Stitching up a sweat

It’s currently eight pm at night and 40 degrees (celcius, that is).  Tomorrow and the next two days are meant to be 46 degrees (celcius).

It is hot. 

I spent my day doing various chores, including being at home waiting for two tradesmen, who both turned up at the same time.  One needed the water on to check the sprinklers, the other needed the water off to fix the plumbing.  Murphy’s Law.

I have so many of these small units leftover from a massive miscalculation in how many I needed for a project, so I sat in the cool and stitched.

I am determined to finish all I start, so rather than use this for a new project,  I dug out some old applique and have decided it looks rather nice together.  So it will stay.

Obviously it’s on its side – less pins needed that way to get the idea, but I think it works, don’t you?  And I’ll have to do another plane, but that’ll be easy enough.

Aussies, please stay cool over the next week! 

See you soon!

A Finish To Show You–Knitting…

I find I like to knit at night, mostly it’s because I really can’t be thinking that late at night and knitting doesn’t involve much thinking for me.  And to be honest, I have more wool than I can ever shake a stick at.  I’ll never get through it.

Sadly, I bought (downloaded for free) this pattern years ago, when my little people were little.  They are grown now and there is no chance of them

I need to work on my finishing a little, but I’m always happy with how my cabling turns out.  I hope a little girl somewhere, someplace enjoys it.

Our family members have all gone home now, and for the first time in a long time it’s just me and the girls.  I’ve got rid of the tree (it was a real one, now it’s on the burn pile) and the Christmas decorations are packed away.  I need to tidy the house now and then we can start the year afresh.

I hope to be in my sewing room today, I’ve been finishing a few projects up, tidying a few things away, clearing the swamp that is permanently my sewing room.  It needs to be a calming space for me, it’s far from that at the moment!

I hope you are all quilting away – shall talk more tomorrow!

Quietly quietly

Our family visitors have now left us, and for the first time in … I really don’t know how long, it’s just me and the girls on school holidays.  DH is back at work and we do feel for him, he would much rather be on holidays too.  But needs must.

I’ve spend much of my afternoon in my sewing room but I have nothing to show you there yet, so I shall show you the latest Lucy Boston that I have made.

I sat down and made a comprehensive list of every ufo I have started, and lo and behold, it’s worse than last year.  I actually bought more stuff into the house than I finished.  That was the complete opposite of what I had planned.

It’s all rather horrifying, the level of work I have made for myself.  I take some comfort in the fact that so far, eight days along, I have not spent a cent on myself for anything.  And there are so many tempting things out there.  So I’m aiming for a month, and keep on from there.

Wish me luck!

How I spent my Sunday (or why no stitching was done)

Family visitors + boat + beautiful weather – the choice was easy!

Enjoy your weekend!

Socks–something new to show you

At night, I like to do mindless stuff.  The current mindless addiction (apart from Lucy Boston) is knitting, and as I have a very large stash of sock wool, I’ve been knitting socks.

I gave this pair to my niece at her 21st.  They don’t match but I like that about them.  And she is quirky and I think would like that too.

I used the Winwick Mum sock pattern along with her stellar tutorials, and I managed very well, if I do say so myself.  I’m using a combination of circular, and sets of needles to get the job done.

Once I get my ‘sock hat’ on, I find it very easy to do.  The trick is to finish the sock while you’re in the groove, as with all other sorts of knitting, once you put it down for a long period of time it’s very hard to work out where you are.

I’ve got enough sockyarn to do a pair each month, so just a quiet plan set in place there.  No grand promises, but I hope to get that done.

I went online and drooled over some new yarn today, but in remembering my pledge to buy nothing this year, I left it on the shelves.  I LEFT IT ON THE SHELVES!

It’s much cooler today, and it’s trying to rain.  The weather is bonkers and I will never enjoy summer in Australia, no matter how much you try and make me.

Have an excellent day!

More Lucy Boston

We struggled through 46 degrees today.  It was 35 by nine o’clock and at 7 pm last night it was still 40 degrees.  Summer sucks.

Perfect day to do more stitching. 

This one is even more whoofy than yesterday’s version.  I’m hoping very much it’ll all come good with a good press and the papers removed. 

We shall see!

Stitching–Lucy Boston

Hi lovely readers,

As part of my ‘finish it all’ push for this year, I spent a large amount of time kitting up all my Lucy Boston blocks so that I could make them more portable and actually get them done.

I took a few away to Coff’s with me and managed to stitch them!  So yay me!

I played around a bit with the colour choices before I left:

I was going stitch them in a particular order, but when it came to actually sewing this one, I was on a plane and it was a bit jiggly, so I just grabbed a colour and went for it.

It’s the first choice, not the second one and I wish I had gone for the second one.  I have an issue with putting two colours the same on the outer edges – please don’t think I’m a lunatic but all I can see is (ahem….) male appendages when I do that.  But I’m not unpicking it.

It’s certainly not my best work and I’m hoping that when the papers come out it’ll be less woofy but I had taken two magic pills to help me fly, so it’s probably better than I should have hoped for.

Going to be 41 degrees today.  I have a lunch date, so I best get moving.  But once I get home from that, I’m not going out again!

Have a great day!

Home again, home again

Hi lovely readers,

Day two of the new Suzie.  Two posts in two days!  My goodness me.

We had a lovely time away – we went to Coff’s Harbour, which was three full days driving from here.  We were going to drive originally, but my other (better?) half put his foot down and decided hang the expense, we were going to fly.  I’ll actively do anything to get OUT of flying but I was outvoted and so we all went. 

And the plane didn’t fall out of the sky and we slept in our own beds after three hours of flying, rather than twenty hours of driving, so I guess they were right to choose that option.  But my goodness, airflight domestically in Australia is amazingly dear, especially at Christmas.

So you want photos?  Of course you do.

View from our apartment in Adelaide the night before.  Adelaide is a slower city – just the way I like it.  It’s surrounded by parklands which you can just see in the right hand side of the picture.  The big buildings on the left are part of our brand new Royal Adelaide Hospital, which at the time of building was the world’s most expensive new building.  Thankfully I've yet to use the facilities, but to be honest I’ve not heard the best things about it.  As always, nurses, doctors and staff = excellent.  Bureaucracy and red tape = not so good.

A view from another window overlooking Adelaide’s oldest church – takes up prime real estate for its buildings and its carpark and is totally overshadowed by sky scrapers but I love it for that.

We drove through some smaller towns surrounding Coff’s Harbour on one of our days and found the most amazing mosaics.  Photos don’t do them justice, but look at the work on them.  All I could think was how amazing those would be as quilts!

Coff’s Harbour is up near the border of New South Wales and Queensland, and is rainforest country.  With our home town suffering through 46 degree days, it was lovely to walk through a cool, calming environment after what was a particularly hot, stressful, busy Christmas period.  Good for the soul.

Today I have to get back into my ‘work’ mode, and get some jobs done that I’ve neglected over the Christmas period but this afternoon I really hope to get stuck into my sewing room – that is VERY neglected at the moment.

Hope you all had a truly lovely Christmas/New Year’s break – and it was all you hoped.  See you soon!

As Another Year Closes

Hello, my lovely readers.

It's been a big year, hasn't it?  Whilst I've not managed to fulfill one of my personal goals in 2018 of trying to post daily to my blog, I did manage to fulfill another - not putting myself too much under pressure, or at least not feeling guilty when my goals weren't met.

As I said, It's been a year, hasn't it?  My kids have continued to grow up, my first baby is about to start year nine of high school, my youngest baby is about to start her second to last year of primary school, and I am again wondering where those years have gone.  They were just babies yesterday.

We had massive drought in our area when rain was desperately needed, and then when rain was the last thing anyone could deal with, it wouldn't stop.  

We've had fruit fly, we've had losses of dear friends.  

We've had lunatic politicians.  

But we've had babies.  We've had weddings, we've had shared times with lovely family.

As this is posted, I am on my way home from celebrating a special birthday with lovely family in another state.  I'm flying home, and oh my gosh I hate to fly.  So wish me luck.  

It is my big hope that next year, 2019, I WILL get my act together.  I'm aiming to post more, exercise more, enjoy more.  Eat less, drink less, spend less.  

We shall see.

I'll leave you with a lovely picture my daughter took, which seems apt for this time of year.

See you on the flipside!

Back again

Hi lovely readers.  Me back again, briefly popping in to say hello, I’m still alive and kicking, in case you’re worried!

I’ve been working my little tail off here in my corner of the world, but I’m hoping that my hard work now will pay off for next year when time might (just might) be more of a premium.  I let myself slip out of habits at the end of First Daughter’s primary school, last year.  We’d had five years of a routine that worked quite well, and changing to a new school, new routine, more travel – well that has meant a lot less time here at home to do fun things like quilt and blog.

But fingers crossed, it’ll be better in the new year as I try to establish new habits and make 2019 a productive year!  Bear with me!

I’ve got some lovely photos for you of our most recent rose festival.  You’ve seen these from previous years so I’m happy to share the current year with you.  It’s all done and dusted now, which is a good thing because today is meant to be 40C which will annihilate any roses left on the bush.

Other than that, things are well with me.  Trying to keep cool, trying to lose a little weight, trying to be organised.  Life is all about trying hard to be better, don’t you think?

Have a lovely productive day and I’ll pop in again when I can!