happy mailbox...and stuff

Some Anna Maria Horner little folks voile came today. Oh my. So soft, so silky, so pretty, so lovely, so my new favourites? Quite possibly. And SO much like liberty print tana lawns too. Best be careful when I try to quilt them. Yep, I can see another quilt in the making.



A little while ago I won a giveaway over on Tiffany's blog. This parcel of happiness turned up yesterday. Plus 2 boxes of Ginger's favourite cereal - lucky charms, and a quilt block magazine (firmly attached to my bedside table for late night reading). Thanks Tiffany - I LOVE it. That huge piece of munki munki coke travellers is going in the too precious to use box. At least until I can summon up enough strength to make the first cut.



Another too precious to use item arrived a few days ago too. This sweet little notebook made by Aneela's fair hands. How can I write in it? I should practise my handwriting and maybe one day I might be neat enough. Until then it will sit looking beautiful, and be admired daily.



Seeings as I have become obsessed with dresden plates, and am carting blocks with me everywhere I go, I needed a new pouch to store my bits and bobs in. Et voila. one new zippy pouch, beautifully adorned with a hex brooch made by Fiona (happy Australia day, Fi). Actually, if it wasn't for the hex brooch the pouch would be pretty dull. Hooray for hex brooches.



The dresden plate is nearly done. Told you I was obsessed. I am living and breathing it at the minute. No time for anything else. Or at least, I am not allowed to TOUCH another thing until it's safely at the quilters. Only one more row to go. I will blow my own trumpet, I flipping love it. I am so much in love it's hurting me. I am so damn proud of it, and I am not ashamed to say so. It's a proper, grown up quilt, and I made it. So it definitely needs quilting by a pro, otherwise I would most certainly mess it up.

Only one downside - charcoal grey and cream cats are not a good mix. NooNoo is not having this one. Not unless he gets a dye job. Does anyone know where I can get dark grey cat dye?

Auction for Haiti

Hop along to Beth's blog for a fabulous auction for Haiti - up for grabs are 2 beautiful Christmas quilts and tree skirts. I am really hoping to win something, I want to be organised for next Christmas super early. Oh, wouldn't that be cool? Let me tell you, it would be a first - my Christmas quilt never did manage to get completely finished. I'm so slack.
Go click HERE. Auction runs until Friday. Go Go Go!!!!!

lunch time today

I got some more of the fabric for the centres of my dresden plate in the mail today. It took less than a week to get here from across the pond, regular mail too - not priority or fancy or anything. That's good service for you. Thank you Mr Mailman on both sides of the pond. And thank you Hawthorne Threads.

It might not be a wise move but I am trying to eat soup and pin at the same time, and take up the kitchen counter which really should be for preparing food and not preparing quilts. There's only me and Ginge in the house, so who's going to stop me? Gosh, I am such a rebel sometimes.

craft hope

Please pop over to the etsy shop of craft hope, if you haven't been already. And check out the blog for more details on how they are raising money to help Doctors Without Borders over in Haiti. Around $7000 has been raised in just 2 days. It's amazing!

I've just donated the doll pictured above, so keep an eye out for her in the next day or so, and whilst you're at it snap up other gorgeous donated items. Or maybe donate something yourself (all the how to's are on the blog )

and it grows (plus a plea for help)

Icy, icy, icy roads. Should we go out? Nooooo, let's stay in and sew some more dresden plates.

Six blocks are finished, the others are pinned. I need 24 in total. Fun fun fun. It really is. They are so darn simple -scarily simple.

I'm still pondering over the huge block. I think it needs more of something. Miss G suggested I make it into a cat bed, and I am really quite struck by that idea. I could wear it as a hat and pretend to be a flower maybe?


Anyway, enough of my dresden plate obsession. Let's talk of serious stuff. My new year's resolution was to 'give'. Things are tighter in the Monkey household than they have been in the past, we are having to be less frivolous than before, but things are hardly terrible. I am thankful for that. Incredibly thankful. It is, therefore, heartbreaking to read about how tough life is for some families. The economic downturn has hit so many industries, and whilst the cat might have to cut down a little on his cream, the mice are scrambling for crumbs. It's cold here, and colder still in other parts of the Western World. So when I was reading about this campaign I was really struck. I know there are a myriad of different and all very worthy charities out there, but Rachel who is collecting for 'give a kid a quilt' is a friend on flickr and was generous enough to share some flea market fancy with me in the past. It was time to give back.

I have sent her one quilt, and she assures me the campaign will go on so I have promised more to come.

Please, go over to the blog. Maybe you could help? Rachel is collecting quilt tops as well as quilts, and I am sure any donations of fabric for backings or wadding would go down a treat too. Let's all try to give this year. Imagine how much we could achieve if we all pitched in together. Imagine how you would feel if you were one of those families unlucky enough to be living in their car right now. It's bitterly cold, no child should have to sleep in the cold. If you live in the Northern hemisphere, and it's chilly outside, go and sit in your car right now, with the engine off, and see how long it takes before you start to shiver. Or just stand outside for 5 minutes, imagine sleeping in that cold air. Please help.

keeping busy inside, thus avoiding the snow

The snow has continued...although we are beginning to thaw out a little (which means now we have ice instead of snow). The kids have loved it. Miss G has dressed wholly inappropriately for the most part, and has had to come inside every 5 minutes in order to get changed out of wet clothes, and into dry ones, only to head back outside to repeat the process many times over.

I am not much of a fan of the cold, wet stuff, so I've been hiding away inside, making good use of my time to start yet another quilt (add that to the list of wips from last year, I won't be counting them up though, I'll only have some kind of mental breakdown)

My mate Brioni and I decided we would make dresden plate quilts this year, using the pattern by Sarah Fielke in Material Obsession. Neither of us are ones for finishing projects before we embark on new ones, so we both got stuck in.

Me with my nice big stack of hope valley and her with a selection of different prints from different designers. I am loving the dots in hers. Loving as in I am quite jealous of them, and might try and swipe a block...

This is my first block (I am a little further along now, hopefully this will be one quilt that gets finished sooner rather than later).



The pattern calls for a ruler called the '22.5 degree wedge ruler, by nifty notions'. It's a big old thing - 13 inches long, 6 inches wide, but you only use a 4.5 inch section for each 'petal' of the plates. But I wonder how big would the plate be if you used the whole ruler, methinks to myself (and out loud to Brioni over a cup of tea or 12).

Very big, it seems. 25 inches across, in fact.....

(not quite sure what to do with this huge plate now I've made it, maybe make it into a pillow, or a table quilt, or make 3 more and have a 4 plate baby quilt? Too many possibilities)



Miss G went sledging at the weekend, and the husband was convinced she'd hurt herself and we'd get a phone call saying she had been taken to the hospital with a broken leg.

Seems he was worrying about the wrong monkey.

It was the ginger one that had the accident, tripping over whilst taking his coat off and smashing his chin into the kitchen floor at Grannie's.

So, Saturday evening was spent hanging out at accident and emergency getting his chin glued back together. He was very brave, didn't cry, and just lay there whilst the nurse cleaned him up (and I know that antiseptic stuff stings like mad, and nurses can be quite brisk with their wound cleansing - I am pretty certain I would have been whimpering).

Well, I'd better get back to it. I have a mountain of hope valley to get through, and a ginger boy requiring cuddles. It really is lovely to have the snow as a good excuse to stay inside!

and time moves on

2010 already. How'd that happen? Did you all have a great holiday period? It was the first white christmas I can remember. Apparently there was one back in the early 1980s, but I was only small then and I can't be sure I remember it. Seasons blur into one when you're little, don't they? It's still a winter wonderland here, yesterday we had around 6 inches of snow fall. It's cold, and I am dreading the heating bill when it comes. I have a feeling I'll be paying it off over the whole year.
The whole Christmas period seems to have flown by way too fast, and now seems like it might never have happened.
Miss G went back to school today, despite the heavy snow. Most of the schools in our area are closed (Ginger's included), but G's has a big team of grounds staff, and the head lives on site so if you could get to school then it was open for business. She wasn't overly impressed about it, but it's time to get back to normal.

Christmas was wonderful, lots of happy smiling faces, lots of new toys to try and find homes for in the already full toy box.

I had a little trip to London to meet up with Lorraine and Aneela. Lorraine brought gorgeous gifts too - this bag hasn't been out of use since she gave it to me. I love it!



I need to get cracking - I have a head bursting with new ideas, more pregnant friends (you know that means more quilts, right?!), and a stack of things in need of finishing. Spidey is one. This string quilt is another. Incidentally, I ordered 6 yards for the backing from etsy shop Ruth Sewing Room. It's crazy cheap, $5.22 for 2 yards of Katie Jump Rope - that's just $2.61 per yard, I couldn't have bought a really cheap fabric locally for that.



I also need to find a home for the ever growing pile of fabrics that seem to turn up at my house on a regular basis. Or I need to get sewing at a greater speed to use them up.

I was planning on showing you some of my christmas gifts, but my camera battery is dead, so I'll have to do that later. Plus my biggest and most exciting gift is hidden under a pile of snow, and doesn't look like it'll be coming out to play at any time soon. Roll on spring!