The Kaffe Fassett quilt - finished!

 At last, the Kaffe Fassett quilt is finished, and I LOVE IT. It's a fine piece of work, if I do say so myself.

I think it's the best quilt I've ever made - all the seams match up, the colours are spectacular, the flannel backing is particularly soft and lovely,and of course there's that invisibly hand-stitched binding to top it all off.

So I'm glad it's going to the Amateur Actress. She came to pick it up yesterday and we took these photographs. I especially love the one of her reclining, considering it was actually 34 degrees outside in the burny sun, and she put up with me fussily arranging and re-arranging a super-warm flannel-backed quilt over the top of her bump and making here stay there while I took a range of photographs from ever-so-slightly different angles.

She's a good egg, that Amateur Actress.

1. Baby quilt for the Amateur Actress
2. Baby quilt for Beck
3. Baby quilt for the Headmistress
4. Cup of tea and a lie down after three baby quilts in quick succession
5. Complete the massive postage stamp quilt I started early last year. I was doing fine until I realised I'd accidentally doubled the recipe and was now making the quilt twice as big as it needed to be. King-size. In three-inch squares. That's a lot of seams. It's been stuffed into the back of a drawer (a big drawer) for months now, because I get a cold shiver every time I even think about going back to it.
6. Curlicue Crush quilt as posted on a few days ago
7. Complete a patchwork screen using the antique wooden frame that's shoved into a corner of the sewing room and has been unused for years. In the hope of selling it at a market later in the year.
8. Start the Autumn Daze quilt from Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Romance book
9. Bit of a breakdown as I realise doing all those quilts is probably impossible, and why do I always set my sights on unattainable goals and is this a major character flaw and do I set myself up for failure this way and why can't I just live more in the now without having to constantly achieve, achieve, achieve; ...valium now please.
10. Finish those grey wool pants I cut out in the middle of winter last year ... sigh ....
11. Put up shelves in my sewing room so that my wondrous and ever-growing collection of lovely new and vintage tins can be displayed to its best advantage so that I can actually see and enjoy them. Right now they are piled on top of each other in a heap on the sewing table.
12. Make a curtain for the sewing room window. It's been naked-of-curtain for more than 18 months now and I can't stand another winter without one.
13. Organise myself for a destash sale. Gulp.
14. Get Etsy sorted out. With current stock. Take some damn pictures, Flickettysplits!
15. Start blogging again. Oh, I've done that one! Tick that box. 

Blister In The Thumb

Over the weekend I incurred a devastating, debilitating sewing injury.

Oh I know, sewing is supposed to be a non-contact sport. Done inside, with cups of tea and biscuits. But people, it is DANGEROUS. There are SHARP things involved. Rotary cutters. Needles. Scissors. I tell you, I'm surprised that the emergency rooms haven't filled with people who've done themselves a mischief in this current resergence of craft.

So what's this incapacitating damage I have incurred? You can't see it in a photo, but I have a laaaaarge blister in my thumb.

Right in the middle of the tip.  Right in the exact spot where you use your thumb to push the needle through three layers of fabric when you are hand-sewing the binding to a quilt. In exactly that spot.

This is my own fault, of course. This is what you get when you spend virtually all weekend hand-sewing binding to not just one, but two baby quilts.

The good news is that I have now finished the quilt for the Amateur Actress (photos to come). Hooray! It looks absolutely beautiful and may be my best quilt ever.

And the binding is now virtually completed on the baby quilt for my crafternoon friend The Design Diva as well.

This is what happens when you spend practically the entire weekend inside, on the sofa, doing needlework because your One True Love is off cycling up and down mountains in the country. You get a lot done.

The bad news is that I now cannot stand to pick up a needle again for quite some time.

This is something of an issue, to be honest, because I'd quite *like* to pick up a needle again as I have about 15 centimetres left on the second quilt and I am itching to get it done. I was so tired last night that I just threw it down and went to bed when I couldn't keep my eyes open any more.

This was a bad move, people, a bad move. I was obviously in some sort of focused zen-like state yesterday, concentrating so hard on doing nice neat little stitches and getting through the metres, because I felt no pain at all. Obviously my poor thumb was completely numb from exhaustion.

But today? Well, today when I picked up the needle, thinking I would just do a little bit before heading off to work .... well, then I knew ALL ABOUT MY THUMB, let me assure you.

The truth is evident: I need to rest my silly thumb. The poor thing needs convalescence time.

But .... just fifteen centimetres to go! Fifteen!! ........gah.

Giveaway winner, hooray!

It's been a big day for Fatpuss - all day long he's been pacing backwards and forwards around the house, miaowing loudly and with great vigour.

He's been looking forward to drawing the giveaway for ages ... every night for the past week, before I've tucked him into bed he's been asking if it's time for him to pick the winner. And I've answered Not yet, Fathead, not yet. Soon though, it will be time.

And here we are now on the giveaway day! He woke up in a great state this morning and required more than the usual amount of chompies, to fortify himself for the important task ahead.

I had to brush his fur especially well, as he knew he'd be appearing on camera again. He smoothed his whiskers down, and washed his paws, and put on his best collar, and then finally - at last - we were ready.

Giveaway time!

The Amateur Actress stood over him, with fifty-three entries in her hands. She threw them up into the air and they fluttered down around us like the ten thousand autumn leaves that fell onto my front path today a millisecond after I spent an hour sweeping up the original ones. (Sigh.)

Fathead fixed one with a steely gaze, shot out his paw as quick as lightning, and stomped it onto the ground. Then stood there, purring, terribly pleased with himself. And then he licked it.

Without further ado, the winner of the amazing, astounding, astonishing SURPRISE giveaway is ..... "thereisabuttonmissing" !!! Fatpuss sends his love and congratulations to you.

And if you could send me your address, your super-surprise box will be in the mail without further ado. Hurrah!!

(Afterwards, Fatpuss was so pleased with his sterling efforts that he went upside down in bliss.)

Catticus and friends

Here are my new friends. They're Curiosity Cats.

The black one's name is Catticus, and I'm yet to think of names for the other two.

And I'd better do it soon, because these little guys are coming with me to the Made N Thornbury market tomorrow, and hopefully they're going to find lovely new homes!

They're different to my normal toys ... a little plainer (not as wildly coloured as my usual stuff is, that's for sure), and certainly more stylised. I like their round faces. And each one has a different mouth.

I made Catticus first, and when I finished him I sat back and thought .... hm, something's missing.

Then the Amateur Actress suggested I put a ribbon around his neck, and lo and behold, it was the perfect thing. You can't see the ribbon very well in this photo, but you can see the ribbons on the others.

Isn't it great when things come together?

(Except for the spacing on this post, of course. I've no idea what's going on with Blogger today but the spacing refuses to work!)

A beauty of a bathroom bag

Oh, who was I trying to kid. Of COURSE I ended up sewing yesterday. It was inevitable, wasn't it? Of COURSE it was.

After the fence festival of ugliness was only very slightly improved by a very slightly less ugly wire trellis with a poor limp passionfruit trailing weakly off it in an effort to disguise the Ugly - and that took the better part of too many hours to count - I could hardly stay away from the sewing machine, could I?

It's how I decompress, after all.

And so I made this. It's a cute little bathroom bag made from vinyl-covered Kokka babushka fabric in an apple-y lime green. I especially like the little mushrooms (look closely, she instructed, look closely).

I've got the same fabric in sugar-pink, so Im going to make a few in the same material.

This one here is a prototype; I was going to put it on the stall for the Thornbury market, but it's a little bit wonky around the base seam, so I gave it to the Amateur Actress instead. She doesn't mind my dodgy offcästs, in fact she said quite happily "It's good living here!"

I'll know the tricks of the pattern better for the next one (I hadn't tried this one before).

But my goodness, the market is coming up in five days time and I've hardly any stock left after two markets already in two weekends. What on earth am I doing here on the computer, blogging?

Must sew!

Quaking in our boots

Okay, that's a weak pun, I know it. Actually we weren't even wearing boots at all.

But how amazing that it's true! When it happened last night I thought that's what it felt like, and just now I heard it confirmed on the radio news.

Last night around 9pm the Amateur Actress and I were out leading wildly exciting lives as one should on a Friday evening, oh,um ... I mean, we were at home watching a dvd (me) and surfing the interweb (her) ... when something really shook us up.

It didn't last long, just a few seconds - maybe 10 or 15 - but we both felt it and stopped what we were doing and looked at each other. All the pussins sat up and stared.

T: What was that?
AA: Um ... I've no idea. What was that?
T: It felt like the house was shaking.
AA: Was it something jumping onto the verandah?
T: It sounded like that, didn't it? But what on earth could it have been?
AA: (pause, while thinking) ..... a really big possum?

We both went tentatively out the back door and looked around, but couldn't see anything. All the possums were chittering noisily though, like they'd been disturbed. And the thing, whatever it was, sounded REALLY heavy.

As two women at home on our own, I don't hesitate to say that we were slightly concerned about the potential options (super-sized possum on the rampage, giant hailstones falling from a clear sky, dead body pushed out of plane, aliens a la the movie Signs, possible home invader, that sort of thing).

The Amateur Actress even went out the front to check, but there was nothing to be seen.

It didn't happen again, so I only thought briefly about it when I went to bed.

And then I woke up and found out it was an earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale! An earthquake! Centred in Gippsland! And we felt it here in little old Northcote! How amazing.

It's my first one ever. I'm very proud.

Stress less, my darlink

Agh.

So today I finally had my delayed stress reaction to the high pressure of last week.

I forgot my laptop this morning and had to go home to get it, thereby missing my 8.01 train to work. Work was ordinary, if slightly annoying, and at the end of it I managed to catch a train that was remarkably empty (and therefore got a seat, wonder of wondrous wonders), and came home.

Podae refused to say hello to me, perhaps because My One True Love and I spent twenty minutes trying to catch him this morning so we could walk to the train station unassailed by a mischievious puss doing his best to catch the train with us.

I came inside after the Podder dissed me completely, and the steam valve blew when I couldn't get to the recipe book I wanted because of the godawful mess on the kitchen bench.

See, if my external world is in a chaotic heap and my internal world is happy, then it doesn't matter. Everything's fine, and I just tidy up. But when both worlds are cross and irritated and out of control, then I am not a happy girl.

So I paused. Went outside to photograph some of my tote bags. The camera gave up the ghost with a dead battery just as I finally had the perfect angle all framed up. Of course.

I whistled air through my gritted teeth.

Came back inside. Grimly set about tidying the kitchen. Cut potatoes in half. Steamed bloody asparagus. Grumped at My One True Love. Had a beer. Got over it.

The Amateur Actress says that sometimes she finds it difficult to tell how stressed I am, because I manage (hide?) it so well. And it's true - my worst days are still pretty rosy and chirpy, because I'm a natural optimist.

And that kind of made me glad, because at least if I'M having a crap day, I'm not necessarily showing it or taking it out on the people around me.

But that damn kitchen bench? It's gleaming tonight, to within an inch of its darkly laminated life.

And then came the darkening

It's 6.25pm on Friday night and instead of going out to the Australian Open with My One True Love - he's taken the Amateur Actress instead - I'm (slightly ashamed to admit this but it's true) sitting at my sewing machine, finishing up an Ellyfump for my upcoming February market stall.

Now, this is not as lame and sad as it might sound. It's actually quite good. I've got the house to myself, the air-conditioning is protecting me from the 45 degree weather outside, and I think I probably have ...oooh, at least five long, lovely, quiet hours of happy sewing to myself, before the other two return home.

I've settled into a nice rhythm. Beside me there is a glass of clove cordial with ice gently creaking and cracking and clinking. I've finished making the flappy ears - this is an African ellyfump, so the ears are gigantic - and I'm just starting to sew the two body pieces together.

When all of a sudden the machine stops, the air-conditioning stops, the tv goes off, and the lights go out.

Now I'm sitting in complete darkness.

It's obvious what's happened, of course. On the tv news they were talking about the immense power demands through this heatwave, and clearly, Northcote has guzzled more than its fair share of electricity. Greedy, greedy Northcote.

I can't sew, clearly. And I can't open the blinds or the back door to let some natural light in, because then of course the lovely cool air will escape and the sun will blast in and I'll fry to a crisp in the heat. So what to do?

I push back my chair, take up the glass and drink down my long cool river of cordial. I go to the fridge. I extract the Duvel beer I've been saving for a special occasion, and I pour it into the cordial glass. It froths satisfyingly.

I scoop up a book I've been meaning to read but somehow never got around to, and I wander up the hallway and out through the front door. It's ever so slightly cooler here, because the front of the house is protected from the sun.

People are milling about, suddenly freed from their semi-comatose states in front of the tv. They're calling to each other about the blackout, and everyone agrees the timing couldn't be worse. The man down the street has taken on the role of neighbourhood Oracle, advising people as they pull up in their cars arriving home from work; The power's out! Not a volt! Nothing works! He sounds really excited about it.

I settle into the deckchair out the front. I make myself comfortable on the cushion Podder usually sits on - it's covered in cat fur, like a small furry hide, and I watch the world go by for a bit. The New Parents down the road are taking the baby out for a walk, it's too hot to keep him indoors in this weather. They're thinking about going to the local cinema, but of course it's blacked out too - so, just a walk then.

I sit back and read my book, for over two hours, but the book's engrossing and I don't even notice the time passing. I sweat quietly, without worrying, and just enjoy the free time.

Eventually the power comes back on and I retreat back indoors, and so does everybody else, and the unusual sound of neighbourly conversation eventually stills, and I can hear the hum of airconditioners powering up, and the faint sounds of a radio floating down the street, and doors slamming as people close up their houses again against the summer sun.

I assume my previous position in front of the sewing machine, and so it goes.