Owl Sculpture/Bird Bath

I recently had a query about the progress of my owl sculpture (Owl). The owl progressed so far on Day 1 and then sat ignored in the garage for months. I was side-tracked by other things, but mainly I was deterred because of the amount dust the carving produces. Finally, I decided, if I wasn't going to "finish" the sculpture, I should just use it. I'm happy to say, the local birds don't realise it's supposed to be more 3D than it is.

To create the bird bath, I put a heavy duty stake in the ground, with about 6 inches of so showing above the ground. I drilled a matching hole in the centre of the bottom face of the block. This prevents wind or over enthusiastic birds (or the neighbour's cat :-( ) knocking the bath over.

On the top face, I drilled a similar hole. The bath is large plant pot saucer, with a central drainage hole. A large bolt sits through the hole and into the top of the owl. The bolt is silasticed (plastic glue for sealing water-tight) to the saucer.

Showing a few chips and bumps due to neglect in the garage - one of the reasons I decided he needed to be used in the garden, finished or not.

In this photo you can just make out the blob of silastic around the central bolt, holding the saucer to the top and creating a water-tight bird bath.

The locals like my owl

Idul Fitri

Like most Westerners, I don't know much about Islam. Unlike many, I don't think what I see on the nightly news or read in the paper qualifies me to claim that I know a lot. From the media I gain a very biased view, regardless of which brand of Islam we're talking about. Unlike a lot of my cultural compatriots, I have lived side-by-side with Moslem families, I have attended school with Moslem students, I have shared in their celebrations, including Idul Fitri.

Idul Fitri is the Indonesian (and possibly the Malay) spelling of the name of the feast that ends Ramadan. Ramadan is the Moslem holy month of fasting. Like Christmas in the Christian tradition, Idul Fitri is celebrated with a mix common themes and unique traditions throughout the world.

In Indonesia, where I experienced Idul Fitri, one of the common traditions is for individuals to greet each other with the phrase "mohon maaf lahir dan batin", which literally means "Please forgive (me) outwardly and internally". I was told it was a request for forgiveness for the intentional and unintentional hurts of the past year.

One of the things I appreciate about Ambon, where I lived, is that it is not only the Moslems who offer this phrase on Idul Fitri. Others who are not Moslem will offer Idul Fitri greetings to their Moslem friends, including this request for forgiveness.


I know some may roll their eyes and say, "Oh, it's just phrase. It doesn't mean anything." blah-blah-blah. Maybe, maybe not. The individuals I know offer it with a sincere heart that genuinely seeks to let go of the past and move forward.Wouldn't it be nice if just once in a while we could all put aside our religious and philosophical differences, ask for forgiveness of real and perceived hurts, and move on?

Game Playing

There's a game being played in our family. The others set it up, leave for the day, and I play it by myself. I'm not really enjoying it, so I'm not sure who is enjoying it. The game is called, "Hide mum's espresso cup." This is how it works.

If mum hasn't washed her cup, the game cannot be played unless someone does some washing up. If mum has washed her cup, the game may proceed. The object of the game is to send mum on a merry chase for her cup. It is very simple - for those setting it up - simply put the cup in a different place every day. I think I'm winning; I think the number of I'm-not-sure-where-to-put-this-I'll-put-it-here hiding places is running out.

In increasing order of innovation and decreasing order of logic, so far I have:
1. On the coffee machine
2. Next to the coffee machine, with the coffee
3. In the cupboard with all the other coffee cups
4. On the shelf with all the tea supplies (not near the coffee machine)
5. In the cupboard with all the glasses (a different cupboard to the one with the coffee cups)
6. In the cupboard with all the small baking ware - the ramekins, pots and measuring jugs

And my personal favourite to date
7. Under a larger cup or glass on the dish drainer.

You may think that it's a pretty boring game - easy to win - but remember, this is my coffee cup. Until I find my coffee cup I cannot make coffee, which means I haven't drunk any coffee.

To give ... or not to give

I'm really writing this post as a personal message. I guess that seems counter-intuitive; blogs are hardly personal. I want to share information with an individual, but I want to give them some space - only because I'm not sure if they need that or not. So, writing an impersonal blog seemed like a way to do that. As part of that 'giving space' idea, I've not named people, just used an initial. It's highly unlikely that anyone, who isn't 'someone', is likely to know exactly who I'm referring to.

In 2011, a friend of ours, who had struggled with mental illness for a long time, decided life really was just too hard. I cannot begin to imagine what it feels like to live in that grey space of constant despair, and to finally drop into the darkest of dark where hope doesn't penetrate.

We weren't exceptionally close friends. G (the friend) and K (his wife) had worked with hubby on a night-shift job. I'm guessing on night-shift you probably get to know people a bit better than in a 9-5 office job. I know my guard comes down when I'm tired and I can get a bit silly if I'm trying to stay awake. But that was hubby's journey with them, rather than mine.

I introduced K to the concept of quilting. I didn't really teach her anything. I lent her a book and talked to her, but obviously it inspired her to try. The quilts she made from that meagre introduction were a part of my journey to enjoy the art of quilt making; to not be so bound by the 'rules' and what "real quilters" might think. The quilts weren't technically brilliant and would have been slammed by judges at any quilt show, but they were art; they were personal expression; and they inspired me. There's a lot of freedom in that.

Because of that connection, when G died, I decided to make K a quilt. She mentioned considering travelling, so I wanted to keep it travel friendly. I'm not renowned for fast quilt making (I can, I just rarely do). It was nearly two years before I finished the quilt, even though it was reasonably simple. Life has a habit of taking unexpected turns, and by the time the quilt was finished, K had a new man in her life and she was happy again, and I wondered whether the quilt I'd made was appropriate. So, it's sat on my shelf and I've pondered what to do with it. It's quite personal; it's not something I could give to anyone else.


The answer was so simple I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier, and this post is part of the answer. If I can show K the quilt, without me being involved, she can decide if she would like it OR if she would like to give to another of G's friends, who might appreciate it. I'm hoping that by doing it this way, that veneer of politeness (which is all lovely and everything) might be avoided, and honest decisions can be made. I don't want K to take the quilt just because I'm standing right there and she feels she has to. Although I made it for her, I really made as a memory of G, and she feels it would be more appropriate to pass it on to someone else, I'm happy with that.

So, on with the photos.

G changed his name by deed poll to a Japanese name. I searched for it online and finally found the characters (I hope). The bottom section uses Japanese fabrics. He was also keen on sci-fi (introduced the Girl to HHGTTG), hence the night sky and stars.

The stripes are to fade into the night sky from the 'land' section.

What is difficult to see here are the green characters against the grass and bamboo tree background.

This is officially my first attempt at curved piecing. I like to think that's a nod to K, and that journey of discovery and freedom in art.

The shooting star represents his final journey, and his impact on people while he was here.

More stars

Not sure if it's obvious, but there is a shamrock, representing G's birth name.

Banking Rant

I usually keep my blog for creative posts, but I've decided to become a ranter, at least briefly.

I just logged into my Citibank online banking for the first time in months. What a hugely frustrating experience. The site used to work fine, but it seems the tinkering boffins have been in and "improved it" (which seems to be programmer speak for "made unworkable"). If engineers live by the "don't fix what ain't broke" rule, IT boffins seem to live by "if it works fine, complicate it".

The issue I have:
1. I log in. I need a username (which is not my account name, so it's not recorded on any official bits of paper that someone could steal). I need a password, which I created myself. I now also need to wait for the bank to send a four digit code to my mobile. Since that's been implemented I have received my code within a few minutes, but I just know that one day I won't. It won't necessarily be the bank's issue, it might the teleco. It won't really matter to me who's at fault; the result will be the same.

2. Against my cash account I have a message, "Your card needs to be activated". There's a hyperlink, "Activate now". I click the hyperlink, thinking, "Wow, this is an improvement to having to ring up, push dozens of codes into the phone, and then wait for an operator." But, wait! It's all a hoax. When I click the hyperlink, I get a list of my cards. I have two cards - a cash account and a credit card. The list only has one card - for my cash account - and that card is listed as "activated". If I wish to activate the new card they sent me, it would seem I'm going to have to use the phone system after all.

3. I'm trying to balance my books for end of financial year. I hate financials and I'll admit I'm approaching this task with a lot of grace to start with. On the old system, there was an option on the main menu, "download activity". Clicking the button took you to a new page with all the download options. It took me a good 5 minutes to find a small pale hyperlink on the specific account page. Clicking it opens a floating window.
First option (the only one showing in the window) is to select a date range. In the "from" calendar I scroll back as far as it will let me. At some point, the dates grey-out and I can't select them. In the "to" I choose today.
When I press go, I'm informed that there are more options. Oh, yeah, look at that. There's a pale, skinny, scroll bar to the side. Even the option to download the activity is in a specific account's window, I have to choose the account I want. Finally, I've found all the options, but it still doesn't work. According to the error message I get, "the date range you have chosen is not available for this account". No indication of what date range is available - the dates I've chosen are still clickable on the calendar.
In the end, I give up. I keep clicking "show more activity" at the bottom of my transaction list. When I run out, I highlight the whole lot on the screen and copy and paste it into Excel.

4. I thought perhaps I should download all my available statements. They come through by email, but it's on the other computer and (silly me) I thought it would faster to download them again, rather than find them on the other machine.
I go to the 'view statements' page. It lists three accounts. I have had a third account in the past, but only had two accounts for several years. Oddly enough the account names are not the account name - they're all my name (in various forms). No indication which account they relate to, so I have no option but to click each one. Two of them return an error, telling me there're no statements to download. I download all the available statements for the third one - no idea which one it is until I open the files.

5. In fairness, I decide to send my rant to the bank. Here is one improvement - the message system used to be limited to about 300 or 500 characters, which is barely enough to get started. They still haven't fixed the issue of "special characters". Is there anything more galling to an editor than to be told you can't use apostrophes, because they're "special" characters? PUH-LEASE!

I don't use the online banking very often, but it is the only way I can access my account. There is only one branch, in the CBD. I'm thinking it's time to change banks. What a nuisance.

Girl's Bedroom Update (an old renovation)

Someone was posting about the issues they were having updating their daughter's bedroom. I'm putting these photos up mainly so I can hyperlink to them. This renovation was in 2007. Since then the Girl has moved into the master bedroom, taking the shelves with her, and most of the wall in these photos with the shelves on it doesn't exist any more. We took the middle section out to open it up to the lounge room and create a sitting room/library.

The room when we started. Our whole house was painted this not-quite-white colour. Blurgh grey. I'm really not sure why you would.

This was the first room we tried this colour scheme in. It was based on the curtains. Wish I could get more of the same fabric. The shelving system is tracks and brackets. The tracks are all equidistant apart; shelves can be used anywhere on the wall. The "Rebekah" desk has now been replaced (in her new room) with a full length sheet of melamine.

One chuffed girl.

At this point in life, the Girl hated dresses. The shelf in the far corner has a rod screwed underneath it, providing all the hanging space that she required.

And moved back in.

We replaced this bed with a 3/4-loft bed when she changed room. The space underneath provides more storage area, and a reading nook.

Pretty in Pink

A new grand-nephew was added to the family a few weeks ago. I thought about making him a quilt, but realised there were others ahead of him who were yet to receive quilts. I think my average completion time for a quilt is about 4 years, but it's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

This quilt, by Pinetree Lodge (https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/pinetreelodge) was my original inspiration. I really like the monochrome colour scheme and highlight of the white. I planned to make the same quilt, or similar, in pink and white.

However, when I dug through my collection of scraps, all nicely pre-cut into 5, 3.5 and 2 inch squares, I found I had very few 5 inch pink squares. I'm not really fond of pink. I've used bits of it here and there, but the dozen or so pink charms I had simple weren't going to be enough.

I toyed with the idea of 9-patches, instead of single charms. Although I had plenty of 2 inch charms, I had lots of some fabrics, and only one or two of others. I needed at least four or five of each fabric for 9-patches.

9-patches are traditionally dark/light arrangements

Someone suggested 16-patches. 16-patches can be more random in placement. A four x four arrangement of 2 inch squares creates a finished 6 inch block, which is a nice size to work with.

The quilt started with digging out all my pink or part pink charms. I sorted them by fabric type, then distributed them into 16 piles of 16 fabric. No fabric is repeated in any pile. A couple (just one or two) fabrics appear in every pile; some only appear in one pile. Someone once told me that the secret to a scrappy quilt is that fabrics need to be repeated. If you repeat some fabrics, you can sew together just about anything you like. And so far, it seems to work for me.

16 piles of 16 charms, to make 16 16-patches

Once I had my piles, I started chain sewing. I took a pile of 16 squares, and sewed them into twos, without snipping threads in between. I put a piece of scrap fabric through the machine and continued with the next pile. When all the charms were sewn into pairs, I cut my long string apart at the scraps and then cut each section apart. This kept me from muddling up my piles. I then sewed my twos into fours; again, sewing a piece of scrap between the piles. Sewed my fours into 8s and my 8s into 16s.

Piles of 2 charms

Piles of four in a line

Four x twos

Half of the finished blocks

Digging through my scraps I found some pink homespun cut into binding strips. And I had enough to sash my 16 blocks. I didn't have enough to sash and corner stone the blocks, but I found a lovely piece of fabric with enough in it to cut cornerstones. In fact, I miscounted and cut twice as many cornerstones as I needed. There's forty sashing strips, but only 20 cornerstones.

To sew on the sashings, I add sashing to one side of every block. For four blocks, I added sashing to two sides. I sewed my blocks together in four strips of four. I then sewed sashings and cornerstones together - five lengths of five cornerstones and four sashings. I sewed one of these lengths to each strip of blocks; and two to one strip. Then I sewed my sashed strips together.

I toyed with various options for borders, and finally settled on adding a tiny spark of contrast. My first border was bright green, with pink highlights. The second border was a wide pink border. I did consider a pink first border, like the inspiration quilt, but decided it wouldn't work. The inspiration quilt didn't use cornerstones, which although small, change the dynamic of the quilt.

The quilt wasn't quite as large as I had envisaged, but consensus on Facebook was that it was finished and didn't need any more borders.

I decided to machine quilt it using my embroidery machine (the main reason I bought the machine). It's slow, it's a little tedious, but the results far outweigh anything I could do by hand or machine.

In the centre of my blocks I used a feathered circle and in the sashings a feathered heart (best seen on the back). I backed the quilt with polar fleece, which doubles as wadding. Two layers are much easier to manipulate in the machine hoops.

I surprised myself my not making a single mistake in the arrangement of the sashing quilting. The hearts are all alternating - both horizontally and vertically. I didn't want to create a "right side up". In the wide pink border I repeated the circle quilting, lining it up with the blocks. I could probably have repeated the hearts as well, but decided not to.

Finally, I sashed the quilt with the same green as the narrow border.

I started the quilt on Sunday afternoon and posted it the following Monday. Waiting to hear that it has arrived safe and sound.