Mrs Echidna's Dilemma

I popped into my LQS yesterday to buy a couple of balls of wool, whilst I was there I was lucky enough to meet Betty Johnston who has just written a book called "Mrs Echidna's Dilemma".

A fabulous children's book. It came into life, as she had made finger puppet's of Australian animals for her daughter who is a teacher. She then wrote a story to go with the finger puppets.  Betty made a quilt with the story on it. She then made a companion quilt with details of Australian fauna. From there this book was developed. It is gorgeous. A fabulous story with beautiful pictures, reproductions of blocks from the quilts. It also has information on Australian native animals and at the back of the book there are instructions on how to make finger puppets of the animals featured in the book, and a DVD of the story as well. It is well worth the $29.95.

I am not sure whether it is available in book shops yet, as it has only just been published.

Betty's website is http://mrsechidna.com/ and you can purchase it from there online. It is not a cheap book, but well worth the money on a fabulous Australian children's book. I don't think you can purchase it overseas yet.

I even had my copy signed by the author.

PS.  It only has nice Australian animals in it, no sharks, snakes, spiders, dingoes, stingrays, man eating koalas,  crocodiles, bunyips, rogue kangaroos, stone fish, or jelly fish.

The *#!* Snowball Block Saga (cont'd)

Well, here we are again, Tuesday, the fateful day of the week that I chose to do those beautiful, wonderful, marvellous blocks.


The days have flown by and I figured I had enough time to calm down from my disastrous attempt at *#!*ing Snowball blocks.  I attacked  (not literally, at this stage) them differently this time. I thought, maybe it was due to my haste and inexperience last time, that they were so utterly crap. This time I didn't rely on my nifty diagonal straight line sewy thingy (technical term). I actually drew the lines on this time and gave the nifty diagonal straight line sewy thingy the flick. I was told by a wise quilter that this was the only way to do snowballs that worked, and by the way 5" snowballs are very difficult. Thanks for that info now.


My other decision today was to only do a few, that way I was less likely to make mistakes and get pissed off annoyed with them.


So I only made 6  *#!*ing Snowball blocks.


Only 2 were pretty much 5" square. One, I only needed to re-do one corner, two were close enough, they weren't actually, but I was beyond trying to do them again, and one was total crap.


So that's it folks I now have 25 *#!*ing snowball blocks that are sort of squarish and roughly 5".


A crappy photo below taken in the early evening, it was getting dark and I wanted to post about them  get it over and done with, tonight.  A crappy photo of crappy blocks, he he.

(They actually don't look as bad as they do in the photo, they are not very photogenic.)

No more, it's all over, finished!!!!!

I am hoping that if I sash them with a very dark grey they will look absolutely fabulous. 

I can still hope can't I.

It is going to be bigger than a placemat,  maybe a table topper size. BUT, I am never ever going to put it on my table.

Please, please warn me, and/or remind me, if I suggest I am going to do anything other than really basic blocks next time.

Back to the crochet, and maybe a bucket of some Moose Milk to help me forget.

PS. Mrs P you must have been out of your mind when you suggested I only needed to make 120.

Weekend

I have had a fabulous weekend. Yesterday was spent crocheting. It was a beautiful day here, like most of winter, blue skies, about 22 deg (72F) but I really wanted to get stuck into some crocheting.

I had started making a hot water bottle cover, as although it is warm during the day here in winter, it is quite cold at night.  Cold for here anyway, cold enough for hot water bottles, maybe it's warm for everywhere else.

I found a pattern on the internet.  I didn't do a test square!  I just started it and checked after a few rows and it was the right width, so I kept on going.  The pattern was in half treble (UK) and I had completed about a third of it when I realised that although the width was ok, the length was going to be way too short, and I was going to use a lot of yarn.  I undid it and started it again using treble (UK) and basically making it up as I went along. It worked a lot better and the sizing was perfect, although as it is in a larger stitch it isn't as firm.

I will try making another one soon,  I am pretty happy with the result, and it used up some yarn I had lying around.

Today I went to Gympie, (pronounced gim pee), which is roughly 45 mins north up the highway, where there was a quilting and crafting show on this weekend.  I went with a girlfriend, we had a fabulous day. I took my camera but hardly took any photos. There were a couple of quilts I liked, but most were not to my taste.

We sat in the morning sun and had a lovely morning tea of home made scones with jam and cream.

I bought a Layer Cake of Rouenneries. I really enjoyed making the layer cake quilt a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I would make another one. I love this fabric line, and it was 25% off. Still heaps more expensive than buying from the States, but at least I have it now.

My friend bought these,

they are very cute ceramic buttons. I am going to make her a quilted laundry door hangy thingy (technical term) and sew these on.

Afterwards we went into Gympie and found a lovely pub that reminded me of the old country pubs in NSW, and we had a very nice lunch. We found out that Ian Moss (Cold Chisel) was going to be playing there later in the afternoon, if only we had known earlier we could have stayed and hung out with all the over 50s waiting to hear him play.

We have decided that we have to do a girly road trip sometime this winter and travel around south east queensland visiting all the country towns with quilting shops (and good pubs)! Hopefully I will take my camera and even more importantly, actually use it and take photos.

SIBOL Squares

I love my crocheting. Unlike my hideous attempt at quilting last week, I find crochet much more soothing. It is not a major drama if stitches need to be undone, just pull a thread and re do it. Fortunately these squares were nice and easy.

These are the granny squares I have crocheted for  Sue for SIBOL. They should be winging their way to the UK next week, after I have sewn all the ends in. The purple one has a nice fluffy yarn between the dark purple and lilac, hard to see it in the photo.

I like the blue one below, a very pretty pattern, even though it is sideways in the photo.

All of these patterns are from 200 Crochet Blocks.

I also made this one below.  I was going to say pretty much the ugliest crochet square I have seen, but in the photo it doesn't look so bad. Believe me though, everyone who has seen it has looked at it, looked at me and then looked at it again, and said you are not sending that are you?  So I am not sending it. 

So I still have the odd disaster in crochet, but it doesn't make me want to do violent things.  I don't feel like destroying it in a very painful manner.  Although if my snowball blocks end up in an "art installation piece" this could sit nicely on the top.

Before/After

My dining table, when I decided enough was enough for the time being on those pesky shitty snowball blocks. Out of sight, out of mind, seemed appropriate. So I packed it all up into a nice Ikea box, pretty!, with a lid, so I wouldn't have to see them any more. Until I decide I can face round three doing a few more. Now I know why Karen suggested just doing a few once a week. Although does that mean I just protract the hideousness of it all? Which is worse get them all over and done with quickly or take it slowly and do a few each week?

Look how beautiful my dining table looks now, much better.  The cat scratch pole/house multi story apartment block in the background is a nice touch, isn't it.

A teensy bit annoyed

Snowball Night is a great idea, just maybe not for me. In defence of my language, some of the  following words are terms of endearment in Australia.


Please do not read any further if you have an aversion to swearing.


This is a copy of an email I sent yesterday.

Dear ........

I am going to do serious damage to myself. I hate those little bastard squares. What the hell was I thinking. I can't sew a straight line on the diagonal even with a nifty diagonal straight line sewy thingy, and get those shitty 2" squares to sit square. I have completed 20 snowballs, 3 of which are actually 5" square.  The rest are any bloody shape other than square, or if they are square they are 4.97" squares give or take a 1/4 inch or two. Bloody bloody bloody snowballs.  I think I might do some installation art with them, like stab them with a very sharp knife, repeatedly. Throw red paint all over them, and then burn them with lots and lots and lots of fuel. Anything that will be a very painful death for those shitty little m*****  f***** squares shapes.  Failing that I can probably make two placemats out of them, coz I am pretty sure there is no way on God's earth I am going to make a bloody quilt out of those bastards.

I hope you had a nice day.

Marg



Maybe you can see from that email that I have been having a little bit of a problem with my snowball blocks.

Not only am I not loving the colour of the ones I have already made, (especially as I had this absolutely fantastic vision in my head before I started), but now I can't make them properly either.

I was really looking forward to doing them, but making them small, leaves much less margin for error. And to think on the first couple of blocks I actually did the second line of sewing so that I could use the cut off corners as blocks in another quilt. HA HA HA bloody HA.  At least I saw the light after the second one, when I actually opened it up and looked at the size. If I can't piece a 5" square how am I ever going to be able to sew two triangles correctly into a 1"square.

Now I am beginning to remember why I gave up quilting last time. I need a bit of patience, something that I am obviously completely and utterly lacking. Great!  I am going to keep quilting, as I have about 8766 yards of fabric in my stash, double great!  Not forgetting I just ordered some more on the weekend.

I think I will join all my fat quarters together, minimum cutting, that should be easy peasy.  In the meantime I will let somebody else run for Quilter of the Year, as I am seriously not going to make the cut. (pun intended)

I'm off to crochet now.

Snowball Night

Over at Sew Many Ways, Karen is hosting a quilt-along to make snowball blocks. You can see the button on my side bar if you want to join in.  I said I would join in a good week or so ago, and then couldn't decide which fabric to use.  I was going to buy some charm packs to make 5' squares. But I couldn't decide which charm packs to use and then which fabric to use for the corners. Basically I was stuck in a loop.  I was beginning to think that everyone would have finished before I even started. Yesterday I finally decided I should use what I have in my stash. I found a lot of oranges, pinks and yellows. 

I thought these would look good on a dark background, which would make the colours pop. I am hoping it will look like jewels once it is all together.  I am using 5" squares with 2" squares for the corners. I have completed 11 10 so far. One looks crap, so have to bin it.  Now I am wishing I had started on 10" squares, much more room for error.  I'm not sure how big I am going to make the project, with my attention span being about 5 minutes, it might end up a placemat or a couple of pot holders.

As usual, at this stage I am having second thoughts, but I am going to soldier on, and I think once I have completed a lot more blocks it will look a lot better.  I have just been using random fabric to get an idea of what it is going to look like and have not been at all methodical about it. Maybe I should!