All pretty...unsure of it

I am sailing off into unchartered waters with this little skirt.  On the outside it looks great, I am super happy with that gorgeous purple fabric...but I am giving this skirt as a gift and I am really, really uncertain about its fit and ease of wearability.  I have a deep down gut feeling that its all wrong.

I made it following an internet tutorial and downsized it to smaller dimensions.  I was happy with my downsizing calculations but when I actually made it I realised that it was probably going to be too minimal around the waist and subsequently be restrictive around the wearer's legs as its essentially a straight up and down tubular construction through the skirt with the ruffles sewn into it.  If you check out the tutorial and you will see what I mean. 

I have sat and stared at this itty-bitty skirt and considered picking it apart and re-modelling it, but I'm not sure I can made any really serious improvements for the time and effort it would take.

I am going to pop it in a gift bag on a wing and a prayer, and with my fingers crossed.  Maybe two year olds are smaller than what I can remember...

Brain bender

I can't believe how long it took me to downscale a skirt pattern from size 5/6 measurements to size 2/3 measurements.

Being all scientific I was sure that it could be done with a calculator and my jotter pad.  I made a lot of crazy calculations over the space of 12 hours, both in centimeters and inches (go figure why I was doing that, I don't DO inches).  Then when I thought I had the answer I used the "phone a friend" option and asked her to measure up her almost two year old.  My little model had a waist measurement of 50cm (vs. my 48cm calculation) and a waist to knee measurement of 28cm (I was spot on, yeah baby!).

Enough of this mathematics caper.  Tomorrow: fabric!

Progress

And on Saturday I finished painting and moved in. Still some more embroidery hoops to hang on the wall, and I hope to get some shelving installed in the nook on the right hand side...there's all sorts of pattern papers and books that need a home, but the mess of them is conveniently out of shot!

I can't tell you how happy my heart is to see this little space finally coming together. :)

Friday arvo

Reclining on the day bed on the back deck having a meditative stitching session.

Creating a little bit of decoration for my new sewing space.

And thinking about the fact that I had better get a move on with it all as I have to make a gift for a birthday girl for next weekend.

Patchwork

Don't worry, I haven't suddenly turned into a home renovations blogger!  I promise, fabric does feature in at least one photo in this post...

I tried to set up my sewing machine on the built in desk downstairs - but the melamine top of the desk was too thin and flimsy and putting something heavy on it like a sewing machine made a decidedly nasty sag in the desk.  All very wobbly and not functional at all.  So, the desk had to come out.

I raided the tool box and got down to work.  I thought it was just screwed into the wall with big dirty nasty screws, but I realised that if all the screws have come out and the desk still won't move then it must be also glued to the wall.  I selected a few more tools and with some elbow grease I prised the desk from the wall.  To my horror the glue ripped the paint and plasterboard wall, but it isn't such a disaster after all because two things called spakfiller and sandpaper will fix the wall up like new.  I should soon be ready to paint over the patching and install my own desk.

I've also got a "gentleman's wardrobe" that I restored a few years ago ready for organising my gear into.  I piled the fabric inside, but it needs some shelves to be ideal for fabric storage.

Hopefully I'll be making good progress on my little room in the coming week.  Then I'll need a sewing project!

Trying to resume normal programming

Me on the back deck, my sewing space is going to be in the "granny flat" underneath

January has come and gone and its time I got back to my poor neglected blog.  My crafting gear is sitting downstairs also waiting for me to pay it some attention.  I feel tomorrow will be the day for plugging in the machine and having a play around in my new space.

January has been a tiring and exciting month filled with cleaning, sorting, chucking, keeping, packing, unpacking, connecting to essential services etc. - our new house is about 90% unpacked, still got tasks like hanging pictures and getting rid of a few last boxes of "stuff".   We have plans for a few simple improvements, mainly changing things to our own taste, not because there is anything inherently wrong (except for very dodgy television reception). And we have spent time getting to grips with...gardening.  As renters all our lives so far gardening was mostly a hack, chop and mow job around the time of real estate agent inspections.  Now we have a beautiful garden that has olive, avocado, grapefruit, lime, lemon and guava trees along with a few herbs so we hope to be able to expand the herbs and grow a few vegetables in the garden beds as well.  Bearing the responsibility of looking after the garden from a "not a natural gardener (black thumb)" kind of background has been capturing my attention these last weeks.  Gardening over sewing?  What ever will I do next?

A whole lot of nothing and everything all at once

Have you noticed?  No crafting going on in this space right now.  I've hardly had the urge to touch the sewing machine this year and the task of making a simple drawstring bag for my son starting kindergarten next week is the only reason I made myself sit at the machine last night (I even started by sewing a right side to a wrong side - sigh).  I haven't even been reading blogs for a few days, I just had a peek and I have a lot in my reader to catch up on!

The reasons: lots on my mind, lots on my plate, and lots of damn water.

Thanks to those lovely people who have checked in on us to see if we are OK.  Thankfully we live in an unaffected area, up high and dry in a nice old Queenslander too.  Thats not to say everything hasn't been very wet, soggy and increasingly mouldy (and the cabin fever - aaaaargh!).  We haven't had to pack up and leave but this week we have been doing a lot of packing for an entirely different reason altogether - we are in the throws of moving house.  Moving in the middle of Queensland's worst flood disaster over 100 years is no piece of cake.  For the first part of the week there was so much rain that we had to run boxes out to the car only when there were short breaks in the severity of the rain.  Now the rain has stopped entirely and we are hoping that the furniture removal truck on Saturday (a) was not flooded at the depot or something in Toowong (b) has enough petrol (c) is not diverted elsewhere.  Not that I would complain loudly if any of these things happened, I have to keep myself grounded as plenty of people don't even have furniture anymore and will be spending this weekend sorting through the ruins of their homes.  There is a certain amount of survivor guilt that we are spending this weekend moving to a beautiful new home of our own.  I am hoping that we can donate the things we don't want to take with us in the move to where its needed locally.


Thank you to those participating in the Qld flood appeal auction. You're simply ace.

She knits

In the B&B, a basket of wool and needles and an invitation to knit.

I can knit, a bit.

A few rows of grey, and then a change to red to amuse the small one.

He "helped".

Maybe you can too?

I didn't get to do a whole square, but I did my bit of knit.

Christmas, Evandale Tasmania

We went travelling on Christmas Day this year.  A lot of water and a bit of a cyclone in Queensland sent the Brisbane airport into chaos on what we expected to be a very cruisy travelling day of the year.  We made it to Tasmania just fine though.  Before going campervanning we had booked in to stay our first night at Blenheim historical house in Evandale, close to the Launceston airport.  We discovered a very beautiful and stunningly photogenic place with gorgeous hosts who also run a glass gallery and antiques store on their property.  I just wanted to share a few of the photos I took while visiting this magical place. 

Flowers in the garden were in full bloom and buzzing with acutal bumble bees.

The real thing for Christmas time! A holly tree (green berries still though).

A beautifully presented and scrumptious breakfast, just how I would love to wake up to breakfast everyday.

Poking around in the early morning sunshine I discovered many hidden and delicious corners in this courtyard.

The entrance to a walled garden.

The outdoor table that had hosted a family Christmas feast the day before.

A storeroom.

 And a laundry! Where else do you keep your plates and pitchers?

Thanks to our hosts Victoria and Robert for a wonderful stay.

Just been up to...

...a bit of campervanning around Tasmania.  Believe me the romance of what it sounds does not match the gritty reality.  Adventure none the less!

The good:

• having your own lounge room and kitchen in tow where ever you go
• sitting in your "lounge room" in Salamanca in Hobart eating cream cheese and Tasmanian smoked salmon on fresh bread rolls (erstwhile people watching)
• grilled cheese on toast when ever you want it
• gorgeous sun filled evening in a beautiful heritage town for the last day of 2010
• not being able to play kids music on the stereo as the speakers are only in the front
• the kid is a long way behind you
• when the kid finally drops off to sleep in the top of the van you can do nothing but read a good novel until you too pass out

The bad:

• the roaring 40s nearly blows the van off the road
• the road is always sickeningly windey when its my turn to drive
• repeated head injuries from low clearance in the van for adults
• making the kid wee into a baked beans tin in the middle of a freezing night
• needing to get out of the van to toilet yourself about 20mins after the hearing the sound of weeing in a baked beans can

The ugly:

• cold showers at the camping ground amenity block
• slipping over in the shower cubicle, crashing into your child who is bravely enduring the freezing reality of camping ground showers and then discovering that the door does not hold your weight (I'll leave that scene to your imagination)
• falling over in the dark camping ground and removing skin from hands and elbows and getting a large bruise to the knee (and buggering my watch)
• nary a vegetable has been eaten (do baked beans count?)