A very cute WOW....and an award!

My blog has received an award, isn't that lovely! And as one of the meanings of 'liebster' is lovely it seems appropriate. Bev of Quilton passed it to me, and says nice things about me on her blog too. Thank you Bev.....I shall pass it on in turn.

And thank you to my friend Sandra who made me a wombat, isn't it cute! Made from felt with Christmas trimmings, but too nice to only have out at Christmas time. Shall find a place for this little feller where I can enjoy him/her/it (they're a bit hard to tell, really) all year round. Perhaps I need a wombat tree.
It's nearly two weeks since I have dropped pearls of wisdom in my blog because I have been crook. As crook as Rookwood in fact, and considering Rookwood is a cemetery that's pretty crook. I was struck down by The Dreaded Lurgy........not the flu, not a cold, not sinusitis, not an allergy, probably a bit of all of them. However I am on the road to recovery now, thank you for asking, and once the cough settles down more and I can sleep better at night I will be jumping out of my skin again instead of feebly hopping. The headlight on my forehead is healing nicely, and should soon be completely gone.

Today I noticed that a few leaves on our backyard tree are starting to turn yellow, yippee! as are some other leaves I have noticed on my travels around town. That means that summer will be off and away before too long, we hope, to be replaced by much more pleasant autumn. Apparently it hasn't been a very hot summer as far as summers go, although tomorrow and Tuesday are forecast to be very hot......37 deg C, that's nearly 100 deg F for those who aren't metricated. Some people are rejoicing because, they say, summer ends tomorrow and autumn begins on 1st March.........rubbish, say I.......autumn begins when it begins, and not because someone years ago decided to make an arbitrary date of it. The seasons don't change suddenly anyway, it's a gradual process. When I was at school a thousand years ago we learnt that seasons change around the time of the equinox, and that's a few weeks away yet.

We think the backyard tree may be an apricot tree although we didn't get any fruit from it, it only had a few blossoms and the birds got to the few fruit which appeared before I could identify them. Bummer, because apricots are my very favourite fruit......I love love love them.....and the season for stone fruit has just about finished now, so it's several months until apricot time again.

For several days I couldn't even pick up a needle and thread, it was all I could do to get out of bed (and every time I did I was soon back in it again), but today I am preparing the pieces for my contribution to a block of the month for my quilt group. We take it in turns to choose a block, which is then used to make quilts for the local Ronald Macdonald House. This months is a cute but somewhat fussy variation on Sunbonnet Sue, however everything different is a learning experience isn't it, and I haven't made this block before. Probably won't make it again either. But I shall do the best I can.

Have you noticed for a few years now that almost every bride and her female attendants wear strapless gowns? For goodness' sake, why? If they are well padded then there are unflattering little rolls poking over the top and sides, and if they are somewhat under-endowed then the dress looks as though it would remain rigid even if its wearer turned a circle inside it. For what it's worth, I have a theory..........back in The Good Old Days when life was a little more formal young (and not so young) women wore well-made cocktail or evening gowns, sometimes even strapless ones, and they knew how to walk and move in them. These days strapless dresses and tops are worn without much in the way of 'underneaths', so the wearer spends her time hunched over in case........quelle horreur!........that little sliver of fabric should slip, exposing her all. Nowadays the wedding dress is possibly the first formal gown worn by many a young woman who hasn't had the previous experience of dances and balls while similarly attired, and.....to put it quite frankly.......she doesn't know how to wear it.

"The wedding dress.

A full bridal costume should be white from head to foot. The dress may be of silk, heavily corded, moire antique, satin or plain silk, merino, alpaca, crape, lawn or muslin. The veil may be of lace, tulle or illusion, but it must be long and full. It may or may not descend over the face. Orange blossoms or other white flowers and maiden blush roses should form the bridal wreath and bouquet. The dress is high and the arms covered. Slippers of white satin and white kid gloves complete the dress."

There we have it, the dress is high and the arms covered. Not strapless. And not looking like something one would wear to bed either. Wonder how many of today's girls would wear a dress like that to her wedding?

Enjoy your days!

Ouch ouch ouch.......

........today I went to the doctor about a little 'thing' on my forehead, and sure enough it was a little lesion that had to be burnt off. By gosh it stings. My forehead looks as though someone has punched it hard or I walked into a door. I feel like Cyclops with that eye in the middle of his forehead. Unfortunately that's the price those of us with northern European ancestry pay for living in sunny Australia. For the next week or so, while it heals, I will not look as lovely as usual.

So to cheer me up you are all invited round for a cuppa and a nice piece of cake. I'll even get out the good china. This very pretty set (four cups, saucers and plates, plus a creamer and sugar basin) were inherited when my mother died several years ago, and I think may have been a wedding present when my parents married in 1946. The design is "English Rose" by Royal Doulton and possibly dates from the 1930s. The oh-so-glam tea cosy was made by my mother's Aunt Laura, my grandmother's sister. I have some of her tatted lace, isn't it delicate? The lining is pale green rayon taffeta and is ruched over the curve, there is a padded lining of white cotton inside.

The fabric which suffered a colour run last week is still ever-so-slightly pale green. So I have put it away in the stash cupboard for the time being, and bought new fabric for the challenge quilt. Pretty though it is, for this quilt I don't want pale green, I want white. It will be worth it, when it's all done.

We have no wildlife reports this week. Haven't seen the blue-tongue lizard again, and the frog(s) have been quiet too. But the garden is growing well, and some of the decisions as to what to keep and what to get rid of are gradually being made. We have been here now for nine months so we don't think there will be many more garden surprises - soon the plants will be thinking about their winter sleep.

Did you all have a lovely Valentine's Day? We went out to dinner to celebrate Kevin's birthday, Aussies of our generation don't generally do the Valentine's Day thing. It seems to be bigger with the younger folk and is really pushed at them by the media.

Now that's over we will be bombarded with Easter......chocolate, yum.......hot cross buns, yum again...........

It was surprising how many of you don't do retreats either, for the same reasons that I don't. Makes me feel better about not going, as reaction from several of those who will be attending made me think I must be a bit weird for not wanting to share a bedroom with several strangers. But that's how I am, and that's how you are too.

"If a gentleman calls upon a lady, his duty and his respect for her demand that he shall appear not only in good clothes, but with well-combed hair, exquisitely clean hands, well-trimmed beard or cleanly shaven face, while the lady will not show herself in an untidy dress or disheveled hair. They should appear at their best."

Untidy and disheveled? Doesn't sound like any of us, does it?

Enjoy your days!

WOW for February

We haven't had a wombat for a long time, have we? Not since the computer issues late last year. So here is a very little one, or a little one and an even littler one. They are really tiny, the big one is only a couple of inches high.

This gorgeous feller is named Darwin, isn't he something? Has eyelashes to die for, too.......
We met him last year on Open Day at a local alpaca farm. When I first saw him I thought he had an interesting grey fleck to his fleece, but on closer inspection it was some kind of grass seed caught there instead. If you click on the picture it should enlarge, and you can see why we were deceived.
A couple of mums and bubs. Little alpacas are called crias, and are really sweet. And fluffy. And gorgeous.......I would love a pet alpaca.

Remember the circles I ran around in last week, buying extra fabric for the challenge quilt because I was working with the wrong measurements? The sorry saga continues. This morning I overlocked the edges of a few pieces of fabric, both quilting and dressmaking, to pre-wash them. I don't always bother with pre-washing quilt fabric, but thought I would this time. There was a the spotted background fabric, the striped border fabric, a piece of brown fabric for the border of another quilt, a piece of pale blue and white cotton batiste, and a piece of jade green poly/cotton blend. To save water and power (we're always being told to save energy, aren't we) I threw them all in the washing machine together.........

and the colour of the jade green fabric ran.......

and the only fabric it ran onto was the white-background-with-black-spots fabric for the challenge quilt.......

.....so now it is pale-green-splotched white-background-with-black-spots........

Wouldn't it rot your socks.

Please don't tell me what I did wrong, I already know. I should have (but forgot) to use a dye magnet. I probably shouldn't have thrown so many different fabrics all in together. Etc........etc...... There is a wonderful product which removes colour run, it comes in two formulations, one for white fabrics only not to be used on coloured fabrics under any circumstances whatsoever, and one for coloured fabrics. There are three packets of it in the laundry cupboard, all the same. Guess which one.....yes, the wrong one. But I have some Synthrapol which is used to rinse out excess dye when dyeing fabrics, so I am washing the offending fabric in it right now. At present I am at home sans automobile because it is with Kevin at the bowls club, so I can't even take a quick trip to the supermarket for some of the right product and I am buggered if I am going to walk 45 minutes there and 45 minutes home again. If the fabric is totally wrecked then there will be another trip to the Big Fabric And Homewares Store for more. I am determined to make this quilt and equally determined to use that particular fabric, because it is so right.

Moving right along.

We have had a certain amount of wildlife this week. There was a green tree frog on the outside of a window early in the week, which entertained Bianca The Beautiful (but slightly brainless) a great deal. A few weeks ago we had one inside, erk. We convinced it to leave. Then a couple of evenings ago we wondered why a bird was acting strangely in the backyard and why Bianca was so agitated at the same time, and found a very large blue tongue lizard crawling along the edge of the garden. Kevin, who is much braver than I am, picked it up and brought it over to the window to show Bianca. She was inside the house and the lizard was outside, but they hissed at each other through the window screen and honour was satisfied on both sides. We haven't seen it since but apparently they are active at this time of year, so we may see it again.

Yesterday we met the new cat which recently moved next door, seems it is an outside cat. When we suggested it leave and go home it pounced on a bird, as bold as brass, so Kevin squirted it with the hose. It came around later and was squirted again. We will continue to squirt it whenever we see it. Our cats are inside cats for a reason - this is an area with many birds, and some of them are using our backyard as a place to socialise. We like that. We have a bowl of water in the shade of a shrub and today I have seen some birds having a drink - first time I have seen it being used. If next door's killing machine keeps using our yard as its personal buffet we will lose the birds, and that would be very sad. We like cats but their place is not out in the Australian bush.

The washed-again fabric has just come out of the washing machine and it is still streaked with green. Time for Plan B, which is the product suitable for coloured fabric dye runs when I can get to the shop to buy it later. Plan C is to buy more fabric.

Next week I plan to ask at a local fabric shop about sewing classes. Now so much how to join fabric by machine, that's easy - but how to alter a pattern to fit me, now that my shape is the middle-aged barrel. When I was svelter I had no trouble with patterns, but such is not the case now. Ready-made clothes are getting rather unexciting, do you think? They are fine if one is a chickybabe (although even when I was a chicky I was never a babe) or if one is 'a working woman of a certain age', but as one is neither of those and one needs some new clothes, one is jolly well going to make one's own. There are some very nice fabrics in my stash and I have a machine, and the skill to cut out and assemble the fabric, just need a pattern to fit properly. Could have a go myself at home but it's something that is probably easier with a helper.

One of the local groups is planning its annual weekend away in a few months, but I can't see myself going. This may sound very "princess and the pea" but the accommodation is in dormitories and I have never shared a bedroom in my life, except with the blokes I have married. (there have been two, don't ask, it's a long story) Because I didn't have sisters, only brothers, I had a bedroom to myself as a child, didn't go to a boarding school and there were no school or holiday camps in those days. Seems there is no possibility of a room to oneself at this weekend away, so I would prefer not to go. But that's OK.

"To appear at all times neat, clean and tidy is demanded of every well-bred person. The dress may be plain, rich or extravagant, but there must be a neatness and cleanliness of the person. Whether a lady is possessed of few or many personal attractions, it is her duty at all times to appear tidy and clean, and to make oneself as comely and attractive as circumstances and surroundings will permit. The same may be said of a gentleman."

Comely........attractive......sounds like me, for sure.

Enjoy your days!

Occasionally something gets finished..........

.......even if it's not very big. When we visited Toronto, Canada, in October 2009 Rose Marie and I attended the Creativ Festival and a few things caught my eye - this was one. I'm ashamed to say I can't remember which store I bought it from! The pattern is by Quilter's Line, Markdale, Ontario, but when I googled it to add the link here I had no luck so I don't know if it is still in existence. The scene is Old Baldy in Beaver Valley, Ontario. It's nearly all finished, just sewing the hanging sleeve down on the back now and then it will have a label added. Size is 15in square.

Love those autumn colours, as you can see! I am using these Bear's Paw blocks as 'leaders and enders' a la Bonnie of Quiltville. There are 16 pairs of half-square triangles in each block, so joining them in between other sewing is not too tedious. Another five blocks are cut ready to be sewn too. Every now and then I have a play in EQ7 with this block but haven't yet decided on a final layout. The backgrounds are mostly tan/beige/light gold and the other fabrics are all leaf prints. I was going to call it Barely Autumn....Bear's Paw blocks in autumn prints, get it?......but have decided I like Maple Leaf Rag instead. So Maple Leaf Rag it is. Many of my quilts have musical names.
Haven't shown this for a while. These baskets are all hand-pieced and have been my portable project for nigh on five years now. Yesterday block number 148 was finished, and there will be 225 altogether set 15 rows across by 15 down; blocks are 6in finished, different floral prints with white on white prints.
There is no hurry to finish this as I am enjoying the journey, I'm not in a hurry to get to the destination. Hand-piecing is very relaxing. Besides, I haven't decided on a name.

The other day I decided to print out templates from EQ7 for the unusual shapes on the current challenge quilt, the Grand Plan is to tape them on a ruler to cut out. When they printed I said to myself, I said "Self, these shapes look a bit small to me" I said, and sure enough when I checked the block dimensions, they were for a 9in block and I need to make my blocks 12in. Bummer. When I drew the block I made it 12in, then when I set it into the quilt it must have defaulted to 9in and I didn't notice......so it wasn't changed........so when I printed out fabric quantities they were wrong, and there wouldn't have been enough of the spotted background fabric. Bummer again. So off I go again to the Big Fabric And Housewares Store where it was recently purchased and nearly had conniptions when I couldn't find it on the shelf, but fortunately it had hopped over to another shelf to visit with its fabric friends so I bought another half metre. So you can all breathe a sigh of relief because everything is good again. I have shopped from my stash for the bright fabrics for the windmills and pinwheels, hopefully it will look good. Its title - "Windmills of Your Mind"....."Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel"......that's how I felt when I realised that I had been working on the wrong size.

It's hot again but after all it is summer.....and it is Australia......and Australian summers are hot. Fact of life. Before we know it autumn will be on us, won't that be lovely? Then I won't be whingeing about the heat.

I'll whinge about people instead.

As it is summer many blokes and girls too are getting around with their bare arms and chests hanging out, so we can't help noticing that tattoos are popular. Now folks, I know your body is your body and you can do what you want with it (up to a point), but honestly....who ever told you that a whole arm tattoo looked good? Or both arms, most of your chest and a leg or two covered with tattoos? And while we are on the subject, why do some blokes have that little tuft of hair on their chin? Can't they grow a proper beard? Looks like they were eating gravy and dribbled some down their face. I don't mind a bloke being clean-shaven, I don't mind a bloke with a beard, but what's with 'designer stubble'? All I can think of is beard rash and we know how uncomfortable that can be, don't we, girls? Blokes who shave their heads don't do it for me either; yes, we know that some blokes lose their hair and some don't. It's a fact of nature. Don't shave your head and pretend that your hairline is not receding, you're not fooling anyone. To say nothing of the risk of skin cancer.

End of whinge, thank you for listening. Feel free to add your own.

"Satire and ridicule.

Young persons appear ridiculous when satirizing or ridiculing books, people or things. Opinions to be worth the consideration of others should have the advantage of coming from mature persons. Cultivated people are not in the habit of resorting to such weapons as satire and ridicule. They find too much to correct in themselves to indulge in coarse censure of the conduct of others, who may not have had advantages equal to their own."

Satire and ridicule? A cultivated person like myself? Perish the thought.

Enjoy your days!