Christmas Eve

 The next day was Christmas Eve, and we just hung out with each other instead of doing any sight seeing.The kids first thought in the morning was the pool and by 9 they were splashing around and shrieking with laughter.We let them stay in longer because they were wearing long sleeve rashies and we were pretty certain the sunscreen was working well. Hats were added to the pool clothes, and they stayed in for hours and hours. The adults certainly tired of it before the kids did.

There were some blow up ride on things but by far the most sought after aids were two black innertubes and there was much competion over whose turn it was to drift around in them. The twins absolutely loved lazily skimming around the  shallow end of the pool in them, but pool noodles came in handy too. 

 Matt had asked what we wanted for lunch and suggested a barbeque. He disappeared and a bit later the work ute rolled up with trestle tables and chairs, tableclothes and cutlery and he set it all up in the welcome shade of a large gumtree. He  fired up a huge barbeque and got the meat cooking and his friend Sam in the kitchen whipped up salads and great trays of cut up fruit for dessert. Twenty of us sat down in the fresh air to a lunch that seemed to have materialised out of nowhere.

After lunch was some quiet time and a movie for the kids, while I made two cheeecakes in the  kitchen and a few nibbles for the next day. Matt made pizza dough, and filled up seven huge trays with varied toppings and cooked them in the two big gas ovens. Two were loaded with jalepenos, just the way we liked them, and I was hoping no-one else would eat them so there would be left-overs for breakfast. But I suppose feeding twenty people  meant that was unlikely anyway.

After tea we played charades, visited the wallabies, and then everyone was ready for bed. The kids were a little worried that Santa wouldn't know we were in Arkaroola, but we assured them that their 'elf on the shelf' would have told him. Christmas day tomorrow!

Read more...

More adventuring

That night after a delicious meal of burgers we followed Matt down to feed the yellow footed rock wallabies. They are wild but enjoy some of their special food each evening as a supplement.

Matt tipped some food onto this rock platform, and after five minutes the wallabies started coming shyly in.

The kids were deighted to see these pretty little animals at such close range; eventually there were about seven of them feeding on the rocks.

Each family had a seperate house to stay in, so we spent a comfortable night after our adventures on the road, and next morning set off for the pool.

It was hard to get the kids out of the pool after one and a half hours, but the sun was too hot. They were slathered in sunscreen but we didn't want to take the chance of them getting burnt.

After lunch we set off on a 4wd tour to The Pinnacles, massive outcrops of rocks that were very impressive.

Dolly had come along for the ride too, and loved the attention the kids lavished on her.

Next stop was the old copper smelter, an enterprise that failed to make anyone's fortune. The land is so inhospitable that it was hard to imagine how people survived out here. Eventually they walked off and abandoned the workings.

Next stop was  Nooldoonooldoona waterhole, a bit of a walk and a climb before we got to the actual water. It was amazing and the kids loved scrambling over the huge rocks. 

To put this in perspective, note the tiny spec of yellow which is Rob in his hi-vis shirt.

I didn't climb down the last bit as my back was complaining mightily by this stage, and I didn't know if I'd get back up again. There was very little water there, despite the recent rains, but it was still a beautiful setting.

I just couldn't get over the scale of some of the rocks

- all the kids loved climbing this one and posed at the top for a photo.

 By the time we got back to the cars we were all ready for some quiet time and a bit of a rest.The little girls had kept up so well over the rough terrain, but energy was flagging and they needed to cool down before we assembled again in the dining room for another great meal and conversation.

Read more...

 Christmas tthis year was very special for our family.  A deal was made that if Matt stayed on as caretaker at Arkaroola while the resort was shut , he could invite his family up there  for Christmas. Much planning ensued and on Dec 22nd we set off, Rob and co from Adelaide, John and the girls and me from Pt Pirie. 

470 odd miles to our destination...

This was the first hurdle, somewhere north of Quorn. There had been rain the day before and what had undoubtably been a dry crossing was now under water.

This was the view upstream, that was a lot of water coming down.The water was flowing pretty quickly but after watching a couple of 4wd vehicles going through we knew that the road was good underneath and the water not terribly deep in the middle of the dip. John drove on the wrong side of the road (for Aussies), away from the left edge where the water was tumbling rapidly down into the creekbed and we got through. Lily said "Hold your breath if you hope to live!!"

I couldn't believe the line up of cars and caravans on the other side, some people had even got out deck chairs and were waiting patiently by their vehicles. The lady in front of us when we stopped said she'd been there for an hour- How long were they prepared to wait?

Of course I did mutter to John that I hoped we wouldn't become one of those viral videos of cars being swept away, ha!

The further north we drove the more stunning the scenery became but with the girls in the car we couldn't really stop to take proper photos. The ominous gathering of clouds also meant that we had to get there as quickly as we could; the road to Arkaroola had been washed out a couple of months ago and we didn't want to risk being stuck somewhere.

The last part of the road is dirt and we could see veils of rain sweeping along ahead of us, so the nervous tension in the car rose steadily. Phone coverage is very spotty, John had none at all but I was able to contact Matt, and he set out to meet us in case we needed assistance. One of his jobs is to go and rescue stranded people, which happens regularly on these roads.

It was good to see his vehicle waiting for us, and his verdict was there was one crossing where he might have to tow us through, but otherwise it should be fine. The crossing in question had been washed out and tons of fine red dirt deposited like dunes amidst the water, but John went through at a steady pace and we made it. He said there should be sand in our underpants after that!

The worst bit was a stretch of small rocks that looked firm but underneath was squishy, so there was a bit of sliding and skating and muttering until we got out of that.

Of course all of this had slowed us down, so it was nearly four oclock when we finally reached our destination, eight hours after we set out. John said if we ever do this again, he's hiring a 4wd, which would have given us a bit more peace of mind. There might also have been a few less squabbles from the back seat if there had been more room in the car, about everything from Lily's water bottle touching Mia's leg...windmills.... binoculars..... 'leaning'.....who would get the 'top biscuit'. I don't even know what that last one meant.

But we were all together now, and it was Christmas coming up! Let the fun begin!

Read more...

Back again...

 2022 turned out to be a year of upheaval in one way or another. My youngest son Matt had been living at my place since jan 2017 and in March he found his dream job and moved out. He's been working at the Arkaroola Resort as a maintenance officer doing everything from plumbing to changing tyres to feeding wallabies and checking bush trails. He's even had a few flying lessons, gulp. I'm so glad for him and I love hearing about this remote area that he loves.

My son and daughter-in-law are now living separate lives and the three girls go back and forth between the two houses. It seems to be working out as well as it can and as Mia said once "We've got two homes now."  When my son has them I look after them during the day and stay overnight as it's not worth driving home. My life is still divided  between my place and the pirie family for the foreseeable future but I love being able to help so that the girls don't have to go to daycare.

Next year the twins will start school and I'll have the days free, so I'm hoping to get back into customer quilts and more of my own persuits.

Izzy (on the right) is eight now, and the the twins are five. The difference between Mia (on the left) and Lily (in the middle) has grown even more pronounced and they are totally dissimilar in personality too. This nana who only ever had boys has had to learn some hair styles and plaiting skills but it's been fun.

Keryn has written about the original computer on Millhouse (the longarm) crashing and having to learn a new program to run it. At least she is computer savvy and can work things out, but I'm having to be coached slowly through each step and the things I did automatically in the old set-up have to be unlearned. I'll get there, I've done two of my own tops and feel a bit more capable. It's still intimidating, whereas I used to feel pretty confident in my skills.

I'm still doing lots of piecing and starting of projects, so I'm really looking forward to being able to use Millhouse to actually finish a swag of them, hopefully without too much help from Keryn.

Read more...

I was shocked that sewing the first batch of triangles made so little difference to the contents of that drawer. So the pile of pastel and modern fabric triangles were dealt with next. Another sewing session resulted in some more stacks of HSTs....

but the drawer barely changed. I quickly discovered that because most of these triangles are leftovers from bindings, our own and hundreds of customer quilts over the years, that the light triangles disappeared pretty quickly. I cut about 200 from creams and white strips and tackled the remaining piles.

Surely that would be enough!

Nope.  Now I could put this away and be done with it, but really? How many HSTs were lurking in here over all?

I paired up medium triangles with the darkest darks, cut more lights and back to the machine I went...

To the ironing board!

By now I was slightly appalled at where this was going. Understand that I have a 1 1/2" drawer, a 1 3/4" drawer and a 2 1/2" drawer of triangles as well. My reasoning has been that the set of little drawers takes up the same space empty as it does full, so I didn't have to do much more than tuck all those trimmed bits neatly away. I thought they might be a sort of 'starter' for a quilt someday but would only amount to two or three hundred. I have gone to this stash to pad out quilts I've been cutting for, but now I see that  a paltry 50 or so taken out every now and then wasn't making a difference at all.

No.  You can't really see how high these stacks are, but the final count was around 1,800 HSTs.

Gobsmacked !

For interests sake I tried packing them back in the little drawer and yes, they would fit apart from the bulk of the extra folds in the seam allowance. I'm now deciding whether to start an Ocean Waves or just sew them into blocks of 25 because they won't fit in the container they were meant to be transferred to. One little 5" by 8" drawer housed all that. I know that I cut extra light triangles, but all of these squares are made up of two triangles, people! Nearly 3,000 in that little drawer. 

It's made me think thoughts that I don't want to, about how many quilt tops I could make from the scraps that I adore hoarding, how many tops there are in my extensive stash, the number of quilts I can complete in the years I have left to me.... HEY! this exercise was supposed to make me feel better about the horrors going on, and instead I've spiraled into existential dread over my excesses in the sewing room. Hmmm.

And did I completely empty that drawer? Nope, I gave up. I call quits. I'd have to cut even more light triangles, and then I found this...

The little basket where I put binding cut offs, waiting to be trimmed. Argghh! I used to joke about the fairy tale where every morning there was a room of straw to be spun into gold. "I wouldn't mind if that was scraps I had to deal with, I'd just trim and sew away, and the next day there would be another lot! Tralala!" 

Well apparently I'm living it and it's not as much fun as I thought.....(still can't say no though, so I'm not throwing them out)

Read more...

Like the rest of the world I've been thrown off balance by the events in Ukraine and my normal sewing for solace doesn't seem to be working. I'm not doing much doom scrolling because I know I can't handle it, but there's enough news around that I'm still appalled over the tragedy of it all.

There's also some upheavals happening on the home front which I won't go into but Keryn and I are making schedules of things to happen and then rewriting them and rewriting again. It seems as soon as we make plans all sorts of spanners come flying into the works! But we'll get there.

I was putting some trimmed triangles away last week and the little drawer I keep them in was absolutely full. I've been in a bit of a funk since I finished my last top, so I decided I would just sew some together and see if I could make a bit of space in there.

So I sorted and spent one session sewing the repro scraps together...

Yep, this is relaxing and fun pairing them up....

All ironed nicely, now to trim the dog ears and count them up.

These are 2 inch HST that will finish at 1 1/2 inches, so that little drawer is around seven inches long. The stacks in front are about 140 squares in total. That's 280 separate triangles. How did they all come out of that container? I barely made a difference at all, so I decided this would be my MAD challenge for March, Empty that Drawer!! The HSTs would all shuffle off to another large container that hosts the finished squares and I could actually see some progress in dealing with scraps. Challenge accepted.

to be continued...

Read more...

This is the second finish for the year. I have no idea what to call this, other than 'grey, cheddar quilt.' I put the blocks together as a sixteen patch, which greatly simplified things. 

I made 4 patches using two fabrics, in sets of two which gave me a sort of framework for dealing with the scraps. A set of two cheddar and grey 4 patches and another pair of lighter  grey/blue combined with the lightest squares in shirtings, red and white checks and pale blues.

A vintage gingham in black and white gave me the darker stripes running diagonally across the top. The original quilt that I was inspired by had a lot more of these darker areas but I didn't want to recreate that blotchiness, and preferred these subtle bands instead.

The borders were made from men's dark grey shirt strips alternating with the remains of a fat quarter, cut in 1 1/2" strips, and then a 4 1/2" strip of another vintage gingham that was only 36" wide. This one was blue, but I think that helps tie in with the light blues in the centre of the top.

 

I knew that joining the gingham in any-old-how fashion would give an unsightly break in the borders, so I decided to have a go at matching the checks. These little squares are 1/8" wide, eek.

This attempt....not so great, but it will do.

This try was better, but I wasn't going to agonise too much. As long as there was no overall break in the pattern I was happy.

This used up all the grey and cheddar scraps that I wanted to deal with, and I actually had to cut some strips from fat quarters in the end. I have some leftover blocks because I changed my mind about how big I wanted this to be, and I'm going to make a second top using these colours, in a different design. I'll have to use the stash now that the scraps have gone but I really liked making these blocks and I'm not sick of them yet.

Read more...

First finish for 2022

 It's hard to see the borders in this little top but they are there, framing this baby top nicely. Still haven't found the missing sheets but when I do I'll set the rest of the blocks I made into another little quilt. I'm quite pleased with how the fabric behaved so I'll be on the lookout for more very lightly used cotton linens at the opshop. And then try not to misplace them...

Read more...