Matching Pegs

Our weekend has been very much an “at-home” one.  Since midweek, Rory has had the flu, with all it’s fevers and aches (there have been between 8 and 10 kids away in his class all week).  On Friday he developed a double ear infection, loads of fun.  Thankfully he is well and truly on the mend, and has been well enough to play with his sisters and eat a proper dinner.

Here is a cushion that I made yesterday afternoon (once Rory was starting to feel better).  I made it with Lara’s lovely houses fabric.  I was in love with this fabric back when it was just a sketch, and have had a bundle of co-ordinating fabrics put together for weeks.  It looks almost as good as I imagined, that is, except for the binding.

Now that it is finished, Luke and I both think it would have looked better with dark brown binding, with just that little pop of colour on the front.  Can I be bothered unpicking all the binding to change it?  Perhaps I will wait and see if it grows on me.  The rest of it is exactly as I imagined.

Here is a piccy of one of the Currawongs currently frequenting our backyard.  Perhaps it is even the culprit who targeted my peg basket.

I think I have established that I am a little funny and a little precious about my pegs.  Not only do I like them to match when I am hanging out the washing, but I also house them in style (see banner picture) and I never leave them out in the weather.  Once I have pegged out the washing, I bring the basket of remaining pegs back into the house, so neither the pegs, nor the basket fade (or get wet) anymore than they will through use.  Not yesterday. 

I have a sick little boy at home at the moment, and he called out to me while I was hanging out the washing so I abandoned the peg basket to it’s fate (after all people are more important than pegs you know).  Later I discovered that a large bird (Probably a Pied Currawong - there are lots about at the moment) had been using my basket for target practice.

The mess the bird left may be more than a wash in the machine can fix, as the bird had clearly been enjoying the berries you see at the top of this post.  Redecoration may be in order.

That little guy you see in the picture is a little brass Wombat, who is actually a sprinkler.  I have never used him (we are not allowed to use sprinklers, unless they are watering with tank water) but he makes a nice ornament if you ignore the nozzle fitting coming out his left side.

On Monday, Amelia found out that her class teacher will be taking a position at an exclusive Catholic boys school, and will be finishing up next Friday, on Amelia’s birthday.  We are all very sad about this as she is an excellent teacher and a lovely person.  To show our gratitude for the time she has spent as Amelia’s teacher, the two of us have embarked on a project together.  Here is our WIP.

Amelia is going to embroider “Thank You Ms Superteacher*” on the little apron.  I just have to assemble this little lady, and add some hair.  This is a pattern I have making up for years, either as Christmas Angels, or cloth dolls.  I usually make Christmas Angels for the classroom teachers, as the school year in Australia finishes at Christmas time.

So what do you all make for Teacher presents?

* not her real name, but Amelia will be embroidering her real name. 

While I had my folder of patterns out, I found another that I thought I would show you for The Friday Archive.  These are more Christmas ornaments, in the shape of stars.  One for each member of the family.  We have five, that feature our First and Middle names on one side, and our birth dates on the other. 

Several years ago I made 12 for my Mother-in-Law, one for each of her Grandchildren.  I have since added 2 more, and will need to make another this November.  That page on the right hand side is a page of swatches of fabrics that I have used, so that I can choose fabric for new stars, that fit in with the others.

On the weekend, Luke and I actually shared a little home improvement project, that we managed to start and finish in a day.  We were trying to eek out some more storage space in our bedroom.

Our bedroom has an old fashioned built in robe, that has 2 narrow full length hanging cupboards (one at either end) with a big gap in the middle for a mirrored “dressing table” with drawers below.  This gives Luke and I a grand total of 71 cm width of hanging space each.  We were sick of our clothes being crushed, so decided to make use of the mirrored cavity in the middle.

Luke added a hanging rail, and I made a cute little curtain, which we hung on one of those stretchy covered spring things attached inside the top of the space.  Now we have a place (75 more cm to share) to hang some of our shirts, that don’t need the full length space to hang.

I am quite pleased with how this project turned out, not only because of the extra space, but because I like the fabric.  It also makes me smile, because it looks like we have a little puppet theatre in our bedroom.  Does that make us weird?

After a few weekends off due to bad weather, construction resumed this weekend on our fort/cubby/space station (Rory is absolutely Lego-Star-Wars Mad, and has decided that we have a space station in our backyard).  First the frame for the roof was completed.

And then, an exciting trip to the hardware store to select a roofing material.  Luke settled on wide fence palings, as the cheapest, aesthetically pleasing option.  He put these up in spite of a rain shower that sent the kids inside.

We plan to paint the whole structure when the weather improves.  Meanwhile inside I made yet another Log Cabin cushion – the final one.  Here is the before shot.

and here is the after…

And for those that are interested, here is a view of the backs of the cushions, which are all made from fabrics that I purchased at Purl Patchwork in NYC.

The Matroyshka fabric backed cushion was the first one I made, and I put the zip where I usually do.  Once I started making the others, I made the decision to use two different fabrics on the back, and because I bought such small amounts in NYC, I had to place the zips lower down, so the backs are all different.

The fabric makes me happy every time I look at it.

Finally here is a link to a site that made me more than happy.  It made me laugh so hard that, (like every cliche), tears streamed down my cheeks, and my stomach was sore.  It is a site about Cake Wrecks, cakes that are just wrong, and it was the post titled “Get Me Holly Hobbie’s Head on a Platter” that really had me in hysterics.

I found this site via a link on, Emmzeegee’s website.  Emmzeegee was a friend that I worked with back when I was childless (and so was she) and I have only reconnected with her recently.  She has triplets who are now 7 years old, who I last saw when they were about 6 months old.  Two of the triplets share first names in common with my twin brother and I, which is kind of cool (but a complete coincidence).  Anyway, check out the cakes, they are great for a laugh!

My Friday Archive post spent most of Friday half written and it is only now that I have gotten to it.  Instead of finishing it, here are some of the things I did….Played with play-dough, Built Lego “castles”, supervised the 2 year old painting (don’t put that brush in there until you wash off that blue first), nipped up to the shops, washed 12 sink loads of dishes, and finally did some sewing.  There were lots more boring things I did of course.

So here is my dip into the archive.

This is a page of sketches taken from my Industrial Design Honours Project in 1997.

My basic idea was that mobile phones are like watches.  They are functional objects we have with us all the time, that should allow us to express our personality through more than just different coloured covers (coloured covers were a pretty new thing back in 97).

Essentially, 11 years ago I came up with, and explored the idea that the phone handset would just be a touch screen with only a couple of buttons, and there would be a separate interactive part (think blue-tooth) that would function as the hearing/speaking unit (back then we did not have blue-tooth).  This separate wearable unit could come in a myriad of different designs, ranging from expensive pieces of jewellery, down to kid friendly plastic pieces – much in the way watches range from expensive gold and platinum through to “Dorothy the Dinosaur” kids watches.  The wearable unit was based on hearing aid technology, and could communicate wirelessly with the hand piece, and, like hearing aids, didn’t need to be very big.  The microphone did not have to be held adjacent to the mouth, etc.

Somewhere I have a bunch of models of different “jewellery” interactive units (which is what this page of sketches is of). Some were to be worn like necklaces, others were brooches, tie-pins, and I also had a couple which were to fit onto the side of eye glasses.  The point was that once you designed the technology, you could commission artists and jewellery makers to come up with new designs, to allow people true self expression.

For the past 11 years I have watched phones come closer to my idea, but no one has run with the jewellery thing. It is only a matter of time – but remember, you read my garbled account of it here first!

Here is the sewing I did yesterday afternoon. I took these…

Added some Needle turn applique, and created these for my friend Carolyn’s new home.

Quite a satisfying little project.

This morning the kids have had swimming lessons, so this afternoon I am heading to my parent’s house to wash the chlorine out of the towels and bathers.  Hopefully this is the last load of washing I will have to do off site.  Then it is Roast Lamb for dinner, yum.

Have a great weekend everyone.