the fruits of our non-labour

We're what I'd term accidental gardeners these days. There once was a time when we were very focussed on our garden, particularly the native plant side of it, and we spent time every week tending to it lovingly. Now the natives pretty much fend for themselves apart from the odd trim.  And it's always a bit of a surprise if we manage to grow any fruit or vegies. 

Excitingly, this year Andy has been quite committed to the vegie patch, and we're currently enjoying capsicums. zucchinis, strawberries, baby spinach as well as the herbs that seem to grow so well here (what to do with an oversupply of sage though??)

Even more exciting has been our fruit crop that has now come to an end. Last year our little apples were mostly picked by a helpful toddler well before they were ready. This year we had a good little crop and they were sooo yummy. The best part was our peaches though. Andy decided the peach tree was in need of a trim and in trimming it discovered about a dozen peaches of the yummy golden flesh variety. This has been the first year our tough little peach tree has produced so well. They've only been in for 4 years I think.

this is .... my creation

This week's this is comes from Betty the Geek.  

My blog really is a journey of my creations to show what I make for both my shop and for my own personal life. I usually include lots of sewing and some knitting so for this meme  I wanted something different from what I normally show.

I decided to choose the thing that had taken me the longest to create, and something that is supposed to be an heirloom for my daughter Lily.  It is a cross stitched cot size quilt with 12 images taken from the Beatrix Potter book The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It took me a bloody long time to stitch, I started it way before Lily was born not knowing whether she was a girl or boy, hence the gender neutral tones.  After she was born I soon learnt the delicate art of cross stitching and breastfeeding at the same time. And no, she never got pricked with my needle!

Anyway, these are some close ups from the quilt.  Once I finished the stitching my mum hand-quilted it and hand-stitched on the backing, so it is totally made with hands ~ no machining at all.
It's been through the wash a few times in the last almost three years but has held up well. I just noticed while photographing it it needs another wash as Lily had her lunch sitting on it today a la picnic style *rolls eyes*
I love the language of Beatrix Potter. A great base for kids to develop lovely wide vocabularies. I love how the sparrows implore Peter to exert himself!
Strangely enough, I don't think I've really done any cross stitch since I finished this LOL

Maybe one day I'll drag out some of my other old cross stitches and photograph them too.
And here's my most beautiful creation of all, lying down on it to be photographed.
And lastly, here is Lily "creating". She's making a princess crown. What was I thinking to leave an almost three year old alone with two jars of glitter for 5 minutes!!! After finishing the crown she took off her nightie, and put clag on herself and attempted to stick glitter all over her body!!!  It's a pretty cool crown though, I must say :D

a couple of previews

ahh, blogger has been a bit naughty today!!! Slowly working away on the sewing today, while entertaining the little princess mad one.  She's very excited today as her uncle Tim has come to visit. She thinks he's come to do jigsaws with her... not quite. Last time Tim did jigsaws with Lily he did have find some of the nine piece ones a little tricky which caused Daddy to remark that "Uncle Tim struggles a little bit with jigsaws."  

Today she asks him, "Daddy, what else does Uncle Tim struggle with?"  *oops*  Uncle Tim did see the funny side of it luckily!!!

Anyway, a couple of shorts finished and up on ozebaby now...
and a couple of pairs of pants to come probably tomorrow :)

This is ... looking out my front door

ok, so I'm getting my act together and doing this tonight incase I forget again tomorrow.  I am really crap at remembering to do things like this so my participation is a bit hit and miss.  

anyway, this week's This is ... comes from Brooke.  

Our front door is more of a side door, it looks out onto the front verandah and across to the boundary wall, which is the wall of the neighbour's garage.  You can just see the sun peeking over the roof as it's beginning to set.    

A wooden sculpture done by Megsie many moons ago and a money plant.

A faded kangaroo paw.

I quite like our front door view; it's lovely and private.

perfect weather

Yeah for long weekends! We were anticipating a hot weekend this one, but today after early morning cloud that cleared and then drifted back in, it's just been one of those lazy lovely weather days. Perfect strawberry eating day, which Lily proved by gutsing a whole punnet.  

Do you like these cute little knitted strawberries?  I just adore them. Lily gave one each to Tully and Asher, they're lots of fun to knit and very quick too. You can find the pattern here.

I've been on the sewing machine today and have a few pairs of shorts and pants just about ready to put up in the store. This is the first pair complete, with pockets from my very loved Dick and Jane fabric. They shall go up some time tonight.  

Andy's in the kitched whipping up a home-made pizza ~ I did my bit and made the base earlier! Yummo!!!

tag a lag

I've been tagged by Megsie from pint's palette.  I have to share some stuff about myself...hmm.

Firstly, here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog

2. Share seven facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird

3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs 

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

So here we go, seven facts hey....

1. We went through a stage when we were living in Ballarat where the house either behind or next to us burnt down.  I think there were about three or four in total.  In one case we saw the house next door being extinguished while watching the news in Hamilton!!! We lived in a miner's cottage and had a shared driveway. When we got back home we realised how lucky we were when we saw all the scorch marks on our wall.  

Ironically this all occurred AFTER we had flooded both a real estate agent AND a recording studio which we lived above in a small flat in Lydiard St.

2. I like to hoard.. erm...  collect things. I have a hard time particularly parting with clothes. I still have some stuff I wore as a teenager *blush* (not a lot just some of my favourite items  ~ hey, it's all coming back in fashion)  hell, I still even have my brownie uniform that would have been worn late 70's/early 80's. 

3. I have a fear of walking on piers. It is quite ridiculous and makes no sense whatsoever, even if I fell off I'm a strong swimmer. It's got something to do with being able to see between the gaps in the planks, why, I have no idea.  If there's big gaps I walk really funny on them, and clutch the edge.  Those swinging plank bridges are the stuff of my nightmare.  

4. As a teenager my friend Nis and I used to be obsessed with Pseudo Echo. We used to particularly love Funky Town. We'd put the video on and dance to it, doing all the moves ~ she'd pretend she was Brian Canham and I'd pretend to be James Leigh. The best bit was where there was a music build up to a wang on the guitar and we'd get down on our knees LOL 

5. When I first started working as a teacher one of the other teachers at my school tried to kick me out of the photocopying room; she thought I was a student. I was 25.

6. I like bright colours and rarely wear black.

7. My daugher, too, will only wear dresses.  She likes to choose what dress she is going to wear each day with the help of her rocking horse.

Now who to tag.... I'm aiming for some peeps who haven't been tagged with this already.

KiwiFi

Rebecca

Sue

Tracy

Kim

Eilleen

Kate

random act

Some more catch up pics...

I recently participated in a Woolaholics Random Act of Kindness swap.  My recipient was Kim and you can see a pic of the package I sent her above.  

The packaging itself is a little project bag for keeping knitting projects in.  The red fabric I used or the lining has knitting phrases on it; I teamed it with the Japanese snow umbrellas (both Michael Miller prints) as Kim's favourite colours include blue and green. I whipped up a needle roll for holding sock double pointed needles (dpns) as Kim has been getting into a bit of sock knitting.  I tucked in the needle roll a set of bamboo dpns.
Also included 130grams of peartree 4 ply merino; a very lush soft local yarn; and a pattern for a little baby jacket. Kim is due to have a bub in 10 or so weeks and as I don't know whether she's having a boy or girl I thought the green was a great colour.

some little tags to attach to her knitted garmentand one of these cards. How cool are they! Perfect for sending to a knitter; they have a pattern on them...
what a fun swap to put together :D

some overdue pics

of a custom Megsie and I did for a very patient customer. She had such a lovely vision, and it was so much fun to work with someone with such a definite idea ~ right from sourcing the awesome paisley fabric right down to the image for the tshirt.

And you know what, it came out beautifully!!! I am really proud of it, it's one of my favourites :D

The pic above is the tshirt front and skirt back; below a matching bag, and bottom: front of tshirt and front of skirt.

pear or lemon?

I was convinced that the fruit on this dress was a pear until Andy said to me last night, "I like the lemon dress." 

"It's a pear," I said.

"You sure," he said. "Looks like a lemon to me."

so I looked twice at it, and it really got me thinking... is it a pear or a lemon?  The fabric is just called "juicy", it's an awesome retro style 50s inspired print from Alexander Henry.  

So what do you think it is; a pear or a lemon?

or maybe there's one of each there????

anyway, it'll be up on on ozebaby later this evening ;)