Mojo A Go Go

Just when I thought my mojo was lost forever and I was lamenting the fact I'd finished two whole quilts this year I've managed to knock the ball out of the park and finish two more this month. It's about bloody time I got an injection of creativity that actually led to finishing stuff ! 

I started this quilt on a whim after seeing another version of it when I dropped some backing for another quilt off to my awesome magic quilting fairy recently.  The idea looked so simple and ingenious (and fast to do - I like fast because there's no opportunity to get bored with a project and shove it in a corner ) so I started it the very next day and 15 days later it was done. It was a dream project, as long as you don't count the silliness where I thought I could hand quilt this as a starter project. Pfttttttt...forget that. I'm going to start with hand quilting a pot holder. 

I suffered for my art ...getting my socks wet to take this picture. 

And I came in and informed Mr. P we simply need to move because  there is nowhere picturesque to take a picture in our yard.

Nanci sent me a layer cake of this fabric 18 months or so ago and it's been waiting for the perfect idea to come along.  I love this fabric and cuddling up to this quilt in winter is going to be a reminder that Spring will arrive again (eventually). The heating is well and truly turned on here these days and I even broke out of pair of socks last night. Seriously -winter is just bullshit. 

The mojo was slightly interrupted by a visit from Little P this weekend. Since we hadn't seen him for almost a month we had plenty of catching up to do. I was mistaken for his mother twice which really made me feel awesome because I've been feeling kinda old and frumpy lately. I either look really young or I was acting so immaturely in public that people couldn't believe I was a grandparent. Whatever. Bear with me for a sec while I break out my bragging pictures from the visit. I know every grandparent thinks their grandchildren are the smartest most adorable children ever but Little P really is. Everything is better when he's around. 

I'm linking this post  up to Elizabeth's monthly finish linky party because I keep promising her I will when I finish something and then I totally forget to do it!

P.S. The quilt finishes may slow considerably over the next couple of weeks since I am now pinning trillions of pictures of bags on Pinterest. One of my nephews asked me to make his girlfriend a bag months ago and I'm just now thinking about it. 

P.P.S Just wrote girlfriend as "girlfiend"..and she isn't a fiend at all ...G is adorable. My sister is blessed by having two gorgeous prospective daughter in laws that she gets along so well with. Both her boys picked good!

Distractions

At some point during  a period of intense crafty inspiration you get so many great ideas in your head that your brain simply cant keep them all in there and so you have to try and translate them into reality. Its like a law of the universe or something.  I mention this only because I seem to be working happily on so many projects at the moment - somethings gotta give - but I 'll take it where I can get it. 

I was  inspired to start hand quilting a quilt. I got 12 inches in before I realised three stitches to an inch is pretty crap  and I’ve since  managed to convince myself that only an insane woman starts her first hand quilting project with a full sized quilt.  I’m thinking a mini quilt is a good place to start my hand quilting experience. Naturally I'll have to make the mini first so I've moved on to other things. Goodness knows I have plenty of unfinished projects laying round begging to be finished things.   

I finished quilting the Gelati quilt  (thanks for the name Ms. Nerida ) by machine  this past weekend.  I think I made the right call because I’m really happy with how it’s turning  out. This is going to be a lay around, drag on the floor , drop whatever you happen to be munching on at the time quilt for my house so it doesn't have to be fancy. I'm half way through finishing the binding so I'll show you the whole thing in all it's glory soon. 

Last week I allowed myself to be distracted by Pinterest and all the pretty scarves there. There I was inspired to knit an infinity scarf because I was formerly inspired to make a gingham knitted blanket  that I haven’t got  right yarn for (and that is seriously going to take forever to make ) and I just wanted to knit something. Then I got distracted by the idea of buying a scarf on Ebay instead. My moral conscience kicked in when I realised that 4 dollar scarf I wanted to buy (with free shipping no less ) was  made by someone in China working for 12 cents an hour .  Eventually I went back and cast on my stitches for the infinity scarf and have managed to get this far. Assuming my interest doesn’t wane too much I could conceivably be wearing this before the end of winter.

Tazz and AusRose made faces like this at a recent sewing day when I mentioned I was going to machine appliqué my hexie flowers onto their backing blocks. 

I took those looks to mean "Crap-est idea you've ever had " and so I have succumbed to peer pressure and wiser heads than my own and I’m hand appliquéing them onto the blocks. I've done 12 this past week and I'm not finding it as mind numbingly boring as I thought it would be. In fact -it's quite relaxing.  

"Beep Beep" is finished, washed and crinkled so it looks well loved and is off to Master Jack this week. This kid lives in the tropics so I imagining this will be decorative rather than strictly functional.  

Onwards and upwards...dont want to lose that mojo!

It doesnt take a lot to get me excited (and to blog about it )

For 12 long years I've struggled every single time I've opened our back sliding door. The muscles in my left arm have become disproportionately over developed because of the force needed to open it. Yes- I have one superhero arm and one bingo wing.  The door rollers were dodgy before I moved in here and because some bright spark told us that we would have to replace the entire window, door and frame we've just put up with it. My father in law decided he could do something about that when he was here on Sunday and by last night for the first time ever I have a door that you can open with one finger. I can't tell you how happy that makes me . I've opened that door so many times over the last day that Mr. P keeps warning me I'm going to wear it out. The little things people - its the little things. Be thankful I don't know how to upload video because if I did you would all be treated to 10 minutes of YouTube video of a door opening and closing (and I'd fully expect you to get as excited about it as I am) 

I bit the bullet on Monday and bought some bulbs for the garden. I've never grown flowers from bulbs in my life. If I manage to keep them from curling up their toes, come Spring maybe my garden will look something like this. 20 bulbs should yield a vista like this - right? 

Image credit because mine haven't been put in the ground yet

 And I love the look of this clump of Hyacinths so I'm going to have a go at keeping some of them alive too. I may have just wasted $37.95 that I could have spent on fabric but I think it will make for an interesting experiment. 

Image credit 

And lastly there has been some plotting and planning going on here the last few weeks that I've refused to get excited about until I knew whether it was likely to come to pass. The crane and transport guys came yesterday and advised they could get this into our yard by removing part of our back fence  and using a crane to drop it down and it wont cost us a trillion dollars. Now I'm keeping everything crossed that council will play nice and approve it. ( If you could all keep your fingers and toes crossed for us that would be great -thanks) 

I figure this would be the perfect place to store my fabric and other sewing related items as well as everything we have in our current (very small) shed. Now do you see why I'm so excited?

Wrap Up

Little Miss Sunshine came to stay late last week and I spent most of her visit trying to convince her that Adelaide isn't the cultural and social backwater of Australia. The other states often poke fun at us down South because we're smaller than they are and a little more sedate and in turn we poke fun at Tasmania for the same reason. I guess bullying is prevalent everywhere. Anyway I wanted to show her that there are a ton of fun things to do in Adelaide besides looking at our architecturally brilliant churches and doing pub crawls.

The first must do stop was on the way home from the airport where we laid in some essential supplies for the week. 

Cosmopolitan cocktails under the back veranda eased us into Thursday night. 

image credit from here - I was too busy guzzling cocktails to take any pictures 

By 9.00pm we were both ready for bed mainly due to the fact I was mixing doubles. Don't judge me. I was just following the directions on the bottle. At the point that I couldn't read those directions anymore Mr. P took over as bartender. And cooked dinner because I wasn't in a fit state to do that either.   

Naturally Friday morning was a slow start while our livers processed the efforts of the night before. I'm proud to say I didn't have a post drinking chuck and we were out of the house and heading for the Barossa by 11.30am. 

We visited Maggie Beer's Farm Shop, had lunch at a local pub, hit a couple of quilt shops, and generally meandered round taking in all the sights of the Barossa. 

When you venture out to the country its essential to bring home a country kind of keepsake. Meet Clarence my heavy metal chicken. Which makes him a rooster  now that I come to think of it. 

Friday night included gin and tonics but we were wary of a repeat of the great alcohol incident of Thursday so we kept it to a sensible level of consumption. 

Saturday saw us hit

Best quilt store ever. 

See what I mean? You want to go there now and spend all your money don't you? It's like evil aliens take over my brain every time I walk in that shop. I came away a lot lighter in the pocket but also completely inspired to make a bajillion new things. 

We also made stops at Eastern Silk and Bowerbird Bazaar and my favourite lunch spot in town, The Brown Dog. 

In fact, the week was pretty much all about eating. Sunday night we went to a Vietnamese restaurant to sample some Dinky Di (that means authentic )cuisine. Kirsten I'm posting all these food pictures for you. 

We also hit Glenelg beach another day and meandered up and down Jetty Road. I may have bought some new clothes and another handbag. Yes I'm as weak as crap. 

And since Patchwork by Sea was very close we also went there to spend more money on projects that may never get finished. 

On Marg's last day we classed it up by having High Tea at Newman's Nursery. 

(And going to Haigh's again)

So the summary?  Alcohol was drunk, nobody got arrested, we both weigh 10 kilos heavier from all the food we consumed and my sewing room is now officially full because I went on a mad buying spree this week. 

I'll leave you with a picture of the most perfect gift ever, supplied by my ever thoughtful friend who knows all my weaknesses ...

How freaking cute is that? 

Almost makes me regret getting her hooked on Hay Day.....

Ugh....

Yes – I'm aware it’s May 7^th...and that I’m schmoozing in here late as usual to give a full account of my achievements for April.  I have an excuse . Its hard to write a blog post about nothing.

If Unachievements was an actual word I’d be using that instead since I completely ran out of  steam in about Week 1.  I didn’t touch my machine for the last three weeks of the month except to repair a ruffle on one of my favourite shirts.  We all know garment repairs don’t count as REAL sewing even if they do prevent us from having to go to work naked.

I only managed to get the final 8 blocks done for the recycled shirt quilt last month.  Yep folks that’s it. Huge effort for the month.  ABSOLUTELY  huge. Then I laid it all out to motivate myself to sew it together but then I put it in a plastic box and forgot about it again.

I did completely clean out my sewing room though. I think that counts for a lot. At least I can find all my  WIP’s now- even if I am ignoring them.

That poor baby quilt is still lurking in a sadly  unfinished  state (and it was meant to be on a plane with Sister of Pyjamas four days ago winging its way to the intended recipient) Baby Jack arrived in the world this afternoon and it would be so nice to have this quilt finished before he starts primary school.  I'm about quarter of the way through the binding so maybe I could pull out at least one finish this month?

I continue to be inspired by projects that I really cant resist starting. I tell myself that they’ll be quick to knock up but the truth is I'm all about increasing my WIP pile to epic proportions. But for better or worse in the last week I’ve started an Irish chain quilt in red and white. Mainly so I can use up all the red fabrics I collected while not finishing the Farmers Wife Quilt I started last year.

And today I started this...

And I’m planning to suck it up and hand quilt this one so the ultimate finish may be months (or even years) away,especially since I’ve never hand quilted anything in my life.

Making monthly goals is the stupidest idea I ever had.  I seem to get much more done when I just bumble along smelling the roses along the way, meandering on to something new when I feel like it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.