Amanda’s Musings

Oh dear, I seem to have gone a bit mad with the fabric and pattern buying since starting six weeks ago. I’m one of those sorts of peopl who loves a bargain and can’t quite bring myself to pay full price for most things if it can be avoided. I’ve started buying a few bits of fabric and a handful of patterns off ebay and its so much fun getting parcels in the mail!! Here’s a couple of my latest acquisitions:

These patterns are huge, each one of those are larger than A4 (thats roughly 12×8″) in size and the patterns go from age 2-12!!! That should keep me going for a while!

This fabric will make a pretty little dress for Keziah - look out January, sewing sewing sewing!

Lastly, I have thought about buying one of these for a while now. Its hard to take photos of necklaces on yourself and this was an ebay bargain, under $10. If and when I decide to do any sort of market stalls this will be very handy!

I started ‘doodling’ in my moleskine the other night to take a break from sewing and polyclaying and this is what I ended up with. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet but hopefully something with my new Gocco that I know I’m getting for my birthday! Yay! I’ll keep you posted:

PS. I’ve since discovered a smudge on my camera lens that caused that spot in the sketch to appear lighter to the left!! Ah well.

Below is a selection of some of my red and green items. As you can see there is a lot of variety there! Just thought it would be fun to start getting all Christmassy on here.

So, I’ve been busy sketching painting again in my moleskines. I’ve got about three or four on the go at the moment. They are all for different things and different styles as you will see from the pics. As I mentioned before in this previous post I have been dipping my finger in Keziah’s paint pot whenever she’s busy painting (her paper, hands, hair, head, fingers, arms, legs, stomach etc…). This is of course not meant to be anything more than an excersise in freeform sketching so you will understand the roughness of the result (and being kids paint - the dull acrylic primary colours):

This is what I mean by Keziah painting herself everywhere (second pic she is checking herself out in the camera view finder and hadn’t seen the paint on her face before then):

Just to show that I can be a bit more controlled, heres one of my latest pattern pics which I hand drew the other night:

and recently I’ve been playing around with my watercolours a bit. I found a windsor and newton watercolour palette that I’d bought and not used in my cupboard the other day. It fits in perfectly with my limited painting space/convienience with toddler so here’s one of my doodles:

I have of course been sewing and polyclaying inbetween this so I’ll be sure to put up some new polyclay work soon.

I have a new idea for raising funds for SIM projects around the world and hope to put that into place in January so stay posted on that one! So many ideas, so little time.

Here’s my entry for this PF theme. I suppose you could say that Kezi is holding two table numbers but really, this was on her second birthday which is how it relates to the theme:

I’ve been busy over the last few weeks sewing this and that but much of it I can’t show you here. This is mainly because they are Christmas and Birthday presents for people who are likely to see the pics!

What I can show you is what I made for Keziah the other day. Yes these are basic but I don’t mind, she loves them! She wouldn’t take them off when I was trying them on her.

This is for my mother-in-law for her birthday, she doesn’t browse the net so I should be ok:

This is for a girl from our church:

and I’ve gone a bit mad with the self covering buttons hair clips lately (oh and some polymer clay ones too) for Keziah:

After Christmas I’ll be able to put up photos of the other things I’ve been busy making. Theres a lot more to come!

Out in the bush in Niger (west Africa) is a place called Galmi and SIM has a hospital there. We visited Galmi and stayed on the hospital compound in 2001 for the national life conference that SIM holds every year.

The trip out there was very bumpy, the potholes were often over a metre wide and much of the time we drove off road (alongside the main road on the dirt). Driving through Africa you are sure to see some interesting sights such as these:

The hospital itself is nothing like our hospitals here in Australia. Entering the building for a tour isn’t something you do if you have a weak stomach.

Here’s my friend Janella and I outside the front gate:

and a mother with her sick baby:

as you can see, I will never complain about waiting rooms at the doctors here in Australia again from the waiting room there (which is fairly standard I was told):

Why the nostalgic post about somewhere I visited over 6 years ago? Because a friend of ours who worked in Niger while we were there has been working on a website for Galmi and its gone live recently. The website is:

Galmi Hospital

This is one of their photos from the site. It reminds me of something our missionary tour guide told us while there, that one of the most common injuries at the time was from Fulani men who had fallen out of a tree and hurt their foot. They were trying to collect food for their herd and often would walk on the injured foot for days before treatment.

If you have a minute, please have a look at their site. Feel free to leave comments on what you think of it here and I’ll pass them on to our friend.

I haven’t entered photo friday in quite a while but this weeks theme is ‘Travel’ and seeing as its a favourite passtime of mine (and one I haven’t been able to do much lately) I had to enter. Here’s my pic

This is my hubby Michael sleeping in the aiport in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport in 2001. An oldie but a goodie. We were exhausted after nearly 24 hrs of being awake and were on our way from Niger to Papua New Guinea to see my parents.

Keziah did some more painting the other day so I got my moleskine out again and started mark making. Later on I added to the marks using a felt tip pen and here are the results. Its fun trying to find images in the marks!

Firstly, don’t ask what this is, it just is:

This last one is my favourite. The funny thing is, when I sketched in the girl on the very end it was meant to be as if she was running with a flag or something. Now on closer inspection it seems that she is about to whack that poor old fella on th head! Oh dear!

I have recently added a range of handmade pendants to my Etsy store and Wahmania store. If you are looking for something unique and one of a kind for Christmas gifts then maybe these would interest you: