Hoops!

I love to stitch, or embroider, or whatever you call it. When I was younger I used to say I'll learn to embroider when I retire, but the opportunity presented itself before then so I took it. I find handwork really relaxing. I also like the look of machine free motion embroidery. I often think one day I'll try that. I'm not much into trying new things. Earlier this year I joined a swap on Instagram. A hoop swap. (Are you in love with Instagram? I love all the pretty pictures there!) I decided to make a pretty hand stitched scene for my partner and that was that.

I also tried a crocheted covering for the hoop. I had pinned this on Pinterest ages ago and was thrilled to have the opportunity to try it out. I don't usually try these things for myself. I have to be "pushed" into it! After the swap date had come and gone I got a message on Instagram asking if I could be an angel for someone who had sent a hoop, but not received one in return. I was happy to do it and felt the pressure of a self-imposed deadline. It was sad that this person didn't have a hoop and I wanted to make one as quickly as possible for her. So I began to consider making a free motion embroidered scene for this second hoop. (Quick, right!) With a little hand embroidered embellishment. This is what I came up with. 

It was so much fun to make! I also crocheted a hoop cover for this one (It was easy to do!) and I really loved this one. I liked the first one, but the second one is my favourite. I (almost) wished I kept it. I figured I could easily make another for myself, but I haven't quite gotten around to it yet. I am keen to try some more free motion embroidery. Hopefully I'll try it again soon.

Such a long time!

I went to a class at Hetties Patch last weekend and ran into someone who I had met years ago and she said she used to keep up with me on my blog, but I don't do that any more. I was a bit stunned because I often think about blogging, but I never quite get there. Part of it is fatigue (I moved three times in thirteen months!) and part of it is not having access to a computer to blog on. I have my iPad always at the ready but have found blogging on that difficult. So today I woke up and thought, that's it! I love this blog and the record it is of my doings I'm just going to try harder to use the iPad and be done with it! So here I am blogging. Weird, huh?

I lifted some photos from my iPad for this post. This is my Sue Daly "Pies and Tarts" quilt in progress some months ago. Actually, now that I look at it closely I see that this photo was taken in the townhouse we lived in for four months in North Adelaide. That was immediately after we left the farm. The best thing about the farm was it was in the middle of nowhere. I loved the quiet. And not being able to see anyone else. I loved the Kangaroos I could see every day around the property and I loved the "big sky". And the worst thing about the farm was it was in the middle of nowhere. It was a 25 minute drive to the bus stop and I had to make that trip twice a day with my two university girls. It was too much! So we moved almost to the centre of Adelaide which was in direct contrast with the country experience. I loved it! We could walk everywhere! A free bus into the city took off two houses away from us and we really loved it there. We "did" so many more things there even though we were only there for a short time. Everything was in walking distance. The Botanic gardens, the zoo, the city, museums, the art gallery etc. Trying to park your car was a nightmare for us and visitors, especially when there was an event on at Adelaide Oval because they have more onerous restrictions during events, but I did a lot more walking there! We were sad to leave that location, but really felt like we needed to move closer to our grandkids and so we are living in the Adelaide Hills now. We moved here eight months ago (so long now!) and I STILL have things in boxes. Sigh! Anyway, I have been sewing and making and I intend to keep sewing and making and recording my life here at "Rosemary Hill" even if it's just for me to read and remember! 

This photo shows more progress on the Pies and Tarts quilt. It's officially huge these days and I am busy practicing my free motion quilting so that I can do a better job on this beauty. After all, 

It's a journey.

This is what I have been working on over the last month. "Aunt Bettina's Parlour" by Quilted Crow Girls Designs. I started it I can't remember when at a class at Hettie's Patch earlier this year. I am enjoying hand stitching! It's all very relaxing and fun.

This year is all a bit of a blur. Every year I am amazed at the beginning of every month to realise that another month has flown by. This year it is even worse. We left Melbourne last November, but it seriously only seems like a month or two ago, not the eight months it really is. I miss Melbourne a lot. Well, the place a little, but mostly the friends I made there. 

When we moved back to South Australia eight months ago we decided to do something different. Why not? We decided to move to the country. We are just renting so this would be an opportunity to see if country life is for us without too much of a commitment. Our current home is on seven acres, and is on a dirt road. (Can't get more country than that!) When we moved in we couldn't see any houses from our house. We are surrounded by paddocks. Paddocks that are full of rabbits, foxes and kangaroos and also cattle and sheep. Now we can see a house on the hill opposite our hill. It is in the process of being built. And do you want to know something funny? In the tradition of South Australia (it's a small place people) we know the people building the new house. They will move in in the next month or two. What are the odds that we would know them? In Victoria not great. In South Australia, pretty much even. 

This is our backyard. So, after eight months, how do we like country living? So-so. There are some things I love. Like living in the middle of nowhere! And some things I am completely sick of. Like living in the middle of nowhere! I love the quiet. (Well, except for the cows and sheep. Boy are they noisy!) But I am sick of having to drive 20 kilometres to the bus stop to drop kids off. (I know that that is not really a long drive, but it seems long to me!) Sometimes I make the 40km round trip three times a day which is crazy, but necessary. So I'm hoping to move again when our lease is up. Where to? Right now I have no idea. 

We moved back to South Australia to help our daughter. She is one of the most brilliant and capable young women I know. Always has been. She does have a huge challenge though, her son has special needs. Without the regular support of extended family this special boy's challenges were overwhelming for her. As he has gotten older, and bigger, the challenges have grown too. So now we are nearby to help. We have him come stay at our house one day a week each week. This gives her a break and an opportunity to do something other than look after him. He has behavioural problems which are really hard work. Of course, he is still wonderful along with it. Last month was a big month for him. His doctor prescribed him medication. His mother has resisted this course of action previously because she wanted to try every non-invasive way of helping him first. This was the next step. He has reacted really well so far and we hope this will give him a chance to learn and practise better behaviours. 

This is him helping his sister last week, which seems an ordinary thing but is quite amazing for him. 

So, I am still here. Working on sewing projects, babysitting my grandchildren and watching kangaroos in my front yard, in the side paddocks and on the other side of the hill. I have many new projects floating around in my head. I have attended a class and improved my free motion quilting somewhat, and I am contributing to a market that my girls are doing this month. Oh. And we built a tiny house. 

I finished this quilt. Finally.

I thought I would never finish this quilt, but today I did it. I started it back in August 2013 and thought it wouldn't take long. Do I always think that? I love it. I love the fabric. I love the circles. I love the flowers. I love the quilting. I quilted circles around (and in some of) the circles, pebbles in all the frames, and a large free motion flower in each of the "empty" circles.

In other news, my friend who I gifted this quilt to two years ago (I was surprised that it was so long ago when I looked back through my blog, it seems like the other day.) passed away last week. She lived across the road from us in Melbourne and it's a little bit heartbreaking that I couldn't just walk next door this week and attend her funeral. (We used to live next door to the church her funeral service was conducted in) The last time I spoke to her was in a paddock here. I missed her a lot. We had lots in common and thought the same way about lots of things despite a 25 year age gap. Just looking at the photo of this quilt reminds me of life two years ago. It was such a good time!

I finished it!

Last Friday night I crocheted like a demon and finished this rug! It's hard to believe that it took me so long to blog about it, cause here it is Friday night again.

Every week is so busy at my house. We have two girls at Uni this semester. They are back into it this week after a teaching break which means lots of trips to the bus stop. We are twenty-five minutes drive from the bus stop so there is lots of driving. One of the reasons we moved back to South Australia was to be with our grandchildren more and we have our grandson sleep over every Sunday night. That means that Monday is a very busy day here. This past Sunday we had our grandson and his two sisters sleep over. They don't like to miss out so occasionally we have them stay over too. They are so much fun!

It's so nice to have a finish! I am still working on the Anna Maria Horner quilt. I'm keen for another finish. I have a pile of quilt tops just begging to be finished so I see a lot of quilting in my future!

Sewing room

Last November we moved house. This week I managed to do some quilting, the first for six months. I don't think I want to move house ever again. It took me so long to get organised. I'm not sure why. Ok. I say "organised" loosely. I'm not really organised completely yet, but I'm now organised enough to sew. We have just one living room in this house (the last house had four) and I have had the furniture arranged every way possible! Look at my photos for the latest!

Oh. And you can see the quilt I am working on in the first shot. I began quilting it last year in Melbourne, and it's nearly finished now. Here it is.

So I'm sewing again. And hopefully finishing some things too!

It's getting bigger!

When we first moved back to South Australia in November last year (seems just like the other day, but it's months ago now.) I didn't have any sewing or handwork unpacked. My crochet I was working on had to be left behind in Melbourne and packed a month or so later by my Bradley. Still haven't found it yet. (The last boxes to be packed were not labelled and were all full of random items.) I knew before we moved that I had too much stuff, but I know it much more now! We lived in a huge house in Melbourne and the house here is tiny! Anyway, back in November I had nothing to work on, so my first day here I popped to the new local Spotlight (it's tiny and has so little choice, my last local was ginormous) and bought some yarn and a crochet hook and began crocheting a rug. It's getting bigger, but isn't a good shape yet to finish it off. I recently bought second balls of all the yarn (had to go to two Spotlights to find them!) so that I can finish it. It's big enough now to keep my lap warm as I crochet. It's autumn here and becoming cooler so it's more enjoyable to crochet now. Can't wait to finish this rug! 

Still here making things!

Have you seen "Frozen"? We haven't seen it yet. We tend to wait until movies come to DVD to see them. It costs so much to go to the movies, and we choose to spend our money on other things. Like fabric! Nevertheless, Lily17 trawled the net to find out what "Frozen" characters looked like. Apparently this is Anna. Lily17 was Anna when she went to a "Frozen" dance on Friday night. She made the costume herself.

My sewing area is getting more set up and I even did the appliqué on Lily17's vest above. I am crocheting and working on a hand appliqué I started at a class at Hettie's Patch. The class was with the Quilted Crow girls from Tassie and I couldn't resist attending because I met the Crow girls in Tassie last April and loved their wool appliqué. 

That's my wool appliqué hanging on my new pinboards set up in my sewing room come living room. So much has happened since I posted here last. Lots of birthdays. (I turned 50! How weird is that?) And other happenings. I hope to post again soon. 

Stitching

I bought a magazine and it had an article in it about kantha. It is a traditional Indian method of reusing worn fabrics. A way to make them good again. They would take two worn fabrics and stitch them together with decorative running stitches to make a new, stronger fabric which they could use. Of course I didn't find worn fabric, I got some perfectly good fabric out from my stash! Then I started stitching. It was so much fun! I am planning to do this some more. As soon as I get my sewing space better set up. Want to know what I did with my pinboards? Check out this post at A Making Life!

making and unpacking...

Christmas? Nah, it's not on my horizon at the moment. We are making and unpacking. I seriously can't contemplate getting ready for Christmas until my sewing room is unpacked. I know I don't have long till Christmas, but my mantra always is "It's not Christmas Eve yet is it? Well what are you worried about?" Perhaps there will be no gingerbread men or houses this year, but that will just make them all the more exciting next year, right? That's what I'm going with. I hope you are having a lovely time preparing for Christmas and I'll just get on with this unpacking.

Sewing this week. For a market next week.

 See, there has been sewing happening at my place this week. Proof. Evidence. Photographic evidence even.

But it's all Picklesticks' (Jessica) sewing. Not mine. Want an animal mask for the small people in your life? If you're in Adelaide come to the Jazzy Christmas Market at Unley town hall Tuesday from 4pm to 9pm and buy one, or like Picklesticks on Facebook and check them out there!

There is also this sewing going on. Lily16 is sewing a red and white Christmas dress. The blue and white print is a dress she made a few months ago. She loves it so much she is making a Christmas dress just like it.

Oh. And this is my contribution to making this week. Pop stick Christmas trees. They are supposed to be painted. Any minute now...

The sky.

 I'm not sure whether there is more sky here or whether I just notice the sky a whole lot more because there are so few buildings in front of it. Every day I am busy noticing the sky. And maybe during the summer it will look similar every day, but it sure looks different all the time at the moment.

full moon. colourful sky

One evening I was out hanging-out/bringing-in the washing and felt I should grab my camera and take some shots. All of these shots are views from my clothesline. I'm not a huge fan of doing the washing generally speaking, but I'm becoming a fan here.

Then Tuesday this week a storm cloud was rolling in. We are living in a rain shadow so we don't get as much rain as other areas around here. I'm not sure what I thought that meant, but we have had lots of days with rain since I moved here. The contrast in the sky, so blue on one side and so dark on the other side was astonishing. Perhaps this photo doesn't show it so well. We have had rainbows and all sorts this week. I'm pretty sure that my craft blog is not really the place for these photos, so I'm thinking of making a photo blog. I like the idea of taking a photo every day and recording this place, this life I'm living. 

There is making going on here at the moment though, so I'll be back tomorrow with more crafty photos!

I'm so tired… (it's December, and other impossibilities)

this quilt again. still working on it. no idea where it is right now. in a box?

I'm off for a nap in a minute (it's ok, I'm a nanna - well, a "Ma" - and I am officially allowed to do nanna naps) but I just thought I would quickly blog about the impossibility of today being December the first. I often think about blogging, but then something else takes my attention and the day slips away. So, here's the blogpost right now. Photo and all!

Today is Joseph's birthday. He is my third child and it was a hot day the day he was born. Today is overcast and showery, a real contrast, just like my boy. He was 10 pounds and 10 ounces. That was very different from child one and two. He was a boy. Different from the girls. And he was born with blonde hair which made him look very different from his dark haired sisters. He was quite a shock to the system, but a wonderful shock. Now he is a grown up, with a wife, a mortgage and a dog. Another impossibility. (Can I really be that old?)

Today's theme seems to be impossibilities. Here's another. It seems impossible to me that my sewing room will ever be organised and operational. The only cheerful bit about that statement is that today is full of impossibilities so I quite expect it to happen at some point. Off to nap!

A house in the country...

 Whew! This past month or so has been so busy for us. We moved. To Adelaide. All that packing and cleaning and just getting stuff from here to there has been exhausting! We moved in dribs and drabs with four of us moving first. Then another two. And the last one (my Bradley) is finishing up in Melbourne at the moment.

These are the views from my clothesline. It is so peaceful here. I think I like living "in the middle of nowhere" as my grandson says.

And the kids have played and played and played. Now I just have to alter my "pop-to-the-shop" attitude and I'll be right. (We're seriously not that far from the shops, but the trips add up!)

The sewing room isn't set up yet and I still have boxes everywhere, but hopefully that will all change this week. And maybe I will get to set foot inside a quilt shop near our new home too!

I tried to write this post last week...

... but the internet conspired against me and it couldn't be done. I'm not sure if it was THE internet, my internet, my modem, my computer or just blogger itself, but it's working now so all's right with the world.

This is what I have been doing. Yes, back to the eight year old me, I'm making Barbie dresses. This one works, so I'm going to make some more for the Spooky Oooky market I mentioned last post. Possibly. I'll have to see how time goes. We are moving back to Adelaide so there are things to be sorted, boxes to be packed, garage sales to be had, that sort of thing. We have a plan in place, now we just need somewhere to live. (And that's never easy!) So if you want to rent a house to a crafty family send me an email! I am off to Adelaide some time next week to look at houses (again) so cross your fingers for me.

And now it's October...

This year is really zipping by. Last week we (my Bradley and daughters Sophie and Molly and I) went to Costco. It's a fun place to go, especially if you like shopping. First up past the doors was the first of their Christmas range. We oooed and ahhhed over that and then halfway through the shop my Bradley stopped dead and observed, "Of course, it's almost Christmas." It's hard to believe. It was my most eventful trip to Costco ever. Normally we just hop on the fast road and zip to Costco in 30 or 40 minutes. Coming from Adelaide (where there are no fast roads) we are completely in love with fast roads. Even if we have to pay a toll to use them. So I thought this trip would be the same. Except our requisite fast road was a car park because of an earlier accident. It took us just over two hours to get there. It was my first such experience with the fast roads, which isn't too bad considering that we have lived here for almost three years now.

I have been sewing, although nothing too exciting. This is some Halloween bunting that I put together from a panel that I got from Spotlight. I got a few panels which I am in the process of completing. Some will be to decorate my daughter's stall at the Spooky Ooky Halloween Market and some will be available for sale at the market. She is busy making Deddy Bears and Ghoulish Girls, as well as all her cute softies, for sale at the market. So if you are in Adelaide and want some softies (or patterns for softies) you should pop along. Some of my other girls are busy making ghoulish jewellery for the market too. I am thinking that I might just be in Adelaide for the market, but I'm not sure yet. Oh well, back to the sewing.

September! (I'm slow, but I get there in the end)

I can't believe it's a month since I last posted here. I have been busy and preoccupied I think. I am still working on this quilt. I'm liking it more and more!

I am getting closer to having it finished! I made two trips to Adelaide in August which tends to keep me busy! It's a more than 1,500km round trip which takes forever if you drive it! One of the trips was to see child number four graduate from Uni. Again. This makes it three times now. She has a bachelors degree, an honours degree, and now a masters degree. Five and a half years of study and now she is a fully fledged teacher. She hasn't scored a job yet, but is working as a relief teacher which is keeping her pretty busy. And paid. After being a student for so long she loves the paid bit of working.

My Bradley and I with Rose the graduate

I'm not too keen on this photo as it has me looking like the side of a house, despite the fact that I have lost 25kg this year. I guess it's good to have a reality check now and again though and I definitely need to lose a lot more! I'm not "dieting" at the moment. I just needed a little break. I'll get back to it any minute now.

And speaking of "breaks" look what I did to my stockpot lid a couple of weeks ago! We were all quite sad about it when it happened. Even my 19 year old son. He spoke fondly about his memories of this pot as did his siblings! That's the moment I decided that we all need to get out more! Owning a saucepan for 16 years doesn't make it part of the family! So I am going through all of our stuff at the moment. we have waaaay too many things! Today is going to be a sewing day though. I'm off to sew some more!

Circle Quilt

This is what I'm working on today. I bought some backing yesterday afternoon. Basting is next and then a little quilting and some appliqué. 

Blog Reading

I haven't been doing much blog reading of late. My head has been busy. In fact I have been busy! I did take some time out to spend time at our local shopping centre with my Bradley one evening. Isn't it pretty? The sky at night, through a glass dome.

I did see this post this week and thought you might like to see it too. It's about being a mum to a special needs kid. So in case you've ever wondered what that might be like, this post explains it beautifully. Oh. And it's written by my kid. She is an awesome mum. And her kid is awesome too.

Playing with Anna Maria Horner...

No, she didn't come over to my house with her newborn to play with me in my sewing room. I have spent the past couple of days playing with her fabric range Innocent Crush. It's old. I bought it when I was still living in Adelaide in 2010. Not sure why it's taken me this long to use it because I am completely loving it!

Oh! And I'm piecing curves. I am loving feeling so confident with curves. I took an online curves class with Rachel Hauser (Stitched in Color) eighteen months ago and found it really enlightening. Back to the sewing!