Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone. 

May your day be filled with happiness.

Have a good one.

Happy Summer Solstice

 Summer Solstice this year is at
Saturday, 21 December 2013, 17:11 UTC

This is cute, but what I always think of is the fact that it is the longest day of the year, and from here in, the days are going to get shorter and shorter. The birds in the garden are currently waking up at 3:30 and making a joyful noise and bragging about the worms they have caught. :D

I have always liked the summer solstice as it marks the point where Christmas is just around the corner.   

The whole thing about being brought up in the southern hemisphere is that all of the symbols used to show what the middle of winter feast were just weird. The concept of needing to celebrate surviving the depths of winter, when it is amazingly warm outside required just a little more imagination. 

Thinking about it, in this modern world that we live, even if you are in the northern hemisphere in the depths of winter, you can still pick up your favourite pineapples from the grocery store. 

So let's collectively think of our long ago ancestors that sat in cold caves and had to celebrate surviving the depths of winter. 

Last year this time, we were all waiting for the end of the world as we knew it. Well I have had an amazing year and filled it will a whole lot of living. 

Happy summer or winter Solstice and I hope you have a good one.

Cute Date

So that gives you 9:10 11/12/13 this only works as we always have the dates shown as dd/mm/yy. Anyway is is just a cute bit of nonsense.

Have a good one. 

Numbers abound

 Quilting has been progressing at a pleasing pace. I use YLI quilting thread and as you can see from the next photo, I am about to finish a second spool of 1200 yard thread.
As is my want this sparked off a whole lot of number gathering. I have now been quilting for a whole five years .. well three weeks short of it as I started this flurry of making bedding on the 1st of January 2009.

In that time I have used up 2400 yards of YLI thread. 2252 yards of cotton thread to piece the quilts and about 900 yards of other quilting thread that I used on my first quilt. If I just stick to the YLI thread then this is a whole 2 km of thread that has been stitched.

2 km of 2400 yards sounds a lot, but when you see a visual representation, it becomes even more amazing. In structures you would need this repeat of these landmarks to get to 2 km.
 This bridge is 2 km.

 You would need 2 of these scenes to make up the quilting thread used.
If we now talk about all of the thread that I have hand stitched a whopping 5552 yards of cotton.  This is 5 km or 3.15 miles. No wonder I have calluses on my fingers.

Have an amazing day.

Animated Dear Jane

Whilst messing with the movember pictures I thought I would quickly do one of my Dear Jane.

Have a good one.

Movember is a memory.

Movember is a memory and so is the moustache. Here is a quick gif to remember it by.

Have a good one!

Oh ho ho it is December!

December is here and the year slithers to an end. I have much hope for December. My youngest starts her summer holidays on Tuesday; It is my husbands birthday and there is always the fun of Christmas to look forward to.

The name of December is of course confusing as the it says that it is the 10th month of the year. Well this is the 10th month of the Roman calendar, which I suppose is fitting as they were the ones that initiated the feast that we are all so happy to participate in. 

Progress has been made on the quilting of my Dear Jane. I managed to finish quilting 81 blocks. This makes a cute 9 by 9 block. It sounds great until you realise there are still 200 blocks to go. 

My husband and I also take time off work in December, so I am sure that I will be able to quilt! I must make sure that I have enough fun TV shows to watch whilst I do this. I really enjoy

watching silly history shows whilst quilting; It has brought to mind a question as to why there has never been a quilting tradition in South Africa. I come from a family that were frontiers people and yet the only artefacts that have been saved are lace and embroidery. The one thing may be that Africa is too darn hot to need quilts or maybe that ladies were too lazy to actually create some.

Hope everyone is ready to have a great December.

Happy Thanksgiving!

To one and all, happy Thanksgiving. 

 Hope you make delicious pies.

And an amazing Turkey.

 Hopefully with a bit of time to stitch.

Hope you have an awesome celebration and are surrounded by people you love.







Hope all of your favourites are part of the meal.

Have a good one.

Dr Who ... Happy 50th Anniversary

Congratulation to the Dr Who people on their 50 year anniversary.

I have spend may an hour watching Dr Who and I can see why it has been able to endure for 50 years.

I think we could all learn a few lessons from the Doctor. Firstly there is nothing wrong in re-inventing yourself. And keep the things that plague you to be either really scary or downright amusing.

All quilters should watch this as it gets down to the fabric of life.  

I am happy to see that the program has soared to huge popularity as I feel the script writers of this program always keep it fresh.

Here is my favourite Scene.

November after the rain

Progress on my Dear Jane is going amazingly well this week. After the rain the garden is looking amazing so here are some more pictures.

Have a good one.

Colours of an African November

I looked around the garden and was amazed at the amount of purple and blues that make up our November garden. Here is a whole mess of pictures.
Bougainvillea

 Pink hibiscus

African killer bees - they live in our chimney.

A blue and an orange - the orange is a watsonia
Jacaranda trees.

A lemon adding a dash of yellow.

Hydrangea and Plectranthus

African violets

So the next time you see African scenes depicted in burnt browns and oranges, I am sorry to break your preconceptions but actually softer colours dominate the scenery.

Have a good one.