Making Makes Me Happy

Whilst sewing has been very much on the back burner at my house we are never not making. Today four of us have been working on this Ikea project. Which either makes Ikea stuff sound really tricky to do (it totally isn't) or us sound really pathetic (we're not). These Ikea Ekets were up on my wall until last week. That's the thing with Ikea furniture, it can be so many things. Three of them had glass doors and three didn't. Today I have removed the wall brackets from them and marked where the feet should be attached. My Bradley then attached the feet brackets. Molly screwed the adjustable feet in whilst Lily attached glass doors to the remaining three Ekets. Now Lily and Molly are connecting them all together to make my brand new console to sit behind my couch. 

That's the thing with making. All of us are doing it all the time - even when we don't know it. We make dinner and lunch and breakfast. We make the bed. We clean and make things right in our house. We make jokes and play around.

Around my house I have been changing rooms and rearranging furniture of late. We have lived in this house for almost two years now. I'm busy making it a home where more making can happen. Happy is my goal.

I've been thinking about records...

 Not black, round records that we used to play in the 70's, but recorded thoughts and musings. I guess they could be on black, round records, but I was thinking more specifically about written records. Over the past year or so I have taken to keeping a journal more regularly. Since my early teens I have kept some sort of journal, mostly very sporadically and occasionally somewhat faithfully. I used to think of this blog as part of my journalling and I think I was always the most regular reader of my blog. (Is it sad that I am admitting that I like the sound of my own voice?) A blog is such a lovely record of your happenings and it can be so cosy to trip down Nostalgia Lane every now and then and read just how you felt on that occasion. Anyway, I have been keeping a journal more regularly which has caused me to ponder record keeping. I say I value record keeping and in keeping with that declaration I want to update this blog more often. I have posted the most recent fabric related photo from my phone. This is me stitching in the Doha airport on the way home from Germany last month. 

It's a well travelled piece of stitching. I take it with me everywhere. I have it sitting in my work bag right now as I sit at work typing this blogpost. It's old. Five years old in fact, so I obviously don't stitch every time I have it with me. (Even if I did one stitch per time it accompanied me I think it would be more stitched than it is.) It was the result of a class I did at Amitie Textiles with Meg Nicolson an artist from Warrnambool. It is one of my favourite classes I have done at Amitie. I'm going to try to stitch more. Just looking at this photo makes me happy!

Christmas Eve, and my World is Completely Different.

Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus

It's Christmas Eve and my world is completely different. This Christmas is like no other Christmas. I haven't once considered that I might make something for Christmas, let alone contemplated having a handmade Christmas. For me this is strange. Who even am I?

Lots has happened this past year. Instead of spending my time making things I run a company. It is all-consuming. This week is the first break I have had since we began eighteen months ago. Tomorrow we will celebrate Christmas and remember the birth of our Saviour. And after that I plan to think about something other than work for four more days - and then it will begin again.

Re-arranging.

I think you are either the kind of person who re-arranges their home constantly, or not. I used to think that I spent so long re-arranging our rooms because we just didn't have enough space. I had to keep re-arranging because my space just wasn't working. Now I just think I like to change things up. So this month I have been changing things up in our living room. We have an L-shaped lounge/dining room which has to have many uses. It is the sitting room, tv room, the music room, the sewing room, the library, the making room and the art room. It's quite a lot to fit in one room, but so far it seems to be working.

fabric on the shelves

I haven't been doing the re-arranging on my own. I have had lots of help from my kids. This is alpha and omega (the beginning and the end - the oldest and the youngest) helping me set up this Besta as a tv bench. 

Now, where to drill the hole in the back?

I'm still pottering around getting the room set up. Hopefully I will get it all done this weekend so that I can get back to sewing!

Getting Older...

This getting older thing is interesting. Last month my Bradley finally gave in to all the cajoling and went to the optometrist. He has been wearing chemist shop glasses for some years now for reading (we both have) but all of us at home were sure he was seeing less and less over all. He was most surprised when the optometrist gave him a prescription for both reading glasses and long distance glasses and suggested he get multifocals. He came back to the office with the said prescription in hand, denying the need to wear glasses full-time and throughly aghast at the price of multifocals. Of course, I took him back there the next day and we chose frames for his new glasses. We picked them up a week later and he loves them. He is still being surprised by how much he can see now.

Flowers last June

My Bradley was resistant to getting glasses, but he is really finding them helpful. Earlier this week when he was out walking he came across some guys trying to break into a car. His first thought was to dissuade them from breaking in (He's a salesman. He spends all day trying to persuade people!) which, moments after he started speaking, suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. They were not to happy with his intervention and began to approach him until one of them noticed that he had a dog with him. The presence of our dog did far more to persuade the men to change their ideas than my Bradley had been able to. As they drove off he was able to get their number plate which was helpful when he made a police report. When he recounted the story to us later we all thought that he wouldn't have been able to see the number plate clearly had he not got glasses. 

Had you asked him a month ago whether he had trouble seeing things in the distance he would have said no. And that's the thing with getting older. It creeps up on you. You hardly notice it at all until one day you look in the mirror and you're old. 

Doing things that make you happy

I read in the news this weekend that a Harvard Professor has said that people resist doing things that will make their life happier because of feelings of guilt. They don't hire that cleaner, or outsource their washing and ironing, or hire that lawn service because of feelings of guilt. Guilt about the money they are spending or guilt about being "dependant" on others and not looking after themselves. Buying time would mean they could spend more time on pursuits that would bring them happiness, but they dismiss it because of those guilty feelings. It's something to think about!

I am back in the sewing room today. I managed to sew last Sunday afternoon and I decided to make it a priority to get back there again this week.

My Sewing Corner

Terrible light in that photo, but that's how it is this weekend. It's hot in Melbourne and I have the curtains closed to keep the heat out and the cool we have generated in. Last August I did a class at Amitie Textiles in Torquay and managed to pick up some fabric while I was there. (It's a talent!) I didn't have a plan for it. Last Sunday I dragged it out and just started sewing. At the end of the day I had a picture in my mind of where I wanted to go and I NEEDED more fabric. All week I have been dreaming of going back to Amitie to get more fabric, but today I decided that what I really needed was to think about things differently. So today I am pressing on with the fabric I have. 

My blocks made last week

I'm sewing more regularly than I have in a long time and it makes me really happy! I'm sure more improvements can be made to increase happiness. Like blogging more. I really enjoy writing my thoughts and feelings, and I really like having this record to remember things by. Here's to sewing more and blogging more!

It's been so long!

It's been so long I'm not sure I even remember how to do this or even if there's still anybody out there who will read it. Not to worry. I have been busy writing in a book two of my daughters made for me for a #decemberdaily which has been so much fun! And I now have access to a computer - so blogging again makes sense to me. Not sure if I will get to adding photos to this post. This computer has no idea that I regularly take photos. We'll see how it goes.

It's 9pm on December 27th 2018. It's that time of year when I start thinking about how the year has been, what has happened and how I want 2019 to be different. Why is it I always want the next year to be different? Was this year so bad? Well, it wasn't wonderful. And I guess I really want wonderful.

This year was too busy and too full of things I just didn't want to do. (I'm such a whinge-bag!!!) I acquired a full-time job which involves loooooots of time and lots of worries. I don't know what this year holds. If you had asked me last December if I would be working full-time in twelve months time I would have told you you were crazy, but that's exactly where we are now, so who knows?

The photo above is my most recent sewing project. There haven't been many this year and that is something I want to change for 2019. We now only have four children living at home and the four are now all adults. It's the weirdest thing. For so many years (about 34) we had a kid or kids living here at our house, and now they are all grown up. Of course, they are all still my kids! And we are living in Melbourne again. Last time I posted we were living in Adelaide. Things do change, just maybe not the things I want to change!

Let's see if I can post something else here without a period of years passing.