Category Archives: Knitting

As promised here on this blog yesterday. I ventured into my sewing room to tidy up the mess that has been festering there for a few months. I get into a frenzy of creativity; fabric and ‘stuff’ gets flung all over the place and then the lull happens, no tidying occurs, junk gets thrown in when visitors are coming and before I know it I am paralysed by not having a serene, well ordered place to work.

Here is a little glimpse. Before and After:

That box on the floor is the extent of my stash. I don’t need a huge one since I dye pretty much all the fabric I use, so I can dye more as needed. I discovered I have a lot of purples and pinks, I will overdye a fair chunk of it I think.

In the ‘before’ shot, you can see a washing basket on my desk, that was part of the stash prior to organisation today.

I threw out a heap of scraps I was keeping. I couldn’t be bothered putting them into any sort of order, so they were chucked. Without regret.

How cleansing.

Since I was in the mood. I unsubscribed from a number of mailing lists…. Including QuiltArt. I will resubscribe in a few weeks. But I need a break. Those of you on that list can understand how overwhelming it can be. At the moment I prefer the more gentle world of blogs.

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My creativity has lost focus. Not terribly suprising since I have recently taken up spinning and knitting and Linocut and drawing in addition to my interests in making art quilts and photography.

So this is what I did on the weekend (apart from a pleasant BBQ with friends, clothes shopping and doing a tour of the paper mill where Riscy works).

Things I was meant to do this weekend included making a handbag for the swap with Sophie, Clean my sewing room and PUTING THE WASHING AWAY!!!
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Whew! It’s Friday. We are just about to head into a series of 4 day working weeks 🙂 Its Labour Day here on Monday then we head into Easter.

An old friend of mine from High School is coming to stay on the weekend so I don’t envisage that I’ll get much creative stuff done, but I do hope to work some more on the Linocut.

I finished the bag on Wednesday night for the Shave for a Cure auction:

I realised last night that I am the worst storyteller EVER! We had some friends over for dinner and everytime I opened my mouth nonsense came out…. I’d get caught up in stupid details, people would look at me with a confused expression etc. I wasn’t even drinking…

How could I, daughter a wonderful and entertaining storyteller and conversationalist, suck so badly. It’s embarrassing I tells ya, EMBARRASSING!

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Tonight I WILL finish the bag for the Shave for a Cure auction. My excuse for it taking me so long is that I decided it needed more quilting than I originally planned.

The photos don’t show the sparkles caused by the metallic thread used in the flowers. Originally I planned to only use the metallic thread but it didn’t show up enough on this fabric, so I was quite daring and chose to outline each flower in veriagated RED thread!

Today I was utterly astounded by this quilt by Melody Johnson. I wasn’t really familiar with her work until joining the Artful Quilters Webring, however I check her blog very regularly now 🙂 Apparently she is quite famous in the quilting arena and perhaps as a quilter I SHOULD have known of her before now LOL.

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Ahem. This is the quilt for QuiltArt Straight and Narrow Challenge. I’m on a high from the glue spray I used => why don’t I ever follow advice? Don’t breathe this stuff friends of Little Fish, it is not good for you.

Here in Gippsland we are being devoured by mosquitos. I’ve never seen them this big, or this bad. I even got bitten on my ear on the weekend, it wasn’t itchy, just sore.

Mary Fever has hit our shores. Mary married a prince. Now we all want to know her (I’m currently filling in time, blogging, until her interview with Andrew Denton airs in 15 minutes time).

So you can claim seven degrees of seperation. Her dad taught me Mathematics at University in Tasmania – if my memory serves me correct, Calculus and Linear Algebra 2 in second year and Numerical Methods in third year, sends shivers up my spine just thinking about it. All of it is totally useless to me in my engineering practice – of course LOL

Tally Ho

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In the spirit of me returning to my sewing room I present a finished quilt, I was so keen to have this finished, I sewed the binding by machine instead of by hand. Hand would have given me a nicer result from the back, but it makes little difference to the front, so I compromised in the interests of finishing it.

I admit that I don’t really like it, but it will stay up until I make a replacement.

This is a close up of the quilting:

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Well this sucks! Last night was the first time in ages that I haven’t created anything. We had our last game of touch footy in the round robin season, we had to win to make it to the finals. We won, 10-2. I was totally stuffed afterwards and ended up watching TV (Urgggg!)

I’m also trying to get pay pal to work for me. I have an account, I have just totally stuffed it up. I desperately want to buy a little purse from another blogger.

My last spinning lesson was on Monday night. Bev was happy with the bag I made her (I think). I tried out her little wheel which is the same type as the one I am going to buy. They were locally made and apparently a lot of local spinners have them. No longer in production though which could be a pain if I want extra spindles. But I figure it will still be cheaper than forking out of a new Ashford Joy which which was my other option.

Bev lent me a heap of stuff about dyeing with plant material. She has some fab examples of her experiments and I’m keen to try it. I’m going to try it on cotton fabric first rather than waiting until I’ve spun enough wool for my experiments.

I can’t be late for work today, so cheerio.

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I’ll be sad to give this one away, but I’m sure Bev will get plenty of use out of it 🙂

We attended the Victorian Chilli Festival in Jindivick today. The festival is run at the farm of the Redback Chilli Co and is set up in their cow paddock 🙂 There was a salsa band playing today which really got me in the mood for tasting and spending LOL.

We went with our mates Frank and Sharon and their two boys. The boys were excited to be there after seeing the Chilli Cookoff episode of the Simpsons, being young boys they weren’t into actually tasting the chilli 🙂

On the way home, we stopped off at a little town called Yarragon, I splurged on a casserole dish made by Gooseneck Pottery of South Gippsland.

Upon arrival home we found that our neighbours have built a brick wall right next to (and parallel to) our side fence, the wide glass doors in our living area look straight out at it. I am angry about this, very angry.

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Tonight I did a bit of everything:

Cooking – I made vietnamese noodle soup called pho. This was my favourite food when I lived in Vietnam in 1996.

Reading – I got another lot of books from the library today including a book about knitting with handspun yarn (circa 1987), and one about traditional guernsey patterns from England (circa the mid 70’s). The funny thing is that I now remember I borrowed this book from the library about 5 years ago LOL

Spinning – I practiced spinning some merino and couldn’t resist spinning a little bit of the (very expensive) alpaca/mohair blend top I had on hand. I’m definitely going to work on spinning that merino as it feels devine.

Sewing – Further construction on the BAG was done. The lining is in place and now I just have to whip up some handles.

AND I actually finished something, YAY!!!

I’m now going to make my evening complete; go to bed and read a bit of my new Textile Fibre Forum Magazine. I’m tooing and froing as to whether I should enquire about any unfilled spots at the Geelong Fibre Forum in September (I should just DO it and stop dithering!)

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Late last afternoon I started this bag, which I had planned to give to Bev today. I’m pleased with the way it’s turning out, but I don’t think I have time to finish it 🙁

I might try and put this week’s spinning lesson off until next Monday. It’ll give me more time to spin up a storm. (and besides, it’s Valentines Day… perhaps I should spend some time with Riscy LOL)

I tried some merino again and I actually spun some decent yarn (or as decent as a spinner of two weeks experience can expect). I also tried spining some silk (in Lap form), it would have made a nice fine embroidery thread.

On a personal note. Today is my first day in a new job. I’m officially in charge of other engineers and responsible for the work done in our group, how bloody scary!

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