Hello again, from a hot Perth Western Australia in the first month of 2025. We are in full summer mode -but even the beach might be too hot for a walk in the morning these days. If it is too hot for the beach, it is probably too hot to work in the garden too. I keep up the watering, and wait for better days.
We had a week of cyclone-induced humidity and low cloud last week which was weird. When you are used to very hot but very low humidity days with lots of sunshine, and a sea breeze every afternoon, a week without those things is a shock.
This was my first attempt at foccacia, using the King Arthur Bread company recipe. It was yummy, and I now have a new cast iron pan to cook it in -thanks to Father Christmas, but the oven has been playing up and won't be fixed until later this week so I haven't tried to do it again.
I heartily recommend this large book about Robodebt by Rick Morton, called Mean Streak. It goes into detail about who knew what and when about the government disaster which claimed debts based on faulty mathematics from unsuspecting welfare recipients. It is a sad story, but there are heroes who kept their moral compass pointed to courage and compassion and truth, no matter how powerful were the voices telling us that it was otherwise.
I have spent most of January tidying up my sewing room, with the help of the wonderful Karen Brown of Just Get It Done Quilts and her yearly "Declutter Challenge". It is now clear that my bad habit of taking out fabric to test them in a new quilt scheme, then stuffing them back into a drawer, was a really, really bad idea. I couldn't tell what fabrics I had, and they were crumpled and a mess. Quilting is easier in a organised work place. I have promised myself that I won't do that again!
Fabrics have been sorted -scraps even thrown out.
In the spirit of 'using it up' I finally unpacked a panel which had been in a bag for far too long, and determined that it was either going to be in a quilt soon, or I would throw it out. This is the result. Some scrappy 9 patches, squares of shell fabric and a top is made. I am now, in my now tidy sewing room, working on a pieced back. This thing needs to be a quilt, not just a top, and off to the WAQA Community Quilts group for donation.
This is the pieced back of the quilt. More scraps in here, but it would have been a lot quicker to use a whole cloth back!
Do you ever pick things up from the side of the road? I noticed this shelf one day, and immediately drove back home to get the DH. He also thought it was something with potential, so he cleaned it up and painted it and installed it in my sewing room. I love it! It has cleaned up a lot of equipment that I like to be handy but don't want cluttering up my workspaces.
I hope I will be back at my blog more often in 2025. It has been a way I document my life, and its simple joys. Wishing you the same joys for 2025.
