I should begin by clearing up what seems to be a misconception from my previous post. I didn’t mean to imply that South Africans who “have” don’t donate or do charity work. They do a tremendous amount, it’s just that the need here is so great that it’s overwhelming and charity on it’s own isn’t going to fix the problem.

You may remember that I suggested the guild have a quiltathon and donate the resulting quilts to charity. Well, that is happening on the 15th of September, but my friend F has already finished 5 quilts. Due to the on-going guild drama she won’t be there and this is her contribution.

I thought you might like to see the quilts.

The diamonds are mini-log cabins set on point (centre square was cut one inch).

The centres are 9 patches made up of 1 inch squares!

Cute hey?

and lastly,

This last quilt was made out of donated blocks that F fitted together.

Really don’t want to go on and on about it, but I went to my last guild meeting yesterday. The attitude of the remaining committee members, and they way they treated me after the meeting when the other ladies had gone home, really just confirmed in my mind that my resignation from the committee was totally the right move to make!

Well, it’s back to work for me. This week is going to be a write off craft wise. I have to go into the office 3 times, and commuting really eats up the free time. Not to mention that I’ll be in the office during the hours when I’m normally not working, and will then get home and need to work my shifts. Good thing I enjoy my job…

Thank you for the nice words about my new ‘do’. I’m rather pleased with the second cut. I jinxed myself with the weather though, it’s been cold and wet (really cold) since I posted about ‘T-shirt weather’. I find winter very hard here, mostly because every time I drive in the car I feel helpless and just want to cry, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the poverty and homelessness that is so visible, and contrasts so strongly with the extreme wealth that is around. I don’t talk much about these sorts of things because I don’t want people to think I’m criticizing. I know I’m very much a foreigner here, and that the country has made great strides in the last few years, but winter leaves me feeling like I should do more, I just don’t know what.

Ok, on to other things. One of the good things to come out of the whole guild trauma is that I’ve made a couple of lovely friends. One of them, F, is fabulous. She is a prolific quilter and does the most amazing things with scraps, I mean tiny scraps!

Last week I visited her for a sewing day - I love sewing at her place, she lives in an apartment overlooking the ocean and it’s so peaceful. Anyway, F had told me that she had been sewing together some blocks for me as her leaders and enders.

She started with the centre squares at 1 inch cut, none of the strips are wider than one and a quarter inches!! I was floored. They are just stunning and all from fabric that most people would place in the rubbish bin as being too small to work with. I’m going to be setting them square in a square with a plain white fabric then I’ll lay them out and see what’s next. Aren’t they awesome?!

These are not the smallest stuff that F works with either, she does foundation piecing of the tiniest scraps you could imagine, into crazy patchwork and then stitches onto them with a magnifying glass and gold thread. I’ve asked permission to come back with a camera to take pictures to show you and it has been granted. Ironically, F has the largest stash of anyone I know. She has more fabric in her apartment than some of our local quilt store owners have in their shops, I’ve told her if she keeps working with her tiny scraps she’ll never get to the good stuff that she’s been buying

F also dropped off some quilts today for the quiltathon (yes we have completed quilts before the day - they do things very differently here) I’ll take some pictures outside when the weather is better. Again, they are scrap quilts with centres made of tiny, tiny pieces.

Life has been a bit crazy here the last few weeks, and blogging and blog reading have suffered, which makes me very sad, but I can’t spend all of my off hours in front of the computer. I’ve managed to fit in some sewing though. I’m working on a mat to go under the laptop and sewing machine, it’s all made out of scraps. It was to be unveiled at the scrap challenge for the guild in November, but since the September meeting will be my last one I’m trying to at least get the top done by Monday. I’ve also been working on the quilt for Araminta, I screwed up with the sashing though and will need to unpick and trim it - I tried to ease it to fit and it got very wavy…

Well I’ve got half an hour before I have to go back to work. Hopefully the kidlet will stay asleep long enough for me to peruse a few more blogs.

Have a great day, and thanks for stopping by.

Ruth

Can someone please tell me where time has gone?

Milestone 1: Yesterday I took this picture:

Gorgeous Girl standing on her own two feet long enough for me to take her picture! What, do I hear you ask, was the great treasure which brought Gorgeous Girl to her feet?

Her favourite thing…

Scrap paper!

Milestone 2: This post also marks 300 posts on this little blog. I can’t believe I’ve had that much to say (you can all stop laughing now). Thank you to all of you for coming on this little journey with me, both commenters and lurkers. I’ve had a great time so far, hopefully I’ll stay interesting for at least another 300 posts.

I had my haircut on Monday. I went to the usual salon, but not my usual guy. He didn’t blow dry my hair, which is ok by me because then I get to see what it will look like in my normal life, and when I left the salon I was ok with it, but by the time I got home and it was dry…well let’s just say I was less than impressed.

It made me feel very middle-aged. So I did something most unlike me instead of complaining to Gorgeous Man about it for the next 10 days little while, I rang my regular stylist and explained the situation to him. He very kindly arranged for me to come in at a time when the first stylist wouldn’t be there (I didn’t want to hurt his feelings) and recut it.

It’s not the look I was after, but I can live with it, and have decided to embrace the curl.

and this one just because I like it:

and it’s rare for me to like a photo of myself. Gorgeous Girl is wearing a shirt that I appliqued the flower on. The fabric for that came from a bag of scraps from my next door neighbour just before we moved here. It is truly vintage. Her father owned a fabric store way back when - she is now retired - and some of the fabric still has the shillings and pence price tags stapled to it. I’ve got lots of plans for that fabric - now to just find some time!

Milestone 3: Today was the first day in many months that it’s been warm enough to wear a T-shirt! Bring on spring!!

My ‘helper’ has decided that she wants to type too, so blogging time is over. Craftiness again soon. Have a great day, and thanks for stopping by.

So instead of typing a nice blog post last night showing you the results of my weekend of sewing like a mad woman, Gorgeous Man and I played pass the screaming baby. She was like I’ve never seen her before, and it took nearly 2 1/2 hours to settle her down.  I know we are very spoiled and a lot of babies are like that all the time, but WOW. Finally worked out that she must be teething, and once she had the teething ring she calmed down quite a lot.

By the time she was soundly asleep in our room we were too scared to go to bed in case we woke her up for round two, so we ended up sleeping on the camping mattresses in the living room. I’m a little zonked today

This morning she has been back to her usual happy self, which is a huge relief!

OK, on to the sewing. You all know I have organised a quiltathon for my guild. Well I thought we’d all just turn up and sew, but the guild wanted to be more organised than that and so we have been making blocks in advance. Last weekend I worked on these:

and this weekend I worked on these:

There’s all sorts of fabric in these, all of it was donated by the women in the guild,

polycotton, local quilting fabric that everyone used before the US imports became available, furnishing fabric, sheeting, good quality quilting fabric and so the list goes on. Because I am cheap frugal, I also unpicked the trimmings from the white blocks to add to the black ones. I’ve still got more of the black to trim down.

I’ll be taking the extra white strips to the next guild meeting to see if I can get a few more ladies to sew some blocks before the day. I’ll spend next weekend sewing too and then take whatever is left over to the guild meeting and hand that out too. September 15 is the big day of the quiltathon and then my association with the guild will end for the year.

I had to go to the committee meeting (even though I have resigned) because I said I’d finish the quiltathon off. Well that was interesting. They all had their printed agenda’s that had be sent out 6 days before the meeting. The meeting confirmed my desire to leave the committee. There are some very nice ladies on it, but one of them was particularly hostile. OK, enough ranting about that…The quilt blocks are pretty.

Finally to finish: Reason #46 why you need a stash of fabric (yes Kate, I admit I have a stash)

Baby barrier to stop the child going into the entry way (that we never use) and playing with the cat food/litter.

A while ago I showed some pictures of our helper wearing Gorgeous Girl, and Starfish (sorry, no link - password protected) asked how on earth she put Gorgeous Girl onto her back.

Well, since I haven’t done a lick of crafting this week, what with the Sunday shift at work and doctors appointments etc I thought I’d show you how it’s done.

First put blanket and baby onto your back.

Then,

lean forward and put the blanket over the baby and tie a knot.

Fold up the bottom of the blanket and tie another knot.

Voila, one happy baby!

I haven’t tried this yet, I’m too scared that the knots will come undone!

Today is Wednesday, which means it is knitting for me day. I’m off to knit on my second sock for a few minutes before I have to start work again. The good news is that I don’t do the 7 - 9 pm shift on a Wednesday so I’m hoping to get the sashing attached to Gorgeous Girls quilt tonight.

Pictures of that in the next post with any luck. I’ve also managed to trim a few more string blocks which were donated at the guild meeting on Monday. When I’ve trimmed all of them I’ll lay it out and take a picture.

Thanks for all of your comments about my guild situation. Seems to be a common problem with guilds. I thought very hard about my course of action and have decided to resign from the committee and take a break from the guild. I’ll try again in the new year when there is a new committee in place. Most of the women there are lovely, and having the guild to look forward to each month has been good - especially when I have been feeling a little lonely or homesick.

I was going to resign from the guild effective immediately, but I decided to see the quiltathon through. It was my idea, and I feel some obligation to it. Besides, I know that it will probably die away if the two of us on the committee that were the strongest force behind it aren’t there.

I’ve been sewing for it in preparation for the day - I turned these:

Into these:

The first colour is more accurate.

These were really fun to do and I’ve just been gifted with a whole stack of muslin so I’ll be doing some for me in the near future. Probably with strips all the same width though. These blocks were a mix of my own and donated fabrics.

I’ve also made some more straight strip blocks, and packaged colour-coordinated kits for the day, and put together some 1 and 1/2 inch strips into sets that the ladies can take home and then bring back on the day. The idea is then that all the blocks will be put together and randomly sewn into a quilt top.

I sewed the buttons onto the charity sweater today.

I’m really pleased with how it turned out. I am sadly behind in my committment to 25 things for Charity this year.

Well it’s late and I’m tired so I will leave you with this picture of Gorgeous Girl. She loves feeding herself pasta.

This is the aftermath.

And, simply because she is so darned cute - here is Gorgeous Girl caught in the act of eating paper again.

There has been reading:

2008 Book List

26. Yoga School Dropout - Lucy Edge - a travel book about her trip to India in search of enlightenment. It was OK

27.  In Her Hands - Craftswomen Changing the world - Paola Gianturco and Toby Tuttle - this was interesting. It looked at women in the developing world who were earning a living through their craft, and in the process raising the status of women and achieving education for their children.

I haven’t forgotten about the pictures of how to wear your baby African style, I just wanted to show some crafty stuff today.

We have all been visited by the dreaded lurgy here at Ruth’s Place, after a week of feeling thoroughly miserable (Gorgeous Girl included) we are feeling halfway human again. Apart from those dreadful hacking coughs that winter colds leave behind.

Unfortunately, the sleep training has been undone by her being sick and we are going to need to start again. *sigh*

But fear not! There has been crafting. The cardigan for the local hospital has been blocked and is waiting for the addition of buttons. I found the cutest ones yesterday - now to find time to sew them on. Pictures when buttons are attached. I think they are really going to make the piece pop.

I’ve also been sewing scrap blocks together for the quiltathon. More straight strips and some that are going to be cut on the diagonal at 6 and 1/2 inches. I was going to show you a picture here, but wordpress has done something screwy with the image editor. As a IT support person myself, I went and looked in their support pages for an answer. Lots of posts from users asking about the problem, but so far not a single company response - so pictures will have to wait…

Sad story:

I don’t think I’ll be seeing the quiltathon through to it’s conclusion. There was MAJOR drama in the guild committee this week. Some seriously nasty emails circulating about the guild committee chair from the chair lady. Totally silly, one of the accusations - she hadn’t circulated an agenda in advance of the meeting! I think the phrase “taking ourselves entirely too seriously” applies here. So they had a big meeting today, which I couldn’t attend because I was working. And the chairlady J, and also my best friend on the committee,  resigned. I sent a prepared statement to say that if J resigned I would be handing in my resignation effective after the quiltathon.  I don’t want to work on a committee where I’ll be worried about what the other members are saying behind my back. However, I figured since the quiltathon was my idea I should see it through.

BUT

Apparently at the meeting the issue of Gorgeous Girl was again raised. I seriously don’t need that sort of drama in my life. Quilting is one of the few adult things for myself that I do with other adults. It’s my fun time. So I’m going to go to the next meeting to see what is said about the outgoing chairlady and to see if I can find a replacement webmaster for the guild’s website. I’ll also be taking all of the blocks I’ve sewn so far and the donated fabric so if there is any issue at all I can wash my hands and shake the dust off my feet.

The three of us are planning on forming our own sewing group, and I think that will be lots more fun than the guild.

I also had pictures of my latest quilting wip. Somehow all of my sashing blocks have ended up a 1/4 of an inch out, and so I need to trim and resew, but I’m waiting until I’m not sleep deprived to do that.

Oh yes, a few of you asked how my helper got Gorgeous Girl onto her back to carry her African style. I took some in progress shots for you and will post them next time. (If WordPress will let me).

Forgot to mention the other day that the pictures from the Quilting Guild’s show are up on their website. If you are interested in seeing what South African quilters are doing you can see some examples here. Click on the show tab in the menu.

Yesterday I had to head in to the office for the day. One of our Execs from the US office was out and he wanted to meet with the all the people in our department. Then we got to go out to a fabulous Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. The restaurant had AMAZING views of Table Mountain. Unfortunately, my camera batteries were busy charging, so no pics.

Thanks for all the feedback on the sweater. I’m going to continue (since the mother-to-be tells me that she doesn’t think it’s too girly), but I’ll leave the sleeves until I know the sex, and leave the decorative edging off if the baby is a boy.

No new sewing or knitting to show. I’m trying to get caught up with my blog reading and Gorgeous Girl is not having a good day as far as napping goes. She’s perfectly happy at the moment, but napping isn’t on the agenda.

I keep forgetting to update my reading list:

2008 Book List

25. Golden Deeds by Catherine Chidgey

Oh, yes, I’ve finally given in and joined f@ceb@ok. Love the scrabulous application

I mentioned that on Tuesday I spent some time with a friend sorting out the fabric that has been donated for our quiltathon. We’ve had some fabulous stuff donated (orphan blocks and beautiful fabric) and F had already sorted the nicest stuff into kits for quilts - I bought a kit home with me to make a start before the day… but we were left with a lot of odds and ends. Sidebar - F is my inspiration, she’s the reason I’m currently cutting the smallest of my scraps into one inch squares - her quilts are stunning!

Anyway a fair bit of the donated fabric is not, how shall we put this? Quality. There’s some crepe and some polycotton, furnishing fabric etc. Some we put straight into bags to be given to the ladies that make African dolls for the tourist trade - they can use them to dress the dolls. The rest we cut into kits to make blocks. I sewed some up last night. These are going to be true scrap quilts.

These are true scraps. The idea is that each lady in the guild make 4 blocks before the day and bring them then put them in a big pile in the middle of the room and use blocks from that pile to make 4 patches. These are the examples to show to guild ladies. I think they will be fine sewn together.

I’m back to my ‘Days of the week’ crafting now that my big hand quilting project is out of the way. Thursday is sew from my list of miscellaneous items that I want to make. Those of you who know me well won’t be surprised to know that it’s alphabetised. So the current project is an Advent calendar - I was making good progress until Gorgeous Girl had a meltdown.

The pockets are going to be some blocks I won from one of Kate’s giveaways. (I have to admit that I’m kind of worried that it’s July and I’m still in the As).

In addition to the Days of the week projects I’m also trying to make sure that I spend at least half an hour a day working on a quilting project. I work a 7 pm to 9 pm shift and it’s a good way to unwind before bed (I work from home, so it’s only 4 steps from the computer to the sewing machine). I looked at my wish list of quilts I want to make the other day and discovered that at my current rate of quilt completion I’ll need to live to 160 to get them all done.

Anyway here is a sneak peak of the current quilt in progress.

Finally, a question. I’m making this sweater for a baby - sex unknown

Be honest, do you think it’s too girly? I’m making it in size 6 - 9 months. Feedback greatly appreciated! I’m spending half of my time thinking ‘it’s fine’ and the other half thinking ‘too girly’ and it’s driving me nuts!

After what seemed like weeks of uninterrupted rain (so much rain that I went out and bought a clothes drier to get Gorgeous Girl’s nappies dry) Sunday was a beautiful winter day.

Gorgeous Man and I bundled Gorgeous Girl into the car and decided to take a trip along the coast to Rooi Els. Rooi Els (if I understand correctly, means Red River, and the river, where it meets the sea is certainly red from all of the tannins flowing from the fynbos).

Usually the sea has quite large swells, but on Sunday it was like glass.

I took this from the window of the car, so please excuse the blurry bushes in the foreground. Whale migration season is beginning and we saw a whale from the car - that is always very cool.

We went for a short walk.

We would have walked further, but Gorgeous Girl got a bit fussy.

Here is some of the scenery.

Fabulous mountains on one side and sea on the other.

Gorgeous Man spotted a bird that he had been wanting to see for ages, so Gorgeous Girl and I sat down to wait while he went to see if he could get closer.

There were also proteas out. I love proteas - there is such a huge variety.

This was the view from the mountain.

Across the bay towards Cape Point.

Finally, on the way home we stopped to get a shot of the snow on the mountains.

Right at the very top if you look closely.

Yesterday I spent some time with a quilting friend sorting through fabric that has been donated for our charity quiltathon in September. We cut up a few kits so that some of the ladies can pre-sew blocks before the day, then just assemble them into tops on the day. Pictures of that in the next post. Work on Gorgeous Girl’s quilt is also progressing nicely so I’ll lay those blocks out and get shots of it too.

And I’ll have a knitting question for all the knitters out there. Hopefully it won’t be a week before I get to post again.

As far as blog reading goes, I’m very behind. I’m lucky to be getting to all my blogs once a week. Guess that’s a sign that I need to cut back… but it’s so hard!