Scenic Views

I went to a wedding down by the river the other day.  It was the first wedding I had been to in a long time and we were delighted to be invited. 

It’s quite the in thing to avoid churches and have a very simple, very pared back wedding.  This wedding was held at an old station (in Australia our farms, for want of a better word, are called stations) that was one of the first properties in European settlement around here.  The property sports a large country home, lots and lots of acres to run sheep on, and of course – the woolshed. 

A wool shed is the place where the sheep are shorn.  They march them up a ramp, the shearers do their work, take the fleece off and the sheep are marched out the other side, naked.

As time has gone on, the nature of this station has changed.  It’s more difficult to run sheep here nowadays, and in this case they have made way for tourism.  Now, the woolshed has been converted into a micro brewery and instead of sheep being shorn, we are offered home brewed beer.  I’m not a beer lover but I was told it was delicious.  And it was a hot day, so much beer was consumed. 

But when I walked into this woolshed, despite all the years it has been since it was used for stock, it still smells like sheep – lanolin and dust and fleece. 

The wedding was held overlooking the river:

The bride carried a very simple bouquet of native flowers, and we listened to them take their vows, with a backdrop of birds chirping and fish jumping in the river.

I’m so lucky, living here.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Pleasures of a summer garden

I wait all year for summer to arrive.  I don’t like the heat much, but I’ll put up with living in a hot area because summer fruit is divine.  I live in a fruitgrowing region, and our house is on a bigger block of land, so it made sense we planted fruit trees when we moved in.

This is what I picked this morning.

Fresh, juicy, dripping plums. 

And these:

Such delicious apricots, I can’t tell you.  I didn’t ‘thin’ properly this year (for those of you not acquainted with stone fruit, you thin, or remove, about half of the fruit when it’s just forming so that the fruit you end up with is larger).  So most of my fruit was smaller, and didn’t the birds just love it!  But even with the added drama of the birds stealing some fruit, we still had too, too much of it.

What a wonderful state to be in – too much fruit to eat.  Any visitors were loaded up with bags of fruit, whether they wanted it or not.

Still to come are two types of peaches, another type of plum, and my favourite – the nectarines.  I didn’t have masses of luck with the grapes – we suffered a very hot day right at the start of their season and they got fried, but the ones that remained were delicious. 

The kids are barely eating ‘proper’ food, we seem to graze on fruit all day long.

I’ve said it so many times, but it bears repeating – I’m so blessed.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

The Apricot Tree

Oh hi there.

Remember this?

Now it’s this.

Soon it will be covered in little apricots, and then soon enough we’ll have more than we can eat. 

Soon enough.  In summer.

And this?

This is the almond tree.

There’s nothing quite like a freshly picked almond.

Or apple.

Or passionfruit.

Or grape.

Or plum.

Or orange.

Or strawberry.

Or mandarin.

Or nectarine.

Or peach.

Or berry.

Or avocado.

Or walnut.

Though to be fair, the avocado and walnut have a LOT of growing to do.  I have to wait a few years for that.

I am the luckiest person alive to be surrounded by fruit.  All fresh.  All free.

Oh what’s that you say?

What’s behind that fence?

Oh nothing much.

Just a big hole.

Just a really big hole.

That one day soon, will house our new POOL.  Most decidedly NOT free but a very welcome addition to a summer that regularly passes 40C.

I’ll keep you posted.

Aww thanks, you guys….

Thankyou so much for your lovely comments on the Calm Blue Ocean reveal.  I’m tickled pink (or blue?) that you were so happy with it.  The quilt, my version of it, is exactly the way I had it in my head.  It’s not very often that it turns out quite so well.

So thanks again, and please keep watch for the next one.  There will definitely be a next one, I totally loved doing it.

As for Bountiful Bouquet – I know I haven’t posted the final entry yet, but I will.  It’s hanging over my head like a great, big quilt-sized anvil.  Rather than stress to much about it, I’ve decided to give myself July off and I’ll post it in the first week of August. 

I’m sorry that I didn’t stick to the schedule I’d hoped for.  As it was my first online quilt-sharing experience, I made a few mistakes and it’s taken me a little longer to get it out there to you.  So check back then and I’ll definitely be online for you.

There’s a whole heap involved in the posting of a quilt or a mystery quilt.  With the first one, the Bountiful Bouquet, I was only doing it a month in advance.  With the Calm Blue Ocean, I made the whole thing before I posted any of it.  That allowed for any hiccups, fabric disasters, sick children – you name it.  What with the children, the husband, the house – life well and truly got on top of me this past month and Bountiful Bouquet has suffered for it.

But one more posting to go and then it will be another thing crossed of my list!

Hope your weekend is going well.  This is Ballet Concert season for my first daughter, which means silly schedules to keep, hair to do, you name it.  I’d love to post a photo of her in her ballet costume.  Perhaps I will.

Anyway, till tomorrow,

Happy Quilting!

Suzie

A new way to waste time

*edited to fix up the truly woeful editing that the Ipad does.  Ghastly.*

I've long been a member of quilterblogs.com, and most days visit there to see if I can find some interesting and new blogs to read.  

But to be honest, it's has got very commercial lately and it's hard to find a decent blog in between all the shops spruiking their wares. Don't get me wrong, I'm as keen as the next person to spend money on quilting fabrics, but I'd rather surf quilt blogs than quiltshop blogs, if you know what I mean.

So I was delighted to find the mother load of blogs here at Red Pepper Quilts. There are close to a thousand blogs there you can spend hours of your day checking out, neglecting all the housework and quilting and stuff.

You're welcome.

Why not post yours there too?

Till tomorrow, Suzie

The Weekly Checklist

Part of my trying to get in order around the house/craft room is my weekly checklist.

I have a number of things that I must do daily, or else they will get away from me.  There are a number of other projects that I try to work on weekly. 

I know myself well enough by now to know that I can’t give myself too many daily jobs – they just don’t get done and I end up being deflated.  I’ve listed them into weekly jobs, that seems to be more successful for me.

It doesn’t matter what day I do them on, but hopefully by the end of the week, all of my jobs will have a big fat red line through them.  I’m trying to make myself accountable.

The current weekly checklist is:

• One Dear Jane block
• One Farmer’s Wife Sampler block
• One 25 Patch block
• One 9 Patch block
• One Civil War Diary block
• One Barbara Brackman block
• One crocheted block a day
• One Joseph’s Coat block
• One blog post a day
• One written personal diary entry a day

I’ve printed them up onto a checklist that hangs square in the middle of my work wall.  I see it every time I go into my room.  So far, so good. 

• One Dear Jane block
• One Farmer’s Wife Sampler block
• One 25 Patch block
• One 9 Patch block
• One Civil War Diary block
• One Barbara Brackman block
• One crocheted block a day
• One Joseph’s Coat block
• One Pineapple block
• One blog post a day
• One written personal diary entry a day

So far, so good!  I know it seems like a big list, but these are all UFO’s to be done.  I find if I work on one, I tend to work on it till I finish it anyway, despite all the work I make myself do on the rest of the checklist.  It’s a fluid thing, I change it all the time and take things off, add things on.

None of it is set in stone, except the personal diary entry a day.  Been doing that for years now, and I find if I don’t write every day, whole weeks or months go past. 

I’m also trying to get into the daily exercise thing which is so far not going so well.  But if I add that to my check list, maybe it will.  Habit forming, and all that.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

I reckon I should just give up.

I found a new quilt blog today. 

http://www.kathykwylie.com/index.php

Believe it or not, I've never heard of this woman's quilts before.  I am totally gobsmacked and I feel as if I should pack my bat and ball and go home. 

I have the world's worst case of quilter's envy right now.

I can't be the only one out there who aspires to make such quilts.   Where do their ideas come from?  How do they find the exactly perfect fabric?  How can they needleturn so delicately their fabric so that you can't even see the stitches?  Not even one?

Do yourself a favour and go and visit this clever, clever lady.  Read in detail how she made her 'Flourish On The Vine' Quilt.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Bereft

After piecing a small baby quilt perfectly yesterday, for no apparent reason my Pfaff machine broke. Sob. It's in the doctors today, it's got a broken spindle on the spool and the timing is out. For those of you like me, to whom that means nothing, it means you break many needles and the machine is angry.

So today, for the first time in a LONG time, I haven't pieced anything! It's a bit of a dangerous time really. I tend to get itchy feet (or hands?) and start something new when I can't finish something old, which is why I have so many UFO's. One day I'll show you my UFO cupboard.

How are we all going with the first month of Bountiful Bouquet? I'll confess I haven't even started stitching mine. But I have pieced next months' blocks so I will be ready to post them on the 1st November.

Must away, tea to cook. See you tomorrow!

Where I belong

This is where I live.

Not right on the river, of course, but a five minute walk.  

I am very, very blessed to be able to look at this every day.  This is our river in flood a few months ago.  Floods are rare nowadays.  Our river is overused, and in crisis.  But that's a debate for another day.

Right now the river is filled with fish, and yabbies, and waterbirds, and ducks, and so much more.  It's a blessing to live here.

You couldn't pay me to live any place else. 

Local Quilt Show

The group I belong to is having its annual quilting show this weekend. 

I'd give my eye teeth to spend some time there, by myself, all along, without children.   The group is manning the exhibition for eight hours today and tomorrow and the idea of being with like minded people for a whole eight hours is just too tempting.

But, I'm by myself this weekend, so I've had to take my two little people along with me this morning and have a quick run around.  Can anyone tell me why seemingly well behaved childen act like - well I can't really tell you politely how they were acting except to say many a hard word was said between clenched teeth 'I will NOT TELL YOU AGAIN....'   They ran between the quilts, playing hide and seek - the amount of Very. Bad. Looks. I was getting from others, I can't begin to tell you.  We didn't stay long.

It wasn't their finest moment but I think I can put it down to their familiarity with quilts.  We have them everywhere, on the walls, on the beds.  There's always one or two in the sewing room in various stages and to them, a quilt is just one of those everyday things.  Great for making cubby houses or for wrapping yourself around on a cold day. 

I took a few photos, in between wrangling children.  

There were plenty more, but it all got a little too hard and I left, children in two, to go home and have naps.

I might see if I can pop in tomorrow for a little bit more quilt-love.

Till then,

Suzie

Fifty Posts!

It's a little weird to me that I have posted fifty whole posts!  I'm not much of a stick-to-it type of girl, and I'm pretty proud of myself that I've stuck to this enough to last for fifty posts.

Now whether it's fifty posts worth reading is another matter!

I don't have any pictures today.  But....I have ADSL!  After three years of paying for very expensive wireless broadband because our brand new house is in too old a street (??) we now can join the land of the living with enough download to last me forever.  So hopefully I will be able to be a bit more prolific with the photo side of thing.

I'm struggling taking decent photos to show you, I must admit.  Doing this blog was all part of me wanting to learn the computer a little more, to get better at things that I can do, but not very well.  Photographing blog worthy stuff is one of those things. 

I've been making half square triangles for most of my week.  I've been working on another scrap quilt, just because.  And it's all half square triangles, big and small.  I'm just about over half square triangles. 

Most of my fabric for the Bountiful Bouquet Block of the month has arrived, though of course the most important one  - the background fabric is still to come.  Hopefully it'll be in my hot little hands after I got to the post office (no delivery from the mail man here, we're old fashioned in my part of the woods) and I can get a start on that over the weekend. 

So until tomorrow

Suzie

Still on a go slow

My internet is still not working quickly.  The technician who was going to ring on Friday (hand on heart, I really truly promise) didn't ring.  Of course.  So I have the weekend on a go slow. 

It's amazing how quickly we get used to the finer things in life, such as fast internet.  I can only get wireless here, though the technician is supposed to be ringing me to tell me that I can get ADSL broadband instead.  If that happens, I can go from six gigabytes to one hundred gigabytes.  I doubt very much even I could use one hundred gigs. 

But I need him to ring back and confirm it.  Why is it that no one follows through on what they promise?  I pay these people good money and yet they'll get to it in their good time.  I don't think I'm too pushy, they promised they would ring on Friday, and they didn't.  I think I have a right to be cranky. 

And it's our national phone carrier, so my choices in transferring to another company are fairly limited. 

Anyway, it's letting me post words, just not pictures so until tomorrow, I hope you have a good weekend. 

Suzie

Hello again

I've not been away, but I have had the double combination of visitors (so no time) and slowed internet.  Not a good combination.

I've been sewing quite a bit though, and have really got down to business with some of my oldest UFO's.  The one I'm working on right now is older than my marriage, and I've been married nearly twenty years now.  I should be finished soon, so I'll show you my photo then.

I can't show you anything now, because my internet is slowed, and even though I just spent an HOUR trying to upload one measly little photo, my computer went all 'Oh no you don't...' and so I can't.

So, I'll try again later, when the computer is behaving.  But I've taken lots of photos and when I do get back into the land of the living and have appropriate internet speed, I'll show you all of them.  In one hit.  You're welcome!

Talk to you tomorrow.

Coming Clean

I spent a large amount of time over the past month organising.  Mainly my sewing room, but some other things as well.  It's my aim to have a clean sewing room, with everything in its place.  It's also very important to me to have a photographic record of all that I have done.  I started making photos of all my quilts years ago, and mostly I have been faithful to that.  Consequently, I have many photo albums filled with quilts, and bags, and cross stitches, and so much more. 

I think there's a touch of the hoarder in me and I find it hard to settle if I can't finish things.  But I'm also  great starter, and I have so many UFO's in my cupboard, and PIGS (which I learned yesterday meant Projects In Grocery Sacks), and magazines and patterns that I feel I will never settle in my sewing room, which is meant to be the one room I can totally relax in. 

So I have a quandary, a dirty little secret.  I don't know if I should just Ebay the lot of it and declutter, or if I will regret it forever. 

As I said, all a bit of a quandary.

Been gone long time...

I've been meaning to post, really truly I have.  And suddenly I look and it's three months since I last updated. 

A lot happened in that time.  Mostly my beloved lap top has gone bung.  Bung is a technical term for *&^54 itself.  I've had it into the computer doctor and whilst it now opens okay, which it wasn't doing before, I am now forced to type like a beginner and go niccceeeee annnnnnnndddd slooooooooow.  If I go too fast the computer falls over in a dead faint after an attack of the vapours.  Which is rather frustrating. 

There's also a dead mouse in the ceiling over my sewing room. Yes, we've looked for it.  No, we can't find it.  So all my sewing room stuff is now in my spare room so that the smell doesn't go through everything and meanwhile my mother in law is coming to stay this weekend and I'm going to have to sort through everything and put it back into the smelly sewing room so that she has someplace to sleep and I'm not at all angry/stressed about that situation AT ALL.

So between the dead mouse thing and the computer gone bung thing, I've not been a good blogger.  Sorry about that.

But the plans for the freebie block of the month are progressing well.  As in, I've taken the folder out of its box and put it on the table.  That's a start.

So, hopefully tomorrow I'll post a little more, if the fading wallflower of a computer will let me.  If not, I'll see you again in three months!



What would you grab?

Like most of Australia, I've been confronted with violent footage of the deadly earthquake in Christchurch.  I've never been to Christchurch, having only visited the North Island of New Zealand, but my heart breaks for them.  There's been much talk this year, perhaps too much talk, about what you would take in the event of an emergency.  Australia has been swamped with emergencies, it seems, and each time I tell myself I really MUST get myself organised.  We have floods and fires to worry about, and they seem to happen with deadly regularity.  Who only knows when the next big 'unexpected thing' would be? 

I'd take the obvious - family, pets, drinking water, my backup information containing all 25 years of the diaries I have kept.  Precious photos.  You know.  That bit is easy.  But then, it gets more difficult.

Do I keep the old books I've collected over the years?  Do I save my two daughters' heirloom knitted blankets?  Do I make room for the many old treasures I've stashed away?  Their christening dress?  My wedding dress? 

Don't even get me started on the quilts.  Do I keep the hand pieced double wedding ring quilt?  Or the one that is on my bed that has comforted me through good times and bad?  Each one is filled with memories that make it 'the' one I would need to keep.

I wouldn't worry about the UFO's and the stash, and the quilting books.  That's just all stuff.  But the other things, the quilts and the baby clothes and wedding dresses and antique books - they are memories.  Yeah, at the end of the day it is just stuff, like all the other stuff, but it is so much more than that. 

I can't imagine losing all of that in one day, one hour.  Add to that the trauma of losing your job, or your pets, or your precious, precious family - well, it's all just too much to bear.

And if you've gone through that in the last week, or year, or lifetime - my heart breaks for you.