PLOUGHING THROUGH

I feel quite remiss, having not blogged for a few days. The most frustrating thing is not having my camera at hand to include pics of what I have been up to - not that it is very much. Mainly I have been working on my entry for a competition. I feel most ambivalent about the piece (camera returns to Oz shores tomorrow, fingers crossed) and will post pic ASAP. What I was trying to achieve was ridiculous, when I think about it. I tried to blend an art quilt (of a type) with smatterings of traditional styles, whilst still complying with the competition rules. Trouble is, those sorts of things end up being a huge excercise in compromise and I doubt the result is a "winner" in anyone's eyes. Of course, it may well be that I am just fed up with the sight of the damned thing and in other circumstances it would have definintely become another UFO. Competition closes in a few days, so I have to get my shit together - luckily all that's left is to quilt the thing (maybe something magical will happen in that process), measure it finally _ God let's hope it finally meets the dimensions requirements because that bit has taken me the most time - every single time I measure it I get a different answer and I am definitely not good at maths. I just want to move on to another more exciting project - or several of the thousands currently backing up in my brain.
Being Spring and delightful, I have also spent copious amounts of time in the garden - a necessary pleasure because pretty soon it gets far too damned hot to venture outdoors and I am determined not to get a tanned face this year (although the mirror tells me it's too late). Yes, it looks healthy and so on, but I am very sick of that older Australian ritual of having little bits of one's body burnt, frozen or cut off every time I see the doctor. Being a fair skinned, blonde haired blue eyed person with eyelashes and brows so fair they look invisible without makeup, and of Irish/ English extraction - I have no business even walking out the back door without sunscreen. Trouble is, as a Baby Boomer, I was encouraged to run around naked in the sun as a toddler by my mother who had a morbid fear about rickets. Apprarently rickets was rife in England post-war because the sun hardly ever shines there anyway and everyone had spent so much time inside due to the bombs. Common sense would tell you that the fact you can get about 165 times your daily requirement of Vitamin D by walking to your mailbox in Oz - but the powers that were back then had little understanding about such things.
MUst away to the sewing machine - hoping like hell to finish the competition entry today.