A Stellar effort and a few cows

I'm very pleased as, for the second month in a row, I've met my One Monthly Goal!
I've been fitting in a bit of star making over the last week or so, and have finished the 24 friendship stars needed to go around the centre of the mystery stitchery I am doing this year.

A nice pile of 3" friendship stars

I even got them sewn onto the centre block —

Thank you to Patty of Elm Street Quilts for running this link up -it's a great way of getting a little push to achieve a goal.

I took my camera out with me when we were doing farm work yesterday. It's calving season down on the farm and it was a lovely afternoon.

Aw shucks - what cuties

One mob of expectant mums. We draft out the cows who are close to calving
so they are in smaller mobs and are easier to keep an eye on.

A newborn to a first time Mum

Expectant Mums in another mob. Very full bellies of grass!

Taking the new Mums and their babies home to the milking shed...

...and the calf shed.
I'm now feeding about 50 calves and there are 62 cows calved.

What's this you ask?

—the chickens love the milk.
We store the milk we cant send to the factory to feed to the calves. The chooks
are always quick to appear when I start pouring it out!
Time to shut them away :-)
(I'm not complaining though, they've suddenly started laying heaps of eggs!)

 The weather suddenly changed and today was chilly with some cool showers coming through, even a bit of hail. Hopefully this weather doesn't hang around for too long and we can be back to sunny, dry days again.

I found a photo of this on my camera which I hadn't yet shown. My DIL made it for me for my birthday earlier in the month - isn't it special?!

All the grandies ♥

Oh and One Last Thing. I do have ONE finish for the month but don't have a photo yet - I gave Xavier his knitted slippers without pulling out my camera. Photo of proof next time!

'til then,

Happy stitches,

Did I Sew?

When I signed up for Friday Night Sew In over at Sugarlane Designs, I forgot that I had a few things on over the weekend that would slow me up on crafting and blogging!
(And here it is Wednesday already, I hope I get this post written today!)
Yes, I did manage a few stitches, here's a taste of what I stitched on FNSI —

Thank you Wendy for hosting Friday Night Sew In. I'm sorry I wasn't a very focussed guest :-)

After dinner and before I sat down to stitch, I made a couple of Birthday Cakes. The next morning, another two—

A sunny morning in the kitchen. Four cakes (two in the tins) ready to go!

... and the rest of Saturday was spent at ED's where four of us got together for a fun time icing them for her two wee ones' first birthday!

YD has the process all sorted. Using my yarn swift which rotates smoothly
to get the layers of buttercream icing nice and even.
All the crevices in my cakes were well and truly covered up!

I had to leave before they were finished, but look how cute they turned out!

Hehe I loved the party hats ED made for the animals!

And for the record, here are five cousins eating cake at the party.

We had a busy party day on Sunday so the only other crafting I touched during the weekend was a bit more work on Lily's latest cardigan. I started this while we were roadtripping with Mum last week but haven't really touched it since.

In other sewing news, a wee while ago I tested another design for Juliet of Tartankiwi. You may remember that I love her designs and I always jump at the chance to help her out, providing (what I hope is) useful feedback. It also gives her a chance to see what her pattern looks like in completely different fabrics.
She has now released this pattern and I am able to share my version of it.

I adore this fellow - he is (officially) the Little Blue Penguin, the world's smallest Penguin and native to New Zealand. The pattern is available *here*.
As always, Juliet's pattern went together well. The only trouble I had was with the eye; I thought I'd picked out a reasonably suitable contrasting fabric for it, but because it was so little, it didn't show very well (and photographs even less well!).
I got out some grey embroidery thread and did a few straight stitches and I'm a lot happier with it now :-)

As the days go by where I don't get near my machine, I worry that I won't meet my One Monthly Goal this month! Those 24 friendship stars aren't going to make themselves!
However yesterday I had some time to myself and managed a pile of pressing—

 — and trimming.

Progress at last! I have a week until the end of the month so surely I can get them made!

Must away,

'til next time,

happy stitches,

A new One Monthly Goal

After success last month with meeting my goal of getting a quilt top together, I'm keen to sign up with the Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal again. I'm hoping I can have success two months in a row!
I am taking part in The Country Yard's Mystery Christmas Stitchery, Not Even A Mouse. It has lots of very cute stitched blocks and I'm happy to say that I am keeping up with stitching those.

However there's a bit of piecing that also needs to happen and I'd LOVE IT if I caught up on that.
My goal for the month is to piece 24, 3" friendship stars.

The stars go around this centre stitchery.

The half square triangles are at the pressing and trimming stage, so there's a bit of sewing involved.

I'd be happy if I also caught up on the rest of the piecing for this project (there's no more small blocks like the stars) but we'll just have to wait and see about that...!

Such cute blocks

I'll be reporting on my achievement later in the month! Thank you Patty for this link up :-)

I've barely had the chance to sew lately; just a bit of invisible machine applique which I decided to unpick. I used Smoke monofilament when I really should have used Clear, and it wasn't as invisible as I would have liked! Unpicking size 1.1 zig-zag sewn in 'invisible' thread is not the easiest thing to do!

I've been knitting again in the evenings and have managed a pullover for George —

Being ably modelled by George

and (nearly) some slippers for Xavier.—

Had just enough yarn leftover from George's pullover
for these!

Mum is staying at the moment and she is busy knitting as well. ED requested some toddler sized Granny jerseys for her two.

She always knits in a pattern as she gets tired of stocking stitch
so every jersey is unique!
(The colours haven't shown up so nicely in this photo).

We're off on our Winter Holiday tomorrow - two whole nights away - such is the life of a Dairy Farmer! We're taking Mum up north as she's not seen much of the Far North before. It will be nice to get away and we are hoping for fine weather so we can enjoy the sights!

'til next time,

Happy stitches,

Friday Night with Friends

With no knitting on the go and my Whimsical Woodland stitcheries all done, I thought I'd best get working on my 'Not Even A Mouse' Christmas mystery stitchery. I haven't touched this project for a month or so. We got month six the other day but I have a couple to catch up on before I start that one.
After working on it for a few nights this week I got block four out to complete on Friday night when I joined in with Cheryll and a group of lovely ladies for Friday Night with Friends .

I had a bit of evening left to trace month three —

Thank you for hosting us Cheryll. Pop on over to her blog to see what others got up to.

After going into town to watch netball on Saturday, my day fell apart. I came home and slept most of the afternoon away as bugs I'd been fighting all week hit me.
The only handwork I did on Saturday was making the cords for Lily's slippers...she just needs her sheepskin soles and then she'll be stepping out in fine style, like her brother ♥

You may remember me harping on about all the satin stitched leaves on block 3 of Foxley Village. Yaay, I did actually finish them, plus the berries - hehe so pleased I persisted!

Making a start on month four of Foxley Village will happen after I've done the Christmas stitcheries - I'd better get stitching as I'm looking forward to some more applique :-)
My cold seems to be coming right, I didn't think I'd get this blog post written today but I have so that's a good sign. A quiet day tomorrow and I should soon be all better :-)

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Scrubstitching Show and Tell

We've had a busy old time since I got back home from retreat, but I did have the chance the other day to pull out the projects I worked on while over there.
I was really lucky that Sue lent me her machine - I thought she was bringing a second machine but no, she'd decided to mostly hand sew.
She put her time to great use and here is one of the Old Time Kaleidoscope blocks she completed.

I hadn't planned my retreat sewing very well and only had time to throw a few close-to-hand project boxes in my case before leaving home.

I spent the first half of retreat working on my Whimsical Woodland mystery quilt from last year. All the stitcheries were done but little else. Lots of cutting, piecing and more cutting yielded a pile of the filler blocks.

I got to the stage where I needed to lay it all out to work out my colours - I didn't have enough room, so packed it up. So glad of the progress made though.

On Saturday I worked on some hearts for the Christchurch healing hearts quilt drive. I'll share those in another post.

Sunday was a half day and I pulled out another box. I needed to make some small friendship stars for the current mystery stitchery I'm doing. As you can see, I got a whole heap of half square triangles done. I think I got busy chatting on the way to the iron and didn't get them pressed.

But I did try for the scenic shot though - not very successful due to only the wrong side of the fabrics being visible!

At the start of the weekend we each received a gift bag of lovely goodies. One of the gifts was this gorgeous embroidery design by Sonia, of forever always online.
Sabrina, who hasn't really stitched before, achieved this!

I'm looking forward to stitching mine when I get to it; it will be a great memento of the weekend.

On Saturday afternoon we had show-and-tell. It was great; a huge variety of finishes over the year. Some of my photos had heads, etc, in them so there's just a sprinkling here to share.

Sue, with her Doing the Rounds quilt

Deb, a French General Sarah Fielke BOM

Janice, with a quilt made for her Mum

Kylie with a scrappy Round the World

Lea showing us her applique quilt

Sonia's Tessalating Diamonds (?)

Janice had her Splendid Sampler on the wall

Trish's Interlocking squares; she finished the piecing at retreat.

All very inspiring - what will I take for next year's Show and Tell, I wonder!!

I could sort photos for days.
However I'm leaving it here, as time is creepng on and I must get ready for work today :-)

'til next time,

Happy Stitches,