Goodbye Cerego!

You may have noticed that I've changed my blog header.  And my Instagram bio.  I wouldn't be telling the truth anymore if I'd kept it the way it was.  You see, we've moved off the boat, but not only that, we SOLD her!

My old blog header (in case you couldn't remember!)

Many people didn't see it coming.  To be truthful, I didn't see it coming either.  But when my husband and I decide to do something, we do it.  We discussed selling the boat, it made sense, so we listed it that evening.  And several weeks later, she no longer belongs to us.

Cerego is a big boat, and she is an old boat, and she is a wooden boat.  All things that add up to a fair amount of ongoing work and maintenance that we realised we were not going to keep up with if we weren't living on her.  Plus we really didn't need such a big boat if we were only going to go out on her for weekends and holidays.

We're really happy for the new owner.  He's just the right guy to take over the love and care of her.  And yes, we are a little sad for ourselves.  We won't be able to watch her steam up and down the harbour without some nostalgic feelings.

However...

We then decided we really needed a house instead of an apartment.  Somewhere with a garage for the man, a studio for me, room to park our 4WD 'The Hippo' and the runabout trailer-boat, not to mention our two cars.  Oh, and room for the children of course!  And the dog!  The apartment is great, I love it here, but I had to acknowledge that if we were going to live on shore, then we really should have the full range of conviniences available to us.

So, as I said earlier, once we decide to do something, we do it.  We looked around for a few days, found the house we wanted and within another few days we had a conditional agreement all signed up.

Unfortunately, this means I'll be moving house.  Again.  Setting up my studio.  Again.  Going slightly mad with the stress of it all.  Again.

Happy memories from our time on Cerego.

On a cheerier note, I'm really enjoying reading everyone's name suggestions for my latest heron quilt.  Some are funny, some are beautiful and Daisy's is particularly moving.  Thank you and keep them coming.  You have a few more days before I draw a winner from everyone who participated!

What it's like to live on a boat

I read a blog post by Mary Fons today (she writes the best blog, by the way) about what it's like to live in a condo.  And I realised how utterly foreign that would be for me.  Doormen and garbage chutes (just calling rubbish garbage is foreign to me!).  So I've lived on a boat for three years, and I realised how utterly foreign that would be to someone who lives in a condo.

So do you want to know what it's like to live on a boat?  Well, my boat in particular, because certainly there are boats and then there are boats.  And my boat is tied to a wharf most of the time, not floating in the wild sea or bobbing on a mooring.  It's not a sailing yacht or a super yacht, but it's home.

1. I sometimes hear penguins at night and they sound like donkeys.
2. I hear seagulls ALL the time and they sound like seagulls.
3. It's a lot noisier than you might think.  I have a set of earplugs next to my bed because I need them when the gangplank squeaks.  Or it's particularly windy and waves are slapping the hull beside my head.  Or we forgot to tie the dog up and she has insomnia and her little claws are click, click, clicking around on the deck above me.  Or the seagulls and the penguins are having a party.
4. We need more fiddles.  Fiddles are the raised edges on benches and shelves that you have on boats to stop things sliding off when it rocks from side to side.  Last time we took the boat out I realised we need more of fiddles, more tie downs, more latches, and then hopefully we will have less stuff on the floor.
5. We don't get power cuts.  When the houses on shore lose power because someone has crashed a car into a transformer or a tree has fallen on a line, we don't notice because our system automatically switches over to using the boat batteries. 
6. But you can't use the microwave and the heater at the same time because the fuse blows.
7. There are rust stains on all our bedlinen.  Old wooden boats leak and we are always finding tiny leaks and fixing them.  These are rain water leaks that find an old bolt or something and just a tiny bit of water runs down it, picks up a bit of rust and whammo, there is a drop of rust stained water on a pillow or a duvet cover.  It sucks.
8. If we want to go away for the weekend, we can just throw the ropes and leave!  No packing a car or a camper van, no booking motels or putting up tents.  My home is totally portable and that is pretty cool.  We just need to make sure we've have got enough groceries, fuel and bait for fishing and we're good to go.
9. But it's all dependent on the weather.  Bad weather and boating just don't mix.  And if you forget to shut the portholes before you leave and there is a bit of a swell running, ugh.  
10. I'm a lot more aware of weather and tides.  When it's a really low tide, the gangplank is on such a steep angle that I take off my high heels if I'm wearing them to traverse the gangplank.  Some people won't visit us on board if it's like that and I don't blame them.  The dog can't make it up - she slips and slides and yes, she has fallen off into the water.
11. I have really interesting ceilings.  There are planks and bolts and beams and funny shaped bits of wood that I think are called knees (or is it elbows?)
12. I can tie a bowline knot.
13. I get seasick, but since living on a boat I'm much better, except I can't use the computer or read a book when there is an easterly wind because that makes us bounce around a bit.
14. The beds are a pain to make because they are tucked into corners.  The kid's beds are particularly weird shapes because they are fitted to the hull and they are up in the bow where the boat is pointy.
15. If you leave lightweight things lying on the deck there's a good chance they might end up in the water.

And it's cool fun to live here, and so different, I'm glad I gave it a chance.  But the kids are getting bigger.  My son is almost as tall as me and his feet have been bigger than mine for ages.  It's starting to feel a little cramped when four of us are trying to use the galley all at the same time.  

I can see a time in the future when we will move off the boat and look back on our time here with fondness and nostalgia.  But for now, this is home.

Hitting the Wall

I am so buggered.  Just mentally and physically exhausted.  Over the last few weeks I've finished four quilts to exhibition standard, the last one today.  I delivered that one to the exhibition this afternoon and then I suddenly felt deflated.

I didn't realise how much I had been running on adrenaline, but boy, I realise it now!

So what's been going on?  The NZ Quilt Symposium exhibition submission deadline was midnight Thursday (yesterday).  And Wednesday afternoon I got a call from my good friend asking me if I had anything for the Matariki (Maori New Year) exhibition they were holding at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds where she works.

A while ago I had agreed that I could probably have something for that exhibition and then promptly forgot all about it.  So I asked Monika when she needed the quilts by, and bless her heart, she said, "Friday!"

So not only was I hurriedly finishing, photographing and documenting symposium quilts, I also had to rustle up another quilt or two for the Matariki exhibition.

I sat down and took stock.  First up, did I have anything in my collection that would fit the bill?  And actually I did.

Matariki occurs when the Pleiades star cluster rises above the Eastern horizon.  There are lots of stories associated with Matariki and it is a time of year for reflection and celebration.  One of the Maori myths is about how the Matariki cluster was formed.  When Ranginui (sky father) and Papatuanuku (earth mother) were torn asunder, Tawhirimatea (one of their sons, the god of winds) was so angry that he tore his eyes out and cast them into the sky where they formed the Matariki stars.  Cool story, huh?

And I happen to have a quilt that has Ranginui and Papatuanuku featured as a subtle quilting design.  It's called "I don't feel lonely".

Phew, so that was one quilt, and it was completely finished with hanging sleeve and all.

Then I looked over everything I was working on.  I had four quilts lined up for symposium exhibition, and one that I had decided not to finish for symposium.  But now that I looked at it with Matariki eyes, I could see it would be perfect.  Matariki is a time when people say goodbye to the loved ones passed away the previous year.  It's a time of renewal, a time of remembrance and a celebration of the harvest along with holding portents for the coming growing season.

Here's my artist's comments that I wrote for the quilt:

Matariki reappears, Whanui starts it's flight.  We say goodbye to those we lost in the year gone.  We look towards the new season and send our hopes flying to the stars.

In the close up you can see the star cluster that I hand embroidered (with metallic thread - never again!).  Maori often flew kites at Matariki, so the birds are a fitting symbol of that, along with being symbols of remembrance as well as hopes and dreams for the year to come.

So everything got finished, photographed, documented, uploaded, delivered - whatever had to happen to each quilt happened and now I'm done.  I'm sitting here, writing to you, drinking a comforting hot chocolate (it would have been wine, but I forgot to put some in the fridge) and thinking that I could easily not sew another stitch for at least a week.  My brain hurts, my shoulders hurt, and my hand-sewing finger has holes in it.

I was listening to a podcast by Tucker Harley the other day and he said something that resonates with me today.  Creativity can be like breathing.  Sometimes you are breathing out, creating, giving, making, sharing.  And then sometimes you have to stop, and breath back it.  That's what I feel like today.  I've breathed every last drop of air out of my creativity lungs and now I need to pause, and take a big breath in.

So I'm going to go relax and breath and when I next write I'm sure I'll be feeling more alive!

PS - I feel like I never share photos of my boat, so here's the wheelhouse/office where I'm sitting right now.  It's full of boat thingies but my computer, printer and paperwork crams in too.

Consolidation revisited

Back in February I mused on what I wanted from this year.  Now it's May, Autumn is heading for Winter fast, and I thought it might be time to revisit that blog post and see where I'm at.

My word for this year was consolidation.  And here's what I said back in February:

"I want to settle into this boat life and make it work for us.  I want to strengthen my quilt making and further develop my own style and way of working.  I want to gather my far-flung quilting supplies and fabrics and make an effective working space here on MV Cerego.  I just want to settle in and stabilise ourselves in all respects before we stretch our wings any further.  
So no goals or resolutions for me.  Just a word to remember (before I get excited and hare brained about anything new and shiny)."

So how's it working out for me?  

As for family and boat life, I think we've really settled in well.  In fact it's coming up nine months that we've lived here and I'm not regretting it yet!  The weather has cooled down and we've had some rainy days but, so far, so good.  The boat is becoming more and more sorted with every weekend - bookshelves get put up, deck wash pumps get wired in, little leaks get fixed - it's really becoming a home.

Flashback: what the kid's cabins looked like when we first bought Cerego.

I've got a daily routine going.  It had to change a lot.  Back in our house I could sew in the evenings but here I can't because of noise and kids sleeping etc.  So I try to do a lot more sewing during the day.  Evenings are for dishes (no dishwasher!), computer work and husband socialisation.  We talk more now - that can't be a bad thing right?!

We haven't bought any houses/boats/businesses so we are pretty stable in that respect.  Husband's businesses keep him pretty busy, but living five minutes away has helped the stress levels and made it easier with combining my work, his work and kid duties.

And I don't think I've been distracted by anything new and shiny (except Instagram - I caved and signed up, I'm madquiltlady there if you want to find me).  

The kids are doing their kid things.  It makes it easier living close to the school.  Sports and lessons need less driving and less organisation, and they can be more independent.  I've noticed big gains in their maturity.

So yes, I feel settled.  We've slowed down and kept new projects to a minimum and we're reaping the benefits of such a big life change.

That's it for consolidating the life side of things.  I'll write more about the quilting side of things another day.

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.

Living Aboard - the good bits.

Ahh, loving my life on the boat!  This is super-high tide at the beach - the beach is a one minute walk away and I walk on it usually twice a day.  The kids found a huge log floating and it became a boat, a diving platform and just the best water toy ever.

Here's another thing I love about living on MV Cerego.  We are five minutes walk from school.  And it's such a great little small-town school.  The kids planted, cared for and then get to eat from the school vege garden.  That's my boy with cherry tomatoes.

And how about this photo for inspiration?  There are so many textures and shapes around the boats and the wharf - particularly the reflections in the water.  I'm feeling a whole series of quilts coming on and I'm building up a huge library of photographs.

We are also settling in more and more.  Here are a couple of before and after photos of a corner in our  bedroom cabin.  We found a bookshelf (no great thing of beauty, but perfectly functional) and Hubby installed it.  And now I have a little nook to sit in with books and magazines beside me.  

We also put up a bookshelf in the main saloon.  With the one we put up in the kids play cabin a couple of months ago, that's all the books out from under the beds.  If you're wondering whether all the books will fall off when we are out to sea, then no, all three bookshelves are on crosswise bulkheads.  The boat rocks from side to side in swells rather than tipping upwards and downwards.  So the piles of books might shift and the ones standing up might fall over, but they are unlikely to go flying off the shelves across the cabin.  But eventually we'll be putting little lips or straps across the shelves just for extra safety.

Last but not least, I had a lovely visit from Yvonne Brown and her husband.  Yvonne is a talented textile artist from the UK.  I met her when I took a class she taught in NZ at Queenstown Quilt Symposium in 2011.  Recently Yvonne contacted me to say she would be over here again and could she come and visit.  Yes!  Go check out Yvonne's work on her website - it's gorgeous!

So yes, I'm loving this life on the sea so far.  It's slowly cooling down a little, heading towards Autumn.  I'm wondering whether I'll still love it all in the middle of Winter...

We're all going on a.....

....summer holiday.  No more working for a week or two.

Christmas and New Year's in New Zealand is shut down time.  Schools break for their summer holidays and there are four days of public holidays so lots of businesses close their doors for a week or two as well.

We traditionally break out the tents and sleeping bags and go camping in an Uncle's paddock.  The extended family all come to stay and sometimes friends too.  At one stage this year we had 13 kids running round.

Now that our house is portable, we decided that our maiden voyage could be combined with our Christmas camping expedition.  We cruised up the river and anchored for a couple of nights before Christmas and then motored out into Manawaora Bay where we had organised to borrow a mooring in Jack's Bay.

Borrowing a mooring was the best thing ever.  It let us spend nights camping (it was a short dinghy ride up a tidal creek to get to our usual camping site) without worrying about Cerego dragging her anchor.

This is the little creek at high tide.  I learnt how to operate the dinghy so I could zip back to Cerego if I wanted to.  Living tied up to a dock meant I hadn't needed to use a dinghy yet and it hadn't even crossed my mind that I should learn.  The first day we were up the river, Hubby took his runabout sized boat to work, leaving me on Cerego with the dinghy.  Fat lot of good that was because I didn't know how to use it!  I had my freedom curtailed and I didn't like it one little bit.  I made sure I had my first lesson that afternoon, and actually, it's pretty simple.

The weather before Christmas was a bit grey and dull but it slowly got better and better until we were having the most beautiful days.  The temperature would get up around 27 degrees Celcius, hardly a cloud in the sky and the water temperatures went up too.

This is our sixth year camping in this spot.  The kids look forward to it so much.  There is so much for them to do and now they are getting older and older, they require less supervision and have an even greater range of activities...like mud bathing.

And horse riding.  That's my Uncle in Law leading the horse.  Marshall is a bit of a famous horse whisperer in the area and there are ten or so horses on his property.  It's very relaxing in the evenings watching the horses graze on the hill behind our tents.

This year was the year of the flounder.  The kids discovered they could find flounder in the creek during daylight (usually you go flounder spearing in the evening with lights) so they made or found flounder spears and went hunting and they were surprisingly successful!  And it's the funniest thing to see half a dozen kids crowded round a frying pan devouring a freshly cooked fish - gone in seconds and none left for the adults.

It's becoming a tradition to build one of the Aunties a birthday cake on her birthday.  I say 'build' because we pile up pre-made goodies like pavlovas, eclairs, fruit and we've even tipped out a whole container of ice-cream to use as a base.  That whole tray got eaten with none left for seconds - our annual sugar fix!

Whipped cream shenanigans!

If we needed respite (from noise, kids and hard mattresses) we would spend a night on the boat.  The incredible peace and beauty when we would sit up on the top deck in the evenings was totally soul restoring.

And the top deck was also the perfect place to jump from when swimming!

The water was warm and clear.  

And everyone swam.

Now we are back home safe and sound and restored.  

I am preparing for my next adventure which is a week away at the Manawatu Quilt Symposium.  I have a four day class with Texan quilt artist, Sue Benner and I'm totally excited.  I intend to use mostly my own hand dyed fabrics and the requirements list says to bring 40-60 different fabrics.  I needed to restock my hand-dyes so I used my lazy days in the paddock to dye about 25 yards of fabric all in fat quarter sized pieces.

So hopefully I'll be back to a more frequent style of blogging, and I'm hoping I'll manage to squeeze in some interviews at Symposium for my podcast - watch this space!

Directionless

This is MV Cerego's compass.  It's a cool old thing, set on gimbals (swivelly, ball thingies that make it level no matter how the boat is sitting) and I love it.  I also thought it was an appropriate symbol of how I'm feeling at the moment.

We are living on the boat - we've been here for about five weeks or so, but I'm still not settled.  We finally have a boat builder working in our forward cabin, building our bed and storage units, but in the meantime Hubby and I have been sleeping on the couches in the kid's playroom.  I'm getting over that very quickly.

Because we are missing the room and storage that our cabin will give us, I haven't been able to sort a sewing area out properly.  And I've been so busy moving, sorting, organising tenants etc, etc that I haven't had much time to quilt anyway.

I let all obligations and deadlines go so that they wouldn't stress me out.  But on the downside of that is now I feel a bit 'drifty' or focusless.

And what do you write on a blog, or say in a podcast, when you have been doing very little and your thoughts are all awry?  It didn't help that I had no WiFi - at least that's mostly sorted now.

So I'm starting with baby steps.  Like writing this today.  A small blog post, with no real planning behind it, just to re acquaint my fingers with the keyboard.

I'll be back again soon.

Morning Walks

We're enjoying living on board.  It's been more than a week and we are getting the hang of it.  It's a bit like camping, you have to figure out processes and procedures to make life smooth - like where to tie the dog up at night so she makes the least noise on deck (did you know how loud a Lab can snore and toss and turn?).

My agility is increasing.  We are tied up to a stationary dock, meaning that the boat goes up and down with the tide, but the dock stays put.  We haven't a gangway (yet) and so we climb up or down to the boat as dictated by the water level.  Occasionally I have to balance on dock lines, using my weight to push them down and pull the boat close enough to get the dog on or off.

I've only dropped one bag of shopping in the water so far....

One of the things I'm most enjoying is the walks.  Having a dog on board necessitates several times a day walks, for reasons I'm sure you can imagine.  And it's a lovely part of New Zealand to walk in.

The kids are enjoying the walks too.  There is something magical about kids and beaches.  Sticks, stones, shells and anemones are all subjects of discovery and imagination.  If they are bored, grumpy or sad, the beach is a magical cure.

And the beach holds endless opportunity for me too.  I'm trying to remember to take my camera every time with the intention of photographing one thing.  Whether it be beautiful, interesting or inspirational, just one thing that I take time to really look at.

Yes, the ideas for quilts are numerous!

I'll leave you with a picture of MV Cerego.  This was taken by a friend who was in his own boat when we took her a quick sea trial while we moved her to her new berth.  She's cruising at 10 knots, about her maximum speed.  Isn't she beautiful?

Beginner Quiltmaking Classes

I'm sitting here in the wheelhouse of my boat.  It's our third night staying aboard.  I hesitate to say we've moved in completely because the majority if our stuff is still in our house.  Our plan is to collect the things we need day by day and after a couple of weeks, everything that is left in the house is either junk and can be tossed/recycled/donated or things that we won't need until we live in a house again (think wheelbarrow and rake) and can go into storage.  I think this is the lazy persons way of moving and downsizing, but it seems to be working!

So the reason that I'm telling you all that is to say I don't have internet hooked up for my desktop computer yet.  I have cellular access through my ipad, but the Blogger ap just doesn't compare for usability, and I can only upload photos that are on my ipad.  Meaning?  My blogging might be a little weird, and scant, for a while.  Bear with me.

But I did find a couple of photos on here that I want to share.  These are the table runners from my beginners classes that finished up a couple of weeks ago.

There are only four pictured as a couple of students couldn't make the final night.  But these four all got to the hand-stitching down the binding part and it was so cool to see the different runners evolve out of all the different fabric selections.  Each person had different challenges, but they all got there in the end.  Do you remember the first patchwork item you completed and were proud of?

I thought I might run a sampler class next time as everyone was keen on this idea.  Problem is, I'm not a traditional block sampler kind of girl so I'm thinking I might do a strippy type sampler instead.  I've been having fun looking at block books and thinking of the different skills each block needs and what I should incorporate.

Do you have any suggestions or ideas as to what skills you think beginners should learn?