Cooking, dress cutting and Christmas bunting

I managed to go home to Ballarat for a few days this week, chiefly for my Dad's birthday but also to do some sewing and spend time with the parents and Darwin. Dad's birthday was a very quiet family dinner and Mum made an awesome roast and chocolate pudding.

First I finally succeeded in washing the black fabric and getting it dried without bird presents on it. So I cut out the fabric and then gave the pattern to Mum to figure out…..its about half finished at the moment but don’t think I will get home until after Christmas.

I found this fabric in the remnants pile at Spotlight for $1 a piece. Pretty cool I thought and perfect for making some drawstring bags to give as present.

As we are having Christmas day at my house in Melbourne I decided to make some Christmas bunting as decoration. I haven’t really bothered to collect Christmas decorations previously as I always go home for Christmas and I would rather make than buy so I started with the bunting. Not sure that I will be making anything else this year, it might need to be a slow collection of things.

To make quick bunting I used pinking shears to cut the edges. These are my Mums pinking shears (with the original and very cool box).

This is Mum's bunting all pinned and ready to be sewn.

And this is Mum sewing bunting in the studio.....all of the sewing ended up like this with me handing things to Mum as she sewed and then wandering around stealing yarn from her stash to make birthday presents and more stitch practise squares.

Now I am off to work on a beanie for a friend for his birthday.... I told him he may need to wait six months before it is finished.

Friday......

...... and we all know what that means - yes its the Weekend. And this weekend looks like it will be awesome as, after a ridiculously hot 38 degrees today, the temperature of the weekend is set to be mid-20s.

I had to go to work Thursday and Friday so no new crafty stuff unfortunately. Thursday evening though I did manage to purchase a USB card reader so I now have photos...........

Spinach from our garden.
Everyone gave the ugly lasagne the thumbs up and I finished the last piece for dinner tonight. Yum. I hoping the rain will spur the spinach to quickly regrow so that I can make spinach and ricotta filo pastries next.

The dress fabric from the last post.
I haven't had a chance to wash the black fabric yet but that is one of tomorrows tasks.

The (almost) finished Ipod cover.
As we can see from this image I need to learn to be more patient when taking photos to make them look vaguely attractive.

Well that is all from me at the moment. I found my birth certificate today so I will actually be able to get a passport and go to Japan in January. I will put up a post of some of the amazing Japanese craft shops I have found on the internet and hope to visit when I go (lucky I am going with two other people who thinks the idea of 6 floors of fabric is heaven).

A day at home.

(Obie and his friend the chook)

RIP Obie.

I spent a fairly decent number of afternoons when I was growing up being pulled up and down the road by Obie. He was never unhappy to see you and wanted to express it by jumping on you and licking whenever possible. He died with sheep and people around him, seemingly in motion which seems a beautiful way to depart.

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Today I had a day off from work. I was going to put some photos of things I was doing up but can't find my camera cable. I am pretty sure I have seen it since we moved last year so I will just have to poke around the house until it turns up.

Instead of photos you get a description of the photos. (Imaginations on everyone?)

The photo here shows spinach
out of our garden
(okay planted by my brother
but I claim it as ours as I have been
watering it).

Originally I planned to make large pasta shells stuffed with cheese and spinach with tomato sauce but our supermarket suffered a fail and does not stock large pasta shells. So instead I made tomato, spinach and ricotta lasagne and it started out with a beautiful cheese crusted top. However, when I went to take the foil off the top it pulled the top layer of cheese and lasagne sheet off and then it landed on the floor. So tonight for dinner we will be having slightly ugly looking lasagne, hopefully, it will taste good.

The photo here would show
the awesome fabric I brought the other day.

I cut out the pattern pieces to make a dress. Then I grabbed the fabric which I had washed yesterday and discovered a lovely message left for me from a bird. It is probably the evil bird I saw in the backyard the other day eating butterflies. Luckily the fabric is the much cheaper of the two and so back into the wash it goes. I am not game to cut out the really awesome fabric on my own so I have packed away my sewing supplies for the day.

The photo here would show
some knitting on needles.

So this is my confession of the day I can't really knit all that well. This is not that bad really until you realise that HawthorneC is my Mum (if you look closely there is a photo on her blog of me (in my best worst clothes) and my puppy Darwin (the grown up form of the puppy in my ID picture)). At the moment I am trying to knit an ipod cover which should take about an hour, so I managed the stockinette stitch okay but the rib at the top is not happening. After pulling it out about four times I have decided to knit to the end of the cover and then go figure out what is wrong with my rib.

So I am off to find somewhere cooler in the house to knit and read.........actually looking at the kitchen that will be after I do some dishes.

First Post

Mmmm. This is a worry two blogs on two different sites.... oh well we shall see how this all goes.