Summer and Winter...

My Secret Santa Christmas Swap parcel has arrived over at Ulla's house safely and she has been able to open the decorations I made. ( The pattern is Mini Merry Stockings from The Birdhouse)

Here's the photo I took before I sent them - hanging on a bright green tree in my garden. Very Summery!

 And I borrowed this photo from Ulla's blog showing them hanging in a very different tree. Having only seen snow four times in my life I can only imagine what it would be like to have Christmas in Winter.

Tahks you Ulla for putting this on your blog - I have just loved seeing it.

Stitching by the pool...

For the next week (and maybe more) I will be spending two hours a day at the pool with Colly doing some swimming training.

I've picked a project to work on - it's actually one I was working on waiting at piano lessons. I wonder how far I will progress this week?

I am also trying blogging from my phone. I am not sure how the picture placement will work out. But anything is worth trying.

Edited to add the name of the design. It is Rosalie Quinlan's Christmas Treasures Wreath.

SSCS

My parcel has arrived from a faraway place but there is no place to put it yet as we haven't done any Christmas decorating yet. The school holidays have just started so I am sure something will happen in the next few days. But until then I will just have to keep my parcel safe.

And here is my ornament which I was allowed to open. As there is no tree yet I went to the garden to photograph it. We've had a bit of rain lately so there are some raindrops in the photo. Isn't it pretty? I can't wait to put it on my tree with the ornaments from past years.

Giveaway Draw

The draw has been done - I just found it was too hard to fight with the kids for the computer on the weekend to post before today.

Here is my Trusty Helper...all ready to go...

 The first name is out....

And the people who will be receiving the giggle buttons are

Debra 

and Lois.

I'll be contacting you to let you know and to get your addresses.

I just wish I had enough for everyone who commented. Thanks for visiting. 

A little giveaway...

Have you visited Red Brolly lately and seen the free Christmas sampler she has on offer. There is a bigger photo here of the finished item.

Cute, isn't it?

Did you notice the two Giggle Buttons included in the stitchery?

My plan when I went to the Craft Show was to buy a set of buttons for myself and also one set as a giveaway. I mentioned it to the lovely Kez and she gave me a set to use for the giveaway. How fabulous is that? I decided that I would still buy a set to give away and so now I have two sets to share with two lovely blog readers.

Just leave a comment before next Friday night Australian time and I will announce the results on Saturday next week. It couldn't be easier.

Thanks to the wonderful Kez and Dan from Giggle Buttons for the opportunity to do this.

 And here are the buttons. Aren't they sweet ?

Good luck!


I am happy to post worldwide.

Craft show...

On Wednesday Kayly and I went to the Stitches and craft Show ( Brisbane). We had a long day and when I went to visit Kayly today it seems that she might just be spreading rumours about me being a shopoholic. She says I was still shopping at closing time. Aren't friends supposed to support you and keep your secrets? To be fair, I was still shopping at closing time but that was because I had just found some felted wool pieces I wanted. I actually achieved what I wanted at the show - I got a pet mesh bag kit which I wanted to make for summer. Of course there was the felted wool and a pattern from The Birdhouse for making a pincushion. I did get some small kits which I haven't shown because they are for secret gifties - and that was also something I had planned to look out for.

 Interestingly a large pile of fat quarters jumped into my hands near the end of the day as well - I just liked them and they are the sort of fabric I like to use for smaller projects - bags, purses and sewing accessories.
We did go and have a good look at the Queensland Quilters show which was packed with beautiful quilts, giving us lots of ideas. If you have the time check it out - although the photographs don't look nearly as good as the real thing.
The next two pictures ( taken with permission) are of part of the stand from Giggle Buttons. They are working with Red Brolly as well so the display was very impressive. I also had a chat with Joy here - we always seem to find each other at Craft shows.

Come back and visit me tomorrow as I am going to talk about a little something I bought at the show and will be sharing.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S swap (2)

I guess I should show the things I made for Lida. I feel a bit silly because when I photographed them before I wrapped them I only took photos of the things I made - but not of everything else. You might have to visit this post of Lida's to see the other things I sent. Lida normally writes in Dutch but she has provided some English as well on this post which is nice.


F = Four Fat Quarters

R= Ribbons

I = Images ( Calendar of Queensland)

E = Embroidery Threads ( some of my favourite Cottage Garden Threads)

N = Needle Book ( and Needles) - a design by Rosalie Quinlan

D= Drawstring Bag

S = Stork Scissors and Scissor case.

The Something Extra parcel contained a Humbug Bag - Lida had admired them on my blog and so I included one for her.

I hope you enjoy everything Lida. It was fun making things for you !

F.R.I.E.N.D.S swap

I am catching up a bit with things I want to post. This post is about the F.R.I.E.N.D.S swap run by Khris of Sew Prim Khris. The idea was to send things which start with the letters in the word FRIENDS.

I had just arrived home from retreat ( that's still another story to come) and the parcel was waiting for me - of course I ripped it open straight away.Well, I did say hello to my family first....

My swap partner was Lida from The Netherlands, which is why this parcel is full of lovely blue and white goodies. The photos aren't the best because I took them at night as soon as I opened them. You might like to look at better ones on Lida's blog at this post.

 The card with the clogs had all the items written down so using Lida's words here what I received.

 F = for Feathered Friends and Flowers!  ( A lovely panel)

 R= for Ribbons in Blue and Green ( My favourite colours)

 I = for in a book very handy!

 E= for Empty but you may fill it yourself ! ( a fabric covered heart box)

 N= for Needles and Pins! ( Beautiful!)

 D = Dutch Shopping bag! (How did she know I love shopping bags!)

 S= for Snowy Cushion Cover! ( I can't wait to use this for Christmas)

Thank you so much Lida for all the lovely beautiful things - I love them all!

Good and bad....

The good is that my Tis The Season Quilt is finished. I posted the top a few posts ago but now it is quilted and bound, and I am really happy with it. I love the stripey border and binding and the little touch of gold it brings to the colours, as well as pulling all the other colours together.

Here's a close up of one of the corners. I mainly did stitching in the ditch but added two little rows in the outer border.

 You can see more finished quilts here

Now for the bad....

Yesterday I was travelling home along one of our major highways and it started hailing. I pulled over to the side of the road and waited it out with my three passengers. The hail stones were the size of golfballs and the noise in the car was loud. But being the true blogger I am ( smile) I took out my camera and took some photos. This is looking out the front of the windscreen with the hail on the wipers.

And this ordinary photo shows the road after the hail had stopped - This is a three lane highway ( in one direction) and it was just covered in ice.

The bad news is that there are dents in the car - we haven't really assessed what we will do about it yet.

It is just one of those things.

Going on retreat...

 I'm going away for a few days on a retreat here. I am not taking my computer so you won't hear from me. However I am taking waaaay too many projects and hopefully I will finish at least one thing.

And what does the photo have to do with this......nothing. I just found it in my photos and is what I found one morning when I opened a new container of margarine. I peeled the paper off the top and obviously there had been some air bubbles.It cheered up my day.

Activity happening...

Over on the Stitch-A-Long Blog there has been a hive of activity with lots of people finishing their quilt by the deadline of the end of September. ( It was a nice deadline - nobody is getting into trouble. It is just nice to have a goal.) I'm afraid I didn't get my whole quilt finished, as in quilted and bound but I did get my top finished before midnight of the last day. The fabric I used was Moda Adoring by Sandy Gervais and I stitched the blocks using lovely Cottage Garden Threads in the colour Plum Pudding.

I added and extra border to the pattern as I found that the light border I had chosen was too similar to some of the blocks. The simplest solution seemed to be to add the stripe ( which I am hoping will look good for the binding as well). It seems to pull the colours together nicely so I am happy with it.

It has been a lovely project to work on and I send my congratulations to everyone who has been working hard.

The Tis the Season quilt is designed by Natalie Bird from the Birdhouse.

P.S. Yes, Chooky, I will be going back to working on my Gardener's Journal now.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S swap

This year I participated for the first time in Khris's F.R.I.E.N.D.S swap.

Here are the packages I sent to my partner in The Netherlands. At first I had trouble thinking of something for each letter ( the idea is to have an item for each letter in the word friends)

In the end I had a lot of fun making things and packaging them up. But one of the nicest ( but maybe silliest) things was the pleasure I had in finding this ribbon which was just right for the tags. How perfect is that ?



As the sun set...

As the sun set on another day in hazy Queensland I made a decision that I needed to follow advice from Flylady - You are not behind! I don't want you to try to catch up; I just want you to jump in where we are.

Sounds like good advice for a blog too. So here I am - not worrying about all the posts I should have posted in the past weeks but jumping in right where I am today. Hopefully I can catch up on some of the things I have been doing.

Two weeks ago our school had a fete - so a friend and I made up some Humbug bags for the craft stall.

And my son's class was in charge of the Decorate Your own Cake Stall.

After a morning of cooking patty cakes I don't know if I feel like cooking cakes for a long time. Considering we only have a small school it seems that our fete did reasonably well. And with the added attraction of a circus we had a fun day.

getting back into things....

I've been away from my blog for a while, as well as having a quick trip from home. Can you guess where I went? There are some clues on other blogs but here's another one.... It's part of the skyline of Sydney with my son's favourite animal at Taronga Park Zoo. ( I think giraffes might be one of my favourites as well)

Our holiday started out just being a trip for me to go to the Craft Fair in Sydney but somehow it ended up being a family holiday as well with general sight seeing.

I had a great time meeting up with lots of friends I have met through blogging and also from my trips to Nundle the past three years. We had a meet up during the day and some of us who were staying overnight went out for dinner. It was such good fun.
Here we are at dinner - Lyn, Maree, Alison, Sandy,Leah, Chookyblue and Anita.( Check our what they got up to at the show.)You can see more bloggy friends on Chookyblue's blog. I didn't have my camera with me at the show itself so I missed photos while I was there.



Keeping in mind that I had to travel home by plane with a luggage allowance I had to be careful with what I bought. ( of course it has nothing to do with the amount of money I spent.) One thing I like to do when I go to a craft show is make a little something at the workshops. This time I went to one by Marg Low where we made the little Birdie Trinket. We got most of it done at the show - I finished the last little bit of stitching when I got home. It's really cute and Marg had done a fantastic job of putting the kits together - there was everything we needed. I also got two other of Marg's patterns/kits and can't wait to make those up. I also got some books and patterns. Of course the books had to be signed. I had fun at Anni Downs' stall - she had a lovely display and I also got some of the felt fabric packs so that I will actually get around to finishing some of the patterns I have previously bought.

And there were othe little things too - some more hexagons for my hexagon quilt, some Japanese purse kits and some socks to make some sock monkeys from. At the time of the bloggers meet up I had only bought two fat quarters - but I made up for it later on.

It was lots of fun. Will I go again next year? I don't know yet but it would be great if I could.

camping...

About a month ago we went camping at Neurum Creek http://www.ncbr.com.au/ and even though we have only just got back from another trip away we are going away this weekend. Here are some pictures from our last trip.

I am having trouble posting another post about our trip to Sydney but it doesn't seem to be working. So I am trying with this post to see if I can get it to work.

Edit : Got it working so you should see the Sydney as the next post. Yay!

Hexagons...

I've caught the hexagon bug. I've also joined the Vignette Hexagon Quilt blog which is following the making of the quilt in Leanne Beasley's second issue of her magazine Vignette. I've started using a Moda Scrap Bag of City Weekend. I don't know how many hexagons I'll get but it is fun to just make them. I've done eight since I started last Saturday...

School holidays start here in Queensland on Friday so who knows what I will get done for the rest of the month.