COMPARISON.........is the thief of joy.  (Theodore Roosevelt)

I came upon this quote and accompanying article in my latest copy of Mollie Makes and it made me ponder some what.

Written by Jessica Bateman she talks about the "dissatisfaction we feel after seeing other peoples achievements and adventures plastered over social media" 

Now I must confess to a little bit of this happening in my life, thus I have withdrawn from the dreaded Facebook so I didn't have to keep on liking my friends Bali adventure as I was housebound with ill children and husband. Now I love my friend dearly and I hope she did have a great holiday, she deserves it a lot but sometimes I don't want to be found comparing her current wonderful times with my current hard times.

But do I feel this way about my blogging life? Did comparing my crafty attempts with others leave me feeling flat? Sometimes, I will confess in the early days it did, but then you find that little tribe of like minded souls that INSPIRE and bring out the best in you. I am so lucky I hung on in there blagging and blogging away and meeting  others and being inspired to go onwards.

These are some quick snaps I took when I went out without my camera. Taken on my little phone. They don't stand up to great scrutiny and they are not sharp and crisp but they do show you some of the wonderful sights at The Cranbourne Botanical Gardens. (PS. I post things like this on Instagram should you be interested under susanc269)

Any way as I was saying people often do inspire me, especially if they are really happy with what they do. It doesn't have to be at a professional level, just the excitement and passion that is created will get me going along. Again my friend Joy (joyjinks) has prompted me to post a few of my phone photos and just enjoy what I have discovered.

  

Isn't this landscape so photogenic? You couldn't fail to frame up a good shot. This garden represents the soil and colours of the centre of Australia.

The contrasts were all there. 

Pretty flowers. The top one are banksias and I have no idea what the others were other than they were pretty and spilled over the path.

 The reason I had made it to these gardens was a little quilt show put on by the "Friends of the Gardens" and these are details of the most amazing quilts. They look a lot like the works of an artist called Margaret Preston

 But these have been created in cloth with that same bold black interspersed with strong colour. The details in these quilts are amazing. Now there is something that could quite intimidate but why would I be? I am happy to stand back and just admire this woman's artistry and passion.
Check out her gallery of quilts on the Internet you will be in awe...

Now see, if I wasn't inspired to go back and see what was sitting in my phone then I would not have shared these wonderful memories of such beautiful days.

Till next time dear friends......

GOOD MORNING BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.....

I am slowly finding a new rhythmn in my life....are you kidding, there is NO rhythmn just organised chaos?!?!
Yep just when you think there is order, life has a way of showing you otherwise. Lol. The only order in my life is the end of the day when I make a date with myself to sit in my chair and stop and sew. Thank the Lord for my hobby, it is a gift and so are the people I have met with the understanding of why I do this "stuff".

So although I dont get here too often I still create along the way, now is the time to share my deeds. (Thank you Joy, your gentle way is my muse) 

Now a little errrr long time ago I bought this gorgeous kit at a craft show. Dont know what I was thinking as that stage could not really crochet. But what the heck I was assured it was quite simple, so off I headed.
It was simple but teeny tiny and did I mention didnt really know how to crochet? 2.25mm hook and 8ply DMC perle cotton.

Yes folks I am the one who skips the basics, gets bored with simple stages and goes directly to the back of the book to attempt the advanced. Strangely not a huge risk taker in life but when it comes to craft I loose my head. One never learns if one doesnt make mistakes and for some strange reason when it comes to creativity I am a little fearless. I did have an awesome art teacher in my early years at high school and I was often left to my own devises by my parents, so didnt suffer anyone telling me it was wrong.

Ta dah...... I do love it. It has taken years of stop start to achieve this. I did set it aside and learnt how to crochet a little better. I may attempt difficult stuff but not too stupid to realise that going back to learn the basics would be beneficial.

Realised that I had also made up my own stitch and this caused a bit of angst as the later little teeny tiny squares had a different tension and look. 
So unpicked the sewing, discarded a few really wonky pieces and reassembled the whole thing. The older wonky made up stitch squares I placed in the centre and used the newer better tensioned squares at each end. 

  I think I got away with it.

Ohhh look at me getting all arty now. The little bird was an opshop treasure that just had to come home. Love my little opshop treasures, so inexpensive, so much fun. My mother disdains all this frippery...just "dust collectors" in her eyes...dont know where I get my love of little treasures from.....sorry drifted off there...

 Now the other thing I purchased lately was this amazing piece of fabric at the latest craft show. It was a limited hand printed design, directly from artists in our aboriginal community.
I was drawn by its simple graphics and simpy fell in love with it. A lot of "Australiana" is an interpretation of indigioneous art by Europeans and down in southern states of Australia we do not find a lot of this art being affordable. Often the art is purchased cheaply from the artists and sold at huge margins by art galleries. This is changing in these modern times.

 This is the artist who created this design and it is a traditional one, depicting fishing nets.

This is the centre that protects these artists and their work ensuring a fair trade.

This is the distributor and the lovely lady I met at the craft show. In case you were interested there are many more fabrics to see.

And I purchased this pattern and will use the abovementioned fabric to sew a skirt. 
The skirt design is pure genius, it uses basically two squares of fabric that when sewn according to the instructions gives you a wrap skirt that DOES NOT gape and expose you. Love it!!
I can see a few more summer skirts using a great feature fabric coming my way.




So that dear friends is a little of what I have been up to in life.

Will be back in the chair tonight...pure bliss.