Down on the farm

Cows and calves, calves and cows, calving cows, cows, calves —

(Warning  - photo heavy post and no quilts included)

Get the idea?!

Yes, it's that time of the year. We've been at it for about three weeks now, and have about a third of the herd in. So far I have just over 50 keeper calves I'm raising.

Yesterday we had a set of twins born; smallish but both healthy and Mum was doing fine —

It's a great time of the year for the kiddies, too. It's nice when they visit and get into the calfshed —

We've been fortunate to have had a mild winter. In the earlier photo you can see how much grass we have grown after the drought. The below photos were taken mid-March. Don't be fooled by the tinge of green you can see; we were in a dire situation.

Our main dam out the back —

Luckily the drought broke in May; the same dam now, fuller than it has been for a very long time.

Since then we've had our annual rainfall in three months. Several floods. The worst was just as we were starting calving a couple of weeks ago. It caused a lot of mess —

There's a bridge under there somewhere!

Of course after the waters recede, a big clean up is needed.

Luckily we had a good band of helpers and within a week all the fences, etc were operational again.

And we're fortunate, we didn't get as much rain as areas closer to the coast, and I understand there are still farms under water. We always drain pretty quickly after a flood and the water doesn't stay around long enough to kill the grass.

Ok so I warned you it was photo heavy and non-quilty related! If you got to the end, thanks!!

'til next time

Happy stitches,

July round up

After trying all week, here is a last minute attempt to squeeze another blogpost into July! Funny how sometimes I can blog every day and then other times I can barely get here!

Never to mind. In spite of trouble getting to my sewing, I have a couple of bits of progress to share - yaay!

On the machine sewing front, I wanted to make a pouch to gift some sewing bits in for my DIL. She'd borrowed my second best (but family heirloom-type) sewing scissors back in lockdown, and when I started missing them, I decided she needed a pair of her own and a few bits and pieces to go with them.

I was working with a nice scrap of linen I found in my cupboard and true to my style, it was a very scrappy affair; making sure the elephants were the right way up on both sides took the pouch from a simple sew-in-a-zip-and-line-it affair to something more complicated. I think I made this a lot more hard work than I needed to - even though I was going to line it, I decided to do the bottom strip burrito style as in the popular pillowcase method. It meant I could add some pellon and put an extra layers, since the linen was heavier than the cotton I was using.

I did do some crosshatching on the base but you can't see it here!

Anyway, I got there, the scissors fitted in it (I almost forgot to measure!!) and I was able to gift it 😀

Continuing on with the sewing theme, I finally finished the last applique block for Foxley Village! I nearly had to do a deep clean of my sewing room (aka The Palace) as I'd misplaced my precious Perfect Circles (Karen Kay Buckley) which I now find essential for circle-making. However I only had to go one layer deep in my cleaning before I found them!

So one completed block —

Here is the first half of the quilt, photo shared some time ago —

...and here are the last applique blocks. Progress!

Baby Odie decided he needed an Arigirumi Gir-Affe and YD passed on his request. I found a cute pattern but spent ages hunting down some yarn - 4 ply in anything but pastel baby colours was hard to find but I was finally able to make a start.

And a finish.

I haven't done Arigirumi before but it was kinda fun. (As in kinda). Although I see my crocheting isn't dense enough (you can see the stuffing!) I'm still happy with the result. And apparently Odie loves it too!!!

I splashed out on some fancy yarn and made myself a warm hat during July as well. I try to buy only New Zealand yarn - this was made in New Zealand and was 80% NZ Polwarth and 20% Camel. I'm pretty certain the camel was not made in NZ (!) but it knitted up really nicely and is lovely and cosy to wear!

The pattern was Everglade by Woolly Wormhead and was a delight to knit.

OK, the end of the month deadline is approaching so I'll sign off now, I hope you're all doing well and keeping safe and happy,

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Chugging along

It does feel a little bit like I'm just chugging along with my sewing at the moment, grabbing moments to sew when I can. What keeps me sane is the evenings when I can sit and relax with needle and thread, or yarn and needles. Regardless of how much crafting I get done during the day, at least I can count on that!

I've been beavering away on my LAST Foxley Village applique block, enjoying the straight forward shapes to sew down and not having to spend ages selecting colours. 

Stem and leaves —

Fussy cut main flower —

I purposefully didn't prep the other flowers, which are fussy cut circles, as I needed to put the applique down and finish a wee pair of slippers I'd promised to make for my niece's toddler —

Mission accomplished —

If they look familiar it is because they are identical to a pair I made a month or so back. I had more wool that colour so that's what the young fellow got!

They were some of the family that came out to the farm on Saturday to celebrate my father-in-law's 80th birthday.

We had an afternoon tea, I made a cake —

And there was lots of playing. A lovely afternoon —

(The kiddies are enjoying the new play area recently completed. The swings are out to the right.)

And speaking of birthdays, finally I can share the completed Buggy Barn Tractor/Truck quilt I started during lockdown. My One Monthly Goal for May was to complete and gift the quilt to grandson Xavier. I decided to wait and give it to him for his birthday which was the beginning of this month.

The quilting was a mix of 'light custom' —

With a background fill like this —

I matched the thread with each fabric colour so the back was a bit of a colourful mix.

Labelled of course!

I think he liked it! In fact, he loved it ♥ 

I was battling with snakes in my last post; trying to get the right 'design' to block out the light in Odie's room. Finally, prototype three (a single with a flap) worked perfectly (even better than rolled up towels apparently) so I have now made a total of five! I've told YD I'm taking a break from them for a week or so as other sewing needs to be done. I think I have enough beans left for two more and that should be enough to cover all his curtain rails. (Odie's room is a corner room and has two walls of windows.)

The flaps are random fabrics from my 'other sewing' stash, as quilting cotton was too light. It's yucky old stuff that I don't know why it's still here! It can be easily unpicked and tossed once the snakes become draught stoppers or play things (or whatever). Each snake is about 33" long so it's a good scrap sewing project.

And to finish on a cute note, here are Lily and George getting very brave feeding the chickens when I looked after them the other day. It's a very drawn out process as small hands only hold small handfuls of feed...!

'til next time,

happy stitches,