Scatterdayers in Altona

One of my earliest memories is going to Altona Hospital to meet my new baby sister. Today I was back in Altona.

As I walked along the pier I was entranced by a line of swans:

And fascinated by gulls digging in the sand between waves:

But my real reason for heading west today was a concert by Cathy Miller, The Singing Quilter.

The building which was once the hospital where my little sister arrived, today saw a meeting of some Scatterday Sisters! Here you see 75% of those who made it through to the end of the Scatterdays challenge; the Aussie Kilted Quilter, the Singing Quilter, and me. It was a shame Pauline from Blink n You Miss It couldn't have joined us to complete the set.

The concert was wonderful! I bought Cathy's CDs so that she can keep me company in my sewing room in future.

Scatterday - Y

It's our very last Scatterday challenge, and our last letter is:


and our categories are:
bedroom
winter
hot
and from the sewing room - yahoo!!!! Something that you were really pleased you finally finished.


Bedroom:

I had trouble finding a Y item for this one, but this quilt I finished in June this year contained a lot of "Y-seams", so assembling it was very time consuming.

Winter:

The Yarra River in June this year. In contrast to our long days at the moment, this photo was taken just before 6:00pm, when it was thoroughly dark.

Hot:

Given that I'm actually writing this post on Friday night, yesterday was hot! Sorry about the bit of dust or something on the thermometer, but by the time I realised it was there the temperature had dropped so I couldn't re-take the photo.

Yahoo!

I started in this quilt in 2001 and was very, very happy when I finished it in 2012!

So that's the end of our Scatterdays journey. It's been fun! Many thanks to Cinzia for initiating it, running it all year, and hosting the links. Check out the other participants via her blog here. We lost a few along the way due to illness, busyness, travel and life in general.  Congratulations to those who made it to the end!

Scatterday - C

The letter for our second-last Scatterday is:

and we are looking for:
Sunday
wet
round
colourful

Sunday:

Sunday always used to involve church attendance.

Wet:

It is hard to get a canna leaf wet - rain just beads on the surface.

Round:

Double-ended calipers, as used by woodturners. They are also rather cute.

Colourful:

This iron caddy was almost colourless when I bought it a couple of months ago. But I'm hoping the addition of some colourful embellishments makes it more cheerful. I'm giving it away later today, so I hope the recipient will be content with my contribution!

You can see what the other Scatterdayers found for this challenge by visiting Cinzia's blog here.  I'm pretty sure there's only Y to go, so come back in two weeks for that!

Scatterday - G

It seems I lost count of how many letters we had left in the Scatterdays journey. I thought last time we doing our antepenultimate letter, but it fact this is the one that is our third-last:

And our categories are:
Body
Hobby
Lunch
Something green from the sewing room.


Well this could have fitted three of those categories, but I'm using it for Body:

The green body of the first Elna sewing machine has contributed to it becoming known as the Grasshopper. It was made from 1940 to 1952. This is not a picture of mine, but it looks pretty much the same. The photo is from elnagrasshopper.com, a domain which is apparently going to be shut down in a couple of weeks.

Hobby:

I enjoy growing things. This is a piece of a plant I found yesterday that someone was throwing out. I couldn't grab the whole thing, but I hope this cutting will grow into a nice plant.


Lunch:

Grilled cheese still sizzling under the griller! I've eaten a lot of grilled-cheese-on-toast lunches in my life. This one was particularly yummy though, being more of a Welsh rarebit than just my usual slices of cheese on toast.

Green:

A selection of green things from my sewing room, including a sample of every stitch on the only new sewing machine I ever bought. That was in 1990, and it died in 1997. I had thought it was purely mechanical, but it actually had some computerised components, and when one of them broke it wasn't repairable. So I went back to using the Elna Lotus I had owned since 1982 (still going strong now), and have had no further desire to own a computerised sewing machine.

Check out the links on Cinzia's blog to see what the other Scatterdayers found for G. By my calculation we have only C and Y to go!

Scatterday - K

What a pretty K! Our categories today are:
in your neighbourhood, edible, container, and something king size from the sewing room.

In My Neighbourhood:

Someone's idea of a koala. There are three of these perched in trees in this mall in my suburb. I don't know who is responsible for them, and I'm not sure what they are made of, as they are up quite high.
Added later: Thanks to Dee in the comments, I now know that the koalas are part of the same MoreArt festival as the giant worms. I should have realised! The artist is Aaron James McGarry, and he made the koalas of plastic shopping bags. Details in the link Dee posted: How much plastic can a koala bear?

Edible:

Also in my neighbourhood - quite a few kebab shops. The crowds at Melbourne Kebab Station lead me to believe it must be the best. It has been there for years, but others open up and close down regularly. It is not uncommon to see no-one buying the rival kebabs while at the same time the queues spill out onto the footpath at MKS.

Container:

This one was tricky. So many containers, so few starting with K! This is an Ikea storage box called "Kassett". I have a few of them on the shelves in my loungeroom holding bits and pieces. But their main purpose is to allow double-height CD storage. i.e. I have one row of CDs in front of the boxes, and another row on top, allowing twice as many CDs on each shelf.

King Size:

Giant bulldog clips used when basting quilts (tape measure for scale). Last seen in action here. They would have been quite expensive, but I got them very cheap when this colour was discontinued.

Well that's it for my Ks. You can find links to other people's Scatterday posts on Cinzia's blog.

Scatterday - P

It is the turn of the letter
and our categories this time are:

Furniture
Books
Animal
PIG in your sewing room

By my calculation, P is our preantepenultimate letter!

Furniture

How about this plant stand? It sold on eBay for $530 three years ago. Picture found here.

Books

I had several Pookie books when I was a child, but couldn't find them this week. So this picture is from eBay, where this book is for sale for $149.95 - with free postage! Apparently there were ten Pookie books, listed on the author's Wikipedia page. I've never met anyone who is familiar with Pookie, but I was happy to find a few bloggers who remember him, such as here, here, here, and here.

Animal

My dog Merle when she was a puppy. How about her pinnae? Her ears were the biggest part of her fifteen years ago.

PIG in my sewing room:
"PIGS" is an American acronym meaning "projects in grocery sacks" i.e., stuff you are still working on and keep in shopping bags. I don't keep my projects in shopping bags, so I've gone with this instead:

It is a shopping bag, covered in pigs. I made it earlier this year using the Nicole Mallalieu Zip-Away pattern


As usual, you can see what the other participants found for this challenge via the links on Cinzia's blog.

Scatterday - F

Cinzia's die has rolled an F for us this week, and our categories are Insect, Country, Shop, and Future Project.

Insect:

Is that the second-biggest fly you've ever seen?

Country:

Fireplaces of former farmhouses are a common sight in the countryside. A small flock of sheep graze under the long-dead pine trees which once lined the driveway to this house.

Shop:

Fabric shops are my favourite, of course! But these vintage fabrics were for sale at a flea-market.

Future Project:
The next hand-piecing project I have lined up to do is a pattern designed by Geta Grama from Romania called Flower Ball. This is Geta's photo from her blog post.

Mine won't be in these colours of course. I also want to see if I can add to the 3-D effect by the use of lighter and darker fabrics in both the flowers and background.
Geta has since made a lot larger version based on this concept, which will be at the Houston Quilt Festival this year. You can see that amazing quilt here.

Well that's the F-words taken care of. As usual, there are links on Cinzia's blog to the other Scatterday folks.

Scatterday - O

I don't know where Cinzia found that O; are those guys wearing prisoner-of-war uniforms? At least they look happy, whatever their situation.

Here are today's categories:
Discarded
Workplace
Arts
Old

This one nearly got away from me, as I only remembered on Thursday that this was the Scatterday Saturday. Don't know where the last fortnight went!

Discarded:

I found this opal amongst some buttons someone discarded three years ago.  I did give it back to her!

Workplace:

Not my workplace, although it is quite close to somewhere I've been doing some casual work recently. The Melbourne Observatory was once a very important astronomical site. You can read about it on Wikipedia.

Art:

Is this art? Wall sculptures of owls made of old kitchen junk. $75 each if you want one. Spotted at Bulleen Art and Garden yesterday.

Old:

This fragment of hexagon patchwork included papers dated from 1793 to 1803. That sounds old to me! It is thought to have been made by Mary Ann Spring, (born 1799, London). On display at Quilts in the Barn yesterday.

There aren't a lot of us still able to continue with the game, but to see what the remaining few found for O, go to Cinzia's blog here.

Scatterday - J

It's that time again, and this time we have the letter:


Our categories are:

• Holiday
• Dancing
• Toy
• Japanese

I found these a bit tricky, and rather than take photos specially as I usually do, I've had to have a bit of a dig through my old photos.

Holiday:

View of the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur. It is a collection of huge astronomical instruments built in about 1730. You can read all about it on its World Heritage List page here. I was there in December 2006.

Dancing:

A performance by the Jhoom Bollywood Dance School in November 2006 during the filming of Chak De! India in Melbourne.

Toy:

Jacks. Not my photo, this one comes from the Museum of Victoria. They have two sets of jacks in their collection, one from the 1880s, and these ones from the 1990s. The difference is that the older ones were probably actually played with, whereas these ones were deliberately collected for the Australian Children's Folklore Collection. I am old enough to have used real bone jacks when I was in early primary school. I don't think anyone at my first school had plastic ones. In searching for this photo I came across a site with the rules of the game, although they list far more complications than the version I knew.

(Added later: Actually the museum seems to have many sets of jacks. I also found these from 1955, and a comparison with the plastic ones here.)

Japanese:

I made this little Japanese purse a couple of years ago from a kit purchased from Mariko Japan at the AQC. Later that year I made a bunch of them as gifts for various friends. This week I've been using mine to hold the bits and pieces I'm using to finish the facing on a quilt; the thread, point-turner, clips, etc.

So that's J done! We still have C, F, G, K, O, P and Y to go.

As usual, you can visit the other Scatterday participants to see what they found for this challenge by following the links on Cinzia's blog. I'm looking forward to seeing what they found!

Scatterday - E

This week we have the letter E, and these categories:
Pantry
Frightening
Flower
Exciting equipment


Pantry:

Empty jars. Have you noticed how fewer and fewer products are sold in glass jars these days? Plastic seems to be taking over, so we need to hang on to the glass ones we have. There's a section of the pantry for storing empties until they are used for jam-making or for honey distribution.

Frightening:

Screen shot from a video of an elephant charging into a vehicle in the Kruger National Park. You can see the whole video at the Guardian site here. I think I would be more than a little frightened by that!

Flower:

There are lots of plants beginning with E in flower at the moment, but which one to choose? I went for this one because it is quite unusual. It is an Eryngium, or sea holly, which I found in a park in Bendigo when I was there two weeks ago.

I couldn't resist throwing in the beautiful Euphorbia as well. These were in the same garden bed as the eryngiums, and the contrast between the lemony yellow and purply blue was lovely.

Exciting Equipment:

What could be more exciting than my lovely Elna Lotus? Definitely my favourite piece of equipment. As seen all over my blog, as well as at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York.

So that's E eliminated. And by my calculations, there are only eight letters left: C, F, G, J, K, O, P and Y. I wonder which one Cinzia will pull out of the hat for us next?

As usual, you can visit the other Scatterday participants to see what they found for this challenge by following the links on Cinzia's blog.

Scatterday - H

What a pretty H Cinzia found this week! I wish my photos were as pretty as that H.
Our tricky categories are:
Sticky
Wearable
Breakfast
Hiding Place


Sticky:

Honey being extracted from the comb by centrifugal force forms sticky strands.

Wearable:

It's a hobby-horse wearing a hat from Himachal Pradesh in India. Unfortunately the hat is not wearable by me as it is way too small for my head.

Breakfast:

Honey on crumpets so hot they steamed up the camera.

Hiding place:

This Horn cabinet is meant to be a hiding place for my sewing machine, but in reality it is rarely closed up like this.

As usual you can see what the other Scatterday participants found for this challenge by following the links at Cinzia's blog.