Finished

I can't say that I have very many WIPs (work in progress), but the few I have tend to neglect totally for a period of time. Like the place mats and the headboard cover. But ever now and then inspiration hits me and I manage to finish the project to my liking.

So after having brought out the headboard cover for our bed and found it really good (and The DH agreed) and yesterday I finally sat down and finished it. To get it in place was not that easy, the bed is a double spring mattresses one and heavy as xxxx and sits tight agains the wall, so I had to ask The DH to go upstairs and pull it out a bit for me. In his kindness he put the cover in place and put the bed back and......that's why it's not on straight.... ;-)

I have to admit, I am rather pleased with the result though :-D

So - no more WIPs in this house - hurray!

What to do next? After some time with no creative ideas at all, last night after the cover was in place, dinner eaten and wine drunken, I suddenly was hit by some inspiration: I have a full collection of FQs

that I so far had no idea what to do with. I thought they where very cute when I bought them, but IRL they was kind of too girly for my taste. But - the star blocks I used for my niece's USA quilt are not too difficult to make and with a flying geese border and maybe some other pieced border, some of them FQs can be put to use in a snuggly, girly girl quilt with a long haired fleece as backing. So I have to go and search through my quilt books to find the measurements of the strips to form these stars, I do think they are 2.5inch ones and then decide which FQs to use.

The DH surprised me with breakfast in bed this morning :-), fall has truly fallen upon us early this year = blaaaaaahhhhh but I try to spend as much time as I can outdoors to kind of store up on sun rays and fresh air before the coming dark season. Often I get company on the porch swing

- a 68 lbs heavy lapdog :-D Am currently reading Maria V. Snyder "Inside out". I read her Glass trilogy and enjoyed it very much and I find this one equally good. I see that she also have written the Study trilogy = yet one more "trip" to Amazon.co.uk

Omg

Imagine - my oldest (15) very heremit like son came home after school, threw some stuff together, got some money, fetched his bus ticket, his grren card and swoched out the door in record time. To go climbing indoors at the climbing centre with some of his friends at school. Hurray i say - finaly he's doing something! "I'll be back later" was the last thing I heard :-)

Before quilting

there was perfumery. Natural Botanical perfumery that was. After a life as a "perfumaholic" (first came the scent and then came me LOL), suddenly (due to a severe illness) I could no longer stand and comercial, synthetic laden "fumes".

One thought about handmade soaps lead to lotions and potions and - botanical perfumery. What a magnificent world that opened up...........such a wonderful raw materials there are out there and - some you can produce yourself if you have the imagination and curiosity - tinctures of all kinds. Andf I was hooked for quite some years

Until - I took ill again, my olfactory system went from sensitive to overly so. To that extent that I can lie in my bed on one side of the house at the top floor and smell the DHs shower gel and what toothpaste he uses in the bathroom one floor down on the other side of the house. So I found quilting (or it found me) and kind of gave up on perfumery. I do have created some blends over the last years for a very special group of fellow botanical perfumers, but not much else and not for myself.

And so - today - while reading a review of some comercial perfumes, the memory of different raw materials started to tease my olfactory system - vanilla, tonka, coumarine heavy grass tincture................and what do you know - I'm sitting here with a small list of essential oils, absolutes and concretes, just waiting to be experimented with.

Later - and I did. Created a new base chord without any real formula thought out in advance ( to the above was added some patchoulis and a wee bit of sandalwood vanuatu) and right after blending the scent smelled more than ok on a scent strip and after 30hrs it still was there.

Now I do know from experience, that what smells good upon blending can turn to murky eau de mud after a while. So it will just have to sit there (the beaker is tiny, it just holds a couple of mils), maturing for some time before adding some florals in the heart. I have neroli and orange flower absolute down for that and after browsing Arctander's "bible" (Perfume and Flavor materials of natural origin - an absolute must) maybe the tiniest amount of a gorgeous Tuberose absolute..... I might even delve into the treasure chest where all my rare and special samples of that mostly came as gifts from my very dear and über generous friend L in SF are stored, since this scent is just for me :-D

So cross your fingers and pray that this will turn out, well not magnificent, but at least quite good ;-)

James Cameron Jr ????

I do have Sam' permission to post this here;

It's a school assignment in the "picture and form" class (Swedish "Bild och Form") where they was divided into teams and was to make a 3-4 minutes long video - whatever topic they choosed. Sam's team chose a soccer inspired theme, but after thinking long and hard, Sam it wasn't his thing and decided to jump ship and do his very own movie - Top Gun on a M1800 motorcycle.

Since Sam is such a stickler for details, it took a while for him to get to the start-to-shoot point and the weeks that followed was enough to drive any parent up the wall and in the end, he was not finished when school was out. But we made one thing very clear to him - before the start of the fall term, that #€€%%&&& film had to be finished. One thing I learned from this - never threat a teenager into doing anything - bribe him instead ;-o

Tomorrow school starts and - today the whole movie is finished in all of it's glory. Let me tell you this - I'm so frigging proud of my darling son - he did deliver on time on money LOL, but not only that - the film is great!

So - here it is: M1800 riders, hopefully you'll like it ;-)

Notes:
The girl is our neighbors sons (Viktor) girlfriend Petrina and it's Viktor who shot that scene. The M1800 rider is of course The DH, Sam is a bit too young to handle that machine ;-)

 "SLUT" has nothing to do about loose women;-P. It's simply the Swedish word for "The End".

And the grave side sequence is not filmed at a real grave, but something we put together on our property with a piece of slate and some flowers. I find that scene well put together and quite touching.

Even John, aged 12.5 yrs think that Sam has done a terrific job. If that isn't high praise, I don't what is ;-9

Whats not to like???

I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in this world who starts a project, work on it until almost the end and then - fall out of love with it. Happily it hasn't happened very often, but it's so unsatisfying when it does.

During the winter I worked on a new cover for the headboard of our bed and since The DH likes all sorts of mariners compasses, I decided to use that pattern, but in a more easy way - with wedges. I worked and worked and.....got all the way beyond quilting and adding the front piece that goes beneath the mattresses and was just about to add the side and back coverings and kaboom - out of nowhere comes the unlove!!

So I packed it away and tried to figure out what else to decorated the cover with?? Nothing - absolutely nothing spoke to me. Until........

I tried the wedge work for a seat cover using only 16 "spikes" instead of the 32 I used before. Holy Mahoney, I can't remember when I used Mr Grim Ripper as often as I had today....what was so clear to me the first time I used this method has been totally befuddled today and I know I ought to rip it all apart again. Or start over or...something.
But I just had to bring out the headboard cover and check what and how I did it then. And know what??
I like it again! I mean what's not to like about it?????? Me thinks it's pretty great :-D

The picture looks kind of wobbly cause I draped it over the porch swing ;-)

So now I have to take new measurements and get that backside added, cross my fingers and hope it fits in the end.

Now onwards to the kitchen where dinner waits to get cooked.

Auto love

When we got home from the vacation my oldest fell on his knees in the hallway, kissed the floor and said "home, I'm home!". Yesterday I did something similar; getting my biiiiiig car back from service (having to drive one small and one even smaller car for 1.5 day :-o), I kissed the steering wheel and said "my car, oh my car!" Sillly me ROFLMFAO!!

Not knowing what to sew next, I've started on a mariners compass (one block only) to make a test seat cover. Not in blues, but in several hues of pinks.

It rains so no Mälaren Runt for the DH :-(

Change of plans

Forget what I wrote below -  after auditioning all kinds of blue fusion fabrics I came to the conclusion that I really don't like that top. I think it's the third project ever that I have abandoned fully, but never mind - it's just bits of fabrics ;-9