Crochet/Quilt update ...

Someone on the Australiacrochet yahoogroup recently posted there and asked "Where is everyone", because the list has been a bit quieter than usual ... so I posted a reply ... it also goes in here because I have been a bit quiet in here too! ... so now you will know what I have been doing with crochet/quilting ... as for the rest of my life ... well ... mostly get up, take kids to school/me to work ... get home, have tea/play "Mum's taxi", sometimes go to meetings etc ... maybe do a bit of crochet or something in front of the TV, maybe check my e-mail and/or get lost in cyberspace, go to sleep, get up ... etc ... pretty boring eh?

anyway ... here is what I am just about to post to Australiacrochet (I am waiting until after I post this, so I can also tell them that the photo is here ... provided it works ... LOL) ...

Hi All,
I am still here ... just mainly lurking as usual ;-) ... I have been doing some crocheting, but not a lot in the last 2 weeks because I realised I need to stop crocheting and do some quilty stuff for a while - it is almost time to put in my entry form for the quilt show and I need to at least start whatever I am entering so that I know what it is going to be ... lol (also one of 2 of the items I want to enter are in categories that require a photo with the entry form ... so I have to have made at least enough so there is something to take a photo of ... although one year I designed a small quilt that was actually a picture of burnt hills and stuff - and I laid out all the fabric where it was going to go and that was the photo that went in with my entry! ... and, strangely enough, when I made the quilt it actually looked kind of the same!).
The crocheting I have been doing was mainly a few scarves ... one in that feathery yarn (I think it was a cheapy version of "feathers") for dd (she liked it) and 4 in some odd yarn I got on special somewhere and can't remember what it was called ... I had bought 6 balls of it - 3 in pink and 3 in a greenish colour ... I needed to make a scarf or wrap for my donation for a raffle prize for that TASDA group I am in (they have a big raffle every year where everyone in the group is supposed to make and donate whatever item they decide it will be this year and they draw out that many tickets and the winners all get one each, then the money goes to a local lady who runs a soup kitchen) ... anyway ... I decided to use the pink and make 2 identical scarves - one to keep and one for the raffle - and I used a big hook and did Tunisian double crochet stitch so it grew really fast (and looked quite interesting too ;-) ... trouble is ... dd saw them and decided one was hers! ... so ... I dug out the green (it is a sort of olive green with apricot bits in it - sounds awful but looks good) and decided to make 2 more in that colour because I knew that dd wouldn't want to steal one in that colour [;-)] ... and I donated one of those - so now I have 2 more scarves to wear ... with the other few I have crocheted, and a couple of fabric ones I bought at a market stall, and a couple I have been given as presents/etc - I now have more scarves than I know what to do with - LOL
I have also been working on a shawl ... which is starting to look like a huge great bear rug! ... I started out using 3 balls of that hairy stuff that came from Spotlight (I bought it when I went to Queensland to visit Mum and Dad and we went to check out the new store they had built up near their place ;-) ... I forget what it is called, but Lincraft have one called "Funky Fibre" that looks the same ... these 3 balls were black/brown with a little bit of yellow in it ... and 3 balls is nowhere near enough to finish what it is going to be! ... it also now has some black (some other cheapy version of the same stuff plus some of the "Funky Fibre") and some brown "Funky Fibre" and some more black (Janice gave me a couple not quite full balls she had left over - thanks - and I also bought 2 more ... but with the size the thing has become - those almost 4 balls only did 4 rows! LOL ... it is a shawl that I made up as I went along - it starts with about 5 chain joined into a ring and then about 7 trebbles (DC for those in USA ;-) into that ... then I kept adding rows, but doing 3 DC on each end - so the thing keeps turning into a bigger and bigger triangle ... then after a few rows I made 2 more "corners" (points) on it by doing 3DC in the same place along each side ... then a few rows later I added some more corners ... so it is king of shaped more like bats wings or something ... I will put a photo somewhere sometime after I eventually finish it ... that probably won't be for at least a month or 3 ... but it will be before the TASDA Exhibition (in September I think) because I plan to exhibit it in that - probably as part of an outfit to wear in the fashion parade [grin] (I also plan to make a matching beanie and maybe even more items of clothing to wear with it ... maybe even some felted boots or something if I get time ... I have been wanting to try making a pair of those for ages ;-)
I have also been crocheting a really weird ?beanie (it still might become something else yet - it isn't finished ;-) with black 8ply acrylic, and the left over bit of pink stuff I used for those scarves ...
In between the crocheting I have also been making more of those A4 sized journal quilts (am doing one for each month this year - for a challenge, and exhibition, for the art quilters yahoogroup I am on) ... and I have started doing some of the bits for the quilt show - actually I should be out doing that now! LOL ... and I should be doing the washing first [sigh] (My grotty lab coat from work is soaking in bleach, and I also have a doona soaking in the laundry tub, washing that is going to be an interesting, and wet, excercise ... lol) ... there are photos of the journal quilts on my blog - www.aykayem.blogspot.com ... in fact I might copy this e-mail into there too ... save me having to type most of it again to tell my millions of readers about it (no - I don't really have millions of readers [sigh], but I think there might be one person who reads my blog ... sometimes ... LOL ... actually the main reason I started the blog was so I had somewhere to copy all this kind of stuff together in one place in case anyone was interested, and then I realised it was also good to have somewhere to stick photos of stuff where I could also write something about them in the same place). I might stick a photo or 2 of those scarves up there too, if it is working ok at the moment (it was having a hissy fit when I posted something to it the other night) ... and if I actually took any photos ... I know I have photos of one - in one of them it is under the cat! ... I decided to take a photo of the feathery one I made for DD before she looses/ruins it, so I laid it out on the bed ... and the cat laid on it! ... [andrea goes looking for photos] ... oh yeah - the dog came in to see what was going on - so he got to model it!

now - here is the photo of the scarf ... on the dog ...



note the cats on the bed WITH the dog! LOL ... the dog only chases the cats if they run ... btw - the dog is called Diesel ... and that is Pixel (who is almost 17 years old!) lying almost on top of him ... and Spook is half out of the corner of the photo (she is the one who came and sat ON the scarf as soon as I laid it out on the bed)

and ... I just found a photo of the green scarf I made for the TASDA raffle (the other green one and the 2 pink ones are the same) ...



Those who have seen/felt it say they like it, and it is "lovely and soft" ... I wonder where I got that yarn from and what it was, and - most importantly - can I get some more?!

anyway ... finding more photos will have to wait until later ... I have to go out somewhere shortly ...
(whenever "later" happens I will also put some more photos on http://spot-theblog.blogspot.com/ ... I have just saved a half written post, to that blog, as a draft ... I ran out of time before I put any of the other photos there ... )

Journal quilts ... etc

er ... I decided it was about time I added some photos of my April and May journal quilts ... then I realised that I have not actually added photos of March, or my second version of February! ... so I guess I had better put those here too ... LOL

February - yes ... I already did one, then I realised that the quilts will be traveling around the country and might even end up going overseas - so maybe real gum leaves, feathers, and a dead weed are not good things to put in one ... so I made another version of the same design/idea, but this time without the leaves/feather/weed in it ...



now what DID I call it? ... oh yes - "Primal Stirrings"




March - "Journey - Chasing The Dream"



... it is sort of about the journey of life, and about following your dreams (with a Kangaroo sequin with a gold star for all the athletes chasing gold medals at the Commonwealth Games, which were in March, in Melbourne)

[later edit - Feb 2008! - the above quilt is on page 77 of this month's issue (Feb '08) of the magazine Down Under Quilts! ... there were several other people's journal quilts in there too - they are part of an article about these journal quilts, and how a group of us each chose 5 quilts, which were then exhibited as a group at several quilt shows/etc around Australia, during 2007]

Then I didn't get much quilty stuff done at all in April and May (but I did do some crochet) ... I made my April quilt in the middle of May and my May one on the last day of May and the first day of June ...

April - "Tropical Dreams"



this one was actually inspired by a few things - mostly the trip to Queensland to visit my Parents (who live on the Sunshine Coast) ... DD was spotting Frangipanni flowers from the train window as soon as we got to Sydney (they don't grow too well here in Canberra ) and she was also pointing out any other nice tropical looking flowers she saw , and while we were up in Queensland I took quite a few photos of flowers/leaves/etc in Mum's garden, and then, after getting back from Queensland I got to go to Bowen Island (Near Nowra) for the weekend (doing some conservation volunteers stuff) and there was a frangipanni bush next to the hut we slept in ... I probably should have called the quilt "Sub-tropical dreams" because we didn't actually go far enough north to be in the tropics - LOL


May - "If I Can't See It - Then It Isn't There?"



actually I only just named this one (and the April one) earlier this evening! (when I put the photos up on the yahoogroups page for the yahoogroup that I am doing these things with/for) ... I kind of forgot I had not actually decided on names for them until I re-sized/etc the pictures and went to save them, and realised they had no names!
the May one was a weird idea that came to me sometime (I think it was actually in late March or early April, but then I had the other idea for April ;-) ... I think it was when I was kind of daydreaming and thinking of quilt ideas and stuff (like "what on Earth do I make to enter in the quilt show this year?" and "when will I actually find time to make it?" lol) and this idea came from somewhere in the weird universe that exists in the back of my mind (the place where a lot of my ideas come from ) ... hmmm - maybe I was trying to tell myself something?

Now ... let's hope that if I can see it in "preveiw" then it IS there ... because it isn't all there in here ... I know - that doesn't make sense - I think the editor thingy where I am writing this is/was having a bit of a hissy fit ... it didn't like me uploading a big photo ... so I made them smaller (which I probably should have done anyway, but I was being lazy) then it didn't like doing all 4 photos at once, even though it all looked like it was working ... they just never turned up in here like they are supposed to ... they did work when I did them again, one by one ... but the first 2 I did just show up as an "x" (in a box) in here ... but they look ok in the "preveiw" thingy ... methinks computers/etc have a mind of their own ...

... hmmm - now there's an interesting concept (which I think I actually thought of a year or more ago) - now that the internet is so huge, and so much stuff is connected together ... and it seems to have a mind of it's own ... what if it actually DOES?! ... what if that much information all connected together with all those various applications/etc just happens to all connect in such a way that the internet becomes conscious ... and some stream of bits and bytes and stuff flying around in cyberspace says to itself "I think, therefore I am"?

I think I ought to be asleep, therefore I am going to bed ... soon ... LOL

(after I have a drink/etc and dig up something to wear tomorrow and do whatever else I may have decided I had to do before I went to bed but have forgotten about ... )

... goodnight

(well - it will be a good night if this thing actually lets me publish it this time ... it stuffed up the first time - I think there is something not working with the intenet and/or the stupid ISP - a few things are having a go-slow tonight ... I got a "can't load page" message instead of "your post has been published" - not a good sign - LOL - my "edit posts" page said it was there but it wasn't on my blog and it came up 404 when I tried to edit it ... but when I finally got the browser to go back to this page it was still here - thank goodness that is one thing that does seem to work ok ... it never did that with geocities - once something I had been working on was gone - it was gone - and no amount of going "back" etc would ever find it again ... )

... I think blogger died ... at least the log in/post to your blog part has - it won't even let me log in ... luckily I copied this and saved it before I hit the "publish" button ... just in case ... now I just have to remember to dig it out and try to post it sometime ... LOL

but first ... had to have one more try to log in, before I left the room ... and it let me log in at last ... and all the stuff was still in here! (except the bit that I had typed where I had saved a copy - so I copied that in here - lol

now ... let's see if they have actually fixed the problem ...

(if they have not, then this will have to wait ... I have to get up and go to work in the morning!)