Whatcha Reading?

I'm linking up with Judy's Watcha Reading Tuesday (even though it's Wednesday here, but you know how this goes ...)  I am currently reading Death comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James, which I picked up a few days ago at the annual Australia Day book fair at Braidwood for the princely sum of one dollar. It's only a couple of years old, and is a murder mystery set as a sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - so it takes place at Pemberley, where Lizzie Bennett has gone to be Mrs Darcy and live happily ever after.

This book is awful. I like P.D. James and a good murder mystery. I love Jane Austen and all the characters in Pride and Prejudice. But this book is stilted and awkward and silly. Everyone stands around declaiming in a self-consciously 1803 way. The plot seems dippy and the characters are shallower than a dried up puddle. I will probably read it to the end, because I want to find out whodunnit, but then it's going on the donate pile without a second glance.

A few more holiday shots

Just to show you that our week at the beach wasn't all sand and surf, here are a few more holiday shots. To show that we did spend our time wisely and productively. We finished a really hard jigsaw.



That house was a struggle. And the trees were nearly impossible. But we defeated it!!!!! The beach house where we stay is pretty basic, and doesn't have a dishwasher. This is number two son quite bemused by the whole idea of a scrubbing brush and dishwashing liquid. The boys were (mostly) in charge of the dishes and they could not believe it had to be done three times a day, and moaned a lot about the outrageous burden of it all.

And we went out one evening for fish and chips by the river. Delicious fresh fish and a lovely setting, but that doesn't stop this child burying his nose in a book. We normally have a restaurant rule that when the food is on the table the books are off it, but hey. It's a holiday...

Well, this sucks

I'm not having a good quilt moment with these moths in windows. In fact, it's been a bit of a disaster since about halfway through making the blocks. I didn't really like the colours and the boringness of the block was making me a bit spare. The brown/orange/yellow fabric is just plain ugly. But I persevered, because you do have up and down moments during a project, and sometimes you just have to keep going even when you're not too sure.

So I made 64 blocks, and batted them and quilted them all individually, and they made a nice soft pile of quilted squares. I trimmed them down and there was a bit of a wild variation in size, but I cut them largely to the same dimensions and hoped for the best.

And I've today finished joining them into pairs, with the navy and white spot fabric, and that was OK, but not very precise. Because I'm unconvinced that the end result is going to look any good at all, I'm rushing and can't be bothered lining stuff up. And quilt-as-you-go is reasonably hard to get exact, you have to use foreign things like pins and rulers if you want it to be square. But I ended up with 32 pairs.



And then I joined the pairs into fours, and it all started to go horribly wrong. Have a look at this. Those are inches on the mat, so I'm about two and a half inches out, on a 24 inch piece! That is not good. If it was even one inch, I would just hack it off, but it's actually going to look completely stupid if I chop this off - I'd lose half the pattern.



So I've thrown it all in the corner of the room after swearing at it and now I'm going to start something else. I'll find it again when I'm tidying up in 2016 and do something with it then.

No words today, just pictures

Happy Australia Day!!! We've been engaging in national pastimes ...  go to the beach, get wiped out by some surf, drink beer and burn something. Love it.

And some craft

My apologies for not much quilty activity on the blog here. My sewing room is upstairs, in the hottest part of the house, so on the very hot days I tend to avoid it. I've been hibernating in the main room next to the air-conditioner, reading, surfing the net and generally bludging.

But we did a bit of craft. This is from Better Homes and Gardens, a show that the boys just LOVE and which I find excruciating. They love the craft and the pets and the home improvements and all the other  joys of a well-maintained suburbia. Maybe they don't share my feelings of inadequacy and dismay when I hear about Lawn Maintenance and Interior Decor. But the one thing we all do with BH&G is bag out Tara. Tara is responsible for some of the mankiest pieces of crap that have ever littered a home improvement show. Tara takes perfectly good lampshades, spray paints them purple, and hot glue guns shit to them. I think Tara has to be taking the piss sometimes, but her wide blue eyes and big toothy smile only ever show a complete belief in crafty wonderfulness.



So I was a bit surprised when the boys wanted to do some Tara art. But it stopped them bickering for five minutes, so we bought the finest canvases the dollar store had, dug some masking tape and old sample pots of paint out of the carport and rolled away, just like Tara.

It was quite fun. I only had one shouty with number two son on how you had to do the RIGHT WAY not LIKE THAT. And now we have these glorious artworks to hang somewhere.

Enjoying our christmas presents

We are enjoying our christmas presents. I got my husband a coffee machine - it's a Nespresso, which has the little pods that you put in and a milk frother attached. It's very easy and no fuss and it makes lovely coffee (or we think it's lovely, we may not be coffee gourmets). Since christmas we've both been having about eight coffees a day, just to push the little buttons and make the whooshing sound and fluff up some very fluffy milk.

It's also the brand that George Clooney advertises, so we call this machine a George Clooney. And the coffee, and the process, and the pods.
   - I'm having a George Clooney, do you want one?
   - It's over there, next to the George Clooney.
   - Sorry, I can't hear you! George Clooney!!!!!



This is my present, a keyboard. It's not a very fancy one, just from Target, but I'm not a very good player. In fact I'm not a player at all - I had two years of lessons back when I was (maybe) seven years old before the piano teacher politely suggested to my parents that if I wasn't interested and wouldn't practice then maybe they could save their money and she could get more enjoyment out of her few remaining years. She was quite old.



So I printed something out from the internet about which note means which white or black thing on the keyboard and bought a book called "Easy Piano Jazz Hits" and away I've gone. I can go about ten minutes before I get bored, which means my progress isn't very rapid. I can do a tune with my right hand just fine - I'm comfortable in the treble clef because I played the tenor saxophone for one glorious (to me) and hideous (to the rest of my family) year back in 1983. I'm a bit more hesitant with the left hand but I can work through it ... but putting the two hands together? Impossible. I think it's just practice though, so I'll keep pegging away.

Until I get bored. Remember the watercolours and instruction book I got the christmas before last, to help my great new adventure into watercolour art? I may be a dilettante.

Rolling along

The long summer holidays are just a-rolling along. Some days it's super hot, and some days it's not. Some days I'm at work, and some days I'm at home. Some days the boys are foul bickering satan spawn, and some days they are wholesome fort-building angels. Some days I finish the day with an icy cold vodka-based cocktail, and some days .... scratch that. All days are vodka days.

Thank you for your nice comments on my last post. I think the lady I was talking to had very good intentions and just wanted to be helpful ... but yeah. So part of the holiday kicking back was icecream. I think this was one of the hot hot hot days.

And I bought a new DVD player too. Even though it wasn't really reduced to clear. Don't you hate it when they do this?