Joyous January!

First, a sneak peak at one of the challenges I've been working on!:

Detail

Detail

It's all finished now and I'm ready to send off photos for the deadline!

January has been wonderful! We’ve had so much rain that everything is lush and green and thankfully it hasn’t been too hot; we had a weekend away at Bellingen on the motorbike (we didn’t get wet this time!) We stayed at Casa Belle which is a wonderful piece of Paradise in the Bellinger Valley just inland of Coffs Harbour in the north east of the state of NSW! This is our 3rd stay in 3 or 4 years and we just adore it! If you’re planning a visit to Australia or are in Australia and looking for somewhere to stay in this area, we can highly recommend it!

We went on another organised bike run yesterday - a perfect riding day; I had a shopping day in Newcastle (about 4 hours drive away) with my eldest daughter (Kat) last week and bought some much needed clothes, shoes and underwear!; My youngest 2 children have arrived home from Christmas hols with their father interstate; and on top of all of that I’ve been busy working on challenges! Not so much studio cleaning and redecorating happening yet but the year is yet young! I'm harvesting Button Squash, Lebanese Cucumbers & 'Jack Be Little' Pumpkins (soooo cute!) from my vege patch (seeds were all from Eden Seeds - non hybrid, old traditional, open pollinated).

Here is the first of my ATC swaps. I'm not 100% happy with it but it's growing on me! It's just so different to the other entries posted so far- which are all divine!

Here is the link to Lenna Young Andrews Creative Swaps website with updates on this swap.

This is a little piece of needle weaving in situ on a piece of black felt that I did in front of the telly the other night. There is a photo and tutorial of the technique on this lovely blog: Creative Dabbling I came across the other day! Click here to go to the tutorial.

Needle Weaving on Felt

Needle Weaving on Felt

I couldn’t immediately lay my hands on my embroidery hoop to weave onto fabric and I was itching to try this sooooooo I decided to use the felt as a base instead with very successful results. The instructions are for a brooch but I may turn this one into a necklace (I’ve been doodling ideas for fabric necklaces in my sketchbook and jumped on this technique when I saw it!) Thank you Erica for wonderful instructions!

Erica dabbles with lots of different techniques (like someone else I know!) and I'm enjoying her blog. I've just 'met' Erica and realised it is her selvage quilt on the front cover of the latest Down Under Quilts magazine! Congratualations! Click here to go to Erica's blog entry about the cover and a further link to the article!

'Black' Iris, Herbs and Vegies

The dark iris buds have opened!

They are such a dark velvety purple and absolutely gorgeous!

Here's another yellow one. I love the surprises I’ve been having each day as the buds show colour and I find out which I planted where!

My favourites are pink irises….. but I’m fairly sure I don’t have one. I’ll need to keep an eye out at the nursery….!

We have 3 old and very heavy concrete laundry troughs which were located in various places in our huge house yard. They had been used as garden pots by the previous owners. Whilst Jon’s boys Ben and James are here we utilised their extra brawn to move them all into the vege patch, where I will turn them into herb gardens! They are all double troughs, so I have the equivalent of 6 new large pots! I added alpaca poop, compost and mulch to the soil. I’ll give them a week or so to fester nicely in the warmth and wetness before planting them up! It'll be nice to keep the herbs close together and they look great along the fence of the vegie patch...

The beans I planted a week ago aren’t up yet… hopefully they won’t be too much longer! The peas and snow peas are starting to produce… so we've been munching as we've been working. I don't think I've ever actually got fresh peas shelled, cooked and served to the table!

On the road again tomorrow; I’m driving the boys back home. I'll travel an extra hour to go to a large art store to get a few supplies!