Big decision made

These last couple of weeks have seen me making a million decisions, big and small, rather than anything crafty and tangible. The biggest decision has been to sell my apartment. The first open house inspection will be next weekend and then an auction will follow about a month later. It's scary, but I think it's the right thing to do and contrary to what I originally thought, it seems like a good time to sell.

In preparation, I've been going through the place room by room and getting rid of all the junk that doesn't deserve to be packed in a box and moved nearly 1,000 kilometres. I've had stuff go to charity, ebay, ewaste collections, recycling and the plain, old garbage bin.

The other reason to get the house so clutter-free was for the sale photography. I had the shoot done last Friday, and both Kate (my sister) and I made comment to the photographer that the place had never been so tidy!

I know I had to get them done anyway, but it's so nice having these shots as reminders of the place, as well as the process – the fun I had choosing the wall colours and painting them; how I spent forever without a couch until I could find just the right fabric; and making some other pieces to tie it all together – like the patchwork wallhanging in the image above.

There are obviously things you never quite get finished, but maybe houses are always a work in progress. There are also corners and angles missing from the shots, and they don't reflect any of the memories of time spent there – coffees drunk with friends on the couch, Christmas dinner at the big dining table, or even the weeks and weeks I spent recuperating on the couch above after a nasty bout of bronchitis last year. 

I'm sure they'll act as prompts though, for memories of all these things and more.

The one item I can't quite believe I have to leave behind is the bookshelf in the shot below.
Ever since I moved out of home I've wanted my own full-wall bookshelf and I only had this one installed at Christmas! Hopefully the new owners will love it as much as I do. I am thankful too, that I didn't quite get rid of all my smaller bookshelves, as the place I'm moving into is a rental. It would be even worse if I had to go out and buy another bookshelf after just having this one done!

So, farewell my lovely apartment! I know you won't be to everyone's taste decked out like this, but you absolutely are mine. And here's to my new adventure. I don't know if the move will be temporary or permanent, and what new people and places I'll discover, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

A lovely year of finishes – May goal setting

Since I didn't manage to complete the April goal, and I'm still living between cities, I'm going to try and keep my May goal simple... It seems every time I open a cupboard here to do some clearing out before the move, I find another piece of fabric that I, or a friend or family member, have brought back from overseas. I have pieces from China, Thailand, Peru, East Timor, and many more of uncertain origin. I usually have an item of clothing in mind when I buy the fabric, more often than not a skirt, but this stash below has had me stumped for a while.

A friend of mine brought it back from Peru. I think it's the colourways that have had me baffled. An odd mix of fluorescent solids with dark blue, turquoise, black and liberal use of hot pink stripes! As you would imagine I've been sitting on this for a while...

Then along comes A Lovely Year of Finishes, so one of the challenges I set for myself was to do something with this fabric. The internet is such an amazing resource for inspiration – I think I have a number of half-formed ideas bubbling away now. The first is a Kaffe Fassett-style quilt, with large, quilt-as-you-go squares. I have visions of some kind of embroidered ribbon between the squares.

Inspiration – Interior Design Files via Pinterest

So, my goal for May is to actually design the quilt – figure out the number of squares, decide if I want borders or not, choose the backing fabric, the ribbon and the quilting pattern. I don't have to sew anything but I need to have a plan and a pattern by the end of the month.

Here's how one square looks so far. I'm excited to see how it will all turn out. This is definitely my favourite part of the process – the designing and colour-choosing – oh, and seeing the finished product is pretty good too! What's your favourite part of the quilt-making process? 

Good luck with your May goals everyone!

A lovely year of finishes – epic fail for April

Forgot to pack the knitting needles (have now bought some more).

Forgot to pack the sewing needles to finish off ends (have now bought some more).

Forgot to pack the other colour wools to sew the finished jumper together (can't buy more of that).

Basically all I packed on this trip to Melbourne were the back, sleeves, purple wool for the last bit of knitting, and the pattern. So April gets a FAIL stamped on its report card with a comment of 'could do better'.

I hope everyone else made more progress on their April projects than I managed.

On the upside, I did have a lovely weekend away to Beechworth this month (pictures above) and signed a lease on a new apartment in Melbourne, so all is not lost.

Bunting, knitting and the big move to Melbourne!

Mercifully, on this blog, you have not been subjected to the trials and tribulations of my working life since the company I work for was sold last year, but put it this way, my T-Zero app tells me I have 1 year, 91 days, 10 hours, 51 minutes and 24 seconds until I can resign...

A couple of weeks ago, after months of longing for something to change for the better, I found out my proposal to relocate to Melbourne had been accepted and I can move down to our smaller sister office and escape the worst of the takeover fallout. I am so excited about this!

Right now it has me a bit flappy-armed, flitting around the house trying to figure out what to pack, what to leave, whether to rent the place out, sell it, and how on earth I managed to accumulate so much stuff! It also has me dividing my time between cities until I can find a place to live in Melbourne and pack all my stuff in Sydney.

Sadly this has left the blog a bit neglected over the last few weeks. I am still working on my April finish – and determined to post a successful completion on here by the end of the month, but the other project I've been trying to finish is some paint-swatch bunting. I have a space above my desk that needed some brightening up so I collected half a dozen or so paint swatches every time I happened to be in a hardware store to make the bunting. I cut each of the swatches into three long triangles by measuring the half way point on one short edge, then halving that distance and marking it in from each edge on the opposite side (as below). I then used a steel ruler and a blade to cut the shapes on my patchwork matt.

A lovely year of finishes – April goal setting

Now that the days are getting shorter I'm beginning to realise that I'm going to have to be so much more organised about getting my posts up on a regular basis! There are no lovely daylight hours when I get home in which to take photos for posts, nor in the morning (since, for those who know me, I'm so NOT a morning person!).

The colder days also have me thinking it might be time to bring out the needles. I need a break from sitting at the sewing machine, and the thought of snuggling under a quilt to do some knitting is suddenly becoming very appealing. I can imagine you folks in the northern hemisphere have had enough of that right now and you're ready to throw off your layers and dance in the sun, but for us down south, it's quite the opposite.

With thoughts turning to knitting, I've also realised that most of the blogs I've been following since starting here are about patchwork and quilting, and that I really needed to rectify that by adding some woolly reading to the list. Here are a few I've started following on Bloglovin this week – click on the blog names to go directly to the sites for a peek.

Mason-Dixon knitting

This blog makes me smile. It's basically a conversation between two knitting friends. Kay in Manhattan and Ann in Nashville. Ann's posts during March on the experience of knitting the jumper pictured above had me chuckling one minute and then horrified (at the spit-splicing and steek-cutting) the next... I seriously don't think I could ever embark on such a project. The finished piece is just beautiful though.

Silk-dyed egg tutorial – Happy Easter!

I'm sitting here in country Wagga for the Easter break, typing on Mum's laptop, looking out the window watching my nieces run riot around the veggie patch. Today's post photos and instructions have been generously supplied by one of the stitching ladies – Di (or Aunty Di as she's more affectionately known), with photography by Mum. I don't have my usual photo editing program here so we'll see how we go.

What you will need: white eggs (with the insides blown, or syringed out) – and yes, they need to be white shells for best effect, a silk tie (or several with different patterns, depending on how many you want to make) cut into a piece approx 20 x 25cm for each egg (enough to wrap the egg entirely),3 tablespoons of vinegar, thick cotton thread, an old cotton handkerchief and elastic band for each egg and a saucepan for boiling the egg/s.

March finishes party – A lovely year of finishes

Ta dah! It's finally time for the big reveal – so here it is – the wedding quilt! I'm so glad to have finished this one you wouldn't believe. I sewed the last stitch on the binding half an hour before the ceremony started – eek! I'm really very happy with how it turned out though, and thankfully so were the recipients!