recently {five reasons why the blog has been so quite}

1. We moved house
Early August Brendan and I decided it was time to start looking for our own place to live. We has no idea what we were getting ourselves in for. In a space of a month we looked, applied, got accepted and moved in. I honestly think it has taken me till now to get my head around the whole process because it happened so quickly + at the most busiest time of the year. But it feels good. We have learnt so much about each other and ourselves during the past few months, and slowly we are working out how to merge our two lives together to make new routines and traditions.

2. Work has been insanely busy
Schools are busy places, especially at the end of the school year. I've written and edited reports. Had spontaneous parent/teacher interviews. Said goodbye to this years kids and met next years. Taken 80 9/10 year olds to the beach in the rain and slept over at school. Said goodbye to a colleague I started my teaching career with and met new colleagues. Turned stars into Christmas trees and newspaper into Christmas bowls. Made chocolate balls with 80 children. Packed up my classroom and spent hours engaging exhausted children. Basically, I have been in survival mode for the last two months until now. 


3. Turned Twenty-Five
Celebrated my birthday with some of my closet friends at a lovely little beer garden in the city. Melbourne gave as a glimpse of it's perfect summer nights as we drank beer and chatted in the warm night air. It was ace.


4. Celebrated Christmas
We ate, drank, ate, laughed, ate, swapped presents and repeated, multiple times with friends and family over a three day period. It was lovely to relax catch up and be present. It was awesome to have my own house and tree to  decorate.

5. Hello Summer Holidays
That pretty much sums it up. I have so many plans for the next five weeks, that I really don't know where to start. I'm looking forward to spending some time down at the beach with some ace new friends, catching up (again) on my 2012 project life album and coming up with an achievable plan  for 2013, making plans to crochet a new blanket and make a quilt, plan and dream about a 2014 holiday and cook up a storm.

I have plans to share for the blog, 2013 and a heap to catch up on throughout the next few days.

It feels good to have time slow down for a moment and really enjoy the last week of 2012.

Have things slowed down where you are?
What plans do you have for the last week of 2012?

creative space | simple square blanket

Love starting a new project. Love finishing it even more.
 
I started working on this blanket, sometime towards the end of January. It has been with me through hard days, long weeks, sick days and times when I need calmness. I think it is the repetition of patterns and stitches that draws me to long term projects like this. I loved that I could pick this project up at the end of a long day and not have to think about where I was up to or that it could sit there for weeks without being touched.

Inspiration for this blanket came from the lovely Pip and her super simple squares. Initially, I thought I would stitch the squares together... that lasted approximately three days before I realised how much extra time it would take me to do that and I decided to join my squares as I went. The blanket ended up being 132 squares and I added one row of treble stitch around the edge (still not sure on the best technique to 'finish' a blanket). I wasn't too fussed with the pattern that was forming, my main criteria was that the same colour couldn't touch! Once again, the most tedious part of the blanket making process was stitching in all the ends, next next, I must remember to do this as I go.

For me to finish a project it needs to be achievable and I need to see it coming together as I am working on it. This blanket was perfect for that. 

Are you glad to see the end of a big project?
What have you been creating?

Playing along with my creative space
(it's good to be back!)

Winter 2012, I want to remember

How we decided to start looking and applying for rental houses.

Getting accepted for our first rental house, much quicker and easier than we anticipated.

How lucky I am to have an awesome family who helped with the packing and moving of all my things.

Unpacking boxes + setting up our new home.
How our relationship changed during those first few weeks of living together.

How cold, wet and unpredictable the weather was.

Learning to adapt to things that weren’t how I expected them to be.

Layering up to leave the house most mornings for work.

The excitement in my classroom, before, during and after their performance of the Flintstones at the school production.

Staying up way to late watching the Olympic Games.
Adapting old routines and making new routines. 

The awesome performance of Sally Pearson and Anna Meares at the Games.

Wearing bright coloured jeans with boots and super warm jumpers.

Trips to Ikea where we debated the ‘essentials’ and made plans for things we could make ourselves.

Cardio sessions at 6am, when it was still dark and less than 5 degrees outside.

Realising, that I much prefer to exercise in the morning before work.

Watching the block and falling in love with Dale and Sophie’s style.

Eating mums homemade soup with fresh white bread.

Feeling the warmth of fire first thing in the morning.

My obsession with instagram. 
The sense of calmness and familiarness that came with every square I crocheted.

I didn't realise it had been so long between posts. Winter has been a crazy busy couple of months. So ready for Spring and all it has to bring with it and getting back into regular posting. I have lots of pictures of my new house and projects I've been working on over the last couple of months to share with you. 

Have things been extra busy where you are lately?

project life | how I caught up

The other night I sat down to 'get caught up' on project life. I knew I was a few weeks behind (a month and a half to be exact) and I knew I hadn't been taking many photos (long working hours + lack of sunlight). Feeling overwhelemd, I went and checked my email (avoidance) and Ali Edward's latest newsletter was waiting for me. In which she was talking about how she had gotten behind with her newsletter. It was just what I needed to hear. I decided there was no point stressing out about how far I was behind and how I was going to get caught up. It was in the past and the present was waiting.

That six week period became one double page spread in my album.

I loved Ali's repeating journalling technique that she used in her newsletter and decided to use that too. I picked a couple that I really related to and added some of my own. I trimmed down a page proctor so it would hold 4 6x4 and added the text + some pictures of the report writing process (one of the reasons I had ended up so far behind)

One of the reasons I love this approach to memory keeping so much is that it is a reflection on my life right now. And a few weeks ago, that life was crazy busy. This project reflects that.

Are you a memory keeper? A collector of stuff?
What approach do you use to record those memories?
Do you use project life?

 

my creative space | split personality pillow

I made my first crocheted pillow!

I was cleaning up my wool basket and found a couple of circles in squares grannys I had made a couple of months ago, which were going to become a blanket. Turns out I never got around to that project. I decided to turn them into a pillow, for my friends birthday. It was Wednesday when I had this idea and her party was on Saturday. Nothing like a good challenge!

I used the join as you go method to join my granny squares. This meant they ended up with two rounds of cream yarn. As I had never made a pillow before, I didn't really know how to finish it. I spent some time on pinterst and google trying to find a tutorial with not much luck, so I decided to just wing it, and make a giant granny square for the back. This was going great, until about two thirds of the way in and I ran out of orange wool, it was late Thursday night and I didn't have time for a visit to the shops on Friday. I finished the square off with purple wool.


I continued crocheting the square until it was roughly the same size. All my searching before, had told me that the most popular way of joining the two squares together would be to use single crochet. Which I planned on doing, until I discovered they were slightly different sizes and didn't have the same amount of treble clusters.. there was no point stressing over it, so I single crocheted the two squares together with my own unique method!

I was really happy with how it turned out. I love that it has two distinct personalities, the calm look of the grannys on the front and the bright orange/purple square on the back, depending on your mood!

Do you crochet pillows?
How do you join the pieces together?
Do you use a pattern or prefer to make things up as you go alon?

I am still working away at this blanket too.
I needed a bit of a break from making the same thing over and over again.

Do you finish one project before you start the next?
Do you like to have a few different projects on the go at once?

Go here to see a variety of fab projects.

point + shot | long weekend

It has been a super productive long weekend here. I've spent most of the three day break writing and editing mid semester reports. After finishing a report, I rewarded myself by making a square for the simple granny blanket. There was a very good ratio of reports written to squares made this weekend! I started joining the squares together and it is really starting to look like a blanket now. Love this. Naturally, I did most of the report writing and crocheting in my pajamas in front of the fire. I am yet to find a way to write school reports that doesn't involved my pajamas, they seriously have to be the most comfiest sitting down clothes ever!

Was it a long weekend where you were? How did you spend it?

Playing along with Sunny + Scout for the first time in a while.

right now

Winter has really set in down here in Melbourne. The mornings are cold and icy. The days are long and cold and and really wet. Layers are being worn at every opportunity. Boots and stockings are on on high rotations. The fire is burning day and night.

I am right in the middle of writing reports and I have declared the Queens Birthday long weekend, the report writing long weekend. They will be finished.

I am finding a few minutes here and there to crochet a few more squares for this blanket and I am dreaming about learning this stitch to make this scarf. 

I am pinning bits and pieces over here and really hoping to find my blogging mojo really soon. 

Are things slowing down for winter in your corner of the world or are they about to get busy?