Sun befuddled ramblings

Its been amazing weather lately. After the summer without sun and without drought, we now have the autumn with both sun and drought. The garden is bolting along due to me putting water on it, while the lawn is starting to burn off. They call it global weirding.

At lunch I sat outside, in the sun, alone. The others sat inside and talked to each other about impressively mindless things. I like to sit and chat most times, but I often go back to the class room more peopled out than I was at the start of break. I sat outside and soaked up the sunshine, and relaxed into the quiet. And went back to class, ready for the noise.

In fact, class was quiet last thing, as I tried to explain linkage to tired and heat befuddled year 13's. I'm not sure any of us made much progress. At least there is no school tomorrow, so we have a day to find and engage our brains. Then a two day teaching patch, 2 day weekend, 5 day teach, 3 day weekend. Its a strange term...

Oh, and today the exband got his payout, and I got a mortgage.

End of a good thing

Tomorrow it's back to earning my living, and the boys go back to school too. Its been a great holiday, I think in part because we had no great ambitions to achieve anything. We did do a few things - the vege garden has several new plants, and less weeds, the house got cleaned, we visited some people and made lots of extremely good food. But it all just flowed along rather than being strained over. That's what we will miss when school starts - its all stress and deadlines. Dead lines.
As of tuesday I will be a separated woman - he will have his payment, and I will be sole owner of the house. I will also have a mortgage - did you know that translates to death grip??!! Lovely.
One of the things I finished in the holiday was son #2's blanky. It is a length of material, cut in half and sewn together to make a large rectangle. Then pinned to a polar fleece blanket , stippled and bound.

Cheap blanket - $20 - cheaper than batting

I discovered the power of the blue tape.
Works better than white or green!

The whole room was full of blanky

Used Leah's tip on zig zagging the binding
GOOD TIP.

One very happy customer - the best kind!

I should note the blanky goes round him twice in this photo. I only stopped stippling when thread ran out, and the size is pretty consistent, and LARGE. I have several new skills thanks to Leah.

So now I have to bind the asian fabric quilt and the holiday projects are finished. FINISHED.

The third day

It's the third day  of my holiday, and also the third day of Easter. We went to Mass tonight. Son#2 has to sit with us now and stay out of the crying room. He doesn't cry in there - it sounds like he is organising the super bowl though! yelling and banging.

The exband bought son#2 a length of fabric printed with sharks. I don't mind that part, but it seems it is my job to turn the fabric into something he can use. Which as I have a 'to do' list longer than I can actually recite I find his attitude ... annoying! He must think I don't have anything much to do with a full time job and full custody!!! But onwards.

I am pinning the fabric to polar fleece and turning a boring blue blanket into an exciting quilt. And I get to stipple the whole thing if I want to so should have big scale stippling sorted out by the end! Pinning it is really hard. The pins don't go through easily. Either the fabric is very high density - it sure looks tough - or pinning through polar fleece on an angle is hard because of all the threads. Dunno, but my fingers sure hurt.

Cleaned up the back yard today - swept, trimmed and weeded. Looks fantastic. Checked when to move the rhubarb and its June/July, so its a long wait to finish the final garden off. Ate first feijoa yesterday - feel so clever eating fruit out of the back yard.

The first day of the holidays

I  did a load of washing.

I went to put the irrigation on in one of the gardens, and when I turned the tap, the fitting snapped. I found a spare fitting, and fixed it. And put the irrigation on!

I cleaned the oven. (I don't like this job. It takes ages, is lots of work, and smells disgusting. I used to do it every holiday so it never got too dirty, and wasn't such a horrific job. I've been lazy for at least a year, and it feels great to have the job done, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed doing it.)

I finished quilting my asian fabric quilt, and tomorrow I will go and see if there is suitable binding in the local quilt shop. If there isn't, I am going to the neighbouring town on Tuesday, and they have 3 quilting shops so I have options. You have no idea how unusual that is!

I finally bought a new ballet album off itunes. Then I gave myself a class; then I used the music I liked to make a playlist for using next time. I've never used the playlist function before. I will use it again.

I walked the dogs, cooked the dinner, cleaned the kitchen with help from the boys, and then watched a movie with them. I'm off for a shower, and then to sleep.

So far, holidays are busy, hard work, and immensely satisfying.

What I learned: when tidying up the threads from quilting with an easy threading needle, do not put the needle in your mouth if you are chewing gum. Just saying...

Six days

The alternative title for this was "I'm a single lady, I'm a single lady", as tomorrow I go to the lawyers after work and sign the separation agreement between the exband and I. I sent this agreement last year to him, after we agreed to it verbally, and it has taken a WHOLE YEAR for him to sign it. He has been through three lawyers and cost me quite a bit of money getting to this point. I'm gonna feel so relieved (and a little sad) to finally sign.

Onto other news, its six teaching days to the first holiday of the year. We aren't going anywhere much - I offered to take the boys up to see their father, but he said not to bother (!) so we are staying home. It will be good to chillax at home. And maybe catch up on keeping the place clean and tidy.

Quilt wise, I managed to buy the batting and backing for the Japanese print quilt and have started quilting it. The first material I looked at was $80 for 2m, but I found something cheaper (tea dyed muslin), then the first batting was going to be $70, but I got that down too, and the total for the cheaper versions of BOTH was $60. I'm going to be making a few shopping decisions like that over the next little while. Once I have done this one, I will make Hami's blanky which I don't have to buy anything for.

I'm gonna learn to quilt on the cheap!

Back from the break

Have been working away on a quilt top. Bought the charm squares about 4 years ago at the Quilters Symposium in Palmerston North. Went there with my mother, and we had a Very Good Time. The credit cards where slightly bruised by the end of the weekend though! Mother also bought me some fat quarters to give me a bit more to work with. A couple of weeks ago I went to buy Plain Muslin and came away with this rather sumptuously patterned fabric. A quiet palette, but definitely sumptuously patterned. The pattern is from Amy Butlers site - though I took no notice at all of her measurements and just used the biggest square I could get out of the charm squares after they had been washed, which was 6.5 inches. That set everything else. The photo does not show the whole quilt - for two reasons. One: its a big quilt top! and Two: I have one more round of squares to attach, so it ain't finished, quite.

And here is one of the dogs, wondering why I'm taking photos of her late at night

I have two Westie's, this one is called Shinty. She thinks she is in charge of everyone. Everywhere. My other Westie is the opposite, and prefers to be told what to do - she is very shy. They get on really well together.

Wagging the quiltalong, and sulking the report

I haven't done the last couple of assignments for the quiltalong. The first one was to practice quilt as you go. When I was trying to describe how I felt about this to a friend the only word I could use was
"despise": I despise quilt-as-you-go. I dithered for a while about doing it anyway, then decided I would listen to my inner voice (and outer voice too), and not learn to do something I would never do on a real quilt.

This week is quilt a UFO week. I know it is weird, but I don't have any UFO's. The part of quilting I like the best IS the quilting. Piecing is okay in a neat freak kind of way, but it is the quilting that I like, which means nothing sits around waiting for that to happen. As long as work isn't biting me.

Which it is at the moment. I have this Very Thick report to produce, some of which requires a large number of weasel words. I looked at the last section in the weekend and just about cried. Today my very lovely department helped me produce some suitable weasel words that press all the pc buttons, and I am nearly done on the hard stuff. I think the report is a good idea, just there is a lot of overkill in it at present. I will feel better about my whole life when I hand this report in.