Merry Mouse meets Vintage Sheet.

I decided to add the rows I'd made from my vintage sheet quilt into my Merry Mouse Quilt.

It just looks like it was meant to be,

and that way I finish two quilts at once.

I'm really pleased with it, and can't wait to do some more.

But today is a gardening day!

Merry Mice Again.

I had a lovely e-mail the other day from a lady called Gloria from Australia.

She'd come across my Merry Mouse stitcheries while looking at some of the old posts on my blog.

She asked me for details of the publisher etc, and let me know that she had managed to find one of the books on e-bay.

Which reminded me that I have been planning to make these into a quilt for so long.

So I have finally started.

And you know how much I love to start things!

Finishing is another matter altogether.

They are from the Merry Mouse series of Patterns by Pat and Gloria, published by Doubleday in the early 1980s.

So I thought I'd use borders and lots of sashing and follow the look of this quilt from

Little Chicken Feather (Annie Downs).

I have some lovely gellato coloured fabrics to use.

And I think this might actually be the last quilt I start - for a long time anyhow.

I finally feel like I have enough quilts in my life.

But I will finish the three I have on the go.

This one will go into my Grandma stash.

It will be the very first thing in my Grandma stash.

Not that I am expecting to be a Grandma for a long time yet.

If ever.

But this quilt will be so special, because these stitcheries have such a story attached to the making of them.

They could really only be given to a Grandchild now.

Maybe I'll do some more tomorrow.

I'll let you know how I get on Blog Chics.

If You Open Your Ears to Beauty, You'll Hear it Singing its Song.

A little trite perhaps Blog Chics,

but never the less true enough.

I've been thinking a lot about gardens.

My garden in particular.
And gardeners.
It hasn't been a spectacular season for the Granny's potager.
And she's been busily ripping out all her tomato plants.
Not enough sun.
They've all been smited by a botch or something,
although we have been eating the little sweet yellow ones.
The Granny is tremendously disappointed.
She is one of those gardeners that loves gardening.



I, on the other hand am one of those gardeners who loves gardens more than gardening!
I see gardening as a means to an end.
I see my flowers as still lives and vignettes that I can run together as a slide show,
or fuse in the moment inside my mind.






We both love to have masses of fresh flowers inside in vases.
Sometimes it's hard to decide weather to leave a lovely bloom to be enjoyed through the window, or to bring it in and smell it, touch it and enjoy its composition intimately,
but for a shorter time.

For instance...

this year I succeeded in growing two hollyhocks.

One pink, one white.

They are magnificently deformed.

So I cut one and used the single usable bloom in my photo.

To last forever, or as long as the digital life of the photo.

If you open your heart to beauty....

You'll find it.

The Granny Square as a Metaphor for Life?

Hello.

I love this photo. It has nothing to do with anything, I just love the way it turned out.

I love all the colours together, and the way the cups stack up "just so".

I am looking for happy things to compensate for the weather.

We haven't had a summer yet here in the "Naki".

I really, really need a few days in a row of sunshine.

One swallow does not a summer make. Well all we've had here is the odd blackbird scoffing up the Granny's "pensioner bread" .

And there was the remains of last week's rhubarb crumble too, which may or may not be attractive to swallows.

I wouldn't really know, having not had enough summer to encounter even ONE...

The Granny has been randomly assorting her granny squares and sewing them together.

I have admired the work sufficiently to assume ownership of it I think.

That's mostly how it works round here.

Except for a made to order goat or two.

I really have no idea how the Granny Square is a metaphor for life.

I just made it up because I liked the sound of it.

Am far too pre-occupied with the weather to have that conversation with myself.

Probably something about going round and round, but then the Granny's Granny Squares are so free style and lovingly embellished that you just have to have hope don't you?

So there you are... the metaphor for life shall exist only in the most random of Granny Squares!

I found this gorgeous American magazine on my birthday. Luckily it was on my birthday, as it was so outrageously expensive i really shouldn't have bought it, but i just love it so!

A house is never just a house for me.

It's a blank canvas. I cannot be doing with the paint by numbers approach.

And gardens...