All the fun of the fair

The Junior Crafter's little school held their biennial Village Fair yesterday, and it was a wonderful day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and there was an air of festivity all about the place. The Fair also incorporated the *ahem* Grand Opening of our (not quite finished and not really how we wanted it but shh don't mention the war, it's not at all PC and we may seem ungrateful) new Junior Learning Centre which was overpriced   massively behind schedule  bungled  built as part of the Federal Government's Building Education Revolution. Our local federal MP put in an appearance and cut the ribbon. I'm hoping it will be completed by the time the Boy Genius commences school next February.

Anyway, back to the fair. The Bloke Who Lives At My Place organised races and games for the kiddies on the school oval, including the egg and spoon race, sack race and three legged races; some good old fashioned fun. I held the fort on the Cake Stall for the day, along with 2 other mums, and we simply couldn't keep up with demand! We had two trestle tables, which were completely covered and sold twice over, thanks to the generosity of our school community who baked and donated all the goodies which we sold.

My contribution this year was 4 dozen Anzac Cookies and two batches of my famous Chocolate Slice, a family recipe passed on to me by my cousin, who got it from our Great Auntie Jess, who I believe had it handed down from her mother (my Great Grandmother).
I'd love to share it with you of course, but I think that publishing a recipe like that on the internet would amount to some kind of sacrilege!
Hope you had a lovely cake filled weekend too :)

Craft & Quilt Fair x 2

I must confess, I actually started writing this blog post last week right after the fair, but didn't manage to finish it and hit 'publish' until now! I hope you enjoy this somewhat belated account of the Craft & Quilt Fair!

Last weekend I made it to the Craft and Quilt Fair not once, but twice! What a lucky girl I am. On Saturday I spent the entire day admiring the beautiful quilts, making one or two small purchases (!) and being inspired by all the talented crafty peeps at the show. I spent the day alone, but before you start to feel sorry for me you must remember that I am the mother of 3 very busy little people and time alone is an extremely rare commodity in my life. So I absolutely relished the thought of spending hours and hours, by myself, wandering through the craft fair. (I did try to make Jodie's meet, just to say hi, not realising it had been cancelled, hope you're feeling better soon Jodie).

And it certainly was a great day. I stopped to admire the beautiful free motion quilting of a very talented lady who turned out to be Kate of Kate's Sewing Centre, who invited me to sit down with her and proceeded to give me a half hour tutorial in the art of FMQ. Kate was so lovely, not to mention generous with her time and sharing her knowledge, I learned so much, thank you Kate!

I was particularly taken with this beautiful whole cloth quilt "Hearts of Love" by Wendy Arnold. I am very new to quilting, and to be honest, it had never occured to me not to have a colourful pieced quilt top. This has opened up a whole new world of ideas for me. Although this quilt is actually pieced from three pieces of white cloth, it was still referred to as a 'whole cloth quilt' by the 'quilt angel' who was chatting to me about it. It is huge, measuring 216cm x 260cm and is machine quilted.
Andi has lots more photos of the amazing quilts that were on display, including another of my favourites, Crop Circles.

On Sunday, I made it back to the Fair with the Junior Crafter and her Crafty Sidekick in tow. We met up with Karen and Liesl (with Argy and Bargy in tow) and had a wonderful afternoon wandering around the fair.  Argy and Bargy were particularly well behaved and ever so cute, despite dire forecasts to the contrary!

The Junior Crafter was very interested in purchasing some 'horse fabric', so Karen kindly took her to a stall over in the next aisle to find some. The Junior Crafter carefully perused the fabric and informed Karen that although it was lovely, she didn't think she would buy it as it wasn't great value for money. She had already purchased a fat quarter for half the price this merchant was asking for a 30cm cut, she knowingly informed Karen. (She's 8 years old, and was ever so careful with her $20 spending money!)

The girls and Argy and Bargy had a wonderful time felting at the Sewing Art Studio. The kids were able to use the Pfaff Embellisher machine to make some amazing pieces of fabric art. I love this machine, it uses no thread at all but instead has 5 needles which punch through the layers of fabric, creating a felted effect.

The Junior Crafter using the embellisher (and wearing the pinny I made her)

Bargy discovering his artistic side on the embellishing machine

I also had fun playing with fibres and free motion stitching in the Sewing Art Studio:

I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do with it, but I really like it. I think it would be nice inset into a panel on a bag, or maybe just hung on the wall in my sewing room?

Of course, the afternoon was somewhat hampered by my painful foot, but I soldiered on and eventually made it home where The Bloke Who Lives At My Place administered ice, bandages, rest and a healthy dose of medicinal chocolate. Just what the doctor ordered.

Update: xrays showed no fracture and the foot's only bothering me slightly now, thanks for all the concern lovely readers.

Now that's dedication...

A funny thing happened on my way to the Craft Fair.

Okay, actually it wasn't so funny, it was quite painful.

You see, I was on my way yesterday from Father Bob's celebration to the Craft and Quilt Fair when I had a little stumble on an uneven footpath and rolled my foot. It was immediately clear to me that the situation was dire, and an ambulance was needed to rush me to hospital for emergency orthopedic surgery, when suddenly, I remembered...two dear, sweet, innocent little 8 year old Crafters were looking at me with huge disappointed puppy-dog eyes. They had waited their entire crafty little lives for this one day at the Craft Fair. Not to mention some other crafty peeps who were awaiting my arrival at the show! Who was I to let them down? So I pulled myself together, swallowed my pain and soldiered on, all the way to Jeff's Shed.

Okay, so that's not exactly how it happened. But...I did roll my foot very painfully, gave it a few minutes to see if there was any damage and when it appeared all was fine I continued on to the Craft Fair, with the Junior Crafter and her Sidekick in tow.

However, after a few hours of wandering the Fair, it became painfully apparent that I had actually done some damage to my foot, and by the time I got home last night I could barely walk. I popped in to see my doctor this afternoon and he sent me off for x-rays, concerned about a possible fracture.

I'm still awaiting the results, but if I find that I spent yesterday afternoon walking every aisle at the Craft and Quilt Fair with a broken foot, then surely I must qualify for some kind of Dedicated Crafter Award?

More about what we got up to at the show (and pictures of loot) to follow soon, I promise.

Baking...and more baking

We have been very busy in the kitchen of late, although at the moment I'm baking in an old fashioned metal tin - at least I'm certain metal can go in the oven!)

Caramel Slice

The Junior crafter baked a delicious chocolate cake with pink icing and sprinkles (of course).

(She takes icing her cakes very seriously!)

And a banana cake using this recipe which was soooo yummy!

Better late than never...

I used to sometimes struggle to find things to blog about, and was often wishing I had more time to be creative and make things, or do more interesting things so I'd have something to 'show and tell' on my blog. Now the blog can't keep up with real life! And now I struggle to find time to write blog posts about all the fun stuff I've been up to! How's the irony?

So, here's a belated thank you to Bec for hosting a lovely Crafternoon last Sunday. The Junior Crafter came along and had a ball playing with Bec's Little Miss and doing some Junior Crafting:

I did a little bit of cutting out for my winter pinny (on which I've made progress since last week. I really need to keep up with blogging or I feel like I'm going backwards!) 

And we all enjoyed some magnificent food and lots of great company.

And we missed some people who weren't allowed out to play. Their mums wrote them a sick note and made them stay home in bed. 

Thanks Bec for a lovely Crafternoon!

**Lots more photos here :) 

Mothers Day @ Stitches & Craft Show...

does it get any better than this?

My day began with real coffee and honey toast earnestly prepared by the kids, and loads of presents, not least of which was a pen and ink drawing of yours truly. I queried the 4 year old artist about the *ahem* detail in the picture..."That's your boobies Mummy" he grinned at me. I was desperately afraid to ask for any more detail but was thankfully assured it was my belly button. Phew! And then I had a lovely day at the show with The Junior Crafter and my very crafty Granny (who lives in Perth so it's always a treat to see her!).

I met up with an old friend, Carolyn and a new friend, Carmel and we went to Jodies talk in The Studio which was fab! Do you know Jodie? Have you heard Jodie talk before about something she is really passionate about? Like Craft? Or maybe blogging? Well, today she was talking about both and her level of enthusiasm almost put a rent in the space-time continuum (and almost got her told off again by the ever so sensible business type fellow giving a very serious and dignifed talk in the Studio next door!). Anyway the talk was funny and entertaining and informative and really quite inspiring...a bit like the girl herself really *grin* I made a little purchase at the RicRac stand, very exciting.

I ran into Bec and had a bit of a catch up at Nikki's stand, while Bec's daughter and my daughter sized each other up, liked what they saw and wandered off to draw some pictures together for the storywall. Saw Nikki of course, (and the other Nikki!) and admired the beautiful bags and hats, and oh my gosh, I really wanted to get a kit and make one of her gorgeous purses but there were too many choices and I didn't know what I could do (not having actually made any purses before and not being at all good with zips or those metal closing thingys!) and I got so overwhelmed by choice I didn't choose anything at all, and now I'm kicking myself VERY HARD because I wish I had bought a kit to take to S.I.T. next weekend where there will be plenty of crafty girls on hand to help me if I get stuck! Not to mention Nikki herself will be there! Doh!


I introduced myself to Caitlin of Pippijoe who was lovely and who's fabric designs I have admired for quite some time! I just missed Liesl but will be admiring an iron with her next Friday over a little glass of something bubbly and at a certain crafty girl's place.

It was heaven on a stick for a crafty-bloggy girl and has made me more excited about Sew It Together which is only a week away!

The Storm and a Wedding Day

On Saturday, The Bloke and I were heading off to celebrate a family wedding in South Melbourne and looking forward to a night in a fancy-pants hotel followed by a lovely sleep-in, late checkout and a leisurely brunch before heading home to the hills.

I had somehow pulled off the seemingly impossible task of arranging to have all 3 kids looked after overnight, and it was to be our first night away together in about 4 years.

I had my hair done, bought a new frock, and was feeling very glam and excited as we set off. We were so thrilled to be able to share in this very special family wedding.

Then the storm hit.

We were on Toorak Road when the hailstorm hit us, we pulled over and sheltered in the car. The hailstones were about as big as large marbles and sounded very scary hitting the car, I was terrified our windows were going to break. After the storm eased, we spent the next 30 minutes or so trying to find a road that was not flooded that would get us to the Church on time. We were having no luck, everywhere was flooded.

We were trying Swan Street when my sister called (she was at our place looking after the Junior Crafter and Poor Point 3). My sister took the kids into the hallway and shut all the doors to protect them from flying glass as the windows were broken by hailstones larger than golfballs. She said the windows were smashed, there was glass everywhere and rain pouring in. At one point she opened the hall door into the kitchen to see what was going on and a large hailstone flew in a broken window past her head and down the hallway!

This photo was taken by my neighbour

We turned around and came home immediately, but I knew it would be at least an hour before we made it home. I called my brother who was only 5 minutes away and he went straight to our house and started the clean up and boarding up the windows.

We arrived home to find:
11 broken windows (in our house and bungalow)
Weatherboards damaged by hail
The shed wall damaged by hail
Our Colourbond roof looks like someone has taken to it with a large hammer
Skylight broken and leaking water into the bathroom

My car (which was in the driveway) has hail damage to 7 panels, but luckily no broken windows so it is still driveable.

I am still unable to contact my insurance company.

We didn't make it to the wedding. We called the hotel and told them what had happened and asked if they might transfer our booking to another night (they sounded doubtful and said they would call me back this week). We ordered take away and stayed in feeling very grateful that it wasn't worse, devastated that we missed the wedding and just a tiny bit disappointed about missing our night away.

I called the mother of the groom and explained what had happened and was relieved to find out that the wedding went off without a hitch and the happy couple still enjoyed their special day despite the storm going on outside.
Congratulations Pete & Beck, we wish you a lifetime of love and happiness, and wish we could have been there.

My Creative Space...or is it?

My Creative Space this week isn't really mine, I was more than happy to share it with my beautiful daughter and her friend.
I recently discovered this excellent tutorial over at Leonie's and I thought it would be a perfect project for my Junior Crafter to try with her new machine. We went to Spotlight where she and a friend each selected two fabrics for their reversible headbands and we came home to sew.

Pinning fabric

More pins

Ta-Daaaah!

And they are reversible!

Thanks Leonie for sharing the tutorial, and well done to two gorgeous little 8 year olds who persisted carefully with their cutting out, pinning, topstitching and thread trimming and had a wonderful time in My Creative Space this week. I'm so glad that my little girl loves making stuff as much as I do, and we have so much fun making stuff together.

For more spaces, visit here. As always, thanks to Kirsty for hosting this fun meme.

Beautiful Butterfly

Look what the Junior Crafter found

And no matter how many times she let it go in the garden, it just kept coming back to her! I think it's a bit magical to have a butterfly choose you over a garden full of flowers!

Going home to Mother

I'm off to my Mum's for a lovely girly (child free!) sleepover! The Bloke Who Lives At My Place will be spending some quality time with his little 'uns: The Junior Crafter, Captain Underpants and Poor Point 3, while I will be spending some quality time catching up on some much needed sleep.

Mum and I are going out for lunch, then doing a little spot of shopping, then home to unpack a few boxes (Mum has just moved back into her house after a housefire earlier this year), and spend a little girly time together. I'm hoping Mum will teach me to crochet so I can have a go at one of these. And then I'm having a very early night and hopefully a lovely sleep in...I think the last time I had a decent sleep was around 2001!

A completed project, and an interesting discovery

It's only the first day of the year and I already have a completed project under my belt! I'm doing a little happy dance on the inside, as I am a chronic starter of craft projects and a very poor finisher of same.

Whilst some of my bloggy friends were able to finish the year with a lovely list of completed projects, I think I was lucky that 2009 didn't actually end up on my UFO/WIP pile! So to start the new year by finishing something is a good omen I think - it's important to start as you mean to go on!

This is an embroidered travel journal cover I made for The Junior Crafter's wonderful Grade 2 teacher who is taking this year off to travel around the world! She has been a brilliant teacher and we felt so lucky that The Junior Crafter was in her class, and she will be greatly missed this year.

As a project, although I was very happy with the end result, it was not all smooth sailing.

When I measured and cut the outer and lining for the journal cover I did not allow enough extra width to cover the seam allowance and the topstitching required to make the pockets for the journal to slip into. So when I stitched the outer and the lining together and turned them right sides out, I had no hope of being able to top stitch the pockets down and still fit the journal in.

So I unpicked. Which took a really long time. And in the end, was not very helpful.

You see, the outer of the journal is a gorgeous piece of vintage linen I found at my local op shop some time ago. As luck would have it, my Gutermann 02776 thread is an exact colour match to the linen, and I very carefully sewed the linen and the lining together using stitch length 1 so as to hold the delicate fabric very securely. Which it did. So the unpicking was a difficult and frustrating affair.

To make matters worse, it didn't even help in the end. I restitched the (now slightly damaged from the seam ripper) vintage linen to the lining using the SCANTEST 1/8 seam allowance, carefully turned it, ironed it to within an inch of its life, and...it still didn't fit :(

After experimenting with elastic, ribbon, matching binding (here is a fab tutorial for using a bias tape maker) I quickly realised that nothing would work, short of starting over, and I had already put so much work into the piecing and the embroidery!

Just then, The Junior Crafter stepped in and saved the day! Why don't you just sew it onto the journal Mum? said she. Because my sewing machine won't sew through a hard book cover darling, I replied. However, with no other options (and plenty of spare needles on hand) I decided to give it a whirl. Which leads me to the interesting discovery: my Janome can sew through four layers of fabric and a hard journal cover!

Forgive the blurry photo, but that is my trusty Janome whizzing through all the layers with ease. And not a broken needle in sight. The moral of the story is always listen to your children, they might be saying something very useful. And there is no limit to what a good sewing machine can handle!

Happy New Year friends xx

Christmas round up

We had a lovely Christmas, celebrating the day with close family, extended family and friends. There was gorgeous food and great wine, and of course some pressies!

I was very excited to receive this inspiring gift from a great friend:

And The Junior Crafter (8 years old) was beyond excited to receive this great present from her Nonna and Nonno:

It's a real one! Not a little kid's one, but an honest-to-goodness really truly proper sewing machine!

So we set to learning how to use the new machine. The junior crafter sewed a pincushion, all by herself:

(you can never have too many pins, right?)

which was an unquailfied success:

so I immediately requested she make another one for me:

And, voila! New pincushions for all the crafty girls in the house, beautifully weighted with rice in the bottom and hobbyfill in the top, and finished with the sweetest little hand stitching you've ever seen!

 

She even put my name on mine in pins.

The  Junior Crafter also received a couple of Spotlight vouchers for Christmas, so no doubt we'll be on a shopping trip in the next few days to stock up on supplies.

Hope your Christmas was merry and bright too!

Oh happy day!

Guess who's going on a road trip to Daylesford tomorrow? Yes, little ol' me (ok, less of the 'old' methinks. Just because there was a birthday last week, no need to get too excited.)
The Bloke Who Lives At My Place will be spending some quality time with The Junior Crafter and Mr 400 Questions Per Day, while PP3 and I will be driving to Daylesford with my gorgeous and dear friend Leigh.
On my itinerary:

• Daylesford Makers Market of course!
• The Mill Markets There was too much to see last time, it requires a 2nd visit
• Red Pepper Gallery Just to drool over artwork I wish I could afford, if you get the chance this place is really worth a look.
• Lark Just because!
• A spot of lunch somewhere nice, with maybe a little glass of something bubbly...
• Some 'me' time, and some girly time with a great friend
• And, of course, looking forward to seeing some yo-yo wearing friends while I'm there!

Preparations...

At my place tonight we have the makings of...

a cake...

a fairy garden...

and a very positive little gift.

Tomorrow the junior crafter is turning eight!

The Queen of the UFO

Okay girls, I'm claiming the title. I am the Queen of the Unfinished Object.

I have found what I'm pretty sure is my oldest UFO. It is a cross stitch I started back in 2001 when I was pregnant with my first child. It is a growth chart that was intended for said child (note: the junior crafter is turning 8 next week and I'm pretty sure she would be too tall for the chart by now even if it was finished). It has survived through two house moves and various storage boxes, but is looking decidedly worse for wear after I unearthed it last weekend from a box in my bungalow. The bloke who lives at my house suggested through gritted teeth that I should to teach him how to cross stitch so "the damn thing can be finished one way or another".

Note the packaging and the example of the finished growth chart shown full length; see the little clown sitting right in the middle? See my little clown? Yep, that's all I've managed to complete in eight years.

So, fess up girls, surely mine can't be the longest standing UFO? What's your oldest UFO? Are you ready to claim the Title? Post a link to your oldest UFO in the comments, pictures would be fab.

PS. SammyJ, if you're reading this, thanks for teaching me to cross stitch all those years ago, and yes, this really is the same one.

Is there something going around? Blogtober day 8

My computer has a virus. It's in the shop where it can't do any more damage, waiting to be fixed. Yesterday I tried to log in to my online bank, and got a very weird message asking me to enter my 'funds transfer external'. Hhmm, that looks very wrong, thought I. Quick phone call to the bank, emailed them a screen shot of the message, and they said it looks like a very bad virus :(

The Junior Crafter also has a virus and is home today from school.Maybe there's something going around?

I'm currently blogging from the (temperamental and unreliable) laptop, which means no uploading photos, and therefore one very visually unappealing blog until the computer is fixed.

And of course it would happen during Blogtober.