Crafty finishes

I made another jumper!!!! It took about seven months - I ordered the wool in March - which is exactly over winter. I won't be able to wear it for another four months... and my next project is a short-sleeved tee! My timing is off (I think I should be getting faster at knitting, but I'm not).

So this is the Academie pattern, in a 50/50 bamboo wool blend from Bendigo Woollen Mills, and it is quite poorly executed because it was all sorts of techniques I hadn't done before. There was a lot of picking up stitches for the body and sleeves which is still obvious on the garment (it shouldn't be) and there is something strange going on with the decorative rows on the shoulder seams.

The v-neck was a bit tricky to get right and I didn't do a stretchy bind off because I was worried it would be too big and stretchy ... so of course it is ridiculously tight and I have to take my glasses off to get it on. But who cares, because it is done, and I am very pleased with myself. The bamboo makes it nice and silky to wear and the colour is pretty! Yay me.

This next one is completely out of left field - an old-fashioned rag rug. My life is awash in textile scraps of all sorts and I hate wasting it, so when this came up randomly on tiktok I thought I would give it a go. I donate any of my clothes that are fit to wear but old nighties and t-shirts and trackpants aren't generally wearable ... but they can be made into rag rugs! This is two nighties, four t-shirts, one pair of leggings, various quilting fabrics and a ghastly microfibre pillowcase. 

It is a very simple technique - cut into narrow strips and pull-up in loops with a big crochet hook. No finishing, no knotting, no latching, no covering the back. I bought proper hessian from Spotlight but it was far too tightly woven to do this technique with, so I ordered some very open-weave burlap from Amazon that is meant for covering your trees. It was also a tenth of the price for a five metre roll (I also used it for making my little shade house for the lettuces!) and worked out perfectly for a hook rug. 

I was very unsure about this as I was making it - Dad didn't help by commenting on the rag bath mats that my great-grandmother had made and which were apparently still in existence in my grandma's house when I was a child ... indestructible and unloved according to him. I don't remember them, but my rag rug is absolutely delightful. It has a lovely weight and heft, feels great on bare toes, and looks pretty. I've started another one. 

Nothing exciting

Dad has gone back home and we are back doing whatever it is we do. I went into Canberra for the very exciting business of getting a new fake boob - I never bothered with a reconstruction after the mastectomy, just a prosthesis - because my old one had split. "Aaaaargh I broke my boob" were the exact words, which perhaps resulted in more alarm than was warranted.  I also had lunch with a recently retired friend and we sat outside at the cafe at the musuem on a beautiful day, and enjoyed our freedom.

Before he left Dad covered over our strawberries. Despite being squashed by the pine tree felling, they are in remarkably good shape, so Dad felt it was worthwhile protecting them from the birds and seeing if we got any fruit.

This looks bodgy but is quite secure - we had a big thunderstorm with strong winds yesterday and nothing budged. 

I used some of the leftover netting and made myself a little shade house thing from the frame of the tall greenhouse that collapsed a couple of months ago in some violent weather. Actually I don't think I ever put the photo on here of the collapse - in fairness it was mostly held together by duct tape and optimism even before the weather (in July). 

A few pots went flying...

Portraits

 The local art group is having a portrait show and I braved myself did my first portrait and entered it. Technically, I suppose it isn’t really my first portrait, but it’s my first portrait of someone who I know and definitely the first time I have shown a painting of someone else to the public.

It isn't very good, but I did it and it does kind of look like him. It's our builder who has a really cool face (and also couldn't really say no when I asked if he was OK with me taking a photo to paint). 

I was also mucking about with a gelli plate, which is fantastic for doing weird sort of monotype prints. I did one of him with leaf printing in the background - the leaf printing turned out cool but then I tried an image transfer of a photo, and that didn’t work out so well. In fact I tried it several times and this was the best of the bunch - I entered it anyway!

I also entered this ink blot transfer portrait, on a gelli plate print background. It was squares and cross hatching which kind of reminded me of the windows he's been fixing :) A thematic piece.

I sat on the desk one Sunday morning at the exhibition and it was really fun - the exhibition is an excellent mixture of the genuinely wonderful professional and the amateur. Also the realistic and the abstract, paintings and photos, two and three dimensional. We had a lot of locals in to see who they could spot but also a few pleasantly surprised tourists. Yay for small towns. 

Dad in his other natural habitat

We were planning to take Dad to the beach, but it became a bit involuntary when the builder discovered a leak in our main sewer pipe, where the old clay meets the new plastic just past the house. Which is a lot better than it could be, but also required at least two days of not flushing or showering ... so we bailed to the beach. At short notice.

There's a bit of gardening that needs doing down here too, crosswords to finish and of course lots of lovely walks on the beach. No fish to catch, but that is an ongoing story. 

Visiting

The gap in posting is because I've been hanging out with my Dad who is here on holiday. He is a keen gardener and we have put him straight to work - edging beds, chopping things down and providing advice. So Much Advice. We are even following some of it. Number one came out for the night and to see Grandad, which was lovely - although an honours presentation was looming followed by the final report next month. And then uni will be done! So much hard work.

Dad and I made a dead hedge down by the driveway fence (in an area where nothing grows). I've been contemplating this for a while because I hate taking sticks and things to the dump, but they're too big and twiggy to compost easily. We can chip them, but our chipper doesn't like very dead and dry things, so you have to chip quickly after cutting ... and doing things quickly isn't really our strength.

So we put up star pickets and wooden stakes, then piled branches and cuttings in between. I thought it would look horrifically messy but it doesn't look too bad - and it's better than the barbed wire fence behind it. I plan to extend it as far along as we have material, with the idea that it will be a hedge that attracts birds and insects, and a bit of visual interest between the garden and the driveway, and it should break down over time. Maybe. It's all an experiment!

And here is an actual harvest of broad beans. These are the seeds I planted in the new no-dig bed under an oak tree on the western edge. I was surprised when they sprouted, amazed when they grew and astounded that they have actually produced a crop. They did not get watered, weeded, fed, sprayed or protected. We had broad beans for dinner and they were delicious.

The king parrots have been coming in close for food, which entertains my dad no end. They are a very Australian bird both in call and plumage.

Finished after ten years

This quilt has been in the cupboard of shame for ten years. As part of the studio organisation I said to myself 'finish it or throw it out' so I did a very bodgy job whacking it together and now it is done.

It ended up in the cupboard of shame because I decided on elaborate quilting in the same colour as the material. So I did the orange quilting, then some of the purple ... then started butting up against quilting I'd already done and realising it was MILES from flat, and there was absolutely no way to fix it. 

It was going to pucker and look dreadful if I kept on with the quilting so I put in a dim dark place and forgot about it. 

I didn't unpick or fix anything - just gave it the minimal possible straight line quilting in the ditch and put binding on it. It still operates as a small blanket, and I do still like the colours, but not really a triumph. I didn't even name it.

Sydney

On Saturday my Dad arrived from NZ for a visit, so I drove up to Sydney airport to collect him. Given it's a three hour drive I made it an overnight stay and found a hotel in the middle of town and played tourist for a couple of days.

The weather was glorious and Sydney put on its sparkling best. I haven't wandered round Circular Quay and the Opera House for years and years, and it is lovely. So many tourists from all sorts of places - including some questionable videoing. The influencers certainly weren't there last time I visited.

These giant rocks are an art installation and inflatable! You can walk among them and push them ... it's quite surreal because they definitely look just like rocks. Lots of kids who thought it was hilarious. 

I also did a bit of shopping and went to the Musuem of Contemporary Art. The art was disappointing, half their galleries were between shows and closed, but the cafe was lovely and I could sit and gape at the hugeness of this cruise ship. The bulk is quite astonishing.

And to the Art of Gallery of NSW which was amazing. I like their contemporary Australian collection which always throws up something unusual. 

And most importantly Dad made it on the plane and off the plane and survived the in between bits! And also the drive back to our place, where he is already making free with the secateurs. Wonderful.

Pretty spring things

Here's a better post than garbage - the beautiful spring flowers that we are surrounded with at the moment. I weeded (some of) this garden bed today. It involved crawling around under that blossom tree, which was very pretty and smelled very nice, but also involved lots of bees and showers of petals every time I moved.

The ranunculus that we planted as part of the big bulb order are popping up here and there.

There are heaps of these lovely purple bulbs, I can't remember what they're called.

The ajuga are flowering - I even went and bought some more at the garden centre. It is very odd to buy plants at the garden centre because you get one or two or even ten tiny little plants ... and they just vanish into the expanse of our garden. I am more used to chopping back, ripping out and cutting up than planting teeny little things and cherishing them.

The hellebores are absolutely thriving.

And so much blossom. Beautiful. It rained solidly on the weekend which was wonderful and very much needed. It was the town's arts trail weekend so we went out to a couple of open studios on properties out of town. Incredible art but mostly incredible locations and landscape: one carved out of a big farm right next to the Shoalhaven River with an enormous sky and one in a foggy rainforest valley backing right onto the national park. Even in the terrible weather we're glad we went - a good excuse to explore the neighbourhood.

Piles of shit

There are piles of crap everywhere in the garden and it's driving me mental. I am trying to be relaxed, because they are all absolutely necessary to projects-in-progress, but I don't like it. I sometimes move the piles from place to place, which doesn't really help, but lets the grass recover and reduces the risks of snakes. 

There is a lot of wood that we may well use in the future in projects, and which will be stored neatly in a 'spare wood' place.

The builders leave whatever they are using in one spot.

And pile their rubbish in another.

Anything that needs to be undercover is on the back verandah.

A large pile of crusher dust appeared last week, which I'm sure will be very useful, in a few weeks. I am mentally noting all the spots I will have to re-seed in autumn.

This pile of stones has already been useful, for drainage around the foundations, although it has spread for metres in every direction off its tarp.

And the pile of terracotta pots that I have been using to plant things in but somehow the pile is not getting any smaller. Not shown are the literal piles of shit from the builders' three dogs. We don't mind the dogs, they are all very friendly and lovely, but they do tend to drop a celebratory turd the second they arrive. So that's my rant, I am trying to look at the bits that aren't a mess, and there are lots of very lovely spring scenes at the moment. Which I will post about next time, when I'm more cheerful.

Arty things

I am still enjoying my art classes - and possibly showing some improvement? it is hard to know. The best thing is always Fred the failed service dog. I try to get decent photos but he is always either having a cuddle, or coming in for a cudddle, or cruising for a cuddle. Such a good boy.

I am still trying to do people. People are really hard, especially if you want them to look like themselves. This painting is fine, but it doesn't look anything like the photo I used as a reference ... which is why I'm not going to show it to you. We will call this Imaginary Man.

I didn't know what to do one lesson so the teacher suggested dancers, for movement. So I just did dancers! How much fun ... some are good, most are terrible, but it was interesting to do. So many options in how you put their limbs, and very hard to show where those limbs are, especially in monotone.

In paint-related news, this is the colour the consultant suggested we paint the house. I had sent through photos, including the studio, and she suggested we choose a colour related to the studio but much less saturated and much cooler. 

It looks very yellow in this photo - especially against the white undercoat -  but in some lights it looks cream, and in other lights almost green. She also suggested one of the million whites for the frames, and a nice grey for the fascias ... and a bright red for the front door. The red does look fabulous but I'm not sure if it's what I want to do. Given that we might have to paint the house ourselves for poverty reasons, there is absolutely no rush to make any decisions.

Christmas explosion

My quilt group is having a sale table at the exhibition in November - and we decided to sell christmas table runners. I'm not 100% sure why, but we have lots of christmas fabric and patchwork table runners are nice to look at and (comparatively) easy to do.  We had friends stay on Tuesday night on their way from Brisbane to Melbourne - a three day drive, we were the second night - which was lovely. They arrived about 7 pm so we met them at the pub and were able to get a seat by the fire - the cold change had come through and Queenslanders are very soft :) Then I went down the coast again on Wednesday to get away from the builders and make some table runners.

I had a three-day sewing fiesta. Made a big mess, didn't cook much, went for some walks and made four table runners which is probably enough. 

I still have to sew the binding down on this one. Nothing fancy but satisfying to do.

They all look quite old-fashioned, I'm not sure why. I picked fabrics from the shed and I might have gone a bit more traditional than usual. 

The beach was beautiful as usual. Wednesday it rained for hours, which was much needed. It is scary dry down there at the moment and hopefully a day's rain has helped with the upcoming summer. 

Thursday and Friday were much hotter and I went for some lovely walks. I could perhaps have gone swimming but it was a bit windy.