Back in the business of construction

Two more houses have joined the neighbourhood.

A fabric which has always reminded me of conversation lollies - remember them? - with their 'I heart U', cats on what may have been a hot tin roof at night, and gardens with pink flowers.  A couple more have also been cut out.

Leftover tumblers are still being joined for a panel on the back of 'Why Not'.  It's an easy project at night in front of TV, without requiring too much brain power.

Some half square triangles have been made in autumn prints and lighter background fabrics for my (eventual) autumn quilt.  Feeding them through the machine is wonderfully mindless sewing, then they have to be trimmed and pressed.  Trimming can get tedious so I try not to do hundreds at a time; there are over 300 required for the quilt, but I am trying to do smaller batches because my back rebels at having to stand and trim for too long at a time.

We haven't had rain for a couple of weeks, the grass which until recently was green and lush is drying off again, but there is rain forecast for the coming week.  Fingers crossed some of it falls on us.

Absolutely no progress has been made on clearing out the pantry, it's been a bit too warm.  That will happen in due course.

So, as you can see, it's been a good week for doing very little.  We haven't been out at all, apart from a little hunting and gathering and a drug run.  As the weather starts to cool and energy comes back, there will be no stopping us.  It's now been more than a month since the summer solstice, and we are noticing that mornings are darker than they were not so long ago.  It's the beginning of the end of summer, although it will hang around for quite a while yet.

Speaking of TV, there isn't much to watch that appeals to us......or to me, anyway.  Kevin likes to watch some sport which doesn't bother me, so long as he turns the sound off (those commentators can get very loud at times; I can't stand their screaming and the noise of the spectators), we have a few renno porn shows that we enjoy, and that's about it.  We like some police/mystery shows but most are on their umpteenth repeat; once is good, twice is maybe not too bad, but we don't need to watch it three or more times when we already know who dunnit and any surprise is lost.  Having a lot of channels - compared to years gone by we do, even without cable - doesn't always guarantee that there will be something you want to watch, does it?  

So the 'off' button is clicked and the radio turned back on, either to a classical station or to my new favourite, an internet folk music station.

Continuing on:

"In private families it should be observed as a rule to meet together at all meals of the day around one common table, where the same rules of etiquette should be rigidly enforced, as though each member of the family were sitting at a stranger's table.  It is only by this consistent practice of the rules of good behaviour at home, that good manners become easy when any of them go abroad."

This is true.  At times it might be easy to take the path of least resistance and let everybody do whatever they wish, but you tell yourself that they will - hopefully - thank you one day.

Enjoy your days!

And - it's done!

My quilt top is finished!

You can count the full and half tumblers if you wish, or you can take my word that there are 792.  Add the eight border strips, and there are exactly 800 pieces in this quilt.

The narrow dark stripe ws placed along the inner edge of the outer border, and the inner border fabric will also be used for binding.

One of the four mitred borders.  I don't want to fritter away mitred borders on a quilt which is unworthy of them; however, I think this quilt is worthy.  It was taken to quilt group yesterday for show and tell......when I unfolded it and held it up with Kate's help there were gasps of "oh, Jennifer!" which I am taking as a compliment.

It's difficult to find somewhere in our house to photograph a large quilt but pelmet brackets at the top of the window meant there was somewhere to prop the pinned-to-a-sheet top for a picture......so that's where it had to be.  Both inner and outer blinds were closed behind the quilt, but light still comes in unless it's night.

A name popped into my head this morning almost as a joke: "Why Not?"  I couldn't begin to count the number of people who asked me why I was sewing by hand, to which my reply was inevitably  - "why not?"  The more I think about it, the more I like it.

No houses were made this week as it has been quite busy, but I have hopes of doing better next week.  Some of the leftover tumblers have been joined for the backing.  That's about it.

We have had a small piece of excitement in our miserable lives.  Last night we actually went to a concert, a real concert with real musicians playing on a real stage for us!  Audience numbers were limited, we had to sit stay (like well-trained dogs) unless we were going for food, drink or bathroom, no singing along or jigging around.  Everyone behaved as they should, and it was a fun night.

Here's your piece of useless information for the week:  did you know that if you forget about a large tin of apricot halves in your pantry for goodness knows how long, there's a chance it may explode?  We found that out recently.  One evening we were sitting quietly when we heard a really loud bang.  We couldn't find the cause; there were no storms so it wasn't thunder, and we forgot about it.  Last Sunday night I reached into the pantry for a jar of olives (I like olives on my home-made salmon pizza) and noticed it was dripping as I took it to the bench.  Olives were decanted to another container, glass jar was checked......no, no cracks.  Check pantry and......woops.  The ring pull lid on the tin of fruit was half open, obviously the cause of the explosion.  Fermented apricot juice on the wall, on the shelf......not good......it has now been cleaned, but the pantry needs to be emptied, de-cluttered and re-organised, a task long overdue.  Needless to say, 'use by' dates on cans, bottles and packets will be checked in the process.

It was, as far as explosions go, quite an almighty one.

More on table manners, continuing from our last.

"Even when persons habitually eat alone, they should pay due regard to the rules of etiquette, for by so doing they form habits of ease and gracefulness which are requisite in refined circles; otherwise they speedily acquire rude and awkward habits which they cannot shake off without great difficulty, and which are at times embarrassing to themselves and their friends."

Hopefully while you are not embarrassing your friends, they in turn are not embarrassing you.

Enjoy your days!

Stitching on.....and on......

The border fabrics for my tumbler quilt have been stroked, fondled and pressed ready for cutting.  The inner borders are cut but not yet joined, while the outer border fabric has been drooled on a few times because it it so gorgeous.....and so right.  Cutting will have to be done one piece at a time; no layering and cutting all four together, because the stripe pattern needs to be correct.

The inner border is called 'Broken Stripe', from the 'Sycamore' range by Jan Patek, in a golden brown colour.  The outer border is a leafy stripe from 'Old Cambridge Pike' by Barbara Brackman, and although they are from different ranges by different designers I think they hold hands quite nicely.

The inner border will be 1-1/2 in wide, the outer border will be......I'm not quite sure, it will depend where the stripes are cut but probably a bit over six inches.  Each leaf repeat is a smidgeon over two inches wide.

Those borders will, of course, be mitred.  I firmly believe that every quilter has so many mitred borders in them and when you use them up they are gone forever, so best to use them wisely.  Happily I still have a few left.

This week's houses, a purple house and an aquatic house with fish.

A name for the house quilt has popped into my head - "There Goes The Neighbourhood", what do you reckon?  It's probably not very original but I like it, and it's name of a CD in our collection.  (Remember CDs?  Yes, we still use them, we haven't gotten into the downloading thing at all)  

The tumbler quilt still needs a name, but no doubt a dazzling thought will occur to me one day like a brilliant flash of lightning, and that will that.

Flower basket blocks are being joined into larger pieces......perhaps one day it, too, will be a finished top.

Speaking of lightning - we have had a lot this week!  A few nights ago we were trying to drop off to sleep (the neighbour's younger dog has been very barky because his people are away, we're the dog feeders until they return) when a storm which had been lighting up the valley for an hour arrived with a vengeance.  Much lighting, rumbling thunder rolling around the hills, strong wind and - for a very brief while - heavy rain.  It was quite dramatic, but didn't last long.  The following evening just after 6pm following a few quiet rumbles there was a very loud clap of thunder, one of the loudest I have ever heard in my life.  It sounded as though it was right overhead.  Bianca was quite perturbed (as was I; actually, it scared the living daylights out of me), the kangaroos on the hill were also agitated and were hopping hither and yon.  A few drops of rain, a bit of wind, and it was gone - we checked for damage, fortunately there was none.  

We are going ahead with planning a trip to Canberra at Easter, although there won't be a folk festival.  However we will still be able to spend time with family, and hopefully with friends, and enjoy some autumn weather.  We will take a different route home to meet a distant cousin with whom I have been in touch; we have only met once before, so we plan to catch up again.  Our mothers were first cousins so - I think - that makes us second cousins, and we share the same middle name.

Continuing on from the last posting on table manners and etiquette:

"To be thoroughly at ease at such times is only acquired by the habitual practice of good manners at the table, and is the result of proper home training.  It is the duty of parents to accustom their children, by example as well as by precept, to be attentive and polite to each other at every meal, as well as to observe proper rules of etiquette, and if they do so, they need never fear that they will be rude or awkward when they go abroad."

Yes indeed.  Practice makes perfect, whether it is good table manners or anything else.

Enjoy your days!

Ta da, whoopy do, yippee!

And all that stuff!

The final stitch was taken a few nights ago.  To save you the trouble of counting, I can tell you there are 792 pieces.  Sideways:

It still needs borders, but as I am not a complete and total masochist they will be done by machine.

The feeling is tremendous; when the thread was cut after the final stitch I sat back and patted myself on the back.  My shoulder is still feeling the pain.  The cutting was started when we were in our 'home away from home' following the Second Great Flood of 2017 but lapsed after we moved home; later the following year the pace was cranked up again so there would be a hand project to take on our 2018 trip to Canada, to help while away time spent waiting in airports etc.  And now it's done.

Heaving a sigh of satisfaction......

No houses were made this week.  This will be remedied.

The flower basket quilt which hasn't been looked at for *ahem* quite some time has been brought out to take its place by my chair, for sewing in the evenings.  I had thought of quilting it in sections then joining them, but have now decided to finish the top and have it quilted in one piece.

There were 225 of these six inch blocks made, half (plus one) on a white background, the other half with a floral background.  They were joined into 25 blocks, each with nine baskets......and there they lapsed, until this week.  So, those 25 blocks are now in the process of being joined into quite a large top.  (I refuse to call my quilt tops a 'flimsy'.  'Flimsy' is defined as something weak and insubstantial; to me there is nothing insubstantial about a quilt top that may have taken years of my life.) 

Kevin has still been entertaining himself with his circus family history.  To this end, on Friday we went for a Nice Sunday Drive to a town north of here as he found out that one of the family, William George, died and is buried there.  There is no other connection to the town so we assume that he died while the circus was on its travels in March 1918, and there he still lies.  His grave memorial reads "erected by his loving daughter E (for Elizabeth) Last Name", which means that he was the father of Elizabeth and her brother Charles......and Charles is one of the men, Elizabeth's husband being the other, who died in the explosion in 1923.  Some of the names are now being tied together.  William George's brother Charles - the same names keep coming up - was the father of Kevin's grandmother, so William George is Kevin's distant uncle.  

We also visited the music store, having heard good things about it......and I must say, it leaves our local store for dead; not a difficult thing, seeing as how the local store just isn't very good.  I like to support local as much as possible but at the end of the day I decided how I spend my money, and if that means bypassing a local store for one with better service and products - so be it.

Everywhere is green and lush following quite a lot of rain,  truly a sight for sore eyes after the years of drought.  We know that eventually there will be another drought - which will, in its turn, eventually end - but we'll enjoy the green while we can.  

"Table manners and etiquette.

It is of the highest importance that all persons should conduct themselves with the strictest regard to good breeding, even in the privacy of their own homes, when at table; a neglect of such observances will render one stiff and awkward in society.  There are so many little points to be observed, that unless a person is habitually accustomed to observe them, he unconsciously commits some error, or will appear awkward and constrained upon occasions when it it important to be fully at ease."

Just remember that when you next sit down to dine with The Great And The Good, or even just with your nearest and dearest.

Enjoy your days!

Happy New Year!

We made it - it is now 2021, a new year after a very turbulent time last year.  Honestly, though - the world isn't suddenly going to improve because we flipped over a page on the calendar, is it?  Without even the benefit of a crystal ball I suspect that much of this year will be a repeat of last year.

Oh well.  We can each only do what we can to make our own little corner bearable, can't we?

The last houses of the old year......

......finished on New Year's Eve.  Two more have been cut out and wil be made this week.

We received a Christmas package from our son and his family down in Canberra, and one of the items was a bird feeder woven from grey-washed willow with a metal seed tray inside, and a bag of native bird seed.  

I had to take this from inside the house looking through a window - because you can bet your boots that, as soon as I opened the door to get a better picture, those rainbow lorikeets would have flown straight off.  It hangs in the we-think-it-was-an-apricot-tree which has now well and truly died off, but the birds love perching in the branches so we haven't removed it.  However, when it rains (which it has rather a lot lately) we bring the feeder onto the verandah.  The birds are still welcome to dine but they haven't yet done so, although we do have a few species (not these parrots) which dive and swoop under the roof looking for insects.

Did you all have a good Christmas?  Ours was quiet; we went to lunch at a nice restaurant, the food was excellent, the service let it down a couple of times, but overall it was very enjoyable.

It was followed a couple of days later by lunch with visiting friends at a town an hour away.  We don't miss living in the Big Smoke at all -we've been here over ten years now and wouldn't go back - but we do miss time with friends, so catching up with them is good especially as the folk festival we like attending won't be held until......we don't know when.  Certainly not at Easter, possibly not even later in the year.

I decided years ago not to bother with new year resolutions, and have been very good about sticking with that.  However each year I do have hopes, and this year there are a few hopeful projects to work on.  The handwork on the tumbler quilt is nearly all done so another project will be needed in to take to quilt group, which will mean taking a machine.  'Imprismed', being easy foundation piecing, will fill the bill nicely and I can work on more complex Stuff at home.  I could, of course, add the borders to the tumbler quilt by hand to keep it going......in my dreams......

Kevin's digging into his circus family history has been continuing, and we found about an incident which happened in 1923.  Blayney isn't very big now and was even smaller then when the circus under its owners Charles Perry and William Sole stopped to perform; Charles had just sold it to William who was married to Charles' sister Elizabeth, but had stayed on for a month or two to help.  They had set up in a paddock near the railway, it was 2nd June, early winter, and it was dark.  The electricity plant they used for lighting wasn't working so they brought out an acetylene gas generator.  It didn't work, they couldn't see where the problem was, someone struck a match to provide light......and boom.  Charles and William both died.  We found several newspaper reports of the tragedy, most of which make quite lurid reading.  Both men are buried in a single grave at Blayney cemetery so, if we are able to take our planned trip to Canberra in April as we hope (there's another of those Hopes), we will stop to pay our respects.  Charles and William both left adult children so Elizabeth, with her children and those of her brother, continued to run the circus.

Continuing on from last year:

"Wines at dinner.

If the guests should include one or more people of well-known temperance principles, in deference to the scruples of these guests, wines or liquors should not be brought to the table.  People who entertain should also be cautious as to serving wines at all.  It is impossible to tell what harm you may do to some of your highly esteemed guests.  It may be that your palatable wines may create an appetite for the habitual use of wines or stronger alcoholic liquors; or you may renew a passion long controlled and entombed; or you may turn a wavering will from a seemingly steadfast resolution to forever abstain.  This is an age of reforms, the temperance reform being by no means the least powerful of these, and no ladies or gentlemen will be censured or misunderstood if they neglect to supply their dinner table with wine; it may be on the sideboard, however, and guests may be asked whether they will partake of it."

No such thing as 'Mocktails' in those far-off days, were there?

Enjoy your days!