A finish and a flower show

I am freezing...and very hopeful that this weekend may see an addition to the paltry 3/4 of an inch of rain we have had all spring. It may hurt the cut grass hay a tad, but it may save any more crop from being mown for hay rather than harvvested for seed in the coming months.
While it is very dry in this part of Australia, Queensland has seen more than 10 inches in a few days in some areas, terrible storm damage and hail as big as cricket balls, even in central Australia.

I am freezing because I have been playing semi midnight cowboy...or girl!

I WAS meant to be at the School PTFA end of year break up and AGM, instead I was facing off to a mental mamma cow who did not understand that the the two suspicious looking people (with rope and a calf puller hidden behind their backs) were friends rather than foes! She had a red hot go at the ute (truck) I was in, so when it was just me and her in the laneway I was quick to give her right of way! Never mess with a female in the throes of labour....my DH learnt that!

My poor family are going to be eating the egg salad and rocky road that were meant for the bbq all weekend. They aren't complaining about the rocky road.....

Something else unappreciated was the suggestion I made to my husband as he was standing on haybales trying to rope the cow as I ran her past; the suggestion that I really should have bought my camera as the great light, stormy sky and lassoo action would have made great shots....For future reference...let's just say that a farmer who has been cutting hay around the clock and has to stop to spend a few hours chasing a cow that loosely is the responsibility of his wife does not appreciate the need for my blog readers to be in on the action!!!

But, onto sewing. Yes, there has been some!

If this quilt were a house you would call it overcapitalised. It was an order for a baby blanket and of course I could have just used the panel and the name. But when you want something to be special and treasured it doesn't matter who is getting it, it still has to be as good as possible. So it got Murray grey appliqued cows and the property name embroidered on as well. It also managed to be finished a whole 8 minutes before the girl turned up to pick it up so, unlike my DH doing his cowboy impersonation, you got a picture.

It has a great matching farm flanelette backing so it's cosy.

A week or two ago when I held the Church morning coffee we had a bloom and succulent show as well. I snapped a few shots of my favourites to share.

1st. Iris

2nd Jacobean lily

some kind of succulent!!

Clematis...at a distance

..and up close

An amaryllis

A rose whose name escapes me...but by any name would smell as sweet!

And one of my great new mauve oriental poppies that have come from crossing a red fuzzy with a pink single. The heat and wind fried them all nearly overnight but I managed to get this one.

The rain is coming down, I wont mind if it keeps me awake on the tin roof all night...have a great day, Tracey

Surprise mail, markets and gardens.

Oh, I wish you were here to hear the beautiful melody of heavy rain on the roof! There is no sound better with late crops that haven't yet seen a shower and only about half an inch of rain all spring! It is forecast to be on and off all week so we are hopeful.

I have another piece of excitement tonight! Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville has written a book that is completely my thing, about recycling shirts to make fabulous quilts...and the way the world is at present that is sounding better and better!

I was intending buying it, then our dollar dropped overnight and I decided to perhaps wait a while,but, lo and behold, in the mail, this appeared!

THE BOOK!!!

And it is fabulous, but I couldn't work out who it was from, Bonnie inscribed it from 'your secret swap partner', I thought maybe it was her, but she assures me it is not! I so love a mystery and can't believe someone has found the perfect thing for me, I feel like Diane Keaton in "Something's got to give"..when she says about Jack being a person who actually "gets" her!! So thank you secret swap buddy, I really appreciate being "got'!! My only fear is that i was meant to keep it until Christmas but I didn't know it was a gift and there was no wrapping, so I will just maintain mystified and thankful..and as I told Bonnie...it aint coming back!!

Huge week, as usual of late it seems, tomorrow I am hoping to do the rounds of a blogline list that I gave up checking when it hit 1000! I envisage lots of coffee for that catch up.

Had a market yesterday,

made lots of these little girl gift bags

and these plastic coated purses

and had lots of cards, the new card holder quilt worked a treat.

ta..da..

Had a great morning, lots of stuff went and I have orders for a baby quilt, a plastic coated beach bag, 5 santa sacks...and a girl wanted the ducks she saw on the cards so came and picked a heap of the little darlings up after!

I visited the local kinder's open garden on my way home, beautiful old station bluestone home. The garden was suffering a little from the hot north winds and 30's temps of last few weeks but was still photo worthy so i will leave you with it...

I loved this, succulents planted in the open bricks on top of the fence.

Have a great day, Tracey

Detox amongst the flowers.

School holidays and the lead up to shearing are cutting into sewing and blog time, my apologies for that. I'll catch up on everyone eventually-and yes, my family's team were the unlucky losers in the football! We wont talk about that!

I am trying to have a detox week, lots of fruit and vegie juice, no alcohol and little or no coffee....let me give you a tip, don't try to give up coffee and rubbish food the week you make over 300 biscuits for shearing, far too many with choc bits!!! Tomorrow is homemade sausage rolls and pinwheels...also not conducive to juice!
Well, I'll live. Looking forward to visiting you all and seeing lots of sewing; until then, here are some garden pics.

I am having a lot of trouble picking out which one lends itself to a card and as I am into bees I do want to choose one of them. Can you help ? ...And I have some hatching ducklings and some Heather Bailey play...stay tuned and have a great day, Tracey

Out in the garden

Oh the excitement, the tingle in the toes, the sheer joy......

Tomorrow the rest of the family's team plays in the Grand Final of the Australian football league. This is our equivalent of the Superbowl. I am kinda excited, it's not quite the same when it isn't your actual team, the family team won last year after over 40 years of no premierships. I was right on board then, this year i particularly dislike the opposition, too many 80's memories of them winning everything!! So I will probably board the bandwagon and say, 'Go Cats!' quite enthusiastically.

But, that's not the only excitement I am sharing. I get a huge amount of joy out of a girl who hatches a baker's dozen so i even snuck out in the middle of the night to get hatching pics for you....knew those fluffy silky frizzle cross feathers would be good for sitting.

I just never get sick of this-mammal babies are pretty impressive...but the whole hatching from an egg thing...wow!

I then attempted to get the perfect chicken picture to share...i will never be a professional chicken photographer that's for sure-look at these tries.

Do they have no concept of "stand still and smile or I will withhold the chick crumble??"(-works on the kids..lol!!)

This is my favourite.

They are all out and about today in their little fox proof wire cage. I have got my kids back...with interest...so they and their cousins have spent a good part of today just sitting watching the chicks meet their world.

When I dug up all my front garden months ago I dumped a lot of the arum lilies into pots and threw them in a corner with a few other pots, empty, dead and otherwise. I wondered past that today and spotted colour -in my favourite shade of pink.

Now last year someone told me that cyclamen are bulbous and will regenerate. (Bit of Doctor Who there-the regeneration bit and the fact he definitely used to battle some things that sounded a lot like cyclamen!)

.

But I'm getting distracted.....Closer inspection found a cyclamen pot, well and truly neglected, that just goes to prove what I found out last year....that I have thrown out a lot of good cyclamens in the past because I thought they were dead and not dormant. It is now flowering beautifully at my front door after 12 months of neglect. My Mum is going to freak because she has thrown out a good 2 pots of "dead" cyclamen a year, treats them almost like cut flowers. Who knew this was a "things you can learn about your garden blog"!!!I'll have to ask for more pay!

Have a great day... and for peace and harmony in the home, GO CATS!!

Of gardens and quilts

We have results from me smelling spring in the air.

I picked up my 7 new roses last weekend that I had bought through the School fundraiser. I had great plans, it was time for the space next to my sewing room wall to be cleaned up and transferred to a rose bed, too easy...bring roses home....employ a very handsome gardener who lives to dig and charges the very reasonable rate of 2 packets of footy cards to prepare soil and then sit back with coffee until ready to plant.

Oh, I love it when I plan.

Can you see that crowbar...can you????

Guess what was under the 10 cms of beautiful dirt....

A bluestone floor!!!

Now I love that this was a stable, with what looks like a huge amount of bluestone right out behind the shed, but did it need to come up this close, and be quite this well laid?

A woman with smaller plans may have decided this was a good place for a pot garden, but I struggle with pots so 'ever onwards' was the call.

Unfortunately the call went out to no-one.

Digger boy took one look at the stones and heard homework calling, Dh went to bolt past in the ute and after much batting of eyelids he got the the first one loose then raced off to work up a paddock before it rained.

Doesn't he realise my plans are far more important than getting another 100 acres of crop in??? lol!!!

-and here it is the next day.

Now I know you can see I left some stone in place: we shall say that was because I wanted a path, or perhaps I kept it as an ode to the work done previously-yes, I like that, we'll go with that...... and never suggest that some pieces of bluestone may have been fine to lug around 100 years ago when this place crawled with workers...but don't scream to be relocated by little old me!

Remains to have the watering system added and a few more succulents at the front. I also am feeling the desire to paint a big back feature "something" to go on the fence, but it may be a little too public for DH!

But with the completion of that little project the weather has turned and gone straight back to winter, so these next items have been made or finished.

I think they should be called patchwork blankets rather than quilts. None have wadding, all flannel backs and just turned, pillow case style and topstitched around the edges-with a basic amount of quilting to keep them together. I have a lot of babies they can go to, but I've been asked to take my cards to the new farmer's market next Saturday and I think I will stick a price on these as well if I have to sit there. I can always make more for the babies!

All except the bottom right corner have chenille as the white blocks. The most fabulous quality DB size one for $2 at my favourite shop!!! The bottom left has about half a charm pack of 'all you need is love' fabric mixed with the chenille.

Busted a nice amount of stash.

The stripy one is quilted via vintage pink ric rac...another 50 cents at the favourite store!

Have a great day, Tracey

Didn't escape unscathed!!

I didn't end up getting off quite as lightly with the storm damage as first thought.

Linseed is a fabulous thing, great for oil and for all those natural hormone type additives in bread and other foods....but not so great when its stubble all blows up against fences in winds that my husband assures me were more 150 kmh than 100kmh!

Some of our fences were blown over with the force of the stubble hitting them. The front end loader on the tractor could only remove the stubble close to the fence, not on it, so the kids and I had to work on getting the stubble off the 1 1/2 kilometres of fenceline they were on....I did a bit of this with them, then remembered why my neighbor had 7 children....here are 4 of them helping my two to get the whole rest of the job done in under an hour! $35 well spent I would say! These pictures only show the end of the job, at the beginning you couldn't see any wire or posts.

Instead I went back to working on my sadly neglected front garden. It has had to look after itself over the Summer, with no water to spare, and I have decided I am sick of fighting the elements so I have ripped it all out,

and am studying the space for a while to come up with some nice, low water requiring alternative. It's the entire South facing side of my house, so it gets little or no sun. The Hydrangeas, Arum lilies, shrubs and acanthus had loved it...some of the time, and looked nice....3-5 months of the year-not really a satisfactory arrangement. There is the whole other side of my front door to ad to the above pic.

There are a few more issues if you are thinking of making a suggestion...well, the main issue is this

....impossible to keep out so don't tell me seedlings would be the go...I have been there...and cried over that!!

She is "helping" me dig out the hydrangea!

So here it is today, after all my joints ache...and my carpal tunnel is playing up-a blank canvas, almost like reaching in the stash cupboard. There are even edging pavers under the edge of the dirt and lawn there somewhere, I have to dig and find them next! I only left my 2 now pruned iceberg roses because for some reason they love the position.-but I don't want them the whole way along the house.What to plant?

We had quilter's last night. Chris has her Kaffe Fassett ready for the longarmer.

I worked on my Spring swap but it isn't quite ready for your opinion so instead I will show you what I made for my friend Helen, who was my birthday buddy this month. They are from Ric Rac's tutorial on her sidebar, very quick and easy fabric containers, I will make them again. And the pot holder is from the 'Tracey out of my head pattern'! (that one was cheap!!!)

Have a great day, Tracey

Bits and Pieces.

The local show went very well, DD won 2 blue ribbons for Spring in the pet show, he was very well behaved, just had a few issues with a couple of labrador dogs.

I grabbed a couple of quilts as I went out the door for the craft, received a first and 2 seconds. Here is the completed Roman Holiday cushion, with one of the battery hens. Thought you may like to see how well and happy they are now.....big change from a few months ago. Have run out of the yellow from the Roman Holiday range and think a co-ordinating cushion would look good on my couch, so I just may have put a teeny order into The FQS when it was half price, hope you got there in time, apparently it sold out quickly.

Big celebrations here, Dh is home from harvesting away, not sure if I will see him much more as it is hay season here, but at least he will sleep here........and I will have a reason to stop sewing at a decent hour!


He has been madly cutting more hay at home, all that late rain has made it a bumper hay season in our area..






In 10-14 days it will have cured enough to bale.




I have been doing some more playing with my Jim Shore figures, I can't decide which of these I prefer as a notecard...any ideas?




Had one of my favourite nights of the year on Friday, it was our Quilter's break-up and Chris Cringle. I highly indulged, especially in the cheeses, after my 2 1/2 weeks of exercising and behaving...surely you can't put 3 kgs back on that quickly!

This is the gift bag that was part of my Chris Cringle's gift, it is using ons of the Nancy Halvorsten Christmas panels...and the inevitable Roman Holiday.

I will show you Christine's latest Kaffe Fassett next post, looks good.
And finally, a mauve fluffy poppy.I will be ensuring I collect these seeds carefully, the trouble I have with the chooks doing a lot of the garden cleaning up is that they over tidy and you can lose your seeds.
Have a great day, Tracey