97......98......99!

Done done done!!!

97 is bright orange, purple and green, a very cheerful tree....

98 is another Aussie print, pale creamy yellow eucalypt blossoms with an interesting contrast....

....and 99, last last lucky last, is blue and green.

Here they are together, in all their glory.

What a great feeling it is to have those trees finished!  Now they can be laid out, and shuffled around, and shuffled again....and again....and, eventually, sewn together to make a top.

To show you that eucalypt blossoms come in many colours, here is a scrumptious orange one I photographed several years ago.

A large department store in the Big Smoke has an annual spring display of flowers which I kept meaning to visit but never did, something always seemed to intervene - until the year before we moved away.  That year's display focussed on Aussie native plants and was very colourful indeed; I had only ever seen this variety in photos until I saw it featured in that display.  The foliage is more grey than green (eucalypt foliage often has a grey tinge) which sets off the bright blossoms very well.

It's been stormy again, and we even had a blackout early in the week; not the wibby little 90-second blackout of last weekend but one which lasted four hours almost to the minute, from 4.30 until 8.30 p.m.  At first it wasn't a problem, we were able to grill our sausages on the BBQ outside so we didn't starve but as daylight faded some candles were lit, torches were placed where they could easily be reached, and we settled in to read by the light on our tablets; fortunately we both had books downloaded, because with no internet that couldn't be done either.  It was with great relief that we greeted the resumption of power once more before our batteries ran down too far.

Never a dull moment here in the Small Smoke, folks....

Yesterday's choir concert went well, audience members said nice things to us and about us, and hopefully we raised a goodly amount of money for the charity that we support.  CanAssist gives people  practical assistance in covering transport costs, etc., and the best part is that money raised locally stays local.  Some years ago our musical director was diagnosed with cancer and almost before he could turn around and scratch himself (his words) he had been contacted by a member of the local committee who asked simply "what do you need?"  While he didn't need practical help the emotional support was gratefully received and, as several choir members are also on the fund raising committee, we like to support them with our music.

Apart from a blackout and a concert it's been a fairly normal week.  The odd appointment (some of them are a bit odd, but there you go), notes being plinked and sung, a stitch or two being knitted and sewn, the usual foraging and gathering, and so ended another seven days.

"Trifling with a lady.

A man should never make a declaration in a jesting manner.  It is most unfair to a lady.  He has no right to trifle with her feelings for mere sport, nor has he a right to hide his own meaning under the guise of a jest."

No indeed, that would be very cruel.  A trifle is not just something yummy to eat, it can also mean to play fast and loose with another's feelings.

Enjoy your days!

Jennifer

You're the top....

....you're the Coliseum, you're the top, you're the Louvre Museum......

With apologies to Cole Porter!

My top is done.

I am very pleased with it....once the sewing table is cleared off it will be layered and quilted.  It measures 48in by 60 in as is, without any borders.  I quite like its borderless look.  Some of the greens are edging a little toward yellow but not ~quite~ getting there, while a few of the blue fabrics are leaning toward lavender - but also not quite getting there, which makes for a good mix of fabrics.

Work has also started on sewing together the top for 'There goes the neighbourhood'.

It's a fun design.....and it will be fairly large!  I must admit I hesitated over those pieced setting triangles, but now I can see they were the right choice.  A decision has not yet been made as to trimming the outer edge, or whether borders will be added; if so, they will be more pieced greens.  These are opposite corners, and they will eventually meet as more rows are added.  The backing fabric is the only thing purchased for this quilt; it's all from my stash, but has left not even the tiniest weeny little dent in it.

Now that winter is beginning to wind down a little, it's wattle blossom time once more.  Our wattle bush is in full bloom once more, looking spectacular and smelling delightful as always, and is much beloved by bees and other insects; when we get close we can hear the bush buzzing and humming with insects.  This was taken late yesterday afternoon - it's a much brighter yellow in full sunlight, but is also a bit tricky to get a good photograph without too much golden glare.

Australia has nearly 1,000 species of wattle - Acacia - so many, in fact, that there is wattle blooming somewhere in Australia every day of the year, although Acacia is by no means exclusive to Australia.  We celebrate Wattle Day on 1st September, but our bush may have finished blooming by then.

Have you all had a good week?  Ours has been, although being retired Olde Phartes it's been fairly quiet.  No diamonds were cut or joined, stitches were knitted - the neckband on my jumper is nearly all cast off.  I am using an elastic cast off so it can be turned under and stitched down, I prefer a double neckband to a single.  Words were read.  Notes were plinked and sung.  Hunting and gathering was done so we can eat again, which is a good thing.

The song arrangement for the ukulele group was finished, has been tried out and approved.  There are two or three more arrangements I want to do, but as they aren't needed for next month's gig they will get done they get done.

Continuing on with Etiquette for Public Conveyances:

"A lady may, with perfect propriety, accept the offer of services from a stranger in alighting from, or entering a tram, omnibus or public conveyance, and should always acknowledge the courtesy with a pleasant "Thank you, sir," or a bow."

She should, indeed.  Acknowledging a courtesy with a "thank you" is the right and proper thing to do.

Enjoy your days!

Free at last!

The dreaded boot is off......gone......removed, and how good it is.  Even the pain in my hip is settling down now that my world is level again.

On Wednesday afternoon the doctor said my fractured foot is not ~quite~ healed, but is well on the way to being so.  You can leave the boot off, he said, but make sure you wear supportive shoes, it will be healed by summer, he said, and you can wear sandals then.  I could have kissed him, but feared that if I did he might mistake it for affection when it was only relief.

However since then I haven't run any marathons or danced any polkas, taking it easy has been the order of the day despite having a uke gig yesterday morning.  I prefer to play standing up and did so, but sat down each time we took a break.

Now to decide which sewing project to tackle first; it doesn't matter which one is chosen, fabric will still need to be cut.

While that is mulled over, here are some of the pretties that don't grow here - these were taken on one of our trips over to the coast.  I don't know the name of this, but it's pink and fluffy.  That should narrow it down, for the botanists among you.

 This is interesting, I bet the bees love it.

 Gorgeous foliage......the new growth on many Aussie plants is a pinky-bronze colour which is beautiful in spring.

It almost (but not quite!) makes up for our lack of glorious fall colours.

A month ago I wrote about the block which would be handed out at my quilt group meeting for members to make if they wished, and a few have already been handed in to me.  Well......what can I say.  Some are well made, others are not; one is way too small (the 1/4in seam allowances are very creative) and I suspect, in fact I know, that this particular member never bothers to press as she goes along.  A quick touch of the iron when it's together and she calls it finished.  Another one has pieces of sun block curtain fabric in with the quilt cottons.  Somehow I suspect those less-than-wonderful blocks may end up at the bottom of the "completely last resort" pile, that's if they are even used at all.

Ah well.  Onward and upward.  Perhaps I will just make for myself and not worry about anything else.

The other day I pulled a couple of large pieces of fabrics from my stash, and decided that it's time they had their day in the sun.  One is a repro from......oh, it would have to be the mid 1990s; it was bought to make a dress but not used for that, it will be useful for a border.  The other is daffodils, yellow, gold and white, probably from the same era.  It is yellow.  Very very yellow.  Just as well I like yellow, nearly as much as green......it, too, will become a border.  There is a lot of yellow in my stash, a friend recently invited me to join an online stitch along, so ideas are starting to percolate in my brain. 

Continuing on from last week's thoughts on names:

"With some it is customary to name children after some renowned person, either living or dead.  There are objections to this plan, however, for if the person be still living, he may commit some act which will bring opprobrium to his name, and so cause both the parent and child to be ashamed of bearing such a disgraced name.  If the person after whom the child is named be dead, it may be that the child's character may be so entirely different from the person who bore it, that the name shall be made a reproach or satire."

Well, yes.

My paternal grandmother's first names were Florence Gordon (her father was Scottish), but one of her brothers was named "Australia".  That's right.  Australia.  He was born in the 1880s when Australia was heading towards Federation, and patriotism was strong; he wasn't the only child given that name.  A friend from years ago told me she had an Uncle Ozzie, the family assumed it was short for Oswald - but no, his name was also "Australia".

Makes "Jennifer Grace" quite ordinary by comparison, doesn't it.

Enjoy your days!

Two more sleeps until our holiday

We will be leaving on Saturday morning so there will be a blogging break for a couple of weeks.

Still have to pack, but one important thing is done......my uke is packed!  Next Wednesday morning I will be meeting up with a ukulele group not far from where we will be staying (we will be out of town) which should be fun.  Kevin plays lawn bowls and he is also looking forward to meeting local bowlers for a game or two.  While he is doing that I may, just may, not definite mind you, but perhaps I just might check out the local op shops, or thrift stores if you don't live in Australia.......I like a good op shop crawl.

On Sunday afternoon we will be arriving on Palmers Island for a week, then heading south to visit Urunga before turning back inland.  Our last few days will be spent in Dorrigo - such a nice town, there is a great quilt shop and several excellent cafes - because the folk festival is on.  We missed it last year, we were in Canada instead!

The first year we were living here we visited a couple of open gardens, and at one I bought a potted kalanchoe with an interesting name - "Dusky Bells".   It spent a few years hanging around in its pot on the edge of our fairly sheltered back verandah doing very little; not dying, but certainly not thriving.  A couple of years ago we had a short-but-sharp storm which, as well as breaking off a 30 ft high tree in our front yard, toppled the stand holding some hanging plants including Dusky Bells.  The stand was duly moved into a more sheltered corner, and Dusky Bells was re-potted.  It promptly picked itself up, shook itself, looked around, decided that the new corner was The Place To Be and has been going great guns ever since.  I'm curious, though......it's hanging and trailing, whereas I thought kalanchoes had their flowers at the top of an erect stem.  Perhaps it needs a few of those little blue pills that one hears about?

 The pot holding most of the kalanchoe sits above this orange pot.

Definitely trailing - nothing upright about it, but its leaves are nice and glossy and the flowers are interesting.

We don't have television in our little caravan and I for one won't miss it.  I certainly won't miss the ads for cars, aren't they silly?  Really, what can be said about cars that hasn't already been said over and over again?  A wheel at each corner and one to hang onto.  That's about it.  Cars these days all seem interchangeable to me anyway, but then - what do I know about such things?

One of us hits the mute button when ads come on air.  Watching ads with the sound turned off is quite funny, we can recommend it!  If it were up to me the TV would stay off for 99% of the time, but the bloke who shares my bed likes to watch it.

Not in bed, though.  We have one not-very-big TV (no huge screens and surround sound for us) and it lives in the living room just off the kitchen.  I can't imagine having a TV in my bedroom, even though Kevin does watch through his eyelids.

We've been checking out the weather forecast for next week to see what clothes to pack and the days look like being a few degrees warmer than here which is quite bearable, but nights will be several degrees warmer than what we are currently enjoying.  Still, we will be near the Pacific Ocean so hopefully there will be a sea breeze to keep bugs away and to stop nights being too hot for sleeping.  This week I have worn sandals twice, my bare toes have been hanging out in the fresh air for the first time in several months, and next week they may not be covered much at all.  Even the bare arms and legs may have a turn at fresh air.

But that's all.  There are limits to what I bare in public, folks.

"In assisting a lady to enter a carriage, a gentleman will take care that the skirt of her dress is not allowed to hang outside.  A carriage robe should be provided to protect her dress from the mud and dirt of the road.  The gentleman should provide the lady with her parasol, fan and shawl, and see that she is comfortable in every way, before he seats himself."

Modern cars mean that the skirts of our dresses stay inside, don't they?  We don't need carriage rugs or parasols to keep us sheltered on a ride either, thank goodness for modern comforts

We'll be back in a few weeks, meanwhile......

Enjoy your days!

279 is not 275

The next row of the beaded scarf didn't go so well, it was supposed to end up with 275 stitches, instead of which there were 279.  Bugger.  So the whole row was un-knitted and will have to be done again.  Bugger again.  That will teach me to watch murder mysteries on TV while knitting something that needs a bit of concentration, won't it?

Many thanks for the comments on last week's waratahs!  Here are some more:

 Waratahs were being featured at the time of our visit.  The white ones are interesting, but I think they lack the oomph (technical word here, folks) of the red ones.

 An interesting post which has information about the waratah, including the Aboriginal legend of how they came to be, can be found here.

I would love to be able to grow them here......but, sadly, cannot.

Not a whole heap to report from the sewing room today.  The quilting on the maple leaf runner had to pause because of a couple of BOM obligations; they have now been handed over, so the machine can be set up for quilting again.  Later this month my quilt group is having its annual UFO weekend, or in some cases USO (for projects not yet started), so between now and then I will be cutting out batik fabrics in all shades of blue with a little yellow/gold for an accent.  The blues range from light turquoise to deep almost-purple, and the pattern is a scrappy one I have been wanting to do for a while.  While it's very dubious indeed that all the blocks will be done on that weekend it will at least have been started, which is a Good Thing.

Currently there is a sports carnival happening on the other side of the world, but as this humble blogger is not much of a sports fan (not any kind of a sports fan at all, really - much or otherwise) this blog is a sport-free zone.......except for one thing I found out the other day, which makes me laugh every time I think of it.

Did you know there used to be a spot in the carnival for solo synchronised swimming?  Can you imagine it?  "Solo synchronised" sounds like an oxymoron to me - how on earth does one swim (or indeed do anything else solo) in synch with one's self?

The problem with blogger seems to have fixed itself, I think the site was being gussied-up because things are different to how they used to be.  All is well now, so no need to panic.  We don't want to waste a good panic, do we?

The uke group will be playing my arrangement at a concert on Sunday afternoon, how about that!  Plus a couple of other songs from our book, "Ain't misbehavin'" and "Sway".  All together now......when marimba rhythms start to play, dance with me, make me sway.......la la la laaahhhh.........

"Long, flowing hair on a man is not in good taste, and will indicate him to the observer as a person of unbalanced mind and unpleasantly erratic character - a man, in brief, who seeks to impress others with the fact that he is eccentric, something which a really eccentric person never attempts."

Remember when blokes wore long hair?  It was fashionable for quite a long time in my giddy youth......but I don't think many of the males of my acquaintance were eccentric, just dedicated followers of fashion.

Enjoy your days!

Poor neglected blog

Finally - a chance to sit down and compose some thoughts, without having to race out the door for practice, or to a gig, or to chauffeur Kevin who had an eye operation last week and is doing very well thank you but couldn't drive for a couple of days, or.......or......

A couple of nights ago the last stitches were taken on the fourth large flower basket block, here are all four laid out.  Each block is 18in square finished, and each will be quilted before being joined into a quilt.

 When one is short, as one is, and one has to stand on a chair (which one never quite feels secure about doing) to be able to get far enough away to get all blocks in one photo, one just snaps a quick pic and gets down.  Which one did.  Which is why this is far from being a prize-winning shot.

Last year we fell in love with this pretty Aussie native plant and ordered two from a local nursery.  The young bloke who works there kept shaking his head and saying "you shouldn't be able to grow correas where you are......I love correas but I can't get them to grow for me, they don't grow well in this town" however they are thriving in our garden so well that they are now flowering!  When it stops raining I will sit on the ground to photograph them (because the plants aren't yet very tall, although they are growing beautifully) and you can seen their pretty pink bells.  To give an idea of scale, each flower bell is about three quarters to one inch long.

The music festival is over and the uke group has no more gigs for a while, so Euan's quilt can be layered, pinned and quilted.  The orange sashing will have a vine design, the blocks will have a variation on a continuous curve design, and the borders will have cats on two borders with dogs on the other two.  Euan's parents have a dog and his Other Grandparents have a dog, but we have a cat so he might as well learn early that dogs aren't the only animals in the whole universe.

Uke class starts again next week, and the other day I pushed the boat out and changed the strings on my uke because they were sounding muddy and didn't have the clear ring that new strings do.  It should have been done before our festival gigs but it's a bit late to think of that now, isn't it?  Now one item on tomorrow's 'to do' list is 'call in at music shop and buy new set of strings' because it's a good idea to keep a spare set.

By golly, those new strings do sound nice......

Not only has it been raining again, it has turned quite cool for this time of year.  Not that we are complaining - it makes a change from being too hot.  Our plants are very happy with the rain, because restrictions mean that we can only water them sparingly.

"Signature of ladies.
A married lady should not sign herself with the "Mrs." before her baptismal name, or a single lady with the "Miss."  In writing to strangers who do not know whether to address you as Mrs. or Miss, the address should be given in full, after signing your letter, as "Mrs John Smith," followed by the direction; or if unmarried, the "Miss" should be placed in brackets a short distance preceding the signature.
Only the letters of unmarried ladies and widows are addressed with their baptismal names.  The letters of married ladies are addressed with their husbands' names, as "Mrs John Smith."

In other words, when a woman married in the 1800s she ceased to exist as herself and became "Mrs husband's-first-and-last-name".  I wonder what the good folk of that time would have thought of the idea, now widely used, of married women retaining their maiden name - whether for business (as our daughter-in-law does) or personal purposes?

Enjoy your days!

Did you know......

.......that kangaroos can be quite nasty?  When they are lazing around on a hot day (the sun was so bright it was difficult to get a good photo) they look almost tame.

 However - they are not, so there was no way I was going for the close-up shot.

Did you also know that trees can be strangled by other trees?

 We learnt about these at school.  A seed is carried by a bird, or by the wind, and deposited high in a tree whereupon it germinates and sends down roots.....down, down, down to the ground, while the upper branches and leaves reach for the sky.  Those roots get stronger and it's not unknown for the 'host' tree to die, strangled.

Some of the sights on our recent holiday.

We have had rain!  While that may not mean much to some, it is cause for much rejoicing here.  We are well below the average annual rainfall, only about two-thirds of the average has fallen this year, but December is well up on average and it's not even half over yet.  More rain is forecast for tonight and the next couple of days, so fingers crossed that it does indeed fall where it's needed.  Our garden is smiling, and the hill behind us is now carpeted in green grass which barely a week ago was dry, brown and dead.

Only a month now until Cricket/ette pops out to greet the world.  We will be driving All That Way to Canberra (nine hours or so including an overnight stop, because we have decided that we are too old to do it in one day) to join the other grandparents in saying 'hello' and patting him/her on the head.  If the quilt is finished it will go with us to be handed over - if not, we will be in Canberra again at Easter and it will be gifted then.  Either way, I'm sure Cricket/ette won't mind.

And of course - we will know whether it is Cricket or Crickette!  Crickette would be nice......there have been too many blokes in my life.....no sisters, I had two younger brothers.  No daughters, I had two sons.  Even the cousins we played with as children were boys.  I did have girl cousins on my father's side but they lived interstate; I only remember seeing them two or three times during my childhood and, because of a split in the family, not at all afterwards.

Anyone else having trouble with blogger's robot verification?  It seems to have been turned on again, even on blogs which didn't use it.  Thanks to a link on Fiona's blog I have fixed it, it was easy - here is the link.  Many thanks, Fiona!

"Never introduce unpleasant topics, nor describe revolting scenes in general company."

Indeed.  Why is it that some folk seem bent on doing just that?  We know the world is not all sweetness and light, but dark topics do not need to be dwelt on and emphasised out of all proportion.

Enjoy your days!