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

To little

I'm sure this happens to all of you, but nevertheless it's danged annoying when it occurs - you are almost out of fabric! No, not that the stash is running low, but when you finally find the perfect fabric for your project and you realize that there is too little of it to go last.

There I was, having done something with my trial run of hexagons...... that is I followed Melody's suggestion and used black as a contrast and put them all together in a row with the intent of making a table runner out of it.

For that to happen I needed something to applique this row of flowers onto. I swear, I went through almost my entire stash to find something that worked. I even went as far as to cut up some red Kaufman Flourish fabric and hand stitched it halfway when I realized that it wasn't it. Finally I gave up and asked The DH for advice, he took one look and said "darkish blue" and at once I knew what fabric to use - Robert Kaufman Fusions 5574-80 Evening. The pic is very unfocused, but you get the grip - it works!

And whatdayaknow? As you can see there isn't enough of it! I bought it from Sewthankful, but of course it was on clearance and they have no more of it in stock. Googled but found only the usual Fusions fabrics, not this one - see me pout here :-( If there is anyone out there who has any idea on where to get some or - have a piece to sell me, please send me a message.

Dark clouds are sailing up and not only in my mind LOL, dark charcoal grey ones, a strong wind and I'll bet it's gonna rain pretty soon. You sometimes it's the little things in life that puts a smile on you face, like getting a new tea mug:

It's painted with different herbs and it comes with a small tray to put your sandwich on and a little lid/saucer:

Think I'm going to make me a nice cup of jasmine tea :-)

Latest purchases and thoughts about prices

I still consider myself to build my stash, so I buy fabrics I fancy, rather more than with any specific use in mind. Yesterday found my postbox with two USPS flatrate envelopes, stuffed with my latest purchase from Thousands of Bolts, one of my two favorite fabric online stores.

12 yards for just a bit over 500SEK including postage :-) That my friends is round 43 SEK per yard! Can anyone residing in Sweden explain to me why anyone shops at their Swedish LQS (or Swedish online stores) where fabrics are at 150-160 SEK per meter??? The only reason I can think of is if you want to view and match fabrics IRL, but that goes for the LQS only.... but in both cases you are ripped of. OK ToB is an outlet, but I find their range and quality as good as anyone.
The other online store I favour is Fat Quarter World where I occasionally get my Jelly Rolls, Charm packs and an FQ bundles. OK they are not as cheap as ToB, but they have excellent customer services and ships in flatrate envlopes. Every now and then I splurge on a 0.5yrd of some new fabrics, compared to Swedish prices they are still very low, round 65 USD/yard or something like that.

Sam and I went to the vets and had the girls nails fixed, the drive home was a race against the dark clouds and right now we have heavy rains, thunder and lightnings. Poor Fiona hates this and wines constantly, even with fatty cotton plugged in her ears and the radio on.....being gun shy ain't easy. I think I'm going to go out and open up the RV, she feels so much safer out there.

Almost a miracle

You know how this work with putting the hexagon flowers together have stumped me artistically. It went so far that I laid in bed at night wrestling with hexies thoughts ......round and round.

Then Melody came up with the most genius sugestion - putting solid color hexagons round the colored ones, so of to IKEA I went and bought 7.5 meters of solid black and solid of-white fabrics at sale - SEK 19.00/meter (less than USD 3.00)!!! Since the fabrics at IKEA is far from a good quality, I washed them both separately, dried and ironed them just to be sure of evenness in cutting. Then cut and cut and baste and baste....a lot of little black hexagons, stitched some to two of the flowers and know what? The colors just popped out!!
Look here:

From being an undistinguished jumble of mishmash (se earlier post) bits, the flowers became distinct - miraculous huh? So last night in front of Navy CIS and The Stepford Wifes I basted even more black hexagons, almost holding my breath with the possibilities and having a small creative fit. Ok, the pic above isn't the best one, the camera in the cell phone is great, but not so great that it can take these hard contrasts. But it's going to be very interesting to see how the different colored flowers will hold up to a black border.... Soon very soon I will bring these back small thingees and some flowers out and start stitchin. But first I'm going to copy Stevie Nicks latest solo album that I borrowed from the music club at work. You pay just under 20USD per year and have access to a huge variety of new and old albums. Sweet deal LOL.

Now some might think that hand stitching is beyond tedious and boring, but I love it. Well not so much that I would hand quilt a bedspread LOL, but it's something about this EPP that is mind numbing and soul soothing at the same time. As my former (and the best doc ever) said - Wolfie, sewing is god for the soul! Nobody knows why, but there is something cerebral about it :-D

Thank you so much Melody for your suggestion, without it I would still be stumped. Hugs!

PS I don't know if my dogs love pancakes or lasagna the most, but the latter last longer:

After these two had a go at the dish, you could almost skip the washer ROFLMAO.