3 to get lucky?

3 days in a row, I’m on a roll now.  The big kids were playing on the hay bales last night, so we decided to shift them into the small paddock and put the cows back in the big one.  The grass might be short, but there is plenty of new growth where the mower couldn’t reach, and more water in there.  You can imagine how heavy they were to roll.  Good workout !

I hope the hay bales are collected soon, as Nathan and Lilly can’t restrain themselves from climbing all over them, despite being told several times not to.  They both ended up laptop-less for the day as a consequence.  We did get a quiet time eventually.

Just in case you are wondering, Lilly is reading  ”Then” by Morris Gleitzman, which follws his awesome book “Once”.  I’ll read it when she has finished.  Nathan is reading a book called “Leviathan” by Scott Westerfeld which is a War book that I got him for his birthday.  Nice to see them engrossed in a good book. 

How about some garden love?

Our corn, not great, but better than last year. Tasted fab!

Baby feijoas.

The pumpkins recovered from the hail a few weeks ago.

We have half a dozen good size pumpkins growing.

Some new seedlings.

Cam keeps nicking off with the camera to take pics of his toys.  Hmmmm.

He had a go helping Dad with dinner tonight, but cut his thumb with the sharp knife.  Poor boy.

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2 days in row

I finished another quilt front  yesterday.  I used the disappearing nine patch pattern.  I’m super pleased with it, as I bought the bright fabrics about a year and half ago and then couldn’t decide what to make with them.  I love how they sit with the black sashing.  It was hard taking a pic of it though, the wind kept coming up.

We had a wee bit of rain overnight, but we could really do with some decent rain to soak the ground.  Seems a bit wrong to be wishing for rain while the Summer is so lovely.

I’ve had a couple of awesome parcels in the post his week.  The first was my Ishbel shawl from Hannah.  It is lovely.  Soft and beautiful!!  There are some fantastic pics of it on Hannah’s blog.  Thanks Hannah for a fantastic swap.

The other parcel was from the “A little fabric, a little chocolate” swap.  My parcel came from Wendy in the Netherlands.  Thanks Wendy.

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Geez..

These blog posts are getting a bit lean aren’t they?  Well, I have some excuses, really, I do.  It’s SUMMER !!! Finally.  Lots of lovely days, temp up to 28 or so, usually cool enough at night to sleep (except for the coughing all night still) though last night was a bit warm.  I’m busy making stuff, I signed up for a craft stall at the Playcentre fundraiser, now I need to make sure I have enough stock, as well as a few orders for clothes, so I’m busy, busy sewing.  Oh, now I’m on Facebook too (stupid invention if you ask me) but when I did a wee poll on free ways to promote Sew Vivid the general consensus was to have a page on Facebook. Bugger as I have been trying to avoid going there. Oh well, times they are a changing. 

So here’s some pics of happenings at our house…………………….

Cam helping me with cooking. We were making some fresh Salsa.

He’s pretty good with a knife

We had a tractor at our place. WOOHOO!! I know not exciting for most people, but our neighbour came and cut down our hay.  It’s the first time in 6 years we’ve had too much grass for the amount of stock we are carrying. Cam was very excited as you would expect.

Cam has been waiting for the last 2 days for him to come back and bale up the hay, but disappointingly he came back last night, about 10pm to do it. Cam was wiped out after a busy day so I couldn’t even wake him up.  Hopefully they will come pick them up with the truck after Cam is home from preschool.

Ian had to cut down a few branches for the mower to get in the paddock, check out the safe tree cutting, NOT!

A few pics of things I’ve sewn recently.

 

A new quilt top for the shop.

That will do for now, won’t it?

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Happy Day

Ignoring the nasty cough that’s giving me a headache each day, today has been pretty good.  Why?  The Woodland Animals quilt has sold! YAY !  It’s so validating when people buy your stuff.  Awesome.

Doing the shopping was not fun.  God, milk has gone up nearly 40 cents per 2 litre container in the last fortnight.  We are almost out of meat oo, and the Cow is not quite big enough to go to the butcher yet (maybe in anther 2-3 months).  The pigs are ready to go, just need to organise things. 

Here’s a pic of my half of a swap.  Hannah has knitted me the most gorgeous Ishbel shawl.  In return I have a made set of placemats, napkins and coasters. I hope she likes them

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Catching up

I’ve been working mostly on bee blocks today, but I had to finish the block in the pic above first.  It’s been rumbling around in my head for a few weeks now.  I find the best way for me to not lose an idea is to just get it started (hence all the in-progress things on my table).  I really need to learn to sketch down my ideas instead.

So you might be thinking what’s so special about the “Circle of geese” block then?  Yes I made one a few weeks ago for myDQ Swap, but this one, I’ve upsized.  Yes, I have a habit of barstardizing patterns to suit a vision I have.  This was as big as I could get the photocopier to go and still fit it on the paper, so not an exact number. It’s 20 inches squares.  I love the way it turned out, it will be the centre piece for a quilt.  Going large in foundation piecing, not easy, it actually makes it harder to piece, not easier.  Who would have thought that?  Not me.  Go figure.

Blocks for quilting bees…

For Rebecca, disappearing nine patch, love the easy pattern, love the fabric, Santorini.

For Laura, I have to say I hated this pattern.  It’s a real bugger to get the pieces to match up (yes hindsight or practice might have helped), but I’m not known for being logical.  Anyway it matches up as best I can do.  Still not happy though, I’m a Virgo, I like things symmetrical.

For Tracy, nice easy pattern, Amish Diamond and some cute blocks made with the leftovers.

So, now I’m up to date.  None of the blocks were late but now I’m in 5 quilting bees, 2 mini quilt swaps and 2 fabric swaps I need to be on top of things.  I like to get blocks made within a week of receiving the fabric, but sometimes things get in the way.

I finished up two more pairs of pants, one for Cam and one that will go in the shop. I haven’t taken a pic of Cam’s other pair, they are nice though, dark denim with colourful alphabet knee patches.  Here’s a pic of the girl ones. I had this fabric in my stash for ages and had to use it sometime.

Tomorrow I’m making Cam some long sleeve Merino tops, and then Wednesday I’ll be working on a swap, my end of the bargain is a set of placemats and napkins.  Hoping to have that finished by the end of the week.

I made my first batch of Roasted Tomato Sauce today.  We finally had enough ripe tomatoes to make some.  Just enough for 4 servings of Pizza sauce when I had finished.    We are back to having strong wind again, some of the Sunflowers are just about to start flowering, here’s hoping they can stand up long enough.

We did a berry picking run on the weekend. Sad. 90% of the plants are gone, from logging in the area, what left is mostly swamp.  We got about a litre container of raspberries in an hour.  We used to get about 6 times that.  Still was better than nothing.  I also got a few mosquito bites for my trouble, stink! I am allergic to them.  The back of my arm is really sore (from the muscle being swollen).  Hope it goes down soon.

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A promise kept

So, apart from a bit of foundation piecing last night at craft group I have worked on the clothes sewing.  The 90 minute shirt was great.  I had to make a few adjustments to the pattern I drafted, but that was okay.  I ended up making Cam 3 tops, 2 out of t-shirts that Nathan had outgrown and one from a t-shirt we were given.  Only pics of 2, one is in the wash.

Cameron made me take another pic after this one (he has to inspect them) as he wasn’t “making the right face”.  What a poser!

I did cheat a wee bit, I used fold over elastic for binding the edges instead of ribbing.  I like the pattern so much that I’m going to make some of these out of the gorgeous striped merino I got a few days ago.

And some pants.  I LOVE how cool these turned out.  They did take all day to make with all the topstitching, but they look fab!.  They will last for ages too, the cuffs are turned up 2 inches

Modelled…

Not bad for a $1 piece of fabric from the Sallies and a few scraps!

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Summertime

Well the living isn’t easy, but at least we are finally getting some Summer.  I’m still in slacker mode after finishing the last quilt.  I’m also doing a bit of research on the best way to promote the shop and what items I should stock.  So far the feedback tells me I should be on Facebook, but that’s something I have been avoiding.  I don’t wanna go on Facebook, it would make me feel like a sheep.  But I do need the advertising (free).  I’ll have to mull it over a bit.

Ian worked overtime on Saturday so I scurried off into Wellington with Cam and Lilly. I couldn’t face another boring day at home.  The weather was just stunning, hot, but bearable, so we hung out on the beach at Island Bay with friends for most of the day. It was GLORIOUS.  The kids even had a swim, not me though.  The water temp on the the South Coast, FREEZING!!

This week I’m making clothes.  I have a few pairs of pants to make for Cam’s best mate and I wanted to make the 90 minute top featured on Made by Rae, who is having a Celebrate the Boy month (check out the link on my sidebar).  I made the pattern, cut out the top and have finished the front and back edges.  So tomorrow all I have to do to finish is add the sleeves and hem.  I have used one on Nathan’s outgrown t-shirts.  Great way to recycle.

Nathan wrote a small computer program for me tonight, he is such a clever lad!! I got him to update all the links in my sidebar for all the bee’s and swaps I’m in, I was too lazy and fiddling with the code annoys me, so he wrote a program to make the code for me.  Sweet aye?

Last of all a few pics, what’s a post without pics?  Boring !

The completed mini quilt for DQS8. I love this mini, reminds me of swirling water.

A bit of progress on my hex’s…

I bought a new quilting book last week.  I can’t wait to make some of these!

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Supercalifragilisticexpealidcious!

Didn’t you always wonder how that was spelt?  It’s probably incorrect, but that’s the way it’s always been inside my head. 

I finished another quilt for the shop a few days ago.  I find that after finishing a quilt I tend to bum about for a few days not being very productive.  I took some pics of the quilt, but they were taken before I did the binding.  I’ll show you, but it looks way different with the binding on (I’ll try to get pics of that tomorrow).

Cute animals !!

I did get a few blocks done for Karen for the Live Piecefully Bee.

Tonight I sat down and finished my mini quilt for the doll swap (except binding).  I find I work well under pressure, hence all the deadlines coming up.  As well as the 5 quilting bees I’m in, I have 2 mini quilt swaps and 2 fabric / handmade goods swaps.  Some are due before the end of Feb, some mid march.  I’m getting my A into G now so they will all be on time.

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Trip away

A couple of weeks ago my SIL took the kids away for a few days.  My 3 big kids (Matt, Nathan and Lilly) as well as their cousins C and A.  They all went to Auckland for a couple of days.

 For my 3 it was their first time on a plane, so was very exciting. They all had a great time (while I enjoyed the peace and quiet).  They did all the usual touristy things like Kelly Tarlton’s, the Sky Tower, where they had lunch in the revolving restaurant, cruising Auckland harbour etc.  They were even given a VIP tour of the Air NZ hangars at the airport and got to have play inside a 747.  So here’s some pics.  I haven’t included the cousins as I haven’t got permission to post their pics on the blog.

I would add more pics of Nathan, but he is being silly in most of them.

Cam didn’t go with the big kids, so his treat was a visit to Wellington Zoo a few days later.  It was a great day for the zoo, slightly overcast and warm.  We caught the bus from the train station to the zoo and back, Cam really enjoyed that!  He liked the Zoo, but I was a bit disappointed, most of the animals were sleeping as it was afternoon.  Some of the animals we expected to see weren’t there any more.  I wonder what happened to the Zebra’s, Camel, Pelican and Kookaburra they used to have?  It was okay, but I’m looking forward to taking Cam to Auckland Zoo later in the year, they have a better selection of animals.

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