Circles

Recently our quilt group was given this year's non-compulsory challenge......and the theme is "Circles".  Long and loud were the groans from a very small number of people, but not this little black duck!  It will finally give the impetus to dig out a long-languishing UFO, the black and white Winding Ways blocks.  They were mentioned in a post way back when I was quite a new blogger, so to save you (and me) looking back that far here they are again.

 Several years ago I attended a workshop to make Winding Ways because it was a block I wanted to try, and going to a class means there is more chance of that.  I really like the graphic look of just black and white, and managed to make nine blocks during and just after the workshop.

 Some more fabrics......since this was taken a few fabrics have been removed from the pile because they weren't black or white enough.

We had the option of purchasing acrylic templates for rotary cutting, and when it makes construction so much easier - why wouldn't you?  Once the pieces are cut, they are swapped round so each block had both lighter and darker fabrics.  I kept cutting for a while, then those blocks were made up.  Now there are 23 completed blocks and I would like to make seven rows of seven blocks, so another 26 are needed (how's that for mathematical genius, eh?)......four of which have already been cut.

I am thinking about a 2in solid black border around the blocks, then a row of half-blocks for a pieced border to finish the quilt.  Possibly.  Eventually.

The fiddly-diddly applique block has been glued down using fusible web and still needs to be stitched.  I usually use matching thread and machine buttonhole stitch, but for this I decided to use poly thread so the whole thing can be stitched without having to constantly change colours.  Every time I go into my sewing room it's there looking at me, I just want to get it done so I can go onto my own much more interesting projects but really don't feel enthused about it, and the heat has fried my brain anyway which makes it difficult to concentrate on anything.

Ah well.  The quicker I get to it, the quicker it will be finished.

Last Wednesday I took my not-very-lovely aging skin to the doctor and pointed to a few blemishes.  No worries, he says, they are just freckles (I have so many freckles I couldn't begin to count them) but the ones on the back of your right hand and the outside of your left elbow are sun spots.  We can leave them or I can burn them off, says he.  Get rid of them, says I.  So he did.  Geez, that hurts.  I'm sure giving birth wasn't that painful.  Now they are blistered and the blisters keep leaking......sorry about that, it's gross I know, but that's what is happening.....but once they are healed they will be gone forever.  The back of my hand isn't too bad although it does get bumped occasionally (and leaks again), but the one just above the pointy bit of my left elbow is not in a good place.  You don't realise how much you lean on your elbow until you can't.

February is nearly over, and it has been the hottest driest February ever for the Small Smoke.  Our maximum temperature has been three degrees hotter than average and our monthly rainfall total is way out of reach - only about six drops have fallen this month.  Surprisingly, though, the minimum temperature has been a degree cooler than the long term February average!  We're hoping for better weather in March and maybe, just possibly, perhaps even some rain.

"To remove freckles.
A good freckle lotion is made of honey, one ounce, mixed with one pint of luke-warm water.  Apply when cold."

Sounds easy, doesn't it?  I am assuming that one is meant to apply the lotion once it has cooled down, not in winter time only.

Enjoy your days!

New skirt added to the sumptuous wardrobe selection

The new skirt is done, finished and has been worn, once with a bright blue top, and again with this green top.  The skirt silhouette is more flared than it looks here.  It has been given some lovely compliments!

The closest I will ever come to taking a selfie.  It doesn't count when one's head is chopped off, does it?

Next project(s) will be to make two blocks for my group's blocks of the month which are made into charity quilts, one is pieced in autumn colours and the other is fiddly diddly applique with unbelievably teensy weensy pieces.  I'm just trying to work up enough enthusiasm to get them done.

Ah well.  Once they're finished I can get on with my own much more interesting projects.

We have a sitter organised for our trip away next month, and we have been very careful to check her references.  We will be meeting up with her for coffee next week and don't anticipate the trouble we had with our previous sitter - this woman is older and seems much more responsible.  The troublesome sitter left a few things here and has never come back for them; her family lives not far away from us so we will drop them off one day, and wipe our hands of her forever.  We don't wish her any ill, we just want nothing more to do with her.

Our newly landscaped front garden is struggling in the heat, but it looks so much better than it did before!  When the weather finally cools down there are a couple of terracotta pots on the back verandah which need something interesting in them, we will see what pretty things we can find.  I have a few ideas......something involving flowers and perfume, perhaps.

Recently I was bemoaning to Kevin the lack of decent programs on TV.  We don't subscribe to cable but we still have access to 20 or more free channels.  However it doesn't seem to matter how much choice there is - if something doesn't appeal to you you aren't going to watch it, are you?  Repeat after repeat after repeat of British police dramas (there can't be too many people left alive in some of those villages, can there?), unreal so-called reality shows (I don't care if you think you can cook better than someone else, or pout better when given a bad score, or turn on the waterworks when your souffle falls flat in front of the judges, really I just don't care), competitive home renovation shows (take out the competitive aspect and they would become much more interesting), sport, sport and more bloody sport, How We Won The War over and over and over again (doesn't matter which war)......honestly, if our television set were to suddenly self-destruct I wouldn't care.

And don't even get me started on the commercials......

I don't think Kevin quite agreed though, because playing with the television remote seems programmed into the average bloke's psyche.  If what you are staring at (as distinct from watching) doesn't appeal, there is always the off button - but that is a button the average bloke seems to have trouble hitting, yes?

"Australians indulge and excel in all kinds of manly sports, and healthy and invigorating pastimes, games and amusements - boys and girls at a very early age are adepts in nearly every kind of out-door bodily exercise, and would seem to have inherited a natural aptitude for attaining in early youth proficiency in nearly all the sports for which their Anglo-Saxon forefathers have been famed."

What about their foremothers?  And not a word about television, you notice - it would have been but a distant unattainable dream to the good folk of 1885.

Enjoy your days!

It's still summer here

Roll on autumn, I am over heat......we're ready for some coolth here......

When we returned from Canada summer had hit with a vengeance.  The temperature on our final day was 9 deg C, it was cool, overcast, a little drizzly.  Just nice.  We arrived home to temperatures 30 degrees hotter with no chance to acclimatise, and I haven't recovered yet.

Just when it becomes unbearable some of our pics roll round on the computer, and instantly I feel cooler.

 Kew Gardens is a park between the Lake Ontario boardwalk and Queen Street East, which goes for miles and miles and miles.  (the street, not the park)  The day we visited was really nice, the view even more so with changing colours.

 View from a friend's window in Goderich, just imagine waking to that every day of your life!  Although right now that hillside is bare of colour and the river has ice floating on it, I have seen my friend's photos on facebook.  Goderich is a town I could live in, it has gorgeous scenery, a really good music shop (where I helped the Canadian economy just a little) but sadly no quilt shop.  There used to be one but the owners retired and hadn't found a buyer, hopefully one might re-open in future.  I left some dollars behind me on our last visit in return for some fabric and a pattern and other things in the quilt shop......probably just as well it wasn't there last year......

Yes indeedy, we did see snow in Canada.  All six pellets of it.  I look at this and remember how cold it was that day, and straight away I feel cooler.

However I have noticed that some trees hereabouts are starting to get that late summer faded look, and the Virginia creeper on the fence of a local sports field is changing to bronze......so perhaps summer will eventually end, woo hoo!  And what a happy woman I shall be then!!

Under the sewing machine needle as we speak is a new skirt.  While in Canberra I visited a quilt/craft shop I hadn't been to before (unlikely as that sounds - we've been visiting Canberra for nigh on 20 years) looking for a black and white print to make a new skirt.  There was one fabric I liked but didn't quite love enough to buy, then I saw another.....and it was lurve at first sight, a black and grey floral print on a white background.  My favourite skirt pattern is a flared A-line with a hip yoke, and for this skirt I cut the front and back, usually one piece each, into three panels which are then joined with fine black piping.  It's looking very gorgeous if I do say so meself (she says modestly), and all my solid colour tops will hopefully look good with it - teal, blue, green, red, yellow, orange.  Not pink though.  Definitely no pink.

Years ago when I was younger (and much more slenderer......sigh......) I used to be totally fearless when it came to dressmaking.  I would blithely swap the sleeves of one pattern with another, change the necklines, add bits here and take them away there, and ended up with some really interesting clothes.  I'm a self-taught dressmaker and no one ever told me "you shouldn't do that, it won't work" so I did it.  The older I have become the safer I play it with clothing and that's a shame, isn't it?  Perhaps this re-done skirt may lead on to bigger and better things; I'm thinking it could be a good idea for using a featured piece of a special fabric, the three panels could be confined to the front with a one-piece back as per the original pattern.

Make no mistake: I'm a chickybabe no longer, I don't have gorgeous legs, I was never tall and willowy (thanks to my not-very-tall parents and other ancestors), but in our summer a skirt is so much cooler than pants, so I wear skirts.

Last week our uke group started up again.  We were all pleased to be back, certainly I was - I have missed our music making!

We've also had the front garden re-landscaped; since our lovely big tree came down in a storm nearly two years ago the garden has changed.  Plants which needed the tree's shelter were struggling while others enjoyed the lack of competition and were threatening to take over the entire universe.  The roses are gone (yay!), donated to our neighbour Elaine who loves roses, and the crepe myrtle which was infested with some sort of mould has also gone because we didn't love it either.  In their places are native plants which will, hopefully, grow well in our hot dry climate.  Pics will be taken soon, if I get up early enough.....summer days are sunny and the sun's glare after mid-morning makes it difficult to get good pictures.

"But a love of dress has its perils for weak minds.  Uncontrolled by good sense, and stimulated by personal vanity, it becomes a temptation at first, and then a curse.  When it is indulged in to the detriment of better employments, and beyond the compass of means, it cannot be too severely condemned.  It then becomes criminal."

Goodness me......I hope I'm not that vain!  One can't help wondering what the ladies of 1885 would have thought about our modern clothes?  Perhaps, after the initial shock, they might like them - our clothing is softer and easier to wear, especially as we no longer wear corsets.

Enjoy your days!

One-twelfth of the year has gone, you know......

.....never to return......not this year, anyway.

We had a busy hot January , first the trip to Canberra to see the family (who are all well.....Euan is now crawling and we suspect he will be a late walker like his father was) and to see a wonderful exhibition of works by Tom Roberts, one of the best shows I have ever seen.  Paintings that many Australians know well, such as his paintings of sheep shearers, were hanging - they were painted just a couple of hours north of here.  'Bailed up' was also hanging in the exhibition and if I could have snuck out of the exhibition with just one painting under my arm, that would be the one.  It's so evocative of the Australian bush in summer that it took my breath away.

There was a 'play room' attached to the exhibition where one could dress like some of the women in Roberts' paintings to take a selfie (something I have never done in my life and don't intend to start doing now) but I tried on the hats anyway......oh my......one flash number from Edwardian times in black with a wide veiled brim and a red feather was very oooh-la-la, I liked it, then I tried on a smaller-brimmed black bonnet......well......not so good, I looked like a Salvation Army lassie of old, and the white wide-brimmed hat also did nothing for me.  White has never been my best colour.  But it was fun, it's been a long time since I played dress-ups.

From which you can tell that, although seeing the family was good, that exhibition was the highlight of my trip away.  Sorry, family.  That's how it was.  Especially after being told by our son and his wife and child, as we handed over Christmas gifts for all and a birthday present for Euan "sorry, we didn't get around to getting you a Christmas present".  I con't care about the lack of a present.  I do care that you couldn't be bothered to find five minutes in your oh-so-busy lives to at least make the gesture.

Anyway.  Moving right along.

Yesterday the last stitches were taken on a project bought last year in Canada!

 A couple of days before we left to fly home the friends with whom we were staying on Vancouver Island took us for a drive from Victoria 'up island' to Courtenay.  The weather which had been so nice the day before turned cold, windy and rainy and, each time we stopped (there are several quilt shops along that drive, you know, and my friend is a quilter too) we dashed very quickly from the car into the warmth of the store.  The husbands had more sense - they waited in the car!  We had a lovely evening with our friends' friends, and next day drove back to Victoria in slightly better weather.

One place we visited on the way back was Parksville, and in Sweet Pea Quilting I saw the kit for this table topper.  The dark colours of the fabrics reminded me of our drive the day before with dark waves crashing on the shore and boats rocking at their moorings, so it came home with me.  Pattern is 'The Centrepiece Tablemat' by Sweet Treasures.

These pics were taken on the way home......waves were still churning and the wind was still cold, although not as fierce as on the previous day.

 As you can see, there wasn't much sun that day either!

I'm glad I wasn't out on the water in a boat on either day.  We left Swartz Bay on the ferry for Tsawassen the following day and had a good crossing......but the day after that, the weather turned so nasty that all B.C. Ferries were cancelled, including the one we would have taken had we stayed one more day!  That was our trip back to the airport to fly home so, while I'm sorry we couldn't have stayed longer, I'm glad our travel plans weren't disrupted.

It's good to make a more complex and/or larger project, but sometimes a smaller one with some mindless sewing and not much brain power required is Just The Very Thing for hot weather when the heat fries one's brain, and it has been hot......so one's brain is well and truly fried.

We have survived another country music festival.  The whole town is taken over for much of January by country music fans and it is fun, but it's also good to be able to just go inside and shut the door on it all.  We had friends staying this year, a woman connected with one of the 'fringe' events and her teenage daughter; their billets were supposedly already arranged by someone, but the bottom fell out of those plans and we offered them beds here.  It was very nice to have them and we have made the offer for next year too.  My friend and I had a little music session one day, she played my baritone uke (she plays guitar and banjo) while I played my tenor uke......well......I have never heard the two ukes played together before and it was magical.  They were made by the luthier out of the same woods, and they blend beautifully.  If there was a way to play both ukes at once I would do it.

"True hospitality.
Try to make your guests feel at home; and do this, not by urging them in empty words to do so, but by making their stay as pleasant as possible, at the same time being careful to put out of sight any trifling trouble or inconvenience they may cause you."

I hope - in fact, I'm sure - that our friend and her daughter enjoyed their stay here, and it was no trouble or inconvenience to have them; quite the contrary, it was a delight.

Enjoy your days!