Weekend away.

So last weekend I got back from my annual trip to go quilting up at Armidale. Unfortunately I don't have a lot to show for my time (except maybe a renewed interest in my craft and children who appreciate me a bit more!) My main project that I took was a flannel quilt that was a quilt that was not co-operating! It was made from a pattern that had been written for regular quilting cottons, but in the kit it had a note saying "Since flannel fabric stretches more, we suggest using interfacing". But unfortunately with these limited instructions I was at a bit of a loss exactly how to do that!!

I did however complete a pillowcase for a little man who likes Ninjas, Spiderman, cats and giraffes...

I also had a very cute cat panel that I sliced up, bordered with a bali pop I had in the cupboard, to end up with blocks like this..(this may be my favourite as it reminds me of my ginger cat, Louie)

So I am currently auditioning sashing fabrics...(feel free to vote!)

And so that I could justify my epic tv watching during the Commonwealth Games, I have been knitting again. I have been receiving a Winter Club from Jellywares and got a lovely skein of Malabrigo wool. So after seeing this pattern, I got knitting, and this is what I ended up with.

It wasn't supposed to have a turnover band but my attaching of the band to the actual hat piece was so shoddy I made it so the band turns over the dodgy join. Still works, I think...

Anyway, hope you're having a good week!

Chicks, chevrons and chastened

With much excitement our baby chicks hatched last Wednesday. I didn't realise how fraught it would get with the question of "Should we help them hatch?". Three of the eggs just didn't progress from the little peep hole stage and we ended up assisting them out. I'm not sure whether this was the right call or not, or whether they had already become weakened, but these three all died over the next couple of day. But we still have 9 healthy chicks out of a dozen eggs. They are so cute...

On the crafting front my chevron-ripple-wave quilt continues...

And does anyone else hand in their sewing machine for a service with trepidation? Maybe it's because I tend to get reports like this..

I knew it wasn't good but really..was the highlighter necessary?! ;-)

Hope you're having a good week...

Crocheting..

My first attempt at a Ripple Crochet Blanket. Destined for Gorgeous Girl's chair where she reads...

New things, old ideas

So February saw my youngest start school - leaving our house very quiet for 6 hours...and extra loud as four over-tired children get home.

Our puppy, Ruby, continues to grow...and assume control over our house...

Also, hopefully, in about two weeks, this broody hen will have done her job and we should have new chicks. This is our first attempt at hatching eggs...bought fertilised and sent through the post (!)...so hopefully we will have success

I wish I could capture her attitude and how "flat" she makes herself in an attempt to cover and keep her eggs warm.

Recently Gorgeous Girl asked me to make a gift for a friend. So she pulled out some fabric,

and with a little applique...

we came up with this...

(sorry that the pillowcase isn't centred properly!)

One year I made all Gorgeous Girl's friends pillowcases for Christmas and I am chuffed to still see some of them heading off with the girls on school excursions.

Anyway, hope you have a good week!

Summer is in the air...

Hi all! Isn't this a crazy time of the year?

I've been busy with end of the year school and sport things and of course getting ready for Christmas.

The only sewing I've done is an apron for a part of the Secret Santa swap my online quilting group runs.

It is from the same pattern as I made for this apron here

We have also had a birthday for our littlest. One Jay from Ninjago cake as requested...

Looking forward to school finishing and everything winding down for the year and looking forward to hanging out with the kids. Think I better get in a few games of Basketball with my 9 year old before he gets too good!

Have a great week!

Spring, birthdays, crochet...

Wow, spring has hit with a vengeance! Between sniffing and rubbing my eyes, I've enjoyed watching the flowers bloom.

I pretty much finished my first ever crocheted blanket...if you don't look at all the starts and ends I need to weave in!.....

It's made from a merino/alpaca wool..so heavy and warm! (just in time for summer...typical!)

And I've been trying my hand at jam making with some surplus strawberries. Any hints on getting it to set more and not have the fruit float to the top??

The smell of it cooking was divine...worth all the mess!

We've also had another birthday in our family and so here's Gorgeous Girl's cake...

It's Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory in a ball pit (a famous episode for the those who don't watch the show!) We managed to survive having eight 12/13 year olds for a sleepover....thank goodness!

Have a great week!

And there goes another week!

What a week! After battling a yuck flu thingo myself for the last 2 weeks, little J then started a gastro bug on Sunday night which has just persisted and persisted. It has meant a lot of time sitting on the couch watching kid's shows - as he wanted me nearby most of the time. (Personally I think Postman Pat should consider a new career with the amount of parcels he misplaces!!)So ignoring the housework and washing, I did a fair bit of crocheting on my first ever blanket...

I also did a wee bit of online shopping..

( a new mixing bowl and a leadlight star from Etsy)
And of course there was some fabric! Hopefully, in the next couple of days, I will get to work with these fabrics to make a present for a special person...

Today was a day of beautiful sunshine here, so hopefully with a bit of warmer weather we will get back to a healthier household

And I can get onto that pile of washing...sigh....
Hope you're having a great week!

Knitting....

It's started to get quite chilly here, all the leaves have changed colour, and the heater...which never quite managed to get put away after last winter...has been back in full use.


I've really caught the knitting bug lately and have enjoyed having something to mindlessly do whilst mindlessly watching television...can you tell I'm into things that don't tax this frazzled brain. So I finished my stripy scarf (Paton's Rainbow Yarn) - just need to thread in a few ends. I can't find a wool needle in this house to save myself so will have to go and buy another.
And I thought to increase my knitting skills I'd try something a little harder and made this one for Gorgeous Girl. It's an alpaca and acrylic mix wool from Spotlight and it's lovely and soft.

Next in the queue is one for hubby. I asked him if he would actually wear it and his reply was "if you made me one, I might", so we will wait and see!

Hope you're having a good week.

My scarf knitting continues...

Nearly to the 2 metre mark, so should be finished soon!

Thought I'd share a recipe from one of my SIL's that I made the other night. Everyone ate it except the four year-old but that child would have spaghetti bolognaise 7 nights a week if I let him!

LEMON CHICKEN PARCELS

Ingredients
4 chicken breasts - each cut into two if large
90 g butter
1 tab oil
filo pastry
1 tabs seeded mustard
1 tabs chopped fresh coriander

Sauce
2 tabs lemon juice
2 tabs of chopped fresh coriander
2 tabs of grated fresh ginger (or a tab of ground ginger if you have to)
1 cup thickened cream

1. Heat 30g of butter and oil in heavy pan. Add chicken and cook until browned lightly. Remove breasts from pan and place on absorbent paper. Reserve pan juices for sauce.

2. Place 1 sheet of pastry on bench, brush with leftover butter that has been melted. Fold pastry in half. Place one chicken breast in centre of one end. Spread chicken with mustard and sprinkle with coriander. Roll up to form a parcel.

3. Brush parcels with melted butter. Bake in a moderate oven until golden brown. Approximately 20min.

4. Sauce - add lemon juice to pan juices. Stir in other ingredients. Stir constantly over low heat until it has reduced by 1/2 and slightly thickened.

5. Pour over chicken parcel and enjoy. Serve with salad or cooked vegies...


Well have a great week. I'd better go check on my four-year old as he wandered past 10 minutes with a glue stick, mumbling "and I'll need this..."

The week that was...

Well this week we've been on school holidays and through the generosity of my parents, have been down to two kids for the week. Gorgeous Girl and Little J headed off to Nan and Pop's to ride horses, jump on the hay bales, walk in the mud and eat too many of Nan's famous ginger bickies.

So I decided to spring clean (in Autumn!) the boys rooms, make some new curtains (to replace the ones that I made from teddy bear fabric when expecting our first bub 13 years ago. Alarmingly I found out that I never did quite get to finishing those side seams!) and chase around the two munchkins who were left to enjoy their boring parent's company.


Boo doing some minor mechanics before heading off on a bike ride..

I've also been getting out my knitting needles as I've decided I would like to improve my knitting skills. I have started with a scarf to get me back in the swing of things.(Not that I recommend swinging with knitting needles...down right dangerous...)

Of course the pattern called for a very tricky 10 rows of colourful wool, 10 rows of navy, 10 rows colourful etc etc..and I managed to mess up on the first change so mine will be unique and go 10 rows colourful, then 12 rows navy..sigh...

I have also been making hexagons..

None of these puny 2" affairs for me..these are the mother of all hexagons at 10 1/2" across. see scissors for scale...


Willow, the new addition to the family is proving a delight. She prefers to be carried around like a baby, and purrs crazily every time someone picks her up. Hubby put in a new water feature for me in the garden and she was most interested to try and figure out what this thing was..

I give the water feature about 1 month to live with the amount of soccer (sorry, I mean football) balls that fly around our backyard! I've already had to farewell 3 gnomes, one ceramic lizard and a flower pot... And my brother wonders why I don't use the banana lounge he gave me to relax in our backyard...

Hope you're having a good week!

Time goes by...

Hi all! Life has been getting a bit too much for me again lately and so there has been no sewing here lately. And funnily enough, once I had gotten out of the habit, I've had real problems picking it up again. Every time I tried to put some stuff together I kept doubting my pattern/fabric/colour choice and it would go no further. Frustrating stuff! However last weekend I decided to make an apron for a soon-to-be sister-in-law's kitchen tea. The invite said "Let's make A a domestic goddess", so I thought I would make it a bit 1950's retro..when the world was full of domestic goddesses. So I made this to put in a present with some blue teatowels and tray. Looked quite cute all together really.

The pattern is Flirty Skirty Apron by the Apron Lady Designs. You should have seen how much fabric I had pulled out before I chose these two. Actually these were my second choice as I originally had some great pears/apples fabric..but managed to have all the apples and pears upside down! Darn it! Have a good week! Ps. Still looking for answers on how to get paragraphs to happen in my blogposts. They are there when I type, but when I type publish they disappear..bit like my waistline....(that's my daughter in the pic!)

And more ornaments...

Still more felt flying as I get a few more bits and pieces made.

I found the ribbon in Gorgeous Girl's scrapbooking supplies. What a find!

And a partridge in a pear tree...

Christmas is rapidly approaching, and as it does my "to-do" list is becoming more urgent. I am in a Christmas ornament swap and so have been playing with my felt and some Theodora Cleave buttons.

So far I have come up with this..


Hopefully it is recognisable as a pear tree??

Anyway it's been fun to have a play after a frantic week of speech days, end of year concerts, visitors and Christmas parties.

Hope you're having a good week..

What do you have on your ironing board??

I have one finished Murray Cod costume! Yay!



My daughter is off to a do a play for other for kids and this is one of the costumes for a play that her class is performing.

It was an absolute shocker to sew..it has craft foam as it's "insides" which wanted to stretch and stick in the sewing machine etc etc. So this view..from a distance, is it's best side. Close up it's full of puckers etc etc.

But I kind of like his cheeky face...


(In case you're wondering how the kid wears it, their face is in the fish's mouth. I would have a munchkin demonstrate but they are all tucked up in bed.)

I'm glad to have one of these costumes ticked off the list. I have to just figure out how to make a frog head now and finish off a Jewel Beetle's legs. (Now there's a sentence I can't imagine I will ever say again!) :-)

Have a great week!

The Oz Material Girls Christmas in July Swap

After exchanging a few emails with my swap partner I learnt that she liked blue and green, was super organised ( a word that I was unfamiliar with, so had to head to the dictionary to define.. :-) and sold gorgeous sewn things through her website This is what I decided to make for her..(no, not the sewing machine, the thing under it!)


Made from a pattern by Bloom. (and once again an item that could do with a good press...sigh...)