Back again, again

What a busy time it's been.  We had a lovely visit with our Canadian friends (in which a little fabric shopping may or may not have been indulged), and there is a week in which to draw breath before the next uke gig.

We took our friends for a Nice Sunday Drive - on a Sunday, no less! - to Barraba, a small town an hour north of here, to see the silo art.  Painted silos have become quite The Thing in Australia, and they are amazing.  Just imagine a painting on a canvas 40 metres high, spread over three concrete silos, and you have the idea.

 The end of the left hand silo has a bird hovering near the man's right shoulder, but we weren't in a good position to photograph it.

Last year while in Canada I bought a calendar pictures of northern Ontario, and while cutting fabric I noticed how similar it was to October's picture......so the calendar came down to join the fabric on my sewing table.  Isn't it a wonderful match?

 Piles and piles of triangles, each pile has ten pieces......so that is 200 pieces right there.  Needless to say, there are many more than just ten leaf and ten background fabrics!

Last night the choir sang at a fundraising concert, and the ukulele group also played.  It went very well.  This morning the uke group played at a Christmas (yes, the C word) market, an annual fundraiser for medical research, and considering the adverse conditions - it was very smoky, with dust and smoke being blown from fires east of here - we managed to finish.  I now have very little voice left, a combination of a lot of singing and smoky air, so not many words will be spoken for the rest of the day.  Kevin can enjoy some peace and quiet, for a change.

We have a week to recover before playing next Sunday at a regular market, held in a small church just out of town.  Indoors.  Not singing outside in smoke again.

The fires are quite devastating and many properties, homes and businesses, have gone.  Sadly four people have died.  Not wishing to laugh at others' misfortunes, but there has been a slight touch of humour in all this; at Ebor, a small village north-east of here, a fire recently did a lot of damage.  The culprit, it seems, was a local man who deliberately lit it so he could backburn around his cannabis crop to protect it from being burnt by wild fire - but his fire ran away and did untold damage.  He is now before the court.  Ebor is at a high elevation and prides itself on its "high country" lifestyle......"high", that's for sure!

Are you all gearing up for the Big C?  It is looming ever closer, you know.  We will actually have company this year as our Canberra son, his wife and The One And Only Grandkid will be visiting between Christmas and new year, first time since his birth nearly five years ago the One And Only has ventured this far north.  We are the distant grandparents he seldom sees and doesn't know very well, while his other grandparents live just a few streets away.  That's how it goes sometimes.  As a child I spent quite a lot of time with my maternal grandparents (I suspect my mother sent me there to get me away from her, we were never close) but we didn't see as much of my paternal grandparents as they lived several days drive away.  Even with today's improved roads and cars it's a long drive, in those days it could be a nightmare.

Following on from last post's quote on feet:

"The hands receive frequent washings every day.  Once a week is quite as often as many people can bestow the same attention upon their feet.  A tepid bath at about 80 or 90 degrees, should be used.  The feet may remain in the water about five minutes, and the instant they are taken out they should be rapidly and thoroughly dried by being well rubbed with a coarse towel.  Sometimes bran is used in the water.  Few things are more invigorating and refreshing after a long walk, or getting wet in the feet, than a tepid footbath, clean stockings, and a pair of easy shoes.  After the bath is the time for paring the toe-nails, as they are so much softer and more pliant after having been immersed in warm water."

Well......I don't know about you, but I would have thought that washing one's tootsies only once a week wasn't frequent enough?  Especially in summer........

Enjoy your days!

Secret Squirrel Reveal

Ta-da!

 It is now in the hands of its new owner.

 Even has a fancy-nancy pieced back.  It was quilted by a local long-armer; I could have done it myself but it would have taken me quite a long time, and I wanted to have it finished.

 The fabrics are from my stash of "Holy Fabrics"......the ones which are too precious to cut up and use for just anything, it has to be a Very Special Project.

 These squares were from a shop which has changed hands over the years but is still in business.  I was unable to get any of the florals for the border (it has been quite a while, after all) so decided on a lavender spot, which was used on the back too.

The last of the florals, a green print, is the centre square on the back.  It has a couple of squares of the background green to keep it company so it doesn't get lonely.

Not sure what to make next, there are so many choices......decisions, decisions......

We have had rain this week!  Great heaps of rain!!  The hill behind our house is bright green and the grass may be even growing; it could be over 1/4in long now.  The kangaroos are quite pleased.  Within a week we had 120% of our average October rainfall, and a couple of towns nearby had even more.  The coming summer may still be hot and dry, but our gardens are happy for now.

We enjoyed our trip to Nundle a couple of weeks ago so much that we did it again yesterday.  For such a small village - only about 300 residents - it's a lively little place, and even has a quilt shop on a farm just outside town.  The Airing of the Quilts was on yesterday, a long line of quilts hanging on the fence from the road to the house and the quilt shop.  A few pics were taken and may make their way onto the blog; I can't credit any of them though, as none were labelled.  Once again we had an excellent lunch at the pub, and found a new - to us - way to come home.

Some people must wish their lives away, mustn't they?  Over the past week ads for The Big Occasion in Late December are starting to appear on TV with the phrase "ten weeks to go".  It will be here before we know it......let's not make it happen any sooner.  We haven't even decided on our plans for this year, we may be here at home and then again, we may not.  It might, as usual, hinge on what the grandkid and his family are doing and we think from hints dropped earlier this year that they may be visiting DIL's sister and her feller way down south.  We have, of course, extended an open invitation to come here at any time but the answer is always "it's such a long way" (yes, we know, we have driven it many times) or "don't think we can get enough time off work" (but there will be no trouble getting time off to go way down south, it seems) or some other reason.  Oh well......the time will come when one or both of us is unable to make that long trip by car, flying is expensive, so perhaps we need to resign ourselves to not getting together much.

When our children were small their grandparents lived away from the Small Smoke, Kevin's because they moved away on retirement and my mother because she lived in a country town all her life; I was the one who moved to the Big Smoke.  We saw more of Kevin's parents who were only a couple of hours away than of my mother because it was a much longer drive to visit her, although nowhere near as long as it is for us to visit the grandkid's family.  Because of childhood abuse I wasn't close to my mother (my father disappeared from our lives in 1972) so I never wanted to spend much time with her as an adult, just enough to feel that duty had been satisfied.

"Yielding to one another.
One of the greatest disciplines of human life is that which teaches us to yield our wills to those who have a claim upon us to do so, even in trifling, every-day affairs; the wife to the husband, children to parents, to teachers and to one another.  In cases where principle is concerned, it is, of course, necessary to be firm, which requires an exercise of moral courage."

Something I have never been good at, I think.  When one is browbeaten as a child it is difficult to stand up for one's self as an adult, you know.

Enjoy your days!