Relaxing on the seventh day

After a very busy with commitments and appointments every day, we are doing very little today.  I had great plans to accomplish Stuff today, none of them look like happening......but that's all right too.

Where to start!

Usual stuff, shopping on Monday morning (because we need to eat), uke practice in the afternoon (fun), volunteering at the regional gallery on Tuesday (interesting), sewing guild on Wednesday (fun), massage on Thursday (relaxing), choir on Thursday night (fun), uke gig on Friday (great fun), quilt group yesterday (also fun) - makes me tired just thinking about it.

The challenge quilt is done.  It was finished on Friday night all ready to be handed in yesterday, as I had thought it had to be......but no, it doesn't need to be handed in until the end of the year.  Could have saved myself a panic, couldn't I?  At my age one doesn't want to waste too many panics.

Our uke gig on Friday went off very well, one of our best.  On Thursday night I told our choir director we would be playing the next day, he MC'd the concert and also performed on piano; thank goodness, he said, because two of our singers have had to cancel and we are short of performers.  Play for as long as you like, he said.  We ended up playing five songs with a bit of waffling in between to fill half an hour.  Our audience (nearly all older folk) loved our songs and joined in singing, especially the Aeroplane Jelly Song!  For the non-Aussies, Aeroplane jelly is like Jello, we all grew up eating it, and we can all sing the advertising jingle with its cheerful waltz tune word for word.  The feedback we received was very encouraging and Bill told me "you are very very good, you know......those harmonies were amazing".  He was talking about the group as a whole not me in particular although Claire and I are the harmony singers, that is high praise indeed.

Consequently I don't have any new pics this week, so it's time to trawl through the archives for some photographic memories.

While in Canada we spent a few days in Midland.  We had stopped there overnight on two previous trips but this time thought we would have a bit more of a look around.  It's a nice town with an interesting history, and large murals on some of the downtown buildings tell of its story.  Outside the local museum we found one of these:

 Even though it's out of action, it's a clever idea.

 As the sign tells, it is a horse trough/dog bowl/drinking fountain - liquid refreshment for the horse on one side, and the rider plus faithful pooch trotting along behind on the other side.

Probably a very welcome sight, back in the day.

It was quite chilly in Midland.  We dined at a local restaurant where we have eaten on our past visits - the whole idea of spending time in this town was to eat there again!  Our server picked by our accents that we weren't Canadian, we're Aussies, we told her......whereabouts, she asked......we told her the town name, she laughed......she is from a town just a few hours away, over at the coast.

However - today hasn't been a total loss, because I found my fishing tackle sewing box!  It was put away in A Safe Place quite some time ago, and amidst all the packing and unpacking following our two floods I had lost track of it.  Following a brainwave today I looked in just one more place, and there it was.  It was received in a Secret Santa gift exchange at a workplace back in the early 2000s, and I had never before realised what a useful thing a fishing tackle box is to one who sews.  Lift out tray.....pop up lid......deep base......plenty of room to store Stuff.  It's going to receive a good clean, then it will be used for the tumbler blocks.

"How to reprove.
Parents should never check expressions of tenderness in their children, nor humiliate them before others.  This will not only cause suffering to little sensitive hearts, but will tend to harden them.  Reproof, if needed, should be administered to each child singly and alone."

Would it had happened.

Enjoy your days!

It's been far too long

However now my world seems to have righted itself, The Dreaded Lurgy making my life miserable for the past couple of weeks seems be well and truly on the way out, hopefully the worst of the heat is behind us (except for the odd hot day or two coming up) so all is well with the world.

If you're not sure what the Dreaded Lurgy is, here is some information.  Australians of a certain age use the term to refer to a vague illness that is sort of like a cold, sort of like the flu......you know how it is when you don't feel well but don't need to seek medical attention, don't feel good enough to carry on with daily life without stopping to rest occasionally, cough a bit (or, as my case, a lot) which doesn't make for a good night's sleep thereby causing tiredness during the day making me thankful we are retired and don't need to front up to work bright eyed and bushy tailed.  It has made singing difficult but hopefully that will improve now too.

Consequently not much has been, quilting the challenge quilt is still not started although hopefully it won't take long to knock out tomorrow, several unmemorable books have been read on my tablet, and some hand stitching has been done.

We did have a social occasion yesterday.  It was Kevin's birthday on Thursday - Valentine's Day - and a couple of weeks ago I saw an ad online for trips in a vintage train this weekend.  Three rail motors are in town for a few days (a rail motor is a train carriage fitted with its own motor, not one pulled by an engine) and one could take a trip an hour north, stop for dinner at a country pub, then return.  So yesterday we did!

Here it is arriving at our station:

 The lovely old carriages - No 12 was at the front, then No 24 (ours) and No 25 at the rear.

 At our destination an hour north, after a steep climb.  We even had to stop at one stage to switch another motor on so we could continue up the hills!

 This is Walcha Road with its attractive station which dates from the 1880s (and which you can't quite see behind the train, sorry about that, it is a nice old building).  We then walked down the hill and across the road to the renowned pub for an excellent meal, before hiking back uphill, onto the platform and into our seats for the return journey.

It was very quick, as it was all downhill!  Because it was dusk and getting steadily darker, we did see a few wild kangaroos hopping around. 

It was of interest to us both; to Kevin because he hadn't been further north than our town by train, and to me because it was a trip I hadn't done since the mid 1960s.  There used to be several small stations on this line which have now been removed, I remember the trip taking longer because trains used to stop at every little siding and station.  The rail trip is not the same as a road trip; the road is much further west, so the terrain is very different.

So now back to reality.

Currently our state is supposedly celebrating Olde Phartes by having a Senior's Festival, as if growing older and hurting everywhere is something to be celebrated.  It is better than the alternative, I suppose, but why does it have to be so darn painful?  Anyway, next Friday morning there is to be a concert with awards being handed out to Senior of the Year, and Senior Group of the Year (which, I am proud to say, our choir won last year) followed by a concert then a free cuppa.  Never knock back a free cuppa, I say!  The uke group will be playing a few songs at the concert including a doozy called "The senior's lament".  "Are you lonesome tonight? does your tummy feel tight? did you miss your Mylanta and Tums?" etc......it always makes older people laugh, so we thought it was a good choice......except for Prue, who doesn't like playing it because she reckons it is all too sadly true!

"The bow is the touchstone of good breeding, and to neglect it, even to one with whom you may have a trifling difference, shows deficiency in cultivation and in the instincts of refinement.  A bow does not entail a calling acquaintance.  Its entire neglect reveals the character and training of the person ; the manner of its observance reveals the very shades of breeding that exist between the ill-bred and well-bred."

We bow after a performance, which obviously shows our good breeding.  When we remember......

Enjoy your days!

Anyone feel like sharing what I have?

Because I don't want it......don't know what it is, could be a cold, could be something else that makes me feel crook and saps my energy......but I really don't want it.

Never mind.  This too shall pass.

This week's weather hasn't been quite so fiercely hot, thank goodness.  January.....the less said the better, apparently it was the hottest January ever recorded.  Daytime maximum temperatures were 5.4 deg C over the long term average, and night time temps were 4.4 deg C over the average.  No wonder it was so nasty.  Actually, knowing that it really was hot makes me feel better, because then I know it wasn't just me being a grumpy old woman having a whinge - there was something to complain about.

Moving right along.

The large pin cushion mentioned last week is finished, done, but not photographed.  One more ticked off the list.  The charity challenge quilt is pinned ready to be quilted, for which I need orange thread - don't think one small spool will be enough, so that means a trip to Spotties.   Once that is done and out of my sewing room - with much relief - I can get back to my own projects.

Selfish as it may sound I have decided that I don't care about making charity quilts, I would much rather work on my projects.  The local quilt group has one or two members who churn out huge numbers of quilts for Ronald McDonald House as if there is no tomorrow, and a few members who make a (much) smaller number.  At my age not knowing how many years I have left to me.....not being morbid, just curious, after all I am on the downhill side of 70.....I would rather spend that time on my own Stuff.  The churners justify it by saying "I don't need any more quilts myself but I like to make them" - well, darling, that's fine.  You can do that.  Just don't force me the guilts on me to do the same because it won't work.

These are the embroidered Aussie flowers on the hanging made to go to Canada.

 All embroidered with one strand of DMC floss, the first was started with two strands but it was much too chunky.

 When these pics were taken they had not been trimmed down and pressed.....they looked more finished afterwards!

 The original pattern was for redwork but I like the look of old botanical etchings, that was the look I was going for.

 Or old sepia-toned photographs.

Back in the late 1990s-early 2000s two Queensland women started Oz Dye-Art to sell their own patterns and their own hand-dyed and printed fabrics.  The company lasted for several years until one moved interstate; however those of us who have those patterns still treasure them and use them, because they are Australian flora and fauna.  Not pretty flowers from overseas, not cute little animals which don't live here....they are all Australian, something which was quite difficult to find at the time.

My 1886 etiquette devotes a whole chapter to "The Language of Flowers" but even though it's revised for the Australasian colonies (of, I suspect, an American original) no Aussie flowers make the list.  Pity.....I would love to know what emotions the waratah and red flowering gum stood for!

"Bring one of the commonest field flowers into a room, place it on a table, or chimney piece, and you seem to have brought a ray of sunshine into the place.  There is a cheerfulness about flowers.  What a delight are they to the drooping invalid!  They are a sweet enjoyment, coming as messengers from the country, and seeming to say "Come and see the place where we grow, and let your heart be glad in our presence."

Indeed.

Enjoy your days!