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!

Garden Harvest

I rummaged around under the jungle that is my garden and dug up enough potatoes for dinner.  I love digging for spuds, revealing hidden treasure.  However, I LOATHE putting my fingers through the half-rotten original seed potato.  Urrrrgh.

Some tomatoes I found today.  These are Latimer Beefsteak.  I have totally neglected them and yet they still give me this bounty!  Last season I didn't plant any because we were late getting the garden started etc etc.  This year I planted them but then didn't tie them up before I left for holiday and came back to sprawling triffids.  So I'm all fired up for next year.  If I can get this sort of crop from total neglect, what can I get with tender loving care?!

And for dinner - lovely, lovely kingfish.  (Can you see Hubby's fat left hand?  He got a paper wasp sting and it didn't agree with him.)

I hope you all had a lovely weekend.  We have been busy building boxing for a concrete retaining wall in the new shed, moving the chicken enclosure, relaxing and trying to stay cool.  Now onwards and upwards to Monday.

Stuck for inspiration?

Random shot, just to boast about what I'm having for dinner!

When I'm making a quilt, I can get stuck.  Because I don't tend to use patterns, and sometimes I don't even have the idea of the finished quilt in my mind when I start, the designing takes place on the hoof.  This has big pros and big cons.

Biggest pro:  When it's finished, it is truly my quilt. 

Biggest con:  The design process can stump me to the point where I put the whole thing away in disgust.

I was getting quite the pile of works-in-progress (WIPs).  To the point where some of them were becoming dreaded unfinished objects (UFOs)!  (After all, if you haven't worked on a project for more than a year, can it really be called a WIP?)

Big, overwhelming pile of WIPs.

But I've been finding some tricks and tips to help me see a project right through from start to finish.  The most important one is dedicated quilting time.  And I'm not that great at self-discipline so dedicated quilting time that I spend with another quilter is the best for me.  I've started spending two hours a week with another guild member.  She has enough room for me to set up my machine, so I always plan to use this two hours as dedicated sewing time.  I also spend an one evening a week at another quilting friend's place.  I can use her machine if I need to but I tend to spend most of this time discussing our respective projects, getting honest feedback and inspiration.  And then I'll squeeze in a little pressing, or thread tying in or drawing.

What we've recently started doing at our evening sessions is a list of what we are each going to work on before our next meeting.  For me it provides a prompt when I'm wondering what to do next and it also keeps me a little more accountable to myself.

Another trick I've been using when I'm stuck on a project is to just make myself pick it up and lay it out and take one more step.  Just one.  Whether that be sewing one more seam, making one more block, or laying out some fabrics to choose from.  If I can make myself do one more step, then I often find myself racing off again, inspired and stimulated to continue.

For example, I've been making an 'I Spy' quilt for my daughter. Nothing too tricky about that. Except I decided to piece the backing out of offcuts of the novelty fabrics I had used. But when I started sewing them together in strips it just wasn't working.

See?  Too many colours, too many patterns, too much going on.

So I packed it all up and haven't touched it for a couple of months.  But it was on my weekly list to do 'something' towards finishing that quilt.  Today I pulled it out, lay it down, changed some of the novelty fabrics for plainer fabrics and divided some busy areas with plain strips - suddenly it was all working and by the afternoon I'd finished piecing the whole back!

Almost finished.

So what tricks do you use when you're uninspired by your current project?

Ug, me big hunter.

Dear hubby came home VERY proud of himself! Terrible photo I know, but taken in the dark with me holding a torch and using the flash, and a grimacing husband saying polite words about hurrying up because it's rather heavy! It's a hapuka which is beautiful eating and lovely smoked.

Son and daughter had just been put to bed, but they heard the boat rattling down the drive and had to come and see daddy's catch - they weren't disappointed.

Not much else happening round here. I've been doing another set of antenatal classes. They always make me nervous to start with and I always wonder if I've told them enough, made it interesting, covered what they need to know, hope I don't offend anyone..........stressful.

Next month I am going to a workshop in Auckland called Breath New Life into your Childbirth Education Classes. Run by an Aussie woman, (whose name I've temporarily forgotten) she comes highly recommended, and as I've had no formal education on giving classes, I'm hoping it will give me a few ideas.

The garden is on hold again (I might just die of frustration!). We've decided to extend the shed. Because we decided to live in the shed, now we have no actual shed - no place to store the tractor, the tools, the wood we had sawn for our house building and all those other bits and pieces you need to keep out of the weather. And, of course, nowhere for the man of the house to retreat to. So, off to the left of the shed in that pic up there (this is before we converted it), will be another big bay. Plus we are going to put up a big verandah extending all the way along the front of the house.

The upshot of all that is there will be some site flattening to do and all the topsoil from that is going to be moved onto my garden site for raised beds. It makes sense to wait for this to be done, but it's sure driving me crazy!