Cruising

I didn't advertise it, but we were on a cruise at the beginning of the year, that's if you hadn't guessed already. I have decided to try and catch up on posts, primarily for my benefit as I'm terrible at keeping a diary, not much better at blogging either. So if you're interested, there will be a couple more posts until I catch up and start showing you what quilty stuff I've been working on this year. I had started working on this post while we were still on the ship but I couldn't access the draft so "cracked the shits" and gave up on trying to write any more.

So here's this one written six months ago.

 It's been great even though the weather was decidedly dodgy last week.  So bad that apparently a number of our fellow cruisers packed their bags and left when we finally made land on the weekend.

Before the bad weather, beautiful sunshine, calm seas and evenings outdoors enjoying the balmy weather.

In the picture above, we had to sail between tropical cyclone Chedza on the left, just over Madagascar and tropical cyclone Bansi on the right just west of Reunion and Mauritius.  The picture below shows how high the waves were.  Where we were the waves were at 12 feet high. Not too high you would think, but gee it was really rough.  Lots of people got sea sick. We didn't but we spent most of three days sipping on ginger ale, which seemed to help considerably.  The seas were that bad that we couldn't dock in Madagascar which was a bummer as I was so looking forward to seeing it.  We also couldn't go to Reunion as they closed the port because the sea was too rough.

Nobody out and about as the wind was at about 70kph and it was raining on and off. 

Before the weather really deteriorated we sat watching the waves in the pool get bigger and bigger. It finally had to be emptied out.

Not an experience I'd really want to repeat, but also not bad enough that I wanted to get off and go home.  We were extremely grateful though that we finally made it to Mauritius and were able to stand on something that wasn't rocking and rolling.

Port Louis ,Mauritius

Ganga Talao, a crater lake that is a pilgrimage sight for Hindus.

Black Gorges National Park

Chamarel coloured earth, Mauritius

Sewing and keeping dry

 It's raining here, which seems to be more often than not these days. Now I think I know what it must be like to live in the UK with endless days of rain, grey skies and blah weather. The only upside with all this crappy weather is that with nothing better to do, I sat and hand sewed the binding on South Pacific Stars aka Hopscotch quilt.  I was determined to finish this before the end of the month. At least it was nice to work on something bright and cheerful instead of looking at the rain pelting against the windows.

Until the weather improves I won't be able to take some decent photos of the full quilt.

A close up of the front and my minimal quilting I used Aurifil thread for the first time and I'm very impressed with it. I will be purchasing more, I much prefer it to Rasant thread.

The back with a stray thread that I didn't see when I took the photo, sigh.

The binding, it just had to be stripey.

In  my ongoing quest to become more organised, (something that is highly unlikely to happen),  I found these containers, 12 inches square and about 1 1/2 inches deep.

They are the perfect size to store blocks I'm working on, especially the blocks for the Circle Game.

The A4 page pattern directions for the block doesn't quite fit flat in the container, but it does fit and  I can place all the pieces, the pattern, thread, needles and scissors together in there and it keeps the pieces nice and flat. Great for transporting hand piecing projects.

Last week in Brisbane I went to The Quilters Store and found some lovely flannel for the backing for the scooter baby quilt. I had already started to piece together a backing but when I saw this I just had to have it. I love flannel backing on baby quilts.

I like The Quilters Store, they have a huge range of fabric and they sell Aurifil thread too, yay.

On a final note, I mentioned the rain at the top of this post. As of today, since the 1st January we have had 1150mm (over 45 inches) of rain. That's over 1 metre in less than 2 months.  I live on the Sunshine Coast, ha, I think it should be renamed the Very Wet and Not Very Much Sunshine Coast. That's why I  originally named my blog Sunshine? Paradise? both words are questionable, especially this summer.

Edited to add: Can someone please tell me how facebook is the main referring website for this post? Can you let me know how by leaving a comment how you found this post please?  I have had more than triple the usual number of readers for this post.

Au revoir

Crying a few tears now as my best mate, buddy, pal, Shay, is finally on her way back home, despite that I may have tried to kidnap keep her here. Firstly, forgetting to look at the ingredient list on a curry paste that was added to a stir fry. We had both taken a mouthful before we looked at each other and let out a swear word or two and then ran to the refrigerator to check the ingredients.  A long stay in hospital so that I could visit her was averted, and so was any possibility of trying to kill her.  Secondly, the weather gods attempt at trying to keep her here almost worked.  We had THE MOST ATROCIOUS weather,  the last couple of days, horrendous winds and lots of rain. Fortunately we were spared the worst of it unlike a lot of people who have had to experience flooding again, only two years after the worst floods in many years. My sister and a friend are still without power after more than 24 hours, with the possibility of not having power back on until Wednesday morning.   Shay had to change her flight that flew out of Brisbane, as Brisbane airport was closed, and anyway, we hadn't been able to drive down to Brisbane from the Sunshine Coast as the weather was bad, roads were flooded and we were experiencing cyclonic winds. It meant that she had to stay an extra morning, woo hoo, but it still went too fast.

During the first part of the Tour de Shay, we took lots of photos, the second part, not so much.  Believe me, it's better if you don't have too much photographic evidence.

AND the best news,

I didn't get arrested.

WHile Shay was here we spent quite a bit of time sewing and chilling out. It's so nice to be able to sew with a buddy. I finished the binding on the Triangles quilt, and it;s now my second finish for 2013. It's still called the Triangles quilt because I can't come up with a better name right now. The plan was to hang this in the entrance but when I hung it there it looked horrible, the proportions were all wrong.  After a bit of a discussion with my go to quilt hanger upperer buddy, we decided to hang it in the dining room.

 It looks much better and happier hanging above the sideboard. I really love this quilt. It was quick to make and a great way to practice sewing triangles. I'ms definitely going to make another bigger quilt using triangles.

I used a charm pack of Lucy's Crab Shack for the triangles, the background is a grass green stripe by American Jane and the binding is a plaid from Lucy's Crab Shack line.

For the backing I used a Denise Schmidt dot print that I bought at Spotlight and some left over strips of the American Jane background. I quilted it in straight line quilting, 1 inch apart using a quilting guide that came with my Janome. The first line I quilted was marked out using a Hera marker, then I just used the quilting guide to follow 1 inch away from the previous line. I checked periodically to make sure I didn't stray too much. If I did, I adjusted the next line by either quilting closer or  further than an inch at the start of the line but tried to make sure the centre of the line was roughly an inch. It worked out really well, even I can't tell where I had to adjust the width of the quilting lines.

Starflowers has been growing too. I'v nearly finished phase one, all the whole flowers that I need and have 5 half flowers left to do. There has been a big change of plans and heart on this one, mainly because I value my questionable sanity too much.  All will be revealed, soon.......... eventually................when I know what I'm doing.

This photo was taken way back in November 2011, it's been a slow but quite satisfying project to work on.

In other news at Chez Sunshine, I had to have some palms removed as they were too close to the fence line, pushing against a wall and paving and were not planted correctly so that a lot of the root system was above ground. The photos aren't great because they were taken at 7.30am facing east into the rising sun.

The guys who removed the palms were amazing, so quick, and did a great job of cleaning up after themselves.  The palms were removed just in time, as they would most likely have blown over in the wild weather this weekend.

Renovating

This week hasn't been the funnest week.  We've had the weather from hell. Well that's assuming that the weather in hell when it isn't hot, is grey and very very humid and has buckets and buckets of water raining down on you incessantly. So much so that everything starts smelling suspect, mouldy and damp. Not pleasant. To top off this lovely weather I've had painters in to paint part of the outside of the house and the bedrooms so that it will be all nice and lovely when I put the house on the market to sell. Because the weather has been so bad, it's taken twice as long as it should have so far.

This is my sewing room and it will be like this until probably Wednesday, hopefully no longer than that.

My sewing table and sewing machine are somewhere under there. It's lucky that I enjoy hand sewing and have a number of projects I can work on while my sewing room is out of action.

This is Bithcypoo's room.  Fortunately she is in Brisbane, she doesn't need to sleep in her bed.
My bedroom was tackled first, it's not finished but I can sleep in my bed and have access to my chest of drawers.

This is was my dining table, now it's a makeshift cutting table. It's also covered in lots of other stuff as well, so I can only work in one corner.

I'd show you photos of the rest of the house but it's too embarrassing, there's piles of stuff everywhere. If I showed photos, The Hoarders would be on to me and want me to star in a new show!
I started working on the next block of the Circle Game BOM and remembered to get everything out of the room that was needed for the week.  Except for this.

See that tiny metal circle with the hole in it. I use that to add a quarter inch seam to the templates curved edges when I'm tracing onto the fabric. When I started to trace the templates I remembered after I used it last time I'd put it back in the drawer of the table my sewing machine sits on. Arrrgggghhhhhh.

Fortunately, I found the table, and the drawer was accessible under all the drop sheets, phew. Crisis averted.

So I had a nice time cutting out and sewing together this block, which I finished last night. I'm really enjoying making these now. I've already started cutting out, the next block this morning. I'm swapping out an occasional scrap from the BOM and adding the odd scrap from my stash here and there in these blocks.

The starflowers have come out of hiding too, and I work on them when I need a break from concentrating hard on which bit to add where.

Organising, bats and geese

Im going to get on my soap box and whinge. I know it's wet season here, and in the last few years, March has been notorious for a lot of rain, but I'm over it. Well and truly over it.  In the last couple of days we've had another 110+ mm of rain, yep that's another 6 inches. That takes it to over 400mm (almost 16 inches) in 13 days. Sunshine? Paradise? my @ɹ$€, no sunshine and it's definitely not paradise when everything is damp and going mouldy.

OK off my soap box now.

I've been de-cluttering, and will be for the foreseeable future, as it's slow going.  More photos to come eventually.
My sewing room.

A partial tidy up. So far, my yarn stuffed in the shelves, fat quarters in Samla boxes and yardage jammed carefully placed in shelves, and Karma, surprised that there is carpet in this room, not just fabric and crap all over the floor.
It's going to look crap again very soon, as this room is going to be painted this week, so I have to move everything to the centre of the room and cover it with drop cloths and then move it all back again, yuck!

During the week I had a visitor. I had one of these last year too, lucky aren't I. I'm glad I'm not the type to freak out at having a bat flying around my house.

Sorry the photos aren't great, I may not have been screaming like a girl when the bat came in, but I wasn't about to get up close and personal with it either.  This time the cats and dog didn't notice it, so I shut them in the bedroom, opened all the outside doors and crossed my fingers that it would find it's own way out. It did, phew! You may remember that last year I woke up in the middle of the night to the gentle noise of a bat flying into the rotating ceiling fan above my bed and being flung across the room into the wall. No harm was caused to the bat. This time it was because I forgot to shut the screen doors before dark.

On the sewing/crafty front, I worked on another block for Foundation Paper Piecing For The Terrified. Katy has posted some fab tutorials and I can genuinely say I'm no longer terrified of paper piecing. I'm still not sure whether I love it enough to make a whole paper pieced quilt but I'll certainly feel confident to give it a go to make smaller things like potholders or pincushions. On the other hand I've wanted to try a pickle dish or New York Beauty quilt for awhile now. Maybe just a mini quilt later this year.

The Circle of Geese is my latest attempt. It was not without problems, like forgetting to check that the piece I am about to sew is sitting in the right place and not folded over so that I sew it all wrong. That happened twice. Also not checking to make sure I haven't picked up the next couple of pieces along with the piece I am sewing, because they were sitting too close to the machine and as I sewed, they came along for the ride.

That would be the two white strips hanging from the bottom of the block, after being sewn in to the seam of the white piece pinned diagonally across the block. This may have happened more than once. 

Yes, I'm a slow learner.

Anywho, despite a couple of setbacks and seams unpicked, I'm very happy with the result.

I used some scraps of Amy Butler Soul Blossoms, the fabric I'm using for the Starflower quilt. Amazingly, some of the geese even worked with fussy cutting. Now that's a minor miracle!