Ridiculously gorgeous holiday weekend

I know I live in a beautiful part of the world.  And, living on a boat, have access to the most beautiful of the beautiful bits.  But seriously, The Bay of Islands on Easter weekend (a four day public holiday in New Zealand) was just showing off.

Snorkelling, fishing, exploring, beach walking, shellfish collecting, kayaking, sunset watching.  And just a touch of sewing to round it all out.

I'm a bit quiet round here at the moment because Easter marked the beginning of a two week school holiday.  I can't tell the kids to knock off their screen time if I'm not setting an example, right?  Have a good one, everyone and I'll be back with more quilty stuff in a week or so.

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!)

Frump

I woke up this morning in a frump - a frowny grump.  I'm tired, the kids are home from school again with snotty noses and headaches and are stretching my patience, 'someone' (no one is owning up) squashed the vacuum cleaner plug so I can't clean the floors and they are crunchy with dirt, I've a to-do list as long as my arm and all of it tedious stuff, four calves to feed twice a day, it's rained every day for about three weeks solid...........see?  I could keep whining on and on but nobody likes a whiner.

So I gave my own butt a kick and decided to be consciously grateful for things today.

The sun is actually shining and looks promising for the whole day.  It hasn't done this for such a long time, it's so lovely.

Those calves that I have to feed twice a day are cute and healthy and that's a big thing.  I know how quickly bottle fed babies can get sick.

My five year old birthday girl wanted a simple heart birthday cake, not a mermaid castle masterpiece, and just an afternoon tea with her cousins - grateful!!  Gotta love the photo bomb by her cousin.

The first bulb is up in my orchard.  I planted heaps but thought the chickens might have scratched them all up so I'm very happy to see this early cheer.  And I can see an iris budding up too.

I've got my design wall up and functioning.  I might put another sheet of flannel covered polystyrene under this one but for now my long quilts can just hang.  So grateful to have a studio space to myself and room to have a big design wall.

Now hopefully I can keep my grateful mood right through the day, especially dinner time!  I'm off to enjoy the sun and get a little vitamin D in my system.

Onwards and Upwards

Well, I got a disappointing email from the Beneath the Southern Skies convener - my quilt was not picked for the exhibition.  There were 71 entries and 30 were picked so I'm looking forward to seeing the final cut.  Not to worry, I have a place picked out on my wall for my piece "I don't feel lonely".  And I'm moving on to the next quilt!

'Scuse the toes!

This is the start of my next 'art' quilt.  I have a bit of a plan, but not sure how it will develop as I go along.  This is a Nikau frond, painted onto white fabric and I plan to cut it out and applique it.  We'll see how it works!

The front.

The quilting shows best on the back.

I've also been working on this quilt.  It should have been added to my WIP round up the other day, but I totally forgot I had it until I was rummaging around for something else.  The sampler blocks were from my very first quilting class.  Halfway through I decided I hated the colours so remade the blocks I'd done in colours I liked.  Then of course these ones have sat around for seven (!) years.  Now that I've sashed and bordered them I quite like them.  I've got to tie in a few threads and bind it and then it will be off to Quilts for Kids for a little person who really needs it.

School started yesterday and my boy had a great first day back - long may it continue as he isn't known for his attention span in class ;)  We spent our last day of holidays (Monday as it was a public holiday) out in the bay on the boat.  Just stunning weather and all round good fun.

Weather Window.

I took these pictures after the rain stopped yesterday.  It was early evening and the light was glowing yellow.  You can see the overflowing stream in the paddocks of the first picture if you look hard.

It was a lovely fresh feeling to see sunlight after so much water from the sky. 

Today we have had a few showers but I managed to get a handful more trees planted and a grapevine too.  Tomorrow I have a kid-free morning and I just checked the weather forecast - a blue sky day.  I'll be working hard, trying to get the last of the trees in the ground because the weekend weather is not looking flash.

The girls have been laying like crazy lately. I had my first day of 10 eggs (from 10 hens) yesterday.

It's been beautiful weather. Nice enough for me to get a little sunburnt when planting some trees. Time to break out the sunhats, sunblock and build shady huts for the kids where they can guard their treasure!

Frozen blueberries (one day they'll be my homegrown ones), a litte sugar and some homemade yoghurt - who needs plastic punnets with artificial bits and pieces? Am I mad to dream about owning a housecow?