Workshops and holidays

 

I'm on a two week break from my weekday teaching job and doing a bit of catching up with things.. like updating the Class/Workshop Schedule on the website. 

I've been teaching about the place.  We had a lovely day at Patch 'n Quilt in Gisborne, and we've scheduled a Zippers for Bags class there for 22nd November.  Contact Mary at Patch n Quilt for bookings.

 

There are still places on the Handmaker's Factory Masterclass next week.. This isn't one that I do very often, so if you're sort-of-thinking about this as something you might like to do, now is a very good time!

To take up the waiting list for this class, I've taken advantage of a rare free day to schedule a last-minute A-Line Skirt workshop at GJ's on the 27th September.  This will be a small group (being a late-scheduling and also being Grand Final day for the football season... which means that most of the waiting list can't make it that day!), so if you think you need lots of extra attention, this will be a good one to book in.

 

 

The other thing I've been doing lately, is taking a complete break from work for THREE  DAYS... I decided I needed a holiday, and I needed to get the garden ready for Spring and Summer... so I had a little gardening holiday at my house this last weekend.

 

I weeded, I dug, I shovelled and wheelbarrowed 2 cubic metres of freshly-delivered soil and compost.  I made new garden beds, cleared overgrown corners and revealed yet more vegetable-growing space... and I planted lots of potential harvests of fresh, organic food for the girleen and me (and for anyone who looks sideways at me during zucchini season). 

I am sore, scratched and bruised (and have a small patch of sunburn where I missed with the sunscreen), but feeling very pleased with my work.  I'm looking forward to the weather warming up more and all the planting, growing and harvesting that comes with it.

 I'll be back soon with more news of books and giveaways... stay tuned!

Taking Shape

 

 Despite masses of pumpkin vines all over the garden last summer, I only harvested 3 edible pumpkins.  This was my favourite.

 

 

Wedged beneath a fallen bough, it struggled on to maturity and formed a shape all of its own.  It was both delicious and a little bit poetic.   

 

As much as you can relate to a vegetable, I felt something for this one.  (A kindred spirit?)  I've been doing a fair bit of growing in unexpected ways lately, too.  Changing, being affected by change, working around things, working at things....

 

Some days I despair at being out of my comfort zone, off-kilter, tossed around on life's stormy seas (the pumpkin made me feel poetic, remember...?), and other days I delight in the new shapes and directions that I'm making and travelling, as I work my way through the tail-end of what has been a very transitional, transformational few years. I can see maturity at the end of it all... even if it's not quite the shape I imagined when I started.

 

And then I step into a fab new fabric store to teach a purse frame class, and everything is as it ought to be again.  Home.

 

I taught at Cotton Factory in Ballarat a few weeks ago.  What a lovely shop!!  They focus on classes and have an amazing schedule.  If you're within coo-ee of Ballarat, I'd recommend following them on every available social media stream, or simply popping in to see what's happening next.  I'll be teaching there again in November. 

These are the results of the purse frame class.

 

This weekend I'll be at Patch 'n Quilt in Gisborne, and there are classes coming up at Handmaker's Factory (Purse Frames, Customised Bags and Pattern-free Garments) and the CAE in Melbourne.  I'm looking forward to all of them.



I'm also working in my new job, and it's inspiring me in many ways.... including ideas for a new book, possible online classes or blog tutorials... although it's also keeping me so busy that there has been no time to flesh out any of those ideas.  Stay tuned.

 

In between, I've been doing a fair bit of this...

 

I hope that things are in good shape in your world.

 

After the Rain....

As I watch my new garden flourish in this weird Melbourne Summer (rain and winter temps one day, hot summer day the next... and then more rain...), I feel my mind, body and spirit hedging closer to feeling ok.   

 

I'm reminded of the regrowth that follows a bushfire. 

 

 

A front garden full of heritage roses makes me stop, inhale heady perfume and wonder at the gobsmacking beauty that can exist in a single moment and all that nature provides.

 



  

There has been work of various kinds, book edits, teaching, dramas on both large and miniscule scales.  There has been no design-mojo and no inclination to unpack any more boxes or think about the myriad to-do lists I could be looking at....

 

In between tasks, I stop.  Breathe.  Swim. Sleep.  I have made time for making bread (we haven't bought a loaf since we moved in a month ago). 

  

 

There has been time made for mothering.  And picnic dinners on balmy evenings, by the local lake....

 

 

...and sometimes in the back yard.

 

There is even a tentative return of the long-lost cooking-mojo.

 

 

I'm slowly clawing back that 'life' part of the life/work balance.  It appears to have been lost over the last two years and it's like I'm learning to walk again.  Breathe again.

 

It hasn't all been about stopping, 'though.... I just couldn't stop crocheting that Summer Lace Tank Top.  It's now my Summer Lace Dress. 

 

  

Oh... keep an eye on that old couch in the background up there... I have big plans (and a big roll of fabric) for that one. (I also had optimistic plans to use that blue yoga mat a bit more frequently... but that hasn't really happened.  It just looks like it's kept handy enough to be rolled out each day.)

 

 

 

The recent house-move coincided with the wholesale Quilt Market in Melbourne, so I didn't stretch myself to doing that as well (I HAVE turned over a new leaf, haven't I..?). 

I popped in to see old friends and met some wonderful new people, too.  And once again, spending time with other people in the biz, who just 'get it', there was much laughter, a few tears and a sense of being a part of a community.

 

 

In other very exciting work-related news, the new book - due for release in May 2014 - is already available for pre-orders online. 

Yikes.  It's real!

 

 

 

 It's nice to be back in this space.  I have a feeling you'll be seeing more of me here, again.

 

 

 

Another week, another bazillion things....

 

Time seems to be whizzing past much faster than usual...just gulping up the weeks. 

In the last week, there have been good things, great conversations, random acts of kindness, joy, optimism, new opportunities ....and exactly the opposite of each of these things.   Life's a funny old thing, isn't it?  It's drought and flood... and sometimes it's just like Melbourne weather.

 

 

 

 On the weekend, I went to Canberra to teach at Addicted to Fabric (and took a rather cool pic from the boarding gate) .... and then I only thought to take photos towards the end of the class on Sunday, just before I was due to fly home again.

 

Below, we have another beautifully-made hat by another newbie sewing gal.  Nobody would have guessed that she's only sewn a few square things before... look at those beautifully-sewn curves!

 

I loved seeing hats being worn while equipment was packed up at the end of the day. 

 

This "I'm just going to make a hat for gardening" hat (above) looked way too stylish not to be worn for something more social.

 

This hat (below) was made with fun socialising in mind.  Sewn, finished and trimmed within class-time, it was worn out of the store with sartorial flair!

 

(If you're a little bit inspired by the recent spate of hatty blog posts here, and available to do a class on a week day, you should come along to the Perfect Summer Hats class that I'll be teaching at GJ's.  Learn to make hats in time to whip up a few for summer!)

 

As always - there has been fondling and fiddling with yarn.  In the last week I've finished something that I started in May and nearly finished something I started last week.

 

Having begun this Cardigan Rose about four times before I got it past the armholes - and all the while playing yarn-chicken and being distracted by the girleen's swimming lessons (or whatever fleeting, shiny thing) - I  pretty-much gave up on following the pattern and just made things up after that point.  After a few months, I tired of the project (and too many people commenting on the fact that the yarn matched my hair) and just wanted to finish it...so just kept knitting... ignoring all the mistakes and distracted-while-knitting roughness. 

 

My knitting is so rough in this particular garment, it's almost a waste of this gorgeous yarn.... but it's very soft and snuggly and is full of handmade love.  It's for a gorgeous 1-year old, who won't be criticising my stitch tension.

 

In need of instant gratification and a bit of a cellulosic yarn fix, I pulled out the crochet hook and some Prudence Mapstone tencel loveliness.  I'm making another Summer Lace Tank Top.  I love how quickly this comes together.

 

In other news, I finally have an answer to the question of have I found somewhere to move to when the lease runs out here, which every person and their dog has been asking me for the last month or two.  Last week, I did, and we'll be moving in a few weeks time.  The lease runs out here in mid-November.

 

When I was walking back to the car from the estate agent's office, I saw this in a window of an op-shop.  Just the thing I need for this next stage of balanced, family life....

 

 

Our new home won't have a showroom or classroom, but it has an enormous garden.  The girleen and I have been planning which vegetables we'll be growing this summer.  We're excited.

 

In the last week, I've also been trying to work out which of the showroom bag, hat and garment samples I'll keep and which will have to be sold.  We don't have space for them all and I'll be having a sale as soon as I sort them out.  A brief experiment with eBay didn't inspire me to go down that path again - and turned me off any admin time spent on any other online option - so I'm afraid it'll be in-store only.  Stay tuned for details.

 

And this week is a whole new one.... I wonder what it holds?

It's like... random.

We harvested more storm-damaged vegetables today, trying to bring some sort of order into the shredded mess that was the "bastja" (not sure of the spelling, but it's Macedonian for vegetable garden).

Our heritage variety carrots are full of free-spirited personality and colour.  Not one of them looks like a carrot, but they taste GREAT.  And I think the smell of newly-harvested root vegetables is one of my favourite smells in the world (...that and night-scented jasmine.... I know, the two are quite different).

Storms and tomato-eating beasties permitting, we're looking forward to a bumper crop of tomatoes within the next week or two.  They survived the pummelling from the xmas-day hail better than the rest of the vegetables, and are destined for loads of tomato sandwiches and salads.

 Once the sun got too hot and high, the girl and I retreated to the shade of the lemon tree and splashed a bit of cheap PVA glue around with some scrap yarn.  I'm not quite sure what we're going to use this for, but it sounded like cheap entertainment.

Of course, the exercise involved a long argument about changing out of the new dress she donned for gardening and wearing something that didn't need ironing every time it was washed.  Things are never as simple as they appear in blog photos. 

 At some point in the afternoon, I announced that if I didn't escape to the studio to play with my new fabric, my head would explode. 

I'm prone to hyperbole.

A couple of hours at the sewing machine and I was feeling much more like my old (non-exploding) self.

 I wanted to see what the "quilt" will look like when the plain bitter-chocolate colour is added to the mix.  

Adding to the list of challenges to keep me interested in the project, I've decided that the layout has to be one with a variety of spacings between the blocks. 

I started sewing bits together.... only having laid out HALF of the blocks. Quilt chicken.  Let's see if I can make it come together in some sort of cohesive to-all-appearances-looks-like-I-thought-about-it design.

All you real quilters can look away now.... this is where I almost run out of pants-seat to fly by.

So... how was YOUR day?  Random...?

This is RELAXING....

socks on the beach, a photo by amazing_podgirl on Flickr.

No - they are not my feet nor is it even my photo (I borrowed it from Flickr - and might I add that I was heartened by the breadth of choice I had when I searched for "knitting on the beach").

For me, it's less about the sand and sun and more about knitting the socks.  Or at least catching up on all the half-thought dreams and designs I have for various non-work-related crafting.  All year I look forward to this time of year, when I shut down and shut out the work-related world... and play.

I brought home a few books, in the hope of trying a few new things. 

 And now the small girl has a bunch of thoughtfully-gifted books that are hugely inspiring.

Santa brought in this one (below)  for the wee girl, but I have an inkling of an idea that it was meant for ME.  The girl and I have alrady made a version of a little puppy (in the background of the photo of my books, above) from this one.

The baby cardi I was knitting in bamboo sock yarn was deemed too small, ripped out and the yarn allocated to toe-up sock experiemnts.  A cap-sleeved top was quickly made in its place... but not quickly enough to meet the xmas deadline.  It is yet to be finished and have its co-ordinating garments sewn.  Grand designs in an unfeasible timeframe....

 I finally found a pattern (on Ravelry) for a single-bed knitting machine sock  that made sense to me.  I had a little play with scrap yarn last night and then bought new sock yarn today to try it out properly (ahem.... I wasn't going to use the good stuff from my stash, now was I?!)

There is also another knitted cat in the works.

 

Oh, and I've been playing around with quilt blocks (forgot to photograph).  And yes, my dining table really does look like that..... as does the kitchen table.

And I still have some FELTING books I'd like to sink my teeth into.

There are more Grand Designs at the bottom of the garden.  Behind the back shed, there is a cubby-house in construction.  I'm keeping out of it.  And I'm trying to keep the smallest architect in the house out of the way of the builder (not always succeeding with that one).

We're planning a bit of gardening, too.  The house and cars survived the xmas day hail-storm without damage, but the veggie patch came out the other side resembling a large coleslaw.

We gathered up the damaged vegetables and made a big soup with stock from the xmas turkey carcass.  Waste-not-want-not and all that.

I don't want to go to the beach.  I don't want to go anywhere, really.  I'm like the proverbial piggie in muck....   My biggest concern is whether to quilt or machine-knit tonight.

So.... another week whizzed by.

Fancy that.
I took some photos, but haven't had much time to write.

Last week I taught a few workshops at the Design And Technology Teacher's Association conference.  One of the workshops was in simple, effective embellishments.  My preparation for the class reminded me how much I enjoy scribbling with stitches.  These photos are both of details on A-Line Skirts, but I now also have lots of scribbly bag bits in progress, which I hope to turn into bags.

I also taught another couple of Bag in a Day classes.  We had lots of proud pocket moments on Saturday.  And pannetone and mince tarts. 

 We also saw some of the new-and-improved pattern instructions in action.  I must say, I think that the hellish job that the recent overhaul has proved to be, is absolutely worth it. 

 And I finished my winter woolly socks.....

...just in time for summer.  (Although, this is Melbourne I'm talking about - you never know what the weather might do.  I may just need them mid-January.)

The blueberry bush (thanks, Tanya) on the back porch is teasing me with the promise of fruit.  Each morning, as I water it with the remnants of the coffee pot, I WILL those berries to ripen.  So far, we still have green berries (and coffee grounds all over the leaves).

I'm afraid I don't have many words to share lately, and little time for blog reading or writing.  Real life stuff stuff keeps getting in the way.

I hope that by the end of the week, there will be a bit more order about the place, and some dust will settle after all the upheaval.   The new patterns are starting to go out to shops and fill our shelves. 

This time next week, family will begin to gather from around the country and the globe and we'll celebrate the time we have left as a complete family.  I hope to be reporting about trite small moments of Chrismas preparation happiness.  Until then, it's back to the patterns, for me.