Greening up nicely

Oh my, it's windy today!  I am staying inside so I don't get blown away, as I nearly did when it was time to bring in the washing.  It's also a long way from being cold despite the fact that it's still winter, the warm breeze may bring rain......and it's a bit soon to put away the winter woollies just yet, as the coming week will be much cooler than today.

The park is coming along well, as are this week's blocks.

These are two of the outer corner triangles, two more need to be made for the other two corners.  These are four by four squares cut once on the diagonal; the side triangles are seven by seven, and are each cut into four quarter-square triangles.  They are slightly larger than the measurements given in the book if cutting from yardage, but hey......you can always trim off half an inch, but you can't add it on so easily should it be a bit small.

The black and white fabric around the pale spotted house is left over from a skirt made several years ago.  The fabric was bought from a quilt store, I really liked it, but sadly the skirt wasn't a good fit so I ended up giving it away.  The leftovers still find themselves turning up in the odd quilt here and there.

This is one from several years ago.

The same black and white print is in the inner corner of each block, fussy cut to feature the floral design.  It was also used in the piano key border and for the binding.

All the applique on the Canadian blocks is stitched down, a great sigh of relief was heaved when the last stitch was done.  Now the stabiliser is being torn away from the back......then the blocks can be joined, yippee!   

It has been another quiet stay-at-home week.  A time for sewing, for playing music, for reading, for knitting the odd stitch or two.....a time for just......being.  We have stopped watching the news again (as we did last year, for several months) and we do not click on links to stories about doom and gloom.  Some might say we are sticking our heads in the sand - I prefer to say we're looking after our mental health.

The television is off more than it's on because so little appeals to us.  We don't mind some renno porn shows - house hunting and renovating - we have our favourites, but there are many we never watch.  Other so-called "reality" shows - never.  Not ever.  There isn't much drama that we like and we don't want to watch the same British police shows for the unpteenth time; they were good the first time, all right the second, but lose their gloss after that.  There are the online channels, occasionally I remember to look through their offerings but then forget to put it on.

Back in the days when I was young our town didn't have television; it didn't arrive in major Australian cities until the mid-1950s, and not in country towns for several more years.  We, three deprived little kids from a country town, were mesmerised when we visited our Posh Melbourne Grandparents because they had T.V.  The soundtrack to my childhood and growing up was radio rather than television, and I still prefer it.  My mother used to listen to her radio serials - now, that's something you don't hear any more!  She sang along to the radio and we learned all those old songs by osmosis, they just soaked into our brains.

"Strive to keep the cloth as clean as possible, and use the edge of the plate or a side dish for potato skins and other refuse."

The history of the tablecloth is interesting.  Apparently, several centuries ago, people would blow their noses on it, wipe their mouths on it during eating instead of using a napkin.....a bit gross, really.  Makes you pity the poor servants who had to wash the table linen, doesn't it?

Enjoy your days!

The garden is planted!

Although not much has grown yet.

Just one little strip of green garden to go with this week's houses, a party house at night and a brick house surrounded by......barbed wire, perhaps?

That green strip will be joined to three others, and the resulting square will be cut into two triangles for two of the outer corners.  More will be made.  Eventually.  I could have used the same fabrics for all the setting triangles but this is more fun, don't you think?  The inspiration quilt by Freddy Moran was made with red squares, but I like the idea of my houses being set in a green park.

Some stitching has happened on the Canadian blocks, now there are just two to be done.

What an unpleasant day it is today.  The wind is blowing quite hard and it's a very cold wind, a nasty chilly wind, definitely a day for staying inside by the fire.  Which we are.  We keep expecting to see rain spots on the path outside, but so far none have appeared; it's so windy that, if any drops of rain were to fall, they would be blown sideways before they hit the ground.  It's definitely a day for the Big Green Jumper.

It's been another week of staying home.  Two necessary appointments meant having to go out and wear the dreaded mask, but fortunately once in the consulting rooms both practitioners said "you can take it off" much to my relief.  Nothing is on the calendar for the near future, so there will be more staying home.

Recently the front of the house received a little spark-up with new exterior lights being installed.  The previous lights were here when we came so were not our choice; they were 'coach lights', a popular style, it seems, for many years and indeed still sold, albeit with updated styling.  Both lights sported yellow globes, supposedly insect repellant, although we haven't really found them to be so; over the years they had become somewhat dim so needed replacing anyway.  We then thought......"if the globes need to be renewed, why not replace the whole thing?  They weren't our choice and we've never loved them"  So we did.  We looked online, found what we liked and made paper templates to hold up on the wall.  The small size was, like Goldilocks' porridge, just right.  Much was our glee when we found that a local shop stocked what we wanted so a phone call and a short drive later we had our new lights in hand, a visit from our friendly electrician a few days later and they were in place.

I still have plans to paint the front door teal......it's currently white.......but teal would be pretty with the light sandy-pink colour of the bricks.  Not sure what colour, if any, to paint the shutters and the fake colonial verandah columns, all of which are currently white - as was the style when the house was built in the early 1990s.  Perhaps just a fresh coat of white would be all that's needed.

"The host or hostess should not insist upon guests partaking of particular dishes; nor ask persons more than once, not put anything in their plates which they have declined.  It is ill-bred to urge a person to eat of anything after he has declined."

Indeed it is.  He - or she - may have a very good reason to decline a particular food, perhaps an intolerance or allergy, and I am sure a good host or hostess would not wish to make a guest ill.

Enjoy your days!

Done is a good feeling

Probably bad grammar, but still a good feeling.  All 277 of those 2-1/2 inch green squares have been cut; cutting is my least favourite part of sewing, especially fiddly diddly cutting, but it's now all done.

Lots of different shades of green, and bits of a few other colours too.  The Cunning Plan is to use these as 'leaders and enders' when sewing the next row onto the house blocks, an idea which came to me in a blinding flash of brilliance as I was settling down to sleep last night.

This week's completed houses, a pastel flower house and a black and white (plus colour!) house.

Before the decision was made to use black and white fabrics for the next row there had already been some houses made using these colours, but they still fit into the neighbourhood.

Nary a stitch has been done this week on the Canadian blocks, not one, but now all the tedious business of cutting squares is done that will change - I have high hopes of progress being made during the coming days.  The cutting would have been finished a couple of days sooner had not my hip decided to give me grief.  It's all downhill from 25, you know.....

Much staying home has happened this week.  Unfortunately two appointments await me this week (one is to get the whingeing hip sorted, something which really needs to be done) which will necessitate wearing the dreaded mask, but as soon as possible it will be taken off again.  

Remember the old song 'Stormy weather'?  'Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky, stormy weather'......you'll be singing it all day now, won't you?  It has been a bit stormy lately with rain, thunder, you name it.  Yesterday's wind was nasty chilly and blowy so we stayed indoors;  fortunately today is milder although it's a long way from being hot - or even warm.  Yesterday Bianca forgot that she is quite geriatric and raced around the house like a mad thing so today she is recovering in front of the fire.  Children and animals seem to be affected by wind, back in my days of working in schools the staff used to dread windy days.

Perhaps later today if the fancy takes I might make a fruit slice as no baking has been done for a couple of weeks, but then again I might lose interest in the idea.  We'll see.  I have discovered the wonderful world of cooking videos on you tube - what a marvellous place it is with really interesting recipes, much better than watching cooking shows on T.V.  If you want to watch something really mesmerising check out 'how to tie dye'......the revealed fabric or shirt is quite something to see although I can't see me wearing rainbow spiral tie dyed clothing, that ship has long sailed.

"If a plate is handed to you at the table, keep it yourself instead of passing it to a neighbour.  If a dish is passed to you, serve yourself first, then pass it on."

That is probably a good idea.  If a plate is handed to you it is meant for your use, not someone else's.

Enjoy your days!

The quilt group has a new home

The announcement has been made that we have a new meeting place, a building used by many craft groups, the 'Craft Shed'.  The shed has its own membership which we don't have to take out; when we first moved here I joined but left after a few years as it wasn't quite....."me".  Still, at least we have somewhere to go and it's not far from home, but oh......we will miss the meeting room at the back of the shop because of the convenience of the cafe.  That means we are back to taking a (probably unexciting) packed lunch along with us.  Oh joy......

This week's blocks, a spring rainbow house and an autumn oak leaf and acorn house with a very pink roof.

Some cutting has happened, more of the 2-1/2 in square green pieces have been cut for the outer setting triangles.  There are now 101 cut, 176 to go....yes, I keep a running total so I don't run short.  Odd shaped green fabrics are trimmed and cut into strips then squares while larger pieces are being left for other projects.

Stitching down the applique on the Canadian blocks is also coming along well, only four blocks left to go.

A couple of days ago we had rain - the pattern for a few weeks now has been rain late in the week then dry after the weekend; the coming week's forecast is for more of the same - we have noticed that the kangaroos on the hill seem to enjoy rain.  There were several roos hopping around, this one came close to the fence.  One was a fairly small joey which reminded me of an out-of-control baby just learning to walk, it hopped a little unsteadily for a few steps then veered off in another direction entirely before falling over.

Our unglamorous wire fence is a barrier to a marauding roo but doesn't obstruct our view, this is one of the smaller roos in the mob.

When we moved here it was such a joy to see these animals so close.  I grew up here but don't ever remember kangaroos being so close to town, and during the drought they were coming right into town to take advantage of what green there was in people's gardens.  As the years go by we remember the Big Smoke less and less, it feels like we have always lived here......and we both say, we couldn't go back now.  It's been a good move.

We managed to get the masked hunting and gathering done last week without too many acrimonious words.  I don't think I have ever moved so fast around the supermarket while throwing things in the trolley.  Once we arrived at the checkout (where, fortunately for once, there was no line) I was out of there, the mask came off as soon as I stepped out into the car park.  

The date and maple syrup cake/muffin was very nice.  Now that the pantry holds pecans it just might get made again, with the addition of nuts next time.

The knitting is coming along although my right arm complains if I do too much, so I suspect little and often is the way to go as it gets used to knitting a whole garment again.  Over the years a lot of my knitting has been done on car trips, but with so much of our world shut down again who knows when the next outing will be?

Sigh......

"The old-fashioned habit of abstaining from taking the last piece on the plate is no longer observed.  It is to be supposed that the vacancy can be supplied, if necessary."

I wonder how the custom even started, of leaving the last piece on a plate?

Enjoy your days!

Half the year is done

According to the fount of wisdom which is the internet (how did we ever manage before it?  Greatest thing every invented, in my humble but honest opinion) two days ago, 2nd July, we reached the half-way point of the year; 182 days had passed since last year's end, and there were 182 to go.  Now we are the downward slide.

Nothing, however, will be said about the Big C occasion just before the year's end.......

Thursday, 1st July, was marked by making date and maple syrup muffins using maple syrup from Canada, but instead of making 12 muffins I made a cake.  You eat a whole muffin whether or not you need a whole muffin, don't you?  So the mix became a nine inch square cake, yielding much more than 12 serves, and it's quite nice.  It would have been even nicer with chopped pecans added but the pantry held none.

This week's completed house blocks, a purple house with a scribbly border, and a cat on a hot tin roof house with almost the last of this chrysanthemum print.

These blocks are such fun - I really like how the black and white sets them off.  Considering that there was no intention of making another quilt when the first few blocks were made, it's coming along nicely.....as are (finally!) the Canadian blocks with seven having their stitching finished, six to go.

On our trip down south, on a warm sunny day in April, we stopped off in Blayney to pay our respects to two members of Kevin's circus family.

Charles Henry Perry was a cousin of Kevin's grandmother.  Back in June 1923 Perry's Circus was setting up for a performance in Blayney when both men were killed in a gas explosion.  Charles' sister Elizabeth was married to William Sole, so she lost a husband and a brother in one evening; Charles Perry had recently sold the circus to William Sole as he intended to retire, but had stayed on for a few weeks to help out.  Both men are buried in one grave, and newspaper reports of their funeral the following day indicate that it was the largest ever seen in Blayney.

On arriving at the cemetery we couldn't at first find the grave, so I asked a couple of young blokes who were, to judge by the sign on their work truck, familiar with many cemeteries in the area.  They took me straight to it and one bloke, in particular, was really interested; he said he had often wondered why the grave was so big and why there were two names as double graves are unusual.  We chatted for a while and he said that the company they worked for was one of the last remaining in the region which restores and makes grave markers and headstones......"it's a dying trade", he said.  I bith my thongue and didn't laugh because I didn't know whether he was making a joke or being serious.......but yes, I suppose in these days of people being cremated and their ashes scattered, instead of having a grave with a marker, it has meant that there is a lot less work than there once was in the monument industry.  It also means no headstones for family historians which is a shame, as they often contain interesting information.

It's been a quiet week as we - particularly me - have been lying low.  An edict has come from the state government in the Big Smoke that everyone in the state, regardless of where they live or how far away they are from cases of the current plague, must wear a mask in public.  That's a problem for me because as soon as I put a mask on I can't breathe then I have a panic attack.  So I stay home, which is fine.  However as Kevin did such a bad job of shopping last week (most of the items on the list were missing when he finished, including chopped pecans for the date and maple syrup muffins/cake) I fear that I will have to run the gauntlet of the hunting and gathering tomorrow while he pushes the trolley.  He's not getting out of it.  

I would rather stay home, and breathe, and sew.

"Do not find fault with the food."

This is probably tactful, no matter whether you are dining at your own home or someone else's.

Enjoy your days!

A new start

It's time to meet the new starter in the knitting stakes.

The new jumper has been started, this is the back.  The colour is called 'Mustard' but is more brown than it looks here, a warm cinnamon brown, rather than yellow.  Perhaps the camera's flashing 'charge battery' light means the photo colour isn't very true.

This week's houses.  The purple house was the first ever house made last year - I like its cheerful hippy dippy flower power daisies, while the other house is surrounded by a grassy jungle.

There has also been progress made on the Canadian blocks......my goodness, there's a lot of stitching required to hold all that applique down......but it will be worth it when it's done.

Unwelcome news came through this week.  We have two quilt shops here, and the announcement was made that one of them - my favourite - is closing in September; the building has been sold, and rather than negotiate a new lease the owners have decided to retire.  We wish them well, however they and their store, which includes a really nice cafe, will be much missed.  There is a large classroom at the rear of the shop which is where both my quilt group and sewing group, and many other groups, meet so the shop's closure will leave many groups with nowhere to go.  I have been told that at least one group will be folding as a result.  It's well set up with tables, power, etc., and while there are other halls around town they all have drawbacks.  It is also very handy at a group meeting to be able to pop into the shop if supplies such as thread - even fabric! - are needed in a hurry.  The shop is also a Bernina dealer, but one of the owners has said he will continue to service our machines until someone else takes on the dealership.

Yesterday the backing, a bright red solid, was bought for the Canadian quilt at the 'closing down' sale price, possibly my last (or one of the last) purchase from there.  It's very tempting to go overboard and buy lots more lovely fabrics at the sale prices but honestly, do I need it?  No.  Do I want it?  Probably.  Would I like it?  Oh yes!  So back to:  but do I really need it?  No......

There is another quilt shop here but I avoid shopping there as the owner can be rude and abrupt.  When she first opened several years ago I went in out of curiosity but her manner was very off-putting, so I seldom went back.  She moved to larger premises (which I never even set foot inside) for a few years before moving to where she is now, and I have only been in the current shop twice.  The fabric for the inner border of my tumbler quilt was found there on the second visit, and it really bummed me out to buy it......but it was just so right for the quilt that I couldn't leave it, even though I resented putting money in her pocket.  At least the fabric for the outer border came from the other shop.

Sigh......

Yesterday's Eisteddfod performance went well, although I didn't win.  One of the judges said to me later "you know, you were on the short list" but honestly - I don't mind.  Several people came up to me afterwards to say how much they enjoyed my song, and my performance, and coming from fellow musicians that means a lot.  However - I have been asked to do a solo spot at our choir concert late in the year!  Our choir director went along to hear the music; he has heard me sing before, but so enjoyed yesterday's effort that he wants a repeat.  Who knew - fame and glory at my advanced age!  

"Never lean back in your chair, nor sit too near or too far from the table.

Keep your elbows at your side, so that you may not inconvenience your neighbours."

Indeed.  If you sit too far back you run the risk of dropping food into your lap, too near and it will be awkward to eat.  As for elbows......no more needs to be said.

Enjoy your days!

The house smells really good......

There is cauliflower and chorizo soup in the slow cooker.  It used to be made with bacon - perhaps I found the recipe online, I disremember - however on one occasion we didn't have any bacon, but there was chorizo in the fridge so I used it instead.  We liked it so much better that I don't use bacon in that recipe anymore, we much prefer the smokey flavour of chorizo.

Then just after lunch I really pushed the boat out and made a fruit slice, a favourite of ours.  Every time it's made there are variations; originally I used 'fruit medley' but over the years all manner of fruit has been used, depending on what's in the pantry.  So long as the amount of fruit is correct it doesn't matter what is used; I often chuck in a handful of nuts as part of the weight, either walnuts or pecans are good, and make up the total with dried fruit.  This time it's crimson raisins (because there were some in the pantry), fruit medley (ditto), and fresh walnuts given to us by a nice man at Sofala on our trip south in April.  He was harvesting walnuts from his tree before the birds ate them all, we stopped to chat on our way back to the car, and he shared some of his bounty with us......how nice was that!  We have tried a piece of slice each, and agree that it's not bad at all.

There is a finish to report this week.

The scarf which has been simmering along is finally done!  Pattern is Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf on Ravelry, yarn is Bis-Sock from Quebec bought in Courteney, B.C. on our last trip to Canada, made on a 4.5 mm needle.  The colourway is called "A la Belle Etoile", and it will be cosy and cheerful for our current cool weather.

Stitches have been cast on for a new jumper, and it will be shown when there is a bit more progress.

This week's additions.  The pink spotted house looks as though it is being whirled around in a cyclone, while the lime print is surrounded by birds' nests.  Or perhaps alien life forms......

Just for fun I laid them out on the fabric which will be used for the narrow sashing between blocks, and have decided it's a good choice.  The pattern calls for 'fabric for sashing to equal one yard', and my piece is almost a full metre - it's two inches over a yard, so it will be Just Right.

It was bought many years ago when we lived in the Big Smoke, at a quilt guild market day.  The family of a well known quilter was selling fabrics and books from her estate and I fell in love with this bright yellow fabric as soon as I saw it, even though I didn't have a use for it at the time.  Now it can have its turn in the sun as walkways through the neighbourhood.

We seem to have left the really really cold weather behind for now.  Next weekend is the start of school holidays, so it will probably turn cold and wet again......never fails, does it.......

Next Saturday afternoon I will once again make a fool of myself in public and sing a song, accompanied of course by my gorgeous tenor ukulele, in the Mature Performers section of the Eisteddfod.  This year's effort (which would have been last year's, had not the world shut down) is a parody of 'La Vie En Rose'; it is all in French, but consists of words strung together with brand names and familiar phrases.  I don't enter expecting to win......good heavens no, the winner has to have a photograph taken with their trophy and I have a severe allergy to having my photo taken......but just to have fun.  Next year's song has also been chosen.

"Eat neither too fast nor too slow."

Sage advice.  Too fast and you may cause discomfort to yourself, too slow and you may inconvenience your table companions - although I have always been a slow eater since childhood, but I try to keep pace with my fellow diners.

Enjoy your days!