My Mum's Creative Space

My space is a little boring at the moment. I’m still working on the ripple dress, planning another crochet top, and doing lots of softie cutting out in preparation for future markets. But my Mum has been very busy lately. And Maya is a lucky girl ‘cos she received this fabulous quilt for her first birthday last week. Mum originally patched the quilt back in 1976 when she was pregnant with me. She has recently repaired the quilt, rebacked it, and machine quilted it. The backing fabric is from the curtains my Mum had in her room when she was a baby. I love that this quilt has so much family history in it. Maybe one day I could add to it a little for Maya’s daughter…
Visit Kootoyoo to get your weekly fix of creative spaces.

My Creative Space

My creative space has been very busy this week catching up after the flu last week rendered me useless for a whole three days. Luckily Khye was in care for two of those days and my wonderful mum came to stay and help out with Maya. She got up at 4:30am to catch the 5:30am train just to get here by about 8:45am! Thanks for your fantastic help mum.

Since recovering from those horrid fevers, chills, joint pain and head aches, I’ve been flat out preparing stacks of softies for the Sugar & Spice Children’s Market. There’s the usual herds of elephants, bales of turtles, towers of giraffes, flights of birds, and now a new parliament of owls,and a new colony of bunnies.
If you're near Woodend this Sunday, come and visit me and my menagerie of spunkee softies - we'd love to see you!

Sugar & Spice Children’s Market
St Ambrose Hall, Woodend
Sunday June 20
10am – 2pm
Free Entry

My gorgeous babies

Just thought I would post a beautiful picture of my babies, Khye and Maya. My mum, Merrilyn Ward, painted this for us. I have hung it in a prominent spot so we can see it and admire it every time we walk past. Thanks Mum. I love it.

I love Sundays!

Not only do I get to play Shadow Shot Sunday, but I also get to show off my collection of treasures found during the week by playing along with Flea Market Finds. This week though it’s not only things I’ve found …

I received this nice set of glasses and jug from Sean and the kids for my birthday last week. He picked it up at a garage sale and was told it is Israeli glass. Does anyone know anything about Israeli glass? This set is made from frosted glass and hand painted.
These fabrics were added to my collection this week – a pillowcase and chenille dressing gown and aprons from Mum’s stash.

Mum also gave me some dresses that I used to wear including this gorgeous genuine 1970’s dress that she made. It’ll be a few more years yet before Maya is wearing this.
Mum also gave Maya this gorgeous cotton hat.

And this apron – I don’t think I can cut this one up. I don’t wear aprons but maybe I could make it into a skirt for Maya??
Mum also gave me some wool scraps to go with the couple of pure wool jumpers I picked up this week. They’re such scrummy colours together but the crappy photo from the crappy camera doesn’t really show how beautiful they are. Khye is having a holiday at Grandma and Grandad’s house this week so hopefully I will find some time to use these fabrics – stay tuned to My Creative Space this Thursday.

My Place and Yours

Pink… I didn’t think I had any pink in this house apart from fabric and Maya’s clothes. (It’s pretty difficult to avoid pink when there are girls about.) But when I went looking, I did find some pink.

Pink wool blankets on our (unmade) bed.

Pink cross stitch that my sister in law made for me many years ago, hanging above my sewing desk.

Pink teddy pastel painting that Mum painted of my favourite teddies when I was little.

Silk scarf painted by mum 22 years ago, that I used to wrap a canvas and hang in Khye’s bedroom.

Pink indian sari patchwork given to me by a good friend for my 30th birthday. (not a very good photo I know)

Oh yeah and pink door handles throughout our house.

Visit hello owl for more pink!

Our Holiday

We recently spent 5 days in Callignee at Mum and Dad’s and we all had a great holiday. (This is going to be another one of those long photographic blog entries!)

We had a few very hot days watching beautiful fluffy clouds..

And we spent most of our time out in the cool shade of the paulownia tree which has flourished since the bushfire… There was lots of water play (Mum and Dad have a spring fed dam so no water restrictions were breached)…
There was some pegging fun…
Lots of laughing at “silly grandad”!
Moments spent watching Maya learn to roll (and at only 16 weeks!)… Note the quilt she is lying on – one of Mum’s many beautiful handmade quilts.

There was some climbing up charcoal trees…
And falling down charcoal trees… ouch!
Followed by some sprinkler fun to wash off charcoal…
Sean helped Dad put the roof on the woodshed…
And Dad spent some time staring at his new shed (a bit like the in colourbond ad) … Although the woodshed is not quite complete, it’s a big milestone for Dad to have that done. But there is still plenty of other work to be done.

Khye enjoyed our picnics for afternoon tea every day – particularly when they involved biscuits…
Kiera had stacks of fun running around finding sticks…
We saw some great light shows. First was the neighbours garden filled with Christmas lights… Apparently they won the best Christmas lights in Callignee – not too much competition this year with most residents still rebuilding after the bushfire.

And on New Years Eve we were treated to this fantastic “nature’s light show”…

I managed to catch a lightning bolt!

And yes this is lightning!

New Years Day we went for a drive up the road to Tarra Bulga National Park – one of the last remaining temperate rainforests in Australia. The bushfire just missed the Park, so it is a lush green oasis after being surrounded by the devastation of the fires.
There are many pine plantations on the road up to Tarra Bulga which were not so lucky and burnt in the fires, and unlike native vegetation, pines do not regenerate. But the native trees around Callignee have now well and truly sprouted and are looking really fluffy dominating the bush once again with green…

So how were your holidays? What did you do?

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year and hope that you had lots of fun too!

The Grandies

We had a nice couple of days earlier this week with Khye's Grandma and Grandad staying. I got a couple of hours out by myself on Monday morning while the Grandies had fun with Khye. All I did though was the boring grocery shopping! The Grandies headed home Tuesday morning after spending the previous couple of weeks travelling to the centre of Australia with the Peugeot Car Club.

Khye's Grandma, my mum, Merrilyn took her crocheting with her to do in the car. She has come back with another two nearly finished rugs - a blue one and a pink and purple one. They are looking absolutely beautiful. Below are two of her completed rugs.













They are made using a knitting and crochet technique called “scrumbling” where you use remnant yarns in a random and organic pattern. When the rugs are layed out on the floor Khye is fascinated by them. He heads straight for them and sits on them proudly and then crawls off to look at them and to feel the textures with his hands! Mum has used this technique to also make some gorgeous clutch purses.

A while ago, Grandma also crocheted, using this scrumbling technique, a soft toy for Khye and we called it “gruggle”. He loves his gruggle and she is one of his favourites. In fact, apart from mama and dada, gruggle was his first word!

My parents have been such an inspiration to me. My mum also paints and does patchwork and quilting and has recently been creating beautiful miniature artworks using the sand and pieces of rust she has collected on their numerous trips to the outback. My dad, Brian also works with wood creating turned items and making beautifully finished bush furniture. They have both exhibited their work, won awards for their work and had many market stalls. I have learnt a lot from them and they continue to inspire me.