Joining Stitchalong Sundays with Chrissie!

Hello blogger friends, and happy Sunday to you all! This is just a very quick and short post today ... ...

I expect most of you will have heard about the Stitchalong Sundays with Chrissie here - if not, do take a look at her lovely blog, and I hope you decide to come along for the fun!

I am definitely in, for I know this will be very encouraging and inspiring, as well as fun! Now if I got my facts right I believe that Chrissie would like us to post about what we're planning to make, and also to update as we make progress, so I thought I'd just let you have a look-see at what Ive made a start on. This project should take me through the course of this lovely activity with Chrissie and friends, whilst still leaving me time for my other WIPs!

If all goes according to plan, this will be a cushion cover with an embroidered strip of 'similar but different' fabric sewn in about a third of the way down. First I drew my flowers (first pic), then traced the drawing onto heavy tracing paper with my iron-on transfer pen. Next step was to iron the transfer onto the fabric and voila! All set to go!

Below you see the two linen fabrics followed by the proposed placement of the embroidered strip, and finally a pic of the threads I plan to use, although these are subject to change as I progress! Well you know, it's good to leave one's options open, isn't it!

So there you have it lovely friends and now I'm off to do a few stitches. I do hope your weekend is working out even better than you hoped for!

Thank you so much for being here, and I'm looking forward to chatting with you all soon!

❤Joy xo

Home, Garden, and Park

Here we are again, happy as can be, all good friends and jolly good company - as the song goes -  and so many times I've sung that with my grandsons when they were little and we were driving off somewhere in the car! Happy memories!

I hope you are all having a good week? I finished all those venetian blinds so am quite pleased with myself and it's so nice to see them sparkling fresh again; it was worth the effort even if I do feel a little bit jaded myself!

Anyway, I have quite a few little pics to share with you so lets go!

Recently the lovely Marianne from ladybirddiaries kindly let us have a look at her craft books and I said I would take a pic of mine also, which I've done, but really, there are very few here as over the years I bought more books on painting than 'crafts'! I think perhaps it's time to build my craft library - I mean, really, you can see that I don't have many at all, can't you!!! There are a few magazines tucked away on shelves and I suppose there are a couple of sewing books somewhere - oh yes, there is a lovely cross-stitch book I missed - The Encyclopedia of Cross Stitch Techniques by Betty Barnden - a very lovely and helpful book. 

I finished the cardigan! What do you think? It's a bit different, which is what I wanted, and quite nicely shaped. I like the sleeves - they are about three quarter length. This was a free pattern from Deramores, by Rico Design and very straight-forward and easy! I mentioned before that I used Bergere de France Ecoton yarn, which is a recycled cotton blend. It knit up very nicely and is quite soft but I had to wash it on completion as it had a bit of a 'dry-cleaning fluid' sort of smell. It's okay now though, and it pressed up beautifully!

I was longing to get into some colour again after the cardi so tried out this little motif from Issue 6 of Simply Crochet. It's called Divine Diamonds by Lucy Croft and I'd had my eye on it for a while. Anyway, I didn't really intend to make anything out of this but did want to challenge myself with the pattern. It was a lot simpler than it looked! I haven't even finished off the loose ends yet!

Do you remember the pics of the local park/adventure playground that I showed you a wee while ago? Right, well, the Kangaroo Paws have developed and grown and I said I would post about them again:

Are you impressed with our Native Flora? They make quite a statement don't they!

And I've taken a couple of pics in the garden also - our lovely Jasmine first, then another gorgeous thing that I've been told is a South African plant - but have no idea of its name! I love pink!

In the front of that pic to the right is a little sprig of our Silver Birch tree foliage which has just begun to green up again after it's leaf drop of winter. Ah yes, a sure sign of Spring I'm very happy to say!

And so I'll be off, hoping you enjoyed your little visit and thank you so much for dropping by. Please leave a little message if you have time and inclination for, to me, that's what blogging's all about - interaction and communication among like-minded folks and I do enjoy it, thank you!

Have a wonderful week and take good care of yourselves!

❤Joy xo

Abba, Venetian Blinds, and Blue Wrens!

Hello friends - I know you are probably wondering what Abba has to do with venetian blinds so without further ado I will explain!

I actually don't like this type of blind, mainly because of the difficulty in keeping them clean and so I vowed years ago that I'd never have them again, but ... ... when we bought this house the windows were already fitted out with them and to be honest, in order to control the amount of light, sunshine, and thus heat, coming through the windows, as well as for privacy, I had to admit that these blinds were really necessary!

So, for the past four or so years I have diligently dusted these things fortnightly (mostly!), then more recently I started to notice that, even as I lifted the dust, so it was settling back on them again and I got a bit fed up with the whole scenario and stopped being so regular with the cleaning of them!!! The result being that they became dirty - I said dirty - I meant dirty! We like fresh air so we always have windows open and guess what catches the dust as it comes in search of a happy landing place - the venetian blinds!

So, seeing as Spring has sprung and this is the time for spring-cleaning, I decided the job had to be tackled, though this time not with a duster! Since hubby is recovering from a shoulder injury it was not an option to take these things outside and give them a good scrub down so it was a case of wiping off each louvre individually - are you with me? - one by one - spray, wipe, and rinse cloth!

The very thought of this repetitive action had me feeling bored and weary for I knew that this job (full height  w i d e  sliding doors were tackled first) would take hours! So what did I do? I called for Abba! I don't know about you but I so love Abba - I will never stop loving Abba - so to clean venetians to the beat of their music sounded like such a good idea! What do you think? Yes?

But I bet you've never jigged around like a mad woman, singing and dancing whilst undertaking such a chore - for the most part - on a chair!!!! Oh yeah! What great exercise and I felt so happy too, for Abba's music always makes me feel warm and sentimental as it brings back such wonderful memories of when our children were young and our younger daughter was dancing all over the place to their beat - she was our Dancing Queen!

Every window in our home is covered with venetian blinds - there's a long way to go yet  - but the worst of it is over, for the remainder of them are much smaller than those doors! So it'll be one or two a day until I get through them and Abba will be worn out but I'll be toned up and slimmer than when I started - well that is my hope - there has to be some sort of reward surely!


Today is Father's Day in Australia so hubby and I had brunch with our daughter and family at their home which is a little way out of town. It was most enjoyable, especially as the weather was very nice after the gale-force winds we had yesterday that caused widespread power failures!

While we were down there I managed to take a few pics of the beautiful blue wrens which hop around their place quite freely - such friendly little creatures they are and their little voices are sweeter than canaries. My favourites! This fellow is called the Splendid Fairy-wren (Malurus splendens), and in the first pic he is with his offspring - Mum was there too but I wasn't fast enough to get the three of them together! Mum actually looks similar to the youngster - the female is not as brilliantly coloured as the male.

And here he is thinking about having a bath, then deciding to just hop back down and continue seeking out the crumbs that we had enticed him with!

Now don't you think that is the most beautiful little bird!

The following pics are some that I took a couple of months ago and didn't get around to a 'show and tell' until now. This area is about 75kms drive from where we live, on the other side of Walpole and, as you can see, offers a little bit of magic! I'm sure you know by now that I love water and waterfalls of any kind, (and I'm sure many of you do too), so 'Circular Pool' is most attractive to me! The pics tell the story so I needn't give any more of a write-up! Such peace and tranquility!

I'm sure you agree this is a beautiful area and we are so very fortunate to have such as this close-by to visit and enjoy!

Wow, this is a rather large post isn't it! Thank you for your patience and I do hope you've enjoyed my ruminations! It had been my intention to show some of my craft books but that will have to wait for another time. And, come to think of it - craft - I don't have anything to show you this time as I've been concentrating on my cardigan knitting and that should be finished and ready to look at in a few days!

Please do leave me a message for I so love to hear from you, and many thanks to all of you who take the time to keep in touch - you're wonderful!

❤Joy xo