Saturday 1 June 2013

Oh so soon and now it is June

Happy start of June. Everything here is full of static as winter is our dry season. It can drive you nuts what with clothing and hair defying gravity and doing its own thing. One of our cats has long hair and the poor thing runs around having a constant bad hair day. It is also nippy so she sneaks into bed at night and often this action is accompanied by sparks as static is discharged. The mornings are coldish but soon warn to a pleasant temperature where no jerseys are required, but then again the 22nd is either the start or middle of winter. I think I will be going with middle as by august normally the first blossoms are on the trees.

I really do like June as so much that is good in my life happened in June. I met my husband in June and my eldest daughter was born in June so basically June for me is the creation of family month. It is an interesting point in life when the family you are born into is replaced by family that is yours due to the life you have created or been blessed with. It is an interesting social experiment this thing called family, firstly you find someone who gets you so theoretically shares your values and your general view of life and then you bring up children who will go out into the world showing off your values and how you see the world. The more interesting part I think is when these children are old enough to start changing the world view that you imparted on them with one of their own and start the cycle again.

There is also the down side of June and that is the sniffles that keep attacking the family. We are all taking our vitamins like crazy and as yet it has just been small skirmishes and nobody has taken to bed. The other thing is the mess that is in the garden with all of the leaves that keep tumbling down.
It does not matter how often they are swept up, within and hour or two the ground is once again covered in leaves. Let us not even get onto the topic of the swimming pool.

The swimming pool is situated in the back corner of our garden and the neighbours have beautiful trees around the perimeter of their stand, unfortunately in autumn, all the leaves from these 25 foot trees all fall into the swimming pool.

It is not a nice sight. It almost looks like frogs have taken possession of that bit of the garden. We still have a few flowers and birds in the garden.

The hardee dahs are still in our garden.

The youngest is doing mid-year exams, so that is always a bit of a stress especially seeing as she is a teenager and all the distracting electronic devices need to be kept out of her bedroom so that at least a little studying will take place. Having gone through bringing up a teenager already, the one thing that I did not want in the youngest bedroom until she was at varsity was a computer. She has her PC in the study with mine and my husbands. This is so that we can have social time when playing on the computer. This has been excellent in drawing her out of her space and into general conversation areas. The school, however, was able to go against this by issuing all of the children tablets on which they can view their textbooks as well as do internet interactive study in class. This means that my child has a computer in her room. As this is for school I have to let her use it there. I do make sure that it is in the study charging whilst she is studying. The same go for the two Nintendo devices that she plays with..she isn't spoilt rotten, one is mine and the other is hers. Well these too need to be plugged into the study. Oh the modern day problems that modern day families face.
My stitching together of my Dear Jane is going slowly but surely. I did a bit of a system check and found the logic of how I was assembling the dear was all wrong.  As the sashing is supposed to be used to even up the blocks, the way that I was going was going to lead to a whole colour stripe having nothing to equalise the sizing of it. This could have potentially messed up the flow as one of the colours would have pulled wrong. I still have my four corners, but now I have started to do it row by row. I have done the top two and it is fun to see the rainbow start showing. It really is taking a while but then again it is probably due to me hand stitching all of the pieces.

I really do have a bit of a problem and that is deciding what to use as a backing for my Dear Jane. If you have made one, what did you use? The other problem is deciding on what colour binding to use, and whether I should just buy pre-made binding or make it myself. These are silly inconsequential matters but it does give me something to think about.

I only have 1 month left on my contract at work. I have been told that I will get a renewal but as yet I don't know for how long. People who own the company want all of the IT work to go to India, but sometimes knowledge of systems are completely lacking which I like as it keeps me employed. I did mention that taking the jobs out of country was despicable and was answered that the holding company was more interested in the global work force... I think that means wherever they can exploit people the most. Oh such cynicism.

The hairdresser that my husband and I have been going to for the last 16 years has decided to go and live in Scotland. This is so very sad as she is a lovely person and we will miss her. It is a strange thing living in a country where everyone that you know seems to be going away. Well I wish her luck as it is never easy to transplant your family into a new country, but I am sure she will be okay.

Well happy June to everyone. Those in the northern hemisphere, keep posting pictures of the spring flowers as they are beautiful and lovely to see and those in the southern hemisphere, enjoy winter as this too will pass and then it will be our turn to see the spring flowers appearing.

Have a good one. 

2 comments:

  1. So odd to think of you in the depths of winter as we are hiding from the summer sun. We too are loosing the electronic device battle. We have always required the computer to remain in family spaces where they can be monitored, but the addition of tablets has upset our balance. So far we have solved it by getting a programable modem that turns the internet off to all the the children's devices at bedtime. So many problems that could not have been anticipated! Congratulations on staring to get your Jane put together. I am tempted to start the assembly as well, but a bit worried about how it will all fit together. Still plenty of time to figure out all the details though. I was thinking of using the background fabric on the back to show off the quilting -- no decisions yet on binding. Plenty of time to ponder as the sewing continues.

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  2. The modem idea is very clever, I think it a sneaky way until they are old enough to then use their cell phones or internal modems to "dial" out. I think the longer that they will come to a central point it must be considered a win. Starting to put the Dear together does bring up all sorts of logistical problems, such as should you go block for block or long strips of sashing at a time. I am trying the block by block approach though as I said I did realise I was leading myself into a trap by not following a left to right and up to down approach. Your blocks are looking amazing so it will be fun to see your quilt once you start sewing it together.

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