A better week and a Yarn Trail idea

Thank you so much for your comments after my last post.  It's quite amazing how a little comment from some kind person in cyber space can help lift the spirits and help keep you afloat.

You will be happy to hear that things are going great this week and a lot of that is because hubby has been home to help out.  That means that I've been sleeping better and I have someone to share the parenting duties with.  Hubby also took the kids out the other day and I was sent off for a massage so I'm a new and revived woman!

We have been to the movies again and then went out to dinner afterwards which was a bit of a novelty.  If we do go out it's usually for breakfast or lunch, rarely dinner so I'm sure the kids will be excused for arm wrestling at the table.

I like to let the kids experience different things and places as it helps develop the social skills which don't come easily to them.  We live in such a café culture and I want them to get used to the fact that some places you order at the counter and others offer table service.  

It might not seem a big thing to some people but it's little details like that which can confuse and stress them so I to make it as casual and easy for them as possible.

It was also a gorgeous summer's evening too so we took the opportunity of going for a walk along the edge of the Mooloolaba River near Point Cartwright after dinner.

There's a path which follows the river to its mouth and the surf which is where we wandered.  There were a few trawlers coming in and going out as well as some fishermen out in their boats hoping for a good catch on a beautiful, balmy evening.

I have to say that the path wasn't well lit so we were lucky that the moon was close to full which gave us enough light to see.

We've got a couple of quiet days left now until hubby goes back to work and most of the school supplies have been bought so it will just be doing what makes us happy for the last week of the holidays.

A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of my struggles, a germ of an idea was created and it's something that I'm pretty excited about.

I've decided to begin my own personal Yarn Trail (well that's what I'm calling it as it sounds better than finding yarn shops).

I usually buy my yarn online or sometimes at the craft superstores like Spotlight.  The only problem with doing that is that I'm limited in the stock that's available in the superstores.  There's usually only certain brands and a lot of it is acrylic.  There's obviously much more choice online but I can't see the actual colours or squish the balls to find out if I like the feel of them.

I read a couple of blog posts from some lovely people in the UK who go to local yarn shops and decided that I needed to find out where they are near me.  It's also an excuse for me to get out of the house more which is one thing I want and need to do this year. 

I'm giving myself a radius of about one and a half to two hours drive from my house so that I can drop the kids at school, explore and be home for school pick up.  Of course I'm not always going to go this far.  In my brief research I have found that there are many possibilities within a half hour drive so I'll definitely see what some of them have to offer.

So my yarn trail started in the township of Maleny the other day when I had my much needed day out.  It's an artisan town in the hinterland and an old dairy farming area.  It's a place I used to know well as I went to high school here but hadn't visited in quite awhile so I decided it was time to get to know one of my old haunts again.

The first place I went to was the Arts and Crafts shop which is where the many talented people of the Maleny Arts and Crafts collective can sell their wares.

Inside is a treasure trove of quilts, sewn items, pottery, paintings, woodworking, knitting, and crochet items, all made from the talented people of the area.

After a brief look at some of the gorgeous pottery and wood items, I headed straight to the back to the fibre section.  There were some beautiful shawls and scarves on display but as I was just starting out on my yarn trail, I was on the lookout for... well...yarn.  

I did find a small shelf with some beautiful hand dyed yarn but nothing really jumped out at me that made me want to buy.  I think some of it was hand spun too but not all of the labels stated this.  Most of it just said hand dyed.

As it's only about a 20 minute drive from home I can always drive up periodically when I want to get out of the house and see if there's some new stock that will appeal.

Another shop that had potential was Sapling Textiles but the yarn stock was very limited.  In fact I think there was only about 20 balls in a small corner but if it's fabric you want, oh my!  The silks were gorgeous and it's definitely not your run of the mill fabric shop.  I think if I sewed more than crocheted I would nearly send us broke buying some of the gorgeous fabric that was in here.

I also called into Maleny Magic Patchworks and Quilts on the way home as it wasn't far out of my way.  If you're after quilting fabric then this is certainly the place to go as the range was pretty amazing but unfortunately they had no yarn except for a couple of scarf kits.

I didn't expect there to be much yarn in a quilting shop but I'm treating it like a treasure hunt because I know some quilting places stock yarn as well.  All was not lost though as the friendly and very helpful lady who ran the shop told me about a certain yarn I had never heard of.

More on that next week though because as a quirk of fate would have it, that tiny little comment the lady made is sending me off on my next yarn trail adventure.

I also won't be going on my yarn trail each week either.  If  I did that I would accumulate a stash of yarn bigger that my house and send us broke in the process!!  I'll just be toddling off every now and then when I am able so I can see this going on for years so it will be more of a slow rambling yarn trail.

Happy weekend everyone.

xx Susan

Yamba

Yamba is a seaside town in New South Wales that is also situated at the mouth of the Clarence River.  It's a really beautiful spot and hubby and I spent the last night of our honeymoon here over 14 years ago.

Instead of dusting off the camper trailer and heading to one of the dams or up the beach to Double Island Point like we have in the past, we decided to splurge a bit and do something a bit different.  

Yamba is where we eventually decided on because it's not too far from Grafton so we could visit my father in law (who ended up going away so we didn't get to see him), there are a number of interesting places to explore and it had a couple of really good kid friendly places to stay.  We were also lucky enough to book accommodation in the school holidays at the last minute so it ticked the boxes.

We ended up staying at the Blue Dolphin Resort which was fabulous although took a little getting used to for us as we usually try and camp where there aren't too many people.  The place was packed with caravans, tents, camper trailers and cabins (sorry.. villas) like we stayed in.

It's also situated on the shore of an offshoot of the Clarence River and had its own private boat ramp and jetty.  I loved going for walks down to the water to watch the birds and boats coming and going.  Of a morning the trawlers would come back in with their overnight haul and we did get to sample some really nice freshly caught fish one night.

Being school holidays the place was packed.  We were hoping to get a cabin on the outer edges of the resort but unfortunately ended up smack bang in the middle of it and right outside the noisiest place for the kids to play.

That was the jumping pillow and I took the below photo from my seat on our little verandah.  It wasn't too bad though as they deflated it at dusk and didn't inflate it again until 9am and watching the kids play and have fun on it was a joy.

Our kids had plenty of fun on it too and when the noise got a bit much for them we shut the windows and doors and let them watch a movie until they could cope with the excess stimulation again.

The number one place at the resort for the kids was the pool.  Perhaps I should say pools plural as there were three of them as well as a bit of a water park.  The one in the photo below was the heated pool and the most popular because the weather has still been a little cool.

One of the other pools had a couple of waterslides which were a hit with the kids but they only went on them for a short amount of time because the water was pretty cold.  They would spend 10 to 15 minutes on the slides then go back over to the heated pool to warm up a bit.

So what did I do while the kids swam and played in the water, sometimes for 3 hours at a time.  I crocheted of course.  I had my school holiday shoulder bag project with me and hooked away very happily in my little spot.

As we ended up spending most of our time at the resort because the kids were enjoying it so much I ended up finishing the bag on our last afternoon there.  I still have to add eyelets and the rope handles to it and once I've done that I'll show you the finished product.

Spending so much time poolside and in the pool worked up an appetite and even though we were self catering in our little villa, we did splurge on chips and wedges too.  

We mainly got these for the novelty factor that you order at the café and they deliver it to you wherever you are poolside!  I'm sure people do this all the time but it was a completely new experience for us as so we just had to have a snack.  The kids loved it.

They also had pedal go karts that the kids could zoom around the place in.  We hired them one afternoon for awhile and the kids had a great time tearing up the tarmac.

We didn't stay at the resort the whole time we were there otherwise there would have been no point driving to Yamba at all as we could have stayed in a place like it a bit closer to home.

There was plenty of grumbling from the kids (one in particular) when we told them we were off to do some exploring.  We were usually only gone for about 2 hours each day on our little jaunts which was enough to see some of the area in spits and spurts.

The first stop was the town of Yamba itself and the lighthouse.

We parked down at Turners Beach which is next to the mouth of the Clarence River and at the base of the lighthouse.

There were plenty of rock formations to clamber over and explore and to just enjoy the beauty of the ocean.

We climbed from the carpark up to the lighthouse and then went back down again.  We really did have lovely weather when we were there although it was pretty windy so I wasn't getting too close to the edge of the rocks.

Another one of our jaunts took us out to Angourie which is more of a residential area and the start of a 65 kilometre walk through the Yuraygir National Park. You can do a shorter 10 kilometre walk on the Angourie Walking Track as well which looked lovely but we were happy exploring the headland and beach on this trip.

It was a lovely view down onto the Angourie Surfing Reserve from the headland and we were really lucky to arrive just when a whale was breaching just offshore.

I wasn't quick enough to snap it when it was right out of the water but in the below photo you'll see a white wave right in the middle of the picture.  That's the splash of the whale which was pretty exciting, especially since it was the first time the kids had ever seen one not on tv or in a book.

We walked down to the beach and did some exploring of the headland and over the beach on the other side which was beautiful and had very few people there which was a bonus.

We really loved our trip away and already it feels like a bit of a dream, especially as we're back into the school routine again for term 4 of the school year.

A big thank you to my mother in law who had a holiday of her own at our place and looked after Patch for us so we could go away.

I hope you're all having a wonderful week.

xx Susan

On the way to Yamba

I'm going to do a couple of posts about our trip away which will hopefully keep them reasonably short and not a mile long.

The first is about actually getting to the town of Yamba where we were spending some time over the school holidays.  It's about a 4 hour drive south but took us much longer as we were intending to stop in at a few towns and sights along the way.

The first stop was the town of Tweed Heads which was at about the 2 hour mark just over the Queensland border in northern New South Wales.

My Dad is from Tweed Heads and growing up we used to spend a lot of time on school holidays visiting my Grandma and Uncle who still both lived there.  My Grandma passed away when I was 17 and my Uncle stayed living in the town he had grown up in until my brother and I started our own families.  He then moved up to where we live to be closer to his only family.

The kids have heard me talking about different things I used to do when we went to visit Grandma so we did a bit of a pilgrimage past the old house.  Unfortunately it's not there anymore and is now a block full of brand spanking new units.

We drove around the area a bit taking in some of the sights and one thing I HAD to do was drive up to Point Danger.  We used to do this with my Uncle as he would by a newspaper at the bottom of the hill then we would drive to the top and sit and watch the ocean and the surfers.

We couldn't get a car park anywhere to sit and look at the surf as it was not only school holidays but the last day of a long weekend.  Bedlam!

I don't remember the above building up on the point growing up.  We would have called it the Jetson's house if it was there back then since we loved that cartoon.

The other place I wanted to call into on the way down was Byron Bay.  I haven't been there in about 18 years and it's a nice enough town but back then it was too touristy and busy for me.  It's even more so now and is also a very popular holiday destination with celebrities. 

That in itself would make me want to avoid it but it also happens to be the Eastern most point of mainland Australia and I wanted to take the kids to the lighthouse and down the hill to the point for a photo.

I did mention that it was the last day of a long weekend.  It was a nightmare getting through town and there were hundreds of people walking up and down the road to the lighthouse.

I snapped the photo below of the lighthouse as we were turning around, told the kids that the eastern most point was just down the other side of that and we'll come back another day maybe.  I then got out trusty google maps on my phone to see if I could find some back streets to get us out of town without having to go through the gridlocked main street again.

Not long later we left Byron Bay in our dust and headed down the coast road to some much quieter beach towns.

The kids were pretty happy for most of the trip.  Miss R had her book and read a lot of the time and Master M slept.

Well I thought he slept but when I looked at the photos on my phone (which I had tried to snap half turning around and over my shoulder), I realised that he wasn't exactly asleep.  Cheeky.....

A little further down the coast we stopped at Lennox Heads for a short break.  We got a car park at the beach easily and the place was relatively deserted compared to Bryon.

It gave the kids a chance to stretch their legs as they were starting to get sick of sitting in the car by then.  We still had further to go so we let them get the fidgets out before heading off.

The coast road south of Bryon Bay ends at the lovely town of Ballina.  It has a little lighthouse and we were a bit early for the Jacaranda trees to be in bloom along the main street.  Evidently when they flower it's a carpet of purple petals in the town.

We had one more stop to make before we reached Yamba and by this time the kids were really whinging and wanting to get to our accommodation.  Luckily they don't drive with Shane to work each week as he drives twice as far as we went for our holidays.

Our last stop was another pilgrimage to the town of Evans Head and more specifically to see the bridge in town.

My Dad spent two years here before he met my Mum. He lived in a canvas tent and was one of the people that built the bridge.

All the cement pylons you see in the photo below were poured by hand.  Dad said there was a large hand mixer on site where the cement was mixed then it was brought out to where it needed to go by wheelbarrows. 

Dad's main job though was to dive underwater and do whatever needed doing there.  I'm sorry about the quality of the below photo but we weren't game to take it out of the frame so I could scan it.  

It's a photo of them suiting my Dad up for one of his dives.  He had one of those big old space type helmets on where they pump in air from the surface too but we don't have a picture of him fully suited up.

They certainly make bridges a bit differently these days!

Much to the kids relief we ended up in Yamba not too long later (after they phoned Nan and Pop to say they had been over Poppy's bridge).

More on that soon.

xx Susan

School holiday - Week 1

We didn't really have any plans for the first week of the school holidays this September.  Well Miss R had one special day planned but the rest of the time we intended to go with the flow and meander along. 

 We've really enjoyed mixing in a few outings with plenty of at home time.  There has been sleepovers at Grandparents places as well and it's just been a lovely balance of things.

  As I type I'm looking out the window to the lovely dark, drizzly, rainy Sunday morning and listening to the thunder rumbling around.  I love days that start like this, especially when I can potter about at home and don't need to be anywhere.  It's the perfect ending to our week.

The first weekend of the holidays saw us go on an expedition to various seafood markets around the Sunshine Coast as hubby was on a mission to buy a decent quantity of mullet so he and his cousin could go fishing.  That meant a stop off at a playground and lunch for us at one of the fish markets in Mooloolaba.

Hubby and his cousin did head out for a fish and brought back some lovely parrot fish (don't know it's true name).  They went about 20 miles off shore from Mooloolaba in his cousin's boat as our little tinny is made more for the rivers and estuaries.

The fish was delicious by the way.

We also went visiting while the boys sorted boat fishing things out.  The kids had fun with their cousins (2nd or 3rd cousins, I can never remember how to work it out - easier to just say cousins).

The pool was the most fun part though.  I still think it's a bit to cool to go for a swim at this time of year but the kids don't seem to worry about that.

I did mention that Miss R had a special day planned.  Well she went off to the Zoo for one of their Zookeeper for a Day programs.  She joined in one of the Zookeeper Extreme programs (for 11-15 year olds) nearly 2 years ago and loved it.  She really wanted to do the Extreme Reptile program and  got the opportunity to join in these holidays.

They only do two of the Reptile experiences a year.  One in the Easter school holidays and one in the September school holidays because that's the best weather around here for the reptiles.  There are only 10 places in each group so if you want to experience the Reptile program you need to book in quick because there are only 20 places each year.

I've been doing some crochet too of course.  I'm working on a shoulder bag which I've been itching to start for awhile but had decided that it would be a school holiday project so I was very good and waited until this week to begin.  I'm really loving how it's coming together.

There has also been a little cooking.  Not as much as some school holidays as I've been very lethargic in my kitchen duties lately.

Miss R loves lemon butter and wanted to make some.  Luckily we have a microwave lemon butter recipe that is really quick and easy and makes one jar full so she made that.  It's a great project for her.

I don't know where I got the recipe for this from originally as it was scribbled on a bit of paper so I'm sorry if I've stepped on any toes publishing this but here goes:

Microwave Lemon Butter

Zest and juice of one lemon

1/2 cup of caster sugar

75 grams butter

2 eggs

Place juice, zest and sugar in a microwave safe jug (1 litre) or bowl.  Whisk in the eggs then add the butter (I like to cube the butter).  Cover with a lid or cling wrap and microwave on High (800w) for 3 minutes, giving it a good whisk after each minute. (Best to do it in one minute bursts)  Cool slightly and pour into a jar.  Enjoy!

We didn't have a fresh lemon handy so we used bottled lemon juice which works well although I think that you can taste the difference between fresh and bottled.  Miss R and hubby can't seem to tell though.  If using bottled you can use 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup.  We used 1/4 and it's quite thick but still very lemony.  We also have a 1100w microwave so we cooked it on Medium/High.

Oh and make sure you give it a good whisk each time otherwise you get egg white chunks through it.

I hope you have all been having a wonderful week.  We're heading a little further south to northern New South Wales this coming week and intend to enjoy a bit of a rare family trip away.  

xx Susan

Friends

If you've heard of the term Pen Pal then you are a minority in the world these days it seems.

With our lives full of instant messaging via twitter, facebook, Instagram and so many other social media sites, the days of putting pen to paper are well and truly over.

Can you remember writing about what was happening in your world and taking the time to really explain things properly, especially when you sometimes had weeks worth of your life to write about.

 When you were finally done and signed off with a flourish there was a  ceremonial sealing of the envelope (or the old thin, blue airmail paper), and wondering if you had forgotten anything that so desperately needed saying.

Once you had put that precious letter through the sometimes freaky and sinister looking post boxes, you knew it was out of your hands.  You could only then wait for a reply, sometimes months later before the whole cycle would begin again.

If you remember that then you might be interested in this story.

I would like you to meet my sisters.    

Liz on the left.  Sandy on the right.

Everyone I know recognises Sandy and thinks that she's my only sister because...well basically she is my only blood sister.

I also have another sister who has been a part of my life since I was 6 years old.

Sandy and Liz have been pen pals for 38 years.

On the left you have Liz.  She grew up in Yorkshire, England.  On the right you have Sandy.  She grew up in Queensland, Australia.  

Oh how I wish I had a photo of each of them at that age to show you but sadly I don't right at this minute.  (I may in the future.. be prepared girls!)

Through mutual aquaintances (thanks Aunty Alison on our side) and an introductory letter passing hands, I don't think either of these wonderful women realised at that age just how long their friendship would span. I have also just found out that Sandy still has the first letter she ever received from Liz.  How lovely and extraordinary is that!

Every part of their lives has been lived alongside each other, sometimes delayed depending on the postal service or just the reality of living your own life half a world away.  

The one constant is that they have always been friends and know that each of them are there for the other, if only in spirit when it's physically not possible to have a shoulder to cry on or a friend to laugh with.

 For me, Liz has always been a part of my life.  For as long as I can remember she has been mentioned and I can remember being so excited when a letter would turn up in the mail.  Not only would my sister get to hear from her friend but if I was lucky, she would let me know (or even READ..sQUeaL!)  the latest letter and I would get to hear about life on the other side of the world.  

The first time I met Liz was when I was 20.  Sandy had already had her first trip to the UK to meet Liz and her family a few years before that.  

I also have so many fond memories of the time she first came out to Australia.   I mainly remember putting her in a car and the three of us driving to Cooktown and back visiting the Great Barrier Reef and plenty of other places in between.  It was well over 4000 kilometres in total and many memories made along the way.  

Then 4 years later I had the amazing opportunity to travel to the UK with Sandy and got to not only see Liz again but to meet her family.

That was 20 years ago and even though Sandy has been to England numerous times  since then, this is the first chance I've had to catch up with my other sister.

She's out here with her partner and son who is a similar age to my two cherubs, so it's nice to see everyone catching up and a new generation mingling. 

For now I'll leave you with a photo that I will always cherish and that's with my sisters.  Plural.

Love you both and thank you so much for being incredibly amazing women and so much a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I have Kleenex or Poise available, whichever is most appropriate at this time in our lives. 

xx Susan