Weekend fun

It’s better to write about the good stuff aye?? Instead of the teenagers that are pissing me off.  It would be nice if we could throw them out sometimes, or run away somewhere.

So, we took Cameron to the local Christmas parade on Saturday.  It was really good for such a small town.  Cameron thoroughly enjoyed it and came home with his pockets bulging with sweets. 

This is my favourite pic of the lot.  This is Nikki from Cameron’s Kindy coming over to say hello.  I love her costume !!!

Nice.  To make the afternoon even nicer, while out having a decadent lunch afterward at “Wild Oats” we ran into the lovely teacher from Fraser Crescent School in Upper Hutt that taught Nathan and Lilly in the new entrants class.  You know how sometimes there is teacher who makes a real  impression on both you and your children?? Well, Mrs Cowell is one of those.  I’d still rate her the best teacher they ever had.  It was so nice to see her again and hear that she is still teaching.  It s a real pity that Cameron won’t have her too.  It did make me think that with the dilemma that I’m having about which school to send Cameron to next year the deciding factor may be who the teacher is.

Back tomorrow with crafty stuff, including pics of a finished quilt.

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Getting on top of it all :-)

I’m feeling really good that I have been able to finish some jobs on my list.  Here’s pics of the other PJ’s I made for Cameron………….

I got bee blocks made for Jessica, just 2 to complete for November.

I’ve completed quilt #1 for Bec and the top for quilt #2 (will sandwich and quilt that tomorrow).

I even got a skirt made for a customer.  Not what I usually sew, but very easy to put together

And the best news – Over the past 9 weeks I’ve managed to lose 7kgs !!! Yay, I feel so much better.  Still another 13kg to go, but that’s an awesome start.  Lilly has viral tonsillitis at the moment, so no tennis till she’s better but I can go out for a cycle if I need to, tennis is much more fun though.

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Satisfying

I have to say, some time to sew on things for us here at home has been very satisfying.  I couldn’t work on the quilting as I need to lay a whole quilt (still in pieces) on the floor in the lounge and the other quilt is ready to sandwich.  Neither are jobs that can be done with little people in the house.  So I worked onmaking new summer pyjamas for Cameron.  I managed to get 4 pairs of pants completed and 1 top complete.  The other 3 tops are nearly done, they just need binding.  Not bad for a days work.

If I get this post finished I might have time to finish the other tops tonight

I’ll leave you with pics of some garden produce.  We aren’t getting much as almost everything is in the “growing” stage, but strawberries are going good and peas and broadbeans are coming along nicely too.  We had rain last night, quite a bit, which is great as we’ve had quite a few dry weeks.  We must start watching the water consumption.  Back soonish with pic of the other PJ’s.

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The coats..

Promised pics of the coats didn’t I?? Well here they are.  Much nicer in real life of course

I love the blue one the best.  The fantail applique (just sewn onto the fabric) turned out awesome.  The cream one is nice too, but blue is my favourite.

Both lined with gorgeous striped Merino / Cotton fabric for extra warmth.  Both outers are Wool.  The navy one is coat wool, the cream a recycled wool blanket.  Thanks to friends who keep an eye out for wool blankets on good condition for me I have a nice stash of both boy and girl colours to start making some more of these wool coats for the shop for next winter.  I’ll just need to find lining fabric.

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I got lucky !!!

Not like that, well, maybe like that, but that’s not what I’m talking about.  This here’s a clean blog

Look at the lovely things that arrived in the post this week.

This gorgeous parcel of Melly and Me fabrics was courtesy of Beth at Modern Jax (scuse the lack of links, WordPress is not playing nice).

The other fantastic parcel was from Lyndy at Stitchbird. Geez I was lucky.  I love th way parcels from Stitchbird are packaged up.

So, they were nice surprises

Oh, finished quilt top #1 for Bec, doesn’t it look great?  Just waiting on instructions regarding thread and quilting style and it will be finished.

I have finished the wool coats, I’ll load pics of them next post as they are on the big computer and I’m posting this from the laptop.

I worked really hard today, but not on sewing.  Lilly had a big tanty last night after I asked her to clean her room.  She said she wished she had a smaller room and less clothes.  So I made that wish come true.  Lilly now has Cameron’s smaller room and Cameron gets the bigger one.  It was a lot of work to move it all around, but Matt helped and it was finally all done by 5pm.  Luckily Cam had a quiet afternoon which meant I could finish it off.  The poor boy was running a temp when I picked him up from Kindy.  I gave him some Pamol as soon as we got home, but that was vomited up in about a minute (as well as all the morning tea and lunch).  He seemed better after that and fell asleep in the bed in his new room while I put things away.  He slept for 3 hours, woke just as dinner was being served.  He was perky as, had dinner and then some jelly and milk.  Now I just have to tire him out enough to go to bed.

Oh, and Lilly was not very upset at the room change, bit anti-climax really after all that work, but I guessed the reaction would be like that, you can’t fight the Mum, she knows the futility of that

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Craft

Just not technically mine

A few years ago my stepdad Kevin made me some neat thread holders.  The do a great job, but I’ve recently outgrown them.  I have heaps more thread and I needed to free up desk space.  Jo over and Crazy Crafter NZ wrote a post a few months back about the awesome thread holders that Rex at Woodwise is making and selling on FELT.  So I just had to have me one, or three as it turned out.  The one is the pic is number 3.  The first one, regular size, holds 56 spools, for number 2 I asked for one designed to hold my large reels, so it holds 30 large reels, and number 3 I needed to hold all my bobbins, as you can see in the next pic, I could do with some more bobbins.  They are next on my essential buying list (that and a new top blade for my overlocker). I love that my thread is right by my machine and still out of the way.  Thanks Rex for the great service.

Ive been working on a few different items this week.  Quilt #2 for Bec, almost finished cutting, will be sewing top #1 and top#2 this week. No pics as yet

Quilting for a customer.  The top and thread were supplied and I have straight-line quilted it to enhance the hexagons.  You can’t see the quilting very much on the front as the thread blends in very well, but you can see it on the back.

I’ve also been working on an urgent order for two wool coats for a customer who is moving back to Germany very soon.  I should have pics of those tomorrow.  I’ve done the bulk of work on them.

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A bit of light reading :-)

I preordered these books a while ago, then promptly forgot about them.  So it was a nice surprise when they turned up in the mail box this week (especially as I had already paid for them).  So far I’ve just had a bit of a flick through the Poultry book, it looks really informative, much more so than previous chapters in Small Farming books, the pics of each breed are fabulous and the book is specifically written for New Zealand conditions.  Yay.  Looking at all the different breeds makes me want to get some more hens

I’ll let you know about the Vege growing book once I’ve had a chance to look through it.  I’m feeling good about the garden at the moment, we have heaps of corn seedlings coming up (think we’ve planted about 100), potatoes are coming up, peas have pods on them, strawberries are ripening.  I spent 2 hours in the potting shed on Thursday planting out more seeds in trays so we can get as much food from the garden as possible. 

I’ll be back with a crafty update later, I need to go do the grocery shopping now, it’s like old mother Hubbard’s cupboard here today.

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Working, working, working

Some times I have trouble saying no.  Really it’s something I need to practice, but when you are working for yourself its hard to turn away customers.  I have so many jobs on that I’m starting to think I just need to lock myself away for a few days so I can go some serious work done.  The big problem is I’m very limited with sewing time.  I was getting  4 hours of sewing time while Cameron was at kindy, but now that I’m exercising, that uses an hour of sewing time, so then I’m down to 3 hours.  I need to get lots of spring planting in the garden done, so once Cam is home from kindy that’s what gets done, plus other housework.  Once the wee boy is in bed (between 7.30 and 8pm) I’m just too tired to sew most nights.  Bit of a bugger.

On the good news front, I’ve won a couple of fabric giveaways, so once they arrive in the post I’ll share pics and link to the lovely folks who sent them to me.  Weightloss-wise, I’m doing okay, not fabulous like I’d hoped, especially with the amount of exercise I’m doing, but slow and steady.  I have to admit that I’ve been a bit slack this week with eating, only a tiny bit, but I expect it will show on Monday’s weigh in.  Losing a bit of weight has made me feel a bit better about myself though and some days I even dress like I don’t live on a farm A good haircut helped too.

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A bit ripped off……………

I wonder which of the hens produced this excuse for an egg.

The ex-broody hen is laying, but looks like another one is thinking about going broody now.  I went to get the eggs this afternoon and she was very viscious.  I had to poke her with a stick to get her off the nest.  Then she got upset trying to get back onto the nest and an egg fell out of her, all warm and wet.  Yuck.  I was pleased to get 8 eggs out of 8 hens today though, it’s not often you get 100% laying with cross bred hens.

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Transformation

Don’t you just love it when this …………………………..

turns into this?…………………………………..

It’s a custom ordered quilt for a lovely lady who has bought one of my cot quilts previously and custom ordered a few other things from me.  I’m doing 2 of these quilts, the other is gorgeous brown, lime and orange colours. 

The first of my November bee blocks.  A spiderweb block in vintage fabrics for Kelly  – Australasian Bee.

We’ve had some great weather in the past couple of days, you can see from the pics we have plenty of spring grass.

The chooks are all happily laying.  Broody hen stopped being broody before I got her some fertile eggs.  Just waiting on her to start laying again now.

Jack is fully recovered from his abscess a few weeks ago.

The garden is doing fine.  I have to get the last of the leeks used in the next week or so, I can see they are going to go to seed very soon.  We’ve planted corn and planted out the cucumber seedlings.  I do need to get some more seed raising mix and plant some more seedlings though.

Todays job is to clean all the junk out of the spare sleep out, ready for the return of #1 son, who is coming back for a while.  Hopefully he can find a job or some direction in his life.  I’m not looking forward to an extra person in the queue for using the bathroom, or the extra noise another person can generate when they are all playing silly buggers.  But I’m sure there will be some good points about it.

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