What Happened to Last Week?...

I seem to have lost a week somewhere…bugger!...there are some things I just never find…you might need a coffee and a pillow…this has turned out to be looonnngggg!!!

Well, it seems that Herself managed to tell you all about Her Adventures in Ballarat and Mildura but not mine…darn dog!...

Now there really was a good reason for going to Mildura (head north from home) via Ballarat (head west)… I really really wanted to go Ballaarat Quilters Quilt-In. I’m so glad I did…it was a great day out…good company in Mistea and Ms R, together with four other ladies from my local sewing groups who also made the trek, so I had quite a social day thank you very much…the guest talker was Jodie from Ric Rac who had the room laughing along with her and her stories…there were a good selection of shops, lovely quilts hung on the walls to admire…and…

…I even managed to sew!  I know, amazing!!!  I started the day by attempting to continue work on my Chooky Blue Secret Santa project…I failed…big time…it just wasn’t happening for me…so I moved on to finishing the hand quilting lines on my Leanne's House project from Immerse Yourself In Stitching and finished that part of the project…yay!...and then yesterday (skipping right ahead)…I finished the whole project…

Sticher's Keeper

Very happy with how it turned out…it doesn’t fit my ruler for travelling as I had kind of hoped it would but never mind that, it will still be a most useful addition to the collection of “carry things about receptacles”…

So back to Ballarat…once the quilting lines were done I couldn’t go any further as the next step required P-faff’s involvement soooo I proceeded to flick through the latest issue of Homespun and found a project that would take care of a couple of swap inclusions and that meant I had to shop…right there at the Quilt-In from Sovereign Needlework I found the most gorgeous wool felt and some Threadworx embroidery floss to match…Mistea donated some paper from the part of her photocopy that she didn’t need, thank you Mistea, and with a sense of obsession templates were made and the project begun…I am in lurve with wool felt…seriously… well, all know the acrylic stuff is horrible…the wool blends are OK a definite improvement on acrylic…but pure wool….iss...Bliss….simply gorgeous stuff to work with…

A sneaky peek...

Oh, and the reason why I had a copy of the latest Homespun with me…’coz I was skiteing…just a little bit ‘coz it’s not like I’m a big time designer with a project in there or anything but my little flower doily made it to the mail bag page…I was very excited…

I found me in here!...

...in the Mailbag section...

Earlier in the year when I put the finished project on my blog I received an email from the editor asking me to submit it to the mailbag…so I did…and then I thought it would never appear…and now it has…and they used my very own words as well…I was sure that if it ever did appear the words would be heavily edited to make sense but no…OK skite ends…but I just had to you know…

Mildura was lovely of course but the purpose of the trip wasn’t crafty though I did keep going with the swap project I had started at Ballarat and had coffee with a quilty friend who has relocated there.  I tried a little hopping for Jeannet's Pincushion Swap on International Pincushion Day but it really didn’t work out and as I managed to lose this week in the debris of my world I’m hoping today to get to visit all 152 blogs…oh that would be 151 ‘coz I don’t have to visit my own, well, that makes it easier *LOL*…and see all the wonderful pincushions that were made…thank you to the lovely swappers who visited my blog last week and left a comment…most of you were no reply so I couldn’t answer but I hope to get around and leave comments on your blogs…it was a fun swap and if Jeannet holds it again in the future I’d be putting it on the list to have another play…

Oh, in a lovely surprise…a friend came back from two months in the United Kingdom (*sigh* wouldn’t that be wonderful) on Monday and along with the lovely china thimble from the Royal Yacht Brittania that I asked her to pick me up if she managed to get there…(I had regretted from the day that I didn’t buy it when I was there, the design is the beautiful embroidery in the Queen’s bedroom on the yacht)…she also bought me back the V&A Quilt 2011 Calendar…a beautiful hand embroidered bookmark from the The Lost Garden of Heligan and a postcard of the amazing tapestry “The Hunter” from Montacute House, Somerset…

Presents from the UK...

Had a lovely night Friday stitching with some sewing group friends…thank you Andrea for hosting…and tah dah…the last hexagon diamond for the centre of Bumb’le Bee…wahoo! now only 162 sashing and seven feature hexies to baste so that the medallion can be assembled *sigh*…

All laid out on the "sashing" fabric...mmm, has promise...

I also managed to finish up a Gardener’s Journal stitchery for the Stitch-A-Long…

Chirp, chirp, little birdies...

...it’s from the September block…oops! slightly behind yet again…I completely lost my GJ mojo there for a couple of months, I can feel it creeping back ever so quietly…

This weekend I’m working on the latest incarnation of my Chooky Blue Secret Santa swap project...the original one failed so miserably I took the hint from the Universe and moved right along.  After much anguish (read: couldn’t make up my mind for the life of me) have finally settled on something else…

Another sneaky peek...

which has to be in the mail between the 19^th and 25^th of this month which only gives me a week or so!!!…so while LG is doing his thing making the clothes dizzy and as the weather is not clement enough to want to put a toe outside, my plan for the rest of Sunday is was to stitch and blog hop……instead I've spent most of the day fighting with the internet connection thingy convincing blogging platforms that uploading photos is a part of the plan...sheesh!...have almost finished the stitchery part of the exercise though in the parts where I was waiting, waiting, waiting...

Hope your weekend is a good one…

Happy Stitching…