The sun shines again.  I just had to step over Chloe who is working on her tan.  She'll get so hot that she's panting, but she won't move.



I've had a lovely gift of some Chocolate and Pink repro fabric in the mail this week from Bonnie.  So generous when all I did was direct her to a pattern.  For someone who says she doesn't know her repro fabrics she made a pretty good choice I think.  Thanks Bonnie!  Looking forward to seeing your progress on the bird quilt, even though you did drop the pattern in the bath (?!)



I've also been thinking about how to hang these 3 Flying Seagulls.  I've had them for a while now and was all ready to hang them one day when Mum came over to hold the ladder, but we couldn't decide which way to hang them.  I always thought that the 3 Flying Ducks your Grandma had on the wall of the kitchen were arranged with the biggest on the left, then the middle one and the small one flying away into the distance.  The small one is smaller because it's further away.  Mum thought they should go with the big one on the right with the others following behind like the ducklings following the mother duck.



So I did a bit of research and couldn't really find anything that said one way or the other, so I'm just going to hang them the way I thought, as above.  I traced around them onto newspaper the other day and put them up with a bit of tape on the back, pushed up there with a stick, to get a feel for where they should go.  It was a good idea as I think they need to be a bit further apart and the middle one is a bit high.  I'll get them up there sooner or later when someone else is in the house so I don't fall off and break something. We had a patient at work this weekend who thought he could fly after having a few too many drinks and jumped off the roof of the house.  He has bilateral broken heels and will have to have an operation and lots of time off his feet.  I asked him if he had his Superman cape on - no.  What an idiot.



Not much in the way of sewing, but I did manage to sort out my needle problem.  I was going to put the machine in for a service but it will take 4 weeks!  I'll never get the Christmas presents finished if I do that!  There is a little bit of a chill in the air the last few days, so the pressure's on to finish Laura's quilt.  I have done some crochet on the hexagon medallions, but the bamboo and cotton is so poorly 'twisted' that it has become very frustrating to work with.  As a result there will only be a few more done then made into a cushion cover.

Thanks to those who commented on my most recent post.  I admit to having been a bit down in the dumps, but I'll get over it.  I manage to use the "cooling off period" technique a lot of the time, but sometimes something creeps through. 

The down side of having a blog is the tangible evidence that you're not getting anything finished - no more blissful ignorance! I have gained so much inspiration from blogs over the last few years, and I love seeing photos of other places and hearing about other people's lives that are so different to mine, yet oddly the same.  I love the snow photos and I love seeing other people's dogs! I will quickly insert a photo so that you don't get bored with my mutterings.



Yes I've been crocheting due to some online inspiration.  Crochet is one of the things I've always been able to do, but not kept it up regularly due to the "doilyness" of it all.  Yes I know that isn't a word.  It's like the tatting  I blogged about recently - I still haven't had a go at that.  The good news is that crochet is becoming a little more relevant, or modern.  The granny square will never go away, but lovely new yarns and colours are making it popular again.  I love the look of cotton, and now bamboo is joining that group of yarns.  The yarns above are either cotton, cotton with a bit of synthetic, bamboo, and bamboo with cotton I think.  I bought them at my local Lincraft store (maybe like Joanne's in the US?), and I have to say that I wouldn't buy the bamboo again without looking a bit more closely at it.  The twist in it is very loose making it difficult to crochet with, but I do love the colours.



I've also been loving this Japanese crochet book and the bags above.  The crochet chart idea is new to me - I much prefer written instructions - but the chart idea is useful when the book is written in a foreign language.  Here is a photo of the explanation of the chart.  I also think that we use different names for stitches than in the US, so the chart idea helps with that.



I've also had a trip to IKEA this week for a bookcase with a glass door.  Living on a dirt road in a climate that demands leaving the windows open all the time has resulted in a new vow which is that never again will I buy a piece of furniture without a door.  Man I hate dusting.  I bought 2 small Billy bookcases with glass doors which will go in my bedroom out of the sunlight to hold books and quilts.  I just have to put them together...  I wonder if there is a home in all the world that doesn't have a Billy bookcase?  Last year I was reading a blog that linked to Bloombergs who had created an index with the prices of  Billy bookcases around the world.  It seems to be a one-off, but interesting reading all the same.  I have 3 Billy bookcases downstairs which I would like some glass doors for, but after perusing the catalogue I find that 2 of the shelves I have don't fit the doors, and also that the colour I have is no longer made.  I had to buy the very pale colour for upstairs, but would rather have the darker look for downstairs. 



I also saw this quilted bedspread - look at the price!  The cost of just over 3 metres of quilt fabric here.  The red and white ones on the right also have perfect stippling on them.



I have an updated photo of the progress next door.  They have cemented in these poles which the house will sit on, and they have to sit for 2 weeks to harden, so the house shouldn't be too far away now.

Some days I think I'll delete my blog. Yesterday was one of those days. Today, I could go either way. Mainly because I don't seem to achieve much, which in turn can't make it very interesting reading. My friend Holly deleted her blog (And Sew It Is) and I was a bit shocked at the time. Now I can see it from her perspective. Why do I need a blog when I have all yours to look at?  I think I need to get out more.



It seems that this blog is full of posts about the fabric etc I've bought.  In the photo above though, I did buy the Kaffe book, but the sashiko book is Mum's, and the Owl kit is a belated birthday present from Mum.  Very cute.  I went to Mum's for coffee as I do most weeks excited to share the new Kaffe book with her, but also to give her a Japanese embroidery book of little Japanese motifs, which I didn't photograph.



I also went to Threads and More, the only decent yarn shop in Brisbane (that I'm aware of), and bought some of this gorgeous Organic cotton to do some crochet with.  I just love those Japanese books and also bought a crochet book.  Luckily I can crochet fairly well and can usually figure patterns out by looking at them, but this book, although in Japanese, explains in a visual way how to read a crochet chart which makes it fairly easy.  I love the subtle colours of this cotton.  The true colours are a little darker in real life. 

I was about to take a photo when I saw this pen on the table.  I like to use it for work because it's easily identified if someone else picks it up and claims it's theirs.  A day on the front seat of the car made it melt.  Yes it gets hot here in summer.



The Rowan milk cotton was a bit of a treat as I love this colour.  It was on sale for A$10 (I still thought that was fairly expensive) from A$18.75 - eeekk!  For some reason this photo has turned itself upside down and I can't get it to go back. 

Plus the sun is shining today - what a treat.

The Footy's Back

Went to the Footy last night at the Gabba (or the Gabbatoir as we Brisbane Lions footy fans like to call it).  I went with my sister and her partner, who are getting married tomorrow BTW, her 2 kids and his son.  The family group is seriously divided when it comes to the footy as Ian and therefore his son are fanatical Carlton fans. I'm a Brisbane Lions fan, but not too fanatical about it.  My niece has sided with the Carlton supporters and my nephew is a Lions fan.  My sister couldn't really care less, especially as she ends up dealing with the highs and lows of the fast moving game of Australian Football - ie who is sulking when their team is losing, trying to ration the food, and making sure that all fans in a 2 metre radius don't have their eye poked out with the stick that the flags are tied to.



Our seats were in the nosebleed section, but good for taking a photo - the game was sold out, and the atmosphere was great.  Of course the best team won, made all the more exciting by the fact that we stole Fev, one of Carlton's star forwards, so it was his first game against his old club.  There were a few scuffles but no big punchup.   Fev is a bit of a bad boy, so half of Carlton fans said 'good riddance' and half of the Lions fans weren't too keen to have him, but we've decided that he's a bad boy, but he's our bad boy.



The only other drama was that the guy behind me spilt half his beer down my back, but I suppose these things happen when the game gets exciting.  At the start of the game the teams run through these big banners that have a message on them.  Ours was a nod to how important sponsorship is which was disappointing, but the opposition cashed in on a bit of controversy about the Lions logo being changed this year.  Cheeky, huh?



Anyway the season goes on, and in a rare nanosecond of sunshine I snapped a pic from my seat of the flowers my friend picked out of her garden for me.  Lovely deep colour.  I also bought some cotton and bamboo yesterday to do a bit of crochet, like I need another UFO...

Wedding tomorrow so that will keep me busy, so maybe some sewing on Sunday.  I hope everyone has a happy and safe Easter - please be careful on the roads.

Men!

Pretty quiet here on the island apart from the goings on at the building site next door. The lady who owns it is quite frustrated over the treatment she is getting from some of the workmen. This is a topic I was discussing with a friend just the other day - in this day and age it continues to amaze me how many men still treat women as though they are stupid and incapable of doing things that men can do. I've been having trouble with my mainland car, the battery has been flat twice since my alternator was replaced. Each time I've had to get the autoclub to jump start the car for me, then I've driven the to the battery shop and this week to the auto electrician. It's supposedly fixed now, but we'll see. The auto club man was talking to me like I had no idea what would flatten a battery, and actually said "are you sure you didn't leave the door open just a little bit? That could drain the battery." Duh, like I didn't know that. I park the car in a public carpark on the mainland which is not at all secure, so of course I shut the door properly!



I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but it is the most recent of a number of similar incidents - if I was a man, do you think the guy would've asked him if he left the door to the car half open? No, I didn't think so. I'm a single woman who owns a house (paid for by me, not through a divorce settlement or similar), I have a job, 2 cars and a boat, and manage to live life without a man - fancy that? In fact there seem to be a lot more women around who are managing quite well on their own. I was in a relationship a few years ago which I ended, and truly, when all was said and done the only things I had to do after he moved out (which I had to arrange) was mow the lawn and take out the compost - 2 things I was doing before he came along. Oh and much less housework! 

BTW the arrival of the house next door is still a few weeks away.  I've been getting up in the morning and having a look out the window half expecting it to have arrived in the night.



Anyway, off my soapbox now, sorry for that but I had to get it out!  I spent half the day yesterday on the computer looking at all sorts of things, especially knitting and crochet blogs and sites now that there is a hint of coolness in the air.  For the crocheters among you I enjoyed reading this colourful blog by Sarah London, and absolutely love this Flickr photostream by Eclectic Gipsyland - the colours! 

Anyway while I was trawling through Ravelry I saw a bag that was made out of a rectangle of knitting so I thought I'd try it with fabric. This is a prototype which turned out a bit big I think, and would benefit from some interfacing or something. Everybody else probably knows how to do this, but it was a revelation to me!  Bit hard to see the diagonal seam across the front.  I'll try it with my library books which have to go back today.

Speaking of library books, I borrowed one about tatting.  My Mum knows how to tatt, so I thought I might make the effort and learn.  It does have its limitations, but I saw a photo of a tatted cuff which was made out of a gold coloured thread, and just made me think about how to make something out of a craft that to me just screams doilies doilies and more doilies.  Crochet has been a bit like that, so it's nice to see some of these crafts traditionally used for handkerchief edgings become a bit more relevant.  So much to do, so little time, right?