Sunday Stash - Squared Elements

These beauties I'm about to share are the last of the order of fabric I made last month that I've been slowly revealing. I try to make my dollars stretch, and fabric purchases have to come out of my allowance so unless I have a project that needs fabric NOW I try to limit myself to an order every other month or so and these are the last from my most recent splurge. And these Squared Elements I couldn't wait to get my hands on.

I'm pretty sure I love everything about Squared Elements. The simplicity of the colour/white patterns. The slightly wonky grid layout of the squares. And depending on whether the white is the grid or the background changes how the whole pattern comes off.

For the most part these were stashed with projects in mind.

Eggplant and lime are the primary colours in the quilt I plan to make for my bed in that one-day distant future, so I've been picking up prints I like in those colours whenever I see them. Purple's a favourite colour, and the bedroom is the only room Bunny will tolerate it, so purple was a must have. Why lime? I'm still not sure, other than the fact that I love the contrast a rich purple against a lighter green gives.

The others? Well, I've got my reds collection building up for my brother and the black was just stashing. Black/grey/white prints have been really drawing my attention lately and I think before I know it I'm going to have a lot of those in my stash. They're useful, though, and I loves them.

The effect of the whole stack is just delicious to me. Can't wait to get my hands on more of these beautiful blenders.

Linking up, once again, with the ever excellent Molli Sparkles and Sunday Stash. I can't wait to see what everyone else has to share.

2014 Finish-A-Long Q1 Goals

So last quarter? Totally did not finish a single thing on my list. Perhaps this is especially sad seeing as I only had two projects there, but, since I hand piece (when I move and have space, the first thing I'm doing is buying myself a sewing machine. I even have the money set aside and I cannot wait) I give myself leeway there. How quickly do I really expect to finish a double quilt by hand? So both of my items are carrying over.

Cameron's Quilt

the blocks all laid out

This one is inspired by Red Pepper Quilt's Labyrinth pattern, except for the fact that I did my own math. I'm a little out of love with this right now, but my niece is crazy about it and that's who it's for. I'm just doing the sashing now and the top should be done in a week - then I need to decide if I need borders, which I probably should add and get to quilting. This is intended to be a birthday present, and given that said birthday is mid-February I have to get a move on. But let's be honest, this is going to be a slightly late birthday present.

Pillow Covers

pillows to made from random bits, mostly

The other project on the list is some pillow covers, made using the scraps left over from my Trip Around The World quilt that I've used to test little techniques. I used them to test the corner sections of the blocks for Cami's quilt, and more recently I've been testing some flying geese techniques for something I plan on making for my brother. Since I have tons of co-ordinating scraps, I figure that these can eventually become pillows for our living room.

I have quite a pile of co-ordinating scraps
 

Realistically, I don't actually expect the pillow covers to get done, but a girl can dream, right? Anyway I don't have too much of a space to put them for now.

Sunday Stash - Sun Prints

Making me a happy quilter lately has been the growing nature of my stash. I still have a few prints to show off from my last delivery, and I think I chose some great stash builders. I'm still doing a lot of my buying around the colour scheme for two projects I have planned; one uses reds and blues. Those colors are pretty heavily represented here.

various sun prints

Following along the blog hop this summer for the Alison Glass Sun Print collection I couldn't help but fall in love a little bit. I was being choosy with my order, and only picked up a few prints but if I had unlimited buying power I'd have my hands on the whole collection. You might be seeing some of the other prints soon, thanks to some lucky Christmas gifts.



I think the orange is close enough to some of the reds I've got stashed that it will go with my brother's colours. These should make some adorable flying geese blocks. Colour wise, the purple is lighter in real life, but the orange and blue are pretty accurate. Purple was actually a bit of an impulse choice, but it's a good one.

Of these two my favourite is by far the bike path. My computer screen hadn't shown just how pink the part streamer print would be, so while I like it a lot I don't have any immediate plans for that one.

That's the orange feathers against the red party streamers to give a colour comparison. I didn't count for how pink the streamers would look in person but I'm sure I'll have lots of fun with it in other projects.

There are still a couple prints from this order of fabrics there that I haven't shared, though they should show up here in the next week or two. And maybe some Christmas gifts that I'm a little over excited about. Next time, maybe?

I'm linking this up with Sunday Stash over at its new home with Molli Sparkles.

Ripley's Aquarium Visit

Just before Christmas, Bunny had a birthday (he's officially that much closer to earning his old fart status) and to celebrate the occasion I took him into Toronto for his favourite lunch - dim sum at the Pearl, as well as a visit to the new Ripley's Aquarium that opened just a few months ago. I probably haven't been in an aquarium since I was a teenager and Bunny was over the moon excited.

 

This aquarium? Worth every minute of excitement and dollar of admission price. If you have a local aquarium and you haven't been, just take my word for it and go. I've culled Bunny pictures down to just a handful of my absolute favourites (yes, we took a lot of pictures) here to share with you.

 

The aquarium starts off with the Canadian waters exhibit, opening with a giant circular tank of schooling fish.

 

schooling fish

giant and blue lobsters

There were plenty of other cool things in the Canadian Waters, like a kelp forest, an even giant-er lobster and an octopus, but not everything translated well to pictures. Up next is the tropical exhibit, Rainbow Reef. This is like a supersized version of my ideal home aquarium.

tropical fish



The tropical fish were pretty limited to this one specific aquarium, but after that we entered the largest exhibit of the aquarium, Dangerous Lagoon. Schools oceanic fish, sharks and sawfish galore and the most ingenius way to explore the whole thing.  The tour takes you through an underground tunnel that winds its way through the lagoon, on a moving sidewalk. It's like going to the amusement park, I swear.

sharks!

sawfish

The sawfish are ridiculously cool. This one is just hanging out, laying on the top of the tunnel. Wikipedia tells me that sawfish are a species of stingray, and seeing the "face" on this guy it makes sense. Doesn't it look like eyes and a mouth?

more sharks

grouper

Dude this fish is huge. Bunny says its in its own tank because otherwise it would eat pretty much the entire exhibit. Ugly though.

the moving sidewalk tunnel

After exiting the tunnel, there's a little exploration centre that's a lot of fun (and totally has a Finding Nemo tank, by the way) but we didn't take many pictures. In the same area there's also a little onsite café that's surprisingly well priced. I didn't get gouged when I bought a couple of bottles of juice, which thrilled me greatly.

Next up was a section called the Gallery, essentially small display tanks for individual species. There were plenty of cool fish here, but rather than show a million pictures let's just focus on the favourites.

lionfish

seadragon! this was my favourite discovery

How cool is this little guy? I was fascinated, and now I want a seadragon on my own.

hello mr ray!

Followed by Ray Bay, which features (you guessed it) stingrays! See the resemblance to the sawfish earlier?

Then, right tucked at the end, when I was almost afraid they'd forgotten them: Planet Jellies. Jellyfish are my favourite fish ever to watch. The last time I saw them at an aquarium I sat on the floor for ages just entranced by the jellies. They're hypnotic, and the changing coloured lights on the main exhibit made them more so. Good planning also meant that there was a row of raised benches by the tank. The only reason I left the jellyfish tank was that Bunny was getting antsy.

they save the best for last

pacific sea nettle jellyfish

more jellyfish

miniature jelly

At the end of the aquarium there's also another hands on section, where Bunny petted rays and sharks and such. I'm squeamish and less fun, apparently. Then, a really cool gift shop. They have aquarium style build-a-bear, all the usual, and then sweet little glass figurines of sea creatures that I'd love to get one day. Best someone-else's-birthday ever.

review: The Summoner/Chronicles of the Necromancer

Many of my best recent reads have come as suggestions from coworkers. (Thank goodness for good coworkers!) My fall into The Name of the Wind followed several months of cajoling by a near neighbour. When he left for greener pastures, I was a little upset to have lost my favourite sci fi/fantasy reading friend. Luckily, one of the guys down the hall made it quickly clear that we were destined to be reading buddies.

After bonding over reading the Night Angel series at the same time, a pile of six books was promptly placed on my desk and it was mandated that I must read these. And well, when someone wants to give me a few weeks of reading material and it's all in my favourite genre, how can I complain? So began my decent into Gail Z Martin's Chronicles of the Necromancer, starting with Book One: The Summoner.

These books have the medieval fantasy world, they have the intrigues of royal courts and politics, they have magic and fantasy and pseudo-vampires and -werewolves. It follows a group of young nobles, centred around Martris "Tris" Drayke, second son of the King of Margolan. His brother, Jared, is power hungry, greedy, arrogant and dangerous, determined to take the world down as he chases his ambitions of power and glory.

The story unfolds quickly after the death of the king, with Tris suddenly on the run in fear of his life, suddenly desperate to claim a throne he never wanted to save his people from his brother's cruelty. He's joined on his journey by an appropriately motley band of characters including the mandatory childhood friends, rough men picked up along the way and the serendipity of immediate and powerful allies joining his fight.

Martin moves the plot along quickly, and it's easy to get swept along with the story. There's plenty of opportunity for good old sword and sorcery action to take place, and many different subplots to focus on. The characters are well written and rounded, and easy enough to follow and (my big thing) believable. Minor characters are given enough flavour to seem realistic, and as the books progress the women are just as much part of the action as the men.

Books one and two tell a pretty distinct story, and it could have easily ended there. Book three and four are another clear pair within the series, and I've only recently cracked book four. The third book is an oddball in the set: the original conflict is resolved, and now suddenly although we know the setting and the characters Martin has to set up all new plots again and it takes time to get moving. It got a little bit bogged down both recapping the old story and setting the stage for the new one and it's fair to say the first half was a slog. By the end, though, I couldn't wait to get into book four.

Once I finished the Chronicles of the Necromancer series I quickly dipped into the pair of books that follow: the Sworn and the Dread, which tell a distinct story about two years down the line. If anything, these two books were better than the first four. So, if you're into action, fantasy and believable characters? This might be your thing.

quilt blocks complete!

Lately the scheduling elves at work have not been giving me full weekends off - lots of Friday/Saturdays though, so which feels like a weekend so I really can't complain. It also gives me the distinct pleasure of having the entire house to myself until about 6pm ... which is a) nice for my introverted self to recharge and b) allows me to turn the main floor of the house into a quilting-prep work station.

The other week my day off got spent photographing a number of piles of new fabric (thanks for my giveaway win, and the delivery of my Black Friday purchase) and doing so very much pressing and trimming and marking and cutting. Why, pressing what you might ask?

Working on these babies, of course:

35 of these, to be exact

Because somehow along the way I actually got all the blocks pieced. And laid out and now I'm working on sashing them. I'd been starting to get sick to death of this project, mostly because I didn't allow myself enough variation in fabrics. What was I thinking making a double quilt with only five fabrics, and one of them is white? The oddball blocks have helped relieve that tedium, though, and putting together my final layout and having a photograph of the finish line to refer to has helped.

It also helps that my niece and sister in law are super excited about it, and I'm getting update about new décor for my niece's room that are designed to go with the quilt. That's motivation: so if February 12th being the birthday on which I am aiming to gift this.

random blocks

Those three blocks where I've been much more random with the fabric placement completely allowed me to enjoy working on this project. Even thought it's just three blocks and it's colours and prints that are already in the quilt anyhow, they gave me some breathing room.

the layout!

The lighting on the layout picture is really crummy - the black and dark purples blend right into each other but really I took it more for my own reference than anything. The final quilt will look a bit different, just because of sashing, but now I have the blocks ready and a plan in place.

< 3

I hope you all are out there having a happy holiday season and enjoying as much time with loved ones as you can fit in. As for me, this evening I will be holing up and snuggling Bunny, playing board games with family and mostly enjoying some quiet time.

Christmas Eve is pretty much my favourite day ever, even though I'm not a huge Christmas person. Probably because my favourite day ever, in history, was that Christmas Eve five years ago when I went next door to visit his momma and ran flat into Bunny and my world changed.

Five years ago today was love at first sight. Like I never would have believed if it hadn't happened to me, feeling the world around me shift and realign, the sense of the world closing in on me and coming forward to whisper and scream "this is it, this is your future". Some moments can never be adequately expressed in words and that night is one of them.

But five years ago, was a first kiss. A first hand hold. A sense of certainty like nothing I had ever known before in my life.