Five months in the life of our oak tree

Yes we love our oak tree.  It's one of the reasons we bought our house.  Last summer when it was very very dry we noticed all the leaves were curling and turning crispy brown and we thought for a while that the tree might perish.  I watered it solidly for weeks and it came good.  It has been great to see it do it's thing again this spring - obviously without any damage from the drought.  We think our oak tree is between 40 and 50 years old.

16 November  2009

25 October 2009

10 October 2009

 

20 September 2009

4 June 2009

I feel heroic

We managed it!  Husband and I finally constructed our Freedom slide bookshelving arrangement on the weekend.  Only took us about three hours and not a cross word between us. We have sworn, however, that if we ever buy anything in a flatpack again we'll pay the store to assemble it for us.  So here it is - ta dah.  Now I need to buy some lovely woven baskets to fill in some of the cubicles.  Funny how one retail purchase always necessitates another...

Have been in production of the  millydilly bag. These are little pouch type bags which you tie up and wear around your waist or hips  - perfect for walking the dog, going out dancing, travelling etc.  They look great worn over both pants or skirts.  It's less than three week to our market stall on 13 December at the Masonic Lodge, Hobart. See http://themarkethobart.com.au/ for more info.

Hullo again - still here

Whoops - I have been too busy to update this blog. It's that crazy time of year again  - social life getting busier, Christmas shopping to do, neglected house work and repairs to catch up on and of course the jungle of the garden needing taming after all the recent rain and jack-and-the-beanstalk growth. 

Outside our newly constructed (thank you Bruce) no-dig-raised-vegie-bed has needed lots of 'filling up' with layers of animal manures, newspapers, garden clippings, straw, compost etc. Inside the flat pack containing our new bookshelf from Freedom still sitting in the sunroom six weeks after buying it. Guilt guilt guilt - every time I trip over it but no time or energy to tackle that one yet. Opportunities to sew have been hard to squeeze into my weekends even though all I really want to do is play endlessly with my new sewing machine and overlocker!  Boo working nine to five, boo housework...

On Saturday evening caught up with Noella (birthday girl) and her market stall at the Hobart Fringe Festival.  She was selling some of my purses, a couple of bags and a new design I was trialling for a small dilly milly bag which ties around the waist.  Whoo hoo - all bags sold and lots of the purses too.  Planning on staring production of the milly dilly next weekend.

Yesterday Sue and I visited the first Christmas designers market at the Masonic Temple in Hobart to get a taste for what it is going to be like for our market stall in December.  Gosh was it busy - hard to even get near a stall.  Great to see but the pressure is on now to make more things. In the afternoon I did manage to whip up one bag in the afternoon using some lovely material bought in Burnt Street, Seaforth on a recent trip to Sydney.

Piling in the new vegie garden layers

Showing off our lovely oak tree again - green leaves are darkening every day

(PS Don't let this serene scene deceive you. This is the presentable area of the garden - the other side is where the jungle is taking over)

Useful stuff

Hi ho - back from Sydney and straight into a 2-day Social Media workshop with social networking guru Laurel Papworth.  Phew.  Mind overload but lots of great new ideas for both making and promoting.

It was fun in Sydney at Anna's Open Home although we didn't quite get the numbers we were expecting.  Being a shimmery hot Sydney Sunday I think a lot of the people we invited were at the beach. I don't blame them!!  We had fun though.  I loved Anna's Silk Diva range and Shauna's new range of cards. Go Anna and Shauna!

I've decided that after 10 months of millymaking it might be nice to share some of the things I've learnt along the way.  So I've added some useful info to this blog - lists of the online fabric shops I buy from (all great - no complaints), other sites where I've ordered business cards and clothing labels or used to create promo material, plus sites where I go to get inspiration from, sites where you can sell handmade items and blogs and sites I like.  Hope you find something useful here.


The photo above is of a recent sculpture created by my sister Shauna.