Out On My Own

I went to the movies today to see the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I loved the books and have been looking forward to the movie. I always envisaged Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomqvist even before I knew he was in the movie. He was perfectly cast. Rooney Mara was also a very convincing Lisbeth Salander.

Of course adapting such an intense novel would be difficult but I though the movie was fantastic. I don’t go to the movies very often and at $18.50 a ticket (that’s about $19.50 US Dollars for my USA friends) I am much too cheap to go unless I really really want to see the movie. This one was worth it.

A Finished Quilt!!!

I have finished and bound my Gira Rosa quilt. It was designed by Michelle Marvig and published in Australian Patchwork and Quilting. I was lucky to grab a kit from Michelle so a)I didn’t have to think too hard to match my fabrics and b) mine looked like hers  - which I loved.

Anyhow, here are the pictures.

On the grass – this shows the whole quilt – it is 60×60 inches.

Gratuitous shot over the chook pen. Please understand this is MY quilt and I would NEVER do this with a client quilt.

Do you like my mystery vine next to the chooks? I think is is a pumpkin. It came up a few weeks ago and I decided to leave it there and see what happened. They must be messy eaters and throw their food out because there are several tomatoes and another maybe pumpkin vine on the other side growing too.

Ditto.

Flung over the clothesline for a better detail shot.

More detail. My quilting is indeed freehanded. Those feathers come out of my head, through my hands guiding the quilting machine and on to the quilt.

And showing the border. Look – the binding is on too. I machine bound this one – it is mine, mine, mine and to be used for snuggling under in winter.

I love my new quilt and as quick as the quilting seems to be, I started making this in, I think, 2009. Maybe even 2008.

Visiting

We went to visit my friend who lives at the winery today. She has the cutest 1yo twins. We had a nice visit.

We’ll be back in a few weeks to pick some more of these. It is nearly vintage time.

Housework

Boring topic, isn’t it? I have been planning to clean out my kitchen for a while. This morning I was thinking about it before I got out of bed and decided I would do it today. Not necessarily all of it, but at least the pantry to begin with …it might look all ok but the tell-tale signs of stuff just shoved in there are clear to see.

It holds so much. This is evident when everything comes out – there is a lot of real estate in there.

Lots and lots of stuff.

I went through everything and tossed a few out of date items (not too many I am happy to say). Lola was watching me with amusement.

Items were grouped and re-installed after a quick wash of the shelves. I kept all of my GF foods together. My breakfast items are in the container on the left – I eat a mix of nuts, seeds, yogurt and fruit and it was tedious getting out all those jars. Tins are to the right of the GF food.

There is a snack area next to the cereals – this is where I will place appropriate foods for the kids to eat. Underneath are baskets with pasta and other dry goods. Pizza trays are in the corner. I will get another 2-3 baskets and place the plastic plates and extra cutlery that we use when entertaining into one of them and put it next to there.

I found some extra space on the bottom of the pantry for my rice cooker and slow cooker – both bulky items that were difficult to pull out of the cupboard they were living in.

I am very happy with it now – it took about 3 hours to do.

I found all these bread tags lurking on the shelves – ewewww – are people lazy or what?

Now my kitchen is clean again – if I hadn’t taken these photos, nobody would believe it happened, especially the people who live here.

And I found a little friend of the insect that we found the other day. It was on the retaining wall next to the front steps and I saw him when I was coming in from the letterbox today. It looks like a juvenile version. I took his picture and left him there.

Not So Quick Strippy

Normally, Strippy Quilts are pretty quick to make. Mine wasn’t. I bought the fabric in June 2010 (for myself, for my 3X th birthday). I finally pieced the strips in March 2011 to make a demo quilt for the DVD I made for Quilters Companion. In the DVD, I did a bit of ruler work. Like 3 diagonals on one strip and a teeny bit of feather.

It stayed that way on my bookshelf in the studio until January 2012 when I finally pulled it off to quilt.

It was still on the zippers – I just always put clients’ work before my own. I finished off the crosshatching and had a bit of figuring to do for the feathers – I did have parts of the spines already stitched. Here it is being loaded back onto the longarm.

I had to try and make the feathers look like they were crossing over each other. Took a bit of fussing but it worked OK. I will not own up to the wonky bits if you can’t find them yourself.

 

It needs a wash and blocking then I will bind it.

Stuck!

Someone wound themselves up in the sheer curtain of the living room.

Guess who?

No I am not telling. I will give a clue – it wasn’t a three year old as you might expect…..

Family Day Out

Yesterday we went for a visit to our favourite pie shop for lunch. Blogged previously here. We were given a voucher to go here for Xmas from some in-laws.

As usual, I has a skim caramel latte. Yum.

Now that I am avoiding gluten, I had a freshly made Vegetable ‘quiche’ fresh from the oven – yes they were making a batch as we arrived and I waited for it. It was worth the wait. It was full of roasted vegetables, pumpkin, kumera, potato, carrot and held together with a mix of egg and milk (or cream?). I could make these at home.

After lunch, we went to the town of Leura in the Blue Mountains. This is a rather touristy town with a mall lined with boutiques. Very nice, but very expensive wares. There was a toy shop we visited right before Xmas that PJ wanted to re-visit as he wanted more time to have a look and has been bugging us to go ever since. (He did spend his $20 that he had saved up). I walked up and down the ‘mall’ with the older boys and left the other two with hubby in the toy shop. We went into a chocolaterie and I bought two of these caffe noir beauties and four chocolate fish for the brood.

We took a drive to Leura cascades to eat our chockies and have a look.

I started playing around with the hipstamatic app on my iPhone.

Changing ‘lenses and film’.

 

We went to Sublime Point for a look at the famous Three Sisters. They are on the ridge in the foreground as it descends into the valley. Those three rocky outcrops.

It is a long way down to the valley from the lookout. Yes, that’s my finger covering the lens in the top right of the frame. Amateur.

We had a nice day out together.

From the Garden…

No, not vegetables…stick insects.

 

Hubby found this near the shed this afternoon. It looked just like a gum leaf on a stick. It was amazing!

These guys are the master of disguise, aren’t they? We took him back outside to take a picture in natural light.

Striking a pose!

Then he was placed carefully back where he came from.

And you thought this would be about veges? Ha!

Second Sighting

Seriously people? It is still over three months until this food is appropriate.

Is special food still special if it is available months prior to the event?

First Quilt of the Year

I finally put the borders on my quilt and quilted it today. I made the top in class in November. It just needed the borders popped on (easier said than done).

For the backing, I decided to piece in a strip of the fabrics that were used in the top. I like the effect that it has. I quilted with red thread in the bobbin and a taupe colour on top. Above, you can see the backing with the quilt folded on top of it along with the charcoal coloured batting.

The backing is loaded onto my A1 Quilting Machine.

Quilting in progress. I used Swirl and Twirl for the all over quilting. It is one of my favourite designs for this style quilt.

The finished quilt laid out on the floor. It isn’t my favourite quilt of all time (I am still deciding whether I even like it), but it will have a home on one of the boys’ beds, I suppose.

And the backing with the pieced strip in. Is it wrong of me to say that I like the backing better?