Little Fish Creations

Changing Rooms

Chris has been working hard behind the scenes on this little blog (like writing code and stuff!) so that we can move it all over to a WordPress format.  Yippeee!

It’ll make posting a lot quicker 🙂  and he assures me that I’ll even be able to post from my phone!  Imagine…. I’m working on something, take a picture with my phone and blog about it immediately.  And all from the comfort of the couch or from my whirlwind sewing room, or wherever.

We’ll have a go at moving it over this weekend.  The web address will stay the same and the old content will be available but we’ll have a whole new set up.

Cutting out the Crap

I’m a big fan of Google Reader.  But a few high volume sites take up much of my precious blog reading time and provide little ‘creative nourishment’ in return.

Today I was ruthless and deleted sites like a mad woman.  I’ve gotten rid of anything that has major focus on consumerism, high end product design and any of that trend crap. It has been leaving a bad taste in my mouth recently.

How great it is to feel NORMAL

I can now celebrate the end of feeling tired and sick every single day!  It can really make a girl feel resentful and annoyed at the whole idea of childbearing and more than once I cursed my femaleness. 

Anyway, I have lots of pent up ideas and creative impulses that are getting a little hard to reign in now that I’m back in business 🙂

OK see you on the other side…. hopefully with a shiny, new, (and working) littlefishcreations!!

Well this is what I’ve been working on for the last few months:

If you sort of squint your eyes you can see what might or might not be a baby’s head!  This is the best scan photo they got… the rest of the pictures indicate that I could be incubating a miniature Darth Vader.

Anyway, so yes, we are expecting another baby 🙂  due mid September.

We’re nearing the end of the first trimester thank goodness.  I’ve been suffering from the usual tiredness, nausea and general lack of motivation that comes with early pregnancy. 

This might explain the lack of any posts here as I’ve been doing nothing but laying on the couch moaning, ordering Chris around and putting endless episodes of Chuggington on the TV to keep Jasper amused.

Though he’s going ‘cold turkey’ next week as our TV will be having a holiday at the repair place.

I haven’t been feeling very creative lately, except for the urge to knit Jasper a jumper… in the middle of summer…  Crazy I know.

I’m using Elizabeth Zimmerman’s percentage system for a jumper with no seams.  Though I’ve mucked up my gauge and I’m sure the jumper will be too small :-0

My garden has been disappointing lately.  The tomato plants nearly all have yellowing leaves, wilting branches and dropped, unripe tomatoes. 

Also, the peas, broadbeans and spinach have finished before I was ready.  Jasper loved plucking and eating the peas 🙂

Some ‘crops’ have failed to grow altogether… leeks, beetroot, radishes(!) just to name a few. 

But, today:

Today Jasper and I did some harvesting!  And I’ve realised that, maybe, it’s not all gloom and doom after all :o) The beans are going well, and the zuchinni harvest has begun. But best of all I am sucessfully growing tomatoes regardless of the pitiful state of the plantsl!

In celebration of my new upbeat attitude to the garden I went out and turned/aerated the compost 🙂

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in other news:

I’ve been Jamming, Pickling, Saucing and Fermenting!

Highlights have included the creation of my own sauerkraut via fermentation.  I did this at the request of Chris and fully expected that I wouldn’t like it.  But it’s DELICIOUS… even Jasper loves it!  The best bit is that I’ve used my own cabbages – very satisfying.

The Apricot Jam is divine! I’ve also made more pickled beetroot and pickled red cabbage – which we love to eat.

The plum sauce is lovely and would go nicely with pickled pork or even drizzled on ice cream I reckon.  Best of all the wild cherry plums were foraged from a creek line at the back of a friend’s house and were 100% free and otherwise going to waste.

I’m planning on making ginger beer next, we’ve been collecting soft drink bottles for the brew (Chris has been brewing beer like mad lately which is pretty exciting too).

Well that’s got you up to date 🙂  Though one last thing;  I drew those labels onto lunch bags, cut them out and stuck them onto the jars using glue stick.  Thanks to Melissa from Tiny Happy for pointing me in that direction.

It’s been a LONG time in the making… but I’ve finally finished a quilt made with the red/reddish fabrics I collected over 6 years ago!

I think I originally had a pineapple block quilt in mind but my passion for intricate piecing didn’t last the distance (unfortunately!).

Then last year I decided to make an irish chain quilt which only involves piecing squares. However, when I layed the quilt out I realised that some of my reddish fabrics were too pale pinkish and the effect was ruined against the cream/tan background.

So I improvised and came up with this lap quilt:

I had this quilted by a long arm quilter, an expensive option, but I just wasn’t going to get to it myself anytime soon. I’m just glad that it’s done and in use.

It’s just the right size for couch snuggling, goes very nicely with our lounge room stuff and almost makes our place look well put together!

This was such a fun stall set up, and I was very pleased with how cohesive it all looked considering that Kate and I worked independently with just a ‘brights and linen’ as a theme.

Kate’s work was especially lovely and I’m blown away by her ability to put colour and pattern together.  Here is a little collage of some of the things she made for the stall:

Kate gave me the yo-yo necklace that is at the feet of the (adorable) lion above and I get loads of compliments every time I wear it 🙂

One of the great things about doing the market was (suprisingly) the dicipline of making multiples, I really liked working in this way!  It was also lots of fun chatting to other stall holders.

The worst bit was that we didn’t sell very much, which felt pretty disappointing.  I really did have unrealistic expectations about how much I would sell in a 4hr period LOL.  But it was a great learning experience and I’m SOOOO proud of what we achived.

I’m not sure that market stalling is for me. But I wont rule out doing more in the future. 

However, I am thinking about another venture/project which I have tentatively named ‘make 3’. When I get the urge to make an item, I will actually make 3 of that something … keeping one for me and offering the other two for sale 🙂  Online somewhere.  I’ll get back to you on that one!