattering glass everywhere - including over my precious cookies that I'd put so much effort into...

As you can imagine, I was pretty upset about it and poor Ben felt terrible. We went over them very carefully and removed any glass that we could find, (fortunately there wasn't much) and we still ate them :)  Oh, how I love gingerbread!

Now that I've had time to recover from this awful chain of events, I'm glad to be sharing it with you!

Here is my gingerbread recipe. I found it years ago in a magazine (probably Woman's Weekly or something) and it's great for hard cookies you want to decorate (as opposed to the soft, chewy ones which spread a lot).

Ingredients
125g butter
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup treacle
1 egg yolk
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 Tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

Icing
2 egg whites
3 cups icing sugar (confectioner's sugar)

Method
1. Heat oven.
2. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in treacle and egg yolk.
4. Stir in sifted dry ingredients.
5. Knead dough until smooth. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
6. Roll dough between 2 sheets of baking paper to 4mm. Cut shapes.
7. Bake 10 minutes or until browned at 180 degrees Celsius.

Icing
1. Beat egg whites until small peaks form.
2. Gradually add sifted icing sugar, beating well each time. 
3. Add food dye to colour.

On the weekend we went up the coast to stay with some friends in their holiday apartment and watch another friend in the Noosa Triathlon. I didn't have high hopes for getting to any sewing shops but on the way back we detoured through Maleny and passed by the patchwork shop there. The car fuel light was on and Ben was stressing about running out of fuel (seriously, how do we always let this happen!) and I was so pleasantly surprised when he offered to let me duck in while he did a petrol mission.

They're not usually open on a Sunday, but at that exact time someone just happened to be in there and she had the 'open' sign up on the door. They had the most beautiful fat quarters of Japanese fabric. I couldn't believe when I saw the price - just $3! I love these colours and they are beautifully textured, I hope you can see that in the photos. Don't you just love when things go right!

A couple of weeks ago my sis-in-law and sewing companion told me she was going to sell her sewing machine. Even though it's older than mine, it's lovely and smooth to sew with and has features and feet that mine doesn't have (and is Janome brand so I can also use with it feet that I have bought for my Elna).

I usually leave it at Katy's as a spare for Thursday sewing days so that can both sew at the same time, but I brought it home this week to try and finish off a few more projects.

I've finally gotten around to finishing off the second one of these...

And then I finished off a patchwork laptop sleeve for my new macbook air. 

Can't resist a photo of the beautiful fabrics close-up!