Matching Pegs

I started this quilt 31 months ago in March 2006.  It has been quite a labour of love, and it is very close to completion, as I am now working on the binding.  I hand quilted around these words a few days ago - it could have been the motto for the whole quilt, and, it seems, the entire week.

In the past 24 hours the Matching Pegs household has been hit by a tedious irritating problem that we have all had to deal with, (a member of the family asked me not to be specific).  The problem is not serious, but not dealing with it promptly would make our problem multiply, if you catch my drift.  So I have been practicing my deep breathing and remembering to be patient.

When I was shopping last week for the binding for this quilt, I also picked up some binding and backing for my Chez Moi - Charisma quilt.

The red fabric (which is for the binding) is a perfect colour match, because it is another Chez Moi fabric, but this time it is from the Posh range.  The green fabric is a plain green homespun - it doesn’t match quite as well, but it will be used only for the backing, and it goes well with the binding.  I am toying with the idea of marking a design on the backing, and free motion quilting the quilt from the back, but I am not sure if my skills are up to it.  It might be a good way to learn.

Today Michaela and I were enjoying the afternoon spring sunshine, and blowing bubbles, as well as our cares away.  A little wander around the garden turned up a surprise, a ranunculi from a few years ago, growing where I thought they had been finished.  I thought I would share it with you.  I hope your week is full of happy surprises, but if it is not, I wish you patience.

Last weekend found us in my husband’s home town in the north of Victoria, with lots of the extended family (about 50 of us).  A couple of Luke’s cousins had organised a family reunion that had an Olympic theme.

The games were a little different - We had the gumboot toss, three legged race, egg and spoon, as well as few others that are not on the official Olympics list.

We all took part in different heats of the egg and spoon.  We all did better than Luke, as the rest of us finished with our eggs intact.

The under 5’s heat had special plastic eggs (with matching spoons) which “broke” to reveal tiny bean bag yolks and centres.  They were a really clever way for the little kids to participate.

I think I came in last in my heat - but I can hold my head up, I didn’t cheat, (by holding my egg onto the spoon).  That’s me up the back in the blue hat - our arm of the family was the blue team.

The three legged race was quite a scream, especially when the pairs were as uneven as Michaela and her Aunty Cint.

Overall the whole day was really well organised, thanks especially to cousin Yvette!

The only fly in the ointment was that the kids were extremely tired when they started back at school this morning.  The excitement of the weekend, added to Daylight savings starting on Saturday evening made it doubly hard to get up this morning for the dash to school.

However, it was a very small fly, and we all had a great time.

Here is Amelia with her cousin Jack, a medal winning pair.

How did the rest of you fare with the Daylight savings transition?

Amelia’s Capital A is finished!  We both had a lot of fun making this, and I think it is a really great birthday present.  I had a look around and you can buy them here.

Amelia did get her ears pierced the other day, and she was so brave, not a tear.  I was so impressed.

Doesn’t she look grown up.

Today I mocked up the bottom half of my mug bag design with a scrap of calico that I had lying around.  It already had some pellon ironed on to it, and I wanted to test out how large I needed to make the size of the base area.

I also wanted to test out how appliqueing onto a backing, with batting adhered to it already, would look.  This little flower was just the quickest thing I could whip up, because of course, there will be a teapot.   I am still thinking through the design, but I know that the base I planned with take a range of mug sizes.

We are going into the second week of the school holidays, so I am not sure how much crafting will be going on, but there will definitely be lots of park visiting and drawing and lego and trampolining.

I have a small collection of teapots on my kitchen windowsill.  There are 3 (I said it was small).  I have been drawing them for my mug-bag design, and now I am drawing them up neatly in Illustrator, so much fun, (the pencil part more than the computer part).

The design is most likely to feature this bamboo handled one, as well as one of my butterflies and a cherry blossom.  I think I will start cutting out paper copies of these drawings at different scales to work out where I am going with this.  I just wish I had a super-teacher to teach me how to use the parts of Illustrator that I need to use.  I keep thinking in a tech drawing, auto cad kind of way when I am using it, and it is the wrong way to approach it.

Here are adorable photos of two of my kids.  It’s my blog, and I like to admire my handiwork - I just gave them both a haircut.

Michaela is going through a skirts and dresses phase, hense the skirt and pants look.  I cut her hair to angle in at the back.

I am no hairdresser, but I think I did OK.

Rory told me a minute before I took that shot that he would only pose if he didn’t have to smile.

I love my son so much that I took both he and Amelia to see Star Wars, The Clone Wars this afternoon.  I almost fell asleep.  Next week we are going to see Wall-E, which I am really looking forward to.  Tomorrow I am taking Amelia to have her ears pierced - so I will probably be posting her new look tomorrow.

Yesterday Luke came home with a fantastic surprise, the first DVD of Season Two of “Rome“, from the video shop.  Woo Hoo, get the kids to bed and break out the Maya Gold Chocolate (Fairtrade, so guilt free)!

We both love this show.  The first season screened quite some time ago on free to air TV (very late at night), but the second season was picked up by a cable channel here, so we have not been able to watch it until it hit the DVD store.

Luke has quite an interest in Rome and read his way through the Masters of Rome Series by Colleen Mc Cullough.  One of my favourite reading pleasures is re-reading The Sarantine Mosaic by Guy Gavriel Kay (also a favourite author).  Although this is based on the Byzantine Empire and set in a much later period, much of the culture is the same, I don’t know how many times I have read it.

Last night’s two episodes didn’t disappoint.  I was even glad to see the Roguish Titus Pullo, despite what he did at the end of last season - strangely charming and thuggish all at the same time.

So enough links, and enough about Rome.  Here is a photo of the next little project to join the list.  A mug bag to take my new mug to sewing each week.

I’m not sure exactly how I will make this, but I think there will be a teapot motif involved :-).

This is the other side of the Mexican Ladies Apron. Thanks Debbie for reminding me to take a shot of it.

While the sun was shining, Luke and the kids cleaned out the car.  With the back seats down, the kids discovered that there was even room to lie down.  Of course they didn’t want to get out for ages.

Tomorrow we are going to hop in our nice clean car, and drive into one of the busiest suburbs in Melbourne to see Luke and his new office.  I’m a bit nervous about the parking, I have never been there before, but we have a plan for day one of the school holidays.  After that, I am making the plan up as I go along.

Sometimes the weeks are so full, that if you take the time to post, you will have nothing to show.  In no particular order, here are some of the things keeping me off the computer……

On Thursday I finally had 3 hours of delicious “alone time” and spent it with my felt, a hot cuppa, and the CD of Les Misérables.  It has been years since I listened to it, and I loved it all over again.  This time I made one of my flowers a little larger and turned it into a brooch.  I also made a couple more of the hair clips, all in my cherry blossom design.

The Chocolate brown one may even have to be for me.

While I was looking up some felt things on the great and mighty inter-web last week, I found this amazing array of work that defies description.  Take a look, if you have a few minutes, it is quite inspiring.

Thursday was a whole lot better than Wednesday, when I had yet another of my children sick on the couch all day.  Luckily Michaela improved by the next day after a bit of TLC, and was not as sick as Rory had been.

Thursday night I went along with my friend Debbie to North Of The Yarra Quilters Guild for the first time.  It was fun, and I sure need a regular night out midweek.

This is a Wooden “A” that Amelia was given for her birthday, along with some lovely scrap-booking paper and cut-out flowers. Today we mixed up some paint to paint the edges and the flowers.  Tomorrow we are going to cover the front and back face with the paper.  Such a lovely creative gift, (thank-you Kyra).

Yesterday was the last day of term, and the kids finished an hour early.  Instead of 3 kids, I brought home 5 for the afternoon.  The kids played really well together, and all four of the older kids allowed Michaela to join in, rather than complaining to me about her pestering, so there were happy people all round.  Let’s hope the next two weeks of school holidays continue on in the same vein.

Finally here is a Baby sized T-Shirt for a yet to be born baby on the other side of the world.  This is the Aussie native that I managed to sketch and stitch - hopefully tasteful rather than kitch.

What’s keeping you busy at the moment?

Yesterday morning the girls said good bye to our old car before school, there were even kisses bestowed.

Rory was on the couch, where he has been since Monday with a sore tummy and intermittent fevers.  Every time I thought he was improving, he took a turn again.  Yesterday morning he seemed to be a fair bit better, so I gave him the choice between him going to Grandma’s house or Grandma coming to stay with him.  I was crossing town with Michaela to pick up our new car (and leave the old one behind).  Rory decided a change of scenery was the way to go, so I dropped him off at Grandma’s house on the way.

By the time we returned to pick him up, Rory was a lot worse.  I packed him up in the new car, and brought him home.  As we pulled into the driveway, Rory threw up.

Luckily, he managed to aim it all in the sickie bag that I had transferred from one glove box to the other.  I was so impressed.

As he seemed to be getting worse over the course of the week, it was straight off to the doctors that evening.  The GP was concerned at his localised pain, so we were redirected to the Hospital, with appendicitis on the cards.  From the GP we went to the train station to pick up Luke, and after a quick change of clothes and a hurried sandwich, Luke went off to the Childrens’ Hospital with Rory in the new car.  I was more than a little concerned about Rory, but some of my worry was also for Luke, who was trying out our new car, in the dark, with a sick little boy moaning in pain in the back seat.

Rory was clearly quite sick, but as he was able to climb up onto the bed, handled driving over speed humps on the way in, and seemed to improve a little as the evening wore on, it was looking like his appendix could remain inside his body.  Of course, it took several hours to reach this decision, and Rory was not able to eat, drink or have pain relief during this wait, so the evening took it’s toll on both of them.  The pain may possibly have been caused by the lymph nodes surrounding his appendix, being inflamed by his illness and causing the localised pain.

In the wee hours of the morning, Luke was advised that the could either take Rory home, or they would find him a bed for the night.  Luke choose the former.  Today Rory was still pretty sick, but not in the same pain, and starting to improve.

On Monday, Rory and I did a little drawing to pass the time.  I taught Rory the magical rule about drawing eyes, which I always wish I had known earlier on (I think I was in my teens when I learnt this).  Eyes should be drawn in the middle of the face, not towards the top.  We drew a page of oval faces, each one quartered to show us the middle.  Here are two drawings from that page.  The one on the left is Rory’s Yoda, and the one on the right is a little baby I drew, when I was playing with head shapes, and proportion.  He does look at little blocky though.

This baby led to a whole new page of babies (and no, I am not clucky, but an idea for a little cloth baby is brewing).

Rory loved the slightly angry/spooky looking baby in the top row, second from the left.

Perhaps Rory and I will do some more drawing tomorrow, and I may even answer some emails, and reply to some comments.  Tonight I am off to bed, for hopefully a less eventful night.

Happy Birthday our little ray of sunshine.

You surprise us every day with your confidence, and the joy you get out of life. You smile more than any other member of the family, and have done so since you were a tiny baby. Here you are when you were 3 days old.

Your arrival completed our family, and never has a baby been more cuddled than you.

At three months old when you had an uncomfortable hip brace fitted, the lady fitting it was amazed at your good humor…”This is usually when they start howling”. Every couple of months when they adjusted it, you were so good for the orthotist, and she was always impressed with you sunny disposition.  in fact, most people are usually impressed with your sunny disposition.

This is you when you were 11 months old. You love to join in with any game that the big kids are playing - you often get to be the sick patient, or the student, not to mention Darth Vader.  What ever you are, you always join in, and imagine along with the action.

This is when you were 17months old, and it is one of my favourite photo’s of you, with your big blue eyes and your smile.

In fact, with your smile you can get away with almost anything.

Micky Moo, no matter what, remember that we love you, always. We are so lucky to be your Mum and Dad.

*Michaela’s birthday was yesterday, but we were too busy celebrating it for me to write this post.

I guess it was inevitable. Michaela and I have succumbed to the dreaded virus.

This weekend was full of family related birthday activities for Amelia’s birthday (Going out to a Chinese lunch being one of them), which I managed to make it through, but completely crashed on Sunday.  Here is a shot of Amelia with her candles, wearing the scarf I secretly made her about a month ago.

The cake is a pretty run of the mill (but yummy) chocolate cake.  Amelia has put in an order for a castle for next weekend’s birthday party with her friends.  At this stage I am not sure if I am up for it.

Mickey Moo and I were packed off to bed on Sunday afternoon, and apart from sleeping for a couple of hours, I also made a little start on this.

One silver lining, from Rory’s horrible ear infection (a secondary infection from the virus I now have) is the little bottle from his medicine.  The glass bottle with the childproof lid was perfect to keep tiny buttons in, that I purchased for this project.  Now a certain little person can look safely.

Tonight I am going to stagger off to a Preschool Committee meeting, to present 4 alternatives to the current (appalling) logo.  I will give you all a peek when I am well enough to think straight again.  I will leave you with a look at the last candle standing, I am quite pleased with the photo.

Happy 8th Birthday our wonderful, talented, big girl.

You are our super-imaginative, creative girl, who eight years ago turned a couple into a family.

You were the youngest of our three to smile, at 11 days old.  Here you are on that day giving Daddy one of your best!  Even from those early days, you would follow conversations with your eyes, always curious about what was going on.  These days you like to think deeply about the things you hear, and often ask us questions, ages after we have forgotten the conversation.

You walked earlier than you brother or sister (11 months and one week) and people used to stop and stare at this tiny girl walking by herself.  You are not such a “little dot” now :-).

Here you are with Rory (when you were 4 and 3/4 and he was almost 3) and we can see you holding Michaela when she was only 3 days old (You were just 5).  You are a fantastic big sister, always making up wonderful games that you can all play together.  In fact, most people who know you talk about your wonderful imagination, as well as your fantastic drawing.  We are proud of you, our clever girl, who tries so hard to do things perfectly; just don’t forget that mistakes are part of life, and remember to always make new ones.

Here is one of my favourite photos of you, when you were 21 months old, just before Rory was born.

No matter what, remember that we love you, always. We are so lucky to be your Mum and Dad.