Not a Skerrick

No sewing this past weekend ...nothing ..nada. I wasn't inspired to sew a stitch. This no sewing jag I'm on is now getting to the point of ridiculous. If I don't create something soon - I may just explode. I did however play a lot of Hayday and Candy Crush Mania in between doing other stuff so I didn't feel like a complete slacker. 

When all else fails I like to do a little organising because I can convince myself that's a worthwhile activity and so I started with my pantry and wardrobe. I seriously have a lot of clothes and probably too much food. The too much food thing inspired the thought that I could probably eat out of my pantry and freezer for a month so I'm going to give that a crack for April. Stay tuned-I'm sure this will result in some very interesting meals....does anyone know what I can do with two jars of redcurrant jelly? And why did I buy a jar of brandy butter? Did I have a plan or was I merely enticed by the 99 cent price tag post Christmas? 

One monkey that I got  off my back this weekend was finally finishing the curtains for our bedroom. I bought the fabric in November...hemmed the sides of one half- put it up to check for length and there it stayed until two weeks ago when I finally hemmed them , and then got round to doing the second half. The second half has been sitting in a scrunched up mess  on the sewing room floor since then because the idea of pressing 10 metres of heavy fabric with blockout coating was just all too hard.....

It's nigh on impossible to take a good picture of anything hanging at a window but I gave it a shot anyway. I'm pretty much thrilled that I can open my curtains again and that they ended up hemmed at the same length (more or less) 

A spot of cooking this weekend. Prep for Bun Cha later this week 

And I hand made some gnocchi that turned out to be so large I've rechristened them gnoccioli( a cross between gnocchi and unfilled ravioli) 

My greatest achievement for the weekend was finding a floor rug for the guest room at the first shop I went into ....this room is still not finished but here are some "in progress" shots for you. It definitely needs some wall art and decor staging.   

A chunk of my weekend also went into transforming this 

into this....

Currently masquerading as a towel rack - it's destined to be a quilt rack , as soon as I screw up the motivation to decide which quilts I want to hang on it...folding them to fit just seems too hard. 

Flat Out

Just thought I'd pop in quickly and show you what I've been up to since my last post. 

This has been my stellar progress on the Triangle quilt 

And this is the brilliant effort I've made with my orange peels in the last two weeks 

My mojo seems to have completely disappeared. If you find it can you please send it back this way? 

Not Quite Sure Where That Week Went....

It looks like I've turned into a once a week poster.  Lately I haven't been doing much that's particularly blog worthy or exciting and I'm sure you don't want shots of me making the bed, doing laundry or playing on my iPad.

Work continues on the guest room makeover. Mr. P is a crazy anal good painter and has insisted on doing 5 coats on the dressing table to get it to his satisfaction so I'm still waiting for that to go in the room. I have house guests next week so he's been told he is on an actual time frame and cant fluff about taking his sweet time like he usually does. 

Progress was made on the Seville Quilt this week. These orange peels are haunting me in my sleep. I counted them up and I still have 33 to do.....this quilt is starting to feel like I've been making it forever and 33 isn't all that close to a finish. But I will soldier on and I will prevail! (Yes it really is starting to feel like this is war) 

I've just come from Katy's blog where she talks about a photography course she's been doing , which just reinforces how crappy my own photos are!

My Not The Farmer's Wife sewing group met this weekend. There was a lot of laughter and some hot topics of conversation (missing planes, changing careers to become a phone sex worker, and ladies hoo ha's- don't ask!) No shots of the lovely ladies but I did get shots of some fabulous finishes.

Claire's orange peel quilt. She is now jiggying me along to finish mine, seemingly without the realisation that my peels are 10 times the size of hers... 

Val's Star Wars quilt. I think the force was with her on this one. It is fabulous. 

And Lorraine's scrappy stars quilts (she has recently discovered the joy of rotary cutting and is churning quilts out like nobodies business) 

I dragged out my poor neglected triangle quilt this weekend and added a few rows to the total. This picture was an "in progress" shot...Somehow I don't think this is going to make the finished list as I had originally planned for this quarter.

Some Saturday Stash enhancement for the yet to be started Lucy Boston quilt...not my usual colours and it was quite challenging stepping out of my comfort zone and purchasing these.

And lastly from the quilty front I'm currently working on a restoration project for a friend. This well loved quilt is about 15 years old and has been adored by three kids and really needed some TLC. It had no binding left so I've started with replacing that and I'll see what else I can do as I go along. 

I also worked on hemming curtains this weekend..but since that still isn't finished the results will have to wait for the next post and I have a feeling I'm going to be doing some weeping and wailing about them being different sizes. That'll be a fun post! 

Happy...

After what seemed like an interminable week at work last week, where I hurtled along at about 200 kilometres per hour, I was determined on the weekend to do only things that fit one of three criteria. Everything I did had to be either fun, exciting or it had to make me happy.

I started my weekend by leaving work 15 minutes early so I could get to the post office to get a parcel that was waiting. 

You can call it ridiculous that a woman of my age gets excited about Hershey's syrup. I don't care. It's the simple things that make life worth living and Hershey's is one of them. That and the sweet and sour mix that also came in the same box so I can make cocktails...

This is a Fruity Toad and while it may look like watered down wee it was actually really good...I think Sweet and Sour mix has magical properties.... 

I made some red velvet cupcakes 

I pottered around doing some sewing when I felt like it. These two blocks are destined to head off to Little Island Quilting  to be made into quilts for Mexican street kids. It doesn't take long to whack a couple of blocks together. Check out the post here if you want to know more or you want to help out. 

I dreamed of new projects and as soon as I finish the Seville Quilt I've decided I'm starting this one. I even raced out to buy the paper templates so I cant chicken out. 

This beautiful quilt was made by Hilda at Every Stitch. I was so inspired! 

We moved forward on the guest room re-do. I have officially vowed never to paint the walls dark colours ever again. It took 4 coats of white to cover up the previous colour. But it's done and while I'm freaking right out about having such pale walls I think it'll all come together and look fabulous in the end...

Before and After...

New (to me ) furniture has arrived, and re-painting and re-purposing has begun. 

Vile stool before (this was seriously one of the worst upholstering jobs I've ever seen ) 

After shot of the same stool once I'd had my way with it. 

And the piece de resistance - an antique dressing table which Mr. P has the pleasure of re-painting (in pretty much the same colour it is now- but it'll look fabulous with a new coat or two of paint) 

I pottered about in the kitchen...or sent Mr. P out to forage for food, and dint fuss about calories. 

And all in all I just did what made me happy. It was the perfect way to spend a long weekend. I think this is how weekends are meant to be. 

Confessions of a Clipsal Widow

Mr. P wandered off for 3 days of motor sport Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I had decided this was the weekend to paint the guest room and so Thursday night Mr. P got all the supplies ready for me to start that job on Friday. I thought it was pretty brave of me to tackle painting without other adult help.

I spent some of Friday morning making a list of things I needed to pick up from the hardware store. Mr. P dropped the bombshell that I would have to patch paint a spot on the ceiling that he had repaired -oh I dunno - in August last year but he assured me that he would paint the ceiling when he got home that night so I could continue painting the second and third coats on the walls Saturday. Mildly unhappy about having to touch the ceiling, I dropped Mr. P to the bus station and then made several stops on the way home including the JB's ( a girl has to have rocking music to paint) and the hardware store to get ceiling paint because I'd also been informed we didn't have any.  

I finally made it back home at 12.30.  Mother of Pyjamas called- and I spent 45 minutes talking to her. Then I ate lunch. Then I realised I had a hairdresser appointment at 3.00pm so it wasn't worth getting my painting clothes on for an hour and then having to stop to go get made pretty. I'm sure you know where this story is headed. That's right- no painting got done on Friday. And when Mr. P arrived home from his day at the race he also conveniently forgot all about the ceiling so not only did I have patch painting to do I also now had a ceiling to paint as well. 

Saturday I did everything I could to avoid starting the painting. I washed clothes, and tidied my house and watered my plants and eventually there was nothing left on the list except the painting. So I ate breakfast and then went and stirred the paint ( I hate paint stirring and it took me 15 minutes just to open the can since I didn't have one of those cool paint can openers) and then I cut myself a paint holder from an old milk container so I didn't have to keep getting up and down off the ladder while I patch painted the ceiling. I stomped off to the guest room to slap some paint on the ceiling and discovered to my horror as I swiped the brush across the patched part that my husband had not sanded that the ceiling even though he assured me he had. By this time I was either going to cry or swear so I did both and then coated the patched part with paint anyway ....planning to sand it and then re-paint it later ....

Fast forward to 3.00pm Saturday and I woke from a three hour nanna nap. Still no painting done....

I finally sanded the walls at 3.45pm. Two spots the size of a dinner plate. Big whoop. 

And then like Manna from Heaven I got a phone call that something I has made enquiries about buying was available so I made sure I procrastinated coming home and by the time I got here it was too late  to rip open the wall paint. I congratulated myself and went and ate dinner.

Saturday night I tried to sand the ceiling and convinced myself that it was all too hard. Sanding ceilings without a proper ladder isn't exactly actually my favourite job - and not being able to find the mouse sander made it even harder, so I gave up. Then I spent half an hour justifying why I couldn't paint anything until the ceiling was sanded and painted and since I'd decided I wasn't going to be doing that it looked like painting was off. 

The rest of the weekend was punctuated by "Oh Shiny" moments. I'd have an idea, get motivated enough to start and then get bored 30 minutes in. Repeatedly.

This occurred with a selvage cushion I started making, which morphed into selvage zig zag blocks for a quilt , and after three of them, I turned them into selvage HST's which I also got bored with after making about four. 

Four was coincidentally the number of white fudge covered Oreos I ate for lunch. I guess that means I'm also bored with healthy eating....

By this time, even if I'd wanted to work on the triangle quilt I couldn't find it in the mess that used to be my sewing room..so I went to lay on the lounge and fell asleep for 4 hours. By the time I woke up it was 4.30pm Sunday. Weekend over !

And you know what? My lack of motivation extended to this post because I couldn't even be bothered to add pictures. 

Let's hope this malady doesn't hang around too long!