Time flies like a banana

G'day all!

Actually fruit flies like a banana but you get the gist.

I would love to tell you about all the exciting things I've done recently but umm they are so boring that I can't remember them.

Quiet is good but meh, I need a little jazzing up.  The weather has been dull again these last couple of days.  It hasn't rained, it has just been grey.  I am not good with grey.  I haven't been anywhere in particular (apart from knit night), I haven't seen anyone (apart from knit night and dinner out last night with various of Nathan's workmates, two of whom are friends before they were workmates, and one girlfriend whom I totally confused, with the help of Q).

I have managed to get a bit of crafting done.  I've had a quilt that I thought I might get done before Christmas (hahahahaha!).  It's now Feb and I've finally cleared it off the decks.  It needs its beauty shots done, along with two other little quilts but until the weather cooperates I can't get them.  And the weather is being mighty uncooperative, being horribly dull whenever the forecast is for partly cloudy (Hooray - that link says why!  A high pressure has formed so we get no weather events apart from grey!) and then when we are supposed to have a day of rain, it brightens up completely.  Makes it amazingly hard to plan anything, but is excellent for whinging about.

So what have I made since last I blogged?

A hat for DH.  Not normally sideways.

A thick and woolly hat with microfleece lining for DH.  With pompoms by special request.  This hat took pretty much all of two skeins of Cascade 220 superwash.  I made it top down in the style of the Andean ear flap hats he likes so much.  If I make me one I've realised I can use a thin strip of microfleece to crochet around the edge - the wool on my rainbow hat makes me itch.  And yes I crocheted!

CVM woolly goodness

A nice big ball of handspun CVM (California variegated mutant sheep).  This took forever because white (it is really a silvery white but of course the pic was taken under unnatural light) gets pretty boring to spin after a while.  There's over 100g in that cake of yarn and probably 500m or so of yarn.  Not sure, I should measure it.

I finished a sock (and forgot to take pics of it) then got diverted into making DH a new pair of socks.  Red, burgundy, orange and pale lime.

The sock is a lot longer now and
yeah, the colour is way off again.

I made myself a skirt.  Like everything else in my post today I need to have a nice day to photograph it properly.  Also I should've vacuumed the floor (and my socks) before taking this portrait of it.

Recycled pullovers make pretty skirts
Yes I chose the socks to match.

I sat down today and finished the above mentioned quilt.  It needed quilting and the binding put on.  It took nearly six hours to finish a small quilt (about 110cm square or umm hmm, 44? inches).  I didn't do much in the way of fancy stitching either, but having to rip out one part took a good half hour.  I machine sewed the binding down too - my bad but meh, it would take a couple of days to sew the binding down and this quilt is headed to a home where they won't care about that.  And if they do, they can give it to someone else!

See - the quilting isn't that good.

The grand thing about quilting is once you give the quilt a wash and it goes all wrinkly, a lot of the mistakes become a whole lot less obvious.

This mistake can't be ignored though

Can you see the mistake in the above picture?  Have a look at the safety pin.  Yes it is meant to be bent - it is designed to be used as a basting pin when you quilt.  Have a close look at it.  Note that the (almost) white thread goes right over the head of the safety pin.  Right over it.  I sewed across it.  Not also that the sewing continues.  Yep, I didn't break the needle or anything.  I didn't even notice!

My favourite bit

This little swirl sitting right in the white sashing on the back pleases me immensely.  It is by no means perfect but it pleases me (a whole lot more than the bit that is puckered... sigh... ah well it is imperfect, just like its creator!).

DH sent me a link to a blog that I am not quite sure about.  The person makes creatures and things that look quite fleshy and often like parts of the body that people don't usually show off, well unless it is in special sorts of movies.  Don't go there if you are easily offended or made queasy.

Now really don't look at this person's work if you are at all queasy about the insides of bodies.  I find it fascinating, if a bit offputting, and I'm only queasy about blood (particularly if it is my own and or it is spurting) or vomit.  And leeches.  Anyway, I mean it.  It is pretty detailed and realistic.

On safer ground, I've been meaning to link to a friend's art blog.  She is not your average artist - don't expect her still lifes to be simply of fruit sitting in a bowl.  It is more likely to be trying to eat the person trying to eat it.  I have some of her art on one of our walls and I am pretty sure there is some still at home too :-)

Tonight we saw an episode of Time Team (they've cancelled Time Team, DH tells me!  Woe!) that was about a town that sprang up to train English machine gunners in WWI.  My Pop was a machine gunner in WWI but he was in an Oz battalion (25th Aus MG coy then 5th Machine Gun Battalion).  Apparently the machine gunners were the creme de la creme of the recruits with good maths skills and clear thinking but I dunno about my Pop being that - he seems to have been an Aussie larrikin (enjoying the chance to see sights he would otherwise never see and meet, ahem, ladies...) and we are not completely sure he was numerate or literate.  It seems he was a good soldier as far as the fighting part goes but the following orders and doing as he was told?  He kept being court martialled when he wasn't injured.  But he was definitely in the machine gunners.  I have so little information about him - most of what I know is from old postcards and ancient memories of tales told by the family.  He survived the war, only dying when I was nearly ten but he was terrifying - tall, with a mop of white curly hair and a really husky voice from being gassed - and I was such a wussy child.  Sigh.  There's noone older than my brother in my part of the family now, so finding out family stuff is difficult - I have to rely on my siblings or old postcards and letters like Pop sent back from the war.

Anyway, enough rambling.

anon!