We have carpet too!

Carpet is good.....so much better than grey concrete floors, which are cold.......and grey......very grey......the carpet is sort-of-beige, it goes well with the creamy walls and sort-of-beige kitchen and new floor tiles which have sort-of-beige streaks on a paler background.  We are slowly putting the house back together again; furniture is re-appearing where it should be instead of being packed away.

Grey seems to be popular in home decor lately, have you noticed?  We watch renno porn (there are a lot of home renovation programs on TV these days, it's easy to get hooked) and grey is very popular.  Grey kitchens.....grey living rooms......grey bathrooms......even grey bedrooms.  Why would anyone want to sleep in a cold grey bedroom, I wonder?

Bianca approves, because she can now stretch out on the living room floor again.

In a couple of weeks we will be driving to the Big Smoke for a quick in-and-out shopping trip to buy furniture to replace that which had to be chucked after the flood.  We don't have a branch of The Big Swedish Store here (they don't pay me to advertise but I'm sure you know who I mean) so that's where we will be heading.

Today is raining, yay!  Very welcome rain following an extremely dry month so far.  It's a good day to be sewing and that's where I have been, quilting together fabric, lining and thin batting for a new purse.  Mindless feeding of fabric through machine......sometimes that's just what one feels like doing, and watching the kangaroos on the hill who are also enjoying a wet day.

Here is the one block made at the recent workshop.

 The centre is not quite as mismatched as it looks here, but then my standards are pretty low when it comes to points anyway.  So long as it passes the 'ten foot rule' - it looks good when you stand ten feet back - that's all I ask.

The design......I started doodling from the bottom left corner then turned it upside down so the coloured diamonds drip from the top.  It may end up having the red line on the left and the indigo line on the right when it's put together, because my brain sees the long line (regardless of colour) on the left tapering to the short line on the right.  This layout looks......wrong.  Reversed, or something.

 Rainbow solids, although I may end up getting a lighter brighter orange and changing the red too.  The green will stay; it's rather gorgeous, isn't it?

Backgrounds will be black and white prints, as you can see in the finished block.

Last weekend's uke gig went well considering we had only five people; it's winter here, so folk are dropping like flies.  However people said nice things to us and about us, and we had fun.  We have no more gigs lined up, but I have started thinking about a song for next year's Eisteddfod.  I have twelve months to come up with something.....it will need to be fabulously good, I don't want a dreary church choir to be adjudged more entertaining again......

"Mutual trust and confidence are other requisites for happiness in married life.  There can be no true love without trust.  The responsibility of a man's life is in in a woman's keeping from the moment he puts his heart into her hands.  Without mutual trust there can be no real happiness."

I am trusting Kevin to put furniture back where it belongs......does that count?

Enjoy your days!

We have fire too!

Is this not the most beauteous wood stove you have ever seen, all the way from Duncan, B.C., Canada?

 Bianca approves too, although she didn't hang around to be photographed.

We had a choice of side panel colours, and chose ivory because lime green (or any other shade of green) wasn't available.  Burnished copper metallic finish was truly gorgeous but quite expensive, so we passed.

You can see some of the new floor tiles, and the draped creature in my sewing room is my overlocker.  It's covered to keep dust out when not in use.  My sewing room is now back together, and usable.

New carpet will be installed next week.  We hadn't heard from the carpet shop to say ours had arrived so Kevin rang them - and we were told that the arrangement was, we would ring when we were ready to have it installed.  We didn't know that; neither of us could recall being told such words, we were under the impression that we would be contacted when it had arrived and was ready to be laid.  Hopefully all is now sorted, and late next week we will have warm floors again.

Then there will be replacement furniture to be purchased, books and other stuff unpacked and put back in place (we won't be doing that, it will be done for us) and our house will finally be back to where it was before 25th January.

Last Friday night I made my solo debut at the local Eisteddfod and, as I expected, I didn't win.  I had the audience smiling and laughing and singing along with me although none of them had heard the song before, and the applause was very enthusiastic.  The adjudicator was also smiling and singing.  However the winner, based on the adjudicator's decision as "the most entertaining performance" was a church choir who sang two dreary dirge-like songs.  Many people said to me "you should have won", "I had you picked as winner", etc. which was very nice of them.  Even one of the main organisers was surprised as she also complimented me and indicated that she wasn't thrilled by the result.  However we agreed that the adjudicator is always right even when they are wrong, and I shall have another go next year - she said "don't let this put you off".  I don't wish to sound like sour grapes but I think the verdict had a certain amount of charity in it because, quite frankly, the choir just aren't very good; other performers were much better singers/instrumentalists, and were certainly more entertaining.

Ah well.  Onward and upward.  The uke group has a gig next weekend and I am sure we will have fun.

My brain is coming back to normal after a busy weekend.  Our quilt group held a workshop with Jenny Bowker; some of the time was spent designing, and some cutting and sewing.  It was much better than just being handed a pattern and being told to make it.  We explored various ideas for kaleidoscope quilts, made our fabric choices, started cutting and a few blocks were made......I made one whole block.  Just one, but I know where my quilt is going.  I started playing around with coloured pencils and a sheet of paper printed with kaleidoscope blocks and came up with an Art Deco-influenced design but didn't have the right fabrics with me, so drew another design of solid rainbow-coloured dripping diamonds which I started making.  The whole quilt, all 49 blocks of it, will be foundation pieced because that's what Jenny taught........I don't love foundation piecing, it's so tedious.......

Making it will be like eating an elephant, just taken steadily one bite at a time.

"Signature of ladies.
Only the letters of unmarried ladies and widows are addressed with their baptismal names.  The letters of married ladies are addressed with their husbands' names, as "Mrs John Smith".

I don't know when that custom started, but I have never liked it.  My name is "Jennifer Lastname" not Kevin lastname", regardless of whether I am Mrs, Ms or Miss.

We have tiles!!

The truly gorgeous new tiled floor is done.  Finished.  Walk-on-able.  Tiles were laid last week; we moved out for a couple of days while they were being laid.  The builder will be coming back early next week to fix up some doors as the new tiles are thicker than the old ones were, so doors now scrape on the floor.

Bianca spent ten days with Auntie Deb at her cattery, as she would have been really stressed by the noise and dust and loud music.  We haven't seen a lot of her since she came home as she has been spending a lot of time asleep on our bed.  With no carpet in much of the house, and no fire, it's nice and warm under the covers.

So my stuff is being (slowly....) moved back into my sewing room.  It's very dusty.  My lungs don't like it at all.

Next will be the oh-so-flash new fire.  It was to have been installed yesterday but the installation bloke rang to say he was crook (translation:  he wasn't straying too far from a bathroom.....need I say more?) and would come tomorrow.  Which is all well and good, but yesterday and today are the coldest days of the year so far and they are indeed very chilly, today is foggy, damp and miserable, so that fire will be really welcome.  Fortunately we have a gas heater, so we aren't freezing.

Then the new carpet......and the house will nearly be ours again.  We still need to buy replacement furniture and have our (mostly my) books and stuff unpacked.

During this time very few stitches have been taken because my sewing stuff is packed up, but a couple of weeks ago I managed to make one block as it was my turn to provide a BOM for my quilt group.  Those blocks will be turned into a charity quilt, and it was found here.

Slightly fiddly-diddly (lots of tiny squares) but not difficult, and fun to make.  My sewing machine, fabric and I de-camped to a local quilt shop for a few hours to get it made, as sewing while the floor blokes were here was a lost cause.

Those young blokes were polite and respectful, but we weren't happy that they finished last Friday afternoon and didn't come back until Monday to clean up.  We did quite a bit over the weekend ourselves, because we had to live in their mess.  I wasn't happy, either, with the tilers who, the minute they arrived, set up their tradie radio blasting forth loud rock music in our kitchen.....they could have waited until we moved out, which we did very smartly anyway.  Not sure the house has recovered yet, it usually has much gentler music playing.

However, all that is now water under the bridge.

As there is no chance of sewing I have been knitting.  The first sleeve of my jumper is now finished and the second is cast on; the back was finished while we were away.  I'm thinking - hoping - it should be pretty when it's done.

Two uke gigs coming up.  On Friday next week the Mature Age section of the local Eisteddfod will be held and I  am competing on my own.......solo, in public......just me and a uke.  The uke class (which I no longer attend) is also competing; one of the organisers contacted me and specifically asked for them, after last year's performance!  Isn't that nice?  I passed her request on to prod them into entering again because last year I entered the group first, then told them "we're in".  Win or lose, it will be a fun evening.

"One color should predominate in the dress; and if another is adopted, it should be in limited quantity and only be way of contrast or harmony.  Some colors may never, under any circumstances, be worn together, because they produce positive discord to the eye."

The yarn for my jumper is soft blue with a hint of lavender, which is neither contrasting or disharmonious.

Now......my afternoon coffee is finished, my daily uke playing has been done, so I am going to my sewing room to dust and move stuff around.  If I'm not back in a couple of hours, send help - tonight is choir, and that is a fun night so I don't want to miss it.

Enjoy your days!