Matching Pegs

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.

Yesterday, after an invitation from Debbie and Noah, Michaela and I (along with Leigh and Madison) ventured across to the other side of town to visit “Scienceworks“.  The three of us Mums have each got a son in Prep this year, and a younger sibling of around 3 years old (I’m the only one with a third child).  The three littlies had a wonderful time in the Nitty Gritty Super City, which is designed for 3 - 8 year olds.  Michaela looks particularly tiny perched on the top of the Penny Farthing bike, with her two little friends in the background.

I was extremely pleased to get out, after having a sick child at home for days (thanks Ladies).  Today I had another sick child at home, Amelia.  She lay on the couch and watched “The Princess Bride” this morning (a wonderful movie for the whole family) followed by her first viewing of “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”.  I had not seen it, and thought it was a good opportunity for her to watch it without younger siblings in case it was a bit scary.  I loved every one of the Narnia Chronicles as a kid, which she is yet to read ( I purchased a thick volume of them all recently)  but found the movie a bit slow.  She has not been as sick as Rory, and we are hoping she will be back to normal tomorrow for her birthday - please send healthy thoughts our way.

Last night the finishing touches were added to the farewell present for “Ms Superteacher*”.

I dressed the little dolly, and added her hair.  Amelia did a fair bit of the Thank-you embroidery on the apron.  We are both pretty pleased with how she turned out.  Her dress is made of the same fabric as Amelia’s reader bag that she uses daily at school, so hopefully she will remind Ms Superteacher* of Amelia.

Yesterday morning, after returning from the school drop off, I heard a knock at the door.  A package! I won a giveaway from the lovely Lily at “Block A Day“.  Here is a look at the contents.

This fabric was a special find of Lily’s, in a funny little shop, and she calls the print “Our Lady of the Many Talents” because of what the Lovely Mexican “Our Ladys” are doing.  On the selvage it is called Tree of Life by Kathy Hall, (Museum of new Mexico, Museum of International Folk Art, under licence to Andover Fabrics).  It is amazing fabric and Lily has very generously sent me a whole metre of it.  Also in the package was a few photo/cards of Lily’s work, if you have not seen her site “Block a Day” then you really must.

Not only is Lily super talented, but she is extremely prolific, her sewing output is amazing.  She is also so warm and positive, and when we discovered each others sites, I quickly found I had made a new friend, (of course I suspect Lily has that talent of making everyone she corresponds with online feel like they are her instant friend - pretty tricky to accomplish when you have not met in “Real Life”).  As Amelia put it yesterday afternoon, “If you comment on her blog, and she comments on yours, she is like a pen-friend Mum”.   Anyhow, my favourite of the little cards is her Easter Table Runner, which Amelia loved as well, “Look Mum, Yo-Yo’s!”.   Michaela loves them all, and they keep disappearing with her.

So back to the Tree of Life Fabric.  Because Lily has been so generous, I think I have enough to make a new apron.  I’m a one apron kind of gal, I always wear the same one, unless it is in the wash.  My current apron is a canvas one with botanical illustrations on it, that I gave my Grandmother.  I was given it back when she passed away.  Because I wear an apron every time I cook the evening meal, it is getting grubby and worn in an unwashable type of way.  I think it is time for a new one.  Now all I have to do is find a co-ordinating fabric or two, and this project can join the queue :-).

What is in your project queue?

*not her real name

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.

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see………….

OK so it’s not strictly true, the skies are not blue at all, they have been very grey.

This week Winter has been starting to get to me, I have been feeling a bit blah. At the start of the week my washing machine died, in a water flooding out the bottom kind of way. This problem will hopefully be fixed on Monday, but luckily I have had some kind souls who have let me wash in their machines. Thanks Mum and Leigh, this photo is for both of you.

So today things were looking up. My skies were blue, because I had two hours to myself while Michaela was at Occasional Care. I sat and sewed (for the first time in ages) while I was serenaded by the divine Ella Fitzgerald, who never fails to lift my spirit, and induces me to lift my voice. So what was she singing?

Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on

Hope you have blue skies where ever you are*

*(Metaphorically speaking, ’cause I don’t mind grey skies, if we get good rain with it)

For anyone who is reading this in the Northern Hemisphere, Christmas in July parties are quite common down here, so that we get to eat all the traditional foods in the season they were intended for.  Unfortunately I have not been to, or had one of these parties, but these ornaments are new aquisitions, so together with the Redwork Christmas Quilt fabrics, I have a lot of Christmas stuff about the house at the moment.

I would never have guessed as I set off yesterday for the Craft and Quilt Fair, that these would have been what I would bring home, but the bargain was too good to resist.  The little Father Christmas was only five bucks!  They were from a stall called “Raggedy Country Christmas” which was doing a roaring trade.  I particularily liked the trees, because I prefer ornaments that mention the real meaning of Christmas, rather than just the Man in Red.  The Trees have “Joy” and “Hope” written on them, and they seemed a little more subtle than the usual gaudy ornaments around.

Mum and I browsed the stalls first, until we met a friend (Hi Debbie) and went through to the Quilt exhibition to look at our lesiure.  This is the disperate collection of things that I bought at the stalls.

The Charisma, Chez Moi Fabric is a collection that I have admired for a long time, and I lingered looking at this layer cake, before deciding that I did just need to have it!  The squares are 10″x10″ swatches, and there are 40 of them in the pack.  I think I will cut each sqare into 4 and make a quilt of just squares, as some of the patterns are quite large and I don’t want to cut them up too much.  This plan may of course change by the time I come to use them.

I got some Floriani Wet and Gone Fusible, which I have big plans for.  There is a technique I have been dying to try, to speed up my applique.  I will post more about this when I get a chance to use it.

Last of all I got a very large Yo Yo maker (made by Clover) that I thought Amelia might enjoy using (and she does, she has made several today).  I am not usually a fan of Yo Yo’s (or Suffolk Puffs) at all, but I saw this delicious quilt and was won over.  I also thought Amelia might like to make a Yo Yo Garland to decorate for her birthday next month.

The exhibition of quilts was immense, there was so much on display.  I particularily enjoyed the section on Japanese Textiles, I was quite taken with the little children’s garments made of scraps of other garments - using more scraps made the garment luckier, as did using scraps from very healthy people or families with lots of children, (from memory).  There are some very talented quilters out there, and so many people with much more patience (and time) than me.