Bee blocks

This poor neglected blog, I feel bad! But I just haven't felt the desire to blog recently, not sure why. I think perhaps I'm just not finishing things the way I used to, and feeling like I don't have anything to blog and then getting anxious about not blogging so I don't blog and so it goes. I might try and see if I can break the vicious circle because I do actually have a few things to show off.

Doing bee blocks for our Monday Modern group really does let me finish things which is always a nice feeling!

The first two I did were for Louise, out of this delightfully gothic fabric by Tula Pink. I don't know that I'd want a whole quilt out of it but it was fun doing two blocks! That's the best thing about bee blocks I think, you can just love something on a superficial level without committing to a whole quilt. The block itself was also great - big and easy and very effective when put together with the others. I gather it's also Tula Pink.





The second lot of blocks were for Cris, and she gave us a pile of solid strips and told us to go for it, keeping a log cabin in mind.



This was a lot of fun to put together. The first one was pretty straight-forward, and I kept it fairly traditional. There was quite a lot of fabric left over so I thought I'd just make another one, but ran out of long enough pieces towards the end. But I liked the pieced strip I made for one side, in a desperate attempt to finish it. It wasn't quite enough though, so I had to add a couple of strips out of my stash to get it to size. My husband wasn't at all sure why I was doing that "just give it to her like that" he said, but I really wanted to finish it for me! Which probably says a lot about why we all do blocks - not necessarily out of the goodness of our hearts but because we like the challenge and playing with other people's fabrics - all fun care and no responsibility!

I'm determined to get out another post in a few days, so check back soon!

Emerging from the fog

In less than two months we've bought a house, put our old one on the market, sold it, packed, moved, and largely unpacked, kept the cat in for 10 days, tried to clean cat pee out of carpets (our old house was all polished floor boards), and after a drought dealt with constant rain and no covered deck or garage to keep things dry until we find a place for them. Yeah. And now I am starting to think about things artsy crafty again - it really does feel like emerging from a fog of packing and boxes and general logistics. When I got to stitching group on Wednesday, after about a month off, I really felt like I was returning to real life!

I've also started back on the Monday Bee blocks which I'm shockingly behind on. I had four to do, and I've just finished Carolyn's 'Cheery Canary' improv block. The brief was only 25% of the block in prints, and a canary must appear once. The others had done such great blocks I really didn't know what to do, although I did know I was jealous of Megan's effort which put small triangles and then squares in mind. Eventually I had this mental image of yellow squares tumbling across the light grey, gradually turning into dark grey triangles. I think I came fairly close, although it's not quite as I'd imagined. I think that's partly due to the number of seams in the block which I find kind of distracting, but hopefully they will be less noticeable after quilting.



It was quite satisfying to put together!

I also found the photos I'd taken of Laurina's and Linda's blocks, both of which were nice to do - I thought the technique for Laurina's hexagons was fascinating, especially the way you end up with two very different-looking blocks from the same two sewn-together strips of fabric.



Now on to Shelly's, Mel's and Karyn's!

It's painful but...

So Reader is closing down and I need a new RSS aggregator. What a pain. It seems like Blog Lovin' is the crafty blogger's choice at the moment, so despite the incredibly painful name I've decided to "claim my blog" and if you are making the switch over in that direction you can Follow my blog with Bloglovin by clicking the link. I actually just imported everything lock stock and barrel straight from Google, so much for good intentions of whittling it down a bit!

Packing and general insanity proceeds apace here. I've got a swap to send off to the Netherlands on Tuesday which is largely done but I have two bee blocks to do for my quilt group that are due in a few days too so I'm going to try and continue the juggling act of sewing and packing and painting Hazel's new room. I am woman, watch me multitask!

Here is Ollie this morning, about to fall asleep on my lap. Dogs just don't do laps as well as cats, it's awkward all-round, but he does love being as close to us as he can get! 

This and that

Hey there poor neglected blog! It's been a chaotic couple of months at chez nous, my father-in-law died, which threw us all for a loop even though it wasn't unexpected, then we put in an offer on a house, which was accepted the day we got back from the funeral, so it was all hands on deck to get our current house ready to go on the market at the same time as we were dealing with all the details involved with finalising the sale of the new house. Whew! The hardest part was living in our immaculate house and keeping it that way so people could view at short notice. It was sold 5 days after we put it on the market, the real estate market here in Auckland is insanely over-heated at the moment but I guess I shouldn't complain too much should I! We'll be moving on the 6th. My desk and computer were packed away in the decluttering frenzy and I've been without it for about three weeks now, aside from not backing up my phone properly, it's amazing how easy it is to cope with just an iPhone!

Anyways, what with all that the crafting has gone on the back burner to a large extent, but I have managed a few bits and pieces. The hat is a skater beanie from Ravelry and the crochet is one of a few I'm gradually doing for a project.

Bee blocks. Actually make that crochet.

When I started to type the title for this post it was going to be about two lots of bee blocks I've made for our Monday Modern group - but when I went to find the photos they weren't there. I have no idea where they are, I know I took them! I had a bit of trouble the last time I downloaded from the big camera and I'm wondering if they got lost somehow, hope they're still on the camera! What kind of blogger loses photos of projects? You can see others' versions on our Flickr group.

So on to some crochet I've been doing. Before Ollie came along I had a bit more spare time, and I filled it making odd but charming things like decorative frills for the jars I often use for flowers. The pattern came from Simple Crochet, but I adapted it to fit the jars I had. They didn't turn out quite as nice as the book's examples but it was fun and I think I'll do it again but just use some of the edging patterns I have in various crochet books and nicer cotton yarn.

I've also been working on some motifs from the same book using Perle 8 and mercer thread no.20 which is a lot more fiddly but very satisfying when it comes out nicely! There's a nice little collection growing for a particular project I have in mind. I've also conquered the slip ring start which has been a struggle for me up till now.



And lastly, there is Ollie, who at 13 weeks continues to be both delightful and gorgeous along with seriously annoying and a pain-in-the-butt. At least once a day he get deposited rather unceremoniously into his playpen after biting too hard one time too many; but is then reprieved after a short while by being so adorably cute. Often I think the issue is just too much excess energy for us to burn off. Luckily Helen's boxer Woody is very fond of puppies and it turns out that Ollie is very fond of him too and two dogs can expend a lot of energy in a backyard. Here they are on their first date (and no, Woody is NOT doing anything untoward to Ollie, which is what my husband suggested, they are simply sharing a water bowl). You can really tell there is pug in boxer breeding can't you!



And here is an arty black and white Ollie early one morning seconds before he leaped wildly towards the camera.

Scrappy Tripalong top finished

Oh my god being a puppy-mummy is hard work! Getting easier but still, not a lot of time for sewing because if Ollie doesn't need attention then Hazel does! It's going to be much easier when she goes back to school on Tuesday, but also a bit lonely. She's really looking forward to it though, starting Year 3, up to the Middle school, new room, new teacher, and a couple of good friends to keep her company.

I finished up the Scrappy Tripalong quilt top last night. It had stalled a bit when I discovered that at least two of the blocks were too small in one dimension to be used so I decided it would be better to just make a few more and use them than try and sort out the old blocks and made 8 more. As it turned out (of course), it was just the two blocks I'd initially identified that were a problem, so I have 8 more blocks to do something with! Hazel has asked to have this so there's no point in adding more to the quilt for a single bed. It's not perfect, there are some seams with a big of a jag between blocks, but it's so busy you can't really tell. I think the problem was one particular fabric that must have been on more of the bias than I realised, and has stretched a bit. I'm really picky about cutting on the bias but with vintage sheets it can be quite hard at times as they are cheaply made, and sometimes super-wonky - the weave doesn't run perpendicular to the selvedge, or even straight across in many cases, so sometimes I just had to say "f**k it" and cut however.

I enjoyed making it, now I just have to make myself keep going and get it quilted. Not sure how well my machine will cope with it, it's the biggest thing I've made so far. I know I can do a smaller single but this might just be a bit too big for the throat of the machine. Very simple quilting ahoy! Of course I had some help with taking the photos...

It's hard to get the colours to show up properly, it always seems to look darker than it really is. It's quite light and bright actually, more the top of the big photo than towards the bottom (which is probably a bit in the shade).

More interruptions

 Christmas and the sprained ankle derailed things a bit, but I made a comeback of sorts and got sucked into the Scrappy Tripalong over on Instagram. I got up to 16 blocks



And then just over a week ago this little guy happened and crafting came to a . *



Meet Ollie, who arrived a couple weeks earlier than we expected. He was a total surprise for Hazel, although not for Mat and me, as we've had been looking for a puppy and a good breeder for quite awhile. Luckily Hazel and Ollie get along very well, although she does have a tendency to treat him like a stuffed toy. The phrase "paws on the ground please Hazel" is heard several times a day, as she awkwardly totes him around from place to place, ignoring the fact he has legs and a will of his own. She'll learn though!



What I wasn't expecting was what hard work a puppy is, especially for a cat person like me, how tired I'd be, how much pee I'd have to mop up, and how house-bound I'd be. He's super-cute, tiny and really quite lovely, but damn. I simply have to trust all the dog owners who assure me that "it will get better, I promise!"

Luckily he settled into a routine fairly quickly (pugs are such laid back little creatures, or at least he is) and I've been able to get a bit of sewing on the Scrappy Tripalong done the last few nights. In fact I'm off right now to try and get the last 6 blocks sewed up into tubes and maybe cut into strips. At least I think they're the last, I'm assuming the quilt will be single bed-sized at 30 blocks because I think I'm kind of over cutting 16x2.5" strips. Unfortunately 6 of the blocks I made are slightly rectangular and I'd have to unpick them to get them right, so I have to hope I can use them down one side where it won't matter. I must have had the needle set just slightly wrong for one session.


*I can't remember which book that little joke came from, but I've loved it for years. For those people who call a '.' a period, if you call it a full stop, the sentence above makes sense.