Does everybody know this tip?  Mix a little horseradish with ketchup or tomato sauce to make shrimp cocktail sauce.  My DH can't tell the difference between this and a purchased jar of shrimp cocktail sauce.

Start with ketchup and add the horseradish just a little bit at a time until it tastes the way you like it.

This is one of our family favorites.  It's a slaw made with cabbage and uncooked Ramen noodles.

The recipe is made up of 3 parts.... the veggies, the crunchy stuff, and the dressing.  You keep the 3 parts separate until it's time to serve.  The proportions are very forgiving.  You can adjust them to taste.  For that reason, I list a "range" of quantities for a lot of the ingredients.

Veggies:
1/2 medium head cabbage, shredded.... or a 10 oz bag of slaw mix (not the kind with the red cabbage in it).  If you have a ...

No- I didn't just make these.  I've been much too busy harvesting lavender and shipping fabric and lavender.  I just thought I'd throw in a little something other than lavender for a change.  I finished these socks last month. 

The pattern is called Leaf Garden Socks.  The designer is Wendy Gaal of Knitters Brewing Company.  Wendy dyes all the yarn she sells on her website and it's really a treat to knit with.  The yarn color is "dirty martini".  A lady in my LYS said they looked like cute little turtles.  :-)

The pattern was free with ...

The winner of the fresh bundle of lavender (drawn at random) is the author of a wonderful blog called the Journal of Taylor's Outback.  I don't have an email for you...I hope you read this and can respond soon so I can get a fresh bundle on it's way early in the week. Send me an email with your name and mailing address.  CONGRATS!

I'll have a new giveaway posted in August.  This one had to end quickly because the harvest is coming to an end.

What a busy month!  I keep cutting and cutting but the lavender field still looks full!  We've been vending at some local farmers markets and having lots of fun.  The shoppers walk buy and you can see their faces when they first get a whiff of our stall!  They look around to see where the scent is coming from, and you can see their faces brighten when they say, "Lavender".

We'll be shipping fresh bundles for about 2 more weeks.  When the bundles are past their prime for shipping fresh, they will all go into the drying room ...

I've been super busy lately, but I always get in some knitting time in the car.  When my DH had his table saw accident, there were a few months that he couldn't drive.  I was happy to do the driving, but I must admit that I missed my knitting time.  He's driving again, and I'm knitting again!

I made 2 drop stitch scarves.  This is a really easy stitch that is simple to memorize and great for knitting in the car.  To do a drop stitch, you wrap the yarn around the needle between knit stitches ...

FINALLY!  We started harvesting over the weekend.  We cut about 75 bundles yesterday.  I did my first farmers market of the year last night and I have a few each week now for the remainder of the month. 

We ship fresh bundles.... on their way to you within hours of harvesting.  You get a generous bundle of fragrant long stemmed Grosso lavender wrapped in pretty paper with a ribbon.   I can put two bundles in a mailing tube, so there is a discount for buying 2 bundles.   Click here to be directed to my website to view the lavender products ...

The winner of the autographed copy of The Quilt Life magazine is Gale, Ky Quilter.  Gale is a fan of Alex and Ricky and I'm sure she will give the magazine a good home.

This was a REALLY popular giveaway!  Lots of people entered.  I WISH, I WISH, I WISH I had a hundred copies to give you all!  When I first started doing monthly giveaways, I had only a handfull of entries and I wrote the names on pieces of paper and picked them out of a bowl.  I now have to use a random number generator because ...

You're not in the wrong place!  I'm playing with the blog a bit... just messing with background and colors.  What do you think?  I want a little more color--- I'll keep playing.

My goodness!  What a slacker I've been about blogging!  I have a good excuse though.  Have you ever weeded around 300 lavender plants?  Yes... I have weed cloth out there.  But the little buggers still grow right at the base of the plants.  I don't know how I could keep up with it without the landscape fabric (weed cloth).  It's important that there are no weeds in the bundles when I harvest so I'm going through and cleaning things up one last time before they show their little purple faces.  :-)

Here's how the field looked ...

I found a pretty "foodie" blog.  Pretty pictures, pretty decor ideas and table settings, and what looks like some nice recipes.  This nice giveaway ends soon.... I'm entering.... hoping to be the lucky one!

More from Quilt Market.....
 I think my new favorite pattern designer/ book author is Edyta Sitar. She does amazing piecing and applique.  And when I heard her speak at Quilt Market, I was captivated.  She is very personable and it's a pleasure to listen to her speak.  Her accent is charming and she speaks comfortably to her audience, as if she were conversing with a few friends. 

Behind her is the quilt from the cover of "Hop To It".  She learned during this class that the book is now an award winner.  Her publisher surprised her with the honor ...

The caption here should read, "Ready to SHOP!".  My friend took this photo of me at the entrance of the Spring 2011 Quilt Market in the Minneapolis Convention Center.  Quilt Market is held twice each year.  It's in Houston in the fall, and it's held in different cities each Spring.  Attendees are wholesale customers in the quilting industry.  The majority of the shoppers are quilt shop owners- or those who support the industry such as long arm quilters.  Vendors include mostly distributors, fabric manufacturers, pattern designers, book authors, and suppliers of specialty notions.  For the most part, a ...

When I was at Quilt Market in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, I stopped by The Quilt Life Magazine booth.  The Quilt Life is a new magazine with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims.  They offered to autograph a magazine for me to give away on my blog.  They both autographed a premier issue of the magazine (Alex is holding it in the above photo). If you aren't familiar with Alex and Ricky, they are accomplished quilters and quilt educators.  In addition to the magazine, they have both designed fabric and patterns, written books, produced DVD's and they have ...

The winner of the Mary Englebreit chair pincushion is Debra from  Missouri.  Her blog is Deb's Place.  She's a brand new blogger with just a few followers.  Check out her beautiful quilts and sign up to follow if you like them- let's get her going on her blogging! 

I'm sorry I didn't get the winner drawn yesterday- it was a crazy day for me!  Does anyone else wish there were just a few more hours in the day???  I'm super behind on blogging.  I have some great things to share with you.

I have ...

We had beautiful weather this past weekend and I spent a lot of it out in my lavender field.  I have over 300 plants in our little lavender farm.  This will be our third harvest.  The plants will be ready to harvest in July.  I did a LOT of blogging about lavender last July and my readers seemed to enjoy it.  This year, I thought it would be fun if I took photos in the field every weekend and posted them on the blog.  Over on the sidebar, I'll have the most recent view. You can watch it grow ...

We went to see Kooza, the Cirque du Solei traveling French circus show last night.  How amazing!  No animal acts- all comedy, clowns, contortion, acrobatics, and music.  We've never seen anything like this.  It's not what I normally think of as a circus.  It's much more of a show.  In fact, I know they do a lot of this in Vegas.
Contortionsits.


High wire act.  The men on the bottom were on bicycles on a high wire.... supporting the man on the chair above them.

And the crowd favorite- the Wheel of Death.  These guys are beyond ...

These socks were a KAL with the Knitters Brewing Company on Ravelry.  I started them in March and had the first one done and second one half done by the end of March... but it took me a while to get up the enthusiasm to finish the second sock.  I'm glad I did because they turned out cute.
This is the first time I ever knitted beads into a project.  The butterflies on the leg and top of foot have beads in the design.  Don't look too closely.... the are far from perfect!  But if they're on ...

The May giveaway is an adorable Mary Engelbreit pincushion.

To enter, just reply to this post and ask to be included.  You get a second entry if you let me know that you are a follower (long time follower or a newbie!).  And for a third entry, mention my giveaway on your blog and let me know.

I'll select a winner at random on June 1st.  Good luck!

(drum roll, please.....)..... GERRY!  She won the April blog giveaway, which is the tiny little iron and two sparkly fat quarters.   Gerry's blog is GerryArt.  I'll send you an email, Gerry.

I have the May giveaway ready- just need to take a photo of it and get it on the blog.  Look for it to show up this coming week.

Congrats, Gerry!

Isn't this a show-stopper?  I called Louisa Smith to order some templates and books, and we chatted about the "Swirl" template set.  She offered to send me a photo of her sample for this template set.... isn't it gorgeous?  This wall hanging is made of 16 blocks- 4 groups of 4 blocks each.  Each block is made of 3 pieces, cut from the template set.  If you just look at a group of 4 of the blocks (one of the swirls), one color, or color group, is used for the small piece on one block, the middle piece ...