Time for a catch up!

After my spectacular blogpost a day (nearly) in July, I realise it's now ten thirteen fourteen days with no post!

Generally, the farm has been keeping us all busy, but I have made progress on several things.

I've added just 4 more churn dashes to my collection (these are 6" blocks) —

I took apart my disastrous 'stitched by candlelight' hexie rosette and remodelled it, forming two more. Out with the old —

In with the new —

(Different lighting, but that 'red' is the same fabric!)

Six is enough for what I want to do; they'll be appliqued onto larger squares for my 2022 quilt.

I had needed a little more fabric to complete my Raining Cats and Dogs block/row...so here it is in all its glory!

This is actually 12" x 60 so is a decent size (!). It will also be part of my 2022 quilt. Its width will dictate the size of that quilt.

And Memory Lane has seen some progress too. I made 5 more blocks, joined them together and sewed them on as the bottom border of this quilt. 

(Yes, if you notice it, I did change the order of the above blocks...I had muddled them when joining.)

And I've attached the top border too - here is how that is looking now.

I have a bit of thinking to get the two side borders done. They will look similar to these, but with different sized and shaped stitchery blocks to work with.

On the home front —

Miss Lily (and family) had a brief visit one day. She insisted 'we' do some more sewing while here. She wanted another dolls' quilt.

Her attention span was long enough to quickly sandwich two squares of fabric with an offcut of batting, two diagonal lines as quilting and a zigzag around the outside. I wasn't even allowed to trim it to tidy the rough edges! Here it is in her (birthday) dolls' house —

Just perfect I'd say!

Last weekend one of the local gardens opened their gates as a fundraiser, while their beautiful magnolias were in flower. ED, YD and I (and a couple of children) went along.

We were amazed at the size of the blooms on this tree!

The same weekend, the older twins had their first ever 'dance recital'. This was quite well done, and each little group spent only 5-10 minutes on stage - with one or two routines. Our two loved it. (They do mini-acro; a bit of gymnastics/acrobatics in it which seems quite fun!)

The other day when YD and Odie were out, we went out the back. He remembered exploring from another time and took us off for a bit of a bush walk. 

These three were entertained, watching Gandad in the paddock with the cows another day —

I am bursting at the seams with calves. I have approx 60 that I'm rearing right now. And we've sold a couple of dozen which I reared through to about a week old. 

They're starting to fill up the sheds 

Three mobs (of ten) in this shed now. The older ones now have access to the outdoors so they can start to learn how to eat grass.

It's always a good workout, carrying buckets of milk to the calves! 

We're still having to help the first-timers calve, as the bull we were sold is throwing big calves. They're all doing well. It is always amazing to see how resilient calves are. This guy was rejected by his mum, unlicked even. We got him to the shed, I managed to make him stand and got his first feed of colostrum into him. I left him for the night with an old horse-neck cover draped over him —

Next morning (10 hours later) he was unrecognisable from the other calves —

A nice scene one morning this week —

OK, must away, and (finally) get this posted!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Block-a-day-July Day 19

One hexie-flower was all I managed on Day 19. After a busy day I decided a hand sewn block would be a good way to end the day! 

This is not the start of a new project (!!) - it will be added to the box labelled '2022 quilt' which will include all the random 'must do' blocks that I have accumulated throughout the year. Hence the 2022 block I made earlier in the month.

We're not having the speediest start to the calving season - we only have had two cows calve so far. (198 to go!) 

This is our second calf, and will be the first keeper that I will raise to (eventually) go into the herd.

The first calf born was a beef heifer who will go to a very nice couple who bought all our spare calves last season.

 I'm guessing that after a night of rain we will go out this morning and there will be soggy little calves everywhere. Pleased these two were already in the shed.

We spent a bit of time (and $$!) putting roller doors onto one side of the calf shed recently. Up until now everything happened through the one door that we had. All the bales of shavings got pushed through that door and then all the used shavings got removed through that door. With the roller doors we'll be able to use the tractor to do those jobs a lot more easily. Also on fine days we'll be able to open the roller doors to let the air flow through.

'til next time,

happy stitches,