Photography

I’ve always loved photography, but drifted away from it over the last couple of years as my gear became old and damaged and rarely performed the way I wanted it to. A few weeks back however there was a pretty good sale on, and a slightly different job at work had left a little extra money in my savings account, so I indulged in a new camera.

Now I’m not the world’s fittest person, but my work is currently having a fitness challenge where work teams collect points for various healthy activities. I decided to combine my desire to contribute some team points and my new camera and took myself for a long walk round the botanic gardens this morning. It was a very pleasant distraction from my to-do-list.

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It’s finished

I always get to the stage when I am about to finish something where I get just a little antsy. It’s hard to describe. It’s not that I am sad about finishing something that I have enjoyed working on, its more that I just want it done. I’ve lost patience with the process and hate working on the piece. Which is fine when I am at home working on a quilt and I can just sit down and crank it out until it’s done (or throw it in a corner in frustration). Not so great at work when I am getting cranky near the end of a project.

Today though we had a public holiday, so the quilt top got finished. It’s interesting, because I don’t think I put the blocks together the way I intended in my head. I think I wanted the pink triangles sitting next to each other to make a square, but I like the way it turned out. There is a kind of pin wheel effect going on.

 

 

Getting things done

I’m having one of those months where I don’t feel like I am doing much but somehow I keep getting things crossed off the list. So much so, that I feel like I need to have a new planning session soon to figure out a new list and that is way ahead of schedule.

I have also found some time to be crafty, finishing a scarf from some silk and alpaca blend wool I picked up during a trip to Sydney earlier this year with sightseeing relatives. The wool was so lovely just by itself, so I kept it simple and just knitted on big needles.

I’ve also started a new quilt. Its going to be vertical rows of border fabric broken up with rows of the squares. Only problem is I don’t have enough of the pink and green fabric for triangles so I have to decide whether I go back to the store and by more or fudge it with a few squares that are just the centre fabric. It is not my usual colour choice, but will look nice and soft and pretty when it is done.

Dots and bags

Back in October I won a kit at the craft fair that involved sticking little dots on a canvas. Almost like paint by numbers but with shiny dots. I finally got round to doing it this week and was pleasantly surprised. I expected it to be a bit boring but it was strangely relaxing and provided I had something on tv in the background I was quite happy to do it for a few hours at a time. That said, I wouldn’t have wanted it to be much bigger if for no other reason that by the end I was getting a serious shoulder hunch going on. Here is the finished product.

This week, I also managed to finally finish the bag I cut out back in October.

My last day at work was yesterday and I am on holidays for the next two weeks. I’m looking forward to the break and to getting a plan together for next year.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas and New Year.

 

Weird and windy

I never really thought about it before, but it is really unusual where I live for it to be windy. The sun is shining, the sky is blue but its blowing a gale out there. There are wild, noisy gusts of wind rattling round the house and finding every loose and squeaky thing. It’s a little unsettling, at least that’s what I’m going to blame for my weird mood and the fact that I can’t seem to get stuck into my to-do-list today. It’s like there’s a primitive part of my brain that is trying to understand why the weather is different all of a sudden and can’t make any sense of it.

My mood isn’t helped by the fact that I am feeling extremely uncreative at the moment.  What with work and a work course to study for, Christmas preparations to be made and my garden to get back in order now we’ve had enough rain for the weeds to start growing again I haven’t had a lot of time for making stuff. A couple of weeks back I bought a cutting machine, which I can see is going to be hugely useful for a whole lot of things but it’s going to require me to develop a fair bit of expertise. So I want to play, and I made the test project that came with machine (see below) but I have an awful lot of learning to do before I am going to be good enough to make it work the way I want it to work. Which is a little frustrating.

Summer’s almost here

It’s getting towards that time of the year where I have to camp out in the one room of the house that has air-conditioning and I am trying to muster the energy to do the things I need to do before it gets too hot to do them – like get my crazy garden in order, finish painting those last two windows and getting organised for Christmas. Which of course, is why I spent most of yesterday on the couch, hand quilting a quilt instead of tackling anything on my to do list. However, I’m determined that next year is the year I get my groove back (or actually get a groove, because I’m not convinced I’ve ever actually had one).

Pictures of the hand quilting will have to wait until it’s finished, so for now you will have to make do with a picture of the hat and scarf set I just finished knitting.

Sorting things out

I have had two weeks off work, and what with overseas relatives staying and a brief trip to Sydney things have been a little chaotic, fun but chaotic. Off course while I was away the weather was apparently perfect but the day I need to do what feels like 10 loads of washing it is overcast and threatening storms. There is however some blue sky out there and I’m hoping I can get a couple of loads at least dry on the line before rain hits. In the meantime I will focus on getting the rest of my house back into a semblance of order before I have to go back to work tomorrow.

Here are some pictures of my trip. I loved the coastal daisies I stumbled across while on a walk along the coast. They were almost iridescent. I am trying to think of ways I could capture them in textiles.