first day

... of my new job, as it were. Ant has officially recognised it as "domestic engineer" which, from working in a bank, I have actually seen women put this down as their occupation. Each to their own I suppose.

So, after 3 loads of washing, doing the grocery shop and taking doggy for her walk, I felt it prudent of me to have a rest and enjoy some lunch. Homemade pumpkin soup and 2 new magazines picked up this morning. I've waffled on about Sew Hip before but never did anything about subscribing as, a) I couldn't afford to, and b) didn't know if it would be worth my while, being a new magazine and all. So it was lovely to see it at my local newsagent, who is pretty good at getting in 'different' magazines. The other one is Creative Knitting, more of an indulgence buy because it has a few baby knits.

Oh and did you notice? I have a new camera - yay!

I also had a look on Flickr today to see what the latest count was for the Bushfire Relief Project. Here's what Tia posted on the groups discussion board -

"1764 Donated Quilt Blocks = 70 quilt tops + 39 Donated quilt tops + 12 completely quilted and finished quilts = 121 quilts for the people of Victoria! How awesome is that? What a heck of a quilting bee! Thanks so much everyone...what a great lot you all are."

on a roll

The backing fabric made me do it. I was in one of my locals a couple of weeks ago and came across this gorgeous flannel: Urban Flannel by Valori Wells for Free Spirit. This fabric reminded me that I had some Kaffe Fassett fabric that I could use for piecing with different coloured solids. I also had some raw linen, something that I'd been wanting to use in a quilt for a while but wasn't sure how, so this has become the alternating blocks. I found some variegated thread that matched for the machine quilting.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and will be the type of quilt I can just chuck in the washing machine after baby has leaked on it in some way...

Some other little things to share. I found the hat pattern through Ravelry, very simple and quick to knit up. The darker colour is left over from the jumper I made for Ant, it's an undyed wool/alpaca blend and is lovely and soft. Sorry for the shabby photo quality, I'm still using the camera phone. Hopefully we'll have a new camera soon.

Yesterday I stopped at my local Windmill shop and picked up these wooden rattles. Apparently I'm quite weird for not wanting plastic toys. I know we'll probably be given plastic toys but hey, a girl can but try. When baby is older I really really want to get it a Wheely Bug, who wouldn't?

Note: I'm using a computer at the moment that doesn't have Firefox, and are finding it difficult only using Explorer - it won't do what I want it to do! So sorry if this post looks a bit odd.

scratching that itch

The quilting itch that is.

Since I made those Bushfire blocks a couple of weeks ago it made me realise how much I've been missing simple patchwork and quilting. So..... despite the list of 'to do's' I started cutting out a new quilt, that is, another baby quilt. I know, I can't help myself.

You see this is the thing. I'm in the middle of hand quilting the hexagon stars quilt for baby but I have the embryo of a feeling at the back of my mind that I'll run out of time. It may be a different story once I finish work (3rd April) but I don't want to take that chance, and like I said, I wanted to do some new quilting.

I remember quite a few years ago when I was living in Smithton and was a member of the local quilt group. I had taken part in a few of their shows and at one I was part of the 'working display', hand quilting a saw tooth star quilt that we still use on our bed. One clever bloke asked me what was the attraction of cutting up fabric just to sew it together again. Well it's true isn't it, when you break it down to base elements like that. However if that's how we only thought about quilts then we'd never make them, and buy a blanket instead.

But thankfully we don't think of quilts that way. We revel in the creative process. We love choosing just the right fabrics, either new or from our stash, that will make the quilt sing. Cutting and piecing may get a bit monotonous but we keep plodding along (or else it ends up in the UFO pile.....), and start to feel the first tinglings of joy at seeing the top finished. Then the fun of deciding which quilting pattern will complement the piecing. The neck ache from machine quilting or the long winter evenings hand quilting in front of the telly, and finally the race to get that binding on. Of course these days the process isn't complete unless we take copious photos of the finished product and share them on our blogs, and hey, why shouldn't we? We're proud of our little creations and want to share them with the world.

So, I'm hand stitching down the binding at the moment, and once finished I'll post the proper photo or 2 and gloat over my little creation.

Oh and I haven't forgotten about the nappies, I'll post a photo of a finished one that's all ready for a wee botty to fill it..... literally.

when one is camera-less...

.... and doesn't know if it will ever resurface. In the meantime I have no way of showing off what I've been doing of late, unless I use the camera on my mobile phone - the picture quality isn't overly fantastic but it's better than nothing.

Something I would love to share is my meeting with the new Bernina 830 on Thursday at my local dealer -

This is an amazing machine, choc-a-block full of features and big too. I also love how the Bernina's are still mostly metal, hardly any plastic parts at all. Robyn at the shop was telling me how there's a huge backlog of orders for these machines in America - like 20,000. What's more amazing is that people are prepared to pay for them too, like $12,000. Thankfully they only cost another $1,000 here (=$13,000) but still, that's a truck load of moolah just for a sewing machine!

I'll just go back to my humble 1230 and hopefully I'll be able to show you the fruits of my labour soon....

doing stuff...

Nappies that is.

I currently have fifteen of the little suckers on the go, assembly line style, and still have about another ten to go. I can't spend too much time on them at once though, all those little loose flannel fibres get up my nose and make me all sinus-y.

It's my sister-in-law's birthday this week and I thought I'd make the Puff purse as part of her present. It's a Nicole Mallalieu pattern that I bought through her on-line shop a few weeks ago. Nicole is a very talented designer and seamstress, and her patterns are very well written. She'll often warn you if a certain part is tricky which makes life a lot easier and not quite as bad as you might fear. The kit comes with interfacing and the purse frame as well, which is nice. You can also order extra notions/supplies through the shop.

The weekend just gone. I used to be part of this picture, and in some ways I do miss it. I like to get stuck in and work hard on some manual labour, but as there's a lot of lifting involved I'm just not capable right now naturally. So I sit by and knit or sew....... or take a photo of the new car -

We needed something more suited to Bruny roads (most of them are dirt), able to tow the boat with ease, back seats for baby and a canopy on the tray for doggy, these sort of vehicles seem to tick all the boxes. So, gone is my little red wagon (*sniff*) and enter the big white beast.

Sunday arvo

Anthony suggested we take the Zodiac out onto the South Esk at Hadspen, something different and a change from the Tamar. We wanted to see how far up stream we could go - hopefully as far as Longford. However the river narrows here and there and we turned back after a while as a tight bend showed us some submerged logs.

During our little jaunt we were rewarded with some lovely vistas.

This is platypus country too. Some people we passed in a canoe said they had just seen one. I think the motor of our boat would've scared them away. There's a creek not far from my parents place that has had a resident pair from time to time, it's lovely to watch them foraging about in the shallows.

We did manage to attract the attention of some locals though.

On our return we felt that we had cleared a few cobwebs and are now ready to face a new working week - maybe.... ;)

indulge me....

... for I need to let off a bit of steam.

I am feeling to urge to have a special t-shirt made just for me. It would say "no, I don't know what we're having (but hey, if it's a baby then that's fine by me)".

I think the "do you know what you're having" question has been a bit of a surprise to me especially as that's something I've never asked expecting parents. I suppose it's because for me personally I don't like the idea of finding out so why should I ask others? Almost everyone we see asks us that question so you can see why it's wearing thin. It's also interesting to note the amount of people who, after we've said we don't know what we're having, have then said "good, I hate it when people find out"....... so does that mean they'd hate me if we knew?

Sorry, the irony of these things stands out like a sore thumb at times.

Anyways, I shan't do this again I promise. Here's a pair of little things I finished a couple of weeks ago, I found the pattern here.

They'd be even cuter if the photo wasn't so blurry. Sorry....