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)

Slurp ... stretch ... flop ...

Sometimes I think I must live in a zoo or something ...

Click on this for an even closer up look - go on - I dare you!



I just (yesterday) posted the above photo (which my daughter took the other day), and about a dozen others that are just as weird, to "Spot The Blog"

I also posted this one there:



- yes - the cat likes to wash the dog!

If you want to see the rest you will have to go there and look ... LOL

but you won't find this one there ... I just found this now, while I was looking for something else:



Spook sure sleeps in some strange positions ...

... so does the dog



actually I don't think he was asleep ... nor was I ... maybe this is just a bit TOO friendly? LOL

btw ... most photos on my blog are ones I have taken ... if someone else took them I usually mention that ... unless I forget, or it is rather obvious that I didn't take it (like the last one in this post - which is fairly obvious I didn't take it because I am IN it ... LOL)

also ... I am NOT cheating for this post (but I probably will for the next 2 - and type them now and schedule them to be published on the next 2 days - lol) ... for this one I just changed the time on the bottom to what time it is now - as I am about to hit the "publish post" button (unless I change it - and I usually don't - the time on the bottom is the time I started typing the post ... the time I actually finish and post it is usually an hour or 3 later ... depending on what I am putting in there and how many other things I am doing at the same time as posting to my blog - lol)

Blogtober???

Just before I started typing up my last post I was doing my usual and getting side-tracked and ended up "blog surfing" ... and I found a link to this:

http://bigcatsemporium.blogspot.com/2008/09/blogtoberfest.html

... so I had a look at her blog, and (in a fit of madness?) I put this comment on her latest post:

I think I have kind of joined in (a few days late) without even realising it until I had ... lol
- I came in here to post to my blog ... 3rd day in a row, after 2 months of nothing and only 7 posts since the end of April ... and I kind of did my usual thing and got lost blog surfing and came across something about Blogtoberfest ... so I just had to come and look - LOL
I DO have a LOT of stuff I have been meaning to post to my blog, and was planning to try and have a bit of a catch up and post some more of it in the next week or 3 ... so maybe it was "meant to be" LOL
I will try and keep up for a while ... might not be every day (I do have family/other things to do) ... but I will see how many posts I can do this month ... I wonder if I can break my record ... probably not - I actually posted to my blog 20 times in the first month when I started blogging back in January 2005, but not all of the posts actually said much ...
(and there are still a few things I was thinking of putting on my blog then, that I still have not blogged about!)

So ... I wonder how long I can keep up for? LOL





... actually I probably won't be posting every day, but I might try and make up for that by posting more than once on another day ... but both posts might not be on the same blog - I also have a couple of things I want to post to spot the blog ... and I might stick some other stuff on one of my other weird blogs too ...





... or I might just kind of get busy again and not post much at all for ages again ... LOL





(but if I do that - feel free to leave me a "kick up the backside" or whatever in the comments!)

Talking about 1 post a day or 2 posts on one day etc ... this will either be the day after the last post, or the same day ... depends if the fact that there is now a heading for "scheduled" as well as "drafts" etc means that if I put tomorrows date on it it goes tomorrow ... or if it does what it used to do and just turn up on my blog straight away ... lol
but if it does go straight to my blog, then in about 10 minutes time it will probably correct itself because it will BE the time that I have put on this post ...

P.S. - cool ... I am now back in here editing this a couple minutes later ... Blogger now does the one thing it didn't do that I wanted it to ;-)
- I hit the "publish post" button and a red bar appeared at the top, with the word "error" on it ... "oh oh" I thought ... but then before I could decide what to do it all vanished and was replaced by my list of posts - with this one marked "scheduled" and a message up the top of the page saying that my post will be published at ... (the time and date I put on here) ... which is about 5 minutes away ... better go look at my actual blog and make sure it really isn't there yet and see if it appears - LOL

P.P.S. - I am back in here editing this again - this time AFTER the scheduled publishing time ... yay - it worked just like it was meant to ... not that I thought it wouldn't - lol
he he he ... *evil grins* - now I can cheat and type up a few things and schedule a post each day ... once I get around to taking any required photos and putting them onto the computer and finding any links and digging all the stuff out of the various places I have saved bits of stuff I want to post about and then typing up a few posts, that is ... LOL

a very big hole ...

... not a black hole but it is "swallowing stuff up"

On Friday, a group of us (mostly teachers and a couple of us who are not) hopped on a bus and went up to the Woodlawn Bioreactor for the day - first we went to the visitors centere and watched a "safety video" and learnt some stuff about the place, then we went up the hill and looked down the hole, and had a look at the old tailings dams and stuff, then we went back to the visitors centre for a yummy free lunch and spent the afernoon learing about climate change, and ideas for teaching students about it (it was actually a thing for teachers but non teaching staff were allowed to go too ... so I went - one way to keep my brain cells working - I might need them one day - lol) ... and because we will be getting a copy of all the notes/info/etc I didn't need to write a lot of notes, so I did a lot of sewing on my black hole journal quilt while listening to the stuff on climate change (strangely enough, I think I have always been able to listen/pay attention better when I am also doing stuff with my hands ... even when I was at school - which used to drive my teachers nuts because I was always scribbling in my book or fiddling with stuff on my desk or something but I was often the first one to understand whatever it was the teacher was trying to explain to the class! ... maybe that was because the other kids were too distracted by my fidgetting? LOL)

Anyway ... for those who don't know what it is/have not followed the link at the beginning of this post and found out - it is a huge big hole in the ground - how huge?

this huge:

- see that truck in the foreground, driving along the road below? - well there is another one the same size down the bottom where the green arrow is pointing! ... see how small it looks?! - yes it IS a BIG hole - lol

(it was kind of handy that the camera I was using does wide angle ... lol)

It was a mine once (an open cut one ... and they also did some underground mining too) ... but it kind of closed down overnight (quite a few years ago) and it has now been turned into a "bioreactor" ... which is basically a rubbish tip that they collect methane gas from - they collect rather a lot of Sydney's domestic garbage, stick it on a train which comes down to a place a few km away, where the containers are loaded on to the trucks and taken down the hole and emptied into the bottom ... and they stick pipes and stuff in it and do all sorts of techincal things like pumping the sludgey water out of the bottom so the right bacteria break down the garbage and produce methane - which comes up the pipes and is used to generate electricity ... they chose the mine because it is big enough to fill with a LOT of garbage, and the geology/rock type/etc means that stuff from the rubbish does not leak out into the groundwater - the bloke telling us about it described it as a big bucket ...

(maybe I should have called this post "a fart in a bucket"? LOL)

btw ... seeing it IS an old MINE ... there were some rather interesting rocks lying around ... and we got to get out of the bus at the top where we looked down the hole, and down by the tailings dams ... so of course I brought a few handfuls of rocks home - LOL

(I actually took a spare "green" shopping bag to put them in - because I have been there before - went with the Land Rover club about 2 or 3 months ago, but we had parked at the visitors center and only taken a few vehicles up to the lookout and I was in someone else's 4WD - so I only had room for the one or 2 that I could stuff in my pockets)

I have not taken any photos of the rocks yet ... I might do that some time in the next week or 3 and then all I need to do is try and remember to blog about them - lol

Actually I do have this photo of some of the rocks:

... but these were not the ones I was collecting and bringing home.

I took this picture because I liked the colours in the rusty whatever it was and the rusty rocks it was lying amongst. ... yes the rocks actually are rusty - I think it is because of what the ore they were mining is made out of (iron sulphide, etc) - the iron in the rocks oxidises when exposed to the air and becomes iron oxide ... which is what rust is.

Also, I have a photo of one of the rocks I collected the other time I went there (back in July actually - that is the date on the photos ;-)

This is what I went looking for some more of:

The gold coloured cubes are pyrite (otherwise known as "fools gold" ... ok - I am foolish enough to be attracted to interesting shiny things - lol)

... and yes - I found some more this time ... not a lot, but some ... enough to maybe think about attempting to sew some of the little gold cubes onto a journal quilt - LOL

(and enough to give a couple to the school I work at, so the students can look at it when they learn about crystal structure or what pyrite looks like)

I finally got around to making another Journal Quilt

I was planning on doing a Journal quilt every month this year ... maybe not exactly IN each month - but FOR each month - and I WAS planning on trying to do them within a month or so of the month they were for ... or at least actually DO 4 or 5 in the first half of the year before I got busy doing stuff for the Canberra Quilters Exhibition or the ACTTAA exhibition

... but that kind of didn't happen (neither did the big tidy up of my sewing room/etc ... I probably should be doing that, or the rest of the house, now ... lol).

but ... I decided I had better get a wiggle on and make a few - because if I have at least 5 done by early in December, then I can drop 5 of them off to the "owner" of http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aus_NZartquilters/ who just happens to live a couple of suburbs away (so I don't have to post mine like most people do) and they will be included as part of another one of those travelling exhibition things that we did last year, with our journal quilts from the year before. (where the quilts were displayed at the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne, then went to a few of the craft shows around the country, and then on to a couple of other quilt shows/etc, before they came back home to us at the end of the year.

so ...

... in the first 2 or 3 days of October - I made my journal quilt for September!

ta-da:



It is called "... Of Black Holes And Froot Loops" - and was inspired by the fact that CERN officially turned on their new Large Hadron Collider - despite the fact that a group of froot loops were trying to take court action to prevent them turning it on and creating black holes that they were afraid would swallow up the whole planet ... no black holes yet ... and we are still here too ... but that actually has more to do with the fact that they have not actually got it fully operational yet - in fact I think I read somewhere that they have managed to break it already ... oops?

here is the back of the quilt:




of course I had to get silly writing the "label" on the back - lol ...

btw, the bit up the top has been left empty of writing because that is where I need to sew the "hanging sleeve" that we have to put on them.

Hmmm - those photos are a bit iffy - colours are sort of ok but not quite (the black isn't black enough and the lime green looks a bit too white) ... and the whole thing is dull and blurry ... sigh ... black textile stuff is not the best thing to try and take photos of (so why do I keep making black textile stuff? LOL) ... and I think the new camera (which DH has taken with him to the motorbike racing at Phillip Island near Melbourne) takes better photos inside at night than this older one does ... maybe I should try doing a scan? lol

I notice that the dodgy text spacing/layout still seems to happen when I put photos in posts too ... I was hoping they had fixed that while I had been busy doing other things - LOL

(maybe it is something I am meant to fix? or maybe I should just stick the photos in first and then do the writing? lol)

hmmm ... the scanner doesn't seem to like lime green! LOL

- the only things that are the right colour are the black background and the 2 white beads!

... the 2 bright pink ones only sort of look pink and I am not sure why lime green thread shows up as white and the lime green and not quite so lime green beads look violet and blue!

(the colours of the beads are actually correct in the photo at the top of this post - lol)

I fiddled with the colours in the scan (using the photo softwere that I use for that sort of thing) ... but I don't really know what I am doing with it (whatever I know is what I have found out by hunting in menus and clicking on stuff) ... this isn't right either but I like the effect ... and at least the lime green IS lime green! LOL



btw ... if anyone is wondering what those beads are/where I got them? ... and how come you have never seen those cute round circles anywhere in the shops? - then you have not read about them in my "Peculiar Plastic" post - yes - these are some of those "beads" I made from cut up plastic drinking straws! - I got some coloured drinking straws (various colours - the "beads" on here came from fluoro green and pink ones, and a white one) and I cut them into little bits (about 1 or 2 mm long) ... some stuck together when I cut them but most of them popped back into circles when I poked them or squeezed them - I then laid them between a couple sheets of baking paper and ironed them flat! (if you do that I suggest an old iron/ironing board - not the one you use for your significant other's buisness shirts - lol) and open the windows/iron outside so the plastic fumes don't stink out the house/do you too much damage ... I didn't really notice the smell, but DH did when he came home a while later! ... oops ... next time I might take the iron outside (with an extension cord) ... yes there is sure to be a next time - I can think of a lot of uses for these cute little loopy beady things ...
(I guess part of the reason for the odd colours in the scan could be that the beads ARE flouro plastic ... maybe the scanner has trouble with stuff like that, because the light is reflected/refracted differently from semi-transparent plastic than from a printed page ... which is what MOST people scan ... LOL)

maybe I should take another photo in the daylight ... and/or try the other camera (which I didn't use this time because DH took it with him when he went away to the motorbike racing down at Phillip Island)

maybe I should post this and go have a "midnight snack" (I know - it is already past Midnight, and I was going to go crawl into bed shortly - but I just noticed that I am hungry ... lol)

look what I found

http://thebestblogintheentireworld.blogspot.com/



(that one was just too hard to resist! lol)

[a long time passes ...]
I actually typed that first bit of this post on the 25th of June! ... and then got called away from the computer or something, saved it as a draft, and kind of never got around to actually posting it!

In fact it has also been a fair while since I posted anything else here too - oops ...

(hmmm this red is a bit TOO red)

... yes - I still exist ... just been busy doing stuff and not getting around to blogging about it - sorry.

I have been meaning to rectify that situation for a while, but I just never seem to quite get there ... but I did get as far as logging in here the other day and fiddling with my blog template and adding/fixing a couple little things, including adding the "followers" thingy in the sidebar (blogger have come up with the thing where one can follow blogs ... so I now follow a few, and at least one person is now following mine!) ... there are a few other things that probably need fixing too, but they can wait ... lol

I have also just posted something else to the blog that this post was originally about ( http://thebestblogintheentireworld.blogspot.com/ ) - yes it IS mine! ... I am sure someone else used to have that URL ... I think I had found it before and went looking for it again and found out it didn't exist any more and that the URL was available on blogger - so I "snaffled" it while I could - LOL

I also fiddled with http://messing-around-with-stuff.blogspot.com/ too
- yes that one is mine as well ... I have several (there are links to some in the sidebar, and to all of them in my profile) ...
I had big ideas for a couple of different blogs for different things but I kind of never got around to what I had planned to ... (except I do sometimes put photos/etc. onto http://spot-theblog.blogspot.com/ ), and the messing around with stuff one was one I created so I could test stuff/try stuff out to see if/how it worked before I tried it in here and messed it up or something ... lol)

I was going to blog about something else until I noticed this unfinished/unposted item sitting in here ... there are a few more too ... but a couple of those had reasons why I didn't post them yet ...

things like me needing to take photos of stuff and keep forgetting to do so - lol

... which reminds me ... I was going to put some photos onto the computer now - because the photo of the thing I logged in here to post about is still on the memory card in the camera - LOL

I will post this and then do another post about the other thing - it is almost Midnight, so by the time I get the photos onto the computer and type up the post, it will be tomorrow ... lol