Happenings

What's been happening?  Work.  Busy busy. Putting together a strong argument for a larger budget for my area of responsibility, currently notably underfunded in comparison with similar areas.  I know.  I've been doing the research....

Visited a friend yesterday - her sweet baby is about six months old, a smiling and very interested in everything girl who thinks BOO! is just one of the best and most original games EVER.  And is there anything much sweeter than a little one, tired but not wanting to sleep, who you rock and rock, and croon boring things to, and rock a bit more, and then you feel her getting heavier, and her eyes droop to half mast but spring open, but then they're half mast again, and she's getting heavier, and then you look and her eyes are closed...and you keep rocking like the grenade will go off if you change anything, and then you walk carefully to put her in her cot and the grenade doesn't go off, she doesn't wake, but has the nap we were hoping for..... so there was time to play with the baby, and talk of all sorts of things too, and sew down a quilt binding.

I've been catching up with a few quilting projects - have to put up some pictures of the more recent quiltlets, H is for Humpty Doo and I is for Innamincka have both been out, and I believe Joadja is visiting the Australian Quilt Convention in Melbourne as we speak - but as I don't have them to hand I'm waiting to photograph them with their respective issues of Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine.  I'm wrangling O is for.... and P is for.... this weekend, just finished quilting (and binding, see above) a repro fabric quilt for APQ and have another to quilt for Australian Country Threads, plus two going off to the machine quilter, one for Handmade and one for Australian Country Craft and Decorating.   Plus instruction-writing for them all....

Still thinking about a quilting studio, not the little sewing room that's just too small, but something larger...2009 feels like the year to do it.  More later, after I've mulled.

In the last few weeks I've read all the Alexander McCall Smith "Sunday Philosophy Club" series; all the "44 Scotland St" series (can somebody tell me if The Unbearable Lightness of Scones is the last? It goes to ep. 99 and the series ran for 110 eps, apparently), I'm up to In the Company of Cheerful Ladies in "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series and have finished La's Orchestra Saves the World. And after I'm done, they go off on journeys to be read by friends/relatives.  It's been an AMcSfest around here.  By way of contrast, I've been watching True Blood, based on the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse novels (vampires &tc in the American South) - a different kind of amusing.  The music/images of the introductory credits are among the cleverest in creating tone and atmosphere that I've ever seen.  Current audiobooks are Sunshine by Robin McKinley and The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon (I've read them both in print more than once, and am enjoying another view of them in audio).

Photos will follow, but I've acquired several lovely bits from Etsy, all but one from the Handmade Help blog's listing of things for sale where the money goes to the Victorian Bushfire Fund.  Go and look at what they have, and what you can do.  The button is at the top of my sidebar.

Now it's back to O is for... and P is for.... I need some fabric stabiliser for some oriental charmeusey fabric that's as slippery as all get out, and to think out how I'm combining hand-dyed felt and hand-dyed cotton.  Washing on the line, the sun's shining, it's autumn thanks be! and so the weekend goes.  Hope you're having a good one too.

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