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

(not really?) catching up ...

hmmmm ... "the hurrieder I go, the behinder I get" (not sure who said that ... might have been Winnie the Pooh?) ... I seem t0 be getting behind with posting stuff here though ... the list of stuff I want to post here is getting longer faster than my blog is ... LOL

I will try and catch up with posting more TAST stitches next week ... or sometime ... I have actually done all of them except this week (which I will probably do sometime in the next day or so - because it is still this week ;-)

but ... in the meantime ... there are quite a few other things I have not got around to putting photos of here ...

So ... here is a rush job of throwing in some photos -

"30" - my challenge quilt for the Canberra Quilters Exhibition last year (the theme was 30, because Canberra Quilters was 30 years old - so I made 30 little quilts and joined them together)

the back - yes each little quilt has it's own title.





A photo of the sky - found it while I was looking for quilt photos (took it some time last year ... about Septemberish sometime ... )








"In My Dreams" ... a not very good photo, taken on my sewing desk (note feet at bottom - I stood on the chair to take the photo ;-)


a beanie I had in last year's TASDA exhibition


"Creation - All Things Under The Sun" - exhibited in last year's TASDA exhibition

"Crikey" my September Journal quilt from last year


"Desert Rain" - my June Journal quilt from last year


"Winter's Night" - my July Journal quilt from last year


hmmm ... I was going to throw some crochet ones in here but I didn't find any yet - probably means I need to actually take a lot more photos! LOL

and now ... DH (Dear Husband) wants the computer to read his e-mail b4 he goes to work (night shift) and I have to get ready to head off to this - http://craftact.org.au/exhibitions/2007EX5FCA.php
(I couldn't resist going to an exhibition opening for something called "Knit1Blog1" ... even if I don't knit much!)

Where am I?

If anyone actually reads this blog, they might be wondering where I am - because I have not posted anything for a while ... not even any TAST (the Take A Stitch Tuesday challenge) stuff ...

why not?

well ... er ... sort of been busy ...

- stuff like work, being a wife and mother, and stuff like sitting down in front of the TV with DH (Dear Husband) and sewing/crocheting while watching a few dozen episodes of "Scrubs" - because DH bought the whole set of it on DVDs the other week - LOL

The TV watching is not a total waste of time though - I do need to get a pile of sewing and crocheting done, and in front of the TV is where I tend to have time to get it done ...

I have also been (not very sucessfully yet) trying to find my sewing room under all the mess, because I have entered a challenge quilt and a miniature quilt into the quilt show here (the Canberra Quilters exhibition) so I have to make those in the next few weeks, and I have note even started the challenge quilt yet! ... but I have pieced the miniature quilt - which is one of the things I am now doing some stitching on in front of the TV - it is mostly a "crazy quilt" and I need to do decorative stitches down all of the seams and embellish the rest of it too - I said in the catalouge description that it is crazy quilted with "a lot of spiders" - so I now have to sew the lots of spiders and their webs on there!

I also have some crocheting and other sewing/quilty stuff I want to do for the TASDA (Textile Art and Surface Design Association - a group I am part of here in Canberra) exhibition that happens a month or so after the quilt exhibition ... that is the one where the theme is "Poles Apart" - the reason that my blog is (or "was" if it has stopped working or I have edited my template and take it off or something by the time you read this) playing that weird music (see the post before this one for further expanation, links to their website, etc ;-) ... the music I am now listening to (because I went to look at my blog to see if it was still working, and it is :-)

And ... I have some ATCs to make, for a swap I signed up for (ATCs = Artists Trading Cards) and I have not made any Journal quilts for a while (I was planning to keep doing one for each month, like I did last year ... but "the wheels fell off") ... and - instead of being in here getting lost in cyberspace - I came in here to check my e-mail while I drank my coffee and ate my doughnuts - I should be back out where I was, in my sewing room, finishing off my "Inchies" - which are sets of 1" squares for a swap I am in on the AuzNZartquilters yahoogroup ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aus_NZartquilters/ )

hmmm ... this was going to be a short post where I wrote that I was busy and said "here is what is keeping my busy right this moment" ... and then I was going to paste in most of the text from the e-mail I just sent to the people in the inche swap ... which I am still going to paste in here anyway - for those who are interested in reading about what "that weird Andrea person" is doing with bits of fabric, yarn and shredded bits of plastic shopping bag ... and an iron ...

Hi All,
I have been collecting a pile of blue bits of whatever I find (in the op shop, in my sewing room while looking for something else, in my crochet yarn stash, etc) ever since I heard about this inchie swap ... but I only just started making my inchies today! In fact I am just having a coffee/e-mail break after doing that just now - I have just been ironing bits of yarn and cut up plastic shopping bag etc onto bits of netting and bits of that tyvek stuff that they now seem to use to make pillows and doonas ... hopefully I won't get lost in my e-mail for too long - because I want to spend some more time this afternoon doing some more things to them and doing the other ideas I have in mind ...
btw, I think my inchies ideas are now getting mixed up with ideas for my ATCs for another swap (due in a months time) and my journal quilts (which I have not actually been getting around to doing any of for several months ). - once I get into my sewing room and get immersed in a mad moment of creativity all sorts of odd stuff starts happening ... and with the way I tend to make my ATCs and similar things (journal quilts, postcards etc) it is often quite easy to do what I did for a journal quilt and some ATCs and postcards last year - and that is to make one bigger bit of stuff (i.e. I grab some interesting background fabric/whatever and throw on a few bits and iron/quilt/etc them on) and then cut it up into the various sized bits for a set of ATCs, a journal, and some postcards, and then I finished the various items by adding some embellishments to them and doing the edging/binding and stuff. ... so at least some of my inchies will actually sort of be the "trimmings" from the edges of A4 sized quilts or ATCs ... LOL


I will try and remember to take some photos and blog about the inchies, and how I made them and the other stuff, when I have finished the inchies ...

btw, I have still been doing the TAST stitches every week, and I will try and get around to taking photos and catch up with blogging about them sometime in the next week or 3
... I have even used this week's TAST stitch (half chevron stitch) on the needlebook that I am stitching stuff on for the round robin I am in, on http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/southerncrosscrazies/ (yes - I am on LOT of yahoogroups - lol)

btw ... if the song finished while you were reading all the lunatic ravings I have just written, and you actually wanted to listen to the song - it should play again if you hit the little "play" arrow on the top left hand corner of the music player box at the top of the page ... I just did that becuase I wanted to play it again while I finish this and read the other few e-mails I have not read yet ;-)

Anyway ... I have a few e-mails to read/reply to, a whole heap of sewing to do, and a pile of junk to go and get out of the back of the car - that is another thing I have been busy with this weekend - I went and "slept over" at a friend's place (the other side of Canberra - not really that far away but if I sleep there we can have a drink or 3 and I don't have to drive home afterwards) and we spent Friday evening and most of Saturday sorting out a pile of junk she had in a spare room ... she has been crocheting (and teaching crochet, and writing patterns and designing stuff for magazines etc) for years, and she had a whole pile of crochet items and lots and lots of odd bits of yarn and stuff that she no longer wanted ... so guess who got given anything I wanted out of that lot - yes - me!
... I tend to use all sorts of odd stuff, and I tend to get most of my crochet ideas when whatever bits of yarn I find/buy/get given "talk" to me and tell me what to make out of them - so it was kind of like having a birthday or Christmas or something when I got given all her junk ... so it was one of those "everybody wins" things - she got company/help doing the sorting/clearing out of her spare room and I consider all that yarn and stuff more than fair payment for spending the day dragging stuff off high shelves and carrying the heavy stuff down the stairs for her ... and the op shop will probably do well too - because she also had a whole pile of old books (mostly novels and stuff) she was throwing out - so I put them into boxes and most of those will go to the op shop ... along with the heap of old clothing and stuff that I have sitting in a pile in the lounge room - once I get the other stuff out of the car the old clothing/etc can go in - and the whole lot can go to one or other of the op shops that are right next to where I work (the ones I usually go to in my lunch break and take fabric and yarn and stuff OUT of - LOL)

er ... I had better go do that stuff before I run out of afternoon - oops - where has the day gone? ... looks like my inchies won't get any more work done on them until this evening now ...

Of Crochet and Knitting ... and Poles Apart

A long title for what is probablyWAS going to be a short blog post ...

I have 2 things I wanted to post here for TASDA members (if you don't know what it is, then you are not one ... but you are still welcome to read this post and use the info ... TASDA is a textile art group I am a member of - for the curious, and/or people near enough to Canberra to join and come along - there is a website at http://www.acttextiles.org.au/ )

First ... something to listen to while you are here (hopefully it is already playing - if not you might have to click it or something, but you might not have noticed it playing yet because the first bit is quiet):

EDIT (a few weeks after originally posting this) - I moved the music - after accessing my blog at "dial up" speed the other day, I realised what a pain this music player is for those who have a slower connection (how quickly one forgets what things were like before getting broadband - lol) ... so the music is now playing here - http://wheremyblogis.blogspot.com/ - this is a blog I created when google took over blogger, but before we had to move our blogger blogs over to our google account ... now it is just sitting there doing nothing but being a spare blog - so it is the perfect place to put the music ... those who want to listen can open it up in a new browser/window/tab/whatever and leave it playing in the background while you read the rest of this blog ... or while you go and read/do something more interesting ... LOL

Even later (much later - it is now 2 years since I posted this!) edit: That blog now does have some stuff on it, but the B#%^$$& playlist thingy doesn't play that song any more ... I think it is because they no longer have permission from Pink Floyd (so not really the playlist site's fault I guess) ... so it now I have set it up to play some other stuff ... currently 2 Pink Floyd songs played by an orchestra (weird sounding, but kind of ok actually ... er ... they kind of fit rather well on a blog called "Huh?" lol) and another Pink Floyd one I am not sure who is playing it ... and also a couple other odd songs I like ... but that may change if I ever get around to going in and finding more stuff to stick on there ...
(in fact is is still chaging/being added to now ... seeing I am still messing around on there adding stuff and I am just about to hit the "publish" button on this and go and read some more e-mail while I listen to a few things I am finding and decide if I like them ... or whatever ... you still reading this? ... oh ... it probably doesn't make much sense any more ... I am kind of "thinking out loud" here ... lol)

I tried to put the music player in here, so it was just in this post, rather than on top of my blog ... but it didn't work there ... took half an hour of fiddling and finding something blogger told me I had to change before I could change my blog template (which is what I had to do to put the music thing in) ... so hopefully the song is playing now ... there is only one song on there (I might add more one day)

Yes ... I like this song ... and it just happens to be called "Poles Apart" - which is the theme for this year's TASDA exhibiton ... the theme is actually meant to be about polar ice caps and stuff, but as far as I know, anything to do with any meaning one sees in the title is fair go (my mind comes up with all sorts of stuff - poles apart = differences and/or separation, bi POLAR, icey poles? polarity? this song? anything with Poles and/or Apart in the title ... blue coloured fishing poles side by side but not touching? ... anything ice coloured? ... and I wonder how many personal versions of "Blue Poles" will be entered? LOL)

If the song does not play, and you want to hear it ... it is "Poles Apart" by Pink Floyd ... and I think I might paste a copy of the lyrics on the bottom of this blog post (there are copies of it on lots of those song lyrics sites that my kids visit so why not here too? lol) I am not sure how long the thing will work for even if it does now - things like music files etc on the www tend to come and go fairly quickly)

Anyway ... the other thing I wanted to put here was a pile of links to stuff about the "Magic Squares" (also known as mitred squares) that Janice is showing people how to crochet, and I am going to try and show people how to knit, for the meeting activity this month (in a few hours time - LOL).


I had not knitted these before ... I have not knitted very many other things either ... I learnt the basics of knitting and never seemed to get fast, so I just stuck to crochet because I far prefer that ;-)
but ... because Janice is running the activity and teaching the crochet ones, but also isn't a knitter, I said I would find some info about doing knitted ones, work out how to do them and then I could show any people who were knitters and not crocheters how to do the knitted version. So I found a few websites with patterns/instructions on them and had a bit of a play ... and came up with one version that actually turned out square and looked like it was supposed to, and that is easy to do and should be easy to show people.

I knitted a couple of samples to take to the meeting, then I decided that seeing I am also likely to end up helping people with the crochet ones - maybe I had better actually do a crochet one myself! ... it kind of went a bit odd (I think it was mostly because I used too big a hook) so I undid it - but it gave me a weird idea of something to make using the technique (same mitreing method but not squares - I like to take a "normal" technique/pattern for something and change it until it is totally mangled beyond recognition ;-) so 2 hours later I had a totally useless crochet object that I can't decide if it is a hexagonal crochet bowl or a hexagonal beret to fit someone with a head the size of a cat! LOL
(if I remember/have time in the next day or so, I might edit this post sneak a photo into here ... if not I will put it up in a later post)

Anyway ... here are a few useful links:

http://www.knitting-and.com/knitting/patterns/afghans/st_st.htm an interesting rug - with patterns for small and large size squares in stocking stitch
http://www.magknits.com/Oct06/patterns/mitred.htm childs skirt, but has basic pattern for mitred square as part of it.
http://www.hjsstudio.com/miter.html hat and mittens set, but has a basic pattern half way down the page.
http://www.knittingatknoon.com/afghanpatt.html - mitred squares afghan pattern
http://www.interweave.com/knit/interweave_knits/pdf_files/MiteredSquareRug.pdf stocking stitch
http://home.pacbell.net/kapleo/blog/domesticspherepatterns.html - this is the pattern that worked for me, and that I have used for the samples I am taking to the meeting. ... the page has the mitred square bag on the top and a whole heap of other knitting patterns under it.
http://www.planetshoup.com/easy/knit/mitre_bas.shtml - this is the same as the one above - except it has more than one colour ... but the basic pattern is what I ended up doing ... this one might be better to print than the other one.
http://www.planetshoup.com/easy/knit/mitre_sec.shtml - another page on the same site - how to work another square onto the first one.
http://mindofwinter.prettyposies.com/archives/000146.html - a blog post about them, with yet another way of explaining the same method that I used for mine. (down the page a fair bit)
http://www.masondixonknitting.com/archives/2006_05.html#001556 instructions on how to knit groups of 4 squares without having to join them (halfway down a very long page, but if you are lucky this link might take you to the right part of the page when it loads)
http://www.knitlist.com/01gift/mitred-baby-hat.htm - pattern for a baby hat using mitred squares
http://www.shellykang.com/2006/07/lets-do-gauge-swatch.html and http://www.shellykang.com/2006/07/lets-do-gauge-swatch.html - another person's instructions for doing mitred squares and joining them.

Most of these patterns seem to be stocking stitch or similar, and one even says garter stitch does not work ... but some of the patterns are in garter stitch ... I tried doing one in stocking stitch (with knit and purl rows) and mine was NOT square ... but the garter stitch one (all knit rows) worked out fine! There were a few versions of each of those too ... some with stuff like k1 pssso etc that I was not even sure I knew how to do - LOL but it did say that it was decreacing by 2 stitches and at least one pattern said to knit 2 together twice (dec 2) in the middle of the row ... same effect just a different way to do it (probably with a slightly different look - might be a matter of what you know how to do and/or what works best for you/the yarn/needles and/or what you want the finished square to look like ...

What I did was to cast on an even number of stitches, knit a row and then knit half of that number, minus 2 - and knit those 2 together, then the next 2 ... then knit to the end (which should be the same number as you did on the other end of the row) then the next row is just knit each stitch then the next row you knit 1 less than the last time and then knit 2 together twice and knit to the end ... and keep going in that pattern - knit one row then do the 2 decreaces in the next ... until you get down to decreacing 4 stitches to 2 ... then knit those 2 together and finish off (... or not, if you are going to pick up stitches down the side and work another square onto it)

Hmmm ... for some reason I can't seem to find any patterns for patchwork crochet ... ok for me because I can work those sort of things out in crochet ... lets hope you lot paid attention to Janice when she explained it ... and if any non tasda members need to know ... it is the same sort of idea as the knitting - crochet crochet a chain, and then a row, as long a 2 sides of the square you want to make and decreace a couple of stitches in the middle of each row ...

eeek! where did my evening go?!

goodnight


oh yeah - before I go - the lyrics for that song ...


"Poles Apart" - Pink Floyd

Did you know...it was all going to go so wrong for you
And did you see it was all going to be so right for me
Why did we tell you then
You were always the golden boy then
And that you'd never lose that light in your eyes

Hey you...did you ever realise what you'd become
And did you see that it wasn't only me you were running from
Did you know all the time but it never bothered you anyway
Leading the blind while I stared out the steel in your eyes

The rain fell slow, down on all the roofs of uncertainty
I thought of you and the years and all the sadness fell away from me
And did you know...

I never thought that you'd lose that light in your eyes

Time

There are not enough hours in each day ...



eek! look how late it is already, and I am still in here mucking around with this (and posting stuff on http://spot-theblog.blogspot.com/ ) instead of finding my sewing room under the mess and working out what I am going to enter in the Canberra Quilters exhibition this year ... entries are due in just under 2 weeks time, and as usual - I have not even started anything yet ... LOL

hmmmm ... I wonder if that clock will show the right time once I publish this post? (it does have a thing to choose the right time zone ... and it looked right on the page I got the html code from ... but I am typing this just after 4pm and when I preview this post the clock says it is just after 6! ... oh well ... if it doesn't work it doesn't work - that is what often happens when you put stupid free junk on your web page/blog/etc ... lol)

btw ... talking about time - I never seem to get time to answer people's comments on my blog posts ... but I DO read them ... and I often go to the link to their blog and sometimes I leave a comment there ... LOL
but - I did just put a comment on my own blog - an answer to a question about how I made that big black bag ... when I work out how to find an extra 50 hours in each day, I might get around to doing some more of that sort of patchwork and take some photos and post some "how I did it" photos on here ... but don't get too eager - it could take a while ... pigs might fly first ... LOL

"Eventually" does happen ... sometimes ...

Earlier this evening, I took some photos of that bag I made ... the one I said, in the previous post, that I would take a photo of "eventually" ...

but first - here is a photo of the fabric/etc I "had" to use:

- it was a "paper bag challenge" that a group of us, who are on a quilty yahoogroup, decided to have - we all met for lunch one day (back in about Febuary) and we brought and swapped paper bags of bits (there were a few loose rules - the bag had to have a fat quarter, a couple of other biggish bits, a handful of scraps, and some beads/threads/something). The idea was to then make something with the fabric, adding stuff from our own stash if we wanted to (and we did not have to use absolutely every bit of what we got, just at least some of the big bits and some of the other stuff).

There were some really nice fabrics in the bag I got!

... so ... I grabbed a bit of black (I figured that black would make all the different colours sing together ;-) homespun from my stash and went crazy and sewed strips together and cut them up and sewed them together then added batting and backing (a bit of old shiny dark blue curtain fabric I got from a garage sale or somewhere) and I quilted it, to make this round thingy:

... yes - I did what is normally a big "no no" and quilted it around and around and around in circles ... the dizzy heights of creativity?

(or running around in circles going nowhere? lol)

Then, after resisting the temptation to abandon my original bag idea and leave it as a round quilt (it could have looked good as a wall/table quilt with prairie points or something around the edge ;-), I gathered the circle up and made it into a bag:

I used some more of the fat quarter to make the bit around the top of the bag, and the handles are made from strips cut from an old t-shirt and crocheted.

The original intended use was as a crochet bag - so I could spread all the balls of yarn and bits for whatever I was working on all over the bottom and be able to find stuff ... but it has come in handy for taking all my junk to work - there is room in there for a smallish handbag, my camera, a small box or whatever of sewing and/or some crocheting, and there is room for lunch and a drink bottle and whatever other small items I might want to throw in there ... (and it sits nicely on the floor behind the drivers seat of the Land Rover and things don't fall/slide out and roll around while I drive to work ;-)

An hour or so after I took the above photo of the finished bag, I decided to go grab the camera from where I had left it (IN the bag) ready to put the photos onto the computer ... and as I walked into the room I sprung somebody climbing in ready to make herself at home!

B$#^%& cat! LOL

Spook likes sleeping on/in whatever I leave lying on the bed.

so ... what is that other thing, behind the bag, that also looks black and dotty like the bag?

well - it is this:

I had some leftovers from the big bag, and I had not used any of the bag of beads I got with the fabric, so I decided to make a matching smaller bag (I was originally thinking of making a small purse but it kind of grew ;-) out of my leftovers and use the beads on that ... the other side is black fabric (no coloured bits) with lots of lime green quilting (same colour as on the front) ... I knew that big roll of lime green sewing thread would come in handy for something one day - LOL

It still needs some binding on the top, and some kind of handles ... and the beads will either be part of the dangly thing used to hold the bag closed, or I might sew them onto the front of the bag (have not decided yet) ... or I might decide to still do a small purse as well, and use the beads on that! (with me - anything might happen)

I just realised I had already taken a photo of the bag ... but only because the bag just happened to be in this photo that I took the other day!

yes - Diesel also likes to make himself comfortable on the bed!

Hmmm ... talking about bed that is where I should be now!

(oops?)

but before I go ... I have one more photo that I have already uploaded here ...

... last, but definitely not least - I got a surprise in the mail the other day - Mum made and sent me 3 ATCs! (Artists Trading Cards) ... and I think they are wonderful ;-)