Amanda’s Musings

Yes, they are basic but here they are! The first piece of clothing I’ve sewn using a pattern with no help on my new sewing machine! Amazing:

So, I’ve been brave an attempted a pair of pants for Keziah. Its part of a matching set. So far so good. I was sure I wasn’t going to succeed when I was sewing as I’ve never actually bought, cut out and sewed up from a pattern before with no assistance or explaination. Lo and behold it worked!! Anyway, after saying that I don’t have a pic of the successful pants but I have a sneek peek of what I cut out so far. The pants are the bright pink in the pic before sewing. Stay tuned for a modelled shot when I’ve done the top.

For some reason this looks like its fluro, its actually pastel colours. Maybe its what happens when a pic is taken under a fluro light.

And fabric for a bag I’m going to sew

I should be in bed but I just got my second wind which is very annoying when I was about to fall asleep a few minutes ago. Thought I’d take advantage and do a quick blog post.

Last week I got out the paints for Keziah for the first time. She’s done plenty of drawing with crayons, textas, chalk, pencils, pens etc before but not with paint. As an artist I can’t wait to see whether she shares the same interest as me. So far she just loved it but then, what 2 year old doesn’t!

Here are the photos of her work, the last shot is me carefully taking her to the bathroom for a shower before she touches anything!:

Ok, now I’m tired and ready for bed!

There has been so much going on here lately that I’ve hardly had time to blog at all! For the last four weeks my Mum has been staying with us. She’s usually in Papua New Guinea but had to come down for medicals. Then, for the last week we had another family member visiting and staying with us from interstate. We’ve spent a lot of time this week shopping, drinking coffee and having fun.

One thing that my Mum has taught me while visiting is how to sew. Ok, I haven’t learnt everyting there is to know about sewing but she’s taught me the basics of machine sewing. As a kid I watcher her sew on her Empisal machine which is now sitting in retirement in our shed. She’s had an upgrade since then. Mum has bought me a special gift of a basic sewing machine (birthday, Christmas and everything inbetween present) and I’m going to make sure I learn how to use it properly. We went to Spotlight the other day (I bravely drove there and back - see my earlier post about that) and I bought some basic kids patterns and some fabric. Now I feel like I’ve joined the sahm (stay at home mum) club! All thats left is to master cooking something other than cupcakes and I’ll be set!!

Here’s the results of my first sewing lesson:

leggings were on her already and one leg is showing!

Considering that I have been claiming for a long time now that I can’t sew a straight line, I really impressed myself! These are actually wearable! Anyway, stay tuned for more sewing items but knowing me, I’ll get bored with using patterns before long and end up making things up as I go!

I haven’t got a lot to write right now but I wanted to put up some photos I’ve taken lately that show some of my inspiration. You may or may not know that I believe in the earth being created by God and therefore I attribute all my inspiration to him. He’s an amazing artist (the best) so what better master to draw from than THE Master!

We have just returned from 4 days away at Esperance. For those of you who aren’t locals, Esperance is 8 hrs drive away from Perth in a relatively straight line. Its a beautiful spot in WA that I usually enjoy visiting to relax and sightsee, this time was a little different for a few reasons;

1. It wasn’t for a holiday but for a SIM event.
2. This was our first long car trip with a 2 yr old.
3. Both Kezi and I got sick.

We broke the trip down there up into two parts, a 4 hr trip to Nyabing and then stayed overnight with friends (thank you Cameron and Ruth). We then set off the next day for Esperance which was about 5 hrs by road. Keziah decided not to sleep a whole lot on the trip down which made for an interesting time. Here are some pics from that part of our journey, as you can see, its wildflower season here in Western Australia:

We stayed for three nights in Esperance at a friend’s house which was wonderful! They had a fantastic dog who Kez loved to play with:

We also had the opportunity to go on a catamaran (moored) for a few hrs which was fun. Here’s some shots of that:

We did get a little time to drive along the coast for a few hours on Monday afternoon, the Esperance coast is really breathtaking so I’m glad we didn’t miss out:

and we got to have a little time at the tea rooms:

Then yesterday we made the long trek home. We left Esperance at 8am and got home at 4pm which was pretty good timing. Keziah was the best she’d been all weekend, she didn’t throw any tantrums and slept for over 3 hrs in the afternoon. That was good because I’ve been quite sick from thos canola fields (see pic 1) since getting home.

I did enjoy some of the weekend. It was great to see some old friends again and a lot of our countryside in spring. Sometime I’ll put up some more pics of our great wildflowers here. I have lots of inspiration for my polyclay. Overall, God’s array always surprises me, he’s just so amazing, what I create in my art and polyclay are no comparison!