And Now for November’s Weather and Our Backyard

Oh boy!  What a crazy month it has been.  I know it is spring and you get changeable weather, but this year has been a little crazy.

Traditionally, November is the month where the weather starts to warm up and we are done and dusted with frosts for the year.  The rule of thumb is that you are safe to plant your tomatoes and other frost tender veges after Melbourne Cup Day, which is the first Tuesday of the month.  We plant ours well in advance, but are always watching the weather forecast and are ready to cover the plants if needed…..You can see where this is going, can’t you.

Welcome to the ghosts in our garden.  We tend to cover our veges if the forecast is for 5 degrees C or less, as our yard seems to be colder than the official temperature.  We had a light frost two days after the Melbourne Cup.  Then, can you believe it, we had another, much heavier frost on the 12th.  That burnt some of our plants despite being covered.  Fortunately, they all bounced back.  Lots of people lost their veges that morning.  There was another light frost the following morning as well, but no damage, as we had everything covered.  Our dahlias weren’t covered, so took a beating, but they too have come back.

Now, we are currently officially in summer……. 

This was our temperature yesterday, 1st December.  That was at 2pm.  We did reach the lofty height of 17C very briefly.  The wind was up to 59 kph and we had a late shower of 4mm.  Welcome to summer.

It got down to 4.7 degrees C this morning and they are forecasting a minimum of 3 degrees C tomorrow morning, so everything was covered last night and will be covered again tonight…just in case.  That’s crazy…but not unprecedented, as Mick had snow on Christmas Day once when he was a kid living not too far from here.

To the other extreme, we have had a high of 34 and later this week they are forecasting 36. Some areas have already been up to the 40s.

The other main feature of November’s weather has been the wind.  It has blown and blown and blown.  A week or so ago we had a wild storm with our highest gust reported as 89 kph.  Other towns in the area had winds up to 120 kph, with lots of damage.  There were several large trees down here with some damage to buildings and cars.

There hasn’t been much rain and the benefit of any rain had been depleted by the wind.  We have had a few Extreme Fire Danger days with total fire bans.  Fortunately, no major blazes have broken out.

Despite all that, our garden has been flourishing.  

We have picked our first strawberries and raspberries.

The beds of berries and silver beet have been netted to keep the birds off.

We will definitely have tomatoes for Christmas and there are several zucchinis that will be ready to pick in the next few days.  The garlic is ready to harvest and the onions aren’t far off.

Our little cactus flowered on the weekend.

Mick has been doing some DIY in the backyard too.  The paving under the seats in our raised vege beds were looking a bit rough.

He decided to spruce things up a bit.  That looks much better.

I’ll finish with some random flower photos, just to show that it isn’t all doom and gloom.

And to finish, a posy of flowers from our garden for you to enjoy.

Stitching Update for November

As you can guess, with my obsession with the Wensleydale Quilt, not a lot else had taken place on the stitching front.

Having said that, there is a little to report.

Firstly, my linen knitted top.  I had wished to have it completed.  That happened…..sort of.  You see, when I tried it on, the top section fitted beautifully and the knitted fabric had a lovely drape and I don’t need to wear a camisole, as feared…but…… it is way too short.  It has side splits that now end up half way up to my armpits.

Not to worry….I have a plan…..

I will simply stitch up the side splits and then comes the big experiment….

The plan is to pick up the cast on stitches and knit more of the garter stitch, the same as the bottom band and work another three or so inches to the length.  Fingers crossed it will work.  Regardless, it will be a nice comfy, cool top to wear at home, if nothing else. 

Remember, it was just yarn I picked up at an op shop, so not great financial loss.

Next, I needed some hand stitching to work on at my stitching days.

I worked on the free Anni Downs Christmas stitcheries that she has released over the last few years.  (You can find them on her website and Instagram sites.)

Firstly, I completed the 2023 release that I had started in October.

Then, I traced and stitched the one from 2024.  I do hope she releases another this year and then, hopefully, I will make a Christmas quilt incorporating them and a collection of other Christmas redwork stitcheries that I completed during Covid that were released by “Love and Hugs Australia”.  It will be nice to get them out of their box.

And, that’s all I did.  Everything else will still be there for another time.

How did I go with my 15 minutes a day?  Pretty good.

November = 28/30

Year to date = 259/334 = 77.49%

Wensleydale Blocks All Done and Cleaning Up

I did it!!!  I managed to get all the 60 blocks (plus one extra) completed by my self imposed deadline of 30  November.

Here are the last 21 blocks.

And a quick collage of the completed blocks. This is not the final layout.  

My next job is to remove all the foundation papers and then I will play with the layout on my “design curtain”.  

I’m really enjoying making this quilt.  I hope to have the top finished by the end of the year, if not earlier.

Of course, after such a sewing marathon, there is the mess to clean up.  I have already put all the main fabrics away and also tidied them up, which was needed.  All the scraps are colour sorted in bags, but need to be put somewhere.  A job for another day.

Today it was clean the sewing space.  Firstly, my machine. I had cleaned it before I started, but thought it would be a fluffy mess after this. However, I was pleasantly surprised.  As you can see, it still needed a clean, but not nearly as much as I had feared.

My sewing table was a different story.  It hadn’t been cleaned for some time and was a real mess.  As in get the vacuum cleaner to dust it.  It looks so much better now after a good deep clean and polish.

Next, for the cutting table.  The right hand side was piled with “Stuff”.  It has now been removed and the table and shelf above given a good clean.  It looks so very much better and makes me want to start doing something new.  I’ve hardly done any machine stitching this year and now have a renewed enthusiasm.  (The “Stuff” is all in a bag to be dealt with later.  Not sure what to do with some of it.)

Last week I gave the top of my cupboard a good dust.  Now, that was like an archaeologist dig through the dust.  Definitely another vacuum job.  I know it is cluttered, but I do like all my little bits and bobs.

The dresser top also got a good dust.

It feels so much better to have them clean.  There is much more to do to get my happy place back to being “happy”.  It will happen over the next few days.

By the way, after a few months I have my empty bobbins to add to the yearly total.  Not a lot, but there was quite a bit of thread on those cardboard spools.  I’ll share my dismal yearly total at the end of next month.

Now, to get back to playing.

A Wensleydale Quilt Update

It has been brought to my attention that I haven’t posted for a while, so I’ll give you a quick update on the progress of my Wensleydale Quilt.  I’m having great fun with this.

To recap, I discovered a quilt along for this quilt on 3 November and decided to jump in feet first, as I had the book and papers ready to go.  I also decided to use 300, yes 300, different fabrics, being five different fabrics for each of the sixty blocks with no repeats.

It was fun having a deep dive into the stash and playing with colours.  I ended up getting everything cut into section  for each block over the next few days. I love the colours together.

Time to make a test block.  That first block took over an hour!  Once I started to get a system and routine going I now have it down to just over half an hour, if everything runs smoothly.

Firstly, I make a fold on every stitching line.  Normally, I would use a cardboard bookmark to make the fold crisp, but it lost its sharp edge very quickly, so I grabbed a large sheet of template plastic that was in my ruler rack and that is working a treat.  I thought about cutting a strip off it, but having the large sheet is working really well.

I have a little cutting station set up next to my machine to trim down the seam allowances as I go.  My large Add a Quarter Ruler finally had its first outing.  I’ve only needed the smaller one for previous projects.  Also, sitting in the ruler rack was a long, skinny cutting mat.  I’ve no idea where it came from and I’m sure I’ve never previously used it, but it is just ideal for this project.  My ironing board is just behind me when I’m sewing and I don’t mind getting up and down to press each seam.  At least it gets me off my butt for a brief moment.

So, I have been plugging away over the last few weeks and, as of today, have forty of the sixty blocks completed.  Let’s have a look.

I made a quick collage to get a bit of a feel for how the quilt will look.

I think it has the rich, snuggly look that I was hoping for. 

I’m up to working on blocks with directional fabrics.  Some of them are being a bit tricky, but I’m getting better at them.  One block is currently sitting in the naughty corner, waiting for me to have another go at it.  I may have to recut one fabric.  We’ll see.

I did discover one duplicate fabric that snuck in, so there was a bit of fiddle faddling to find a suitable substitute.  I considered leaving it there, so it could be a challenge to find the duplicate, but decided against it.

Fingers crossed that I can make the remaining twenty blocks by the end of the month.  We’ll see how we go.  In the meantime, it is rather satisfying to look at this little pile.

Oh Dear… I’ve Found Another Squirrel Down a Rabbit Hole

I know, very mixed metaphors….

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a new Quilt Along.  It is the Wensleydale Quilt by Jen Kingwell and is hosted by Quilted Chicken.  I’ve had the book and foundation papers for a few years and this was just the encouragement I needed to make a start.

The Quilted Chicken has a YouTube channel and a few years ago she shared her ingenious method to cut fabric for this quilt that is very efficient.  There are 60 blocks in the quilt and she cuts 60 widths of fabric by 6 1/4” strips.  She then shares how to cut the fabric to make one of each of the five sections of the block.  From those you can get a rather scrappy looking quilt, without having to pull hundreds of different fabrics.  There are 300 fabrics if you were to not repeat any in the quilt.

The Quilt Along only started on 2 November USA time, so I stumbled upon it at just the right time.  It runs for 6 weeks and the first week is to select your fabric.  Week 2 is to cut your fabric. Week 3 is to sort your fabrics into blocks and start sewing.  The next week is Thanksgiving, so a break or keep sewing.  Week 5 is to arrange your completed blocks and the final week is to stitch the quilt top together.  There are already a couple of YouTube posts about it and a PDF with the cutting instructions.  She has also set up a Facebook group to share your progress.

The timeframe sounds a bit ambitious, but will certainly give me the impetus to make some progress on this quilt that I really want to make, but just haven’t made the start to pull fabrics.

Today, I made that start.

And, that is 300 fabrics!!!!!

Why choose just 60 fabrics when you can pull 300?  Hopefully, there are no repeats.  I have removed a couple that snuck in.  Fingers crossed there are no more.

I kind of have it in the back of my head to add an extra column to make the quilt fit our bed a bit better.  That is only an extra ten blocks.  What is another 50 fabrics?  I think I’ll just start with the 60 blocks for now.

The fabrics are mainly reproduction ones, with a scattering of others, but it should still be colourful.  Many have come from a destash I came across a few years ago. Others have been in my stash for a very long time.  There are four I can date back to the 1980s when I first bought some “American Patchwork Fabric” when it was quite a new thing in Australia.

The cutting will probably take quite a bit longer with this variety of fabric, but I’m currently up to date, so I will take that as a win.

I know a few of you have the book and papers.  If you want to have a look or join in here are the details:

Website with link to Wensleydale Quilt along.

YouTube Channel

My Stitching Wishes for November

My goals each month seem to be less and less as the year progresses, especially as the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and the Chookshed Challenge have finished for the year.  This takes some pressure off and anything that is achieved is a bonus.

The main thing that I want to achieve is to finish the knitted top that I am working on.  Since my last post I have completed knitting the body of the garment and just have to knit the bands around the neckline and the armholes.  One armhole was completed this afternoon.  By far the slowest part is picking up the correct number of stitches.  After several attempts and ripping back, the actual knitting took very little time. Hopefully, I will have a finish to report shortly and a garment that I can wear, now that the weather is finally warming up.

I plan to keep working away in the redwork stitcheries that were freebies from Anni Downs over the last few Christmases.  I’m currently working on 2022, then I will have to prep 2024 to stitch.  2021 and 2023 are completed.  There are still no concrete plans on what to do with them, but at least if they are stitched I have something to play with.  Chooky had a Zoom session this morning, so a bit was achieved while chatting away, until my eyes decided that they didn’t want to focus on the work, so I called it quits then.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get all my Chookshed Challenge projects completed during the ten months.  I would like to work some more on the outstanding ones.  They are the Natalie Bird pincushion, then the project using the hexies that I prepped, when it was discovered that the charm squares I had planned to use for a table runner weren’t square.  I’m still not sure what they will become and I really want to get the Sew Together Bag made.  

In addition to all these there is the Anni Downs Pouch we were given at Scrub Stitchin’ 2024.  Fingers crossed, at least one of the above projects will be progressed this month.

If I do any machine stitching there should be some progress on my leader and ender project, Bonnie Lass.

Hopefully, I will have some decent progress on something to report at the end of the month.

October Stitching Update

As you can maybe imagine, I didn’t get a great deal of crafting done during October, seeing as we were busy doing other things.

Here is what I did manage.

I have previously mentioned the Sashiko Bag for the Chookshed Stitchers Challenge.  I was very happy to have that done and it meant that I did at least have one finished project for the month.

I had shared the block I completed early in the month for one of Betty’s group quilts.

Well, I made another one to send down to her for another quilt that has been planned.

In addition, I made two blocks for a group quilt that my Wednesday patchwork quilt are putting together.

While making the blocks I have been adding to the pile of my Bonnie Lass leader and ender blocks.  140 down out of 396.  It is time to get cutting some more.  This is a nice slow bonus project in the background that really is making itself.

I did manage to progress the Christmas redwork stitcheries a little.  They have been good to work on at my stitching mornings.  Nice and mindless.

Finally, I have been slowly working away on my knitted top.  It would have been much quicker if I had just followed the pattern and knitted it flat, but due to the stripes, I made it hard for myself by knitting part of it in the round.  It has also been compounded by me not using the prescribed yarn.  I think (hope) it will all work out.  Anyway, the back is completed and I now just have to knit the two sides of the front v-neck and the ribbing around the armholes and neckline.  It didn’t get completed in October as I’d hoped, but realistically, it shouldn’t take too long to get done.  It doesn’t look much at the moment, but a good blocking at the end should hopefully sort that.

My stats for 15 minutes a day for the last couple of months were:

September = 30/30 (the best for the year)

October = 20/31

Year to Date = 211/273 = 77.29%  

This is way down on last year, but better than nothing.