Well, it's certainly soggy down here, soggy
and cold. We've had 100 mm of rain in the last week and lots of wind
and lots of hail. Today is drizzly and overcast, but oddly still,
we've gotten so used to roaring winds outside that the quiet is strange.
The kangaroos are soaked, they just patiently turn their backs to the rain or hide in the bush. Here's Patience with the every so cute baby Patience peeping out from the pouch. I should think being a pouch joey would be rather splendid on a cold, wet, winter's day.
I am still amazed at the amount of flowers in the winter garden. My camellia is covered in buds and the first flowers are out, they are looking a bit hail battered but I really love this flower.
The back fence area of the back garden is finally starting to thicken up and gain a bit of height. I absolutely love Diosmas this time of year, they are smothered with either pale pink or white flowers and look so cheerful. The little birds love them too as it's a very dense plant to dive into for protection.
I shifted the worm farm to just outside the kitchen, much more practical. Apart from worm castings, the other great thing is worm wee. See the green container and the bucket? They are full to brim with worm wee. I don't know that it actually is 'wee' but regardless, it's a very nourishing liquid that is a by-product of the worms breaking down the food scraps, and the rain dilutes it and washes it through to the bottom level. Normally you just turn on the tap to get the liquid but my tap broke years ago so I just hang the worm farm over the green container and it drips in. It's a great liquid fertiliser for the garden.
We had a delivery yesterday, Steve was a bit excited. We could hear the great big, old 8 ton truck off in the distance, slowly making its way up the hill, weighed down with its soggy load. What could it be?
Up goes the tip up truck, emptying out our prize into a lovely, squishy pile.
Here we are, a delicious, huge pile of cow poo from the local dairy (Michelle, I know you are thrilled :-P) Steve is as happy as a pig in shit, literally, ha ha. We order a truck full of cow poo about every two years, it's wonderful stuff, we grow everything with it. Steve uses loads of it in the vegie patch, I reckon the soil in there is at least 50% poo by now, considering the amount he has rotary hoed in there over the last five years. He's revving up to do the spring planting and has just popped out now to plant another load of potatoes, so good timing.
Speaking of spring, which it's not, there is always one tree in the orchard that likes to jump the gun and burst into spring blossom when it's still well and truly winter. Behold the almond tree, the big show-off.
Meanwhile, I've been spending most of my time inside, keeping warm by the fire, in a craft making frenzy. We have been finding our hands have been getting so cold doing chores outside in the freezing wind, so I made Steve a pair of fingerless gloves. They are a little bit loose but I'll adjust the pattern with the next pair.
Then I started making mine. One down, one to go. They are lovely and warm.
I chucked out our old wheat hot packs and made new ones. We cannot live without these, we use them every single night in bed, we both like to sleep with our hot packs nestled in the small of our backs, so comfortable.
I also made a couple of channeled hot packs. These are good if you are sitting in a chair and your back is sore, as they sit flat rather than a big bulgy bag.
I made another iPad cover, Mum, this is yours. This time I attached the embroidery after doing the fabric cover, much better, it was so much easier to line it up straight!
You may be wondering what my blog title was all about.....652 done, 58 to go. Well, that is the number of inches of slip stitch joining that is needed to connect all 42 crocheted squares together for my blanket. Today I shall finish that joining, what a task it has been! It has covered the entire dining table, which is the easiest place to do it, and I turn on my audio book, see the tiny pink iPad and baby speaker in the background, and slowly work my way through the joining. The end is in sight, then on to the border.
Til next time... xx
Our life amidst the trees, birds and kangaroos, and a peep into our attempts at living a gentle life of home grown fruit and vegetables, funny chickens and a crazy cat.
Sunday 20 August 2017
Sunday 6 August 2017
So I Don't Forget How I Made It!
This blog post is mainly for my benefit, I made something that I am ever so pleased with, and if I don't write it down I'll forget how I did it! You might find it interesting too.
You know my houses embroidery that I've prattled on about, well I finally finished it. And this time I was determined to find a use for it, instead of yet another embroidery languishing in the drawer being useless. My iPad cover is disintegrating so the lightbulb moment happened, and after much research and thinking and then doing, here it is, my new iPad cover!
Here's the inside, isn't it pretty!
And here's what's going to stop the iPad from falling out, Velcro!
It folds right back for easy use.
I can prop it up both upright,
and sideways.
Now for the how I did it, so I don't forget.
First I dismembered an unwanted hard covered book, using a scalpel I cut the pages away so just the cover was left. Note to self, make sure the spine of the chosen book is at least 1cm tall so it sits properly over the iPad.
Next, I stitched some pretty hand dyed fabric around the embroidery so there was sufficient fabric to cover the front of the book. Then I attached felt (with heavy duty Vliesofix) to the back of the fabric to pad it a little, just to the size of the book cover, but I also had a margin of unpadded fabric to fold over to the inside to glue. Note to self, it was really hard to line up the embroidery on the front doing it this way, it would be easier to do the plain fabric cover first, then perhaps glue the embroidery to that.
Then came the covering of the hard book cover, after carefully lining everything up, I lay the embroidery/fabric cover down, right side down, then sat the open book cover on it, inside up. Then I painted fabric glue thoroughly onto the extra margin of fabric and wrapped it round and glued it to the inside edge of the book cover, using multifolds in the corners and tugging it firmly so it didn't have wrinkles. A piece of protective plastic over it, then weighed the cover down to let the glue set firmly.
Then I cut a piece of different fabric, a nice stripey one, for the inside, about a centimetre smaller all round than the book cover itself (plus extra for seam)....this made it big enough to cover the rough edges of the front cover fabric that I'd just glued. I stitched together the stripey fabric to a piece of iron on Vilene (right side of stripey fabric and non-iron side of Vilene together, around the edge with a small seam, rounding the corners, leaving a gap for pulling it inside out. After pulling it inside out so the right side of the stripey fabric was on the outside, and the iron-on part of the Vilene was on the inside, and using a wooden skewer to poke out all the corners and edges neatly, I ironed it so I ended up with a neatly edged, thicker piece of fabric.
I positioned the stripey piece on the inside of the cover where I wanted it to be, then started positioning where the iPad should sit. I worked out where I wanted the Velcro to sit....I used 2 four inch pieces of Stitch and Stick Velcro, one an inch from the top of the iPad and one an inch from the bottom of the iPad. After marking the iPad with pencil, I stuck down the Velcro on the iPad. To line up the other side of the Velcro that I needed to stitch down on the stripey fabric, I velcroed the pieces together, then rubbed the backs with a bit of charcoal, then pressed that down on the fabric when positioning the iPad, that worked well, it gave me just enough of a mark on the stripey fabric to know where to sew the Velcro on, which is what I did next.
Then the stripey fabric had to be glued to the inside cover of the book. I set it in position first, then carefully, so it didn't shift, folded it back and glued the spine section first (using fabric glue), and gradually worked out from there, finishing with carefully gluing right to the edges with a bit of glue on a skewer. After smoothing the fabric out carefully, I didn't want it to shift and thus wreck the position of the Velcro, I again covered it with a protective piece of plastic, then weighed it all down for the glue to set.
That's it! I'm really happy with it, a unique and individual iPad cover. The embroidery is a bit crooked, which I was momentarily unhappy about, but in actual fact I rather like it, it's a bit quirky! And there is no problem with using Velcro, I was a bit worried it wouldn't be strong enough and envisioned the iPad sliding out of the cover and smashing, but I needn't have worried, it is very strong, quite hard to detach actually! But I'll only need to do that to take the odd photo. The only thing I need to start remembering is to press the top button of the iPad when I'm finished to turn off the screen, I'm used to my magnetic cover doing that automatically.
And if you are still reading, then I have to announce that the 42 crochet squares are complete! Well, except where that white space is ha ha, I decided to replace one that has been bugging me, it's almost finished.
The joining of the squares has begun! I am joining with a slip stitch join and liking the look of it very much. It is a little slow to do but worth it, it sits nice and flat. It was suggested to do the join in the same colour as the outer row of the squares, which are all the same, but when I did a test join of the same colour, Parchment, then did another test join of my favourite colour, Sage, I liked it much better using Sage. It gives all the squares another tiny border and I like that effect, I love stripes!
This joining will keep me out of mischief for a while!
You know my houses embroidery that I've prattled on about, well I finally finished it. And this time I was determined to find a use for it, instead of yet another embroidery languishing in the drawer being useless. My iPad cover is disintegrating so the lightbulb moment happened, and after much research and thinking and then doing, here it is, my new iPad cover!
Here's the inside, isn't it pretty!
And here's what's going to stop the iPad from falling out, Velcro!
It folds right back for easy use.
I can prop it up both upright,
and sideways.
Now for the how I did it, so I don't forget.
First I dismembered an unwanted hard covered book, using a scalpel I cut the pages away so just the cover was left. Note to self, make sure the spine of the chosen book is at least 1cm tall so it sits properly over the iPad.
Next, I stitched some pretty hand dyed fabric around the embroidery so there was sufficient fabric to cover the front of the book. Then I attached felt (with heavy duty Vliesofix) to the back of the fabric to pad it a little, just to the size of the book cover, but I also had a margin of unpadded fabric to fold over to the inside to glue. Note to self, it was really hard to line up the embroidery on the front doing it this way, it would be easier to do the plain fabric cover first, then perhaps glue the embroidery to that.
Then came the covering of the hard book cover, after carefully lining everything up, I lay the embroidery/fabric cover down, right side down, then sat the open book cover on it, inside up. Then I painted fabric glue thoroughly onto the extra margin of fabric and wrapped it round and glued it to the inside edge of the book cover, using multifolds in the corners and tugging it firmly so it didn't have wrinkles. A piece of protective plastic over it, then weighed the cover down to let the glue set firmly.
Then I cut a piece of different fabric, a nice stripey one, for the inside, about a centimetre smaller all round than the book cover itself (plus extra for seam)....this made it big enough to cover the rough edges of the front cover fabric that I'd just glued. I stitched together the stripey fabric to a piece of iron on Vilene (right side of stripey fabric and non-iron side of Vilene together, around the edge with a small seam, rounding the corners, leaving a gap for pulling it inside out. After pulling it inside out so the right side of the stripey fabric was on the outside, and the iron-on part of the Vilene was on the inside, and using a wooden skewer to poke out all the corners and edges neatly, I ironed it so I ended up with a neatly edged, thicker piece of fabric.
I positioned the stripey piece on the inside of the cover where I wanted it to be, then started positioning where the iPad should sit. I worked out where I wanted the Velcro to sit....I used 2 four inch pieces of Stitch and Stick Velcro, one an inch from the top of the iPad and one an inch from the bottom of the iPad. After marking the iPad with pencil, I stuck down the Velcro on the iPad. To line up the other side of the Velcro that I needed to stitch down on the stripey fabric, I velcroed the pieces together, then rubbed the backs with a bit of charcoal, then pressed that down on the fabric when positioning the iPad, that worked well, it gave me just enough of a mark on the stripey fabric to know where to sew the Velcro on, which is what I did next.
Then the stripey fabric had to be glued to the inside cover of the book. I set it in position first, then carefully, so it didn't shift, folded it back and glued the spine section first (using fabric glue), and gradually worked out from there, finishing with carefully gluing right to the edges with a bit of glue on a skewer. After smoothing the fabric out carefully, I didn't want it to shift and thus wreck the position of the Velcro, I again covered it with a protective piece of plastic, then weighed it all down for the glue to set.
That's it! I'm really happy with it, a unique and individual iPad cover. The embroidery is a bit crooked, which I was momentarily unhappy about, but in actual fact I rather like it, it's a bit quirky! And there is no problem with using Velcro, I was a bit worried it wouldn't be strong enough and envisioned the iPad sliding out of the cover and smashing, but I needn't have worried, it is very strong, quite hard to detach actually! But I'll only need to do that to take the odd photo. The only thing I need to start remembering is to press the top button of the iPad when I'm finished to turn off the screen, I'm used to my magnetic cover doing that automatically.
And if you are still reading, then I have to announce that the 42 crochet squares are complete! Well, except where that white space is ha ha, I decided to replace one that has been bugging me, it's almost finished.
The joining of the squares has begun! I am joining with a slip stitch join and liking the look of it very much. It is a little slow to do but worth it, it sits nice and flat. It was suggested to do the join in the same colour as the outer row of the squares, which are all the same, but when I did a test join of the same colour, Parchment, then did another test join of my favourite colour, Sage, I liked it much better using Sage. It gives all the squares another tiny border and I like that effect, I love stripes!
This joining will keep me out of mischief for a while!
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