A spot of weekend gardening

I think I’m finally over the disappointment of the summer garden failure.  Yesterday I ripped out all the green tomatoes and made room for some new vegetables.

Have a look at out main beds…

We currently have lots of silverbeet to harvest (Chard) and Beetroot, but that’s about it.  I planted out some more beetroot, celery, kale and spinach a couple of weeks ago.  It’s doing well, especially after the 5 days of rain we just had. Our leeks are looking good too (the ones the chickens didn’t dig up).

Today I planted in most of the empty spaces.  Here’s what I planted out… peas, snow peas, radishes, spring onions, chinese cabbages, brussels sprouts and carrots.  All from seed, so here’s hoping it all (or most) comes up.

On the craft front, I started a new quilt for a customer.  Using the Anne Kelle “Ready, Set, Go” line of fabric.  It’s organic cotton.  It’s very nice to work with.

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Masks

I spent most of Wednesday making some masks.  I had the panel to make these for ages, it matches the fabric I was gifted to make Cam’s Halloween quilt.  So I being bugged to make up the masks.  They are so cute !!! Cameron’s one is the top Cat.  I’ll have to see if I can get a pic of him wearing it. 

I thought these would be a great item for Halloween, presents or the dress up box, so I have a couple more panels to make up some to sell in the shop

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The new teenager

Jeez, now I have another one that’s officially a “teen”. My darling daughter Lilly is now 13.  Her birthday was yesterday, but celebrations have been spread over the last couple of weeks due to school holidays.  I took Lilly and 4 of her friends to the movies and then out to dinner about a week and half ago.  Holy moly, do you have any idea how noisy 5 girls that age are?? Add in one with ADHD, it was so tiring.  I was glad that the girls went to see Hop, while Cameron, Ursula and I went to see Rio.  Some of the girls had never eaten Thai food before, so that was a new experience for them. I’m pleased to say no one starved .  3 of the girls stayed for a sleepover.  I think they finally crashed about 1am.  Never again!

We did present and cake day on Sunday as Lilly went away for the week to camp on Monday.  She’ll be back on Friday.  Here’s some pics of her doing the present thing…

Lilly chose a Pavlova for her birthday cake…

Phew, glad that’s over.  No more birthdays till August.

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SALE!!

Back with a real post tomorrow, but in the mean time I’m having a SALE over at Sew Vivid.  Everything is reduced till the end of May.

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Lest we forget

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

We  didn’t go to any of the services today.   I was watching “Home by Christmas” on TV Saturday night and remember the main character saying that he didn’t need to attend a service to remember his mates who died in the war.  So true.  None of us do, though it is nice to go along sometimes.  Enjoy your Anzac day.

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Happy Easter

I hope you are all having a nice Easter Weekend

So what’s been happening at Highway Cottage (apart from quilt making) ? 

A fair bit of Playstation… (mostly Lilly and Ian, but occasionally the boys join in when they are not huddled in Matt’s room gaming on their computers)

Cameron has been busy with lots of bike riding up at the Mountain Bike Park and some potion making at home…

Jack has been catching lots of mice and baby rats (yuck), Good boy Jacko !!

Some chicken watching and waiting to see who will start to crow.  The egg laying is starting to drop off now, down to about 2 eggs most days out of 9 laying hens.  We have 12 large chicks, so we are hoping a good percentage will be hens this year.

Some sewing up of custom orders…

and some I had cut out and partially sewn up, now finished and ready to list in the shop.

Cameron and Ian have been making Airfix models.  First up was a Buffalo Landing Craft carrying a Willy’s Jeep, then they did a Spitfire, today they are painting up a Seahawk.  Plans are in place for many more.  Here’s some pics of Cameron helping with the painting…

And this was when he lost focus… good thing it’s a 2 man job

I’ll come back later and do another post about the hilarity of taking 5 thirteen year old girls out for a birthday treat.

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Seven !

I’ve made 7 Dr Seuss quilts so far this year :-0  Finally though, 2 of them are to stay here.

This week I finished both Cameron’s and Lilly’s Dr Seuss quilts.  Cameron’s was a stack and whack pattern, which took about 5 hours to cut and piece, with straight-line quilting (which took about 3 hours) and Lilly’s was a pattern from Material Obsession (less the borders), a bit more time-consuming, with loopy, swirly stippling, which took about 4 hours to quilt.  The cotton interlock I used as a backing is lovely and soft, but adds significantly to the weight, so it makes the quilting much harder.

Due to the cold weather the pics are not great.  I’ll try to get some better ones tomorrow if it’s sunny again.  Funny that the pics made the quilts look smaller, both are single bed sizes (though Lilly’s is a bit bigger).

Cameron’s…

Lilly’s…

You can see from the back view of Lilly’s quilt that I didn’t quilt over the ovals.

It’s always nice to snuggle under a new quilt in Autumn

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Congratulations!!

to Megan (#34)  and Tanya (#31) the winners of the Dr Seuss cushion covers.  I’ll be emailing you both asap.  Thanks to everyone who entered.  It was great to see what books were the most popular

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More good than bad.

I have to say sometimes when watching the news it makes you think the world is full of bad guys, but really the world is full of good guys, the bad guys just get all the media.  This week I’ve been lucky enough to come across several of the good guys.  It’s not necessarily big things either, sometimes just the small things.  Like the awesome forum friend who has already helped me out several times before, who lives in quake damaged Christchurch but will go out of their way to post something I wanted in a co-op . Like the other forum friend who was seeking some fabric (which I happened to have) to make something for someone in need (a parent who already has more than most of us to cope with, but still has time to go out of their way for others).  Last but not least the lovely quilter who gifted me some FQ’s of fabric that she won, but had no use for.  There are so many awesome, lovely, thoughtful and generous people out there to inspire us all to be better people. 

Wanna see picks of the fabric I was sent??  Cameron is very excited that it will be turned into a quilt for him

Cute eh?? We don’t really “do” Halloween here in NZ (not like they do in the US), but I love this fabric.

I haven’t got much sewing done this week.  Just distracted by other stuff.  I’m making some more fishing sets for a few customers.  A bit of an easy job I do finish off during the next 2 weeks school holidays.

Still time to enter the Dr Seuss cushion cover giveaway, just leave a comment on the previous post.  Entries are open till Monday morning.

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Dr Seuss giveaway

So Dr Seuss got the most votes for a giveaway.  I’ve spent the last couple of days sewing up some of my Dr Seuss stash into some lovely cushion covers.  I made 4….

but 2 of them are perfect matches for Cam and Lilly’s Dr Seuss quilts (which both need finishing off), so I’m going to give 2 away.

These are the 2 that are staying here..

So these are the 2 I’m going to give away, 1 to each winner.

Each cushion cover fits a standard 40cm (16 inch) inner.  The giveaway is just the covers, which are fully machine washable. 

So what do you have to do to win one?  Just leave a comment on this post, either tell me your favourite Dr Seuss book or character.  Entry is open to anyone, anywhere.  Just one entry per person.  I’ll leave this open till Monday 18th (NZ Time, so that will be Sunday evening in the Northern Hemisphere). Random generator will pick the winner.  Good luck!

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