doodleblog.kaliane.com

the rest of the universe is apparently on a stash-reduction kick this year, whereas I’m still enjoying the ex-smoker luxury of money to blow on STUFF. Connie’s moving to a smaller shop (22 Clyde St, between IGA & the cafe) so she’s been selling off stock she doesn’t want to carry any more. Dress fabrics have been 30-50% off, so one of the things I picked up was some of this pretty chiffon. It’s shot with a very pale grey-mauve/blue, which is most visible when it’s all bunched up & doesn’t show terribly well in the pic. Trust me, it’s gawj. Kind of reminds me of the dress from one of the Disney animated movies - Cinderella? Must have been; I think the fairy godmothers argued about what colour it should be or something, so it kept flashing from blue to pink. I don’t know that I ever saw the actual movie, but we had this set of Disney storybooks, and I was entranced by the idea of a dress that changed colours. Perfect for princesses, anyway, whether I end up using it for one of the fairytale pieces or to make a dress for the small person. Or both, I guess :)

Fur fabric was also on sale. I’d been eyeing the cow print off for years, thinking about covering grandma’s old daybed in it (which everybody else BUT Connie thought was a terrible idea. Connie gets me). It’s more like velvet than fur, and plenty sturdy. Maybe I’ll reupholster the daybed in plain black & make the cowhide into a washable cover, given the 2- & 4-legged animals my furniture has to deal with. The zigzaggy not-quite-zebra stuff (also more velvety than furrish)? Can’t tell you what I was thinking, really. Except that I like it almost in spite of myself, at least partly because it’s like a cartoon adaptation of zebra print. I do kind of have a bit of a thing about animal prints, but I’ve always refused to wear them because being a blue-eyed blonde with big boobs got me more than enough unwarranted attention thankyouverymuch; hoochiewear would have just encouraged the world’s grotty little gropers. So I don’t wear it, but I do have a growing collection of fabrics with snakeskin, tiger, leopard, zebra, giraffe, etc prints. Oh, and fish/dragon scales. This though, this dumb not-really-zebra print, I am somewhat tempted to make a coat from. If I were about 10 years younger & mumblemumble thinner, I would be REALLY tempted, but as it is it’s likely to end up as either a fleece-backed lap-rug/throw/cover, cushions, or upholstery for the chairs that match the daybed. There’s quite a bit of it there, so it may end up as two out of three.

Now this stuff I’ve had on layby for a while, and the gods only know what I’m going to do with it. Some of it’s mum’s, but I can’t remember which she wanted. I vaguely remember thinking some of it might be fun for fairytale works (the wallhangings, not the more 3d things), given that various kinds of fruit & veg make a regular appearance in folk & fairy tales - pumpkins, peas, apples, potatoes, pears, plums, strawberries, just off the top of my head. Other than that, no idea really … I guess they’d be kind of fun for kids, and several of them work just as colour. Meanwhile, they just make me smile a little. Potatoes! Lettuce! Too funny.

This stuff, now. I fell in love with the paisley when it came into the shop, but I couldn’t quite figure out what I wanted it for. It’s kind of bright. Verging on lairy, in fact. Then on Thursday I happened to walk past it sitting on the shelf with the stripe nearby, and thought hrm. Hrm. I rather like that combo. So then I wandered around the shop looking for other things to go with. Bought the last of the leafy tone-on-tone in that particularly delicious rich raw sienna. The dark red with the goldish scrolly bits is actually a Christmas print (I suspect the stripe is too, actually) that had just been delivered. The ochre-umber-sienna-etc weird abstracty rock print appeals to me purely because of the colours; the print itself does nothing much for me, but it should work well as a peeper or tiny strip.

Here’s a few fabrics I pulled out of the stash as potential partners. I really like the deep amethyst down the front, and the dark pink snakeskin, and for that matter the multicoloured scales. The yellow tone-on-tone might work. The mustard with the little red berries & the green iwll probably work if required. There are a few other interesting bits & pieces in the right colours that could be roped in if necessary, just depends what I want to do. Which brings me to the question of what I want to do. What do I want to do? There’s an Indian flavour to the colours & prints I’m gravitating towards, the sumptuous spicy richly ornamental thang. I would like to make a quilt for my very own self, maybe a topper or oversized lap quilt, but I can’t see me persevering with a full queen-size quilt. No, topper. With pieced blocks of some description which manage to capture something of that Indian flavour. Hrm. Maybe I need to dig out all those photos of ornate windows I took in Nepal for pattern ideas … I knew they’d come in handy one day!

I had some interest a while back in prints of some of my work, and I’ve now got a very brief window of opportunity to get some made up at a price that makes selling them feasible. Possibly; I guess anyone wanting them will decide that *G*. We’re talking high-end prints, “giclee” type I guess.

I’ll be able to do 20″ x 30″ for $80 AUD + postage (this means that Spring in the Valley would be very close to actual size) or 16″ x 24″ for $60 AUD + postage. I’d be able to offer Spring in the Valley, Tamborine Moonlight, Sentinel or Firestorm. Signed & dated, of course. Postage will be between $7 (oz) & $18 (USA).

I’ve been trying to get the little thingies I’ve been working on finished so I could (for once!) stomp in with a big TADA and show a thingummywhatsit from conception to completion in one post, but it’s taking rather longer than expected to finish even one and I’m suffering blogblather withdrawal so buggrit. My slowness is obviously not solely a function of my incessant photo-op breaks (does that make it multi-cessant photo-opping?) with the consequent editing, uploading, and blathering. I’M JUST SLOW. In all honesty I fully expected to be displaying a pic of Laughably Horrible Failed Concept #1 by the end of the first making session, but it came together rather better than expected so I’m still plugging away at it. My scanner’s attached to the printer which is sitting at the folks’ place because Dad was fixing it, so I can’t even scan the sketches. So there it is –> a bit of stitching and shaping ago.

I’m about to go play with this embellishment maker gizmo that Mum picked up in Melbourne at the AQS, because it may be just what I need to make the fringey stuff I want for the VISP (Vessel In Slow Progress). I’m hoping it will be, because I don’t really fancy handstitching a metric buttload of yarn to the form only to find out I don’t like the colour or texture or whatever. I want to tread carefully here, because I do have a tendency to belabour a point. Subtlety not my strongest point, like, and sometimes when I go with the flow and follow the trail of inspiration it leads me up the garden path when I really wanted to go play in the forest. Or something like that. It’s very easy, basically, for me to end up with whatever subtlety I was toying with being totally overwhelmed by some hairy big bovver-boots-wearing punk symbology. I do love symbols, but they can be a bit like the bad boys you shouldn’t fall in love with, too easy to slip into one-dimensionality and vulgarity and crassness. IOW, I have a vessel, and I want to be putting fringey stuff on this vessel, and I do NOT want it to look like a big hairy conceptual twat. Because that’s not what it is.

What else have I been doing? Um. Today we got the girlchild’s immunisations up to date, which sucked about as much as expected. Stupid nurse thought I was exaggerating, but after the first one took her by surprise it did indeed take 3 of us to hold her somewhat still while the nurse put the second shot in. We adopted a dog, by proxy (she’s living with my folks for the time being) on Thursday. What else? Oh yeah: trialling different shopping cart systems. Ugh. I really hate trying to wade through other people’s coding & markup, and I’ve yet to find a cart that isn’t pretty horrible. I can’t believe I used to do webdev for fun. I don’t even enjoy the graphics side of it as much as I used to, and I’m resistant to spending the time that would be required to brush up on my scripting so I could customise something. I suspect I don’t have the brainpower any more anyway, to be honest. Just trying to figure out how to template VirtueMart on a Joomla install is giving me hives. Stingy as I am, I would actually pay for something customised, but finding someone trustworthy & knowledgeable to do it is as timeconsuming as DIY. Especially if you’re as cheap as you are fussy :D

I am a bit curious re the concept of open houses, largely due to being the daughter of a man who thinks having a garage sale is an invitation for every thief in creation to case the joint. Carloads of people drive around looking for garage sales so they know who to rob, doncha know. I think if I was a burglar I might be following the people who buy stuff at grudge sales home, because they’re obviously the ones with a) money and b) stuff, whereas the people who just had the garage sales are likely to be the ones who are either a) going bankrupt or b) moving c) dead or d) indulging in a spot of For God’s Sake Get Rid Of All That Junk In The Shed Or I’m Leaving. And let’s face it, if their shit’s worth having it got sold - why would you want to nick the crap nobody wanted even at 4 on Sunday when the guys with a uteful of rusty ironing boards, grasscatchers and used baling wire are taking the OK Look Final Offer You Can Have It For $10, But Only If You Also Take The Couch Uncle Fred Died On And The Three Broken TVs stuff? The really funny thing, from my pov, is that we’re the people sellers say that to. And by we I mean him & me; we’re as bad as each other. Poor old mum’s the one in the background with more hair in her hands than left on her head, trying not to cry. IOW, most of the stuff we need to get rid of is the stuff - the But It’s Perfectly Good stuff, as well as the What The Hell Did You Bring That Home For?? stuff - that some other bugger was desperate to get rid of a few months/years ago (now even rustier and more outdated and MORE Vintage!). Come to think of it, much of the stuff we would be keeping is from the same source (there are after all treasures among the trash heh). BUT ANYHOW. So me, I’m all about us paring down by having a few grudge sales to pass the Useless To Us crap on to some treasurehunting souls, so we can clean the place(s) up so Mum doesn’t go completely stark, but my dad’s all paranoid that the house will get done over. If he’s worried that it’ll get done over when the Driveby Burglar Scouts get all excited by his dead lawnmowers, old wardrobes and boxes of utter crap vintage bric-a-brac, I can’t see him thinking any kind of open house is a good idea. So I guess we’ll never get doing anything like Textile Goddess’s Open Day. Which kind of sucks, because wouldn’t it be cool if deciding to have an open day would magically make your house look like hers? I can’t even work up a good head of envy, it’s so perfectly lovely and so very obviously born of the same creativity that shines in her artwork.

just a little btw - if you email me or leave a comment and don’t get a response, please let me know. It’s almost certain that I HAVE responded, but my email addresses seem to be blocked by some ISPs and I have no way of knowing unless people tell me. I promise, sometimes I’m forgetful & slow, but I never ignore!

pardon the radio silence, but the girl’s been crook. Started with a bit of a cold, then a few days later she developed these angry zitty spots around her mouth & nose, along with a bloodily crufty nostril (IMO primarily because she WILL INSIST on stuffing her entire fist up said nostril). Doctor visit > antibiotics for impetigo. Joyousness. Two days later, face having magically almost entirely cleared up courtesy of abx, I pick her up from preschool to find she’s developed one of her face rashes, the ones that are prompted by exposure to mango (and apparently some unknown irritant). Face rash (kind of a raised flush, really) progressed impressively, by about 7pm reaching all the way to her hairline, and man was she ever pissy & hard to get on with (not that she’s ever exactly easy, but wow). By 11 or so she was running a fever, which came down with panadol, so I waited til morning and took her to the clinic. Her usual doc was overbooked, so we got to see the one she really doesn’t like (yayfun!). Flush/rash was gone by then, but she was still running pretty high fevers. He said … um, can’t remember now. I think he said it was just a virus, nothing to worry about. Her tongue was swollen and her tonsils were up but no grossness, so just keep giving her the abx until finished (for the impetigo), manage the fever & keep her hydrated, & if I get worried over the weekend take her down to the hospital. That was Friday.

So Monday, which was a public holiday (Queen’s birthday, except not), she asked to go shopping & we went. She was seeming MUCH better & brighter, and the fever had gone. We were wandering around Big W & under the revolting lighting (seriously, what IS the lighting they use? It’s worse than regular fluoro, I swear) I could see she’d gone kind of rashy again, all over her face this time, a bit splotchier-looking than her sensitive-to-mango rash. Over the next hour or so it became more pronounced, to the point where she was looking a bit unloved-orphan-scrubbed-with-lye-soap or something. She seemed fine though, and oblivious to the rash, and once we got out from the horrible lighting I was wondering if it had been there for days but was just invisible under regular light. She fell asleep on the couch an hour or so after we got home, and after covering her over and feeling her forehead because she looked a bit flushed (no temp) I’d walked away then for some reason I thought I’d better check her chest. Oh. Spots everywhere. Blotchy pink spots, lots of them. Back too. Crap. Off to the hospital we go, where for the first time ever at Casualty we got one of those annoyingly dismissive doctors who acted like I was wasting his time. **[Side-rant: dude, figuring out whether something's wrong with people is your job. It's what you get paid for. You're the doctor & I'm just some ignorant schmo who happens to be worried about her kid: getting snotty with me because I can't diagnose & trust that you'll do your job is so annoying I'm still cranky 5 days later. Shithead.]** Anyway, so he oh-so-patiently-and-smirkily explained that it was just an opportunistic virus she’d picked up on the heels of the impetigo, and to just keep her hydrated & give her panadol if her fever came back.

So, being as I didn’t trust wankerdoc’s dismissal, especially after googling and worrying about several possibilities that seemed to fit the symptoms, I took her to her usual doc in the morning. Face had mostly faded, but it was worse and spreading on her trunk & limbs. He pronounced it MEASLES. Measles for chrissakes! Fair enough, who gets the measles any more, but how the hell did that idiot doctor not even consider it as a possibility? An outbreak is too potentially dangerous to just dismiss. So, having notified daycare & the grapevine, we’ve been in quarantine. She’s only been mildly itchy, but she’s a bit worried that the spots will stop random strangers from calling her a beautiful girl (what can I say, she considers it her due). She caught an ad for that proactiv (sp?) zit stuff the other night, & said I should get some for her spots (not that kind of spots, darling; yours will be gone in a few days I promise). If this is any indication of things to come, I REALLY hope her teens are as acne-free as mine were. She’s been surprisingly cool about being stuck at home with just me & the cats, but there’s no way on earth I get anything done with the nonstop soundtrack & cheeky interruptions. I did get to spend most of yesterday praying nobody would knock on the door because she’d put cat whiskers on me with an eyebrow pencil, that was kind of fun …

nabbed from Poppalina. I think it’s hilarious that I entered “happy and sane” for #9 and got a sign saying “rabid granny” …

The method:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name

For mosaic virgins (I was clueless!): you’ll need to either upload the resulting mosaic to your flickr account or save it to your computer & post it on your blog. You’ll want to copy the links it generates, too, to post into your blog.

The game

Originally uploaded by sionwynlee

1. Rain Kissed Rose of Sharon, 2. Put Chocolate Pudding on the Top Shelf !!, 3. Concert Hall at Aron Copland School of Music Queens College, 4. Saffron Trumpets, 5. Peter O’Toole, 6. moccha for auda, 7. 64227_poster2000, 8. Lemon Zest Cheesecake from My Flour Garden, 9. Untitled, 10. My Children’s Book Collection, 11. On a lazy Sunday afternoon…, 12. digital painting

against all odds & despite a certain preschooler’s best efforts, I did manage to make it down to the PO to get the quilts crammed into an express post satchel and sent off today. I’d have been more downhearted about the inelegant cramming involved if sewing the stupid velcro strips on hadn’t already undone the flatness achieved by blocking - I suspect they’ll need at the very least a jolly good steam and a week or so to hang in peace after I get them back & remove the velcro. Horrible stuff, bulgy and wobbly and stiff in ungoodly ways. I’d far rather have two narrow regular-style sleeves at top & bottom - faster, easier, less unwieldy & fugly - but I’m not in a position to volunteer to be threading wires through sleeves so I’ll shut up. I’ll just reblock Sentinel if it needs it, and meanwhile hope it doesn’t look too wonky at the show. I’d dearly love to have pics of both of them in situ, if anyone’s going down & would care to oblige.

JFTR, I did actually have a thimble or three once upon a time. In recent memory even - at least one metal, plus two odd little plastic ones that came with thread sets - but see, I also have a preschooler. One who is both inquisitive and, more importantly, acquisitive (my mother would say this is karmic justice, if she was feeling mean). Guess I either buy another one or two to put in my away-from-sticky-fingers kit, or keep a weather eye out for the ones I allegedly own when I’m packing & sorting.

Yes, that means I’m going to move. Soon as I find somewhere that fits the criteria. Even if this place wasn’t falling down around our ears thanks to idiotically miserly owners (for pity’s sake, fix the bloody roof if nothing else!), El deciding that balcony railings are merely a challenge rather than a deterrent (let alone a barrier) would suggest it’s time. Shame to give up the view, but between El’s various terrors & incomprehensibly contrary daredeviltry mandating that the door remain closed 99% of the time I don’t get to enjoy it much anyway, so eh. Not all down to her really; after I quit smoking I stopped hanging around outdoors because it brought up all those situational cravings. Blargh, I so, so, so do not want to do all the crap involved in moving. Hate sorting. Hate packing. Hate paying stupid amounts of money for switches to be flicked & 5 minutes of data entry to be done by somebody I am stone-cold certain does not get paid anywhere near what I’m being charged, harumph. Really hate doing a massive purgey clean on the house I’m vacating AND the house I’m moving into; seems massively unfair, that. Then again, I do love organising myself into a new space. And El is bizarrely eager about moving, having become all Chicken Little neurotic about this place because the newly peeling ceiling is freaking her right the hell out. She’s not really a fan of change, so it’s taken me by surprise. I’m trying to figure out whether to go my usual route (cheap rent, old house I don’t have to be precious about) or whether to go slightly more upscale as one of those fake-it-til-you-make-it things, bit of a dress-for-success sort of angle, which would involve paying enough rent that I’d be forced to do some more teaching etc if I want frittering money. Question is, am I a depressive antisocial slob because I live in embarrassingly povvo houses (in which case a spanky spiffy place might be perfectamundo and solve all manner of ills), or do I live in ramshackle hovels because I’m a lazily depressed antisocial slob? Question for the ages, I tellya. Maybe I need a povvo house but to hire a maid with the money I could be spending on a spankier house … now there’s a thought.

anyhow. So. While I ponder all these deep thoughts, I think I’m going to do something about the 2 PIFs and at least 1 postcard (and probably other things I can’t remember offhand) I owe. And the journals I’ve been sketching and planning but not having a chance to do lately (really, how DO all those overachievey people do it with the quilt a week and so on? I boggle, I really do!). And finish working on the sionwynlee.com shop. And figure out why the wordpress install at macleayquilters.sionwynlee.com went cactus a couple of hours after I reinstalled it :/

finished, yay. I have to stop doing this to myself, my poor fingers are a mess from the handsewing, even though I ended up spacing it over 3 days. I think in future I’m going to try to restrict myself to entering things only if they’re finished or nearly so - really truly nearly so, not the kind of “nearly” that Sentinel was. Either that or buy a freakin thimble …

okay, I’ve done it again with the deadline thing, so I’ve been trying not to panic about getting these two finished in time for the Sydney show. SIGH. Oh well. Firestorm is blocked and behaving (phew), and I’ve made its fugly velcro strap thingies ready to attach. Made Sentinel’s ugly strap thingies too, so I just have to finish it. Since it’s 4.33 am and I have to be up early enough to get el to preschool, I’ll leave you with an in-progress detail. Let’s all pretend we can’t see dangly threads and stuff, eh? :)

you know what I hate? I hate when your machine throws a whammy without telling you, so an hour or more’s worth of fussy quilting has to be unpicked because the back is a dog’s breakfast. Regurgitated even. And your unpicker has wandered off, naturally. And the fabric - which hey, I got cheap, but I thought Moda was pretty good quality - is the sort that despite being fairly coarse shows every needle hole and is inclined to pull threads if you’re not exceptionally careful. Blargh, give me poplin or sateen or somesuch every time.

Anyway. Lines & rocks in the dirt, and some invisible leaves in the border.

If you had an Atari 2600, you just have to go check these out.

Have not finished the fig tree yet. Spent Sunday evening & half of yesterday printing invitation letters & envelopes (never done a mail merge before, that was kind of fun, except for the bits where Word just can’t help sucking purely to keep you on your toes) & flyers & whateverthehellelse. Oh, a list of clubs, so hopefully people can confirm or make changes to their club details at the zone get-together today. I don’t understand why there isn’t a better register of clubs & groups, but I haven’t figured out how to go about it myself so I guess I should shut up. Well, not in the real world, anyway - in MY perfect world, at least one person in every club would have access to & basic understanding of email & the web & be willing to update a central db for her club. Real-world ideally, the NSW guild would have the comprehensive list, but lots of the little groups don’t join, and the guild seems a bit reluctant to share the list it does have. Hell, I suspect our club is no longer a member of the guild, and we are not a small group - “we” just have some peculiar ideas about what’s “worth it” and what’s not.

I was supposed to be going to the zone get-together, but I had one of those stupid canNOT sleep nights and I’m completely ruined - I could maybe get there ok, but I’d need a good nap before I had to drive back, and no. I’m kind of paying for stamping my foot to get E’s attention last night, too; ankle is very sore & tight, stupid bloody tendon. Guess I’ll take E to daycare as planned and either sleep or do some housework instead.

I stewed about it all night and went down to Connie’s today to see if she had anything suitable, and found something nearly perfect at only $11 pm (wonder of wonders - I definitely have champagne tastes lol; everything else I pulled off the shelves was at least $22pm). It’s Moda, Serendipity Circles by Sandy Gervais, and the colour scheme is almost perfect. I like that the combination of colour + dots kind of hints at Aboriginal dot painting without actually meaning anything that isn’t my subject.

The Swirls “Mocha Almond Fudge” I used in the bobbin is a perfect match for it - I obviously need to get the cone back from mum, because that bobbin is now empty & I’m really happy with how it’s disappearing into the pattern. Great thread btw; looks like cotton, but finer & without all the lint etc, the colours are beaut, & it works just as well in the bobbin as on top. Nowhere near the fineness of Bottom Line, obviously, but definitely less noticable than Signature (which I also love, but not for this purpose). I’m planning to use BL for the background so as not to detract from the holy fabric, but I may stick with the Swirls in the bobbin.

Oh yeah, and I keep forgetting to say: I think it was Tanya asked yonks ago how I liked the sidewinder: I do. It’s handy. It overfills for the Janome, but I just flick the sensor open to stop it before it goes too far - if I’d been designing it I’d have made the little green button a toggle so you could easily stop it at any level, but it’s not that hard to flick the little arm out of the way. It definitely tempts you to go and buy many many bobbins and fill one for every thread colour …

so I got the fig all sorted & ready to quilt* and when I dragged out the piece I’d intended to use as backing, it wasn’t big enough. It’s not special enough to warrant fartarsin about with to extend (it’s a piece i decided either had to be backing or needed overdyeing), and I’m a bit unsure re using bodgy stuff on the back anyway. I know the back of a wallhanging is rarely seen, but I have some sort of undefined concept about integrity as well as a sneaking suspicion that using ugly on the back = not thinking your work is “worthy” of anything better. Or at least that it might give that impression to others. I like things to have good bones and a good foundation as well as a pretty facade.

ANYWAY. So I dug out this really lovely bit of fabric I keep digging out and not using because it’s sashing.** Not quite enough to join up & use alone. Hrm. Dug out some yellow which also turned out to be sashing, split it into 3 random-width strips & the multicolour into 4 random-width strips, heaped them in a pile next to the machine and sewed them all together as they came to hand. Seeing if I could do the random thing, like, because not controlling the placement of everything is just alien to me (there’s a reason I have never and probably will never do a genuine scrap quilt heh). Anywho, so I did it, and I really like the way it looks. Having got it basted to the back of the quilt, in fact, I suspect I like it TOO MUCH to stick on the back of any quilt, even one I’m planning to be very happy with. I am seriously considering pulling it off & quilting it up as is. I’m boggling at myself even considering it, mind, because not my style of work at all (although it may just be exactly the excuse to do the quilted “drawing” I keep thinking about), but that’s what I’m thinking.

Which leaves me with either using the green backing I dyed for it (I think not; the same fabric in yellow on the back of FITH is an absolute bitch to quilt for some reason, just does not want to slide) or cobbling something else together (argh - I already wasted at least an hour auditioning stuff for what turned out to be the too-nice-for-a-backing bit today!) or going and buying something (SIGH) or dyeing something (no time, & come to think of it I think we’re out of PFD heh) or using the really nice black I was trying not to be boring by defaulting to lol. I kinda wanted to use something with a bit of pattern. Bah. I’m irritated with myself too, because instead of making these decisions earlier & getting anything useful done this arvo, I wiped myself out with a handful of El’s Smarties & spent most of this evening semi-comatose on the couch. Note to self: seriously, stop doing that shit, eat some protein, and go get a glucose challenge done.

* well, except that I need to unpick half the lefthand border & adjust some fullness in one section of the background before reattaching it.

** we used to cut fabric into ~38cm wide strips 2-4m long & dye up & sell for use in sashing & borders, so people didn’t have to join strips - also, width of the fabric is stretchier than length, which is often not a good thing for borders & sashing. Sold really well for ages and then not so much, so we stopped bothering

the new ground for the fig tree looks so very much better it’s no wonder I’ve just been looking at this piece off & on for 6 months instead of finishing it. Srsly. Changing the forward thrust of the foremost root helps too. I’m also really glad I didn’t have enough of the coppery brown, and that I branched out with the brown “opal” multicolour rather than using straight browns, because it really adds something (I love it when I’m right! heh). I can see a couple of spots where I need to add a bit more, but it’s pretty much ready for me to go back to stitching. I had a brainstorm about the quilting, too, so I’m kind of chomping at the bit. I may actually get this sucker finished on deadline after all!

busy fiddling around to change the base of the grandaddy tree (I thought I found a bunch more of the “ground” fabric I’d used, but no. Doing some cobbling & cutting & layering & fusing of various “almosts” to compensate).

Thought I’d share this incredibly nifty gadget, which my brother & SIL gave me as a birthday present. It’s the Smartcafe Hot Cafetiere Mug, and it rocks. It’s a personal coffee plunger (aka French press) - spoon your grounds in the bottom, add hot water, wait a couple minutes, insert the plunger & push down with your thumb, add milk/sugar/whatever & drink. Decent sized cup, even, and insulated, so it’s kind of edging out my old faithful bucket.

In other news, I seem to have a mouse. Sodding useless cats. Not that the ratsak (actually Mortein, I believe) is doing any better so far.

so, I made the changes I decided the big fig tree needed, and lay it out on the floor to decide between two options for the bottom, and … I still don’t like it. It’s wrong wrong wrong. So. I think I know what I need to do, but … that means I need to unpick AGAIN!!! Have I mentioned how much I hate unpicking? Well I do. Stupid unpicking. Stupid life, where’s my undo button, huh? Cos that would let me undo the trimming back of the side borders, too, which are now going to need lengthening in order to make the other additions & changes I’ve decided on instead.

This is the sort of thing that people who plan works don’t have to deal with, at least not so much. I just can’t do that kind of planning; the more I plan and work out ahead of time, the less likely it is that I will ever ever ever actually DO it. Because it’s done, pretty much, and once all that planning & problem-solving etc is done, committing it to fabric & thread (or paint & canvas, or clay, or stone & ink) is about as exciting as quilting up a preprinted panel like the one I did for ma. I suspect that I am going to need to start doing a little more planning though, because working like a painter just doesn’t cut it when you’re collaging & stitching lots of fabrics & you’re not even sure if there’s any of that gorgeous rusty brown left to make the desired changes …

not the best, however. The board I’ve been using to take photos against has developed a pronounced woop in it, which makes all my (nice & SQUARE thankyouverymuch, I fussed quite a lot to make them so!) stuff look all skewiff (bloody hell, wordpress’s spellcheck is arguing with me about skewiff. Woop, fair enough, that’s probably peculiarly Aussie slang, but skewiff? Up yer bum wordpress, it is so a real word!). Anyway, but, they’re pics, so until I get a new & improved board they’ll do.

here’s mum’s serenity prayer hanging:

Firestorm:

we’ve been sorting out some kits for the Bellanora bag, which I should be able to post in the next day or so. They’ll have the pattern (of course! lol), and all fabrics for front/back/gusset/lining. Since we’re putting only the required amounts in, all fabrics will be labelled so you know which pattern pieces are to come from which colour. I might have to absolutely insist that people send me photos of finished bags, in this case, because I’m totally in love with some of the colourways.

is finished, yay. Well apart from a little handstitching and a label, but that doesn’t count - FINISHED! I’m really pleased with how it came up; I’ll take photos tomorrow when I’m getting the shots of Spring In The Valley for fullsize prints. Finished Mum’s wallhanging too (really truly totally finished!) - she seems pleased with it, although I’m not sure where it’s going to go heh. Take note people, TWO things finished today. TWO!

I’m quite chuffed - I just finished putting my first “peeper” on a quilt, and while far from perfect it does what I wanted and it’s pretty straight (esp for imprecise me heh). I was going to do a flange (BTDT), but I wanted it projecting outward not inward so that wasn’t going to work. I thought about it long and hard people, trying to figure out how to do an outward-projecting flange that wouldn’t extend all the way to the edge or wouldn’t have a really poxy fold where it met; it was that kind of day. Like “HEY BRAIN! SNAP OUT OF IT!” all day heh. I’ve been facing quilts a lot lately, but I really didn’t like the look for this. It took hooooooooours to figure out what I wanted to border it with - flat black looked like arse, blue didn’t work (which was kind of annoying since the phrase “[surging?] into the aching blue sky” had glommed into my head while I was doing the top section of quilting), green was ick. various greys and browns were meh. Found two strong possibilities (ie, the least “eh” of the bunch, and then tried this FQ of gorgeous darkdark brown with black crackle print next to it, and it was perfect.

And of course, some bugger(s) had bought all of it. Not even a FQ left. I just KNEW I should have got a half metre heh. Back to the drawing board, & I tried a new warm charcoaly black Connie got in recently, and it was pretty good. Not as good as the gorgeous brown, but good enough. I kept trying different blues & bluegreys etc for a flange or something, but nothing really grabbed me. Dragged out a sad little strip of a dark blue-green-tan fossil fern, & that was just enough colour to make the hints of blue & green & purple in the dyed centrepiece pop a little. None of that left on the roll either lol … Connie managed to find a FQ, but as it turned out I didn’t need it anyway; there was just enough in my scrap to get 4 1″ strips. And that was about it for the shop, although I did get the border strips for this & other pieces cut down there. I was a bit scared to sew tonight to be honest heh - I was sure I’d bollix something (oh never mind, I just remembered two things that were monumentally dumb but turned out ok; the universe can stay spinning on its axis). No way was I going to take to the edges with the rotary cutter though, that would just be asking for trouble: I’ll finish it tomorrow.

on the quilts I’m supposed to be finishing, but when I got over to Mum’s today I’d forgotten all the fabric. Everything else, I had, just not the fabric I’d intended to use. So while mum & Judy & Margaret played on the embellishers, I unpicked a couple of seams so I can try changing the tree piece (I actually dreamed a fix for the thing that was bugging me that I hadn’t ever been able to pin down properly, how weird is that?). Then I hemmed & hawed over fabrics to frame up the bushfire piece and didn’t really come up with anything I wanted, so I had a play with the embellisher while mum sorted lunch.

muslin scraps & silk hanky on pink fleece:

muslin, silk hanky, sari silk, silk fusion on wadding:

potential needlecase - some of the silk fusion I made the other day, silk hanky, wool roving, dyed butter muslin on doctor flannel:

dad’s old jumper with some silk hankies & muslin:

here’s the silk fusion I made the other day - two with silk hankies, two with silk from the Threadstudio:

I saw this:

on someone’s blog the other day (whose? I can’t for the life of me remember where, but I found the photo in my history .. if you are or know the maker, please let me know!). We decided to try & figure out how it was made (well it’s pretty obvious, but to get an idea of how many strips it would need etc) and came up with this lame duck:

we obviously need to use more strips and a bigger button (we only had a wee one handy), but I really love the idea.

meanwhile, mum’s been trying braids, thinking about using them as the gusset for another bag. Cool eh?