Dog Cat and Needle turn

Our guard dog, a.k.a. the doorbell, ever alert, keeping a wary eye out the window for 'visitors'
Others, knowing they are totally protected and safe, just loll back and just take it easy.

GET OFF THE COUCH!!!.......just got me one slowly opened eye and totally ignored. Back to snoozville.

Progress so far on the needle turn adventure, I would really love to finish Val Laird's 'Consider the Lillies' free BOM, but........not sure needle turn is for me....this is the third needle turn method tried, it's from Esther Aliu's great tutorial on freezer paper applique, I get how to do the sides, and it kind of works, but the pointy ends definitely need more work. Beryl gave me some great pointers (if you will pardon the pun) on points yesterday, and I think the point on the leaf I'm working on is a little better than the others.......but.......well in praise of the block I guess you could say a blind man would be pleased to see it.....possibly.

Oh and one thing I really did learn, the little pattern pieces?, those little suckers are numbered for a reason!, and thinking you can just 'give it a go' and start here........not a good idea Tonto, got my flower stems crossed the wrong way! oooops!!

T.G.I.Monday

We have palms by our front stairs, palms in flower at the moment, lots of lovely pollen laden flowers with bees busily harvesting.

After making the sad and late discovery that I had been snapping pics of a wonderful weekend with a dirty camera lens, popped out to the palm for a test run of the cleaned lens and snapped this pic. Quite pleased with it really.

We certainly did pack a bit in this weekend, lots of shopping, both real time/real stores as well as the net, The eldest Grandie discovered another wonderful site to shop to the limit of Grandmas Credit Card. Sunday Lunch was prepared by the Youngest Grandie, he had a bit of a challenge perfecting 'the claw', the best way for anyone to slice, no chance of a bit of nail or digit joining the dinner with the 'claw'.

He has his own little step ladder for 'kitchen helping', just the right thing for our smallest Chef.
And this is what he came up with, lovely tomato basil sauce. We grilled some Pancetta, grated a mound of Parmesan and served the lot layered in a dish with mini penne pasta. Major yummo.
The day was hot so after lunch we watched a movie in the air con but as soon as the shade hit the garden, the boys and Grandad constructed their own putting green and had a bit of a golf game, followed by some Archery practice - our target was a bit home made (dogs mat draped over a clothes horse - whatever - it worked)
And Grandma was presented with a couple of sea daises, with a little visitor attached.

Now, to get organised and try version 3 of learning needle turn applique, version one was less than successful, and version 2 was just a mess. version 3 - I'm going to follow the wonderful instructions and video that Esther Aliu has posted on her blog http://estheraliu.blogspot.com/

Wish me luck!!

Burying Threads

Its been 8 months since I last posted, I used to get so much enjoyment from Blogging, not to mention Quilting and of course Cooking and of course blogging about same.

What happened???

I guess as others before me have said, Life Gets In The Way. Well it's a new year, a new (stronger) attitude and lets just get on with it.

Did a little mini tutorial on how to bury threads the K Grace Howes way for my Patchwork Group's blog and thought I would pop the same on here......a simple first step back into blogging

Grandies are coming for a sleepover this weekend, we will be very busy, there is the Library to visit and change our books, Croke (Croquet) has been promised, the construction of a putting hole in the lawn (Dunno how Grandad will feel about that) with putting to be practiced, Tennis in the back yard, and a cake to be cooked - with 3 handfuls of choc bits for extra chewy chocolaty-ness. Lots of Fun to be had.

Crazy Patch Thread and Needle Carrier

Spent the day stitching this, its supposed to be a thread and needle carrier, supposed to be, it has a bit of an oopsie though....



I'll tell you how I oopsied.....

My patchwork group is having a crazy patch theme for this years Challenge, we have had lectures and tutorials, well I am not a great embroider, and found the whole crazy patch thing a bit daunting and was going to be a piker, but last night, while writing up the notes for the in house workshop we had on the thread and needle carrier workshop of last week, a brilliant idea surfaced!! Why not do a crazy patch thread and needle carrier!!!, too easy, tiny project, not too much embroidery and I could shorten the flap to make even less work......yay! ... (just proves - self praise really is no recommendation).

I'm sure you have seen the problem........by shortening the flap there is no way you can store the needles..........so I have a thread and one small needle only carrier....

So here is the bottom view and back view of my thread and one needle carrier!........who needs lots of needles anyway!

This is a pic of the finished carriers from our workshop. See the nice long flaps for the needles!

Maybe I could call it a lipstick carrier......perhaps.....ah well, its not gonna get a twin I can tell you that! the wretched thing took all day!......told you I'm no embroiderer.

Changes, lots of 'em

Things have been a bit hectic in our neck of the woods, 3 weeks ago, our youngest visited friends in our old home town of Melbourne for a few days, came home and announced that he wanted to move back, he promptly got himself a couple of job offers, including his first choice, packed, moved to Melbourne and started work today!

We miss him dreadfully, and that empty flat downstairs wasn't helping, so decided to move my treadmill and other exercise stuff out of my sewing room and into the flat. Gets me more room in my sewing room and gives me a bit more room to exercise. So because it will probably never be this tidy again, I took piccies.

The above is taken from the double doors leading from the Verandah. The sewing desk/cutting desk/sandwich table is an old office desk with an extension built by DS2 onto the front to hold my Janome 6500 - lovely to have a continuous flat surface to quilt on.

Everything in my little room is multipurpose, there is an old singer treadle machine under the desk above, its shoved as far to the right as possible, on top of the old singer is a slide out deep shelf, in reality a piece of press board with tiny handles that I store my cutting mat and some rulers on, just grab the little handles to slide the lot out and onto the desk to cut.

The two pics on the left below show some shelving -common cheapie garage type - with pink plastic storage in the shelves and more storage stacked on the top, also shows part of DS1's old study desk on the right of the shelves, with quite a few of those little plastic storage drawers, books, boxes and files on top. The two pics on the right above show my sewing desk with the computer desk at right angels to the machine. Running along the side of the desk, resting on an old chest of drawers that I store my fatties in, is my ironing bench, again courtesy of DS2. I made an ironing pad to measure and bought a 2 yard length of teflon pressing sheet for the top. Plenty of storage between the ironing surface and top of the drawers for small cutting mats and rulers. The final pic is from the same angle with more of the bookshelves and a glimpse of the lowboy in the corner. Both the chest of drawers and the lowboy were bought for the boys as babies.

These two pics are the top half and the bottom half of the only full wall in my room, lots of plastic drawer stacks on top of the study desk and the wardrobe....All those drawers are labeled, not pretty but functional, I use a black marker and can erase easily if I (heaven forbid) finish a project or want to re-organise something. No more searching for this that and the other, I don't have to remember or second guess, just read the labels........saves me hours.......not to mention the frustration...

So I hope you have enjoyed seeing my space, not pretty to be sure, but it has just about everything that I need or want, including I can play free to air tellie on the computer screen.........or movies.....don't know how it works, just click an icon and up it comes. Gotta love having a techie Darling.

Photo of the Day

A bit of a drizzly early morning, perfect for snapping this little sea daisy.

and catching a few raindrops on the leaves of the snowball bush.

Settling in for the night......

Just before dusk I found this little beauty clinging to a plant. He really didn't want to fly away, just moved around behind the leaves a little as I approached, giving his wings a tinsy flutter and reavealing just a hint of hidden colour.