happy finish dance

I’m about two weeks late in posting about my first finish due to my computer being in the shop for eight days!
My Scrappy Log Cabin quilt is completely finished (except for the label). I basted it before class (with the help of my teacher, the shop owner and one of my class mates) on Monday 2 September as planned. My teacher came up with the quilting design and it’s the feature that many people have commented on when looking at the quilt in “real life”.
  
A finish to start the month is a great feeling!

It’s amazing how much was done over four days; especially considering this quilt had languished as a UFO for over twelve months! The quilting was finished on Monday 2 September and the binding was attached and sewn down on Tuesday 3 September. Choosing the fabric for binding this quilt was easy – I just repeated the solid brown I used for the inner border. The quilt was washed to remove all traces of marking for the quilting on Thursday 4 September and photographed on the line while still drying.

And this is the back (before quilting) if you haven’t seen it before.

I need to buy a proper waterproof pen to make my labels – the pen I have been using smudges.

I have a very full schedule from now until the middle of October. Early next month, DD and SIL are going on a trip on “The Ghan” (a train) which goes from Adelaide on Australia’s southern coastline to Darwin on Australia’s northern coastline (and vice-versa of course), a distance of 2971 kilometres (1851 miles). This trip takes three days and is to celebrate SIL’s father’s 60th birthday. Two very active, energetic boys under four would not enjoy the trip so they are coming to stay with us for a week. I will probably need another week to recuperate! ;-)

This weekend, I am tutoring two sessions (Double Knitting and Intarsia & Picture Knitting) at the biennial camp of the Knitters’ Guild of NSW – one on Saturday morning, one on Sunday morning. Next week, we have three billeted guests arriving on Thursday for our church conference (Thursday night to Monday lunchtime). Because I’ll basically be out of the house or hosting all that time, my crafting time will be very limited for the rest of the month so I decided yesterday I was going to get another finish “under my belt” in order to continue with my theme of 2013 being a year for finishing projects!

So here is my second finish.

These blocks were not made by me. they are leftovers from someone’s sampler quilt (the same one I’m making which I talked about in this post). I merely joined the four blocks together (in March!). The project stalled while I searched for suitable backing fabric. Working from donated fabric is often a challenge or a compromise. The fabric that I used for the backing is not ideal but it works!
The red in the flowers picks up the colour of the binding which I had already chosen.

The blue reflects the blue flowers in all of the blocks although it is a lot more intense in the backing fabric. I had to piece this fabric, even though I only needed to make a 27” square – it had been stored for so long that it was filthy along the fold lines. Washing removed some of the dirt but the fabric was also badly faded so I cut the folds of the fabric away and pieced my backing. If you look carefully at the photo below, you’ll see where I pieced it – between the quilting line in the centre and the quilted square on the left. This colour is also more accurate than the one above.

This 24” square quilt is another going to Yasminah’s Gift of Hope after our group’s Airing of the Quilts in April next year. The quilts are given to parents of babies “born asleep” or who die soon after birth. Sometimes the quilt is buried with the baby, sometimes the parents keep the quilt as a keepsake – it is totally up to the recipients. 

But wait … there’s more!

Last night I finished the first of the Purple Cocoon Socks. Today I will cast on the second sock and I will take them to Camp with me as my knitting project. I have taken a photo of the pattern with my iPad so I will not need to carry the book with me – I was going to have my iPad there in any case!
It’s hard to take a good photo of oneself wearing the sock but here it is:

And you know what, the fit in the foot is not too bad after all!

Linking up with Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday over at Missy Mac Creations (edited to say I'm back from Camp, happy but exhausted -- and that the link is now direct to the TGIFF host page)

a story that moved me

I am still here! Between the de-cluttering process and an extraordinarily busy schedule for the second half of September and the first half of October, plus the lack of a desktop computer, I have been quiet but not idle.

My computer was in the shop for a week -- the Trojans were, apparently, well and truly embedded. They came from opening a trusted website (who knows which one?) so please be careful and don't fall into the trap I did, thinking they come only through the spam email we are so careful not to open.

Last Thursday, I tried to use my iPad for this post. Everything looking fine in a preview edition but the video didn't come up on the published post! I don't know how that works!

I hope to be back before the end of the week to do a craft-related post.  In the meantime, I have added added a video that really touched my heart. The video is nearly eight minutes long but well worth watching. I hope it touches your heart too. (By the way, I am not suggesting you need to buy the song as the video suggests, that's totally up to you; I haven't!)

This is Australia -- federal politics

On Saturday, Australians voted for who they wanted to govern the country for the next three years.

Voting in Australia is compulsory for all citizens aged eighteen and over. That is why elections are held on Saturday. The fine for not voting is currently $50.

Australia is a hybrid of the Westminster system of government. The head of our country, as a member of the British Commonwealth, is Queen Elizabeth II. She is represented in Australia by the Governor-General. The current Governor-General is Quentin Bryce. 

Photo taken from Governor-General's website
www.gg.gov.au

The Governor-General is not a political position as such but the person who is to be Governor-General is chosen by the Prime Minister of the time and recommendations are made to the Queen, who usually accepts the nomination. 

There has been talk for many years now about Australia becoming a republic. We had a referendum about it some years ago, but the referendum resulted in Australia continuing to be a constitutional monarchy. 

Back to our federal elections:

The Australian system of government is of two houses: the Lower House, the House of Representatives, and the Upper House, the Senate. The people who sit in both the Lower House and the Upper House are all elected by the people. There were many political parties represented in the elections on Saturday, but basically we have two major parties: the Australian Labor Party and the Coalition, which is made up of a partnership between the Liberal Party and the National Country Party. The Australian Labor Party is on the left of politics, the Coalition are the conservatives, or right wing. Right now, both parties are very close to centre in their philosophies and, occasionally, it's hard to tell the difference.

The country is divided into 150 electorates, each containing roughly the same number of voters. Each electorate votes for one person to represent them in the House of Representatives. There may be as few as two candidates standing for election in any electorate, up to as many political parties as there are at any given election. In the electorate where I live, we had seven candidates, one from the Australian Labor Party, one from the Liberal Party, one from the Greens (the largest of the "minor" parties), one from the Christian Democrats, one from One Nation, one from Australia First and one from Palmer United Party.

Each voter had to number each of the seven candidates in order of preference. Put simply, the candidate with the largest number of votes wins and becomes our representative in the House of Representatives for the next three years. This happens in a similar fashion (according to the number of candidates) in every electorate across the country. The major party with the largest number of votes (assuming they have 76 seats or more) becomes the Government, the other major party becomes the Opposition. The leader of the party automatically becomes our Prime Minister. We do not have have the American system where we vote for the leader of the country independently.

This past Saturday, the Coalition won 90+ seats so they are the new Government and we have a new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. Mr Abbott served as a Minister (1998-2007) under the previous Coalition Government, which led the country 1996-2007. He was also leader of the Opposition from 2009 till now, so he has a fair bit of experience at the highest levels of government and we hope and pray that he can do justice to the office of Prime Minister.

Photo taken from Liberal Party's website
www.liberal.org.au

In 2007, the Federal election resulted in a "hung parliament". Neither of the two major parties were able to claim a clear majority, so deals had to be struck with the four people who had been elected by their electorates and who belonged to either one of the minor parties or who were independents (people acting on their own, not as a member of a political party). This is clearly not an ideal situation and it was with great relief that we saw a majority government returned in this election.

The Senators are also elected by the people. However, this time they are elected on a state wide basis, twelve senators form each state, and two each from the two mainland territories, 76 senators in total. Senators generally serve for six years. The Senate has a great deal of power as they can block any legislation even though it has already passed through the House of Representatives. 

I won't confuse you further by detailing how Senators are elected. I hope this has been of some interest to you in understanding how our country is governed.

2013:The Year of the Finished Project --September edition

Warning: there are no photos in this post, sorry. My computer, with all my images, is in the shop undergoing treatment for spyware! I am posting this from my iPad.

Well, here we are; two thirds of the year over and less than seventeen weeks to go of 2013. A sobering thought, at least for me -- this year has not turned out at all I like I planned!

I wasn't expecting to spend three months renovating DD's house; at the beginning of the year, the idea of moving away had not even entered DD's head!

I certainly didn't expect to get shingles either!

De-cluttering wasn't unexpected but it did hit rather suddenly!

However, as host of this here Linky party, I'm tired of excuses and tired of my UFOS. I'm planning for the final third of this year to be more productive, craft-wise, than the previous eight months.

So, first, a reality check on my August focus list:

1. Country Houses quilt -- untouched due to forgetting to buy batting whenever I was at LQS
2. Ambassador of Love mittens -- untouched; can't find the yarn to finish
3. Westall cardigan -- untouched
4. Scrappy Log Cabin quilt -- flimsy and backing finished, to be basted in class 2 Sept
5. Purple Cocoon socks-- untouched
6. Gift of Hope quilt #2; substituted by Gift of Hope quilt #3 -- finished 29 August

There's no more to be said; it's a sad indictment on the host!

Lets turn our attention instead to my focus list for September:

1. Scrappy Log Cabin quilt -- quilting and binding
2. Westall cardigan, aka as “Cardigan for Me” – get it done and on my back!
3. Scrappy Heart blocks – enlarge all thirty and turn them into a flimsy
4. Country Houses quilt – time to get it off the shelf and on to our bed
5. Gift of Hope quilt #2 – get it finished
6. Purple Cocoon Socks – just get them done, they've been on the needles too long!
7. turn another set of blocks from the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2012 into a flimsy

Edited to add that I'm linking goals #1, #3 and #4 with Nothing but UFOs over on Carrie's blog, A Passion for Applique. 

We're only five days into this month but I've already made a start!

The Scrappy Log Cabin quilt was basted on Monday. The quilting was finished on Tuesday and the binding will be attached this afternoon.

I've decided that waiting for my "desire" to knit to return is fruitless, best I just take control and move on. To this end, I dug out the Purple Cocoon Socks on Tuesday evening. You may recall that I stopped knitting these socks because they were for me and I thought they were a bit too small in the  foot. Having decided to just get on with it, I determined that if they didn't fit me, they will fit either DD or mum, so it was time to get them finished. I found using two 40cm (16") circulars very awkward so I only managed twelve rows on Tuesday night. Last night I did another twenty-four rows of the pattern and the final twelve rows of ribbing. Now I just have to bind off and the first sock is done!

Things are looking up for me now -- no turning back, onwards and upwards! I want to finish the year with a flourish!

How about you? Did you meet your goals for August? What have you planned for September?

Please link here with the URL of your specific blog post so we can all pop in and cheer you on!

making progress

I think it must be true that to tidy up properly, first one has to make a greater mess! It’s certainly true in our house; WM is tidying up his study/library and one can hardly move in there! This is what my family room looked like a week ago after we started on my sewing room.

  

Thank you to all who responded to my dilemma about the tub of fabric. Many people said that they would open it and sort the contents; three said they would go one step further and photograph the contents then put them back. That was a really good suggestion; however, there were literally hundreds of pieces of fabric in that tub (ranging from scraps to yardage), squashed down and locked in so tightly they couldn’t have moved if the tub were tipped upside down!

Here’s the tub with just the top of the contents taken out:

n the end, I decided to open the tub and sort the loose pieces of fabric into rough colour groupings: white and off white, black, grey, purple, blue, blue-green, green, yellow and lemon, orange, pink, red, brown and “low volume” beiges! I also ended up with a pile of fabrics that were mostly florals but some abstract prints that couldn’t be grouped by colour. This is what part of my sewing room floor looked like last Wednesday morning.

As some of you would know, I sort all scraps bigger than 1” square into colour groups so the pieces of fabric and the associated bag of coloured scraps have ended up in drawers.

What’s in the tub now? A lot of the fabric in the tub had been sorted into groups packed in individual zip lock bags so I left those and put them back in the tub. I also put any large pieces of fabric (a metre or more) in the tub. When I’m looking for backings that will be the first place I look.

so back to my sewing room…

Here are before and after photos of the wardrobe (closet):

There’s space on the top shelf for storage of completed quilts and knitting projects until the time comes to donate them. The red bag on top of the drawers and the plastic bag on the top shelf hold metres of fleece bought on sale for making warm ponchos for disabled patients and/or bed blankets for the local animal shelter. The tub with the bright yellow lid holds scraps of batting. Two of the three boxes on the right are completely empty – I’m trying to decide whether to fill them with miscellaneous "objects” that I don’t often need or to fit another set of drawers in there! Those drawers are very useful; the ones in the wardrobe hold stash that belongs to the community quilting group, the ones in the corner near my ironing board hold my private stash (yes, it’s small)!

The bag on the floor is one of the two bags of scraps detailed in my last post. The quilt on top of the drawers is my Country Houses quilt which is supposed to be the next UFO in line – when I remember to buy more batting! The cylinder beside it is actually two sheets of Teflon to protect my iron and ironing board when using adhesives for appliqué! The white cord in the left foreground leads to my cordless iron!

Other parts of the room are still untouched but it’s so much fun to be in here now that I don’t want to tidy, I want to sew!

I need to spend some time sorting out the storage of my knitting yarns but I’d rather be quilting!

I wonder if tidying my yarn stash will wake up the desire to knit!