Winter Craft

My major crafting this winter is the sampler quilt I'm making for M10. How exciting to read Pip's piece over at ever-inspirational Meet Me at Mikes about an English paper pieced quilt made by female prisoners of war in Changi prison in Singapore in World War Two. I'd just learned English paper piecing last week and completed the above block which I'll applique onto a 12" block. (Yes, my tacking threads are still in.)

Hubby and I also rewatched Tenko last year. I have such strong memories of the Stephanie Cole and Stephanie Beacham characters.

Mrs Olga Henderson pointing out the block she made for the 'Tenko' quilt as a 13 year old Girl Guide and POW in Changi, 1943.

[Image from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Oh how I wish I could have seen this exhibition! May have to invest in the book eventually;-)]

Winter Frost

I'm glad I finished these for the girls in the weekend. It is crisp, cool and clear here. -3 as I type this.

(Ravelry details.)

Winter Star

We hope that popping a few of these on our windows will brighten things up on gloomy winter days. It's not necessary today because we have sun, glorious, sun again! We're all making the most and are outside hooping, biking, skipping and drawing. Thanks for the star tutorial link, Nova.

Winter Sun

Some much needed winter sun on a Sunday morning meant I could sit outside and finish taping my homemade hula hoop! I got onto this idea from reading Sara Janssen's hooping site. I can actually hoop too! This is going to work miracles for my mummy puku;-)

All of us, bar Daddy, have our own hoop now. There was Happy Skipping thrown in for good measure.

The kids undertook a bit of chalk art a la Bert.

The Dadda is doing some much-needed bike maintenance.

All in all, a lot of contented sighing in the sunshine.

Happy Mother's Day

The Power of the Sun

Resident Eco-Geek and his red-headed sidekick made a solar oven from the instructions at Sunny Cooker. Autumn in the Hutt Valley is perhaps not the best time to experiment with this form of appropriate technology but they're having fun. The most exciting thing we've done is boil water in my cast iron fondue pot. I think we'll move on to actually cooking something in it next;-)

Memento

Hubby and I waited 21 years to see our very favourite rock band eva! They were the seminal sound of our getting together and growing up into adult years. I don't think I've ever been to another concert where all the other people were the same age and looked/dressed like us;-) And everyone knew all the lyrics and sung them loudly the whole way through. Brilliant! I guess they'd had 21 years to learn them well. So of course we had to shell out a zillion dollars for the CD of the concert so we can inflict the memory (except for the songs with the very obvious rude words) on our kids.