Pottering along

I had written a post and put it in draft ten days ago - and here it still is today! Summer has finally been simmering and we have had some amazing weather in the last little while though this week it has cooled down again, especially at night. A sure sign to tell a nice summer day here is when our pool already shows 29degC by the time I get up ;-) Admittedly when it then rises up to 31 or even 32degC during the day, it's not all that refreshing anymore - but now that it's back to 28degC or so I feel it's cold!

The other day I had the urgent urge to reorganise parts of my home; I moved drawers, a chest, a cabinet - found an impressive amount of (very dusty) Wine and Schnaps Glasses - and now my still messy creatively organised sewing room looks like this:

Trying to be organised this year - thanks to Wendy from Sew it's Finished!

My drawers are more organised

my WIP drawer

we're getting a bit less organised here...

can you see how small my stash has gotten?

Bags and bags of scraps...

"The Pile" - mending and UFOs...

Last weekend our local Patchwork Club had their annual exhibition. As I had left my camera at home on the charger (...) I am very thankful that friends have kindly offered me copies of theirs - in the meantime though, here is Suz's post with the pics she took.

Lovely Suz had invited Rona from Layer upon Layer to come up from Auckland so we had lots of fun jabbering about quilting (while the men were just rolling their eyes). Thanks heaps to Suz for the organisation and accommodation and to Rona for travelling so far! Rona brought some of her various fabric painting supplies and we also had great fun with those. We ended with doing some microwave dying - sporting matching red hands now (must be some sort of secret club lol - Suz suggested a name to do with "tutuu" which is lent from the Maori language and usually means to muck or potter around).

Learnings:

• I need to save some money to buy Fabrico Dual Markers by Tsukeneko and Derwent Inktense Blocks
• Using more Procion powder to water results in a darker colour - yippieh!
• Just to stay on the 'save money to buy xyz' part, I also want to get my hot little hands onto some Lumi Inkodye at a reasonable price - can't wait to try that out! Please let me know if you have seen it or even tried it out. (I have seen Inkodye and the Fabrico Markers on Dharma Trading, but now I need to wait for pay day next month).
• It pays to feed my visitors first and then show them the mess I make in the kitchen with my microwave dying - not sure that anyone wants to eat at my place again;-)

Since then Suz, Miss Lottie and I had a play date at my place (kids occupied themselves - great! while we played :D) and today Suz and I had a little shopping spree at our ex-LQS ;-) Can't wait to use these batiks....

Adding to my stash!!!

I also received the remaining supplies for the Tokyo Subway Map Quilt in the mail and have laid out and pieced my first two blocks, here is the first:

My D4P has made a lot of progress, currently I am putting the sashing strips in:

Top half

with sashing strips

This week I have spent away from home for Induction to my new job as Blended e-Learning Facilitator. Lots to learn before I can start working with local schools! As it is fulltime it should be paying the bills better even though it will limit the time I have to quilt. I might just have to make up for it at night or on the weekends!

Happy Sewing!