A Few Things ...

These are some ATCs (Artist's Trading Cards) that I made for a recent swap:

(actually these are the 3 I kept for myself - but I made at least 4 of each one and sent off 3 sets of 4 ... they have now been swapped and 12 different ones have arrived in the mail - I might post some pictures of those, and all the other ATCs I have got back from swaps, sometime later ... after I get back from Adelaide ... maybe a week or more after - because the day after I get back from Adelaide I get to pack again and head up to Sydney for a week on a Scout camp! (with the Scout troop my daughter is in)

This was a bit left over from making some other ATCs - I made several at once in a long strip, and ended up with a bit that was not big enough for a whole ATC, so I made it into this miniature (about 2.5cm square) art quilt:


This is the same tiny quilt next to some shiny stuff I bought last Saturday:

- it came from the Christmas shop next to that fish pond where all the fish were swimming in circles (the one I posted about in the wee small hours of Christmas Day, when I noticed our internet was working again)
... I have a few other bits of stuff in these, and matching, colours - and I plan to use some of them and at least some of this in at least one journal quilt.


and ... OMG! ... have I just gone back in time to the 70s?!

The green thing is the "Lava lamp" (actually this one had some other name on the box, but it is the same thing) that DH (dear husband) bought me for my birthday the other week. It looks a bit weird in this picture (that is why I took the picture - it was still warming up and kind of looked like it had green pickled fingers growing in it!). He bought it while I was at work and decided that rather than wrap it up he would unpack it and turn it on before I got home, and he sat it on the desk next to the computer in my sewing room (the one that mainly gets used for playing music and the odd bit of surfing the www if someone else is stitting at this one) ... and on the desk I just happened to have a black and white polka dot fabric box I made, and 2 "art deco" style frogs (that I "made" - if you can call painting some glaze on something so somebody can fire it in the kiln for you "making" something - lol - I guess I did do the painting and I did choose what to buy and paint and what glaze to use) ... and when I was lining up the photo I noticed it looked rather ... er ... retro? lol - things like polka dots and those frogs are very 70s ... and the fabric owl fits in too - owls were very popular in the 70s ... I still have a nail and thread design of an owl that I made back then (although it has kind of fallen apart because all the string broke - but one day I might fix it up/do it again)

now ... I wonder if blogger still lets me save posts and set them to be published a day or 2 later - it used to do that, but until now I have never wanted to ... but seeing I am going to be away for the next week or 3, I figured I would see if I could do that ... hmmm ... can't find it in the help files/etc (not that I looked for too long) but there is one thing I might try ... post it now (almost 4am) but change the time on it to a bit later today ... then I can see if it comes up straight away or not, and if it doesn't I can come back in here just after the time I put on it and see if it has appeared ... LOL

hmmm ... still have to upload those TAST photos yet ... by the time I am going to sleep everyone's little kids will be waking up to see what Father Christmas has brougth them! LOL

Something Fishy ...?

... has been going on at the local telephone exchange - our internet suddenly stopped working just after I posted my last blog post, last week (so much for my idea of blogging all the stuff I scanned just after I posted that post!) ... numerous calls to the ISP gave us, and a few of the neighbours I spoke to on Friday evening, the same answer "no problems at our end - it must be you" yeah sure - 3 or 4 people in the same street all suddenly have problems with their computers/modems or something ... not very likely! LOL ... finally they admitted that yes - they do have a problem at their end - something broke/died/whatever at the local exchange ... so we (and I guess our whole suburb, and maybe those nearby) did not have any internet until now - it started working again a little while ago - the wee small hours of Christmas day - I was in here putting photos onto the computer, left the room and came back to unplug the memory card reader/close things down and noticed that the e-mail had just started arriving again.

It seems kind of odd that it just started working again now ... wish I was the technician/whoever working on it - they must have been getting paid a fortune for doing overtime on Christams Eve!

Something else fishy:


These are some goldfish at the pond near where I went for the Scquilters (a yahoogroup I am on) Christmas brunch last weekend ... I was walking past and looked at the pond and the fish were swimming around in circles following each other ... it looked rather weird, and they kept doing it for long enough for me to get the camera out and take a heap of photos (and some video too) - I think they were waiting for someone (me? lol) to throw in some food!

While on the subject of weird creatures ... here is a moth we found by the lake while we were having the Scouts Christmas/end or year BBQ:



yes - it is HUGE ... at least 4 inches long and as heavy as a big fat mouse! ... it kind of felt a bit like one too - all soft and furry ... LOL

I was probably going to upload scans of my TAST stitches after that last blog post (that is what I was busy scanning when the internet stopped working) ... but when I finished scanning them and noticed the internet wasn't working I decided that it was probably just the computer telling me it was bed time (it was about 4am by then!) and I decided I would upload and blog them the next evening instead ... but when DH (Dear Husband) couldn't get the internet to work the next day, I decided to play around and put some more photos, from the camera, onto the computer and fiddle with them - and, in the hope that the internet would be working again within a day or so, I fidled with a photo of a tree and made a Christmas card ... which I will probably still e-mail to those that I was going to e-mail it to before Christmas ... if any of them are still home they might check their e-mail and see it ...

Here it is:



yes I know - it's weird ... LOL

It is the top of the casuarina (a sort of native pine tree thingy) that we planted in our front yard a few years ago ... it is getting nice and tall now, and sounds really good when the wind whistles through it too :-)

Anyway,
It is nearly 3am now, so it is probably time I went and hung out the load of washing and then went to bed! ... also, I have seen a couple little messages pop up at the bottom of where I am typing this, where it tells me it has autosaved this as a draft, that have said "can't contact blogger" ... which probably just means things are busy on the net and it couldn't get through at the exact second it tried, because it has still been saving it ok every few minutes ... but ... just in case the internet connection is still a bit dodgy I had better post this while it IS still working, and then upload those scans of my TAST stitches ... even if I just throw those into a post and save it as a draft and write all the stuff about them later - if I don't get time to do that before I fly away tomorrow I might get a chance to sneak onto someone's computer while I am in Adelaide (for the next week and a half) and log in to blogger and write some stuff to go with them.

hmmm ... was that just sleigh bells I heard? ... drats - Father Christmas probably won't come and bring me a sewing room sorting out fairy while I am still awake ... neither will "The Hogfather" ...

Season's Greetings

Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukah (ooops - think I am a few days late for that one)/etc

- whatever it is you celebrate at this time of year ... 'tis the season to be jolly ... I guess most of us go to parties/etc have Christmas/end of year celebrations and then when we finish work for the year/get a few days off a heap of us vanish and visit relatives/etc ...

Anyway ... my Christmas present to anyone actually reading this blog is ...

... I am actually posting something to it before I go away on holidays!

do you like my pretty wrapping? :

Actually that was my "Secret Santa" gift for the Canberra Quilters meeting - those of us who wanted to join in the swap had to make a needlebook and wrap it up and put it in the basket on the way in - then later on during the meeting those of us who put one in got to take another one out ... I got a cute black and white striped one with sheep on the fabric that was used for the inside.

The wrapping was actually a rather clever result of my last minute "OMG I wonder what I am going to wrap this thing up in seeing I am still sewing it at the last minute?!" and having some red crepe paper in my desk at work, and "borrowing" a bit of string from the cupboard ... and then noticing that the weedy plant that is taking over the garden outside the staff room does sort of look a bit "Christmassy" ...

- yes - the idea was to finish it in my lunch break at work because I was going straight from work to a Greening Australia seed propogating working bee thingy, then from there to the meeting! ... and of course my lunch break was just a little bit too short, so I finished the last few stitches in the spare half an hour I had between when I finished work and when the seed planting thingy started, then took some photos (on a bit of white paper in a plastic sleeve - think it was my printout of that week's TAST stitch actually!) and then wrapped it up in the bits i had gathered from work and taken with me ... then ended up being 10 minutes late for the working bee thingy because it was a bit more than the 5 minute walk I thought it was down to the back end of the Botanic Gardens where we were doing it ... it was probably a couple of Kilometers - in other words - "a 6 pack and a cut lunch"

And this is the needlebook I made and wrapped up:

yes - that IS an ant at the top of the photo! ... it came to visit ... that happens when you take photos on a sheet of paper/etc on the ground in a grassy area where you have parked your car ... LOL

That was the outside, this is the inside:

the "pages" (where you stick your needles) are red felt (acrylic "felt" actually - the stuff they sell in slightly bigger than A4 sheets in craft/etc shops)

These are the 2 sides of the needlebook when it is closed:

And, because I felt like it ... here is a spider:

It was hanging around in my teenage Daughter's room a week or 3 ago - so she named (him?)"Oscar"! (yes she is as mad as I am and actually likes them ... they are rather cute ;-)

A week ago it turned up on the ceiling in here - so I took this photo.

A few days ago it was hanging around in the doorway next to my sewing room ... I hope it doesn't get squashed in the door ...

btw, it seems the thingy where I type my posts into blogger still has a mind of it's own ... so if the spacing between text/photos/etc is out of whack - it wasn't me being too lazy to try and make them look nice while I typed it - it was me being too lazy to spend half an hour of more digging around in html code to fix what shows up in the preveiw as a missing space above the last photo ... lol

oh ... and it doesn't seem to want to let me put a space between the text about the spider and this "btw ... " bit either ...

This week has been brought to you by the letter S and the colour red ...

... and white ... and green too ...



Why the letter S and the colour red? - well - they seem to go with stuff that has happened the last few days ...


S is for sniffles (I came down with some cold/flu bug again) and for "sickie" - I just happened to already have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday afternoon, when DD decided she had a "tummy ache" and stayed home from school (which just happens to also be where I work!) ... so, even though DH was home (and even if he wasn't, DD is old enough to stay home by herself) I decided I would stay home too ... I probably should have stayed home the day before instead, but I had to take DD to school, and it was swimming carnival - which is a good day to try and catch up with stuff I don't get a chance to do when there are a whole heap of teachers and students bugging me, so I figured i may as well stay and work ... but I felt "ugh" and didn't really get a lot done anyway (sigh). S is also for stress ... which is what I think I have a lot of at the moment - mostly due to some S#*! that is going on at work (involving a useless person acting in a job I hope they don't get when the permanent person is selected for it, and me being treated like a mushroom, among other things) ... and partly due to the fact that i am probably getting bored with doing the same thing I have done for about 10 years now ... but every year there is more work, less time and less money. Stress is probably why I have had a lot of colds/etc this year, and probably why I seem to have a few other annoying things going on - like getting itchy for no aparent reason - so that is why I was already going to see the doctor before I even came down with this cold ... she agreed that it is probably just stress - but she decided to send me for a pile of blood tests just in case there was something else wrong (and because at the age of almost 45 there are probably a few things I should get tested for anyway) ... she also gave me a certificate for that day off, and the next one too ... so after I went and had the blood tests (that is one place where the colour red comes in ;-) I came home and sewed some Scout scarves that I had been wanting to get done (but not quite getting around to doing) for a few weeks ... (S for Scouts and scarves ... and they are also red ... with a white stripe on them).


I don't know the results of the blood tests yet ... have to go back to the doctor next week ... but now i am worried ... I can't help thinking "what if they find something?" ... like what if I have high cholesterol and I have to eat HEALTHY food?! - yikes! LOL
(I will probably just find out that I have low vitamin C or something and need to eat more oranges ... or low vitamin D and need to go out in the sun more often - which I already think I should do - for the last few months it seems to have got almost dark before i got around to taking the dog for a walk ... so it is a bit hard to get a healthy dose of sunshine if the sun has already set! LOL)


oh yeah - S is also for silly ... which is probably a good word to describe me ...


... and red is also the colour dot mum used to put on the calendar for "that time of the month" ... which is about the only good thing about getting old - menopause will happen sooner or later (in my case probably later - mum and grandma were both about 55, so I probably have 10 more years to wait) and I will no longer have to worry about "Fred" coming every month ... LOL





hmmmmm ... I am sure that lat bit was probably "too much information" ... I should post about my TAST stitches or something instead - lol



btw - yes - my blog looks different too - the red, white and green (as opposed to just the red that goes with the letter S, and the rest of this blog post) and the silly? Christmas pictures/etc are because I decorated my blog for Christmas (I had to - Soozii told me to ... hmmm - another S word - lol)





one last thing - I just put some photos on the computer and found this one that I took about a week ago - S is also for spider ...




this tiny little spider was on the wall outside the house ... and the shadow looks a lot more menacing than the actual spider does! LOL

I think I need a beer ...

It's the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra doing a beer advert ... lol

... I think I might go have a glass of DH's home brew ;-)

(or maybe I should just go get some sleep?)

Eek! ... I need to catch up with blogging my TAST stitches ...

... because I just realised that I am more than 20 weeks behind!

(where on Earth did the middle half of the year go anyway?!?!!!?)

I have actually kept up with doing them for most of the time (just not the last few, but I have a perfect catch up oportunity this coming weekend), but the last TAST stitch that I posted about was week 20 - butterfly chain ... and I said something about having some more photos on the camera ... not sure where though - just looked in my photos and didn't see any more ... which probably means I only thought I had taken photos of the other ones ... I actually don't remember exactly what other ones I was talking about now anyway, but there are a couple more on the same bit of felt as some other stitches ... which I have not taken a photo of yet (but I am just about to scan it, and a few others, once I work out what order they go in ;-)

Week 21 was crossed buttonhole, and this is what I ended up with for that one:

... and that seems to be where I didn't get around to taking any more photos - LOL

but I did find a photo of some work I did on another person's block from the needlecase round robin I was in (finished now - got mine back a couple weeks ago, but I plan to try and make it into something soon, then post all the photos of it at once) ...

anyway - this is my work on someone's block:

... as you can see, I did some feather stitch (which I nearly always do on stuff) and a spider/web (which I also do lots of) and some couching (which I also use a lot) ... and one other stitch that I didn't know how to do (or that it even existed) until it was the week 19 Tast stitch! (Basque stitch)

Week 22 was Satin stitch ... I must have been busy/lazy that week - all I did was add a little bit on the side of a bit of other stitching that I have already blogged about - it is on the bit of felt on the top left in this scan I just did:

mmmmm look at all those dog/cat hairs! LOL

(click on the image for a closer look and once the picture is full size you WILL see the hairs! lol)

Next to that (top right) is wheat ear stitch (week 23) and long and short stitch (week 25). Week 24 was French knots ... there are quite a few knots on my bits of stitching but I am not sure if any of them are French ones ... I think I might have done one or 2 on one of the bits of felt I have just scanned (possibly this one with the wheatear on it) - but on most of them I have done what I usually do instead of French knots - and that is Collonial knots (which I learnt to do when I did some candlewicking, because it is often used in that) ... it is a bit hard to tell them apart once they are worked, because the end result looks almost the same - unless they are French knots and I did them - in which case they either vanish into the fabric or look demented - which is why I use collonial knots instead - LOL.

The bottom 2 bits are my messing around with half chevron stitch and bullion knots (weeks 26 and 27).

Now ... week 28 and 29 were sheaf stitch and arrow stitch ... where the heck is that?

oh - here it is - on the bit of felt I did oyster stitch on (top bit in this next scanned image) ... along with some more crossed buttonhole, and the "missing" butterfly chain stitch ... the butterfly on the top left is butterfly chain with some buttonhole stitch etc, the fan on the bottom left corner is sheaf stitch and fly stitch ... the row of "butterflies" along the bottom are sheaf stitch, the white scorpion looking thing in the middle is butterfly chain with chain stitch for the tail, and the weird looking yellow bit amongst all those is my fiddling with crossed buttonhole and whatever else it kind of turned into.

the other bits of felt are the bit with curly ferny looking things that I have blogged about before (black bit on left) - but I have since added the red flowers to the "Fleur de Whatsits" on the bottom, and the yellow bit with black stitching is Buttonhole wheels, cast on stitch, (weeks 30 and 31) and a bit more arrow stitch and a few other fiddly bits that grew out of the buttonhole wheels ... and some more cast on stitch and a few other white bits around the edge. Under that (white on black felt) is a variation on the buttonhole wheel that I turned into a snail.

This bit is my playing with Crested chain (week 32) in white thread (mine look like little people with one arm in the air like they are throwing something - so I gave them balls ;-) then I did a tiny bit of each of the next 4 week's stitches (week 33 scroll stitch, week 34 Portuguese knotted stem stitch, week 35 Shisha Stitch, week 36 Cable Chain stitch)

I was a bit busy doing other things to have time to do as much as I wanted with these stitches (and a few of the earlier ones too for that matter) but I am going to the Canberra Quilters retreat this weekend and we have to take hand sewing (no machines allowed) so it will be the perfect chance to take all my printed out instructions and my felt and threads/etc and have a good fiddle around with a few of those I want to do more with, and also catch up with the last few that I have not done - once I realised I could catch up on the retreat I decided to do a few other things instead of doing the last 2 or 3 stitches ... like coming in here and posting these pictures/etc to my blog - LOL

This is all I did for rice stitch and square boss stitch (week 37) - I did a bit of one of them, on top of the other one! I like what I got, so I will have to have another play with this one too.

here is the bit of felt that one is on ... some spare space to start on the 3 stitches for the 3 weeks I am behind (and the one posted tomorrow will make it 4). There is a bit more cable chain on here too.

And now ... I think it is time I went to bed before the sun comes up!

(the time on this post will probably show up as the time I started doing it ... but it is actually about 4:25am!!! oops?)

btw, I should have been sorting out/tidying up/etc in my sewing room/the rest of the house today, but I was feeling lazy so I sat and crocheted a shawl ... start to finish! LOL ... how long did it take me? - er ... most of a one day cricket match, part of the news/etc and one episode of Mythbusters ... lol

(I will blog some pictures/etc of it later, once I have taken some ...)

goodnight ... er ... good morning?

Beep beep beep ...

50 years ago yesterday (oops - bit late - I found out about it when there was only 5 minutes of "yesterday" left!), The Russians "threw" a basketball sized object into orbit ...


... I wasn't born yet so I guess that is why I don't remember it, but apparently everyone and their dog sat around their radios listening for the "beep beep beep" being broadcast from Sputnik as it orbited the Earth ...

... the world sure has changed a bit since then ... LOL

Technological change ... who would have thought I would be writing all this waffle that anybody in the world (well - anyone with an internet connection) could read?

Social change ... ditto - and who would have thought I would have more friends who I had met online than in the real world?

... and now kids don't walk to their mate's places to see if they can play with them - they IM each other or ring on their mobile phones!

and Climate change ... which is probably as inevitable as the other 2 I have mentioned, but the likely outcome is something we can forsee - if we don't do something to at least slow down the change then things are not going to be as good as if we do ... I don't want to see what happens if/when the ice caps melt ... or worse ... especially if it is my fault ... and you and I can do stuff to help ... not only to stop global warming, but to do the right thing for our planet in many ways ... we as a species don't have to keep taking more than we give ...

No - I am not telling you all to sell up and live in a hippy commune and become raging greenies ... just that we can all do a few things to be less wasteful/nicer to the environment/etc ... and a lot of them can save you money and/or are healthier for you anyway.



"Huh?" ? ... how did I just manage to use Sputnik to introduce a post about the new "save the planet" thingy I just put in my side-bar? ... er ... it just fell out of the keyboard ... LOL

pity my promised post with pictures/scans of my TAST stitches, and/or a post or 3 about some more of the other stuff I have been doing lately, has not "fallen out of the keyboard" yet ... sigh ...
like some shampoo advert used to say - "it won't happen overnight, but it will happen"
... eventually ...

I will dig out all the bits of stitching, and work out what is what, sometime in the next few days ... then I can scan the bits I have not got images of (and also those that I have taken photos of, but have not blogged yet - because scans will probably work better than the photos I have taken ;-) then I can finally get around to blogging about them, and while I am at it I can make a note of what ones I wanted to do some more with - then I will have at least one thing organised to take and work on at the quilting retreat I am going to the weekend after this one ... LOL

... Most of my stuff I want to do/finish, and that would be easy to organise, requires either using the sewing machine for at least the next part of it - and machines are not allowed on this retreat - they made that rule because sewing machines are too noisy for people to be able to talk/etc ... (or sleep - the bedrooms are all around the outside of the central area where we sit and sew/etc.) or it requires me to dig out stuff from my stash/etc as i go ... which is a bit hard if I am not at home with my stash ... so I need to hurry up and find/organise some stuff I want to work on, something that requires some hand sewing/etc, that I can find and take all the bits I am likely to need for it ... stuff like my TAST stitching, and hopefully some crazy quilting if I can find what fabrics I want to use and machine piece the block(s) to do it on before I go ...


- I have a few stitches that I had more ideas for but didn't have time to play with at the time, and I will also have about 4 weeks of stitches to catch up on - yes I am actually more behind than I have been all year - I have not done the last couple weeks stitches yet, and I have not even looked at what this week is - oops! (I have now - just went and looked ;-) but I only let myself get behind a couple weeks now because I have been busy doing other things, and it will give me some stuff to work on at the quilt retreat ;-) and if I don't catch up there, I will be able to catch up in the next few weeks anyway, because I won't be busy doing stuff for quilt shows/exhibitions/etc or whatever ... and I probably won't be doing a lot of other quilty stuff because I intend to finish sorting out my sewing room ... so the TAST stitches will be a good thing to do in front of the TV when I want to sew instead of crochet ... lol



hmmm ... now ... shall I do a full circle back to Sputink? - I bet a lot more people were tuned in and listening to the "beep beep beep" of Sputnik than are reading this blog (I guess my blog is not new and interesting like Sputnik was ... it's like most of the "space junk" up there now - just another blob in the crowd - lol) ... in fact I am quite surprised that there are one or 2 of you still checking in here and posting comments! (even my Mum never gets around to reading it! ... but then she is on dial up internet and not really into reading blogs and stuff ... she probably would read it if I remembered to e-mail her the posts ;-)

space junk ... hmmm ... could be another quilt idea there ... lol

(or maybe I could do a freeform crochet thingy?)

maybe I should go to bed ... before the sun comes up or something ... LOL

but before I go - methinks this post needs a picture or 2 ...

Seeing I have been waffling on about being green and re-using stuff and whatever - here is a picture of my plastic shopping bag that I crocheted from cut up plastic shopping bags:


I actually made this a year or more ago ... I gathered up a colourful collection of plastic bags from the supermarket, cut them into strips - across the bag so the strips are actually loops - that way I could loop them together to create some plastic "yarn" to crochet with ... then I just started crocheting until I ended up with a bag (pattern? ... wot's a pattern? - sorry - didn't use one! ... bit I could probably write one for this bag if people want me to ... just not sure when ... lol)

And ... just to show that I do sometimes make more "normal" stuff:

This is a photo of me (taken during the TASDA exhibiton a couple of weeks ago) wearing a beanie and scarf that I crocheted, using some "ice coloured" yarn ... no, I didn't use a pattern for those either ... lol
I didn't model those in the fashion parade, someone else did, but I got someone to take a photo in case they sold ... they didn't ... sigh ...
btw, I also made the patchwork/quilted vest that I am wearing in the photo ... the blue fabric was a packet of scraps that a well known Aussie quilter, Margaret Rolfe, posted to me (we know each other becasue we are both members of Canberra Quilters, and she knew I liked doing stuff with odd little scraps, so she sent them to me) ... the weird thing was - I made the vest, and finished the last bit of it off in a hurry so I could wear it to the opening of a quilt exhibition ... and when I was looking at the quilts I realised that one of them was actualy the quilt that the scraps were from!

Re duce, re use, re cycle, re diculous!?

I know ... that is NOT how to spell "ridiculous"

... but maybe this is how to LOOK it?

yes - that IS me ... dressed in the jumpsuit thingy that I crocheted from cut up plastic shopping bags!

hmmmm - methinks this adds a whole new meaning to the term "bag lady" LOL

The person organising the fashion parade that I wore this in (this photo was taken just after it) said I should try and look light on my feet and be graceful, like I am flying ... yeah right ... graceful as a dodo maybe ... LOL

The fashion parade was part of the TASDA exhibition ... which, as far as I know, went well ... last year I sold all 3 of the Tunisian crochet scarves I had in the bazaar ... so this year I crocheted a few more ... and yes - only one sold (I guess one is better than none ;-)

... DD (dear daughter) was happy - she got to choose a couple from what was left.

btw, the theme for the exhibition was "Poles Apart" ... and this ... er ... thingy ... was part of the "rags to riches" section - where the idea is to recycle old garments and make them into something new and exciting ... the colours I used are meant to look like ice/snow/etc to fit the theme ... and somewhere in my weird mind the theme and the recycle idea, and who knows what else that was on my mind at the time, all ended up mixed together and I ended up calling it "Icrarus, The Snow Phoenix" ... and I came up with the idea that Humankind has flown too high and now our Earth is melting, and when we fall - I wonder what is going to rise up in our place?

(and what comes after is going to be poles apart from what came before?) ... or something like that ... I think I think too much?

Now that the TASDA exhibition is been and gone, I have less of an excuse for not blogging all the other stuff I have been promising to put up here (like the whole pile of TAST stitches I have done and not blogged yet) ... although I do have some ATCs I want to make for a swap (might or might not do those - depends if I come up with any good ideas in the next few days) ... and another "inchie" swap coming up ... I definitely want to do that one ... and my sewing room still looks like a bomb hit it ... but ... it is school holidays for the next 2 weeks (which means I don't have to go to work ;-) so I am sure I will end up having at least a couple of late nights in here scanning bits of stitching and messing around with photos and sticking stuff in here for anyone mad enough to read this ...

talking about late nights ... I have been busy putting photos on the computer, and it was already getting late when I came in here and started doing that ... now it is nearly 4am ... and I need some sleep! LOL

goodnight ...

Eclipsed

I have finally got around to putting some photos onto the computer (and I finally got around to posting to my blog again - lol)

... so here are some pictures of the lunar eclipse a week or 2 ago ...


sorry - a bit blurry - taken with my Husband's digital SLR ... which neither of us have got around to learning to use properly (oops?) ... I did use a tripod, but I think the problem is partly due to the camera shaking when I push the shutter button and let go (probably needed to use a cable release/remote ... I wonder if the camera came with one ... my camera has a remote for the shutter ... but I think the battery in it is flat - LOL) ... or it could just be that it isn't easy to take zoomed in photos of such a distant and dark object ...

Talking about flat ... I have been feeling a bit "eclipsed" lately ... might have something to do with being a bit busy, then getting p...d off and stressed out with work (a long story that I won't go into here/now, because it probably isn't the done thing to tell the Whole Wide World about how particular people are absolute total uncaring idiots ... ) and then ... probably a result of the first 2 things ... I came down with some cold/flu bug ... which turned into some other nose/throat/etc bug ... so I got even less stuff done than I wanted to last month ...

but ... I think the light is starting to creep back in ...



... and I am coming out of the shadow ...




... so maybe sometime soon I will finally get around to posting about all those other TAST stitches that I keep promising to post pictures of ... I am not quite up to date with the weekly stitches ... but I have done at least a little bit of each one ... except this weeks - I have not always got them done in the same week they are posted, but I am trying to at least sort of keep no more than a week or 2 behind ... last week's stitch was shisha stitch, and I did a little bit of that in my lunch break today ... and I will probably do this week's stitch in front of the TV sometime in the next few days, before the next one is posted on Tuesday ...

btw - she has moved her blog too ... so the TAST thingy is now on http://sharonb.wordpress.com/ ... (or u can go to http://sharonb.wordpress.com/take-a-stitch-tuesday-challenge/ if you don't want to look at the rest of her blog) ... I think the stitch dictionary is still on www.inaminuteago.com though.


and ... one more photo ... bad photo of the moon, but it makes a good space ship! LOL



... beam me up Scotty.

Pretending I am famous

I am not really famous (yet?) ... but this is what things could look like if I was:



sorry - I just had to do it ...
I found the link to do this in a blog post (thanks Ros)

I should have done this with one of my quilts that I just finished ready for the quilt show - maybe a sneak preveiw of me being famous for winning (not B#%%^& likely!), but I didn't get around to taking any photos before I delivered them (A: I didn't really have time because I was still sewing bits on one at the last minute and B: why go to all the trouble of finding somewhere to hang them up and take a photo when I can wait until they have been hung in the quilt show and take photos of them there? LOL)

Anyway ... I have other things to go do ... like go and clear out the pile of washing and some other junk from the laundry so the delivery bloke has room to put the new washing machine when it arrives tomorrow (the old one is kind of on it's last legs - it is older than my teenage kids, and it has recently developed an annoying habit of sometimes filling up and up and up and flooding the floor!) Knowing my luck I will get to play with that new toy before I get time to play with the other one I still have not had a play with yet (the scanner!) ... and I know which one will be more fun! LOL
(when I have had a chance to play with the scanner, I will put up scans of some more TAST stitches that I have not blogged yet ... I am still keeping up ... sort of ... I have not done last week's stitch yet - but I do have about 12 hours before she posts the next one so if I do that this evening I can say I am not lagging behind ;-)

Moving Music

It was moving music (and I kind of liked having it playing on my blog) ... but I moved it ...

- I had a music player thingy on here - the main reason being so that any TASDA members who came here could listen to Pink Floyd's song "Poles Apart" - because that is also the theme of this year's TASDA exhibition ...

but ... the other day I was accessing my blog at "dial up" speed ... and I realised just how badly the music thingy worked at that speed! ... it was a case of "OMG how annoying!" ... "AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH" evern ... it reminded me just how quickly one forgets how things are for those using dial up internet access, once one has broadband ... LOL

so ... if you want to listen to the music that was playing on here - now you will have to go to http://wheremyblogis.blogspot.com/ and listen to it there ...
(that was a blog I created back when google first took over blogger, but before we had to move out blogs to our google account - I created one to see if the google one worked ok ... it did - which was a good thing, because not long after we actually had to move ... well ... we didn't have to, but we couldn't log in to the old blogger to post stuff any more - so basically we couln't post anything unless we changed over ... LOL)

btw ... I still have not scanned any of the last few weeks TAST stitches ... or anything else I might have promised to put here "soon" ... and it will be at least another week before I do - playing with the new scanner will result in me loosing myself in here for more hours than I have time to spend doing that at the moment - I have to deliver my quilts ready for the quilt show in a week's time, and I still have quite a bit of sewing to do on them ... in fact I should be doing other things now ... but I knew moving the music thingy should not take too long to do, and I really didn't want those of you on dial up/slow speed internet access to have to suffer any more ... LOL

Coming soon? ... well ... sooner or later (more likely later) :
- more TAST stitches,
- an explanation, with photos, of my weird way of making it easier to do Tunisian crochet with weird knobbly/fluffy/fuzzy yarn,
- some more close up pictures of my "Inchies" and an explanation of how I made them
- pictures of the inchies I got back from the inchie swap
- a post about how I "undye" fabric ...
- a post about how I use rust and dirt/garden mulch/etc to dye fabric
- more photos of stuff I have made in the past
and hopefully -
- more posts about stuff I get finished for the quilt show/etc ... LOL

A Magical Map Of The Journey Of Life

No ... not the secret of life or anything Earth shattering like that ... it is the title of a quilt I made for Mum and Dad, for Christmas:

I made this using some rust/etc dyed fabric I made ... I was just talking about it in an e-mail I posted to a yahoogroup I am in ... I was explaining about how to "dye" fabric with rusty nails/bury it in the garden/etc ... so, instead of explaining it again - here is what I said in the e-mail:

Another interesting and cheap (which is one reason why I tried it) way to play with making fabric go different colours is to do "rust dying" and stuff like that - bits of white fabric, calico, etc light colour fabric can be wrapped up with rusty nails/wire/iron filings/etc and/or garden mulch and stuff ... and buried in the garden for a night or a week (have read about doing it for a week but I have only done it overnight) ... or just put the fabric with its rusty stuff/garden mulch/gum leaves/etc in a bucket in the laundry

... I have been told that it works best if you add salt and/or vinegar to it - makes the rusty stuff rust more quickly ... and if it rusts while it is in the fabric the rust ends up on the fabric - which is what you want .

This journal quilt is made from a bit of my "rust dyed" fabric (the journal quilts are what I said was my "yearquilt" for last year - I did one each month, along with a whole group of us from an artquilters yahoogroup).

I think I wrapped the bit of fabric around some rusty nails, copper wire, etc, threw in a few of the wood chips from the mulch in the garden (half rotten ones with dirt mixed in ;-) made sure it was nice and wet, and plonked it in a bucket with some more dirt/mulch thrown on top ... then, because I am not a patient person , I dragged it out again the next day and it was already nice and rusty and wonderful looking , so I shook off all the rusty bits and stuff and rinsed off the dirt/etc, then threw it in with a load of washing to make sure that what colour was on there was going to still be there after a wash (no - none of the colour ran or washed out - I didn't expect it to either - I know that rust stains stuff ).

I also made a quilt for Mum and Dad out of some of that rusty fabric ... they have retired and do a lot of travelling, so I made them a small quilt for their campervan ... I made it to look like a map, so it has contours and roads and a railway line and map symbols for buildings etc ... and because Mum quilts and dad does woodwork/etc in his shed, I named the town "Quilt Town" and one of the hills is "Hardware Hill" ... I don't think I have a photo on my blog yet ... but I might see if I can put one there shortly ...

so ... here I am ... TRYING to put the photo up ... but it isn't working ... grrr ...

(oh well ... I will just have to save this as a draft and try again tomorrow ... either blogger is not working, or the problem could be at this end ... been a while since the computer has been re-started ... and I am not going to fiddle and try stuff now because it is now about 1:30am - well and truly time I was asleep!)

< the next evening ... >

Grrrr ... still not working ...

< andrea goes to help pages, looks at some stuff, opens up another variety of browser and logs in again using that >

It worked at last! - booo for "Internet Exploder", yaaaaaay for Firefox :-)

btw, All the roads and the rivers and train tracks in the quilt are stitched on (some of them over a coloured line that I drew on first) but the buildings and names, and the tree symbols, are drawn on with fabric markers ... 2 reasons - 1: I wasn't sure I could sew them neatly enough and have them look right, and 2: I wanted to get it finished and send it, so Mum and Dad got the quilt before next Christmas - lol

oh - I also coloured in "Lake Lovely" with a pale blue highlighter!

(whatever works - LOL ... I figured that in the unlikely event that the quilt needed washing, and by some chance the blue lake all washes out- then Mum, or whoever washes it, can quite easily grab a blue highlighter/etc and colour the lake back in again ... )

hmmmm ... the spell checker is back (maybe it always was here but currently only works in the firefox browser?) ... it keeps picking up my Aussie spelling of the word Colour! (yes - in Australia, and England, that word IS spelt with a U in it ... it always has been - it's just that the population of another large country decided not to bother using it :-)

Sorry Al ... (I hope he didn't mind)

Yes - after reading http://knit1blog1.blogspot.com/ and finding a link to someone else's similar photo ( at http://need2knit.blogspot.com/2007/07/ttwc-2007_16.html ) I just had to do it too -

... well - what do they expect if they put a statue of Al Grassby in the foyer and then have an exhibition like that, with Friday lunch time "Knit Ins", upstairs?!

btw - he is wearing a Tunisian crochet scarf I finished this week, and he is holding the one I got half way through making and then realised ... I don't have another ball of that yarn - I think I must have already used it! (I can't remember how many I had to start with either ... I might be lucky and find some more in my stash ... even the same yarn in another colour will do - the shop it came from didn't have any more - I looked in the Civic shop while I was there today ... then this evening DH (Dear Husband) and I were near the Belconnen one so I looked in there as well ... I think DH was happy, and surprised, to see me come out without having bought anything ... "the light will dawn" when he sees the bank statement and reaslies I had already used the plastic to buy $20 worth of yarn in the one in Civic this afternoon - I had to - it was on special - LOL)


hmmm ... maybe I should issue a challenge to anyone else reading this blog (one of those "tag - you are it" things) - I think it would be fun if anyone who was game to join in could either go here and find Al, or if you are not in Canberra then choose a local statue, and dress him/her up in crochet/knitting/whatever and post a photo to your blog ;-)
I guess it is a bit like this mob - http://www.microfibermilitia.blogspot.com/ - a group who do "crochet graffiti" - they sneak around and crochet stuff around things like parking meters, park benches and poles! - then they post pictures of it to the blog!
(I actually got that link from www.inaminuteago.com/blog - and I did not see it until AFTER I took the photo of Al wearing and holding my crocheting!)

While I am here - time for a few more photos:

The trees (nearby) looked interesting ...




2 crochet pots -


I made them a couple of days ago, and was going to felt them ... I felt good about it but they didn't! - in other words - they didn't felt! ... I had half an idea that might happen - I had used some odd ball of wool I had lying around and was not sure if it had been treated so it was machine washable (and therefore would not felt) ... and yes - it had been ... so - it is lucky I had a "plan B" - one day I might just stiffen them with fabric stiffener or something instead ...

a prickly plant in the garden ...

for some odd reason I think this plant looks interesting, so I keep taking photos of it!



This is a tiny crochet thingy - made to look like a wall hanging -


I made it to fill up a space (and so there was some more crochet stuff) on a larger wall hanging thingy that I entered in the TASDA exhibition one year ... you can see how small it is by the size of the pin at the top ... actually that "pin" is actually a bead (the same size as a dressmaking pin head) and 3 stitches! - done to look like a pin but not fall out or be so "ouch" (I did some of those pretend pins on something else I made too - then the rest of the time while I was making it I kept finding myself trying to pull them out and move them and stuff because, at first glance with my brain out of gear, they looked too darn real! LOL)




This is "A Little Walk In Big Country" ... my miniature quilt for the quilt show a year or 3 ago -

the fluffy stuff under the lizards is actually fur I combed from our dog!
(Golden Retrievers have a lot of spare fur ;-)


Yes - I can do "normal" quilts as well -



this is a small log cabin quilt ... about a foot square ... that I should have made a couple weeks earlier and entered it in the competition for the Canberra Quilters 30th birthday calendar ... but I wasn't organised enough ... I made this after entries closed, a day before the next meeting - just in case they had not got enough entries and they needed more (which was probably the only way this would have got chosen - LOL)




This is a bag I made at a $5 mini workshop at the craft show a couple years ago -



the $5 was supposed to pay for the kit/materials "to make a small bag and wear it around at the craft show" - which would have been a bit hard because they did not provide anything to use make a handle! - all the yarn (used for the fringe and handle, etc) and the beads came from my stash when I got home that evening - I finished it in a hurry and took it out to dinner that evening (with a bunch of other quilters) - it was my "show and tell" at the dinner.
... the "workshop" was supposed to be a kind of demo to sell some new model of sewing machine and the stitch regulator that you could get to go with it ... but the tension on the one I was using was so "up the creek" I don't think it was a good advert at all (although I actually like the way the particular stitch I used turned out with the tension out of whack - it looked more interesting than the way it was supposed to be did!) ... and I didn't really like the stitch regulator thingy anyway ... some people like them, but for what I do at the moment - there are other things I would rather spend my money on ... maybe by the time I can afford one there will be a sewing machine where you can just tell it to "do this, like that" and he will smile, say "affirmative" or "understood" - and go ahead and do it, and also give you a neck massage and make you a drink when he is finished ... LOL


These are my "Inchies" - 6 sets of 9 x 1" squares (made by doing arty farty things to fabric) that I made for a swap on an art quilt yahoogroup. We also had the option of including a bag of "goodies" to swap ... so of course I had to swap one of those too.

I took that photo in a hurry before I went and posted them - I forgot to do it before I stuffed them all in the plastic bags!

These are the other 2 sets I made - one for me and one that I plan to give to Mum ...

There are all sorts of odd things in/on these - couched on bits of yarn, scribbles of stitching, and even melted shopping bag plastic!

This is the spider, and some other stuff, that I stitched on someone's needlecase block for a round robin I am in (on a crazy quilting yahoogroup)



btw ... if you think my "arty farty" stuff is weird - have a look at this strange art project - http://whatiamupto.com/mechabolic/index.html
... I found the link on this rather interesting blog post - http://greenvolts.blogspot.com/2007/05/carbon-hat-trick.html ... which I found when I had a look at that blog, after noticing it listed as a "blog of note" on the blogger log in page (it's a real trap sometimes - I go to blogger to log in here and post something, and before I even get around to logging in - I find myself "lost in cyberspace" for an hour or 3, just looking at the blogs of note, and the stuff I find when I follow links on those ... and the stuff I find when I follow links from there ... etc ... LOL

Ok ... I saved this one for last ...

I know - sunset (and bed time for that matter) was ages ago (in fact this particular sunset was a couple of weeks ago) ... but u get the idea don't you?

I will be back, hopefully to finally post the latest bunch of TAST pictures, but it might not be in the morning ... or even tomorrow ...

... note - I did not say "photos" ... because they probably won't actually be photos - thanks to the fact that when DH checked out the printer he realised it not only needed new ink, but a new print head too - which was going to cost about $80 ... which also just happened to be the price of a brand new printer ... so we now have the brand new printer - and it doesn't only print - it is also a scanner ... which makes me happy, because I have known for ages that scanners can actually take a lot better images of textile stuff (like small crochet items or crazy quilt blocks or bits of stitching on black felt) than I seem to be able to take with the camera ;-)

A few odd crochet photos ... and a few more other odd photos too

I need some more crochet photos on my blog

(especially if I go and leave a comment on http://knit1blog1.blogspot.com/ and somebody actually reads it and comes to look at my blog ;-)

so ... now that I have been side-tracked looking at everything else I went and looked at when I saw the links while I was at that website copying the URL ... I have time to have a little bit of a hunt around in my photos and find a few crochet ones I can throw up here in a hurry ...

... trouble is finding and uploading them took a bit longer than "a hurry" should take (so much for a not too late night - lol)

Here is what I found in last year's photos:

A crochet bowl - done in something called clothesline crochet - where one crochets around cord so the object is stiff enough to stand up or whatever ...

yes - the lid opens ... not that the dog cares ...

A "Canberra Raider" - crocheted as a birthday present for a friend who barracks for the Canberra Raiders footy team (not that it is real football ... I grew up where people play Aussie Rules ;-)

btw, I didn't crochet the lace in the background ... that was probably made by my crochet desinger/etc friend (who is the partner of the bloke who now owns the crochet Raider)

A scarf I made last year - I made 2 the same, kept one, donated one to the raffle for the TASDA exhibition last year (not sure which one I took the photo of) ... it is done in Tunisian crochet on a large hook, so it is lacy.

A wire goblet I crocheted a few years ago (I only took this photo last year) ... it is made from coated copper wire, probably from inside an electric motor or something ... shiny wire is not the easiest thing to take photos of either.

A woven basket - yes basket weaving is another thing I have dabbled in and want to do more of - this was made from Banksia Rose prunings from the garden (in the house we used to live in several years ago) and some reeds from around a pond.

I also crocheted something with a left over bit of these reeds ... think it was a coaster ... not sure if I ever took a photo, but I do still have the coaster somewhere (at least I know I have not thrown it out ... so it should be somewhere in my piles of stuff)

A wire dragon and a wire camel shape that I made a few years ago - currently hanging from the ceiling vent in my sewing room (where they were when i took this photo)

I used to do lots of wire creatures/people/etc when I was a kid ... done the odd thing or 2 since ... I wouldn't mind doing some more wire dragons and stuff sometime ... maybe a wire dragon with crochet or fabric wings?
The nearest to that I have done lately is this:

Yes - a pair of disembodied chicken legs!

They are now attached to the rest of the chook - I made them for the chook bag that I made for the Canberra Quilters exhibition last year ... I had a quick look for a photo but couldn't find one

- I am sure I took one ... ah - in one of the folders of last year's photos that I have not looked in yet - yes there are a few I have yet to dig around in ... I won't put the photo here though - it isn't a very good one, and I still have the chook so I will take a better one ... sometime ...

an amazing sunset!

yes the sky really did look exactly like that! (and no I did not fiddle with the colours or anything)


I keep finding more quilty/sewing photos than crochet ones ...

this tiny quilt is only a couple of inches wide - it was a leftover bit from making ATCs (Artists Trading Cards) ... and they are only 2.5"x3.5" ... and this was only big enough for about half of one ...

this one is not much bigger ... think it might just be long enough for an ATC but it wasn't wide enough ... it was another left over bit of quilted fabric with foil ironed on ... then I added the thread and did the stitching around the edge.

a small coin purse ... sort of made in a hurry so DD had one for a Scout camp in Sydney - she used it for the trip and then gave it back to me because she didn't need/want it (she bought a wallet in Sydney) - which was fine by me because now I use it for my coin purse!

btw - the furry bit at the top right is the cat's tail!

A bed full of animals!

Diesel the dog, Spook (the cat with lots of white) and Pixel - who is almost exactly the same colour as the back of this quilt! (she died, ,mostly of old age, last year, but the other 2 are still alive and well). The quilt is one I made a few years ago ... and the backing fabric was actually black homespun that I "un dyed" with bleach ...

I also found a few other interesting photos ... maybe I could call this one "spider crochet"?

I think spiders make amazing "lace" LOL

clouds sometimes look like crochet or lace too:

Playing with photos is also fun - this weird blue "yarn" is actually dog fur - and it is still ON the dog ... I just fiddled with the colours/etc in a close up photo of his fur ...

I think this may have been from the same photo ... after a LOT of fiddling with weird effects that the image editing software we have does.

this photo has not been fiddled with ... yet (btw - when I fiddle with photos, I also keep the originals, of course ;-)

- I like all the interesting textures in this - it is actually animal and bird footprints in the mud at the edge of the local pond.

there are also interesting ideas/textures/etc in things like peeling ceiling paint!

eek ... it is now after 4am and I have to get up in about 4 hours time to go to a Scquilters sewing day ... luckily I already got my stuff ready before I came in here and did this!

so why did I just look in the other couple of folders of photos? LOL (probably because I knew it would only take a minute or 3 and there would not be more than one or 2 more crochet/quilt photos ... and I only found one more to post here - a crazy quilt block I made for Mum:

btw, while I was here (while I was getting lost in cyberspace earlier) I also worked out what TAST stitches I had not blogged yet, and looked to see what ones I have not taken photos of yet ... so hopefully I will get around to taking photos of those I have not, and catch up with posting those here sometime in the next few days ...

btw ... the formatting or something always seems to end up going screwy when I add photos ... I found one cheat's way to fix it but that involves a LOT of hunting around and deleting extra junk that this editor thingy seems to put in the html code ... one day I might learn a bit more about stuff like div tags and what they do ... but in the meantime - there are probably extra blank lines where they don't need to be and possibly even no blank lines in between stuff that should have them ... just like the last few posts with photos in them ... LOL

Talking about screwy formatting ... for some odd reason the sidebar sometimes seems to start at the bottom of all the posts ... then it seems to fix itself ... then mess up again ... another thing I probably need to learn more about one day ...

anyway ... goodnight! LOL