Miniature stitching and gardening

This is a little garden of alpine plants. In the middle is a viola and to the left, a miniature aquilegia. It's only about 15 cm tall. There is a cushiony patch of moss and at the back, a tiny climber which I'm told will flower in red and black!

It's looking a bit fragile at the moment - hopefully a bit of tlc will bring it round.

Here we are a couple of weeks on. The aquilegia is flourinshing! All that this scene needs is a tiny little house, don't you think?

Yes, I am a bit obsessed with making little houses. Probably because I long for a house of my own. So here is a little house ornament, complete with embroidered flower garden.

I have plans for a series of these. Maybe even some larger freestanding houses... but first I have to finish off the hundred and one projects clamouring for attention!

Including this - the tinyland firescreen, currently about 3/4 complete.

More finished projects soon... promise!

Pretties from Tamsin Cooper

It's hard to stick to a budget when Tamsin Cooper is having a sale. Look at these pretties:


Silk and velvet and beads oh my. But at up to 50% off they are almost reasonable...

Lolly colours

Some days, you just feel like painting rocks. Usually they are the days when you should be doing ten other things like the dishes, planting out seedlings, finishing a project with a looming deadline or organising your next project with a looming deadline, but instead you pull out some nice round rocks and put some coats of paint on them.

Then you paint them with little scenes of birdies and cupcakes and houses.

When they are dry you add some finishing touches to sparkle and captivate...

Then you spray with several coats of clear varnish. Because you are hasty the spray goes on too thick, and doesn't dry properly. Then it smudges and you realise you have to repaint some details. Damn.

So you repaint, respray and this time everything is perfect.

And then you have a pile of brightly painted, lolly coloured rocks to sell at the market next month.

Things to do on a sunny Sunday

Go to the Spring Show at Hagley Park
Have a walk in the botanic gardens
Weed my garden and pick some flowers
Go to Spotlight - pick out some yarn for my next crochet project
Go to Briscoes and get a new toaster
Work on my mini needlepoint
Find a patch of sunlight and bask in it
Read
Cuddle Lui

Colours of spring - hot pink

"Spring colours" are always considered to be pastels, aren't they? Not so at my place! Looking around me all I can see are vivid hot pinks, intense yellows, deep and moody blues and of course vivid green growth everywhere.

Here are some of my favourite hot pink photos from yesterday:
Pink socks on the line
Pink silver beet
Pink polyanthus
Pink buds on Miss Rose Chiffon (promises, promises)
Pink oxalis
Pink collaged magnet, flowers and ribbon scraps
Pink pincushion
Pink polys and pansies
Pink crochet thread
Pink magnolias
Pink weird lilies (these last two were taken at the botanic gardens a week or two ago)
Pink buttons (spilt hearts)

Yes, it IS spring and there's not a bunny or duckie in sight. What are your favourite spring pictures?

She loves her cat

she loves her cat
mixed media
190 x 115 mm

This one felt like it took months to complete. Probably because I started off with a completely different concept and then changed to this when it didn't work out. I have been working hard though (evidence below!) and I've even started on the next painting.



PS. You can click on these photos to see them bigger.

It IS spring!

It's spring, and here's proof! Daffodils are blooming and blossom is blossoming. The first of September was sunny and warm, and ideal for a walk beside the river.

Or a paddle and a piece of bread, if you felt so inclined.

How pretty is this little spot? I want to step into this photo and disappear forever!

I don't know what this flower is, but I like it. One of these days I want a rock garden of my very own, filled with tiny alpines and miniature bulbs.

That was just over a week ago. The weather since then has been unsettled, mostly cold and a fair bit rainy. But spring is here, I promise!

Crochet Fragments

I was having another play with fd's flickr toys and came up with this image. I liked it so much I thought it would make a good title for this post. Fragments of crochet - bits and pieces, some finished, most not, lying around in odd locations to be stumbled upon when you least expect it. "Oh - there are those flowers I was making - better finish those!"

Bits and pieces from crochet, jewellery making etc.

Here's something I did finish - the Boy Beanie from Stitch N Bitch: The Happy Hooker. It took several attempts to get it to fit Jon's head though - much more time than you would think a simple beanie would take!

Here are the Skeleton Bride and Groom! They are an amalgamation of a couple of the patterns from Creepy Cute Crochet. The bride is the Skeleton Bride and the groom is the Day of the Dead Fellow - although mine looks more like a pimp! Perhaps it's the hat - it was meant to be a top hat, but came out rather gangsta-ish...! Perhaps I should just put some gold chains on him and finish it off.


And this skullie is a pattern from Flickr member Towe My. I want to make another and put rhinestone eyes on it!

I'm also working on another she loves painting. It's slow going this time. But maybe I'll have it finished for the next post... fingers crossed!

Back online and back on track

I have had a bit of an unplanned break from my blog, as our dial up internet connection began to rapidly deteriorate and I could barely have two windows open without it crashing. Needless to say uploading photos was out of the question! A couple of weeks ago I got a broadband connection set up and eagerly sat down at the computer to connect. Everything went well until it came time to actually connect to the internet and then we hit problems... no matter how many times we tried, it failed to connect. We rang tech support and were talked through numerous network and connection screens... we entered numbers, passwords and encapsulations... still no luck. The tech support man decided it must be the phone line. He announced he would send a technician out, and we never heard anything further.

I asked for opinions from computer-savvy friends and family members, who were all as puzzled as I was. "Are you sure the user name and password are right?" asked my dad. "Yes I'm sure!" I replied. Half an hour after that conversation it hit me... even though I had slowly and clearly spelled out our username "ruthandjon", what do you want to bet that the person on the other end put in "ruthandjohn". And that's what had happened.

Anyway, we got there in the end. And I have plenty of photos to show from the past month or so! In my last post I was moaning because it had been raining every weekend. Guess what, it still is. This winter has been the wettest and most stormy that I can remember. I had a week off work at the end of July and it rained every single day! We were supposed to go away for a few days but were thwarted by flooding.


But as you can see, in between the showers there were opportunities. The garden flowers put on their finery as they waited for the kiss of sunshine.

Even the broccoli was not to be outdone!

This was a project I started on my week off, and had to finish in a bit of a hurry after I left my all-time favourite (actually one and only) pair of fingerless gloves on the bus. This pattern is from Stitch N Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker. It was quite fun to do: moderately difficult, but not super complicated. If only I could find super-fine fingering weight merino in other colours (except white and pastel baby colours), I'd make more!

I had a massive update of my flickr page yesterday and as you can see I played with fd's flickr toys as well. I have more photos to share here, but we are off to do the grocery shopping now. If you can't wait, hop over here and have a look...

In which Lui and I potter around the garden

Well, here she is. My new miniature peach tree, Miss Rose Chiffon. She is covered with the tiny beginnings of buds which will burst forth in early spring, and the fruit itself will be white-fleshed and red-tinged. I am already dreaming of jams, pies and crumbles. Hopefully mixed with apples from the two ballerinas...

Here is an interesting article if you are contemplating getting miniature fruit trees. I don't really have room for more, but in the future I want to get a cherry tree and an almond tree!

This afternoon Lui and I spent a bit of time in the garden. It was a warm afternoon, and dry! so we made the most of it. Checking on the bulbs, pulling some weeds, sweeping up.

We were happily surprised by this sweet little clump of irises! I thought it was great last year when they bloomed in August, so finding them in July is a treat.

And, now that my package has been received, I can show you what I made for the Little Critter Swap. Birdies! They spent a bit of quality time together before being cruelly separated. Purple Birdie flew off to a new home in the USA, with a melting bar of chocolate to keep her company. And Brown Birdie, well I kept him. What can I say? Look at his little feet: