Green, Broke & Living in Kits: Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus & My Welsh Tea Towel Quilt

Happy St David's Day!

Safeway - $2.99 (if you save the bulbs, next year it's free!)

How appropriate that I should finally finish up this overdue Welsh quilt on St David's Day (we were waylaid by extenuating circumstances at Christmas, so the border never got added in time. Back to the workshop I went). I had made this Welsh tea towel blanket as a Christmas gift, inspired by this tea towel quilt here (lovely, isn't it?!). Speaking of Christmas and Wales, if you've never seen "A Child's Christmas in Wales", you might consider watching this beautifully acted Dylan Thomas poem next Christmas. It's a favourite tradition in my family.

St David is the patron saint of Wales, if you haven't already worked that out for yourself. And because I have Welsh heritage, it's time to celebrate! Which means cawl, rarebit, Welsh cakes (no recipe is as good as the one I have, so I'm going to post it below) and, naturally, beer! I found this lovely little blog post on Welsh beer just now. I have my doubts as whether or not my local liquor store is likely to carry beer from Wales.

Welsh Rarebit (English Muffin base)

Cawl (oops, forgot rutabaga. Oh well)

Beer . . . English Beer. Couldn't find Welsh beer

Welsh Cakes

St David's Day also means daffodils in the house (being the national flower of Cymru! Here's how to pronounce that), which we only discovered years later was the cause of the sudden onset of the "cold" for my Dad each year at that time! Allergies suck.

Here are a few more photos of the finished tea towel quilt. If you want to make one of your own, start checking out your local thrift shops and also scouring Etsy and Artfire for vintage ones online (wouldn't a Dutch one, all in Delft blues, be absolutely stunning? Hmmm. I might just have to get on that...!).

You need 1/2 a pint of phlegm in your throat to speak Welsh!

Yeah, those hats are for real. I don't own one. I don't mind.

(Coracles are small, lightweight boats you can carry)

I really wanted to find daffodil fabric for the backing, but it wasn't easy to come by

I'm obviously no expert in the field of quilting - if you recall, my recycled jeans quilt was the first I had ever made. But, practice makes perfect, and I think bumbling your way through a few projects is always a good way to get acquainted with the medium. (I really want to make that Dutch one, now! Maybe I'll confine myself to linens I come across in-person so I'm not too tempted to fork over major money for the ones on Etsy).

I wonder why they chose the daffodil family for the name "Narcissus". They are pretty!

Back to St David's Day, I'd like to share the family recipe for Welsh Cakes in honour of my great-Gran. Technically, this is Mrs Rosemary Parker's recipe (a lovely neighbour of ours from way back when), but it's been adopted as the family one for decades now on the grounds that it's very similar to the original and for the reason that we can't find a written copy of the old one! This is the recipe I grew up with, so it's tradition to me.

This is why I generally type... Comment below for required translation.

Our recipe is clearly better! :)

Give these a try, whether you're Welsh or not - they're not too sweet, and I've never met anyone who didn't like them! I defy you to dislike these, ha ha!