works from days gone by

made it.
mothers day.
but that was a while ago now.
love the japanese linen.

Baby Saffron's quilt

 

 

I started a quilt for a neighbour expecting her second baby.
I thought I had carefully selected unisex colours and prints because the gender was a surprise! YAY!
So I went hell for leather to finish by the due date.
I gave it a wash and discovered a hem coming undone. Luckily no baby for a day so I could unpick and fix. Then it happened again. Sloppy seamstress. Luckily no baby....days overdue by now.
Then it was all ready.. went away for camping Labor Day weekend.
Labor Day.
Get it?
So she's here, super quick delivery and she's gorgeous.
Plus I got a 48 hour old cuddle.
Can't beat that.

crazy old cat

Here's lovely Lucy.
In her cattish dotage.
Driving us completely round the twist with her unpredictable midnight warblings, 3 am warblings, 5 am warblings etc.
So far we have tried to mend her ways with Melatonin to regulate sleep patterns, pheremone spray to try and stick her in one happy place for the duration of the night and a combination of love and exhausted frustration.
She's 17 years old.
She sleeps from breakfast to dinnertime, then dinner to bedtime but seems to really need a high volume chat periodically through our sleeping hours.
This morning I heard her stomp up the hallway, push our bedroom door open, turn and jump up onto a storage chest in the hallway where she yowled at heart attack inducing pitch until I hopped up and gave her a pat. 

super productivity-o-rama!

Yes I HAVE been madly quilting. I have been very happily slicing and dicing my way through the stash.
I have photographed the darlings like drunken Aunties falling down the stairs (or drunken Mums...) and I realise I will never earn any points for modesty because I just adore the bright colourful loveliness of them all and am proud to show them off.
I worked my fingers to the bone over the past weekend. I started a quilt, the last rainbow one with the centre cross, last Thursday; machine pieced and hand quilted. It's intended as a gift from my workplace to give a gorgeous staff member leaving this week to have her first baby.
I finished it yesterday and popped it into the wash with the two previous completed works. They gaily dried in the afternoon sunshine.

I have been pretty baby mad lately, addicted to watching the tv show "One Born Every Minute" and delighting in every amazing new life bursting into the world. At the end of each episode I sigh and say mock seriously "I just want another baby". Of course I don't really but I am becoming more aware of my big kids getting ever bigger and missing those wondrous early days and weeks and months that I wished away so vehemently when I was in the midst of the chaos.
So baby blanket quilting is as close as I'm likely to get and if I one day get to cuddle one of these babes I will be over the moon!

Another stash busting gift

As you can see I am on a quilt making blitz at the moment. This is another Christmas pressie.
I fell head over heels in love with the Anna Maria Horner fabric you see draped over my ironing board. I bought the last of the roll at my favourite fabric shop and got it home to discover a HOLE in the middle of it!
Well I called around a couple of stores with no luck trying to find some more and then relented and bought it online. I was having a burst of impatience and just wanted to be sure I had some on its way.
As soon as it arrived I was back into the project...whizzed up in a few weeks.
The grey fabric was meant to be a neutral but it's designed with hundreds of place names on it and the quilt is intended to be a gift for some keen travellers, so I thought it would be a pertfect little detail to ponder .

sweet as....

I have been working on this confection of a baby quilt for the past couple of weeks. I think I have included a scrap of just about all my favourite bright and baby friendly fabrics in the stash.
I was totally inspired when I learned that an old friend of ours had recently become a father. Inspired and also surprised because we haven't seen him for about 18 months and in that time he has managed to find himself a wife, buy a little property and extrude a sproglet. Wow.
So it's all finished and I will post a photo of the completed project when I am next in a sunny spot with a camera whose battery is not kaput.

mistooken identity

Hey, it's come to my attention that there is another lovelybutton out there.
I know...how weird.
Anyway, I am not anything to do with Conan O'Brien or Twitter or America or anything like that.
I do not have a bazillion followers and I was not picked at random to be the focus of any late night tv guru's ponderings.
I am a regular, normal-ish Australian Mum of 2 teenagerish kids who crafts and blogs and works in a bookshop.
Welcome to my rather non-dramatic, average world!
I like it here.

works just completed

This is what's been on my desk and round about. It's a happy, Springtime, girly and bright quilt that I thoroughly enjoyed making.
It all started when I was reading the Aunty Cookie blog one day where Shannon was describing her "you beaut" easy way to piece a cross pattern quilt. (must link back to her) Well I got that far and took a step further by randomly mixing and sewing the quarter cross blocks. I was torn really. I liked the bold cross pattern but I had uneven quantities of colours and couldn't quite get a mix that I was happy with, so I threw caution to the wind and chucked the pieces all over the floor and went crazy from there. I went to Spotty and one of the staff walked in front of me to shelve the green fabric. I took one look at it and had an "aha" moment. As far as I'm concerned it perfectly married all the front block pieces together. A bit of chunky straight stitching in the ditch and it was finished!
For a special friend.
For Christmas.
So it's a secret.

Monsieur Pumpkin

Halloween

The 'hood has well and truly adopted Halloween as a great opportunity to get together and let our street urchins run riot, like in the olden days when we were youngsters. I thought I had made plenty of GingerDEAD men but there were a couple of waves of trick or treaters and luckily we had plenty of eyeballs to follow up with. Hope they went straight into mouths because I don't think they will have survived well in the bottom of a lolly bag!
Mackie did a stirling job of carving the pumpkin. It's the first time we have tried it. His skill with cutting stencils came to the fore.
Pepper had no school yesterday so she was put into service making poffertjes which we iced and food dyed to make delicious but rather sticky eyeballs.
Gross looking fingers were puff pastry smeared with Nutella and ground almonds then rolled and baked. They were very yummy indeed.

Hello to you.Goodbye to PUFFERY

Well hello.

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that sometimes I have no idea why I started a blog. I don't feel any animosity for my blog but it is just sitting there making me feel slightly guilty about not blogging.

I know that's silly. I guess I feel like there's not enough time to lavish on the blog, to make it look super special and up to date. There aren't enough stand-out, show-off moments to share with the world. And why does the world really "give one" for what I do anyway? Ditto facebook and tweeting. Can't be bothered.

I HAVE been crafting. I have been quilting. I have been rearranging furniture. Love it!

I have given up my four year obsession with the Suffolk Puff. So Utter Puffery hair doodads are no longer. Aaaawwwww, see ya!

I had a sneaking suspicion that I would just KNOW when I had done enough of those fiddly little things, but I never thought it would take so long to get sick of them.

Home renovation is complete. There are still a few projects on the go but we're tackling those ones ourselves. I was jubilant to say the least to see the back of the builder.

Would anyone like to give me some hope that the 15 year old magnolia we transplanted two weeks ago will survive? Looking pretty dire at this stage. It's blooms have graced my blog over the years and I will be very sad if it dies, especially after the horribly rough treatment it has survived through two renovations.

Kids are as tall and taller than me! As a rather short, stout person I am delighted that the kids have overtaken vertically.

I have joined a gym. I have stunned myself by enjoying it. And I have been 3 times every week.

on my desk and round about

I have been working on a new quilt.

Pattern's in the Denyse Schmidt Quilt book.

A Flock Of Triangles based on a Flying Geese pattern. I have used lots of little bits of the stash and only needed to go shopping for the white!

I have decided to quilt it directly onto a beautiful cream woollen blanket that I found in the op shop a couple of years ago. So this is first for me and I don't know whether the practice is frowned upon in quilting society, but it's worth a try.

Also in a moment of blog surfing I happened upon a giveaway on the wonderfully inspiring Pepper Stitches blog. She has made some divinely rugged male be-bearded dolls. I was smitten by Folk Man. He looks JUST like my red-headed son when he wears a fake red moustache and beard (yes he HAS one!) AND as if that's not enough, my daughter's name is Pepper. So I thought I was a shoe-in to acquire Folk Man.

A random draw from the universe had him on his way to us!

And here he is!

Settling in very nicely.

Thank you Pepper/Shaz of Blogland. We love him.

stupid blog, no one reads it

SCHOOL.

Pepper has started Year 7 and seems to be loving it, though the pace is breakneck compared to her primary school. She is really having to be on the ball to remember all the things she needs to bring along, books..bits of uniform...notices..homework (and bring home again) We unearthed a segmented lunchbox which has proved miraculous in organising the lunch packing process. God that kid was taking half an hour to carefully trim and individually wrap every flippin' thing that she took to eat. It was driving me insane watching the clock ticking and her subsequent panic.

And then.

HOMEWORK.

What is the secret to fostering good homework habits?

I have made rules about after school tv, provided a gorgeous desk, cajoled, checked the school diary and asked probing questions about what is due and how to tackle it, but the brick wall seems inpenetrable. shrieking arguments before school are shit for everyone. Watching a teary-eyed darling stomp out the front door is heart breaking. "have a good day" rings a little hollow in the aftermath.

I know it's early days in the school year, but forming good habits is so important. Sadly the primary school did NOTHING (still a bit cranky) and I mean NOTHING (really it was a joke) to encourage a regular practise.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

Hey I forgot to say that Mackie turned FOURTEEN yesterday and it was great, he's great. Loved his pressies including the one that ROCKED the most. A Unicycle. So glad we took out private health insurance before the love of circus embedded itself.

RENOVATION.

I know he doesn't.. but I like to fantasize that our builder reads this blog and takes notice when I say...you are fucking INCOMPETENT, we are sick to DEATH of chasing you up to get things finished, if we wanted a SHIT job that we had to organise OURSELVES and would take THIS long, we probably would have gone for the cheapest quote we got instead of the most expensive.

Anyway, sometimes you just have to get these things off your chest. Write a letter to the fucking universe or whatever.

pink

What do you give a wonderful Mum who has everything?

Why pair of hot pink handmade teatowels of course!

I think you can't go past hand made for those special folks that always insist that they "don't NEED anything".

I love my Mum. She is awesome. Last night she created a beautiful fruit platter for me to share with my crafty neighbour friends.

There is a group of about 10 of us and we get together to craft and mend and chat and drink wine about once a month or when it suits the majority. I am sorry that 3 folks couldn't make it last night to my first turn at hosting, but we had a fantastic laughter-filled evening.

I am so excited by our new room which is set to accommodate D's desk (and the ever growing pile of bills and school-related crap), the computer (hi..that's it I'm using right now), the telly and my crafty stuff.

It's a big thrill every day to walk in and see the shelves of fabric, craft books, buttons and my desk. I just love it.

I love the way we grown ups can come in here, way at the front of the house at the furthest point away from the kids, and just hand out in eachother's company. We can each be doing stuff or watching tv, it doesn't matter, it's peaceful and happy.

I originally set my desk up looking out the window at the street. I am such a nosy-parker though, I couldn't stop myself from watching people and cars come and go. The youngsters across the road are enjoying what I think is their first share house experience and there are always visitors or beers to be drunk in the FRONT yard (whilst wearing jocks and not much else). Honestly, I am NOT that interested in them, but just fascinated by their apparent lack of modesty.

Then, I turned my desk around so that I face into the room and suddenly I am filled with crafty vigour! This week I have made these things and I have used PATTERNS from two lovely books which previously frightened me with their perfection. I made Little Pup from the MORE SOFTIES book and a hexagon ball from SEAMS TO ME. Both a tad fiddly for me but well worth the effort. I feel a great sense of achievement. HURRAH!

angelic

Last Christmas related post I promise.

Just before we left for Kangaroo Island, I felt a little something handmade would be an appropriate addition to the grog gifts we were taking.

So, here's my tree angel. It hung proudly on the casaurina tree. Very sweet.

gingerbread house

Under the statute of Christmas limitations, I will just quickly post the photos of the gingerbread house we made to take to the in-laws Christmas lunch. It was a rushed affair with a 3 hour drive to Maffra in the morning...ginormous lunch, then a 3 hour drive back to Melbourne. Followed by a Boxing Day drive to Adelaide! I was very excited by making the house... we made a practise one the week before which sadly turned out better than the "real" one. Still delicious, even though I discovered the in-laws were not fans of gingerbread.

NEW YEAR HELLO

Hello hello, it's a brand new year. Yay!

Last year was pretty ok..but this year is sure to be tops.

I tells ya, THIS year our endless renovation will be finished (and soon I hope ha ha).

Last year we lived through many the wonderful moods of renovation. Beginning with the fairly swift (it now seems) erection of our upstairs, through some months of bitter cold (no roof, no heater) to the disastrous leaking, not right size roof tile fiasco.

Towards the very end of the year we welcomed our lovely new heating, our spiffy new cooker and our too cool for school new benches and drawers.

Now there is only some fixing up to go.

I have been on the greatest and most relaxing fabulous holiday with the family and another family and that family's family. If not for the torturous drive home it would have been perfect. But that's over now...the drive, but not the memory of the holiday!

We went to Kangaroo Island.

We caught crayfish, made dumplings, drank lots of wine, went to the beach, on a cave walk, to see lots of seals. We did jigsaws, went fishing, rock hopping, swam with dolphins (or in a bay close to a pod of about 60 frolicking ones). We cooked toasties over the fire, we played Carcassonne, drank some wine (did I say that already?). We picked mulberries, walked up and down the rows in the vinyard, boogie-boarded.

Here's a couple of photos.

Back, back at work. It's good.

Floods, bad.

Buying two sets of new school uniform plus shoes, bad.

Shoes in general, bad.

Barefoot with multi-coloured toenails on the beach, good.