100th Post Give-away

Hi.  This is my 100th post.  A great big thank you to all the people who pop in here and to those who leave such lovely and encouraging comments, and thank you to those who have hit the follow button too!!

One hundred times I've sat down here at my little table and babbled on and uploaded photos and hit the 'publish' button.  Hard to believe it's been quite that many.  I am enjoying myself immensely and feel very lucky to be a part of this fabulous on-line community and being connected worldwide with like-minded people.  So, again thank you, with a big "most-viewed post" Lalaloopsy smile.  Yup, lots of kids on-line I'm guessing and not you dear peeps going back to this post over and over again?!!

 

Most people who come visiting at my blog are from Australia, England and the United States, but it's also very exciting to see people from Spain, Belgium, Argentina, South Africa and other corners of the world popping in ... hello!!  My post about Teacup making brought the most comments.  That was nice.

 

 

Since beginning my blog I've taken hundreds more photos and am really enjoying playing with my camera, and hopefully improving my skills, looking at ordinary things in a different way.  Also by announcing that I would finish a WIP (work in progress) each month, I'm still on track because of your generous comments and encouragement.  Okay, and a bit of "yikes-I-haven't-finished-my-month's-project-and-I-need-to-blog-about-it"!!!

 

 

Okay, enough rambling and back to the give-away.  I have a stack of beautiful fat quarters of pale, dreamy cotton fabrics I would like to send someone.  Perfect to make a lovely, soft quilt, or whatever takes your fancy.

 

 

 

There will be chocolate.  Because we all need a little chocolate in our day!  And there is a little - handmade by me - vintage doiley brooch.   I used someone else's fine stitches in the linen and sewed it onto some lovely wool felt.

 

 

Please join in the fun.  All you need to do is leave me a comment to go in the draw.  To make this a bit interesting, tell me about your dream craft room/studio.  Is it a beach hut, treehouse, a little shed in the backyard, is it under the eaves in the attic, in the cellar, in the bush?

 

I think my ideal place to create would be in a retro caravan parked in a far corner of a paddock, which you had to walk through a field of daffodils to get to.  It would be filled with cushions and books, and maybe I wouldn't do too much creating in there, but I would certainly spend a lot of hours daydreaming.

 

Pop back on October 1 and I will pick a winner.  Go on, join in the fun!!

Trudy

Love this Colour

 

Teal.  One of my favourites.  I'm constantly drawn to it.  So, for a bit of fun I thought I'd see how much I really like this colour by seeing how much of it I surround myself with.  Let's take a walk through the house and see how many times teal pops up in things.

 

Only one item of clothing in the colour teal, an old favourite cardy, so it seems I don't need to drape myself constantly in this colour.

 

But it seems I do like teal in vases and plates.  Love this plate by Rebecca Rebouche, who describes herself as a painter of trees, birds, balloons and other magic.  I've put a link here to a beautiful little movie I just discovered, that the store Anthropologie did featuring Rebecca in her treehouse studio.  Take a moment to have a look, it's inspiring.

And of course there is teal in my fabrics and wool, bags (thanks Cath K, you do a good teal) and in my treasured, old box of 48 Crayola crayons.

 

 

I like to drink from teal, and I like teal on the walls.  It seems I even like teal to peek out from inside things, like this vase.  And looking at the vase, I realise this love of teal has been going on for quite some time, because that was a purchase I made about hmmm, 20 years ago?

I'm wondering if my love of this colour came from my Mum because back in the '70s when Mums were off at classes learning crafts like macrame and pottery everything she made was teal.  I treasure these wonky pieces of pottery, because my Mum made them and because I love this colour and obviously she did too.  Glad she went back to knitting ; -)

Are there colours you love to surround yourself with?  Colours that you are drawn to?  Colours that you love?  Colours that make you happy?

Wishing you a colourful weekend.
Trudy

She

She wondered if the act of blogging was getting in the way of the act of creating something to blog about.

Days 16, 17 and 18

Decided to go kind of weird and crazy with the colour of my photos for these three days, and I have saturated them with colour!  The words to go with the days are, 16. strange, 17. in my fridge and 18. price.

Strange to attempt, with the use of a red and white polka dot paper pom pom, to make this room pretty in any way when the background is pure renovator's "delight".

Who wants to see inside my fridge?  I like you I do, but I certainly don't need to see inside your fridge, unless you have some left over Chocolate Ripple Cake that you would like me to finish off.  So do you really want to see in mine?  Well here's a little bit of it, just a bit.  And in this photo I think the colour works best in a colours-of-India kind of way, matching with the Patak's Curry Paste.

Price.  The price of grannys in our community.  They're cheap.  And they're loose!!  But I promise I won't talk about your granny in this way : -)

Have a happy day.
Trudy

A Favourite Quilt

With spring here, it was time to pack away my winter quilt and put on the bed a softer, lighter coloured one.  And this is one of my favourites, with lots of dreamy, faded fabrics in both linen and cotton and a few feedsack fabrics thrown into the mix too.  This one is called Faded Secrets.

The quilt had an interesting beginning as I had set out to make an advent calender.  I had carefully chosen all the fabrics from my stash ready to make little advent pockets, but when I saw the collection of fabrics all over the table I loved it so much I wanted it to become a quilt, not just something we brought out once a year.

It is a very simple grid of 11 x 11 squares, of 5 inches.  I love squares so much, but when it came time to quilt it, I wanted something a bit different, to make these quaint fabrics a little more contemporary and had the idea of quilting in circles all over it.   And I think I set a record with this one, because I hand quilted it in 28 days - obviously nothing else got done in those days between April and June of 2010!

On the border I quilted in diamonds, and when I had finished, I calculated that the quilt had approximately 13,860 hand-quilted stitches in it.

The backing fabric of stripes was rather expensive, so rather than buying enough to cover the entire back, I patched that too.  The binding fabric was a gift from a friend's stash, she no longer wanted, and the feedsack fabric was also a gift from a friend, so I have lots of lovely memories of friendships sewn into the quilt.

 

I love that within this quilt there are sheep and little houses, and girls tucked up in bed.  There are red roses and little cottages and the Eiffel Tower.  I love to run my hands over all those stitches and dream about the little girl in bed and wonder if she has been to Paris and seen the Eiffel Tower, and whether the roses have been painted red by a pack of cards and who lives in those sweet little cottages with the blue trees in the yard.

 

 

Enough, I'm rambling now and this post is just covering up the fact that I don't have anything new to share with you today!!

 

Hope you're enjoying your Tuesday.

Trudy

 

 

 

Out Walking

The Rehabilitating One and I are out walking twice a day these days, building up his post-op strength.  Nice to spend so much time together away from work, walking around with all the time in the world.  And we've had some sunny days to enjoy these walks.

And just have a look here at what we saw on the corner of Jones and Nelson, just a hop, skip and a jump around the corner from where we live.  Literally, around-the-corner!!

 

Aren't they gorgeous?!!  Did you see the joeys in the pouches?  The little heads peeking out?  And in one instance the joey went in head first and all you can see are the legs poking out of the pouch!!!  Look at the strength in those hind legs and tail - this wasn't an action shot, he was just standing there for ages wondering which way to go.  And deciding church was a safe haven, off they all went.

I will always squeal with excitement when I see native animals out and about.  This will never change.

What animals do you see in your neighbourhood?
Trudy

Days 10 through 15

Gee, these days are rolling by so quickly!!  Missed the opportunity to post my three photos, so here are six photos for days 10 through 15. The words for this set are 10. hero, 11. black and white, 12. together, 13. table, 14. favourite and 15. first thing you see.

 

My hero, my husband, my best friend. A hero because he never "dropped his bundle" during the time of firstly being told he'd had a heart attack, then being told he needed heart surgery, when he realised he couldn't work in his own business in the same capacity as before, that he would have to rely on others for a time, that there would be a time of rehabilitation and times of pain. During all that he has never complained, or felt self-pity or done anything other than what a true hero would do and just get on with things.

 

 

An outdoor seat that was once white and was then painted black, and now the white is showing through again. Time for a repaint.  Add it to the list.

 

 

Us together, in shadow form, snapped while out on one of our daily walks. Looking a bit like we're part of a map, that we are the sea and are surrounded by land, or maybe not, maybe just shadows!

 

 

On Thursday Girl 2 competed in a chess tournament, representing her school. It was fabulous to watch the concentration on the childrens faces, to hear the constant clicking of the timing machines and to see the glee on their faces if they won. There were long rows of tables, with lots of games happening all at once. Girl 2 came home as part of the winning team and is off to the State Tournament later in the year, in Melbourne.

 



 

 Favourite. Lindt.  No more to be said really.

 

 

This is the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning.  My bedside table with lamp, photo, bowl of trinkets and my wedding rings on a shell.  Love that there is no clock.  I wake up with the sun.

 

Thanks for looking, and reading to the end.

Have a fabulous weekend and take some photos!

 

Trudy