Here’s a wee photo documentary of our recent visit to the Rutherglen Agricultural Show to get the blogging ball rolling again.  Enjoy!

Sorry for the absence from this blog of late – I’ve been super busy with my business, planning a trip overseas, and packing up our house for a move.  Many exciting things are happening here at Chez Craftyllama right now!

I’m just popping in here to let you know that there’s currently a giveaway happening where you have the chance to win some of my Saponify goodies, plus a whole lot of awesome stationery made by my super talented friends Rosa-may and Stella from The Frank and Dean Co. Ltd.

You might like to click here to see what’s on offer, and how to go about getting yourself into the draw.  Entries close on April 7th, so there’s still plenty of time to enter.

I hope everyone is having a fantastic week!

The hoarding maybe-that-will-come-in-handy-one-day part of my personality decided to put the two removed pockets into my fabric stash until I decided what to do with them.  After pulling them out last night and having another look at them I decided that they would make great little pouches to keep our electronic cables in while we travel.  I cut out black felt for the backing pieces of the pouches and sewed around the edges with blanket stitch.  I incorporated the original pocket closure on one pouch by sewing it onto the felt, and with the other I added snap closures.  Each pocket took me about an hour to complete.  Now we can store all of our chargers in one spot, and we wont have to go rummaging through our bags only to find a tangled mess of cables at the botton of the pack!

This little Netbook sleeve was made by me last night while sitting on the couch watching television.  I stitched the entire thing by hand, as we’re in the process of packing up our house for a move and I can’t find the sewing machine.  Even if I could find the machine, finding a flat surface to use it on that’s not covered in curing soap for my business would prove to be quite the challenge!

I’ve held on to this piece of fabric for about 4 years, waiting for the right project for it.  It is a sample piece by Kvadart, called Letters.  It’s quite thick and strong – made from a blend of 50% cotton, 42% new wool and 8% nylon.  Perfect for keeping our tiny new Netbook safe from scratches and bumps.

I pinned the fabric right sides together with the Netbook inside, and then backstitched up the sides with embroidery floss.  I then used my pinking shares to cut off the excess fabric, turned it right side out and slid the computer into it’s new sleeve.  I added the button and tie to prevent any unfortunate accidents of the laptop-sliding-out-of-pretty-new-case-and-heavily-hitting-the-ground variety.

Fabric – gifted
Button – gifted
Embroidery thread – $0.15
Yarn tie – $0.01
Total cost for this project – $0.16!

Photos of our family dog Rosie – taken on my recent trip home to New Zealand.  Such a sweet pup.

I picked up two of these pretty blue tea cups on my recent trip to NZ from a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it church op-shop.  I’ve seen this style of tea cup around in plenty of op-shops, but never in this lovely colour.  They have an imprint on the base of the cup that says Made in New Zealand.  I paid the princely sum of 20c for both!

Listen to this beautiful song today and think about all the little things.  You’ll be better for it I think.

I keep two worm farms, and recently I transferred some of the castings from the farms to our pot plants.  Now, normally this makes our plants grow like crazy, and shoot out all kinds of new growth.  What happened this time however is that several little tomato plants started to shoot out of the soil in the pot next to our established Kaffir Lime trees.  A couple of weeks went by and then we started getting fruit!  The seeds must have been in the worm farms for at least 4 months, it’s incredible that they were still viable.

Normally we can’t grow tomatoes because our courtyard doesn’t get enough sun.  I’m loving the novelty of having tomato plants in our garden this year.  Even if they don’t turn red I’m sure I’ll be able to make some kind of delicious green tomato salad or salsa with them.

Thanks, Nature!  What a lovely thing for you to do.

Christmas truffles laid out prettily in their coloured cases

Christmas Day feasting with our Sydney family

Beare Park in Elizabeth Bay for a Picnic in the sunshine

New Years Eve with our sparklers

New Years Eve fireworks

Stunning view of the Estuary from our Holiday spot in Red Rock

Salmon Blinis for an afternoon snack

Checking out the walkway through the wetlands

The flooded local Bowling Club

We gorged on freshly caught local prawns - so delicious!

Played in the odd sea foam that was on the beach

The view of Red Rock from the beach

It was such a lovely relaxed day, and the other stallholders around me were lovely.  I’ll definitely be looking to do this market regularly in 2011.

More photos from the day here