Crafting at our house

I wasn't on dinner duties on Friday night so I thought I had a nice long creative evening ahead of me.
At the end of the night 11 measely crocheted fancy looking bobbles is all that I achieved —

I could blame Timmie-cat and say it's all her fault I was so slow but I'd better own up and say it was a very tricky part of the pattern which took me a while to nut out..... using 2 colours at once was a challenge too!

So at this point in time I can say my Mandala Madness is growing VERY slowly.
To see what other FNSI-ers got up to click *here* - it's always fun to see what others around the world are working on. Thank you Wendy for hosting us :-)

I said earlier on that I wasn't on dinner duty so I'd best explain. We now have flatmates with our YD and her hubby moving in. They've left the big smoke and are living and working in Northland now -yaay!! They've made the downstairs area very cozy and it's just like a small apartment :-)

Nice to see the quilt I made for her DH lovingly used :-)

As well as sharing dinner duties I now have another crafter in the house.
YD's first completed cross-stitch project —

She figured out the french knots by herself so I was most impressed!

She's now full steam ahead on her first major knitting project; a jersey for her wee dog.
( I say 'first major' as years ago she knitted a scarf for her pet pig.) (Do you detect a pattern there!)

It's nice to have the extra hands around. These are starting to come thick and fast -

Yes, new calves, the 'spring' calving season is upon us.

The chorus goes something like "Will you feed us"

In between time I'm trying to get a bit of quilting done on the mystery quilts I'd basted in my last post. Too many distractions and progress is slow!

I'm using Aurifil threads for this one and I'm very happy
with how they are going.

Best get back to it :-) Till next time,

Happy stitching ♥

Pigs and Gifts

First of all the pigs - this week I completed another block for my Anderson's Farm Barge's Farm mystery button club. I'd missed out Block 3 when I was away on holiday so some catch up stitching was needed.
This block stretches the imagination just a little but is rather cute all the same.

Block 3 - Joyride!

Again I decided to do some needleturn rather than stitching so the big pig, off on a joyride, is in fabric.

Lynette has showed us an assembly diagram for what we have done so far so I sewed mine up too - here are all the blocks together; this is the half way point.

And on to the gifts.... last week I celebrated a birthday (another case of saying "where has the year gone"!).

I had to make my own cake this year, but I made sure it got a candle!

In amongst the lovely birthday fuss, I received a couple of gorgeous handmade gifts.
Kerryn put this together for me...such a sweet simple runner, one of those fancy ones you have peeking out over the edge of a shelf or ledge :-)

Isn't it beautiful?

{I think this style of runner was inspired by Pam Buda's Tucker *here* on a Heartspun Quilts; a sewalong last year}.
And Kerry knows how I like practical gifts too with this lovely set of kitchen goodness.

Pom-poms and ric-rac add to the yummy-ness :-)

Thank you both very much, Lovely Ladies.

Below is what happens when you train your husband up to do (one fingered) emails and check out facebook when you go away on holiday..... he saw this t-shirt advertised on facebook and decided I needed one!! Isn't he a thoughtful (and understanding) chap?!

Hehe very appropriate, do you think?!

And no birthday is complete without a bit of grandbaby time.... it was lovely to skype with my son and follow the babies/toddlers all around the house!!

Into everything. The chair was serving as an ineffective barrier...!

On the quilty front, this week I basted my two Fabulous Friday quilts - looks like I have a bit of quilting to do, doesn't it?

I am needing some long uninterrupted quilting time over the next little while, although I still haven't decided what I will do on them!

I hope you have a happy and creative weekend,

and thanks, as always, for reading along,

A Tui and a Goal

It seemed that June was the month for the Tui at our place. This bird is native to New Zealand (endemic in fact) and while it's not rare, I find it pretty special to have them around.

I was thrilled to get some decent photos of the one that had set up camp near our house...there were more across the road in another stand of the same type of trees... we could hear them calling to each other a lot.

Their chin tufts are pretty distinctive; they are also sometimes known as
The Parson Bird.

From a distance they appear black - but far from it!

Nectar is their main food but they also like pollen.
They do gymnastics getting inside the flowers!

Which brings me to my One Monthly Goal for July. A few years ago I did some pattern testing for Juliet of Tartankiwi.... below is a Tui block I foundation pieced/tested for her. I was really happy with how it turned out but it has sat for all this time, with nothing more done to it.

I am HOPING that July will be the month to stitch this up - I think it will make a really lovely cushion.

 

Thank you to Heidi for hosting the OMG and giving that extra little push I need to rummage through my UFOs, WIPs, or just plain old abandoned blocks like this.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that the video I've tried loading works!! It will give you a ringside seat at one of our resident Tui's performances - enjoy :-)

(Enlarge the video if you can, I'm not able to in blogger!)

 'til next time, 

happy creating,

Friday Night With Friends

Friday night saw me once again snuggled in my chair with my crochet hook in hand.
I was very pleased to finish Part 7 of my Mandala Madness as I've had a couple of nights away from it and it is growing ever so slowly.

However, growing it is and I did make a more little progress into part 8.

During the day Nigel takes it over; the MOML says (quote) it's because Nigel has never had anything special made for him, and maybe now is the time (unquote).

I. don't. think. so.

I realised this week that I haven't shared my latest completed Anderson's Farm (aka Barge's Farm) block —

Block 5. (I needleturned the dog rather than stitching him).

While we don't have two sheep anymore, our farm dog does like to eyeball the one we do have and bark at her. She just glares back, just like the ones in the block below are. Totally ineffective!

A special thanks to Cheryll for hosting us all for Friday Night with Friends :-) To see what everyone else got up to visit her blog, Gone Stitching,

Happy weekending ♥