WOW Day

But first, something a little different. This is an embroidery from over 30 years ago that I made for my son's bedroom. The tiger is felt applique, and the tiger's features and stripes together with the garden flowers are all embroidered in wool. I still have - it's cute.
This week's wombat is a cross-stitch embroidery that I finished a few years ago. The shading on the wombat used many colours and took a while to do, however it was a holiday project that went with me to several places around NSW and Victoria. It was from an alphabet series of Australian animals and birds. When the embroidery was finished I framed it in an Aussie wildflower print, the same print in light and dark blue, then quilted it.

Good gracious, what a morning. The local shopping centre was fairly busy for a Monday. I managed to find a dark red top to replace one that I had to get rid of recently - it had a nasty accident in the washbasket with a ballpoint pen that had been left in a pocket (not my pocket, I hasten to add). It's not easy to find clothes that I like; the offerings in shops are lovely if one is 25 years old and built like a twig, but when one hits the dreaded Middle Age and is no longer skinny the choice isn't great. Thank goodness I can sew.

Singing and quilting

Isn't this a pretty garden! Casa Loma, Toronto, Canada, late summer 2007.

Lovely night last night....attended a concert by Cathy Miller and her husband John Bunge. Canadians Cathy and John sing songs about the joys and woes of quilting, John's "Quilter's husband's lament" is a gem. Great folks, and it was good to catch up with them again. Somewhere in my sewing/music room I have sheet music to a song called "The Pretty Little Patchwork Quilt" from a long time ago, must dig it out and learn it.

Had a lovely chatty lunch with a friend, we had our sewing with us much to the amazement of some of our fellow lunchers; a few folks dropped joking hints about fixing dance costumes, or darning socks. At least we hope they were joking!

Now I am heading off to slave over a hot sewing machine.

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky........

........stormy weather, or so goes the song. It's been a bit stormy lately; last night a very heavy thunder and rain storm, and we lost power for a brief while, and last Friday evening was very windy and rainy. As you can see, the jacaranda blossoms were blown around a bit.
But there are still plenty left on the tree. The bees were hovering around the fallen blossoms - perhaps they still had pollen in them?

My news can now be told as I have notified anyone in officialdom. I am retiring from work in three weeks. The original plan was to go at the end of March next year, but there will be many changes before then and I am not sure I will be happy with them. By nature I'm a back room worker, and there won't be a back room any more.

So......lots more time to sew, and lots of cleaning up to be done before we sell this house and move to the country, away from the city. Over twenty years' worth of 'stuff' to be cleaned out so it's going to be a big job, and will get started after Christmas.

Monday WOW Day

How cute is this one? It's only a few inches long and is made from very delicate clay.....actually, mud. It's pale creamy underneath and has a shiny brown glaze. I bought it in Toowoomba, Queensland, when we visited there several years ago. My wombats come from all over the place! Once again the fabric is an Aboriginal print from the Northern Territory, these prints seem to suit little wombats.
One of my current knitting projects. This lovely basketweave cardigan pattern was bought last year in Toronto, Canada, and I am using Bendigo Woollen Mill's Rustic yarn in Delta, a deep blue. The photo makes it look a bit grey, perhaps because it's a bit of a grey day today, cloudy and cool. It's my travelling project and has been to Tamworth and Canberra twice already; not even finished, and it's already well-travelled! The back and left front are done, and I'm up to the armhole/neck decreases on the right front. The original plan was to have it finished for the end of winter but that has been amended to next autumn. That gives me six months, let's see if I can do it.

And I even managed to pin a quilt at the weekend ready for machine quilting, although one corner has puckers underneath so it will need to be re-pinned. I would rather spend the time doing it now than swearing later. If only I had a large space to pin out.....having to pin a quilt in sections on the dining-room table isn't always ideal, and I'm over crawling on the floor to do it, the novelty wore off that years ago. Never mind, practice will probably help.

At the weekend I did a lot of pondering, and talking with DH, and have come to a decision. I'll write more on it later when it's official.

Cockroaches

Erk....cockroaches. Like many Sydney households, we have them in the warm months and they are horrible. This year the ones we have seen are the huge dark brown ones; someone told me they aren't as bad as the small brown ones. Erk. It's Sydney's warm humid weather that brings them out from their hidey-holes and they can go right back as far as I'm concerned. Erk.

This is Bianca The Beautiful resting in the kitchen sink. Doesn't everyone? The cats can hear a loud noise outside (so can I, and I am home alone); they are prowling and now Binky has jumped up onto the windowsill for a better look. She's braver than I am.

Today's WOW (Wombat of the week)

This is a very cute little feller! He's only 6cm (a bit less than 2 1/2in) long, and I bought him from a gallery in Tamworth several years ago. The fabric is an Aboriginal print brought back from the Northern Territory for me by our friends Alison and Colin. Isn't this great, I can combine two of my interests, wombats and quilting, in one photograph.
Some of the flowers on our jacaranda tree. It started life as a self-sown seed early in 1990, and now is taller than the house. Every spring we have a glorious display of bell-shaped flowers and the grass under the tree is sprinkled with the flowers as they drop. When the flowers are finished we have a lovely shady tree with ferny leaves. Jacaranda trees grow very well in Australia but are originally from Brazil in South America, and are one of the delights of spring.

Yesterday I revisited a quilt that has been a finished top for a few years, the wadding was purchased quite some time ago and the backing was joined all ready to be used. It now has a label and is lying on the floor in my 'other' sewing room (our older son's room when he was at home) waiting to be pinned, then I will quilt it. The wadding has been folded for so long that it needs to be laid out flat for a while before being pinned. Somehow the quilt size had grown in my mind to be huge, but it's 60in by 72in (152cm by 183cm) and I think I can manage to quilt that on my Bernina without too many problems. I even put '2008' on the label, so it has to be finished this year!

Well......back to the doctor this morning, I have been dreading these visits as my blood pressure has been high for a year now, so high at one point that I was in danger of having a stroke. But I got a good report today, although I have to keep taking the industrial-strength tablets. At least BP is now back down to a normal level so I don't have to go back for another six months. When I retire from work next year I think that may solve a few health problems, let's hope so anyway.

Great day for sewing

A couple of years ago in Fairbanks, Alaska, I purchased the Lisa Moore pattern to make this quilt, Alaska with a Twist. I enlarged the quilt by adding extra borders, and by using a forget-me-not (state flower of Alaska) fabric for the corners. The various fabrics were purchased in Victoria, Canada, and in Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway and Fairbanks, and some were sent to me by my friend Terry in Juneau. I used the cool aquas and turquoises of the glacial waters; the bottom picture is the true colour. The various prints have seagulls, eagles, bears, moose, seals, wolves, orcas, trees, northern lights.......some of which we saw, and some we missed. But they are all there in Alaska. My dream is to see the Northern Lights before I leave this earth.
It is still a flimsy, not yet layered and quilted, because I am probably the world's most unconfident machine quilter. But I will get there. There are folks who do wonderful machine quilting for others but at a cost of between $200-$400 I can't justify it. So I will practice, and eventually gain more confidence, and quilt some of those tops, at last count I think there are eight or nine waiting their turn. It would be lovely to have them finished. Then if only that confidence would spill over into other areas of my life I would be ecstatic, but that's another story.

I have just made 14 blocks for the black and white (or is it white and black?) Winding Ways quilt, so now there are 23 finished. An odd number, but I will keep making more and when I decide that is enough I will join them together. Finished size is nearly nine inches square so perhaps 36 blocks might be a good stopping point. That would be 54 inches square, plus borders; I have a black and white fabric which has wobbly red and yellow stripes spaced along the length, for borders. Perhaps a red and yellow narrow striped fabric would then be good for the binding, but I'm sure the quilt will tell me as we go along.

Today is a great day for sewing because it's cool, and cloudy, and the workmen next door seem to have finished and packed up, so that beeping little digger has finally stopped beeping. It's like a toothache...very irritating while it's there, and a great relief when it stops.