December Day Sixteen

Earlier this year, I did some pattern testing for Juliet of Tartankiwi.  I pulled the blocks out recently as I have plans for them. And realise that I haven't shared them all.

So first of all we had Grumpy Cat, of which I made two —

Next was Grumpy Bunny —

Then Grumpy Old Dog —

Finally Grumpy Guinea Pig —

I had fun and games with the eyes for this one. I fussy cut some fabric that I thought would be cool.

But it made her look like she at at some wild party (or something) —

The look Juliet was going for was Grumpy not Wired so I played around a bit.

Below I cut a circle of black and pinned it on top of the original eye. Whew, she'd calmed down a lot, so I decided to hand sew it in place.....

But then had a lightbulb moment and coloured the crazy in with a pigma pen, which worked pretty well.

Hopefully tomorrow, I'll be able to show you what I am doing with these.

Miss Tammy kept me company in The Palace today. I can see I'm going to have to have a big tidy up so that she doesn't end up in all-sorts-of-things —

But she did wear herself out and found a nice sunny spot to sleep. She looks so innocent in this photo!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Raewyn.

June already!

And the start of the month means a Friday Night with Friends, hosted by the lovely Cheryll over at Gone Stitchin'.

I haven't joined in for a little while but was feeling organised this month so signed up :-)

The MOML and I have a few days away next week so I wanted to organise a crochet project to work on while we are away. I've been dreaming about making another afghan for a while; I love seeing the two I made years ago (Ripple afghan and Wavy afghan) being used and figure there's always room for another one or two around the place. Better still someone might claim and adopt one. 

The design I've had my eye on is the Snowflake version of the 6-day blanket by Betsy McKnit. There are various versions of this design and you get a different effect depending on where you change colours.

I have this yarn waiting for a project - originally purchased for a project I later ditched - and in typical Raewyn fashion the afghan will likely turn out reasonably uncontrolled looking colourwise.

So after that big introduction, this is where I got to last night. 

Hmm doesn't look very exciting just yet but I'm sure it will one day!

The pattern strongly advises doing a swatch but I didn't - I don't mind the size it turns out and felt confident enough of the pattern to not need to do it for practice!

(Although it's called a 6 Day blanket, I think know this will take me a lot longer. I understand the earlier versions in chunky yarn were very quick to make!)

Thank you Cheryll for hosting us :-)

In between cows and children I haven't done a lot of sewing since my last post. The only achievements are these two blocks....

Another one for the 20-year challenge for The Country Yard. The theme this time was The Rustic Barn. If you look at their website you will notice that I have stitched the logo. And the shop is in a barn-style building. (Also YD designed the logo for the shop so how could I not include it?!) I added the wee quilt to give the block a little more colour.

The second block made recently is another test block for Juliet of Tartankiwi. This is the third in her Grumpy series and is possibly the easiest of the three blocks so far. This pattern hasn't been released yet but Juliet has shared her own sewn block on instagram so I am sure she will be ok with me posting my picture!

He definitely lives up to his Grumpy Pup name!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Mopping up...

I'm calling this a mop-up post as I am attempting to tidy up some loose ends before I go away. More on that shortly!

Lately I have been asked to test a couple of patterns for Juliet, of Tartankiwi. Long time followers may remember that I love to test her foundation pieced patterns; I never know what journey they will send me on. I enjoy making something completely different, hunting out fabrics that might work and I actually enjoy writing the feedback on the pattern for her! So when Juliet sends out an email to her group of testers, I usually try very hard to squeeze her request in.

It has to be said though that I have a very healthy pile of blocks that I have made/tested that haven't eventuated any further, in spite of my best intentions. So when the latest calls came through I tried to be very realistic and thought very carefully about the end product.

Accordingly the fabrics I chose were possibly a little different to what I usually choose but they will work perfectly for the grandies who hopefully will all end up with cushions this year!

I decided to make two of this design, they will be for the big girl twins - 

This pattern is called Grumpy Cat. Very cute, I think, and fun to sew.

And next came Grumpy Bun. He will be for their brother and I think I will possibly make another of him; depending on what other Grumpy designs Juliet comes up with.

While the patterns come in a variety of sizes, the ones I sewed finished at 12 inches square, bigger than some of the others I've sewn for her, but a useful size for making cushions from. Both patterns have now been released. Visit Juliet of Tartankiwidesigns *here* to have a look.

Other sewing recently includes these harem pants for 3 year old Odie.....even if you look twice you probably won't realise that these started off as one of YD's dresses! The dress had a drawstring/elasticated waist which I shortened for his waist. It still has the (perfect for small boys) side pockets. I shaped the legs ever so slightly and finished the bottom with elastic. Very satisfying and extra cute!

Now onto my traveIs.....I have started my pilgrammage to Scrub Stitching. This is a (sewing) retreat held in New South Wales, Australia, near the home town of Chooky. These have been held for a number of years, disrupted, of course, by covid. I attended in 2019 and am excited that I can finally go again! Chooky has been instrumental in bringing a large number of (mostly) bloggers together - via the retreats but, in more recent times, via regular and, at times marathon, Zoom sessions. It's been a lot of fun getting to know other quilters and I'm so excited to be joining in again. My first Scrub Stitching blogpost is *here*, and I'll try to write posts while I'm away.

This afternoon I flew down to Auckland and I will be flying to Melbourne tomorrow morning (Easter Sunday) - Kiwikid Sue is meeting me at the airport and we are roadtripping up tp Baradine, arriving there, ready to sew, on Wednesday morning.

I was disappointed though to miss a bit of excitement at home tonight.....our son-in-law decided it would be a good thing to put a hangi down on the farm for a shared family meal.

A hangi is a traditional maori method of cooking food. Of course it has been adapted over the years with the use of some modern materials, but it's basically the same technique.
Rocks are heated until they are white hot. We used empty molasses drums to build the fire in and used hot burning and nice flavoured Manuka firewood. While the rocks are heating a pit is dug; then the rocks are tipped into the pit.

Straight away (so they don't cool) the food goes on top of the hot rocks. The basket of food is covered with hessian or muslin cloth or whatever is available. You don't want dirt in with the food!!!

Here is YD preparing the basket of food. The basket was lined with banana leaves, then the meat was put in. Ours had two chickens (no, not my babies), a leg of mutton and also some mutton flags. Then a layer of banana leaves and the vegetables are layered on top. She put in pumpkin, potato, kumara, cabbage, and also made a bread stuffing, and topped it off with more banana leaves.

The hangi was left for about 4-5 hours. Not sure how long ours cooked for as I had left home by then.

Apparently is was really delicious. hangi food has a really distinct flavour! The kids had a great time eating and playing so it was a success all round. Now that we have the stones and setup at our place, I look forward to the next one, and actually partaking!! Handy that there was plenty of food so the MOML will be fed for the next few days while I am away.

I apologise in advance if the formating for this post is all over the place... I'm used to using my PC for my blogposts and can't find some of the buttons I'm used to using! (I started this at home so part of it is 'controlled'!! (Actually, now that it's published, it's not too bad!!)

'til next time,
happy stitches,

Christmas WIPs

Now that things are easing on the farm (for me at least; the MOML is still as busy as ever) I've miraculously found more sewing time!

Back when there were still 100 days left until the end of the year, I came across a WIPS-B-GONE (2021) challenge being run by Leanne, the Devoted Quilter.

In the last year or so I've been very good at signing up for things and not following through😟 
I thought that maybe this challenge would give me an extra push to complete a few projects and therefore redeem myself. With that in mind, I remembered that a few posts ago, I had sort of challenged myself to finish three Christmas quilts by the end of the year.

So that part was easy - identifying which 'Works In Progress' to work on!

Progress has been slow but I have tried to keep these three projects at front of mind.
I've made another reindeer for Juliet's Sleigh Ride Sewalong —

I'm a bit late for the sewalong but that's how it goes. You can see below how it's starting to take shape. I have two more to make, which won't take too long once I put my mind to it.

My evening sewing has picked up a bit. For a while there I was too tired to think about much after dinner, but lately I've been continuing on with The Santa, The Tree, The Turkey and Me. 

When I'd left off, it was at this stage —

But I spent an afternoon prepping some more for the evenings —

I've since stitched these areas; the reindeer now have their harnesses and Santa just needs his beard and some trims on his suit. Then I'll be ready for the stitchery elements of the block.

Most exciting of all is that I am back to my Scrappy Christmas Ornaments!!!

The lack of a decent sized design wall means that this project was laid out on the spare bed in the guest room. I'd had it on a sheet which I quickly rolled up (way back whenever) when some extended family needed a safe place to live for a month, then Mum stayed for a bit, and then, not long after, our bathroom remodel started. The contents of the 'old' bathroom were upended into the guest room (just across the hallway) for safekeeping and sorting. Whew.

One completed bathroom later I can now access the bed so have unrolled the sheet and started working on joining the blocks into rows.

It's always been my vision to have the ornaments 'randomly spaced' around the quilt, so while I'm joining them into rows, I'm offsetting them so they all hang at different heights. 
I soon realised the small blocks need a bit more background around them so they don't look lost. That has grown the potential size of the quilt by a few inches but that's not an issue.

Here's the mess on the bed, I've joined nearly three rows and am nearly half way there.

The WIPs be Done challenge is mostly being run on Instagram. I thought it would be a good way for me to get back onto that again so maybe I'll have a look at that when I finish writing this (unless I get the urge to sew instead....!)

I mentioned that my calf duties are slowing down. We finished calving about two weeks ago (just under 3 months from start to finish). And some are weaned.

I put the youngest ones out into the paddock last week and spent an enjoyable time watching them run, which they always do with great gusto when first put out —

And another time I caught these handsome fellows being curious —

I took this one gorgeous morning —

And here is the herd another, very foggy, day —

OK, must be off, 

'til next time,

happy stitches,

A bit of this, a bit of that —

Well it seems that when I told myself that I would try to blog at least weekly, the message didn't get through!! So here I am a good two three weeks since my last post. 

However it feels like I don't have a huge amount of creating to share. I'll get writing and see what I find to talk about!

A wee look through my photos reminds me that I blinked and the Oak tree was in leaf - all of a sudden it was spring!

Spring and September for us here can be wet, but in between showers there are a few beauties.

I grew Crocus for the first time —

Another first, I planted some Rununculus bulbs and they are flowering too! It was a gorgeous day when I took these photos —

When I planted the bulbs, I also sowed a packet of wildflower seeds in the same barrel so it will be interesting to watch the changes as the year progresses.

On the farm it's easy for the MOML and I to only notice the muddy gateways and and soggy pastures. However our daughter in law sent this fun photo through of the kids (and pets) rolling down the hill - doesn't the farm look great from there?!

Ha! the next photo she sent though brought us back down to earth with a thump - yep, the kids' favourite puddle, apparently!!

September is the month when the kowhai flower and I always look out for the first yellow blooms. I took this photo when feeding calves this morning. These trees in the bush are on the other side of a swamp so this is as close as I got today. 

This is a photo I took another time, such lovely flowers.

Calving has slowed right down and the end is nearly in sight, with approx 20 cows left to calve. The last ones always drag on for ages....70-80% of the cows get in calf on their first mating so we have an almighty rush of calves in the first 4 weeks. Some cows need a second mating, or a third or.... you get the picture. We've sold a bunch of calves, I currently have 103 that I'm feeding. Lots of delicious brown Angus cross in the photo below —

I always love seeing all the different shades of brown —

After being housed in various sheds and so on, most of the older ones are out on grass and getting milk-fed once a day, so that has eased my workload a lot.

Which gives me time to get back to my normal pursuits. 

A little childminding (Odie loves his Gandad's farming magazines!) —

And a little sewing —

I've had a bit of brain fog lately that's upset my apple cart so I've avoided anything that requires too much thinking and decision making.

Evenings has been basket making, with a straightforward design. Just the background fabric and one other —

The pattern was kindly provided by Michelle - she has now finished her Basket-case quilt, it looks lovely.

I didn't realise that I'd amassed such a pile of these - so it's motivating to keep going with them and aim for a decent sized quilt.

I've done a little sewing during the day, enough to keep my hand in!

I have made another one of the Reindeer blocks for Juliet of Tartankiwi's Sleighride sewalong. Details *here*. Again, once I'd decided on the fabrics for this deer, there weren't too many decisions to make, just the foundation piecing process, which I have down pat, to follow. 

(I showed my first blocks *here*)

I think the fog is starting to clear now so I'm hoping for a bit more creativity in the future :-)

And, just right now, there's new calvers to get to the shed and calves to be fed!

'til next time,

happy stitches,