Adventures with Pinterest

I know I'm addicted to Pinterest because I spend hours on there pinning things I'm unlikely to ever make, do or cook. Before Pinterest I used to store "Things I was never going to get back to " under the heading "Things Im probably never going to look at or find again" in my bookmarks on my computer. But with Pinterest I fool myself into thinking if I pin it I've almost made it ...so I don't need to go to the trouble of actually doing the work. 

Aside from the fact I've invested a huge chunk of my life in my co-dependant relationship with Pinterest when I could have been using my time for productive pursuits like brokering world peace or discovering a preventative cure for ingrown toenails I've come to realise that Pinterest makes me really angry.  If I have to look at one more salted caramel dip, cake, cookie, cupcake, icing, frosting, donut or sauce  I may just go postal. I'm so over salty caramel ANYTHING. Let it go. It's the Tiramisu of 2013. Let's all just move on shall we? And peanut butter - every second thing I look at has PB in it. That's right up there with Salty Caramel too. 

And all those talented people out there pinning DIY home gorgeousness - don't they realise that just makes the rest of us feel inadequate? Stop showing off ! Why cant they just live in chaos and disorder like the rest of us? 

Anyway this post does have a point. I've decided to beat Pinterest at it's own game and start making at least some of the stuff I pin. And blogging about it - or submitting my attempts to Pinstrosity because I'm pretty sure there will be stuff ups galore along the way. And being the worlds most prolific Pinterest stuffer upper might be my ticket to fame. 

At some point in the last few weeks apparently I'd taken the adage "an apple a day keeps the doctor away " a little too seriously and I had about 6 kilos of apples slowly desiccating in the bottom of the fridge. I like to tell myself that those kind of things are science experiments so I can leave them there with no feelings of guilt when we all know I'm just waiting for them to go so bad I can legitimately throw them out.

But yesterday I was on a "waste not want not" kick and so I turned to Pinterest for inspiration with apples. 

And came across a lot of recipes for apple butter (and salty caramel apple butter too) It seemed straight forward enough and I thought of all the cool places I could use apple butter- like on toast or pancakes or on ice cream and in cakes and on cakes and as a dip. So I set about peeling and coring umpteen million kilos of apples (OK about 3 kilos worth) and dumping them in the crock pot with Cinnamon, all spice , a ton of sugar , some extra liquid and a teeny weeny bit of ground cloves. And then I checked it every few hours for about 10 hours and occasionally gave it a loving stir.

Before bed I turned the crock pot down to warm for overnight ...because I wanted to gently coddle my apple butter into submission. And I went to bed and dreamed of apple butter pancakes for breakfast. 

And when I woke up this morning I checked out my apple butter goodness and realised that we had obviously had intruders overnight who broke in to turn the crock pot up to high.

All my apples had gone from filling the pot to barely covering the bottom and you could literally stand a spoon up in what was left. 

Not to be deterred I was still confident I could save it. I added some water, mixed it up, turned the crock pot off and waited for it too cool so I could put it in the food processor. I'm an optimist and it's never over till the fat lady sings. 

I processed the apples to within an inch of their lives while the fat lady did her thing and then Mr. P and I bickered over who was going to be the taste tester (and who was going to be the person who ultimately lived) I won and Mr. P drew the short straw because I didn't want to eat something that looked like it belonged in a toilet.  And I kept mentioning that too as he was trying to eat it. 

Its quite funny to see man who will eat almost anything bar beetroot and brussel sprouts struggling to swallow a mouth full of apple whatever the hell that was  because his wife was deliberately blocking the sink so he couldn't spit it out. 

When Mr. P had finally recovered the ability to speak he squeaked out "Ugh - it tastes like medicine-it's horrible ". I thought he was over exaggerating until I put a tiny bit on my tongue. The consistency was like eating a mouthful of wet sand. While I lamented the waste of apples and time Mr. P muttered "Some one at work might like it" and pointedly followed up with "YOUR work"...Enough said. 

I think I'm calling this a fail. 

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

You seriously have to sing that post title to David Bowie or it doesn't have the same impact. 

The only excuse for my recent absence, aside from being a slack arse,  is that I've been deep in thought this week contemplating change and making deep and meaningful decisions about my life.   

We finally having planning permission to erect a structure, so now we move onto the next step , which is  to get approval for the actual building we want to erect. Sigh. Councils do like to make you jump through hoops to get anything done and now that the wet weather has hit it seems unlikely we'll be able to move forward on putting the footings up before Spring-approval or no approval.  That means we're looking at possibly having my studio finished by about November. I can't get excited about something that's 5 months away. Rolling with the punches.....

I wrote a post here about our planned holiday this year to Fiji. What I didn't say was that we were taking Miss P and Little P on their first overseas trip as a surprise. That was the whole reason for going to Fiji. It's a great destination for a first overseas trip because it's close and the culture shock to Miss P and Little P would have been minimal. Unfortunately Miss P has a different life agenda at the moment so Mr. P and I are going to Vietnam by ourselves instead. 

Vietnam is the Russian roulette of travel because it's entirely conceivable I could be poisoned at any moment because the Vietnamese love sprinkling nuts on and in everything. I'm highly allergic. Like epi -pen allergic. I've spent the weekend teaching myself to say  "Em dị ứng với đậu phộng" as insurance. Other than constantly cheating imminent death I'm really excited about going. 

Lastly, nobody guessed what my secret project was. I was kind of mean about giving you clues. I turned the last seam yesterday and this is my only finish for the week. I got the idea for a fabric/sewing diary from Pinterest (my one stop shop for all things inspirational) and decided to have a go at making my own.  I do have manky jotting down book but this just seemed a lot more classy.

Front 

Back

I'm planning to paste fabric scraps in it as well as pictures and descriptions of my quilts and any thing else that takes my fancy. I probably should have started this 40 quilts ago. 

Thoughts That Wont Leave My Head

Last week at work was taken up with starting to get ready for the roll out of Australia's new disability scheme since I work in one of the trial sites. It was an insane week and I finally finished the last thing at 20 seconds to 5pm on Friday night. I let out of whoop of joy so loud that I'm sure they heard me cheering about 5 kilometres away. I was home by 5.15,  in my pyjamas by 5.30pm and I crashed out on the lounge embarrassingly early. I'm going to make an awesome old person because I already have the pyjamas/sleeping/napping/ grouchy thing down pat.

I made a conscious decision early in the week to do something a little crafty every day to maintain my sanity. Progress was made on apple cores, my infinity scarf (I'm really a bit over that now and I bought 4 of them over the weekend- so there's no rush to finish now) and I did some more of the appliquéd hexie flowers. 

This weekend I finally basted Superheroes 2 and did some more work on the recycled shirt quilt too. I'm hoping that this time next week at least one of those will be finished. 

I did slip yesterday. I ended up spending the morning making three stroller blankets. 

I was curious how long they would take to make and how much I might be able to sell them for. I've been consumed all weekend by thoughts of running a market stall later in the year. For those of you that have done it - any pointers? And for those of you that have thought about doing it and haven't - what were your reasons for discarding the idea?  I have a feeling I'm not going to be able to shake this idea until I do something about it. Feel free to talk me out of it. 

Retail therapy this afternoon included these lovelies (as well as a pile of Minky in chocolate, a soft taupe and some pink fur- I dont even want to guess what kind of animal that came from)

In other scintillating news from Maison Pyjamas I cleaned out my freezer this weekend and discarded some meat that was practically prehistoric.  Fortunately Indy and Lola don't care if you give them dinosaur meat. I also found some frozen berries that have been there so long that I cant even recall buying them (I'm vaguely recalling 2011) so I made a raspberry-blueberry-pear pie. And then made Mr. P eat it first in case they were poison berries.   

This week I'm going to be working on this secret project (another idea that wont leave my head!) Cardygirl has been making us playing guessing games with one of her projects so I'm going to ask for guesses about you think this is going to be  (assuming I dont mess it up so badly it becomes a pot holder) 

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.