08 May 2013 Post Wedding

What a month. I am still pretty terrible at blogging this year. I was hoping to blog more often but where does the time go and I feel sometimes that my knitting/sewing is progressing just as fast as my blogging.

I need more time off work I say! Now that I am a married woman, I keep telling Reece that I want to be a Stay at Home Wife and craft all day. I did say I would cook dinner for him…

I am sorry that I am short of wedding photos at the moment. Most of my family and friends have seen a few pop up from our photographer www.mikesemple.com.au on Facebook.

I did promise to post photos of my hand-made bouquet. I liked how they turned out.

Also a couple of pictures of my friends helping to ice our wedding cake, though I realise now I don’t have a photo of the decorator herself.

Magnet didn’t really enjoy his time in the cattery. He is getting better, a lot more relaxed now we are back to a semi-normal routine.

Reece could be heading off for a short term contract next week. They are still waiting for a government department to sign off on something so the start date is not in concrete. The work should be interesting but the idea of an exploration camp is not my idea of fun.

What I am excited about is that I am off to a sewing class this evening. It’s one day a week for 6 weeks at the TAFE (polytechnic sort of thing). It’s a beginner’s course. I really want to improve my current sewing techniques, like sewing in a straight line and, putting in zips. I want to work up to adjusting patterns to fit better and making things look more handmade than homemade.

We spent a few nights in Daylesford after the wedding. As promised by Reece we stopped at some known geology related sites and visited a couple of mining areas.

The Organ Pipes

The Rosetta Stone

Trentham Falls

Lake Daylesford

Original shaft at Clune

Old pump house outside of Clune

The cross at the top of Mount Macedon

I am still plodding away on Shannon's Jersey. Here is Magnet trying to help me with it. 

11 April 2013 Such a busy month

It has been busy with the Wedding coming up, well not really, but I would like to use that as an excuse for not posting in a month!

Where did I leave off last month...hmmm, I should go look...ok, back. On the last post I showed you a quiche that took me two days to make and the back of a jersey. 

I can say that the back is now done and I started the front, but started is about the extent of it. I finished the ribbing for the base and I think I have done 5 rows of the fisherman's rib, so it shall be approximately finished...not any time soon...

Reece built Rach a new computer to get her going in her new home. Now I just have to get her gaming. 

Sue-ann did make me this awesome crochet owl hat and Magnet loves it!

We had one lonely tomato that we finally picked and halved to eat. It was delicious. Hopefully I will take the things I learnt last season to the next season. 

I have some new winter things to try to grow and I will get into that when we get back from our wedding (OMG it's NEXT week). Here's Magnet checking out Reece's suit.

My friends gave me an awesome (read not awesome the next day) Hen's Party. They did a monster job of cooking etc. I only have this photo to show you. Hopefully there will be some more later on when I catch up with Rach. 

Over the Easter weekend, I convinced Reece that we needed to paint the master bedroom. In total we did 3 coats. The first one was a bit of trial run. I have never painted walls before. By the last coat we had our system down and it went a lot faster and now hopefully I will be faster when we do the next room. 

We painted it white with a blue feature wall. Reece hung a new curtain rail and then the curtains. The room has definitely lost it's pink tones now. We will replace the carpet one day, and it will look like a completely different place. We still have to paint the wardrobe doors and internal door. We are going to wait until we have painted all the rooms though and do all the doors at the same time. 

My craft room will be the next room hopefully. Then the bathroom and then the living area/kitchen (that might be the Christmas holiday job).

I have photos of my finished bouquets for the wedding but I will post them after, but here is a photo of Magnet helping me make them...

We are off to Melbourne on Sunday. It is going to be one busy week. I am really excited to be seeing everyone, and of course excited to be getting married! This means that it might be another month until I blog, but you never can tell!

14 March 2013 Cooking and Knitting

I cooked this Quiche last night. Well it really took two days. The previous night I made the pastry so it was ready for cooking and roasted the pumpkin. I think all up, it probably took 4 hours. I had made this recipe before, about 18 months ago, before I had a decent kitchen and a suitable dish, so I new that the taste was going to be ok. But it was nice making it properly. I think last time I used store-bought pastry.

Lots of photos though. I think if something takes this long to make for only say 15min of eating I am going to make it worth my while by taking lots of pictures, well making Reece take lots of pictures while I am actually doing the work.

A couple of changes though, I used a Kent Pumpkin and some weird spinach that I had never seen before, it looked like long grass, but tasted fine.

 While I was waiting for the Quiche to cook, I made up some buttermilk Drop Scones. Now I have never seen/eaten/cooked these before. I don't even know if they were meant to look like this. I am now after a picture of what the batter should look like, as mine was quite dry/stiff, just blobbed into the pan. My experience of cooking piklets/pancakes I thought it should be runnier? Anyone know?

I can’t believe how long it is taking me knit the back of this jumper of Shaz’s. I thought I would be half way through the sleeves by now and I am not even up to shoulder shaping. Looking at it now, it looks too wide for Shaz. He might drown in it. And I hope I don’t run out of wool. I did swatch first and checked my gauge. I am not sure what happened. I need to double check my measurements, but I was keeping an eye on it. It’s only now that I am looking at it that it looks quite wide. 

11 March 2013 A recap of the weekend

So I went to Perth Comic-Con. I tried dressing up as a character from a book, though I need to work on the accessories, otherwise I was going for a 'Mage' look. I wore my big black cloak that my sister made a few years ago for me, and I thought I looked pretty cool. I really do need a proper staff though. 

I felt like I was one of the few people in a hand made costume. A lot of people had awesome proper ones that they had bought on the Internet  but it was full on with the accessories. I saw someone in a complete Assassin's Creed outfit. I didn't enter the competition though. I think I will only do that once I have a complete outfit. 

I did go to the Colin Ferguson Panel. He's an actor from 'Eureka' and has made appearances on the 'Geek and Sundry' Channel on YouTube. He was very funny. I hope that he comes back to Perth and encourages some of his co-workers to join him. 

Here are some Magnet pictures. He bought in a new live mouse that he was terrorising and is maybe still in the house as I saw it over the night. But hopefully he ate it in the end. Only time will tell. 

 And the cat of course always enjoying the sunshine/very warm days in Perth.

Not much happening this week. My friend is moving into her new house today, so I will probably go over there after work this week. 

I think I will take a break from sewing for a couple of weeks and get back to my knitting. 

5 March 2013 Some crafty goodness

It was a long weekend here in Perth, there were a few things on my list to complete. And what did I achieve, you may ask?? Not a lot. 

I was hoping to finish the back of Shannon's new jersey. I finished the arm-hole shaping but I have another 13cm to knit before I even get to the shoulder shaping. My bad. I am really not going to finish this before I see my sis in Melbourne. Hopefully he will get it before winter truly hits them...

The next thing on my list was to sew my costume for comic-con in Perth for this coming weekend (As in 4 days time!). As you can see, it is wearable... It is NOT finished. I have 2 more seams to finish. And then I have to fix up the neckline and hem the bottom and tidy up my cuffs. I still have to figure out my accessories too. 

Looks like there is going to be a couple of late nights this week.

You can't say that I am not trying new things and challenging myself in the craft department. My first major sewing project for an adult and I choose a full on dress and make adjustments to the original patter like the lacing on the back. 

What do you think? I will try and get a picture taken when it is finished and I am all done up. Reece is no longer coming with me, so I might have to bail up some random stranger to get a pic...

I will let you know how it turns out. Until next time peoples..

27 Feb 2003 Baking

Last night I was a bit ambitious after work and decided to bake some scones while I was cooking dinner. These are called Cheesy Beer Bites from a Scone book mum sent me. I conned Reece into helping me. 

 Before and after shots. They puffed up a bit. 

I bought some to work with me today for a morning tea snack and they were still soft and fluffy inside. Sometimes I surprise myself on how things turn out.

Another months passes me by, Feb 2013

Over a month since the last post. And I thought I was going to be better at blogging in 2013.

Well I have just discovered the app so hopefully this means there will be more posts but maybe not as tidy.

In the past 4 weeks what have I been up to?

The two big things are that I went to Adelaide for a weekend and Melbourne for 4 days.

I ducked over to Adelaide to catch up with my Auntie Nola and Walter. They are over over visiting their family from London.

Again the weather was fantastic and I got slightly sunburnt. Probably not a goo look with the wedding coming up but not much I can do about it now.

Last week we flew to Melbourne. It is all about the wedding preparations now. We can cross a few things off the list now.

Not a lot happening in the sewing department. Mum sent me a picture of her wearing the apron I made her for her birthday.

I made some cute pants which I think are meant to be a size 2. But I have nothing to compare it against.

I also finally finished PJ pants for Reece. I am definitely learning lots when it comes to sewing. I am very much the novice. Thinking about some basic lessons would be good. More about pattern adjusting and finishing.

I am going to be sewing myself a dress this coming weekend. Fingers crossed it works.

Now when I look at this list. I have been pretty busy these past 4 weeks. I know that I have taught 2 classes too at work and that is always tiring.

We have been making sourdough regularly too.

And in case you are missing knitting, I am making something for my nephew Shannon, but it isn't exciting to look at yet.

Not as exciting as the cat 'helping' me knit.