Ripply crocheting madness!

With me being well and truly decelerated and unable to run around doing household chores on the weekend, I turned my attention to crocheting.

When I was a child, it was the first craft I learned properly and I always considered it inferiour to knitting. I know a lot of people do. But I recently bought rainbow coloured wooden crocheting hooks and I'm not sure I will ever go back to knitting. Crocheting is much less stressful on my hands and so much more effective.

That's me, 40 and a business major ;-)

Turning Twenty, restaged

I am anal about how my quilts are folded, amongst a lot of other things. Last night, our aupair not only didn't fold it right but also didn't put it back where it belonged. This morning as the light shone on it, I gained a new appreciation for all the hand quilting that went into it.

This was the first quilt I made for myself - and the only one so far - and I've always been unsure about it. It's nice to see it in a different light after all the anguish over this.

Forcibly decelerated

Argh! Despite my resolution for 2009 being to slow down, I had a lovely summer schedule all planned out, laden with work and play as well as nifty trips around Europe and the odd festivity here and there. All was going really well, I was feeling rather pleased with myself and my station, especially given that I had just gotten back into the swing with quilting again (not that you can tell from this blog, I'm having file conversion issues with my new camera). And then I went and sabotaged it all by falling down half a flight of stairs in the middle of the night, running to my mobile phone that was ringing while still having my eyes pretty much closed.

As I fell, I could hear the tell-tale crack of a bone or two deciding to give up under the strain. So here I am: stranded on the sofa with a broken foot, not allowed to walk or drive for at least four weeks. Faring far worse than said foot is my bum from sitting on it all day. I'm not used to sitting with one or two feet elevated. And I cannot work lying down. It's somewhat miserable.

Not being able to use my foot, the one that pushes the pedal of my sewing machine (insult, injury come to mind), I will be condemned to hand quilting and crocheting.

Wait a minute, life isn't so bad after all ;-)
There will just be fewer posts and pictures around here for a while.

Aaaaaargh: am incapacitated!

So I fell down half a flightof stairs and broke two bones in my right foot in the process. That means: no walking, driving or machine-sweing for FOUR FREAKING WEEKS! With hubby away from home for the majority of the week, this will not be fun.

Therefore I have been relegated to hand-crafted projects: ripple afghan?

I want to make one of those: Gadget Case

Freshly listed on Moda Bake Shop: Nicole's Cell Phone Gadget Case.

Pins, pins and yet more pins!

I'm so glad to be quilting again ... I don't even mind the pinning!

The Canvas Adventure

I still have to add a photo of the finished product and will do that once it has been handed over.

My husband has a near-unhealthy love of all things airplane. One day, he printed off a photo of a plane he particularly covets, a Piper Seneca. He looked at me and said: Can you paint me a plane, please? Oh well ... what to do? What to do? Could he not have asked for a Planez quilt?

For the longest time I said: yes, yes, eventually, when I get around to it, I will contemplate it. His response was a soft grumble. So I thought this would be the perfect gift for our ten year wedding anniversary, coming up this Friday.

My life is relatively busy with work, household, all admin and last but not least the two kiddies. My husband works away from home and is very little to no help with my load. That equals very little time to be creative that I usually spend quilting or crocheting or knitting or blogging, but usually not painting. To complicate matters, I don't have a room or studio where I can just get on with it and ban people from entering. So I had to be sneaky and booked a weekend workshop at a local art school.

Also, I didn't want to just paint from the hard copy. But what to do? I eventually decided on a collage as a base. Every year, Hubby has to buy new maps with which to plan his trips. The old ones get tossed onto a pile and used for gift wrapping. Some of them found their way into the painting:



I then added the sky



darker on top, lighter at the bottom.



Then I stalled and stalled and stalled some more. After two sessions at the easel, it looks half-way respectable and I hope he will recognise it for what it is, mainly a labour of love and secondly one engine of said Piper Seneca.