Chaletgirl

I have been working on little quilts for two swaps over the last few weeks. One for the 6″-12″ Mini Quilt Trading Swap, and one for Doll Quilt Swap #4.

I started with the Doll Quilt Swap first, you might remember the fabric I purchased at the Quilt Show..

I’m not going to tell you all about it just yet, as it was my (secret) partner’s description of her preferences that inspired me to make this quilt. I’ll wait until she receives it.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek:

I will tell you that I machine quilted this MYSELF, and am reasonably happy with the result. Which is a breakthrough, for me. That’s why I love doing these swaps, they challenge me.

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For the 6″-12″ Mini Quilt Trading Swap, my partner is not a secret (although she may not be comfortable with me revealing her name to the blogging world), but I don’t want to ruin her surprise, so I will just show you the back until she receives it:

Label inspired by Fi, my last swap partner!

Whilst I love the idea of a pet, it doesn’t really suit our family. Henry’s dermatologist gave the big thumbs down to cats and dogs, and we do like to go away as often as possible; which, to me, adds up to not enough of a commitment to take care of an animal.

So when Henry fell in love with a birdcage in a shop on Monday, I thought the least I could do was make something to go in it.

He even helped me choose the fabrics.

I am hoping he will tire of it soon, and it can go in the baby’s room. It will look so pretty against the blue wall. With a ‘Swell’ birdie, perhaps…

Thanks so much to Spool for the bird pattern. How pretty is their bird mobile?

We watched the movie Blood Diamond the other night. Whilst I enjoyed the movie, I was horrified by the storyline. The thought of all those young children armed with machine guns, drugged and fighting a war over diamonds? Trained to shoot innocent civilians including women and other children? It made me ill.

Add that to the media beat-up about the general state of the world of late, and the next few days left me with the feeling that whilst my little corner of the world is safe and comfortable, the rest of the world was screwed. And what could I, just one individual, do to change that?

Whilst I haven’t answered that question yet, here is an example of what one individual did.

He got the world dancing, and I cried many tears with the realisation that maybe things weren’t so bad if people were dancing.

Make sure your speakers are turned on, and enjoy.

I have very wise and very clever readers. And I am asking for your opinion on what you would do in this situation. I am happy for you to disagree with what I did do - I’m sure it will come up again and maybe I will be more prepared next time.

I had a friend come to visit today with her two sons, aged 22 months and 4 and a bit (a year older than Henry). We don’t see them very often, maybe once every few months, although it’s been nearly a year, I think, since they have been to our house. We’ve been going to their house whilst her youngest, was, well, young.

Unbeknownst to me, about 10 minutes before they left, whilst my friend was packing up her things and changing the youngest’s nappy, her older boy, a year older than Henry, asked if he could “borrow” a particular toy of Henry’s. Not a favourite, or a particularly expensive or loved toy. Henry apparently agreed, but, of course, he didn’t understand the term “borrow”.

The first I knew about it was when the boy put the toy in his mother’s bag, and Henry came racing in, crying, asking for the toy back. The older boy then told me that Henry had agreed to lend the toy to him and he was taking it home. Henry was quite distressed at this and cried, “no!, no!” and took the toy.

Can I add, for the record, that Henry is extremely generous with sharing his toys when we have visitors? He doesn’t have any problems sharing. I am pretty sure that my readers who know Henry will back me up on this one.

So what would you do? Would you insist that your child lend the toy?

And what did I do? I asked Henry three times, trying to gently coerce him into saying yes, if he would let the boy take this toy home and bring it back next time, and each time he cried, “no!, no!”. And of course, I could have forced him, but here’s my issue; I would never let Henry take home a toy from someone’s house. Ever. No matter how much he loved it. And I feared that this would set a precedent for my own son; that this was appropriate behaviour.

The older boy screamed and screamed and screamed at his mother to go and get the toy and he WAS taking it home. I could hear him scream all the way down the street as they drove away. I admit, I was mortified. And I wonder, did I do the right thing?

I love getting mail. Usually I get fabric in the mail, as I do most of my fabric shopping online. And that’s exciting. But look what I got today…

all the way from Donna.

I haven’t told you about our new joint quilt project. After we finished this one (which reminds me, I haven’t shown you finished pictures yet - the handsewn binding on this baby was finished during the last Copacabana weekend) we did a quick swap while we figured out the basis for our next project.

We came up with the idea of using the Katie JumpRope range of fabrics to make 12″ star blocks and they will be alternated with solid blocks of Katie fabric.

And now I have my first two blocks from Donna - don’t they look fantastic?

I’m very excited about this project. Now I just need to get started, and catch up!

I was excited last night to get back to my sewing machine and finish off a little project I started last week.

I made this from a pattern on Nested blog. It’s a great little pattern and the instructions are clear, and the illustrations excellent. And I know I sound very ungrateful when I say this, but I wanted to run it by you…

Is it too small??

The neck size for this bib is just 3 inches across. Could it really be that babies are that small? Have I forgotten already?

I looked around Henry’s room to see if there was something stuffed to put the bib on to show you the scale, but there was nothing that ‘universal’.

Who has a baby? Is three inches enough?

(I know I can make bigger ones, I can make any size now. But these are very sweet and I would like to make more tiny ones. I just want to know if they will be able to be used!)

So we went to the zoo on Monday with my friend Kelli and her two sons. We decided to do a behind-the-scenes tour which was so cool, and well worth the time and extra expense.

We fed a black rhino…

Visited the cheetah’s breeding area. Apparently this cheetah has quite the taste for toddlers. Given that Henry is a little larger than a toddler, he took a while to show any interest…

But eventually licked his lips and came in a bit closer….

Until he got as close to Henry as he could get…

I’m a sucker for a giraffe up close…

maybe not so close - that tongue is kinda long….

although his funny face makes me laugh….

Our last stop was to visit the white rhinos. My favourite was the baby….

A great tour. Highly recommended if you get to Dubbo.

Back on the regular zoo circuit, we loved the hippo….

the elephants…..

and the Galapagos Tortoise…

Um, the tortoise is on the right. The big thing on the left is me.

But I think my favourite sight was the lemurs meditating in the sun:

So there’s our tour of Taronga Western Plains Zoo. Loved it, loved it, loved it. It was really good to spend a few days with my great friend Kelli and Henry had a ball with his two favourite big boys.

For my overseas visitors, you probably know that we are in the middle of winter. What you may not realise is how mild a Sydney winter is. A cold day in Sydney would be 15 degrees Celsius or 59 degrees Fahrenheit. So whilst Sydney was pretty cold today at a maximum of 13 degrees Celsius, we weren’t in Sydney today. Henry and I were returning from Dubbo, home of Taronga Western Plains Zoo.

We left Dubbo at a kind 6 degrees. By Orange, it was 3 C (37 F) and we rounded a corner to find the landscape covered in snow. Ooooh, so pretty we thought! Then all the signs started appearing:

“SNOW AND ICE ON ROAD - DRIVE SLOWLY”

I’ll excuse you northern hemispherers while you wonder what all the fuss is about, but I am a Sydney girl and I have not the foggiest idea how to drive on snow and ice. We don’t have winter tyres - it doesn’t snow here! But I do have a 4-wheel drive and it didn’t seem to be having any problems. On we went. The snow disappeared and the temperature climbed to 4 degrees then 5 degrees and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then after Bathurst we suddenly dropped to 0 degrees (32) and the snow started to fall in a whirling snowstorm. Henry told me to “stop using the wipers, they are for rain, and this is SNOW”. He meant well, but I could have quite happily prodded him with the wiper at that stage.

Anyway, I don’t know where I am going with any of this. There’s no awful story to tell. I just kept driving, carefully, with a few tears, I will admit, and it cleared and I got back to Sydney after 5 hours and it was 13 degrees and it felt like Bermuda, even though that’s Sydney’s coldest day in 4 years.

But I did notice it was one of the top stories on the news tonight, and Henry was thrilled to see the white stuff so I just thought I would share my day with you.

Some cool animal photos coming soon.

Ah, Flickr, I see we are no longer estranged. Anyway, look what I received on Tuesday!

 This is the cutest little quilt made by Fiona. If I read this post correctly, I think these are vintage hexagons, and I love the binding, which also looks vintage. Can you see the lovely embroidery?

And the back!

And the extras!

Fiona, thanks so much for your sweet little quilt. I love it, you have done a gorgeous job. Thank you.

This one, apparently, is for Bunny!

Firstly, my husband, Henry and I are the real winners. The baby is healthy and growing perfectly and we are very blessed.

It’s just as well we had never planned to keep the gender a secret, as after the ultrasound, Henry waltzed into the waiting room and announced to the 20 odd people waiting, including my father (who had no desire to know the sex), ”I’m having a baby stista!”.

So the girl predictors were right on the mark. After a fair and equitable process whereby I cut up the comments and put them into a girl pile and a boy pile and Henry selected one from the girl pile, the winner of my little giveaway is Marina. Well done! I know that your own little girl is due any day now, so I wish you all the very best for her safe arrival. Please email me with your postal address when you have time, and some pretty fabric will be on its way to you soon.

Are we happy? Of course we are. We truly were happy with either sex. I am both thrilled and daunted to discover I have a whole new parenting relationship ahead of me, that of mother and daughter, which will always be different to that of a mother and son. Not better, just different.

I was expecting it to be a boy and I had his name ready, so I could introduce you. We have never really agreed on a girl’s name, so you will have to be patient with us as we negotiate the minefield of girls’ names and personal preferences.

Thank you for all your kind comments and best wishes.