Productive

It has been wet here, for days now. We haven't seen outrageous rainfall, unlike other parts of Australia, and no flooding here. Two reasons it doesn't flood where I live. Firstly I live on the side of a hill, so if it floods here, we are in very very big trouble, and secondly this area has always had very heavy rainfall it's not uncommon to have 4 inches of rain in a single thunderstorm in less than an hour, the landscape is able to cope very well with heavy rain.

Enough of the geography lesson, lots of rain meant I made the most of the cool weather and tried to make a tiny inroad into my ever growing pile of WIP's which are slowly turning into UFO's.

I finished piecing this quilt top, it has a name too, Spice Boxes. Excuse the very ordinary photo of it, it's just too wet and grey to take photos of it outside and this is the best of a bad bunch. The pattern is a  Kate Conklin design that was in a Down Under Quilts magazine earlier this year.  I just love the colours in this, I started off using the warm palette from Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush line and added some Kona solids to break it up as they are beautiful fabrics but very busy. I also wanted to use a few more fabrics from my stash to make it a bit more individual so I added some Castle Peeps, Hope Valley, Deer Valley, and Meadowsweet.  I'm really happy with how it's come together, after a lot of time spent trying to make it look random, I just can't do random random, I have to have controlled random. Now I'm just stressing about how I'm going to quilt it.

After finishing the Spice Boxes top, I tackled the Wonky Owls quilt in an effort to reduce my pile of unfinished 2010 quilts.  After a lot of brow furrowing, swearing and an almost "art installation" moment, where it was quite possibly going to be burnt, stabbed or run over, or all three, I finished the quilting. No photo yet, but in the meantime, a photo of the binding all ready to go.

We also put  up the Christmas tree on the weekend, unlike Mrs P's at QIMP whose tree looks fabulous and very finely dressed, mine looks almost naked. Bitchypoo wanted to go with a blue/silver theme, unfortunately I don't have that many decorations in those colours, and I don't want to buy anymore so it's going to have to stay naked.

 Sorry I had to crop the photo so you couldn't see the disaster zone* in the background. The tree is tall and slim as the layout of the living area means a lovely big fat tree would take up half the floor space.

I bought a couple of decorations in a sale about two weeks ago, they were so cute I couldn't resist.

I'm having second thoughts so I think I'll buy some silver tinsel to make it look a little less forlorn, I can't have a naked Christmas tree.

* The reason the disaster zone in the background - due to the very wet weather, the verandah decking oil still hasn't dried so I can't put any of the furniture back on to it, a lot of it is still taking up space inside. I'm hoping I'll be able to show the big reveal later in the week, that's if it stops raining for a day.

ETA: I didn't buy any tinsel, when I had a look at what was on offer I decided against it.    I am very glad I didn't buy any and thank you all so much for your wonderful and supportive advice. M

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.

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.