Where Is Our Spring?

In the last couple of weeks my desire for spring grew on, I was happy for every sunshine, every snowdrop growing out of the ground. And what happens? Yeah, the answers are on the pictures: in the last few days it snowed as much as it did whole winter. Sadly I couldn’t take a picture of the snowdrops in time and now they are fully covered in snow.

Both of these pictures were made by my husband. This small forest-side street is ours, and is now looking really fabulous.

While waiting for spring I have sewed as well of course. Among a few smaller things, I have started this tablecloth. You can’t see much of it now, but I’ll keep taking pictures as I am going on. As you see I definitely need a larger table to work on it.

Don’t bother searching for my new work on the sidebar, where I collected my plans, since it was just a sudden idea. As I have said before I know that I am a hopeless case.

Late nights (the Progress Chart on the sidebar is working on very well) I am sewing supplementary blocks for my “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” Quilt.

After all I’ll have snowdrops here in my post, but this is not my picture. I have discovered it in Wikipedia. It is taken in March 2005 in a garden under the Beskydy mountains in Czechia by Caroig (David Paloch).

Show and Tell Friday 3.

My husband’s old desire was to sail, and when we were living in Naples we fortunately had the chance for that. He and my son entered a sailing course in a small closed down gulf. Even though the Hungarians are not really born on sea people (like the Dutch for example), they tried to learn as much as possible. The instructors even taught them how to deal with capsizing and helping people out of the water.

To tell you the truth, it happened a day before it was planned, since as my gallant Hungarian men were trying to help two ladies swimming beside their already capsized sailboat, they joined them shortly after in the water as they have capsized as well. So the instructors had the chance to teach two teams right away how to set the dinghy back while crawling back in (and all this in a life jacket, it’s not easy at all).

After they had their exams, we spent a lot of time on water, they took me out to sail too, we all liked it a lot. Of course it wasn’t a large sail cruiser, this was a small dinghy, designed for 2–3 person. One day I was going with only my husband, with the aid of the wonderful wind we sailed deep into the gulf, fast as light. But when we turned back to head for the coast, the wind suddenly died out. And there we were the two of us, pretty far from the coast, with two oars. And since we had an engagement for the afternoon we had no choice but row as long as we had breaths. I’ve never rowed so much in my life. And the following muscle strain was, uhh, better not to even mention. But it was still an amazing afternoon, the sunshine, the wind, the speed, the smell of water, our laughs, it’s a really pleasant memory.

With all the equipments this sailboat looks really cute, right? I bought it with my son for my husband. The embroidery that is under that was meant to be a present for my husband as well, but in the daytime I didn’t have chance to embroider since I had to wait for him to sleep before working on it. I often spent hours in the night embroidering, which made me really drowsy at daytime. Finally I decided that it wouldn’t work longer in this way and gave it to him as a Christmas present. Even though it wasn’t finished yet, he liked it a lot. There is only a few contour stitch back, and then it’s ready to be framed. I would like to put it in a blue wooden frame, and finally it will get next to the sailboat on the shelves.

I imagine this is what a teeny-weeny sailor would see, if he would climb up to the top of the mast. ☺

My boys also joined boat races, and those were always very exciting. Of course they didn’t really have a lot of chance against the Dutch, British, American and Italian teams, but on this picture they are just then on the second place! (I know it’s hard to see, so just believe me!) ☺

My UFO Factory

I am frequently reading quite a few creative and quilt related blogs and I can already see that 2009 will be the year of final settling a score with the UFOs (Unfinished Objects), all around the World.

I have seen a nice initiation at Abyquilt, which could help anyone who participates in: „Participants will try (we know life interferes sometimes!) to complete at least ONE craft project by the end of each month. This can be something you've had partly done for a while (a WISP!) or a pattern or a kit you bought ages ago that you finally get around to making.”

You may join anytime, which is good, since it holds me back that my UFOs are all huge, usually big wall hangings or unfinished king size quilts. I am unsure whether I could show a finished piece in every month. But I will start a lighted version for myself. Jannimary has her plans listed on her sidebar, her started works and the finished ones separated (she participates in the “One Project a month Challange” as well). While Karen shows what she is making in her actual project. I like both methods, so I mixed them in my blog and the result can be seen on the sidebar.

However for now (in defiance of the world’s currents) I’ll just continue to create UFOs. While we were sick, I couldn’t do else but sit in the couch and embroider. It was somehow important for me to do definitely small pictures, hence I sewed parts from one of my previous work.

Last year I got a whole roll of home made linen from my grandmother (her mother and grandmother wove it at home by their hands!), which is a big treasure. It’s rough weaving, natural-colored (self-colored) and I thought that a similarly beige, tan embroidery would look good on it.

Back in 2007 I designed 12 redwork pictures based on William Morris’ art, and embroidered those. I designed them to be a Duble Irish Wall Hanging Quilt. Since this has been an UFO, it waits the red blocks, but just to be sure I sewed them with blue ones too, and these await the Hungarian blue-dying blocks. I know I am hopeless case.

I “cut out” from these designs six parts now. By the time we got better, I finished with all of them, but since I only made them for the embroidery, now I really stop short before continuing. For now I only know that I want to make a wall hanging from them, but similarly to the thread with natural and beige (maybe some tan) fabric blocks.

However I don’t have these kinds of fabrics at home, so I have to try and buy some, or do something new: paint for myself. Up until that, my considerable UFO collection has grown with new ones.

Though I may look at it as these are started wall hangings, and for those the fabric casting is ongoing. ☺ It’s all about the point of view, isn’t it?