A beautiful rainy day

You're probably thinking "she's nuts', but there's nothing nicer than an overcast day with gentle rain falling, especially after a period of extended drought. So I welcome every drop!
In the meantime, here's my 'Batikats' quilt, from the 'Katthult' pattern by Solbritt & Maria. It was fun to make, and I already have another one in mind. All machine made, which is highly unusual for me; Im a hand quilting girl. (Old girl!).
The studio saga continues, after I sent a firm request to the builder to finish off the project this week. He promised faithfully to do that. Maybe I should have been firmer earlier! Once that's done, I'll do a big clean and then I'll post some pics.

Early morning

This morning I woke up at the ungodly hour of 6:30am, goodness knows why. Still, it afforded me a view of our foggy paddocks, still rainsodden from yesterday's weather. Our little mob was here too, and the joey was out of the pouch, hopping around like a mad rabbit, before diving back into mum's pouch upon seeing me. I love seeing fog, and the rain was so good!
I also finished a small challenge quilt wall hanging, called "Paula's challenge", because Paula gave us all a panel from Japan. My design is extremely simple, I'm finding 'less is more' a good principle at the moment. The few bits of bling I attached give it a bit of a lift.
On the studio front, we will have a floor complete within the hour. I chose vinyl planks for ease of cleaning, and they looked nice in the shop. I didn't realise how thin the planks were. But I think it'll look ok.
Now I'm onto the quilting of my Prim runner.

Goings-on

 My friend Chris John visited last week. After a very satisfactory trip to a few art and papercraft shops, we settled down to some serious crafting!
We started with the cards. Chris had brought some of her card making equipment along and we had fun trying out some designs and new inks and powders. I had bought a small book of blank watercolour paper postcards, so we gave that a try, with Chris' inktense blocks! Ooooh, I liked! One of those is definitely on my Xmas list. The colours are so intense, and the hues are divine. Finished the little watercolour landscape. Then we tried some stamps, and distress inks, glitter pen, and paper cards to make more cards. The little owl is so cute. I'll have to finish some of these off before I can use them.
The next project was a little steampunk box, inspired by a YouTube video by Einat Kessler. Einat does awesome things, and I love steampunk, so this was by way of an experiment, as I hadn't attempted anything like it before. I had collected a whole lot of steampunk itty bits for another project (see the Alice in Wonderland Quilt), so there were lots left. Then I raided hubby's garage and found a few more bits to use (and if you want to donate any little metal bits from your hubby's collection of stuff, please keep me in mind). We first painted the boxes with a mix of black gesso and umber acrylic, a nice dark colour, then dried them. Next, we used glue to stick on the metal bits and left them to dry overnight. The next step was to repaint everything with the acrylic/gesso mix and dry it.Then we went wild with all sorts of sprays and mica powders and paint and inco gold, building up the layers.A final drying and voila - my steampunky trinket box! Such fun.

In the meantime, things are moving - slowly! - on the building site. The plumbers were a little flummoxed today because they couldn't find a convenient connection to the main water drain, so after ripping up one of my pretty white dwarf aggies (I hope they'll put them back!), they ran a direct trench over to the septic. Hopefully that will be all the digging required. The next job will be the plasterwork, possiby starting tomorrow. Here's hoping!

The Studio - cont'd

 Things are happening! Yay! The guys came to put the slab down last week. It took 3 concrete trucks to fill it all in. This little studio will have strong and deep foundations. It slowly gave me an idea of the size too.

Not much later, and the frame went up. The guys did it all in one - hot - day. Very efficient. The windows and door are in, and I love the big window looking out over the paddock.

Interestingly, the new part won't obstruct any views. You only see it from a small kitchen window, and .

you see straight through the studio's windows into neighbour's paddock.

Next week, the roof will be aligned with the existing roofline, and hopefully we'll get the bricks delivered.

With all this hot weather, I hope the aircon will come on again soon....