Poor boy

I should say poor boys, as Eddie is feeling a little left out while Rufus gets all the attention. Rufie has to go back to the vet tomorrow for x-rays on his feet. Two of his claw sheaths are infected again. Apart from that, he is healthy and content to be hand fed for a couple of weeks while he wears the Elizabethan collar. I think he secretly enjoys the extra love and smooching on demand.

Tonight I have a journal to work on for a round robin so I hope the boys won't be too demanding and keep sitting on it while I try to write and draw. I need to illustrate a cookie recipe, and write a bit about myself, which I always find kind of tricky to do in someone else's journal. Then I need to think about some swaps that I have signed up for. They are a little bit different from the ones I have done so far, involving stamp carving and making some micro-zines (which have to fit into a matchbox!). It will be nice to have some new challenges.

Garden update: the poo crisis of the other day was averted by digging the top layer in with a spade. Simple really. Ha. Now I am keeping the bed watered while I wait for the seeds to arrive. My strawberries are still alive. We have a few warm days forecast for the end of this week, but then it looks like temps are heading south again! Very strange. I still can't get asparagus crowns because we are about a month behind spring!

Ready to plant?

I only needed to put eight more bags of compost on top of the second layer of pea straw. I put half a bag of sheep manure on top of that, but it was very lumpy and I ended up ruining a pair of gardening gloves trying to break it down. Then there were puddles on the top when I watered it - I don't think that's supposed to happen. Help!

Instant vegie patch

Well, it's sort of instant. Here's the story so far.



During the week I collected my first lot of materials. One 1200x1200x300mm flat-pack treated pine kit which Mum discovered a few weeks ago at Buggerybunnings. A large bag of pea straw and four 36 litre bags of improved soil. Eddie and Rufus were sad to see their favourite cardboard box disappear but I needed it for the base.

The picture shows that I need a lot more to fill the raised bed, so I'm going back to City Farmers this afternoon to get more bags of compost, I figure I will need at least 12 more bags. I also have some hanging baskets to replenish.

More later. I haven't made anything for a while and I'm itching to get back to my sewing machine and hand embroidery. Once the gardening is finished for the day I hope to relax over my needle and thread.

Back in the saddle

After yesterday's embarrassment with the zipper, I needed to whip up something quick and easy last night to prove that I could still do it! I love these fabrics from Moda. I found the tutorial on the awesome Indie House blog.

It all went horribly wrong

The little bit of sewing I did before I went out into the garden has now been thrown out. Everything was going swimmingly: the reverse applique was in exactly the right place and the stripes were all lining up nicely, until for some reason I decided to cut the zipper off before I sewed the side seams. You can guess the rest.



Looking on the bright side, I got a lot more done in the garden since I was in such a huff. The bokashi contents are buried, and the rocket seeds I planted last Sunday are coming up. After a nice hot bath and a bowl of beef casserole I'm ready to sit down and sew again for the evening.

Feeling Lazy

I've used up a whole morning of good weather when I could have been in the garden. But I didn't feel like being in the garden, I felt like finishing off my little embroidery.



Perhaps this afternoon I will venture outside since there is a lot of work to be done and a load of bokashi to be buried. I'd better take a peg for my nose.

Finishing things

Tonight I am very tempted to start a new project that I'm really looking forward to, but I must resist. The two things I'm working on at the moment are a bit slow in coming together. I did go out after work yesterday, but when I got home I was on the couch with my embroidery for long enough to listen to Beethoven's Ninth. I worked on my abstract piece with simple running stitches and French knots.


I had a few spare minutes at lunchtime so I continued customising my evil corporate empire bag. I don't think I can work on this for more than a few minutes at a stretch: it's flipping awkward sewing the fabric to the bag!

Monday off

We had a public holiday (Silly Old Bag's Birthday) in Perth today so I took full advantage by staying inside sewing in my PJs all day. Bliss.

I started yet another little project and worked on a few others, but the only thing I finished was another little house. Ho-hum. I get a bit bored making the same things over again so I wanted something a little different to work on. So I got out the fabric paints and slapped them onto some calico, let it dry while I was eating dinner and have started doing some simple embroidery onto it.


























The pic is scanned so the colours are a bit out, so I'll take a proper photo when it's finished.

My little container of thread ends was starting to overflow, so I decided to get the embellisher out and needle-felt the thread ends to a piece of black felt. The result was a very interesting textured fabric which I will cut up and use later in something else, but it looks quite good as a piece on its own. A bit like a cross-section of Jackson Pollock's vacuum cleaner bag.



Sometimes I think keeping a container of thread ends that are too small to stitch with is doing nothing to discourage my habit of hoarding. But I just can't bear to throw these things away.

Here's a funny photo from last night. The boys wanted me to come to bed, but I was on the computer, so they both tried their usual trick of jumping up and sitting between me and the monitor. I took a photo and even when I was downloading it they refused to move, so I took another one of them with the first photo showing on the screen in the background.

Garden wildlife

Such a lovely day today. I decided to get a bit of weeding done, and I also planted my kaffir lime tree into the front garden and threw down a few rocket seeds. A few creatures of the garden wanted to have their pictures taken. This lazy bee was just wandering around, and I felt brave enough to take a close up.


I must have disturbed this wolf spider's burrow - at least I think it is a wolf spider. Wikipedia tells me they go around carrying their egg sacs. She looked about as comfortable with her egg sac as a heavily pregnant woman and was no doubt a bit cheesed off that I had made her homeless.


Of course there were the inevitable ants' nests everywhere in the garden and I did my best to avoid them. After I'd finished in the garden and was sitting back in front of the computer, I felt a little tickle in my shirt. After several half hearted attempts to brush it out, I finally took off my shirt and shook it: out fell a large bull ant. I was pretty lucky to get away from that one without a great deal of pain!

Little house

Last night I decided to sew the little house ornament, but I made the door a bit too small. It's still quite sweet though. I'll make another one for the swap, maybe tomorrow. It only took about an hour to make and was pretty simple. Thanks to orange flower for providing the lovely tutorial.

Tonight's project is to customise this very plain hessian bag with the "C" word on it!

Mushroom or chicken?

I spent all of last evening stitching my doodle. The red mushroom looks more like some sort of polka dotted chicken pecking for worms in the ground. But never mind. The apron is ready to send off. And I had a lovely restful evening.



I'm not sure what tonight's project will be. I've started playing around with some beautiful rayon thread that caught my eye in the embroidery shop the other day. But it's a real pain in the bum: won't lie flat, and the thread ends fray quickly and get tangled up during stitching. But it looks gorgeous so I will persevere. I really do need to work on my satin stitch. But I also have a swap coming up that involves sewing a little house, and I might start that instead.

A long time between posts......

...but I'm back to blog about *embroidery* - my latest passion.

The pic above is of a little project I completed the other day and submitted to the Sublime Stitching flickr pool. I was googling today for "free hand-embroidery patterns" (I am such a cheapskate) and was thrilled to see a link to the Sublime Stitching blog where Jenny Hart had added my picture with a nice comment. Really made my day!

Right now I've got a couple of small projects on the go. I'm participating in a round robin with four other women in which we are to send an embroidery item around the world. Each person will embroider something on their item, then send it on to the next person until it completes its journey and we all end up with a nice keepsake. I have chosen to do an apron, because I found a couple in Coles for $3 (cheapskate again) and I'd rather have an apron than a tea towel. I'm starting tonight so that it will be ready to send on the 1st October.

I doodled a little picture and transferred it via the laser printer method onto my apron, and have picked out a few bits of floss with which to whip it up. I'll keep you posted on my progress - perhaps I'll even have a pic of it finished tomorrow.....

An avalanche of books

Eddie and Rufus were very generous today and sent me off down to my favourite bookshop (Planet in Mt Lawley) to choose a few titles. Those gardening sessions I had planned for my holiday might have to be deferred for a while. (The book Rufus is reclining on is called "Zakka Sewing".)

A Heart - it's anatomical!

I'm preparing a matchbox swap in which my partner has quite an intriguing profile. There are many cool and interesting things on her list of likes, including "anatomical diagrams (especially of hearts)". So I finished the matchbox and then started looking around for some things to include with it, and one thing led to another with fabric paints and embroidery, and now I have this:



Not sure what it is going to be. Perhaps a pendant, but it's quite big so maybe a fridge magnet. I especially like how the arteries turned out -- I used blue variegated thread. I think with a bit of stuffing it will turn out awesome. Will work on it later tonight.



Here's the swap so far: Hedgehog matchbox, Hippo stamp, little H bead, Hand, Heart, Honeybee, Hope and Hare buttons. Guess what the swap is based on? I'll give you a hint: it is a letter of the alphabet!

























This is the stamp that I carved - she also happens to have hippos on her list of likes!

Bottlecap pincushion

Lazy days

It feels so good to stretch out across the whole bed! This must be what he tries to do at night when I wake up perched on the edge of the bed, almost falling out.
























Woken up by the flash!

Rusty & friends

...Partying on a Friday night.

For Valentine's Day

Mother and child reunion!

An eye for an eye

I've been getting right into embroidered bottlecap pincushions lately. They are such fun to make and I think my hand stitching will keep improving as I find more stuff to embroider. This one and the flowering cactus are to be sent out tomorrow as part of a private swap!