Give Away Alert

I have arranged with Leanne to have a play date with my dye pots. As I can see more wool felting in the near future I have decided to do a give away of 1/2 doz pieces approx 7" (most pieces are 7 x 9) square pieces of my wool felt that I posted last week. I chopped into one piece yesterday and there is no fraying so I am confident that they are well felted so I am happy to send some off to a new home. The colours are Dk blue, Lght Blue, green, purple, orange and red (rust).

So you know the drill, leave a comment on this post and I will draw a winner in a weeks time.

Happy Dance Only Two Borders to Go

Only two more borders and Little Blue Birds is finished. Must say I will be glad to get it done and dusted it has been a bit of a marathon effort but it is looking lovely so I will probably get it quilted fairly quickly just have to find some nice backing fabric.

Playing with Wool and the Dye pots

My fingers have a slight blue tinge I should have put the gloves on when I was doing the rinsing but you know I was just going to do one or two and leave the rest for tomorrow but then I had to see what they all looked like so now the slight blue tinge and a lovely bundle of wool is ready.

Here is the before shot, I couldn't get cream wool the closest I could get was a light grey.

But from these humble beginnings I got these yummy colours. The fabrics in the top photo are Drs Flannel which has a looser weave than the other wool and didn't felt as well, but the colours are clearer as it was cream to start with. I'll give it a go and see how it works on some projects though. The bottom photo is the wool pictured above. I am happy with them not with the fact that I ended up with a heap of orange though. That what happens when the kids get involved and I am trying to keep them from being head to toe in a colour other than what they naturally come in. Might overdye a couple a darker red if I get a chance today.

Well its time to Pick Me

A month or so ago I told you that my photo had been chosen to go in the running for a place in Variety Club Weather Calendar. If you like my photo please vote for me now. The only problem with giving you the link is you will find lots of photo's that I think are way better than mine. Oh well vote for me please just because. The picture is called Gathering Gloom over Grange.

I have Issues

Fabric stash issues. You know you have fabric issues when you can completely change your thinking on a quilt and pull fabrics again entirely from you stash not even make a dent in that stash and not having to purchase a single fabric piece of fabric. You have issues when you don't intend to do anything about it except buy more fabric. Here is my one completed project from the weekend.

Home Again

I am back from the Loxton trip and we had an absolutely lovely time. Mill Cottage was major a step up from the Caravan Park and it was so nice we contemplated not bothering to go to the classes and just stay inside and stitch for the weekend. Maybe we will do that another time.

I will share more photo's with you a bit later but here are a couple of the river and the swans that we took on the way back to Adelaide. I am without a phone again but have bitten the bullet and purchased a prepaid mobile broadband modem to get me by over the next week that I anticipate it will take Telstra to get us back online again (though they said it will be fixed by Thursday I won't be holding my breathe)

Sadly it will be our last sewing trip to Loxton as Tricia announced that she was closing the business and moving on to new things. It has been a wonderful few years and we did look forward to our little road trip and sewing retreat but we all wished Tricia well on her new adventure.

Man on the Moon

My husband told me to get out my camera and take a picture of full moon and for once I got it to work and actually got a reasonable picture, maybe I did learn something in that photography course that I took last year. It is a very clear night and it is a weee bit chilly and has been all day. They are forecasting rain in a day or so which will be good but not for the fact that the kids are still on holidays for another week.

We're All Going to the Zoo Today Zoo Today

As we had to head to town this morning early for an ultrasound for my daughter at WCH in my infinite wisdom decided to take the kids to the zoo. The only problem being said DD who has been in a fantastic mood for over a week has decided today to be a little unwell and in the foulest and blackest mood that she has been in for weeks. We survived thanks to an escaped chicken who took her mind off it when I was starting to get desperate around lunch time. For some reason she was obsessed with seeing the chickens, and this one appearing in the garden where we were sitting eating lunch, happy to have vegimite sandwiches and this took all of her thoughts of going home away. So we got another hour in.

The Zoo is a bit of a mess at the moment with all the work going on for the Panda enclosure but we did see the new Environment Centre which is very interactive and the kids quite enjoyed that. I loved the sea horses and they would have stayed for ages looking in the river ecosystem and trying to find the cat fish. These new bits make a lot of the zoo look really dated but hopefully soon all of the exhibits will look more natural.

I had a first today as well, in all the years of going to the zoo I have never seen the American Beaver, they were never out when I was there but today I saw not one but two of the critters.

The new Panda enclosure is going to be huge and I think I will wait until the hysteria dies down before we head back to the zoo to see them maybe this time next year we might be able to get in to see them.

I thought I would leave you with a few monkey pictures and one of my favourite animals at the zoo the pink flamingo.

School Holidays Yippy

Two weeks where I don't have to rush to be out the door at 8.30 what bliss. This morning I stayed in bed a little longer and the kids even managed to sleep in to after 7am, then they came into bed with me for a half hour and we didn't have a fight because it was just tooo cold this morning so they were happy to snuggle up. I was able to start a new book (which I was trying to keep until Loxton but what are you going to do when you have time on your hands).

I had planned to take them to St Kilda Playground but no 1 son has a awful cough at the moment and as it is pretty cold today I decided to see what was on at the pictures (pretty slim pickings at the moment I might add). But he was happy to see Ice Age 3 which is the only thing my daughter wanted to see apart from Hanna Montana (which I wasn't up to today) so off we went for the 1o am session and they really enjoyed it and so did I.

I am starting to look forward to Loxton trip but haven't really done anything about packing yet just making mental lists.

We are off to Womens and Children's Hospital tomorrow, my daughter has to have a renal ultrasound (which she has every year as she was born with kidney reflux) and then I think we will head to the zoo as we are in town. I think we should get our zoo visit in now because once the Panda's are here later in the year we won't be able to get near the place.

Tail Feathers

Here are my first two blocks of Tail Feathers. I purchased threads today which I thought I did a pretty good job at as I did it from memory of my fabrics. Yes I got more than were needed but I thought that I would mix it up a bit. And yes I have made a mistake in the placement of two of the blocks and no I am not going to redo it, so we will just say it is a design feature of my quilt and I will reverse the bird on the second block so that they are looking at each other and it won't matter. I used the transfer for the second block as I couldn't be bothered tracing it and I will probably get these done on my trip to Loxton which is fast approaching..Next week UGHHH.

I did some stash shopping today and pulled some Pat Sloan fabrics for Natalie's project and bought some yummy fabrics from Hetties for Anni's project so I think I am ok project wise just have to think about clothes and comfort food to take and we should be set.