Quiet and pleasant

Another peaceful long weekend passed. I didn't do the list of chores I had planned, the boys slept in until midday, the sun shone and the birds sang. Or squawked, because they're Australian birds and very demanding. Friday night we had Zoom drinks with some friends that was a lovely catch up - not quite the same as in person but much better than nothing. Saturday was ANZAC day; the dawn services were cancelled of course but apparently people were standing at the ends of their driveways at dawn and remembrancing next to the wheelie bins. I did not take part in such nonsense for a variety of reasons (mostly the 'dawn' reason).



Saturday afternoon we met up with other friends for a socially distanced walk at the Jerrabomberra wetlands. It's quite easy to walk and chat while maintaining a two-metre distance, and we all agreed that it was wonderful to be out under a big sky and hear from someone not in your own family for a while.



The wetlands were looking lovely and autumnal, although because it was mid-afternoon we didn't see many birds. And there were thousands of people there enjoying the sunshine, although, again, not exactly crowded.



Sunday morning I went on a fabric hunt for backing fabric; Spotlight had nothing so I stopped in at Ikea on the way home with ALL of Canberra. Luckily you can fit all of Canberra in the average Ikea so I went in, grabbed six metres of the plain cotton and left again without too much physical interaction. And, even more amazingly, without buying anything that I didn't intend to buy!!! An Ikea record.



Monday was a public holiday and another beautiful day so I went for a long two-hour walk over the hill to the trendy shops with cafes (all doing a roaring trade in takeaway to people wearing exercise gear) then around the posh houses to admire the gardens and back home. To a well-deserved lunch and a quiet afternoon sewing. Other than that Scrabble was played, crosswords were done, fires were lit, a lawn was mowed (not by me) and we enjoyed a bit of serenity before this week started. Back to work for me, back to on-line school for number two, back to the home office for my husband and a new list of chores for number one son who is still having a gap year .... more gap than year.

Sparkle sparkle

Canberra continues to sparkle in late autumn. Blue skies, yellow leaves, green grass. I am spending WAY more time outside than I normally do and it is lovely. We've had the fire on a few times even though it is really only t-shirt weather during the day. But the fire is for our mental health we've decided, temperature is irrelevant. The flames are so pretty.



I had a bit of a reaction to the flu shot so stayed quiet yesterday but went around the lake again today. Luckily I didn't have to write into the paper about what a terrible idea clockwise was because this is Canberra and at least a dozen people got in ahead of me! I knew they would. Most people are suggesting the best solution, which is to have the walkers go clockwise and the runners/cyclists go anticlockwise... that will never happen. Way too complex for the average punter. See how we are focussing on all the big issues? Crowding is not a serious problem though, it is Canberra.



The main challenge at the moment is getting the boys out of the house once a day. My husband has set up a little mini office in the family room which is working well, except it gives him visibility of the boys in the kitchen. "Threesies" is apparently an afternoon meal, involving sausages. Number-two son has been using three pots a time to making something with instant noodles. We wouldn't let him fry the remaining bananas so he walked down to the shop, bought himself more bananas and cooked them; which is (a) enterprising and (b) disgusting.



This is a statue for George V opposite Old Parliament House.  I'd never really looked at it before but I was taking pictures of the trees and skies, and the statue. It's very of its time ... a chunky Art Deco chess knight. And in quilting news, I have been back at the solids with smaller squares this time. It's based on Bonnie Hunter's Carolina Chain (except not on point, which I love the look of but don't like doing) and those 2" squares take FOREVER.

Number one grown up

My baby turned eighteen this week! Legally an adult, for what it's worth at the moment i.e. not much. I don't think spending the day quietly with his family at home was exactly what he had envisaged, poor thing. But we scraped together a few presents, bacon and hash browns for breakfast, Brad made an exceptionally delicious chocolate mud cake, and his favourite takeaway was open for dinner, so not a complete loss. 

We had cake at afternoon tea time and video chatted with the aunts, uncles and cousins in NZ. Technology was a bit of a challenge (especially with my family; video calls work best when at least one person is NOT talking) but in the end it was lovely and at least some social interaction. We ate the cake in front of them, telling them how awesome it was. Haha.

Of course we could have done this at any time in the past five years - it's not like they were going to pop over for cake even if we weren't all in lockdown - but we didn't, until now. Same with work, all these ways of operating we didn't really bother with because we didn't need to, and now we're realising it actually works quite well. There could be some long term changes, or I hope so. Here they are crammed into my iPad.

I am really enjoying my week off and not having to think about work (I do anyway, but I don't have to). Yesterday I popped in for my flu shot but just went to the nurse's office and didn't go near the team at all, which was a bit mean but hey, they might want to ask questions. Then I went for a run but just couldn't be bothered, so slowly walked around the lake. Clockwise, as suggested for reasons of social distancing, which doesn't work at all when people travel at very different speeds, for reasons of maths. I might write in to the newspaper ("Outraged Mathematician" or "Euclid's Ghost" perhaps).

Number one son is taking a gap year to work and travel, which has gone completely disastrously really. He is an even tempered person who generally looks on the bright side, but I do feel for him. And it could be the whole year sitting at home.... which is not at all what he had planned (I will tell you what he had planned after I check with him it's OK).

Tsunamis and standing waves

This is the quilt idea that happened when I was making Blood and Gold and arranging all those flying geese - when some of them were next to each other and had the same fabric it made a cool chevron effect. So I did a whole quilt of cool chevrons - in the same solids - and I really like it.



Nothing very earth shattering about the construction. I did stitch and flip and used the offcut triangles to make the border. This one needed a border so I thought blue was the best colour to tie it all together. There was a bit of headscratching to make sure that the chevrons happened - I had thought I had scientifically planned it so it would be infallable ... but no. No no no. Swearing happened.



After being a bit disappointed by the way Blood and Gold's quilting turned out I decided to go with an allover pattern in my good old standby baptist fans; random this time. I like it more than something that follows the pattern lines, at least on this quilt. It is called "Tsunamis and standing waves" because they are two different but related things. I was not aware of that, and then I was, so the quilt can mark my gaining a small amount of knowledge.

The black work pants

I did have a shot at photographing the boring black work pants that I made ... or posing attractively while someone else took the photos! Limited success, but you get the idea. These photos were taken a few days ago - the boxes have all gone now and we are fully unpacked and the furniture is back to what it was! So nice, having space again. Here is a photo of me showing how pockets work, in case you don't know.

It's a slightly stretchy black suiting fabric - pockets at the front, wide slightly-elasticised waistband, and generally awesome. I'm only working two days a week in the office at the moment, so I can wear the same pants for two days, change my shirt, maybe change my shoes, nobody sees me anyway so who cares! And elastic is good because the combination of having everyone home all the time and a new amazing oven is leading to MUCH EATING. 

Number two made two loaves of a plaited raspberry bread yesterday; enriched dough and very yummy. We've had all those things that have either been impossible or disappointing for years ... home-made pizza, roast chicken, spanakopita. It's even nice to clean up afterwards because you can actually get it clean instead of just slightly less disgusting.

A lovely Easter

I feel as though it should all be doom and gloom at the moment but honestly, we have just had a very pleasant Easter. I missed the Folk Festival terribly (it was cancelled a while ago, many thousands of old people in one spot was never going to be a good idea) but had a little Spotify festival on my own to make up. And the weather on Friday and Saturday was cold, windy and rainy; lovely to be tucked up at home (with our first fire of the year!!! Yay!!!!) but would have been quite unpleasant listening to bluegrass in a tent.

Friday afternoon it cleared up at the end of the day and everyone took to the outdoors. I went for a long walk through the suburb to check out the community oval where they are building a massive demountable emergency hospital. It's over the road from the main hospital, and next to the school, so kind of practical. But kind of sad, I like that open area, and the thought that all that space might be needed for buildings and beds is terrifying. Fingers crossed it won't be needed. But it was a beautiful walk.



We spent most of the days putting our kitchen back to rights which took MUCH longer than I thought it would. The kitchen is basically the same, but it still seemed to take forever to decide what went where, and how it would work, and whether we needed all those shitty bent cake tins and random plastic spatula things. When we packed it up we had poked various things in various cupboards throughout the house so it took a while to unravel.  Also five gold stars to my Dad who did a tremendously thorough job on packing away the good china and glass bowls - all survived unscathed and are now safely back in the good china cupboard to continue not being used.

It is not quite 100% done (and we have nowhere to donate the things we don't need, which is a bit frustrating) but we moved the dining table back into the dining room and it is like a huge weight off. We have the space back, and can move around a bit more freely, and it is lovely! When the dining room was empty it got vacuumed and mopped and scrubbed, so that is nice too. I will post photos of the new kitchen when it is sorted - it is weird how exactly the same it is. Because our kitchen worked so well I always said I wanted exactly the same, but new ... now that we have exactly the same but new it is perhaps lacking in excitement. But the oven and the cooktop are magic, and the benches are beautiful, and it is shiny and fresh and clean. For now.



This photo is the garden at the moment (with some galahs) - it is all over the place because the late rain convinced everything it was spring. It is not usual to see the grape vine turning while the roses are still blooming, but at least it's green(ish).

A time for elastic-waisted pants

The dress standards are dropping here in Canberra Heights, especially as the weather gets cooler and working from home kicks in. Trackpants, slippers and fluffy jumpers are the new normal - when it's not painting or running gear. So I have hauled out the saggy baggy elephant pants I made last month ... flat fronted, elastic backed, super roomy and generally unattractive.

They are perfectly wearable for round the house; but it is a bit disappointing because I made not one but TWO muslins - unpicked the first muslin, marked the lines and made another muslin to make sure it wasn't too enormous, which is my downfall with elastic pants. It's based on a Style Arc pattern but I made so many amendments it doesn't bear any resemblance to the finished product. And then I still wasn't sure so used this very humble fabric (IKEA decorator fabric, yes I know) which is just as well because they are definitely at-home trousers.

These are shocking photos I know. I'm not prepared to lift up my t-shirt at the front and show you how the bulges are managed (although I love seeing this on other curvy sewers, which is very hypocritical) and there is nothing very exciting about the construction. The fabric is actually quite a nice slubby cotton but was very cheap.



The only good thing about these pants is that I then went on and made a pair of plain black work pants in the same style but with even more amendments and they are MAGIC. Fitted but not tight, comfy but not sloppy and with some awesome pockets. So I get there eventually ... I can't promise photos of the black pants because it will be very boring indeed.

Painting the kitchen

We had a busy weekend re-painting the kitchen. It is now all done other than the last bit of painting - floor down, all the appliances connected, benchtops in and the tiling done - so we were very keen to get the last job done and move everything back to normal! Our temporary kitchen has been doing a fantastic job, but I am getting a bit sick of having everything from the kitchen and family room in boxes or on shelves or just lying around squashed into one of the other rooms.

So this weekend we wrapped all the new stuff in multiple sheets of plastic and repainted the ceiling and walls. New architraves and cornices needed priming, and being a kitchen everything needed a good solid sugar soap scrubbing. And didn't it come up nicely! There was quite a bit of filth on the ceiling, which we had been ignoring. We always thought our ceiling and walls were white, because they looked white, but when we painted an actual white on them it was clear that they were all quite cream. So it is much brighter than it used to be - we also got new lights, that are very shiny and bright - but hopefully not unworkably so. When we move the furniture back in it all that brightness might just show how crappy our stuff is ....

So it took most of the weekend to do the various preps and coats. Because we have brick, and timber framing, and beams holding the house up there are a lot of strange little corners and bodgy bits of wood here and there, that make painting a challenge. My "oh ffs just paint over it nobody will notice" threshold is much lower than my husband's, so I have learnt to go with what he thinks and it makes it much nicer in the end!

Just one more coat on a cornice today and then we can give it a proper good clean, including all the cupboards and windows, god builders are filthy, and start moving everything back in. In other boring household news, the downstairs toilet overflowed on Friday, meaning literal shit everywhere and much plumber expense. Never a dull moment here, lockdown or no lockdown.

Circus circles

This latest batch of sewing was triggered by the fullness of my solid scrap tub - lots of them but I didn't want to just do random or crumb blocks. So I trimmed them into little wedges so I could make circles, and of course they were very bright, so I put them on a plain blue background. I used ric-rac to finish the edges because it looks cute and also because it's very easy. Much easier than trying to hem it.

 

But I really don't love the finished product. It is not streamlined enough to be classy and not loud enough to be interesting. I sewed some more plain circles in between, but just bad machine stitching because I slightly got the shits with it. So the circles are wonky, which doesn't increase the love I'm feeling. The centre blue circles are crappily done too.



I think I will have to make it louder and more overwhelming. Perhaps a border? I was going to do flying geese or triangles using the blue background but that might not be garish enough. I will ponder.