Meh

The good news is my sewing machine has decided to be happy again!!! Moody bugger, I've named it after a previous boss who had psycho mood swings and whose name I won't share on this blog because, you know, don't want to get sacked. After another completely unsuccessful couple of hours on Monday I went on-line and made a long long list of fixes (it turns out this is a very common problem with this machine) and tried them all, even the ones I had already tried .... and finally something worked. It won't be the same thing that will work next time, but I still have the list!!!

The bad news is I made this little top, which I thought I would like, but which I do not like at all. Too bland. I am trying to think of ways to spice it up a bit with borders but everything I auditioned looked off, so this is going on the shelf of shame for a while. There must be something that can turn it from boring to interesting, but I have no idea what it could be right now.

After disrespecting my husband for going into work on the weekend I am now heading in on my day off - we both provide secretariats to committees (very, VERY different committees, in fact he would probably deny any comparison between our work) and when those committees decide to meet, then you're in there with them...

Not such a fun weekend

This weekend was quiet and boring - we had a walk on Saturday morning and that was nice. The weather has been really unseasonably warm and clear ... I know we're due for another cold snap but at the moment it feels like winter is forgotten and spring is here. Deceptive.

We walked past this big male kangaroo. Normally kangaroos are quite shy and bound away as you get close but this one just stopped and stared. Not going anywhere. The big ones can go you if they're feeling threatened, so we just quietly tiptoed past and continued on our way. You would not want to get scratched by a kangaroo, or kicked. 

For some reason in our house kangaroo testicles are known as "disco balls" ... and the boys have decided there is a kangaroo secret "attack" signal when the biggest kangaroo scratches his disco balls. Which they do all the time (fleas, I'm guessing) so we could only tiptoe quietly for a few paces before "Run!!! RUN!!! THEY'RE GOING TO ATTACK!!!". Oh the serenity of the nature walk.

Saturday afternoon we decided to get stuck into the vegie beds - we'd been going ten minutes and reached the point of no return with open cow poo bags when my husband's phone rang ... it was work and that was him until about 9 that night. So I dug bags of cow manure into the vegie beds for the afternoon ... actually quite enjoyable but I felt it in my back the next day. Not muscles I am accustomed to using.

And then on Sunday I spent the whole day cursing my sewing machine which, for some completely unknown reason, decided not to free motion quilt any more. It just kept skipping stitches, refusing to catch at all and then breaking the thread. Over the course of about ten hours I changed the top tension, the bobbin tension, the presser foot pressure, the needle (four times) and tried eleven different threads in the top and four in the bobbin. And every combination of all of those. 

I took the darning foot off and put it back on, I took the darning plate off and took it back on. I even tried every single stitch length, although it can't possibly make a difference. I brushed out all the lint and even went down the shop to buy five more different types of thread to see if they would work. Nothing did. I was full-on sobbing in frustration by the end, because it worked yesterday perfectly and NOTHING HAS CHANGED. I did test pieces in different fabric and batting and it made no difference. I'm going to try again now but not for long because I nearly smashed it with a hammer yesterday. It might be I'll have to take it down the shop but I'm trying to avoid it because the staff there are a bit dim. Wish me luck.

Clamshells done

I don't know why I haven't posted all week - it's not as though there has been anything particularly interesting or busy going on here. Maybe it's all the spring flowers distracting me. I've quilted and bound my very bright and cheerful clamshells - I wanted to call it "Cupcake Fairy Unicorn Blossom" because it's so pink and girly ... but the boys thought that was far too sooky a name for a quilt and it needed something tougher so I changed it to "Shredder Ripjaw". Hah! That'll teach them. The boys are always very interested in the names I call quilts but their suggestions are universally hopeless.



I quilted it in an all over pattern from a book called "Mindful Meanderings" which I like - the book has lots of quite simple quilting patterns with variations on a few themes. I used one that goes in rows that I think looks a bit like a kite.



Maybe it's clearer from the back ... or maybe not. Anyway it was quite straight forward to do and it's not the kind of design or colours for elaborate quilting!

A quilting exercise

I finished off another quilt on the weekend while stuck in the house with the children ... and I also did the downstairs windows inside and out - which is completely irrelevant but it's made a huge difference, you can see outside now! I made myself do one chore before I went and sewed, and the windows were Saturday's lucky winner. Anyway the quilt I finished was this one - it is called "Bagel. Bagel."



I made it for two reasons - firstly because I discovered the twelve-inch crumb blocks when I was tidying up my sewing room a couple of weeks ago (the outer border) and secondly because I am still enjoying free motion quilting on my new machine and I wanted to try something a bit more intense. So this one has scrap blocks and lots of nice pale open space to try quilting on.



I did the feathers free hand - getting more even although not close to perfect - and an echo on the outer fill. And the inner fill is four different ones for practice ... this is the pebbles.



And these are the christmas lights - some kind of loopy meander.



And then a wave meander - I don't know what you call this - it seems a bit basic to even have a name! The fourth side I haven't got a photo of ... it was meant to be straight lines but they weren't very straight at all. I don't think I'll be doing that free motion on anything I care about - might stick to a walking foot for straight lines.



It didn't make much of a dent in the 6 inch crumb blocks, but that's OK - as I said it was an exercise for the quilting rather than anything else! I'm pleased with the way it turned out, although I'm not a huge fan of very dense quilting. Even with a nice cotton batting it makes it quite stiff and uncuddly for something that you want to put on a bed. Maybe after a few years of washing machine and wear it will soften up?

Spring!

Winter ends in about two days in Canberra ... one day you're completely encased in woolly clothes and thinking it might snow, and then half a week later the blossoms are out, the daffodils are up and everything's sparkly. And then sometime in October it will go into full-on summer and stay there until March. I like the change of seasons but it seems to be happening every second day now! Because I am getting so old. This pink blossom is up the street and it is SO pretty.



This is the Manchurian pear tree on the border of our driveway - another pretty tree. Beautiful autumn foliage too.



I managed to get out for a walk this morning; this weekend has been a bit of a shambles. We were going to go for a nice long walk yesterday morning but number two son had a bit of a cold which gives him asthma, so me and him stayed home in the sunshine while the other two climbed Mt Ainslie. Steep apparently, and millions of people. And then my husband's week of leave came to a crashing halt as he had to work Saturday afternoon and evening - and he's just gone back in again! Actual meetings too, which means he puts on his suit and tie. I think if you have to go in on the weekend you should wear your trackpants, just to make a point, but he disagrees.



So today's little walk on my own was a nice oasis of tranquility - and wattle! The wattle are out and the hills are a carpet of yellow. Murder if you suffer from hay fever apparently, but I don't, and I love yellow, so wattle is a favourite.

Circles into clamshells

I turned the orange and pink circles into clamshells and sewed them into a top. Originally I was going to have the clamshells going up and down but it looked a bit strange ... actually VERY strange ... so I had to add the borders at the top and bottom to make it a square quilt. Excuse the terrible photo, it was blowing a gale and the top was billowing around like a mad thing. And I haven't trimmed the sides yet :)



I love the pink and orange! It's very girly though, I don't think I'll be able to get it onto the boys' beds without them objecting. Mostly it was a technical exercise to see how to piece these kinds of curved things ... I have a few ideas on more graphic designs that could be really interesting, especially in solids.

What I did find is that the areas, where the points of the shells are, is very bulky with seams - I tried a few ways of limiting the bulk but without success. I think that any design that relied on a lot of circles meeting at one point would be quite difficult .... which might have an impact on what I'm trying to do! It doesn't matter for this though, it's not like there is going to be very detailed quilting on this one, you could hardly see it. And you can't look at the quilt for too long without a bit of eyeball burning. It's quite bright.

Yesterday's walk

Yesterday morning was bloody freezing with an arctic wind and a severe weather warning ... so we went for a walk. Yay for us! Not a long one, about 5km and not too steep or too far from home. We walked through a frost hollow - an open space formed because the temperatures drop too cold for trees, which we could well believe - and then through a variety of native forests, which is even less interesting than it sounds. But it was all fresh air.



I said "look like you're in a frost hollow!" which perhaps got the reaction it deserved.



At the snack break I said "look like you're in a remnant yellow box woodland!" which was even less inspiring.



The last part of the walk was through a cork oak plantation that the early Canberrans thought would be a good idea to plant back in about 1917. Cork oaks take decades to mature to a point where you can harvest the cork, and nobody really anticipated the advance of the screw cap. Never mind, the cork apparently does get harvested and sold, and now it's all part of the new arboretum. You can see where the trunk has been stripped and is slowly re-growing.

It was strangely fascinating because I never think of cork as tree bark, even though my head knows that's what it is. And it was very pleasant to walk in. The boys thought the best bit of the walk was the road underpass because if you shouted REALLY loudly it echoed for full five minutes. Boys.