snap snap snap

Clementine

Just popping by to share the sweetest teeny cardi made for Clementine. A mega thank you to Melissa for knitting it for my girl, it is a perfect fit. You are super kind and such a fabulous knitter. She hasn't taken the cardi off since last night and is currently sitting on the kitchen shelf in the sporting her new attire. I keep looking at it as it it incredibly tiny and just plain adorable, that hood!

dolphins and raindrops

We headed to the water over the weekend and went on a little boat trip down the Port River. It was fast, refreshing, windy, salty and relaxing. We saw some gorgeous creatures who did a spot of above water gymnastics for us. Everyone loves dolphins I know... but you are reminded of just how sleek and beautiful they really are when you get close to them in the wild.

I have been a little preoccupied with producing bokeh of late. I adore the simplicity of the plain shapes among the darkness, but also finding them among the waves while on the boat was special.

I feel so very unmotivated today. meh. Normally I am more than happy to be at school, but this morning I  must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed and didn't even want to open the door to my students. Not a great start to the week but it's got to get better from here on. At least the Boy is being a love and making lasagna as I type... my favourite dish.

Here's to hoping for more motivation tomorrow, and wishing you all a nice week x

♥ bokeh

Ooooo - just must share my discovery. Night is seriously THE best time for Hollywood style bokeh. They appear with ease as long as the shutter speed is slow/wide open (or the Fv value is low) then you stare down the viewer and there they are - gorgeous round little bokeh wherever the light sources are in the night sky/scene. Today I ..

• stanly knived a heart shaped bokeh filter following this video tute
• found Chris Bray's explanation most helpful
• found the photos within this video helped made sense from utter nonsense
• went all heart skippy happy when watching this EOS video (how fabulous would it be to be a part of this project), 
• and watched this and this too

no filter 50mm lens all were taken at stop lights in car

heart shaped filter 50mm lens:

Tonight I'll test a tear drop filter and see what happens. Loving these nice little colour discs.

bokeh rather

Okay, so I made up the word sunspots to describe circular background blur... thank you for putting me onto the correct terminology Mel and Catherine... bokeh. I have been doing my research this morning while the house is Boy-less and I was a tad bored. After watching countless beautiful bokeh youtube vids and reading tutorials I proceeded to dig up The Boy's digital SLR Pentax istDL (just pointing out that this means nothing to me at present) and... we.are.in.LOVE!

My golly, why didn't I play with this camera earlier? To be frank - I was always too scared of the Av, Tv, aperture, depth of field, M buttons and dials that I refused to go near it. But now... bokeh has inspired me through and through. We are going to get to know each other real well!

I have been a bit uninterested with crochet of late (craft mojo very low), so I am thrilled to have something capture my enthusiasm. Is it crazy that my heart was beating quicker than normal while I was taking photos with the camera this morning?

 I'll try some night and evening shots next.  xx

tunes i cant get enough of

bon iver


fleet foxes


passion pit


jónsi


mark ronson

sunspots

Now I am SURE I am not the only one to love those little circular coloured discs which appear (infrequently!) in photos when the lens is pointed towards the light and just beside a shadow.

I have always loved the effect these have and find myself forever trying to 'catch' them with my point and shoot camera. But I generally don't succeed. This afternoon however, as I have been doing almost each day this week because of this weather (27 today... Hurrah!), I took my camera out into the garden with a cuppa, sat down, found some shadowy sections with the sun behind and 'caught' the most I have ever been able to get in my life!

I hope you enjoy the onslaught hehe xx

SprING!

Despite having a horror cold/flu type ailment, this sunshine and mild weather has got me hap-hap-happy!!! There has been a fair amount of swinging from the jacaranda tree, and a fair number of grazes attained from spinning too fast and smacking my legs into the trunk. 

Our pruned-to-death roses have all started to bud-up (technical language? please, who needs it!). Since we bought our house almost 1 and a half years ago I have not seen this many rose buds... and I AM EXCITED. I can see apricot, dusty pink, hot pink and white buds, and the greenery is thriving with recent rain. Can't wait to have all my roses blooming and bring cut flowers inside. I really love having my own flowers in the house - even those silly nasturtiums!

I hop you are enjoying  the Spring.
xxx

ps. Blogtober and I didn't work out. It's over.  I'll be here when I can.

happy day of birth little one

Hello lovely,

Oh how I wish I could have been there today to celebrate your first 365 days of life. I just didn't want you to catch my icky cold/flu. I made these cuppies for you and although I couldn't share them with you or other party-goers I have been thinking of you each time I eat one today :)

I sewed you some special nappy covers which I think will certainly tart up those boring nappies babies are made wear hehe. We are all so glad you are in our lives and can't wait till you grow into a beautiful (if not stubborn!) angel. I'll try and visit you in the next month sweetie.

Love, cuddles and copious amount of claps!
From Aunty Trace & The Boy

xxx

swing low sweet chariot

Simply put - I love swings. After years of dreaming of being the owner of a tree swing The Boy got fed up with my persistent comments ... mostly relating to that lovely swing in The Secret Garden movie.... and crafted me my very own plank swing this afternoon!! It's THE BEST!!!

Swinging is a delightful way of whiling away time, do you agree? I would share a photo of me sitting on it swinging away with the cheesiest 5 year old grin ever, but.... my grundies were showing making the photo rather inappropriate for blogland.

I did spend a few hours soaking up the sunshine today tying, tying, tying. I am really enjoying the knotting, thank goodness!

where is my flippin seam ripper?!!?!

I have looked everywhere for it and it's vanished into thin air, so am using a pin and I'm feeling how people felt with no seam ripper in the days before they were invented. Crappyola! Oh, don't look too closely at those butted up corners - something I just cannot do.

This morning I started to machine quilt and soon realised that the majority of sewers who quilt a QUEEN size quilt would use some specki machine.. long arm doovy watzit... I have a little baby Janome which has limited space for the bunched up already quilted section. 

Conclusion. No longer quilting by machine (or by hand... thats amusing) but will tie with embroidery floss at intervals throughout the quilt. I like knots... perhaps until I have done 100 of them. 

vintage sheet quilt

Fifty-six 10.5" vintage sheet squares were cut yonks ago and were awaiting my be-botheredness and free time. This week, being school holidays, I found time to decide on the arrangement above and sew up the strips.

...... and before I knew it the top was finished! It reminded me that the sewing up stage is a super quick one, its the effort that goes into the cutting which takes the most time. Because it will be a picnic blanket I'm going to try and find a hard waring but thin batting, then bind it in whatever I have in my fabric collection to save money. Perhaps hot orange/pink .....?

my creative space

On Sunday the sun was shining and I felt extraordinarily crafty, so I blocked my baby cardigan. It's 100% pure wool, so the dining room smelt like a wet dog -eeww. I'm quite certain it won't curl up anytime soon and and now dying to sew it up.

 

I've been pondering what to do with all this sweet pale lemony yellow wool given to me last week by my wool supplier - my Oma!

Just throwing in a sweet photo of where I found our teeniest girl a few mornings ago - where else but right on top of my creative space! I have since sewn up the vintage sheet quilt I have dreamed of for the past 6 months, which is now a pic-a-nic blanket! It's glorious.

I am wallowing in the extra time that school holidays brings. Yes, I have had a tonne of planning to finish (I can't wait to read Fantastic Mr. Fox during literacy as my students can now read mini novels - Hazzar!) and there does seem to be more cleaning up around the house as more time is spent here but the sleep ins, crafting and time for baking *sigh* i just LoOOOOVE it.  4 days to go then only 9 weeks and Xmas holidays. Is anyone else suddenly thinking - Christmas is nearing?!? It is and Ive put no thought into it except for thinking I might attempt to make an ice-cream cake. 

Tonight's dinner was a bit camera worthy (unusual in our home), marinated chicken, salad and baked polenta chips. It was a first for me to cook with polenta and the chips were delicious. Here's the recipe I follwed if your keen to try. I didn't deep fry them as suggested, just chopped them up into chip sizes pieces after cooling in the fridge, dipped one edge in Parmesan cheese for taste, sprayed them all with a little oil and baked them on baking paper on a tray at 200 deg C for about 15-20 min. It made WAY too many but we managed to devour them all.

Happy school holidays if you're still on them! (simultaneous clapping and wooting) xxx

10 things i ♥

• Ernst's story by RicRac is too cute for words, yup, I cried.
• Baxter's story ... i love his big tummy in the beach photograph!
• My flickr favourites all lined up looking fancy

• this quilt by Alicia Paulson
• these hexagonal delights by A.P
• the beautiful contrasting red ties and binding on the Lemoncello quilt.. hmm by A.P
• the Stella Vintage Pixie Hat found at Ravelry 
• the 2011 Frankie calendar and diary which arrived last week
• lovely animal paintings on ceramic plates at The Storybook Rabbit etsy store
• one fave place for inspiration and free prints in high quality pdf - Feed Your Soul 

Enjoy xx

a must for silly people

The Boy and I loved a smattering of Japanese photo booth silliness in Melb. If you have not been in a booth like this go out now and get in one... you are seriously missing out on this crazy fast paced Japanese music and language extravaganza! Despite getting asthma from laughing so hard, I am addicted and want more.

Melbourne in b+w

Flea Market Finds

Dear Sophie and fellow oppers,

It appears that I have become very picky when it comes to op shopping. Perhaps I have too much stuff  (or 'junk and blankets' as The Boy says)? Perhaps I don't have enough storage space for more stuff? But I find myself picking up objects of my desire, only to round the corner and ask myself "Do I really need this?" Sadly the voice of logic in my head stands firm and replies "What do you think?!" then the object is put down on a shelf only to be thought of repeatedly for the next few hours "Oh why didn't I just take it to the counter?"

Our trip to Victoria sent us to every op shop we sighted, and low and behold the voice of logic was nowhere to be seen... on most occasions anyway. Ner Ner silly voice!

Sweet coat hangers.

A new glass to add to my collection. We decided we won't be using these for their proposed function any longer, they are rather breakable and too pretty. They're now going to live a life as tealight candle holders.

So Poo to you logic! Do go and peruse some more completely logical purchases over here :)

Blogtoberisation

Tinniegirl is at it again! I played last year for almost every day in Oct. As I've been a bit absent from blogging recently this (alongside some much welcomed cheerier weather) might just be the motivation I need to get to photographing and blogging! I am already 2 days late posting, thanks to a lovely week-long Victorian holiday with The Boy. Tomorrow I'll get onto that!

Join over here if you're up to it!