January 1st 2021

Hi lovely readers.

Did you have an excellent New Year's Eve?

We spent it with friends that we seem to share NYE with most years.  To be honest, I'd be fine being at home in bed but that doesn't seem to happen, and now with a 16 year old daughter who is fully embracing the party life, if I'm not out celebrating myself I can see I'll have to sit up till midnight anyway to collect her from whatever party she is at.

Which is what mums do, isn't it?  Either drive the husbands home or the children.

I took a stroll around our garden last night before we went out and photographed it.  This time of year is the most productive in our small vegie/fruit patch.  The photo above has the thyme and oregano that have both gone to seed, but the flowers are so pretty on both, I don't mind letting them grow a little nuts.  But they are both overflowing onto the path, so it's time to give them a haircut.

The strawberry patch remains enormous and every year it gets cut back to within an inch of its life, no delicate pruning here.  The whippersnipper gets run over it and I think 'that will never grow back' but it always does.  Consequently we have a freezer full of strawberries that I don't know what to do with.

There is also a resident sleepy lizard in there somewhere, he always manages to scare the living daylights out of me.  Despite KNOWING he's in there, I always get a shock when I put my hand on something moving and scaly.  

Loads of tomatoes have been planted this year.  I didn't plant anything that I find hard to grow here, so this year was many tomato plants, cucumbers, capsicum and chili.  I make a mean chutney, and also a great sweet chili sauce too, so I plant those.

I used chook manure this year hauled from the chook shed.  Normally my husband does that job but he had a back operation and that put him out of action most of the year so it fell to me.  I didn't remove some of the chook food from the dirt I stole out of the chook shed, and had the added bonus of many lovely self sown things, mostly sweetcorn and sunflowers.  

You can always find basil in my garden.

The plum tree is heaving with fruit, and due to a fruit fly outbreak here we aren't allowed to remove the fruit from a 15 kilometre radius, so it's all sitting there taunting me.  Normally I give buckets away, but this year I am guessing I'll have to cook it up myself.  I normally make a plum sauce from this, we don't like plum jam here so I'm just going to have to try and get to use it all up myself.

The apples are far from being ready, but they are growing very well.  They grow too big, which is a problem because I would normally put them in lunch boxes but they don't fit.

Many, many nectarines also - I don't think they will get used either as we can only eat so much fruit ourselves!

And our one, solo avocado growing on the avocado tree.  We have so little luck with them.  My husband is treating this one like a newborn, trying to get it to maturity.

And finally, a gloriously blooming self sewn Sunflower.  

Hope you get a minute to sew today!

New Year New Me

Hi Lovely Readers,

Merry Christmas!

How are you?

I've missed you!

It's been a year, hasn't it?  Still in Covid, though thankfully here in Australia we have it somewhat under control, and whilst we have outbreaks we seem to (fingers crossed) get them under control quickly.  Certainly that has been the case in South Australia where I am.

I feel very much for those of you who are stuck in a horror limbo of not getting ahead with it.  I really do.  I'm ready for it to be over and for us to move ahead into whatever Post Covid looks like.

Things have been, as usual, very busy.  We've had months filled with dance concerts, end of year/school graduation, parties - all Covid safe of course but still full on.  Both my girls are in highschool next year with my baby starting there (sob) and so the days of two kids in two schools are finally, definitely over.  I won't know what to do with all my spare time, will I?

We had a lovely Christmas here, we were allowed family gatherings and so my brothers and mother came to spend the day with us.  It wasn't too hot, but hot enough for everyone to enjoy the pool after dinner, I enjoyed a nanna nap and the day went very quickly.

I've not been sewing nearly enough as I would like but I do try and fit some in every day.  Of course my sewing room has been the 'chuck it all in and shut the door' room when life gets a bit out of control, so clearing a space is difficult.  But that's one of my New Year's Resolutions - to try and keep that room just for me, clean and ready to go.  No sense having a dedicated sewing room if I can't move in there.

So that's my update for today, lovely readers.  I've missed you.  I'll do my best to keep up with my blogging - it is something that gives me pleasure.

Talk to you soon!

Hello!

Hello lovely readers,

Long time no see again.

I thought I'd pop in and say hi, let you know I'm still alive, still busy, still sick of Covid.  Aren't you sick of Covid?

It's a glorious sunny day today, and though it's meant to be winter, our almond tree doesn't know that.  

Nature's confetti.  Glorious.

So that's all for today.  Hope you're well and happy, and I hope that today brings good things for you.

Suzie xx

Happy July! And a show and tell for you

Hi lovely readers.  I've disappeared again.  I have a habit of that.  I wish I could tell you that it's because I've been so industrious, but it's not.  I have been busy though, just not in the sewing room.

I don't think I've shown you this before, but I found it in the draft folder and I thought I must definitely show you it today.  It's been finished for months, but I need to pull out the proverbial and get it quilted (along with all the other quilts that need doing)

I think it's a lovely quilt for little people, don't you?  I might even do it again one day.  I kept the pattern.

How's your Covid experience going?  Sick to the back teeth of hearing about it?  Yeah me too.  We remain insulated in South Australia, as most of Australia has its act together and numbers are good.  Victoria though has dropped its bundle and their numbers are causing concern - a spike has been happening and we are all a little nervous, especially those of us who live right on the border.  Our government was going to open up the borders in a few weeks but yesterday it was announced that the borders would remain closed until it got a little more under control next door.  

Having said all of that, our numbers are still very, very low in Australia compared to you poor things over seas.  We always joke about missing out on everything here in Australia because we are so far away - let me tell you, that being so far away from all of this is very reassuring at the moment.

But Oh My Gosh I'm sick of hearing about it.  

So that's my update today.  Bright chirpy birds to show you.  A lovely day outside, all is good with the world.

See you soon!

Show and tell - Rainbow socks!

Hi lovely readers.

I'm feeling quite irritable today, so I looked through my draft posts to show you something cheery, to remind myself that I shouldn't be irritable.

No great dramas here really, a few sad behind the scenes things are happening (always there are sad behind the scenes things, but this is my happy place hopefully).

Its cold and drizzly, and South Australia is 'back', so that means all the demands on my time are back.  Which is all fine, but makes me grumpy sometimes.  

If the covid virus has shown me one thing, it's shown me that I really would love to be a hermit, and only do things that I want to do, when I want to do them.

However that's not how life works, and so I'm back to the grindstone again.  It is what it is, I guess.

So here's my rainbow socks!

The yarn is quite scratchy, and I haven't worn them yet for that reason.  I need to buy some woolmix and try to soften them, and hopefully that will sort the problem.  Other than that I don't know what to do to make them not itchy.  I'll have to google it.

How are things with you?  Are you grumpy like me?  Perhaps it's just the weather.

I'll be back in better humour another day, with luck!

Using up scraps

Hello lovely readers.

I'm still struggling with this new interface, though I'm sure it must have its benefits, otherwise why bother?

It's a cold, foggy day today and it's just the day to snuggle under a lovely crochet blanket and watch television.  However, that's not how I'll be spending my day, sadly.  Lots of jobs to do.  Always jobs to do.

I had a bag of small pieces of yard, all a chunky ply that didn't play well with other plies.  Couldn't quite bring myself to chuck it out so I crocheted up a hodgepodged hat that I'll donate.  Hopefully someone will get some use from it.

Looks okay, really.  As with all my caps, it looks hideous on me but there you go.

Happy crafting, lovely readers!

What's new? Oh, another new project

You would think that I would be able to stop starting new projects, but no.  Not to be.

I brought some lovely pastel fabrics online the other day, and when they arrived I realised they were horribly cheap.  What to do with them?

I decided to use an oldie but a goodie pattern, that I've always loved.  And I'm pleased with how the fabrics look together.

Such pretty colours, don't you think?

I'm using the new blogger interface and I Don't Like It.  So there.  They tinker with things that really aren't broken to begin with.  Why do that?

It's a glorious day outside today, and I need to do some work in the garden, so I'll say hello and goodbye for now.

Happy quilting!

Oh hi there...

How easy it is to just stop doing something.

I had grand visions of writing every day, which worked well while we were on isolation, but now with things relatively (I say that so very hesitantly) back to normal in my world I keep forgetting.

I don't know where my hours go, I really don't.  What I do know is that some days I don't even turn the lap top on, and that is really rather freeing.

So here in South Australia, we are slowly but surely continuing to let more things happen.  The girls have been back at school since term two started, which is almost a month now I think.  There were letters coming home saying 'We support you if you want to keep your children home' but the tone has changed now, and all South Australian children, unless showing signs of illness, are now expected back each day. 

My husband is back at his job, and mostly I am home alone.  Which I don't mind really if I'm honest.  All I seemed to do was cook and wash clothes - and as we weren't going ANYWHERE I don't know where they were wearing all these clothes?

I've been sewing small amounts of my day, and I'll post them more often as I try and get back to my daily blogging challenge.  But for now, I thought you might like to see where my grandmother went to school, ninety years ago.  We live in a dryland farming area, and there were little schools dotted everywhere throughout the region.  This was one of them.

It's fallen down completely now, which is understandable and a bit sad, but to be honest it's a lot more upright than some of these other schools where there is only a plaque commemorating the site.  As we were picking our way through the area, which is filled with broken cars and a whole lot of junk I didn't photograph, some ancient old lady from who knows where bailed my husband up, telling him we were trespassing.  There is literally nothing there for miles apart from the old school site and a church up the road and she scared us by appearing by what seemed out of nowhere.  She was very cross, but he did his usual old lady charmer thing (he's very good at that) and by the end of the conversation she was a font of knowledge.  Turns out she lives in the church, and this was her land.  So we exited gracefully.  

Here in country SA there are many little sites like this, where the church and the schoolhouse were built relatively close together.  A lot of the churches have become places to renovate and live in - I'm fairly sure she was well past renovating the church, but one day I suspect someone will do it up.  

But the school is past repair, I think.

That's my history lesson for you today.  If I could spend all my days researching history I would be.  When I'm not sewing, of course.

Talk to you soon!