The dark side

The above photo is my "angel's" bed.  Beautiful isn't it?

Apparently it was TIME, ........................time to vacuum the floor, so all the crap  some of the crap on the floor was deposited on her bed for this very special occasion. I didn't take a shot of the rest of the crap piled up against the wall, which wasn't deemed important enough to move for the above mentioned vacuuming ceremony.

Her room is like a black hole, once anything goes into that room, it never sees the light of day again. I am amazed that the cats and dog ever find their way out of there. Can you spot Bailey having a nice little snooze on the pile of crap?

There he is, looks comfortable doesn't it........not!

When it came time to go to bed, the crap was unceremoniously dumped back on the floor, to make room to get in the bed. It will now stay there for, say, another 6 months minimum until it is deemed vacuuming day minute again.

Happy Virus

I found this lovely sentiment in Thailand a few years ago.




As we are beginning the flu season here in Aus.






 I wish for you a ..........................

as opposed to a sad one.

More money than sense

Do you remember these from a couple of weeks ago?

I had huge problems trying to find sashing to go with my Martinique coin quilt. I had an idea of what I wanted but couldn't find any solid fabric that would replicate my idea. Why am I not surprised!!!!!
I settled on a soft blue/green that I thought would work, and it does, it just doesn't look like what I had pictured in my head.

I even sent an email to the Fat Quarter Shop, asking them for advice, and they were very helpful, but they could not help with a match to what I wanted.

I finally decided I needed to purchase a Kona solid color card.  

Of course, 

it was a brilliant idea........ 

how easy is that...................................... 

it would have been, if there was even one left for sale in the whole world. 

I tried everywhere to find one, none, nada, zip.  

I found a Bella solids card, which I bought, and I am very happy with, but no Kona solids card.

I was getting desperate, I don't know why because I haven't made a thing in the last couple of weeks, but at the time, I was very very desperate. Then I had a brainwave, I realized I could buy Kona solid charms instead. No matter that it would cost almost $40. My reasoning, that if I have the charms, they are much bigger swatches than are on the colour chart, and I can always use them in my quilts when I don't need them anymore. I bit the bullet and ordered them.

They arrived........... 

my almost $40 of Kona charm squares, 

oooh how exciting all those beautiful colours.................. and, 

then the dilemma,........................................ 

I might have every Kona solid color in 5" squares, 

but I have no idea of the name of each colour square.........

GREAT. 

I had visions of sitting at the computer holding each swatch up to the screen trying to figure out which colour it is.  Fortunately, I thought about it for awhile and then found that Robert Kaufmann have a list and colour pic of each colour in the charm packs, yippeeeeee. Now all I have to do is sit down and go through the list and match up the colours. I am still trying to figure out how to attach a non-permanent name to each square.

It was a great, expensive idea, but I think I would have been better waiting for the Kona Colour Card, which by the way was back in stock less than a week later.

 C'est la vie!

More

These also arrived last week. There is a story behind the Kona charm packs.

This is the sashing fabric I bought at Spotlight, a waste of time wasn't it, in my defence it does look better than this, it looks a lot darker in the photo.  So I will definitely be leaving it as it is and continue on. At the very least it saves me a whole lot of unpicking, and that is a very very good thing.

 From this

to this.....still needs to be a whole lot bigger

And we have had some sun this week, here's proof

                    

In case you were wondering

My profile photo is a penguin soft toy.  In 2007 we wet to Fiji with some friends. One of the girls took a penguin along. We, as mature adults, decided to have a bit of fun with it, so the following photos are the result. 

Hope this answers any questions.

Exercise + me = bad outcome

No dogs were harmed in the following, just me. 

There has been extreme lack of exercise here for some time, partly as I hurt my foot last time I did some serious exercise, partly it's so hot and humid in paradise , and mostly coz I'm lazy.

I tend to either do no exercise at all, or go all out and work out 7 days a week, which I can't sustain, then I stop. Never ending circle!!!!! I need to find a happy medium.

I have now been doing no exercise at all for quite a few months, which has led to weight gain, and consequently high blood pressure.  To counteract this, I have been madly dieting, and dare I say doing well at that, and trying to get back into a bit of exercise, of 30 mins a day.  The weather has been very wet here, and I could go out in the rain and walk with an umbrella, I don't, because our rain is usually torrential, and an umbrella would possibly keep the top of my head dry. I have been intending to use the treadmill at home, but that is boring.  Yesterday I decided I just have to walk, even if I only do two 20 min sessions a day. It is quite hilly around here, and the road I have to walk along to go anywhere further than a 20 min walk has no foot path, very limited pedestrian access and very fast trucks and cars. It is quite dangerous.


Which leads me to todays story. Walking for 20 mins means I can take the dog for a nice quick stroll, on a quite undulating circuit.  It should be pleasant, but as I found out yesterday, due to dogs roaming loose around here it can be quite hazardous for me.  As a dog approached us, I picked Karma up as I thought he might be in danger , and as I picked him up, he bit me, HARD.  Karma is 8 yrs old, he has never bitten me before, ever.  Then when I walked away with him and reached our yard I put him down and he bit me again. HARD, he broke the skin, this from a dog who won't eat bones, biscuits or anything hard.  So there goes the idea of my 20 minutes of walking the dog morning and afternoon. Apparently a number of the dogs in the street are allowed to roam free.

If Karma thinks he is going to get walked again after biting me twice, well, he is very sadly mistaken. (He is an inside dog, but we live on 3 acres so he does get exercise.)

Innocent? I think not.

After this aborted attempt, I went for a walk with Renata, walking along having a nice chat, as we weren't exactly being strenuous,  I tripped over the foot path, did a couple of running steps thinking that I would just stumble, and found myself sprawled on the ground after going A over T in a very undignified manner, ending with a grazed knee and ankle and sore hands. It was funny, in fact very funny, so you can chuckle here, only my pride and dignity were damaged, the graze isn't too bad. Fortunately for me, Renata was the only one who witnessed it....I hope.

This leaves me with the question, which is worse?

A. Doing no exercise

B. Exercising and ending up with serious injuries.

I think I do need to exercise, but I am contemplating buying one of these outfits,

as I should have enough padding to protect me when I fall, and have the extra bonus of sweating off a bit of weight at the same time.

Might need a helmet too.

TGIF

I was going to say that I've got nothing, as I haven't been feeling particularly crafty or creative this week. I think I may have lost my Creative Mojo, so if you happen to find it lurking around somewhere can you please send it back, I miss it. I think my sense of humour might have run off with it as well.

I have been thinking hard about what I have achieved this week, rather than all the things I didn't get done. Not much, but at least it was better than nothing!
So without further ado here is a sample all of what happened this week, (except for the boring bits and the fighting with a teenager bits).
Firstly

This arrived in the mail, and I have a plan for it.

I finished appliqueing this. Actually, it was more like, if I have to applique another one of these, I will throw the damn thing into the dam, (pond for all the non Aussies), or put it on the driveway and run over it a few hundred times. So it is finished as much as it is ever going to be.

I completed this, which is the back of that (scroll back up one photo).

Then something exciting happened, a good fairy sent me a lovely Hancocks of Paducah catalogue, thank you very very much, good fairy. So I have been drooling over that and clocking up a Bank Balance Busting wish list the last couple of days.

This arrived in the mail this afternoon.

Woo hoo

Complete with cat's butt!!

Another reason to empty my bank account, the colour card, not the cat's butt!

I have been crocheting a couple more squares for the SIBOL project. Slow going, but I will get some more done in the next few days. They all badly need blocking before they go o/s. Notice my creative side has well and truly disappeared as the green/yellow/blue one is an exact copy of the one in the book 200 Crochet Squares. I never ever copy exactly, this is not good.

Finally a note about some lovely bloggy friends. Who really cheered up my week. I have had some really great belly laughs this week from some wonderful bloggers. Including a post on how to eat Vegemite and, a video on a poor unsuspecting victim friend eating Vegemite for the first time. You really made my week. Thank you. You will find the video here, on Home Matters 1st.

PS Some other stuff arrived in the mail too, but I didn't want to load too many photos, so they can wait for the next post.