In a Startling Turn of Events, the Marinating Quilt is Completed and Posed on The Front Gate

Fellow craft campers, steel yourselves. In a burst of Dammit! I AM a finisher! the quilt top destined to marinate in its juices for veritable epochs (i.e. ages longer than five months), is basted, quilted and completed with a smug, handstitched binding.

Here it is, not posed on the front gate...



...



There are 560 little and littler squares of the very scrappiest scraps. I love scraps. Scraps have history.

There are bits of screenprinting history:



Inklings of ‘T is for Towel’ history:



There’s the big girl’s favourite dress history:



There’s long-time-fabric-fave history:



After I’d finished the quilt top at Camp, I gathered up most of the scrappy quilt top scraps and made a scrappy cushion cover. There are scrappy cushion cover scraps, waiting in the wings and, a bit weirdly, I sense a scrappy potholder in my destiny. (Just thinking about scrappy potholder scraps is scary).



I keep throwing the scrappy quilt in an artful, spontaneously considered fashion, over the arm of the sofa. Tragically, no one else seems to appreciate the spontaneously artfully considered. Every time I turn around, the scrappy quilt has been unceremoniously pegged to the Other Thing Which Did Take Six Epochs to Finish and morphed into another kid cubby house.



Go figure.

The Magpie

At some point in every day, there’s a wash load to tackle and dirty clothes to sort. There will be a pair of jaw-droppingly filthy trousers or shorts belonging to the collector kid, the boy kid, the Magpie. There’ll be no getting around the need to fully investigate this kid’s every pocket. I know there is no getting around blindly poking my fingers into the deepest pocket crevices, because once or twice I squeezed my eyes shut and la-la-la-la-ed with my hands over my ears and slammed the washing machine door shut and pressed ON.

Nothing like freshly laundered bug carcass, spread over an entire wash load.

Last week I thought I’d do a study. See what shiny and not so shiny objects caught my Magpie Kid’s eye...

Monday
Irrefutable proof lunchboxes are a shared affair at school. No bug carcass.



Tuesday
Irrefutable proof the child drinks beer at school. No bug carcass.



Wednesday
Irrefutable proof the child is solely responsible for introducing gall wasp to our lemon tree. No bug carcass (probably a thousand, living, unhatched, waspy ones inside that nice piece of holey wood).



Thursday
Irrefutable proof of school gardening day. Kid plotting own stealth kitchen garden. No bug carcass.



Friday
Irrefutable proof of Excursion With Mum into City to See Jess’ Grand Exhibition and all her red SOLD! dots. No bug carcass.



Saturday
Irrefutable proof my kid is the thief stealing all the copper wire and shutting down entire railways and phone lines. Makes up for this by finding a button for the jar. No bug carcass.



Sunday
Irrefutable proof that nonchalent rummaging through the Magpie’s pockets is a Very Bad Idea. One arachnid carcass.




(I checked. He intends to keep EVERYTHING).

Dipping a Toe in the Water

One day when I sew something tricksy and pushing my comfort zone and involving more than a half available half hour (and no doubt, multiple zips, purse frames and Vliesofix tape), I’m going to tell you about my newly-acquired, fantabulous sewing machine. In the meanwhile, I found a half available half hour and dipped a toe in the sewing water and knocked up an easy peasy sundress. Now the Small is clad in something newly Mama-made, which was absolutely and entirely the main point of things.



Even though it could do with a good, soften the fabric-type wash, it has survived a day of gymnast-style manoeuvres



and backyard pottering



and general giggle-silly.



In other Sunday news, the Mr gave bagel-making a whirl.



Thoroughly tested (demolished) within fifteen minutes of oven removal. SERIOUS YUM.

In further news, the leafy stick insects are growing in size and in number. Thirty? Maybe forty with some recent hatchings?



Even though we’re all besotted with every single one of them, a house extension, purely to accommodate a possible 347 stick insects is, sadly, not an option. We’ve been busy interviewing (grilling) potential adoption candidates and performing police checks and stuff.

Hope your weekend has been all about good smells coming out of ovens with a bit of giggle-silly...

Ripple Smitten

Just when I thought the Epic Blanket honeymoon period was about to end, a whole extra pile of work landed on my desktop and it seemed I worked every waking hour (and quite a few unwaking ones). Every now and then, I’d smuggle time to crochet a ripple blanket row. The Epic Blanket is therapeutic, rocking-in-the-corner, crafty sanity at its best.



So far the Epic Blanket has taught me three things.

1. No use regretting colour choices. Just keep plugging on and all the rows will merge into one colour explosion. Everything will come out all right in the wash.



Although there’d be an epic tanty if the colour did come out in the wash.

2. I have short legs.



The above image was trying to give you an idea of scale. This doesn’t help a heck of a lot unless you’re standing next to me, in which case you’d be thinking: Wow. Five foot, one and a half inches really isn’t very tall. That blanket is smaller than I thought.



While you were reflecting on my shortness, I went off and counted stitches:

364 stitches per row
72 rows
= a cool 26,208 treble-based stitches to date.
Well that sounds big. Non?

3. In order to live with such a blast of all-round, queen-sized colour, I think it best we spray-paint our entire bedroom white.



I have informed the Mr that he should also wear white pyjamas for full co-ordinating effect. Or, more likely, a spray-painted birthday suit. Here is what our white, spray-painted bedroom will look like, with the Mr sleeping in his white, spray-painted birthday suit (just imagine the blanket):



PS. For more blasts of crafty colour, pop on over to the land of Our Creative Spaces.
PPS. Easiest, peasiest, ripple blanket pattern by Lucy.