Sunday Mumblings

It was frosty this morning.  Only our second frost this winter (and the first was yesterday).

But frosty mornings usually mean sunny days and, sure enough, today was lovely.

Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine.  The boss of the world thought he might herd the ducks.  They were having none of it, and fair enough, they're about twice his size.

The chooks have started laying.  They were hatched on New Year's Day, so bang on six months old.

Floppy (for obvious reasons) is a North Holland Blue, which looks very similar to Barred Rocks.

This girl is unnamed as yet and she's a mix of Light Sussex and Golden Laced Wyandotte.

We put the cows on the lawn to mow the grass.  Grass converting itself to beef, yum, yum.

I tried to work on my swallow quilt but the kids kept annoying me and each other so I got them outside for some sketching.  It worked a treat to get them settled down.

Mine's in the middle, but I think I like my daughter's on the left best.  Although my son's, on the right, might make an interesting quilting pattern!

Hope you had a lovely Sunday too.

Christmas Picnic Blanket

Hello everyone, it's a lovely Autumn day here in the Bay of Islands, sunny, a little breeze and the promise of a chilly evening with a warm fire to enjoy!

I've been a little quiet lately - I've been busy organising my new computer.  I consider it housework and de-cluttering as I needed to do a lot of consolidating and getting rid of old documents and junk photos.  But now it's up and running and in it's proper place on my desk - so it will be back to the paper junk soon.

Yesterday I was at a little Saturday Stitch and Chat that we organised with our quilting club.  It was an attempt to get people along who can't come to our weekday meetings and perhaps interest some new members.  We had a couple of people who had never quilted before come along and they were so enthusiastic!  There was a 10 year old girl who I think I've converted to english paper piecing - she's going to come back next month and hopefully bring along a project.  How cool!

Anyway, I want to show what I've finished recently.  It's not particularly beautiful or complex but I'm hoping it will grow to be special.  My kids picked out these Christmas fabrics and this is a Christmas picnic blanket I've made out of them.

It's our tradition to go camping at Christmas time and so I don't feel I can break out the beautiful linens and table centres of a traditional Christmas dinner.  But I do believe Christmas is about traditions - the ones you make with your own family and I'm hoping this picnic blanket will be used and loved every summer and become associated with happy family memories.

I backed the top with a lovely old wool blanket and used no batting.  I left the old Mosgiel label on the blanket for a bit of history.  I free-motion quilted it all over with a holly leaf pattern.  And boy, did the woolly blanket fill up my machine with fluff!

Now isn't this pretty?  Totally fits my rustic shed/house.  I always check the specials when I'm in a garden centre - they often have flower punnets that are a bit overgrown.  These pansies and calendulas were $1 each and they've taken off and filled my blue fish-bin with green, little white pansy flowers peeking and hopefully lots of calendula flowers soon.  The nasturtiums are self-seeded.

And just for fun!  I was trying to take a pic of the backing I pieced for my turquoise and blue quilt - but gave up in the bright sun.  So you get a silly shot instead!  Have a great Sunday.

(oh, and if anyone can tell me how to resize photos on a Mac I'd be very grateful!)

I love Sunday.

How cool is this colour and texture combination from my garden today?

My Sunday's seem to be very productive of late.  Saturday's are duck shooting days for Hubby so they are just me and the kids and it's hard to get anything done - I don't bother trying, really.  But Sunday's! 

Today I had a few hours to myself in the middle of the day when Hubby took the kids out, he needed to buy some new trousers.  But even before he'd gone, just having two adults around means that it's not always me that has to sort out the kids.  So I got stuck in and turned over a vege bed and planted more broccoli and cauliflower interspersed with pansies (aren't they the cutest flower ever?).

I shifted the rooster house in the rooster pen that was shading my vege garden as the sun lowers it's arc in the sky.  Heavy, but Hubby was busy shooting pesky, chook-food-eating sparrows for me. 

The wee rabbits are seven weeks old now so I separated mummy bunnies from babies and penned the babies separately into female and male pens.  Cute, but feisty, and I have scratches all over my belly. 

I planted my first tree of the season (only about 699 to go, but luckily they haven't all arrived yet).

And I had several cups of tea in silence and did some more cutting and bonding for my mother-in-law's quilt.  I hung out washing, I even vacuumed!

Later when the kidlets and Hubby got home, we took the trailer down to our secret roadside quarry and got another trailer load of rocks and I unloaded them all and built a garden edge with them. 

And now I'll sleep well and look forward to tomorrow.  Hope you sleep well too.