Been and gone and come home again

My life has taken on a life of its own lately.

Had a fun weekend at the folk festival in Dorrigo catching up with old friends, making new ones, playing music, singing, even joining in a big scratch band on stage to open the Sunday morning concert.  Now back to reality......

Dorrigo has a very nice quilt shop.  A little retail therapy may have been indulged in.    Not all for me, you understand.  It doesn't count when it's a gift for someone else.

On the way there and back we stopped at a village pub, as it was lunch o'clock.  Ebor is a small blink-and-you-miss-it place, but the lunches were quite yummy.  Here are a few Ebor trees for you.

 You can see the road which goes through town.

 I like these trees.

 A tall sentinel - these pics were all taken from the pub car park.

It is much greener in Ebor and Dorrigo than it is here.  Dust, dust and more dust is currently the order of our day, and added to that is smoke from fires not too far away.  Air quality is quite bad; we are being warned to limit our time outside, and people who have breathing difficulties are being told not to go outside at all if possible.  Waking up in the morning with a raw throat is not much fun, and singing becomes next to impossible.

Never mind.  This, too, shall pass.

Speaking of retail, have you noticed that many stores don't give bags for our purchases these days?  When one needs to buy undies (as one did yesterday) one must make sure to take a bag (one did), or one may be faced with the prospect of twirling one's new undies around one's index finger while sashaying along the main drag, no doubt to the scandalised gaze of locals.  It's a good thing to use less plastic, but that doesn't really address the problem of the over-packaged items placed in one's take-along bag, does it?

Recently new shoes were added to my less than extensive shoe collection.  I really really don't like shopping for shoes, but these were a necessity; leather lace-up shoes in a light nothing colour called "stone", support for the occasionally broken foot.  I have black shoes but wanted light ones for summer, and I dislike white athletic shoes even more than I dislike shoe shopping, so "stone" it had to be.

Some stitches have been taken.  No fabric has been cut out.  Friends from Canada are arriving on Saturday for a visit, so cutting out is on the back burner for a while while we enjoy their company.

"The feet.
A well-formed foot is broad at the sole, the toes well spread, each separate toe perfect and rounded in form.  The nails are regular and perfect in shape as those of the fingers.  The second toe projects a little beyond the others, and the first, or big toe, stands slightly apart from the rest and is slightly lifted.  The feet, from the circumstance of their being so much confined by boots and shoes, require more care in washing than the rest of the body.  Yet they do not always get this care."

Not a word about a twice-broken foot, you notice.

Enjoy your days!

Still on our merry way

Not a lot of excitement happens here, however sometimes that is a good thing......yes?  There is good excitement, and there is bad excitement.  Good excitement could be something like winning a life-changing amount of money (that would be in my dreams) while bad excitement can be nasty, so we don't go there.

The biggest excitement was last week when our lovely neighbour Natasha knocked on our door to tell me that she had seen a two foot brown snake slither from under her bins to under our caravan.  Brown snakes are particularly nasty.  I don't do reptiles, and I specially don't do brown snakes.

We have some new plants.  Some of the garden is flourishing - not bad, considering the drought - while some is unhappy.  However as we currently aren't allowed to use water outside (unless it's recycled from kitchen or bathroom) we are looking at alternatives, and succulents are interesting.

 Some empty pots have been pressed into service, and some new plants were purchased.  The smaller red leaves were from a sprawling Kalanchoe which had been getting leggier and leggier, so bits were chopped off and stuck into new pots where they seem to be quite deliriously happy.

 So far, so good.  The two larger pots below have been on the front verandah for a couple of years, with mixed succulents.  The sun was shining bright on this one which makes for a poor photo, but you can see its plants are growing well.

 This one has flapjacks which are threatening to take over the universe, and something interesting in the bottom corner.

 Isn't it pretty?  The individual rosettes look like flowers, and it's tricolour.....green, yellow and pink.  I have no idea what it's called, and I can't even recall where it was bought.

More fabrics have been cut.  It is proceeding slowly.  If I was really cracking the whip and getting on with it I would cut multiple layers at once but I am trying to use as many different fabrics as possible, so just one strip is being cut from each fabric before it is cut into squares and triangles.  This ensures a wide variety of fabrics, but also means the cutting progresses somewhat slowly.  Oh well.....it's not as though I have much else to do with my time, is it?  There is still music to be played, strings to be changed, and books to be read, and stitches to be sewn.......

At least the hand-pieced tumblers are coming along well, being the current TV and portable project.

The weather has ranged from bearable to horrible.  Earlier this week it was unseasonably hot for a few days with a gusty wind, and of course there is so little ground cover that wind also means dust.  We have been closing up the whole house, windows and doors, but still the dust seeps in.  This means that one will have to turn into a domestic goddess before our Canadian friends arrive in a few weeks for a visit, but before then we will be heading off to a music festival for a weekend away.

Hard to imagine that a year ago we were enjoying our own visit to Canada!  Photos scroll around on the computer, and I sigh every time those autumn colours appear.  There is a lot of sighing, as a lot of leaf pics were taken......the inspiration for the quilt pieces currently being cut out.

Even spent a few dollars on something other than quilt fabrics last week, bought a new summer outfit of capri pants (green, of course) and a colourful tunic top.  Over the past few years enough pounds have crept on to make my skirts a bit uncomfortable to wear, so I have decided to join other elderly ladies of the town and wear capri pants or as I term them, Olde Ladies' Shorts.  There comes a time in one's life when one does not, or should not, wear shorts in public past one's front fence, and I have reached that time.

At least I have the sense to realise it, unlike some women I have seen strolling down the main drag of our town.  Just because one can wear something, doesn't mean to say that one should.

"Morning dress for street.
The morning dress for the street should be quiet in color, plainly made and of serviceable material.  It should be short enough to clear the ground without collecting mud and garbage.  Lisle-thread gloves in mid-summer, thick gloves in mid-winter, are more comfortable for street wear than kid ones.  Linen collars and cuffs are most suitable for morning street dress.  The bonnet and hat should be quiet and inexpressive, matching the dress as nearly as possible."

Not one word about shorts, you notice......and particularly not one word about wearing rubber thong sandals.

Enjoy your days!