X

I should be eXiting stuff like this and Xing things off my "to do" list ... not joining in more stuff ... but when I found This I couldn't resist joining in (how could I resist something like "Wednesday ABC? lol) ... even if I only keep it up for a while until I get busy or whatever ...

hmmmm ... If I understand how this thing works, we should be posting something about the letter X ... er ... I picked an easy week to join didn't I?

Actually ... X is not that hard ... not when you know that you have photos of an Australian plant that just happens to be called a Xanthorrea ;-)

... and yes - it is a real plant - if you don't believe me check it out here - http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1145455.htm

(not that the picture is that great or anything, but it does prove they exist and I am not making the name up!)

Now ... where did I put those photos? ... or ... more importantly - because my photos are sorted out according to when they were taken - when did I take take those photos? LOL

I don't know when I took the photos I was thinking of ...

- they were some that I know I have taken at several different times, mostly in the bush around this area - in the hills near here and in some areas a bit further away while on Land Rover Club trips/etc - and I have even put some of them on my blog a year or 2 ago - here

... and yes - it was for a similar reason I am posting X things here now!
so ... to save repeating myself here - if Xanthorreas are not enough X stuff - then go to that post and see some more X things ... none are X-rated, but there are pictures of Xylem, Xylol, an XS650, Xanthorreas, "chemical X", X-rays AND an X-ray machine! ... no picture of xanthan gum, but there is a link to my Xanga blog (that I never post to) and a picture of some xylophagous xylophiles ... and a few other odd things ... lol

... but, when I went looking for those Xanthorrea photos, I found these photos instead - I had forgotten about these!

I took these photos in April 2007, up in some hills near Mum and Dad's place on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland ...

The Xanthorreas are the spiky things - the trees in the background are gum trees (Eucalyptus)

here are some more - this time showing the trunks that some of the species have:

... now you can see why they are also known as "grass trees" - lol

and here is a scribbly gum ("the scribbles" on the bark are actually caused by an insect that attacks this particular species of gum tree) and some more Xanthorreas:

and no - the tall spikes are not garden stakes or poles - they are the Xanthorrea's flower spikes!

... these ones have finished flowering - the spikes will probably all end up falling over/get broken off/etc before the next flowering season - each time they flower they grow a tall spike which is covered in buds which open up into white flowers as the spike finishes growing (and if the spike is in the middle of growing and there is a really hot day they can wilt and end up bent over or even all twisted/curly instead of straight - I used to like finding the weird shaped ones in the scrub when I was a kid!

Talking about finding photos ...
(and this also kind of fits in with X - and it being an "unknown")

... while getting lost in cyberspace, and finding out about this ABC thingy, I looked at a few other blogs of people who are doing it and found this blog post (about what the cat dragged in - lol)

and I left a comment on it ... and I also spent half an hour searching for the photos of a particular B%&%^ grasshopper we get around here, so I could stick one of them on to my previous blog post and link to it ... but do you think I could find it? - no - so now here I am looking for something else and what do I find instead ... yes - the grasshopper!



problem was ... I remembered taking these photos, and I remembered seeing these grasshoppers while on a nature walk (with a group of people) in the local grasslands ... trouble is ... turns out I actually took these photos in the back yard on a different day than the one the nature walk was on! LOL


The amazing thing is ... I think the grasshopper on that blog was in Italy ... the link that said what someone had identified it as showed a similar one that is found in America and this one here is similar too (in fact this one looks more like the Italian one than the American one does ... but looks can be decieving) ... of all the thousands (millions?) of grasshopper species around the world ... or even just how many there are in each country - and there end up being some that are so darn similar but are at opposite ends of the Earth!

anyway ... X is also what one does against a WRONG answer when marking a test/etc ... or to cross out a mistake ... and I think deciding to go blog surfing last night was a mistake - because I am still here - and it is not last night any more! (it is after 5am and the sun is coming up!) oops?

eek! - loonies on the road!

There are 2, soon to be 3, reasons why the roads around here have just become a more scary place to be ...

1. DD got her "learner's" licence (to drive a car) today! (she has not actually got behind the wheel yet though - she got it just before she started work so she has not had time to have a driving lesson yet).

2. Last week I did the motorcycle "pre - learners" course (we have to do the course before we get the learners permit) and then I got my motorcycle learners licence
(I have had a car licence for about 30 years)
... and today I rode this home from the shop DH and I bought it from:



mmmmm shiny new (well new to me - it is actually second hand but only a year old) bike ... and no I am not going to go and get a pile of weird piercings and some "tatts" (not that there is anything wrong with that ... except that DH, and my parents, would probably definitely freak out if I did - lol ... DD may or may not mind and DS would probably think it was weird but cool - with DD and DS - it is probably a case of "piercings/tattoos are great" - but on Mum?! - not so sure there - lol)

3. DS, who has had his drivers licence for a year now, decided that he wants his motorcycle licence - so his Christmas present was that we paid for him to do the pre - learners course (which is not cheap, but one has to do it before one can get their motorcycle learners permit here - it is a 9 hour course (1 day or 2 x 1/2 day) where, in a group, you get taught the basics of how to ride a motorcycle and how to do it safely ... and you ride their bikes so you can do the course before you buy one of your own) ... he does his course in just over a week's time - and if he passes it (most likely, unless he is stupid and doesn't do what they say or something) he can then get his motorcycle learners permit and then he will probably get to borrow my bike to practice on because at the moment he can't afford his own ... in fact I am not sure if he has the money to buy himself a helmet that fits him (the law, and common sense, says you need one), and some gloves and a bike jacket, (they don't call people who ride in shorts and t shirts "squids" for nothing - that is what they look like after they fall off - lol) and possibly some boots (unless he already has some that are ok or he fits an old pair of DH's or something) ... he had a helmet and jacket (for when he went on the back of DH's bike) but he has grown a lot taller/etc in the last couple of years and they don't fit him any more (but they do fit me ;-)

so ... at any given time in the next year - there could be one or 2 (or even 3 if DS finds a mate who lets him ride their motorbike) of us out on the road in/on vehicles with with "L" plates on ... but at least one of them (DD) will have someone sitting beside her to tell her what to do ... lol)



yikes! - both kids old enough to be driving?! - when did that happen? - I am sure they were still playing in the sandpit and learning to read and write, and needed an adult to take them across the road safely, just a couple of years ago ...

My Mad Mind ...

I am not sure anyone can ever know what actually IS inside my mind ... but here is a vaugue representation, in the form of an art quilt, of what one might find in there:



hmmm - I should have made that bottom border a lot narrower, I think it would have looked better that way ... to late now though - it is done and delivered ...
It was my entry in the Unique Stitching Art Quilt Challenge, and I delivered it (it is handy living in the next suburb to the person who runs it - lol) a couple of weeks ago.
The theme was "portrait/self expression" - so, me being the contrary person I am, I decided to do my 'portrait' from the inside out - and do an expression of what is inside my mind.
Once we paid our entry fee (which went to a cancer charity ... I forget which one) we were given a bit of fabric which we had to use some/all of in the quilt (and at least some had to be visible on the front) ... the yellow bit is what I got ... and it was a "me" type of fabric - one I like - and it was tempting to only use a tiny bit in the quilt ... but then I would have had to find another background fabric for my "thoughts", and this bit was perfect for it ... so the whole bit got used ... maybe I should ask if she has any more? ... then again ... I need MORE fabric like I need a hole in the head! ... I already have more than I can use in this lifetime ... but it is amazing how often I still can't find a suitable bit for some particular project or a bit that "looks good with these other 2 fabrics" that is the right size for using in a mystery quilt ... and when I look at how much of it is "normal" quilting fabric (reasonable quality 100% cotton) there isn't a lot of that - just huge piles of all the other stuff that I have managed to accumulate over the last few years (from garage sales, op shops, freebies when people bring scraps to quilt meetings/etc, it is amazing where one can acquire fabric sometimes - lol)

anyway ... I have been doing other things at the same time as this blog post, and now it is time to go get DD from work ... (she works at a fast food place and she has been working a lot lately because quite a few of the regulars have gone away for Christmas) ... so the silly dog photo, or whatever else I may have thrown in here while I was at it, will have to wait for another post ... LOL

Exhibiting Myself

I still have not blogged about the other 3 quilts I had in the Canberra Quilters Exhibition back in August ... so it is about time I did!

The quilt I did blog about was the Bookworms one that I blogged about here.

I also entered this:


Which is actually a re-arranged/added to version of the quilt that I Entered in the Tasda (now called ACTTAA) exhibition a couple years earlier - and blogged about here [note to self - add link]

... later, when I found this saved as a draft and actually posted it: er ... actually I don't think I did blog about that!

so ... I went and found a photo:



hmmm - I didn't realise how much better the new version looks! (although it was only meant to be, and look, temporary ... and the quilt show version was hung a bit better too ... and I have also decided that it is not temporary any more - I plan to leave it as it is and hang it up on a wall somewhere in the house - lol)
btw, it still has the same name as it originally did - "Exhibiting Myself"
(and it wasn't meant to sound rude ... really ... why don't you belive me? - LOL)

For the "Tiny Treasures" (miniature quilts) I entered this:



... which I actually made back in 200something - when it was the "International Year Of Rice" ... the idea for it came to me when i was wondering how on Earth one would make a quilt with that for a theme ... and the idea came to me when my mind was wandering while I was walking around the supermarket, so I just had to make it! The background fabric was a bit that I dyed at the Scquilters "Fringe Retreat" a few years ago, I drew the rice plants after spending some time "googling" pictures of rice plants, and I used stitches that look like rice grains (I think it is called seed stitch?) to quilt the bits of the quilt that didn't have the rice plants or the ripples to hold the layers together.

Yes - I sometimes have fun thinking up interesting names for my quilts/etc - lol

The other quilt I entered was another one I made a couple years ago - it was actually done as a mystery quilt on the mq yahoogroup ... this one was MQ9 which we made one day in the middle of 2003 (sewing instructions posted to the list bit by bit - every hour or 2 - during the day) ... it was probably a month or 10 later before I actually finished the quilt - lol

(probably about March 2005 - because that is when I took a photo of it finished ... it is also when I took photos of the fabric I chose/used for MQ10 - and I vaguely remeber deciding to get MQ9 finished before we started doing MQ10 - lol)

This is it hanging in the quilt show - and as you can probably tell - it is the one I need a better photo of - this one is a bit blurry (which is why I made it a small size)



I did take a few other photos of it (including those I took in March 2004) ... but they are all either just as blurry/etc

... or the quilt is underneath the dog!

[where IS that photo?!!!]

... 2 1/2 months pass by ...

(I must have had other things to do besides hunting around for a photo ... or spent too long getting distracted while looking for it ... so I had saved this blog post and then forgot about it ... I was originally doing it back at the start of OCTOBER ... and Christmas got here before I got around to posting it - LOL)

anyway ... this time it only took me a couple of minutes to actually find the photo I was thinking of!



well ... now I have at least made a start on catching up with one of the heaps of things I intended to post to my blog a lot sooner than this but still have not posted yet ... maybe I will get around to posting a few more things sometime in the near future ... or maybe not ... life is still a bit busy ... and I still have a couple of journal quilts I should have finished a week ago, and one more of them that isn't even started yet! (so of course I came in here and did this tonight, instead of going out to my sewing room and doing that - LOL)

Talking about "tonight" - it no longer is ... is is now well and truly morning (3:30am actually)
so I probably should go to bed and try not to sleep in all day tomorrow - LOL

Seasons Greetings

hmmm ... it has been quite a while since I posted anything here ... oops?

(maybe they should move Christmas to a more quiet time of the year? :-)


btw, if you don't like the card - there might be a different one on one or more of my other (even more neglected) blogs ... depends how many more cards I get around to creating and how many of my other blogs I get around to posting to this evening - lol

(there are links to some of my blogs in the side-bar of some ... and they should all come up in the list you get if you look at my profile ;-)

6

What did I do on Halloween?
(I didn't post this to my blog - lol - even though I originally intended to - oops?)
... I did nothing much at all actually - it has never really been a big thing in Australia, and we never made a big thing of it in our family when I was a kid, and we don't make a big thing of it now - I told the kids that some people here celebrate it but it is not really an Australian thing and DH and I never celebrated it, but if they wanted to go out "trick or treating" with a group of their friends we let them do it, and if I remembered I would try and have some lollies just in case a neighbour's kid or one of the kids friends or someone came and knocked (some years they do, some years we don't get anyone). I have noticed that celebrating it is becoming more popular here now - kids will happily do something that involves having fun and getting free lollies - and the people who sell costumes and lollies are happy to sell more stuff ...

anyway ... 6 years ago we decided to get a Golden Retriever puppy ... which should have had nothing to do with Halloween - except that once we chose him (he was the one who sat up and looked at DH and barked, when we first went to see the breeder and look at them) and we went to pick him up, and I asked what date his birthday was ... and got the answer - 31st of October ... aaaahhrrrggghhhh! - LOL

so ... on the evening of the 31st of October - I took Diesel for a nice long walk for his 6th birthday - LOL

... and I took this photo ... which kind of does look a bit ghoulish and scary with the green shining from his eyes!
(although to me he still looks like his usual lovable self - lol)

he was actually running towards me, because I got the camera ready and then called him ... and got the photo just before he noticed something way more interesting (to him anyway) beside me and changed directions and went to sniff whatever it was ...

btw - he ended up with the name Diesel because that is what happens when you don't tell the kids you are getting a puppy until you go and pick him up - and then find out that one of the kids doesn't like his pedigree name and 4 people sitting in a car have to find another name they all agree on ... the kids had recently seen the movie "Snow Dogs" and there was a Diesel in that ... lol



unfortunately we don't know what date Spook (the cat) was born ... although I don't think she really cares ... lol
(we got her from the RSPCA when she was approximately 8 months old - she had turned up somewhere as a stray and was not claimed by anyone ... their loss our gain ;-)

"Lest we forget"

I took this photo a couple of days ago, before I realised that it was almost 11/11 ...



this image is actually cropped from a bigger photo - it is the middle of a (rather scruffy) poppy ...

Why a poppy? and what is the 11/11 got to do with anything? - if you don't know - you can go to this website and find out - lol

I am not sure if this one was a "Flanders Poppy" or not - but it does look a bit like the ones in the picture on that website, and on a couple of other websites with pictures of Flanders poppies ... (there is a pile of links at the bottom of that page - one goes to "Red poppies")
... it could, however, be a similar species ... there are a few others that are fairly similar.

whatever species it is - it is a weird looking flower ... but - I happen to LIKE "weird"! - LOL

Fishing around in my Fabric ...

... actually more like digging it out and spreading it around in piles all over the place, digging around in the piles and then stuffing most of it back in the cupboard but not nescessarily neatly and not always where it came from ...

so why was I doing that instead of in here making a bit more effort to at least sort of half keep up with "blogtoberfest"?
(at this rate I will be lucky to do a post a week, let alone the post a day we are supposed to do!)

Strange as it may seem, and sometimes it doesn't appear to be the case, but I also have other things in my life besides blogging ... although what I was doing does relate to what I do in cyberspace - LOL

- I have been choosing fabric for the mystery quilt I am doing on this yahoogroup

There are a lot of us doing it, and we are having a lot of fun - lol

This is actually "MQ11" ... because it is the 11th one we have done on this list! The first one was about 10 years ago (I joined the list the night before we started sewing the first one!) ... then the list kind of went to sleep after we had done 10 of them (and I have actually done all 10 ... well ... only finished some of them, but started them all - just have not finished them all ... yet) ... all was quiet for a few years ... then someone decided to wake the list up ... and I am glad they did!

We actually got instructions for choosing our fabric just over a week ago, and the cutting instructions were put up on Saturday ... so of course I am only just choosing my fabrics now - LOL

actually I started digging around and looking for some suitable fabric a few days ago ... but ... I only found one lot of "maybe" and then life got in the way for a few days ...



trouble with that lot is ... I don't know how well it would work with the fact that the background of the chilli fabric matches the backgrounds of the plain red and black ... (I also realised later, once the cutting instructions were posted, that those 2 chilli fabrics would have been the ones that got cut up into little strips) ... so would be a bit of a waste of a cute design fabric, that has a lot of potential to use it in a design where the matching/blending colours could be used to do that on purpose ... so I might see if I can find time to try and design a quilt just for these fabrics - lol

or maybe some/all of these as well? LOL



so ... the "maybe" became a "yes I will use them, but not for this quilt"

... so back to the stash to see what else I could find ... I did a LOT of digging around in there last night ...

and came up with these ...



(no not the stuff in the plastic bags - that is a sample of some alpacca hair, plus a bit of stray sheeps wool thrown in with it, both of which came from the Murrumbateman Field day, which DH and I went to on Saturday ... and a bag of emu feathers which someone gave to me at a thing I went to at the Dunlop Grasslands, which are "just over there" [andrea points roughly in the direction of the front door] ... it was a nature talk/walk and the launch of an information pamphlet ... and I took lots of photos of flowers/etc LOL)

er ... back to that photo, and the subject I WAS talking about ...

the pile of green/brown fabric on the left is enough for the single bed size version, on the right is ok for the lap quilt size ...

... I thought I had chosen my fabrics ... but I just wasn't so sure about that lot on the left ... the top one matches some of the others but doesn't quite "go" with them ... and the browns go together too well ... I kept grabbing that green one on the far left and trying to find other blue/green/etc fabrics to go with it but just couldn't get the combination we needed ... had to have a light, medium and dark (and another medium/dark for the single bed and double sizes and also a medium/light if we wanted to do the queen size) ... and a couple of the bits of fabric had to be fairly big ... and I don't have a lot of big bits ... and most of what I do have don't go with each other - LOL

I wanted to do a single bed size and maybe a lap size as well ... but I kept finding fabrics that would only do a lap size - like the pile on the right in the photo above, and this one:



btw ... the bottom middle fabric (looks almost white) is actually some fabric that I "dyed" with condy's crystals - to look like sand ... for a quilt I WAS going to make for something a few years ago but didn't get time to make yet ... story of my life that - lol

This pile of fabrics is still a "goer" ... when I went to bed last night I think I had decided to do this and the other lap quilt size (the wildflowers/orange/green/brown/etc) ... but I ended up deciding that I would not use either of those other 2 piles ...
(although I wouldn't mind using the top 3 fabrics from the lap quilt pile - the wildfowers and orange bits and the big bit of dark green - together in something ... one day ... lol)

... this lot was still calling "come and find me"



I kept grabbing the bits of green fabric and these ...



... and a few others ... but this afternoon I realised that I had been trying to choose them all around the 2 on the left in the above photo ... which, once I read the cutting instructions I realised it was totally silly to actually use those 2 where I was going to use them (we needed 2 smaller bright bits of fabric that sort of needed to stand out a bit) because they get cut up into narrow little strips ... so all my kokopelli/animals and cats would end up being sliced in half, or smaller!

so more digging ... what else could I use for those 2 bright bits?
(I even tried using a few other brighter things with one or both of those 2 bits as other fabrics ;)

why am I having so much trouble deciding? ... I guess I always take ages ... then often use/do something weird for my fabric choices ... and (maybe because I DO take so long to decide?) whatever I eventually choose has always worked out looking good ...

... even when I do something totally weird, like I did for MQ2 - and used GOLD LAME as one of my fabrics!



I am glad I did ...

(I really should finish that quilt one day!)

... and strangely enough ... I also have some of that same lame fabric (came from the same garage sale I think) in green and blue ...

so ... yes ... I just HAD to do it ...

- so I had a look what fabrics I could find to go with the lame ... and I found some!



enough for a single bed size quilt in fact! ...

I thought I was going to be short one fabric ... wasn't sure what I could use for the "medium" ... noticed I only needed a fairly small bit ... so had another dig in the pile that was still in the cupboard and found the fishy fabric and measured it ... it was the right width - good ... how long do I need it to be? - 35cm ... how long IS it? ... 36cm! LOL

- it must have been "meant to be"?

... too bad if a quilt with lame fabric on it is not that practical to use for camping/etc or to put on my side of the bed when I am cold and DH isn't (which is the whole reason I wanted to make a single bed size quilt in the first place!) ... I guess it will just have to be the one I take to sleep under on quilting retreats or something - LOL (although I probably will still use it on my side of the bed eventually ... just not while we have a rather large dog who likes sleeping all over the bed ... and sometimes even wrestling with us there as well!)

I wonder if the fishy fabric will stay as the 6 1/2" squares the instructions say to cut it into, of if it will end up getting cut/etc into something smaller? lol

so ... it looks like I AM making a single bed size after all ... and I will probably do the pink/brown/grey/etc lap quilt at the same time, if I can find time to do all the cutting and sewing for both each week ... (not that I need more lap quilts - but what ELSE would I use those 2 weird pink/brown/grey bits of fabric for? ... strangely enough, even though they are not "my" colours I DO like them ... but I don't think I have a lot of other fabric they would go with - lol
I guess I can use the chilli/etc fabric to make something the right size for my half of the bed/camping/whatever ... or finish one of the other MQs that is about the right size ... I have one that is almost finished actually - I got it half quilted (doing it myself - I like to say I did everything not just the peicing) then I put it aside for later because I had something else I wanted to do/start ... and kind of never got back to it ... oops

er ... I should be asleep ... it is now about 2 hours later than the time on this post (the time on the bottom is when I started typing it ... unless I change it to some other time ... which I did not do this time ... LOL) ... which means it is at least 3 hours later than I should still be up, seeing I have to go to work in the morning! ... sigh ...

Fig Jam

Those who are/have been in the Army, or those who live with them, will know what this title means ... LOL

( FIG JAM = F... I'm Good, Just Ask Me)

except I am not so sure I am that clever ... but those who saw this thing said they thought I was ... LOL

what thing?

my jar of "stuff" that I put in the ACTTAA exhibition!

(yes I finally got around to taking some sort of half ok photos yesterday)

A weird new variety of jam? LOL

(the label was actually an afterthought ... I did it at work just before I took an early lunch break to go deliver this, and my other things ... but often my afterthoughts are just what something needs to make them compete -lol)

yes - the photo is a bit blurry (the camera focussed perfecly on some other bit besides the actual label - LOL) but the label is readable so I can't be bothered trying for a better photo ...

ok ... here it is sitting on a clipboard/folder (first solid/flat thing I found) on the bed (the bedroom was the room where it was still fairly light at the time, and I had just gone in there and taken photos of the quilt I will probably blog about in the next day or 2, and I saw the jar sitting on the dressing table and remembered I needed to do something about that too ...)

hmmm ... nice silhouette ... lol

maybe I should try a different camera setting for those close up shots?

"hmmm" thinks I "this one - 'behind glass' - might work?" ... yes - it did - lol

that is the crochet fish ... on some crochet weed ...

This is a not so close up of that side of the jar:

maybe I needed MORE rocks sewn into the bottom? ... it still seems to be floating UP ...

and this is another side, with a crochet sea urchin in there ...

there is a pink starfish in there somewhere too, but it didn't show up in any of these photos - lol

here is another side:

er... those blue/purple balls seem to stand out a lot now! - they are the styrofoam beads (to make the seaweed float up) that I coloured in with permanent marker - they were not so obvious when I first put this together, but they seem to have faded quite a bit since I first put the stuff in the jar!

Here is another side

the fluffy red blob was meant to look like a sea anenome ... it sort of does to me ... but maybe one needs a good imagination? LOL

I really should tip the water out and wash/rinse the crochet stuff, and dry it ... (and maybe take some more photos of it dry?) ... before it goes slimy/starts to rot or something ... LOL

I also really should go to bed and get some sleep ... I keep yawning ... a lot ... and I was already tired about 5 hours ago ... sigh ... the joys of being back at work and having to get up in the mornings ...

goodnight.

weird world

The world is a weird place ... or at least this bit of it sure looks like it ...

no ... it isn't some blobby white creature with brown things eating it ...

it is a daisy seed head

pretty isn't it ... pity it is a weed - lol

this is also weird - the foyer of the shops where we do our grocery shopping ...

... full of ... snow?
or did someone have a pillow fight?

no - it is just what it looks like - lots of white fluff!

inside and outside ... blowing around the street ... drifting through the air ... happens about this time every year actually ... makes some people sneeze/etc (the only time it has made me sneeze is when I was driving somewhere and one blew in my car window and went UP my nose - LOL) ... it is a sure sign that "spring is in the air"

so is this:

I left the carpet square from out of the bottom of the trailer on the driveway to dry (it got rained on) ... and while I was getting some stuff out of the car (blue bit in foreground of photo is the car bonnet) a magpie came and stole some threads off the edge ... it must be nesting season ;-)

Another sure sign of spring - the lavender bush is full of bees!

see - purple and orange DO go together!
(yes I know - the bee is out of focus ... but the leaves below and to the left of it are not - lol)


another sign of sping - I think the lawn needs mowing ... so the dog is helping - by pretending to be a cow and eating the grass!

yes - he does that a lot ... especially this species of grass - he isn't sick or anything - he just seems to like the taste of it!
(actually I think that grass is in the garden rather than on the lawn ... I guess the garden needs weeding too ... sigh ... )

another sign of sping in the air ... blowflies!

but they are usually flying around buzzing and being annoying - like I said - this bit of the world is weird - so I had to pick up a soggy dead one off the bathroom floor this afternoon!

why?
- ask the dog!
(yes ... he tried to catch it, I had to catch it for him, he thought about eating it ... but I guess it tasted disgusting even to him ... )
I did take some video of him chasing it, and stuff, ... but I won't put that here/now ... I was actually down there in the bedroom (the fly on the floor is in the ensuite) taking photos of a quilt, which I was thinking of blogging about tonight ... until I noticed how many other weird things I had taken photos of this afternoon! ... so I will have to blog about the quilt tomorrow/the next day/whenever ...

(yes I missed posting for a couple of days ... I didn't say I was going to be able to post every day in October ... just that I would try and see how close I could get ... lol ... life is still busy at times ... back to work this week too ... have not had to go to work for the last 2 weeks because it was school holidays and I work at a school - lol)

Strange Planet?

This is a strange looking place:


no ... doesn't quite look right for Mars, or the Moon ...


hmmm ... an alien city maybe?


but this is the same place ...


and it isn't a Tsumami ... LOL


yes - this is the same place too ...

one can see some rather strange and interesting things along the beach!

... and no - I am not at the beach and I have not just got back from there (more's the pity) ... I actually took these photos a few years ago - I just found them while I was digging around looking for something else ... lol

The holes in the first 2 photos, and the squiggles in the next one (snail trails in the sand actually) could lead to some interesting quilt ideas/designs - if I ever get around to it ... LOL

btw, I am not cheating with this post ... I actually started typing it today at 15:49 (3:49pm) ... but I stopped in the middle and went and had a shower, dropped DD off to work, had tea, walked the dog, and a few other things, before I came back in here to finish typing it and post it (so it is now actually 9pm (21:00) ... LOL

What I DIDN'T do in the middle of this post, or any other time today, was to try and take a better photo (than the one I already have) of the quilt I wanted to blog about (so you are stuck looking at weird rocks/etc instead ;-)

Mutant Strawberry?!

About 3 or 4 weeks ago I bought a couple of punnets of strawberries ... one punnet only had a few in it - because this one filled up half the punnet!














yes - it was huge (that is a normal sized pen beside it) ... DD ate it ... she is still alive and has not grown any extra heads yet - lol
(mind you - she is a teenager - which is a totally weird form of life anyway)

btw ... I am cheating for this post ... and typing it up and putting a date on it that is still in the future - well if blogger are going to let one schedule posts for publishing later then of course I am going to USE that feature - LOL
... if it all works as it should, then when this post is actually posted, I will probably be down the other side of town at a friend's place either asleep, or still up celebrating her birthday ... lol

(actually I probably cheated for yesterday's too ... I have not actually written it yet - but if I did I will have admitted that in the post ... the plan is to type that up now and schedule that for posting, in case I don't get around to it tomorrow night ... or should that be tonight? ... this gets confusing - lol - especially when I am staying up late writing blog posts and posting them after Midnight - so they are posted on the next day even though I am still up from the day before ... lol)

MORE

... is the title of the sea urchin bowl I made for the ACTTAA exhibition that was on recently.

Here is a photo of it on display:

It was made from some hand dyed fabric I found in my stash, which was quilted in 7 segments, which were then decorated with suffolk puffs (yoyos) and sewn to 7 same shaped bits of stiffened backing (using blanket/buttonhole stitch)- then I crocheted around the segments and added the beads (coconut shell beads I have had for about 20 years!) and then laced the segments together with the same thread ... then I added the fluffy red yarn around the top because it told me it wanted to be there ... LOL

why a sea urchin bowl? - actually it was something I had the idea for years ago but had never got around to attempting - and the theme for the exhibition was "The Living Reef?" and sometime just before entry forms were due in I remembered the sea urchin bowl idea and decided to make one.

and here is the veiw out of the window above where the bowl was on display - a rather interesting veiw of wintery tree branches ...

I also exhibited this:

it is called "Preserving the Reef" ... and it looks like stuff in a jar or water because it IS stuff in a jar of water - crochet seaweed/coral/etc ... with a couple of rocks sewn in the bottom to make it sink and some bean bag "beans" (styrofoam beads) that I coloured in with a permanent marker sewn on the ends of the seaweed to make it float ... I will try and take some better photos of it in the next few days (photos of stuff in a jar of water with stuff in the background don't always work out too well) ... I need to take the photos in the next few days because I think I ought to empty the water out soon - else it might all rot and/or go slimy/mouldy or something (but if I empty out the water and dry all the seaweed/etc out, then I can keep it all in the jar in case I ever want to add water and display it somewhere again ... lol)

The 3rd thing I entered was this fishy looking thing:



which I made, and blogged about, earlier in the year - I decided that because it looked fishy then it could BE fishy! ... so I called it "Something Fishy" and entered it!

I also made this scarf, necklace and bag as my donation for the raffle prizes:

the scarf is done in Tunisian double crochet, the necklace is crochet and beads and the bag is made by quilting some fabric and adding a bit of stitching etc.

I also put these earrings in the bazaar:

but nobody bought any ... lol

(oh well ... I made them years ago and had tucked them away and forgotten about them until I found them late last year ... and of course I made the cards to display them on at the last minute in a hurry so they were not that attractive looking ... not compared to some of the other amazing stuff people had made to sell ... )

I also had a few other things in the bazaar - crochet phone socks (which also didn't sell) and crochet scarves like the one I did for the raffle (sold a couple of those) and crochet beanies (think I sold one of them ... they were a bit too weird and the weather was getting too warm to sell beanies) and fabric/bead necklaces (made them years ago too ... and didn't sell any)

I also had 2 things in the fashion parade - one was a crochet shawl which I still don't have a photo of ... was a bit hard to get one of it in the fashion parade, even though it wasn't me wearing it - because I was busy wearing other things in the fashion parade (one of mine and 3 that other people had made) ... when I get around to taking a photo of it I will blog about that in it's own post ...

The other thing I made for the fashion parade, and wore in the parade, is also something I will blog about separately later - it was a crochet outfit (a long vest thingy and boots and a weird beanie) ... and a photo of me wearing it ended up in the Sunday newspaper!

er ... now that it is 4am I had better post this ... well - by "post" I actually mean I will stick the time I want blogger to post it on there and hit the "publish post" button and let blogger post it tomorrow night - LOL
(yes I am cheating - I probably should be asleep when this post gets posted ... I probably won't be ... but I probably won't be in here getting lost in cyberspace either - LOL ... and I would probably be doing the same thing even it I hadn't said I was doing "Blogtoberfest" - because I think it looks neater with a post on each day than it does with 2 posts on one day)