Monthly Archives: December 2009

2009 was a BIG year for us.  We moved to a new town, Chris started a challenging role at work and Jasper arrived in style!

I think we’ve done pretty well adjusting to all the changes and the demands of parenthood – sure there have been difficult times (breast infection anyone!) but we’ve got through them with (mostly) good humour.  Things are only going to get even better now that we are working on getting Jasper to sleep through the night without feeds (YAY!!)

Creatively, things have been ticking along.  I’ve been learning to sew garments, but didn’t do as much pattern making/adjusting as I would have liked.  I did more hand embroidery and put together lots of little items for the linen closet.

So, on to the future!  2010 I want to extract as much joy out of it as possible.

We want to travel this year – We’re headed home to Tasmania in January and we would also like to go on a skiing holiday (possibly New Zealand), and we’d also like to spend some time in Bali or Singapore this year (both very easy travel destinations for us here).

My creativity will continue on as usual, a bit of sewing, a bit of embroidery, a few new pattern drafting/adjusting skills. Maybe a few quilts.  Whereever my nose leads me 🙂

Thank you for visiting and reading this blog.  Your support, encouragement and interest is important to me.  I’ve been blogging here for 5 years and it has provided SO many connections to wonderful, creative people all over the place. Happy New Year to you all!

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I’ve been stitching

A little travel blanket, only two layers with the other side being a soft flannelette.

My hand ‘quilting’ is crude, but I think it looks pretty good with the thick thread I’m using.  I’m probably going to bind this with a fairly wide binding in a contrasty colour. I’ll have to dig around in my craftroom to find something suitable.

We had a lovely Christmas watching Jasper zooming around.  He pulled the tree over three times before we finally put it away.  He’s so full of energy and is curious about everything.

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There’s a little production line going on here!

Today operations moved out to the living room.  Jasper started crawling last week and it is no longer safe to have him in my workroom since he is facinated with electrical cords, powerboards and my iron.

These bunnies are inspired by the softies made by Lynne Roberts of Molly Chicken.  The ears are taken from this pattern from Fiona at Hop, Skip and Jump (I can’t wait to make this adorable rabbit… after Christmas).

I found these wonderful crafters by googling ‘rabbit softies’ or something similar.  Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing 🙂

I’ve raided my scraps bin and there are at least another four bunnies to come.  It’s a bit addictive and I’m glad I bought a bag of stuffing last time I was in Darwin 🙂

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Lack of sleep is seriously affecting my ability to think straight this week.  But I thought I’d check in to say

1) I’ve had a big clean out of my craftroom, lots of things boxed up to go to other crafty people locally

2) I finished Jasper’s christmas stocking! and

3) can’t think of a number 3… that’s how mushy my brain is right now.

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I’ve been linocutting! 

I’m really chuffed with these snowflake Christmas tree ornaments, I also printed some on dark brown paper and they are all happily hanging together on our little plastic tree… it’s starting to feel festive around here now!

I also made a christmas tree linocut, but it’s impossible to photograph my printed versions of silver on blue. They’re being used as gift tags :-).

Would you believe that Jasper turned 7 months old this week?  He’s into EVERYTHING and has developed a scream that would wake the dead.  Still feeding 2-3 times a night – so I’m feeling pretty tired right at this minute; don’t mention the prospect of a second baby to me right now, I just might rip your head off.

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I’ve just finished constructing two linen tea towels.  Hemmed by hand with neat mitred corners and a simply appliqued stripe of linen ribbon across one end.  These are for me 🙂

This cloth (towelcloth in off-white), was a spur of the moment add-on to my order from Linnet.  It’s a ‘thick and thirsty’ fabric, good for drying a sink full of dishes and wiping down the benches afterwards.

I’m very pleased with the appliqued ribbon; such a relief to abandon the blackwork embroidery idea I was labouring under for a day or so.   I got a whole lot of enjoyment from working with the fabric and seeing the final product come together with the stitched detail using the full six strands of DMC linen embroidery thread in Ecru.

The fabric I bought for the swap tea towels, Linnet Natural Flax Biz, is much finer which would be good for printing onto if that’s what I decide to do.  But as a tea towel? I think this fabric will make a good towel for polishing glassware and wiping hands. Probably a good towel for people who are firm believers in the dishwasher.  People like me 🙂

I don’t know about the rest of you, but for most of my life the only linen fabric I had encountered was the tourist souvenier tea towel, printed with something like ‘Greetings from New Zealand’ and hung over a rail in my Nan’s kitchen.  These towels were stiff and seemed to smear the water around rather than soaking it up; such a different beast from my recent linen experiences.

Since I live within Australia’s most famous National Park I’m toying with the idea of printing up my own ‘tourist tea towel’ with a Kakadu iconic animal (crocodile?) or plant (pandanus?) and ‘Greetings from Kakadu’ splayed across the bottom.

But really.  Would it give me (and the recipient) as much satisfaction as a hand hemmed towel with some sublimely simple stitching detail? Or (and I am worried about this), would the participants be dissapointed that my contribution was a tea towel with a few poxy lines of stitching?

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