winter blooms

Hurrah! Our kitchen window hyacinths are fuchsia pink.

We have been spoiled - the teeniest jonquils have bloomed in almost every garden bed in our front yard. Last night I got around to cutting up my vintage fat quarters... posting on Mon.

Tulips fresh from Gepps Cross Market last Sunday.

x

colour the world

Watched this on poppytalk tonight and feel happily obliged to spread the word! Sometimes we all need something to make us smile, this did exactly that for me....

All those colours sent me reminiscing me back to when I visited India in 2006. I fell in love with the sounds, smells (not all mind you...) and the most amazing vivid bright colours. Be warned - this post is a little image heavy x

above, Holy Quaran scriptures wrapped in gorgeous fabrics just outside a mosque in Old Delhi.

Point & Shoot

Oooo hello new meme, found through chunkychooky, hosted by fat mum slim. 

Yesterday we had a gingerbread making fest at our place (thank-you Donna Hay magazine, Issue 24, Nov 2005).... lots of whipping butter and dark brown sugar together, kneading sweet tasting dough (yum!) and cutting out these little button biscuits.

Once cooled I wove embroidery thread in and out of the button holes of two biscuits to keep them together. They taste scrumptious, too. Aren't they almost too cute to eat?!  

... I am completely in love with these things!!

Flea Market Finds

Having Saturday all to myself, I woke early, chored it up then rewarded myself by going on my local op-shop route. Do you have a route too? I get super happy when I happen to leave work early and have 20 minutes before shops close, meaning I can whip into a couple and have a rummage.  

I feel like I have an op shop honed GPS navigator in my head, I can tell you all the oppies within a 3 km radius throughout metro Adelaide - seriously this is an illness, right?!  

Yesterday I came away with a pile of fabrics. A bright floral table cloth for $2.

This flannelet sheet will be the back of a vintage sheet quilt I make after the Vintage Sheet Swap.... which reminds me, I really need to get to cutting and posting my fat quarters!

I nabbed the orange polka dot and cute animal fabrics both $2 for 2 m.  Sure I don't have kids yet, but I may as well start collecting now. I googled the animal fabric and looked on eBAY and it's worth ~$45 a metre!

Lastly... and not flea-markety in the least hehe,  our red hyacinths are growing beautifully on the kitchen window sill!  Woot!

Pop over to Sophie's to see more finds x

rainbow crochet blanket Part 3

It's finished...so in true Tracey form I took a bazillion photographs.   

Some problems arose with the edging. The cream wool I wanted to use up from my Oma was a lower ply than the majority of the wool I used for the stripes - this meant the edge pulled tightly and puckered the stripes.

I set to crocheting multiple border rows in all sorts of patterns (dc increase, 4 dc, dc increase, 4 cd... ) and pulling out each row, a variety of bad mannered words were uttered (The Boy chuckling at how wool and a hook can make one so frustrated) ... finally I tested a pattern and went with that, not caring too much by this time as to how it would turn out. I also tried little picot stitches but they didn't look pretty.... I decided a plain-Jane edge was best beside all those psychedelic colours.

I am really happy with it. It's a lovely size for a baby blanket. The Boy has asked for an 'adult' sized blanket. I am always worried I will get bored and give up mid-way, but I really enjoyed making this one... so might give it a go.

Thank you muchly for all of your kind comments during the making process :)

Macro Monday

Woot! I am playing Lisa's meme...yep, on a Friday. I'm early, or late if you prefer. Since I have just finished the rainbow blanket (double Woot!) I was faffing about in my photo archives and hope you enjoy these two.

Note: Blogger claims 'faffing' is not a word... how totally unacceptable.. FAFF! Take that Blogger!

2008- Adelaide Botanic Gardens (I know she's not a macro)

2010-our front garden

Bits and pieces...

Finally school reports are finished (hooraaah!!) and I can get to finishing the rainbow crochet blanket and some dining chair bum warmers (will explain that later!).

The tiniest member of our house has the right idea on these frosty days. I love that she enjoys all the blankets and quilted loveliness I adorn our furniture with.

Another of great nana's salvaged paintings has gone up on our laundry wall. There is something rather delicious about paintings tainted with forests and autumn tones.

I have finished the stripy bit of the rainbow blanket and all those rotten loose ends are being woven in.

The colours and different wool plys together in a pile were too pretty not to take a photo of, or two, of ;)

And lastly, the weather has become ideal for fashioning these woolen 'gauntlets'<----silly word?! picked up in Tassie in January. It seems that anything with some cabling is divine in my eyes this Winter.

xx Stay warm!

Angier's Emulsion

A few readers commented on the box scored from the oppie in my Flea Market Finds post two weekends back asking what on earth Angier's Emulsion actually is.... I had NO clue myself, so I got to researching.

I discovered this funny advertisement that was screaming out to be shared with you. How ridiculous! How gullible were people lol

image: antique bottles

getting around to it...

I can be the queen of procrastination when it comes to WI.Ps... I loose interest, focus etc. Last night I finished the crochet ripple cushion I started back in *cough*... January.

 I sewed the back section of my pre-loved cream knit vest to the ripple square. Finding myself zipper-less (which would surely have ended up a disaster anyhow - do zippers like to be sewn onto crochet?)  I turned up the red ripple edge and secured each tip with wooden buttons found in Tassie.

Our poor rocking chair has been waiting an entire year for some woolen warmth. I think it looks rather content now :)

lino on the wall...

Remember these photos of my great-nana's glorious lino floors? Since the day I set foot on them in April I hadn't been able to let go of the idea of going back to Victoria and salvaging some of it. There was something pulling me back, the fact that generations of my family had walked upon those floors, heavy furniture had made lovely deep crevices in some areas... plus - the patterns are just swoon-worthy!

Last month a sad family event brought my family together in the very town where great-nana's house stood. So dad, being the handy man legend that he is, Stanley-knived large panels of lino from the floors of her two main bedrooms.

The panels needed a good clean up and were trimmed to size and put into IKEA Ribba frames. The lino with big red roses was in a dire state... areas crumbled when touched. The framed swan was great-nana's too... but it has yet to find a place in our house.

I believe these pretty patterns were always destined for a life on our dining room wall. The Boy isn't so keen on them, but understands how much they mean to me so didn't put up much of a fuss when I asked him to get the masonry drill bit.

Ohhh how icky is that last photo...let's pretend those mega cracks in the wall are non-existent ok? ;)

nest musings...

This tiny nest spotted in mum and dad's backyard made me smile yesterday.