Again the Portland Purls assemble

Fourteen happy women crammed in shoulder to shoulder, eating and laughing and drinking tea!


I served gingerbread topped with orange marmelade, then yogurt cheese, and it got rave reviews! I also made ham turnovers, but those were a lot less successful. Oh, yeah, they were fit to eat, but I'm gonna have to learn how to make a decent piecrust before I try that again.

I had such fun with this table setting. The plain white cloth was too blah, but I didn't want to add something that would detract from the pretty hand-painted cups and saucers. (Hand painted was my theme this month.) All my colorful table linens are soo busy with flowers and patterns. So what else? How about a shawl? I dyed this silk and knitted on it for a month and wound up with a long, long wrap with turned out to be perfect! Then, there's the problem with the lighting. The dining-room light is good in the center of the table, but there are shadows at the ends. Candles! But not formal tall candles. Floaties! Don't I have some champagne coupes? Oh, better yet - these nice old compotes!

And to top it all off, piles of clementines for color pop.

One of the guests was joining us for the first time. She confided to me, "It's been years since I've heard such interesting conversation!" The friend she came with said, "I'd have to quit my job to follow them all. Isn't this fun?"

It IS fun! Even though I didn't sit down for the first fourty five minutes, I loved, loved, loved it! And all that trotting around, keeping the teacups filled helped to burn off some of the cookies and gingerbread I ate. It's all good!