First sewing project

Hello fellow bloggers - I have now joined the ranks of bloggers who sew. Very exciting! E was my co-creator and decided what colours went where. I'm not a big orange fan but there was quite a bit of it in the stash my big sis kindly donated to me with her old machine (that I traded in as it was past it). There was also a bunch of brightly coloured squares already cut so I decided to practice on them rather than risk ruining any pretty material that I had spent precious pocket money on. After all, it was the first time I threaded up the machine and wound the bobbin. E did the pedal work and did a great job following instructions of "stop", "go" and "a little bit more". Thankfully, G was out of the house at the time or the whole thing would have been a complete shemozzle. As it was, I forgot to put the cover on my new rotary cutter and brushed my hand against it. Nothing a quick bandaid couldn't fix though.

Now we just have to master adding the quilt back, batting or whatever it's called and sewing the binding on. In case you haven't guessed - it's a dolly quilt. I'm saving up to buy some gorgeous material for a mummy quilt. Many thanks to the lovely Claudia at Quilt Essentials for lending me a cutting mat and giving me lots of handy hints while I wait to do the next quilting course.

CT - I am going to do that tagging thing when I get some time. As you can see...I've been busy... plus working from home so my right arm has almost fallen off. It's a bit different to working in the office where I get up every so often and walk to the photocopier or have a chat to a colleague.

Let the sewing begin

Finally....I have my own sewing machine. I put a deposit on a secondhand one yesterday and the lovely man said "You can take your machine home and pay the rest later". What a guy! So far, the machine is just sitting on the playroom table where I can admire it.

Haven't been able to blog as Em is sick with a nasty bout of tonsilits and asleep on the living room floor. Refuses to take ANY panadol etc which is very very frustrating.

See you soon.

I've been tagged

Thanks to the beautiful CT in Mexico, I've been tagged...not once but twice. I'll have to do them one at a time as my girls are tired and having sharing issues and I may need to dash off. This is already my second attempt. Here's what I have to do for the first one before passing it on .

1.Collect the book you have most handy.
2. Turn to page 161.
3. Find the 5th complete sentence.
4. Cite the sentence on your blog.
5. Pass it on to five other blog friends

The book I have been reading is "Shooting Balibo" by journalist, Tony Maniaty. It is a memoir of his experiences in East Timor just prior to the invasion by the Indonesians in 1975. He narrowly escaped death but the journalists who have become known as the "Balibo Five" and a sixth Australian journalist, all of whom were warned of the dangers by Tony, were brutally killed by the Indonesians. It is also about his experiences some thirty years later when he returned to East Timor with the film crew and actors who made the recently released film about the 1975 dramas - "Balibo". We saw the movie on the weekend (thanks Mum and Dad for babysitting). I was on the edge of my seat and the book by Tony Maniaty was just unputdownable. Given that the movie has just come out (and the book too, I think) and my brother has just married his beautiful East Timorese girl, my family are slightly obsessed with East Timor at the moment - both its sad history and its challenging present. I hope there are happier times ahead for this tiny, fledgling nation.

So, here's the 5th sentence from the book. It's actually from one of the most dramatic moments when Tony and his cameraman and sound guy are being shot at by the Indonesians and he risks his life to run back and collect his passport.

"I could see the chopper in the sky over Batugade, and I could see my passport sitting there, the loneliest passport in the world at that moment, on the wall where I'd left it".

I don't know if I have five bloggy friends that I can tag with this - I have a small audience! So I think I'll pass the baton to CGDK. at Wind Screamers.

a ride in the bush

We decided to avoid the annual "Show" this year as we are being cautious about the swine flu. It's in a lot of schools anyway, but with E being asthmatic we don't want to be milling around with thousands of people. Also last year we spent a ridiculous amount of money on entry, rides for the children, sample bags etc. So....this year we went for a horse ride instead. I think, officially, they were ponies actually. E got to ride her favourite pony called Patch. (Scott doesn't always wear that ridiculous hat - he was minding it for E). We went with our lovely neighbours so it was a good chance to chat and catch up.


After the ride, we like to give the horses an apple. Here's what happened.

Eventually, the poor horse got to eat the apple, with a bit of added dirt for extra flavour.

The weather was gorgeous and we had a lovely relaxed time being out in the bush. I led one of the ponies which required slight concentration so that I didn't get stepped on.

Afterwards, we all drove towards home and stopped in a creekside park to eat our picnic, enjoy the sunshine and let the children play in the playground. It was SO good to have a lazy day (and be out of our messy house)

Not Wordsworth but Blake

After feeling philosophical upon seeing my first nasturtium seedling come up, I consulted my trusty Norton Anthology of English Literature for the poetry quote I was thinking of. I couldn't find it. A google search did find it, and it is William Blake, not William Wordsworth. (Sorry - I did them in the same semester at Uni and it was a long time ago). It is from Auguries of Innocence:

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

News Flash - baby nasturtiums!

Just after I wrote the last post, I went out to bring in the washing and water the garden. Guess what I found? One tiny little nasturtium seedling has popped its head up. I'm sure it wasn't there yesterday. Not a huge thing in the scheme of things to some people, but as a lazy gardener who usually buys seedlings, I get such a thrill from seeing something grow from a seed. As Wordsworth said, sometimes you can see the universe in a flower, or words to that effect. I'll have to dig out my big fat book of English Literature from my uni days for the exact quote. So here it is....nestled under its neighbour - a nice fat pansy.

Garden update

As my quilting/patchwork/sewing plans are on hold until I get my hands on my sister's machine and can afford to have it serviced, I am trying to enjoy being in the garden now that the weather is warmer. It actually felt like spring today - gentle sunshine, no wind, about 24 degrees (C) and just about perfect for being outside. G and I have pulled some weeds and washed the car which was actually more enjoyable than I thought. Funny how some chores aren't so bad if you relax and take your time. And you have a little helper.

Anyway....here are some photos from the garden. My lavender flowers are bringing me so much joy. Today, I showed G how to run her hands over the leaves and flowers and then smell the beautiful fragrance. She loved it and said "Kipper can't do it". She likes to feel superior to the dog, being the baby of the house.


My Mum gave me this pretty pink geranium a year or more ago and I stuck in the front garden when it was completely bare. I have pretty much neglected it ever since and is now looking nice and colourful against the carport boards. I like flowers that thrive on neglect like geraniums and nasturtiums. We have planted some nasturtium seeds but they haven't sprouted because G and/or Kipper keep digging them up.

Speaking of Kipper, here he is watching me take a picture of the revamped no dig vege patch. This was taken over by the pumpkin vine last year and I have finally pulled the damn thing out. The girls helped put the pavers/stones around the edge and put some extra ones down the middle to use as stepping stones. I've moved them to the back to make room for the veges when they eventually go in. My dad is taking me to the garden shop tomorrow to buy some flasher garden edge pavers that hopefully will do a better job of keeping the weeds out. I've put a layer of compost and grass clippings on top but it probably needs a few more layers of good stuff before I start planting.

We took advantage of the gorgeous weather yesterday and went to a park with a lovely big timber playground. Although the playground is great, E's favourite part of this particular park is the duck pond across a big grassy area. It used to be part of a creek (Kedron Brook) but like many of the city's small creeks ("streams" for those not familiar with the Australian vernacular - or do you say "creeks" as well in the US?), they have been enclosed in concrete channels and now look more like drains. Anyway... the duck pond was quite picturesque (apart from the shopping trolley someone had dumped in it). The day before when we discovered it, it was full of nice ducks, with the added excitement of five evil looking eels, swimming about underneath the ducks and popping their heads up in search of food. This time, there was not an eel or duck in sight, just a couple of black moorhead looking things.

We had taken a neighbour's child with us and I was in "let the children have some freedom and feel the grass under their feet" mode so of course someone took their shoes off and stepped on something sharp and ended up with a cut foot. Of course, it was the neighbour's child - not one of mine and I thought the cut might need a stitch or two. So...we packed up and headed home to do some first aid before delivering the child home with an offer to drive to the nearest medical centre (a two hour wait on a Sunday) and pay the doctor's fee. Happily the cut was fairly minor and holding together and the little girl's mum was happy with her tetanus status so we went back home and watched a dvd together. I guess the moral of the story was to let the children enjoy the grass under their feet when we are in the backyard and not traipsing around a creek in a park. I'll have to find other ways to let the children experience the freedom I had as a child, growing up in the country and allowed to wander near and far on my bike with a friend and a picnic lunch we had made ourselves, as long as we were home by dark.