Last WOW for 2010

A well-loved childrens' story....we used to listen to it on radio, the voices were very funny. Wombat is described as being "a square animal with thick hair like a door-mat, stumpy legs and no tail to speak of, brown eyes and a comfortable leathery flat nose like a koala". His friend Mouse is a fat-tailed pouched Bush Mouse, another little Aussie animal, and his other friend is Tabby whose favourite fruit is sardines. The stories were written by Ruth Park, who died recently.

We had a lovely Christmas, our older son and his girlfriend visited for a few days, and we talked to our younger son in Canada via Skype - oh, the wonders of the interwebz! We received some lovely gifts, mine were of the pretty fabric, yummy food and beautifully smelly variety, and I have a gift certificate for a local quilt shop too. We ate, drank and were merry, and had a great time. And now it's only 361 days until we do it all again.
The challenge quilt I finished a while ago when we were having computer issues, so no pics have been posted until now. I made it for Kevin and gave it to him for Christmas, his maternal grandfather was born in 1849 - that's right, 1849 and only two generations back - and was a sailor in the days of sailing ships.
The challenge was to use a 12in block, a 6in by 12in block, a 12in by 6in block, and a 6in block, with the rest of the quilt top made of nine patches. I had a fat quarter of this lighthouse and beach scene so it was the 12in feature block. The yellow fabrics picked up the colour of the sand, seagulls fly in a bright blue sky (how poetical!) and ships sail through the water.
The backing is the rest of the nautical prints I had collected over several years.....I always had it in mind to make Kevin his own quilt, and it had to have ships.
Not sure if you can see, but the quilting in the border is whales and waves. Or waves and whales, if you prefer. The only fabric specially bought was the blue wavy stripe, everything else came from my stash. And has left scarcely a dent.......

At present we seem to have a plague of biting insects, they seem to be leaving Kevin alone but love me.....I am so uncomfortable......bought some cream this morning that the woman at the chemist assured me would take away the itch, but so far it's not doing a great job.......I am trying hard not to scratch because then I will have scabby arms and legs and will look as though I have some sort of dreadful plague. I am also taking anti-histamines but they seem to be swimming uphill against the tide of itchiness. The little buggers attacked me while I was sleeping in my bed of rest, and if one is not safe in one's bed - then where can one be safe?

Oh well, hopefully they will all be gone by winter..........apparently we are having a bad bug season because we have had so much rain, everywhere is very moist, just right for insects like sandflies and mozzies to breed. And bite. Roll on June. At least we are not flooded, unlike those poor folk in Queensland who are suffering the worst flood for a century.

I even found a blog background with frogs, to honour our garden frogs....makes the blog look a bit busy, I'll see how long I can live with it.

Recently Kevin found a gold ring while he was digging in the garden! It is somewhat mangled by mower blades and has no stone. I took it to a local jeweller who (rather disdainfully, I thought) told me the stone would have been synthetic and would have shattered to the four winds when hit by the mower, and the 9 ct gold was worth nothing. Bummer. And here we thought we had found buried treasure.

The current sewing project is new pyjamas for me in a plain gold knit and a deep blue and white print knit, just tee shirts with shorts, but cool and comfy. The tops (I am making two pair at once) have a vee neck, and I followed the pattern instruction for sewing the neckband although I had misgivings about it. Should have listened to my instinct and used another method, the outside looks good but the inside of the neckline looks like a dog's breakfast. Ah well, it is the inside, and the world won't see it. It's a Kwik-Sew pattern and I have usually found their instructions to be good, but there are better ways of sewing a vee neck than theirs.

"Dress at wedding receptions.

At wedding receptions in the evening, guests should wear full evening dress. No one should attend in black or mourning dress, which should give place to grey or lavender. At a morning reception of the wedded couple, guests should wear the richest street costume with white gloves."

Probably shouldn't wear my new pyjamas, when they are finished. Even though they could be termed evening wear.

Enjoy your days!

Christmas greetings!

To all my friends out there in blogland, best wishes for a joyful Christmas. I hope the fat bloke in the red suit is good to you, and that you stop eating before you burst. Many of us will be busy with family and friends for the next few days, so until we meet again....

Merry Christmas!

Wowsers - I have won a prize!

Just heard from Michelle who runs Quilting Gallery, that I won a prize of three quilting mystery books in the birthday give-away - how lucky is that! I can't even win an argument, let alone a prize of books!

That has made my day.

Wombats and friend

The wombats are back and are getting ready for Christmas, as you can see! My friend Nola gave me the little feller on the right, and the other two were souvenirs of a trip to a country town at the end of last year. Their friend at the back was a momento of our trip to Canada in October 2009.....what could be more Canadian than a beaver playing hockey? It was bought at one of those wondrous places that had several Christmas trees each decorated in different themes, one was entirely beavers playing winter sports, skating, skiing, sledding, hockey. It was such fun, and something that isn't done so much in Australia - we recycle the same decorations year in and year out, we don't go in much for theme trees. If you were the theme type you wouldn't want to use the same decorations for two years in a row, would you, because people would remember. Oh, they would say, she used those decorations last year. Or the year before. And we can't have that, can we?

Much too much stress for my brain.

Some of the Christmas shopping is done, tomorrow we must brave the supermarket for the final food shop. Australians seem to have a siege mentality when it comes to public holidays, and as shops will be closed for three or four days panic mode sets in, the average family stocks up with enough food to serve an army for a month, let alone just themselves for a few days. We will be feeding four people, I wonder if we will have enough food?

We have even bought the cats a present, a new scratching post. Bianca is investigating it but so far it hasn't seen a kitty claw. No doubt they will get the idea soon, their old one is almost past its use-by date.

A few days ago we had a visitor, a green frog came inside.....erk.....I quite like fur, and I am happy enough with feathers and fins, but nothing else. It must have been sitting on the door frame and sidled in when Kevin went outside for a few minutes, fortunately it was easily persuaded to leave. We have at least two in the garden, they sing back and forth in chorus.

Our very nice neighbours have sold their house and will be moving to a small farm outside town, wonder what the new neighbours will be like? So far they have all been much nicer folk than we had in Sydney.

We are hearing about the snow storms and bad weather which is affecting plane travel in Europe. While I feel sorry for those who have had their Christmas plans disrupted, and who have had to spend a day or two or three waiting in an airport, there's nothing we can do about weather. It is disappointing if one has been looking forward to visiting friends or family, or visiting another country for a different Christmas experience, but if the planes cannot fly then they cannot fly, and all the moaning in the world will not get them airborne.

"Naming the child.

It becomes an all-important matter to the parents, what name they shall give to the newly-born child, and as this is a matter which may also concern the latter at some future day, it becomes an object of solicitude, until a suitable name is settled upon."

Now I shall endeavour to use my time constructively, and sew for a little while.

Enjoy your days!

The table runner is done!

Here it is in all its glory.....this is Christmas fabric from about 12 years ago, when The Fabric Designers decided that Christmas would be soft and muted rather than primary and bright. The cream setting fabric and pink binding are new.
Here is a close up of the quilting, the centre is quilted with a continuous curve design....very easy with the walking foot and just eyeballed, not marked on the fabric. But I want you all to take a close look at and be gobsmacked by the amazingly outstanding quilted- not embroidered, but quilted - holly leaves. This is done by someone who avoids free motion quilting because she doesn't do it very well. The cream setting triangles looked a bit stark when the runner was together and the centre quilted, so I found a suitable sized holly leaf picture on the interwebz, traced it onto lunch wrap, pinned it on and quilted through it - then decided the cream borders on the ends looked bare, so they were given similar treatment. Then I stood back, looked at what I had done, and gasped in amazement.
Here it is again all dressed up for Christmas, with the little silver tree matching the silver metallic on the pink and green prints. That's my sewing room through the door on the left, wherein this masterpiece was created.

Those of you out there in blogland who can quilt a king-sized quilt on their DSM in an afternoon and still whip up a dinner party for 20 people that evening wouldn't understand why I am so excited, but for me it's an amazing achievement. Might even spur me into trying again. Table runners are a good size to try a new technique, aren't they?

Last weekend the rivers and creeks rose again, we had a flood which was deeper than the one in late July. According to the long-range forecast we are in for a wet summer so we may yet have more floods. My Canadian and American friends and family are freezing in their winter, while we are having a soggy summer.

This morning the new reading glasses were ready and I am wearing them as we speak.......OK, type.........while not yet quite as comfy as the last pair, I'm sure they won't take long to get used to. They do not have skinny rectangular lenses. I am not that trendy.

And the computer seems to be working, the problem of the missing doo-dad was solved by plugging things into different holes. And other technical stuff like that. So I have my EQ7 back again, woo hoo! And the wombats can come back, yay!

We are being entertained or assailed, depending on one's point of view, by Christmas music in shops now, have you noticed? Aren't some of the versions dreadful? I do wish some of the singers would remember that it's not a pop song they are singing.

"The Christening.

The christening and baptism usually occur at the same time, and are regulated according to the practices of the special church where the parents attend worship. As these are quite varied, it will be sufficient only to indicate the forms and customs which society imposes at such times."

So far this month I have attended several Christmas parties, but no christenings.

Enjoy your days!

Water, water everywhere.........

Earlier this year much of New South Wales was in drought, now it's flooded.......that peaceful river in the picture above is the mighty Murrumbidgee River at Wagga Wagga, now it looks like an inland sea. My blog header is a picture of the Macdonald River about 30 minutes from here, it flooded last week and certainly didn't look like that placid stream in the picture. Dorothea Mackellar's poem "My Country" says it well:

"I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains".

Dorothea's family owned a large amount of land just an hour or so west of here, amid sweeping plains.

And today is the anniversary of the day that John Lennon died, I can still remember the shock that echoed round the world....we were all in disbelief, John was such a peace-loving person which made it so sad that he died the way he did.

On a slightly happier note, my signature has made its appearance again and seems to be staying. However Kiera-Oona has made me a selection in different colours so I can have a choice! I just need to get around to loading it on the computer. Speaking of which, we have our new computer back but there is a little doo-dad that joins the keyboard to the computer because the connections are different and it seems to be absent....probably still at the computer shop.......so I am still on the old computer, but hopefully only until tomorrow. Then my new signatures can be loaded.

Today was very fraught. I had my eye check-up, it's been nigh on two and a half years since the last one and I am getting new reading glasses.......erk, I hate having to choose glasses and try on different styles and look into the mirror and no matter which style I choose I still look awful.......was there for ages trying to decide......many of the styles available these days are narrow rectangular frames which I don't like and which look silly on me. The sales assistant helping me didn't think so. But I do. Absolutely ridiculous on my round square fat face. So then I came home and had some chocolate, which made me feel better. Thank goodness that's over for a few more years. Getting new reading glasses and buying new bras are at the top of my "really hate having to do" list.

Decided last week that we need a new table runner to deck the table for Christmas, so went looking in the Christmas stash for some fabric that a friend gave me many years ago.....must be at least ten years.......have made the top and will layer it tomorrow. The fabrics are different Christmas colours, instead of bright red and bright green these are dusty pink and soft blue-grey green with Christmas roses, poinsettias and mistletoe - they go very nicely with this house. Pics will follow soon, when the new computer is on line again.

The new dishwasher is wonderful.

Last Sunday night one of the choirs had its annual carols concert, the usual carols that everyone knows plus some very very old songs that I had never sung before. It went very well and the choir received many compliments, one person even said she has never heard it sound so good before. Must be because I am now a member.......

"Remain until the performance closes.

At a theatrical or operatic performance, you should remain seated until the performance is concluded and the curtain falls. It is exceedingly rude and ill-bred to rise and leave the hall while the play is drawing to a close, yet this severely exasperating practice has of late been followed by many well-meaning people, who, if they were aware of the extent to which they outraged the feelings of many of the audience, and unwittingly offered an insult to the actors on the stage, would shrink from repeating such flagrantly rude conduct."

No one left our concert early. This is probably because they knew there was an excellent choice of yummy treats awaiting them, and also because it was raining and they would have been very wet.

Enjoy your days!

My signature has gone missing!

Perhaps one of these alpacas ate it? You notice they are not even looking at me - perhaps they are afraid I will see guilty looks on their fleecy little faces. When I took this picture it was a sunny day and I wasn't wearing my glasses, so I just aimed the camera at the white tree and hoped for the best. At least there is one alpaca looking at us.

I can't connect to the signature site either, perhaps they are having Problems. Web sites sometimes have Problems. Jolly inconsiderate of them, I say. If it keeps up I shall look for another signature site.

Have made a dozen heart blocks for New Zealand and hope to post them tomorrow, or if that's just impossible it will be on Friday. Mail doesn't usually take long to go across the ditch.

Speaking of mail, last week the postal service slapped on a surcharge of $9 to post parcels to the US. How rude! Makes the postage charge go from reasonable to quite expensive. If it weighs under a certain amount - almost nothing - you don't have to pay, and one has some sort of business account then one doesn't have to pay either, but for many people who only send the occasional parcel it really raises the postage cost. The reason is supposed to be because of extra scanning. And we have to pay $9 for that? I am in an international Secret Santa swap run on a music list and have participated for some years, it's always been fun - but I may have to think again about joining in after this year, which would be a shame. However I posted my parcel to New Hampshire, picked myself up from the floor after collapsing from the shock of the cost, and went home to recover.

We now have a gardenia flowering in the garden by the front steps, which is lovely - it smells heavenly. I was wondering what the plant with the little skinny green leaves would be, it wasn't until recently when we saw the buds that we realised. It is a different gardenia to the lovely potted one that the folk club gave me when I left Sydney which has larger leaves and at present has lots of buds, so we can look forward to gardenias in the beer garden as well as the front garden.

Speaking of the beer garden, it has a new resident. A frog. It croaks occasionally especially when it's raining (as it is now) and we think it lives in the downpipe from the roof because the croak is sometimes very echo-ey. The other night we saw a large green frog in the beer garden but a few weeks ago Kevin had also seen a smaller brown one on the front verandah, so we don't know which one is the croaker. Perhaps it's neither, perhaps there are more than two.

We have a couple of new plants to go in the garden too. There is a narrow garden along the length of our back fence with a few shrubs in it, two of which kept getting in the way of the clothesline. One was recently decimated by caterpillars so we have now chopped it down and will dig out the roots - the other won't be far behind. It will be a good spot for a small herb garden as it's nice and sunny, and not far from the kitchen. We planted a rosemary bush and some catmint a few months ago, both of which are doing very well - wonder what else would be good? Some parsley, perhaps some mint (planted in a pot so it doesn't take over the garden), perhaps something like thyme and oregano. Sage too.......we had better come to a decision, it's not a very big garden........

"To reduce the flesh.

A strong decoction of sassafras, drank frequently, will reduce the flesh as rapidly as any remedy known. A strong infusion is made at the rate of an ounce of sassafras to a quart of water. Boil it half an hour very slowly, and let it stand till cold, heating again if desired. Keep it from the air."

I don't think we have sassafras in Australia, but I could probably do with a bit of flesh reduction just the same.

Now I am going to look at my curtain fabric and wonder if sewing polyester fabric with cotton thread is a good idea, because for some reason I have no white poly thread. Perhaps it can wait until I get some tomorrow.

And my signature has come back! Enjoy your days!