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 ...