Back home again

All good things must come to an end they say, and our holiday is over - we came home early yesterday afternoon. We had a lovely relaxing (and sometimes cold!) time. We must have been lucky for the Nundle folk as we brought the rain with us; in fact, it snowed on the hill just out of town, we have photos. We were lucky enough to see lots of wildlife: wallabies in the park in the middle of Nundle in the evening as we walked up to the pub; more wallabies in bush as we were driving through; several large wedge tailed eagles circling overhead at different times, even one - which didn't move at our approach - perched on a dead kangaroo by the side of the road; and of course lots of parrots, rosellas, galahs, cockatoos and corellas.

And of course some road kill, including.....sob.......four wombats.

We visited towns that Kevin knew, they were in his territory when he was a sales rep calling on hardware shops, lovely little towns with a 180 year old history of white settlement: Stroud, Dungog, Buladelah, Clarence Town. That part of New South Wales is beautiful. A couple of places we thought a bit 'touristy' so we didn't linger. The pics (considering we were away for more than two weeks we didn't take many, shame on us) will make it onto the blog in due course.

Driving in Sydney gets more difficult each time we go away and come back. Country towns have little traffic and no one seems to be in a hurry, but here in Sydney the traffic is frightening and becoming more so each time we venture out. However next year we will be moving out of Sydney, moving to Tamworth where folk look at you and say g'day when they see you in the street, instead of ignoring you or pointedly looking the other way as they do here.

And of course it will come as no surprise to know that I found a few quilt shops while we were away, some background fabrics for my Bearly Autumn Bears Paw blocks came home with me, as did a couple of black and white prints. I was able to achieve lots of knitting, so much so that I made a scarf (twice - first time it was too wide and too short, so I made it again with less stitches on the needle) and knitted lots more of my blue cardi, it's not far from being finished now. I made a mistake and had to undo nearly four inches but it didn't take long to knit it again. That's what I told myself, anyway. It wasn't just a stitch mistake, I had one of the collar pieces round the wrong way. Bummer, double bummer and triple bummer. (that's not quite what I said when I realised what I had done but it will do for now, I don't want to burn your sensitive ears)

Keep warm, may your points be perfect and your stitches be neat.

Jennifer