Lucky Dips

Here I am hurriedly tying strings around lucky dips so they can be fished for at the Rainbow Fair at our local church. I've been the lucky dip provider at kindy, school and church fetes for the past 16 years and the kids get to know you will be there. No fairy flossing this year as the chief fairy had a parade to take part in for the 60th anniversay of the Army Apprentices.

Lots of kids call them 'presents', but love the fact they are in colourful paper (which gets saved from each birthday party).

Here they are swimming in the 'pond', pink string for the girls and blue for the boys and you can see one of the orange-handled fishing rods leaning in the bottom right corner.

Niddy Noddys galore

When John's wool was all plied it was wound onto our Beechworth Handspinners' Special Washable Niddy Noddys. They jostled together in the laundry basket reminding me of a group of meerkats with their little necks craned to see what was happening. There seemed to be a dilemma--how would they all fit in the machine? I managed as you can see and the rowdy mob was cleaned with a short soak and spin.

Reflections from the sewing room

It is with great happiness I show you my beautiful dogwood in full flower. I came home from Sydney just in time to go 'wow!' and take this photo from my sewing room window (you can even see where I have removed the screen to get a clear view). No wonder there hasn't been a lot of sewing getting done when this is the view at present. The dogwood struggled when it's protecting melaleuca was removed to enable the construction of this room several years ago. But now that it has the protection of the room it is thriving (and I am reminded to water it!). I also must mention the red hot pokers as they are winter flowering ones, successful only once in 20 years as they always get hit by our really horrendous frosts just as they flower and kaput! they are history. This year the clever blighters have waited until spring to flower.

And from the other window I can just see this clematis as it heads towards the kiwifruit vine. I love pink flowers.
It is with great sadness that I tell you of the passing of my dear 90 year old father-in-law, Charles. He spent many years living next to us at Silver Creek and helping us with our trout farm, always whistling, nothing too much trouble. It has been sad to see him become less and less able to get about as age robbed him of his dignity. But he will be remembered as a great father and father-in-law, grandfather and great-grandfather, but most of all as a really good person.

How about making the longest scarf?

The Wangaratta longest scarf competition didn't make it to the Guinness Book of World Records but it did get to about 32km long before time started to run out. Now it is being transformed into lovely warm rugs for the needy. You can see one of the many 'rolls' in the picture on the left with a lovely red, black and white rug put together by Pam. The picture on the right shows a pile of squares ready to be joined together.

Pam and Maree were crocheting sections together and making a crochet edging:

Any helpers would be greatly appreciated!

October 17 show and tell

This is Kerry's beautiful quilt all finished.
















Leonie found time this week to whip up a new quilt top,

or two....

Well done girls!

For several weeks Maree has been saying that she desperately needed a new pin cushion. I found this one in the goodies being made for the Scots School Albury Fete, and knew it just had to be Maree's new pincushion--it has pink hearts on it, who else could it belong to???











Fran is working on her hexagon flowers.




















Anne was making suffolk puffs.

the Playground, the Ferry and the brick boat at Brooklyn

After a delicious tea of local Hawkesbury mullet and chips (the salad was waiting for us, accidentally, in the fridge at home) what better than a play.

Oh my goodness, how did she do that?

Ah huh, yep I found the secret hole.

Goodbye ferry, thanks for the ride!

Georgie told us there was a brick boat.....a what???

A brick boat!!!

Georgie's Ferry Ride

While I was visiting, Georgie expressed a wish to go on a ferry ride and as their neighbour had been working at the Hawkesbury River and enjoying the boating there Penny thought a trip to Brooklyn and a ride on the ferry might be a good idea, knowing that this was one of my old 'fishing' grounds. From the age of about 8 I had holidays here at Dad's uncle's weekender, then Mum and Dad bought their own holiday house a bit further along the shore and as Dad was a teacher we spent all the school holidays here. I'm sure we were the only people to eat the local catfish (which were considered the worst thing to catch) but Dad knew how to deal with them, and once they were skinned and pan fried they were the sweetest and most delicious fish with no little bones.

Here we are on the ferry:

approaching the wharf at Dangar Island:

Over at Wobby:

Fondly called Tumbledown by the locals because the sandstone rocks used to 'tumbledown' the hillside. When we first lived here there was no electricity or telephone available and a lot of empty blocks in between cottages. How times have changed!

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Gumby

Indoors....

October 6 was Tim's birthday--the big 20. We had a birthday tea, with a cake, but we could only find 4 candles although one of them played happy birthday so made up for the other sixteen. He had celebrated with a music festival, so was also in Sydney.

The kids thought it was great to light and relight the candles. And there's the high 5 for Gumby managing to blow out all the candles (with help from Georgie)!

Out the front door....

This is my trusty steed having it's leak fixed. At this stage the fuel tank is on the ground waiting for new lines to replace the split ones.

Out the back door....

Granmas can be useful for all sorts of things, especially making new rainbow shorts which are just the length you like them. A pair of shorts and also a pair of trousers (with cowboys on them) also got sewn for James, as well as a red ticking knitting needle wrap for Penny's needles.

Thank you Hume and Hovell

I have been in Sydney with Penny and the grandkids while Dan has been in the US, and most of you will know about the fuel-leak saga with the car when I arrived in Sydney 10 days ago. I was able to quickly find an efficient mobile mechanic to fix it and $1400+ later I was back behind the wheel again.
My trips up and down the Hume were very pleasant however, with beautiful spring weather and the countryside looking glorious as it always did at this time of year......until The Drought! With winter rain the countryside is looking a picture again, and every time I drive the highway I thank Hume and Hovell for choosing some lovely countryside to travel through. This time I also said a prayer of thanks for the rain (and asked for more) as little creeks still had water in them (how long since Adelong Creek has had water in it?).

If you recognise where these photos are taken, then you drive the highway way too much!

From a high point....


and another high point....

At this point I had to take the photo into the sun as I was in a line of traffic stopped at some of the roadworks.

Early mornings

The weather has been warming up, we have after all, just started into October. But some early mornings aren't as warm as others. Earlier this week you can see that despite the sun being up, the frost was still heavy on the ground. Well, we are at Silver Creek!

Undaunted, the Silver Creek peacocks are down out of their night roosts in the gum trees and hoping for some bread for breakfast.

And I am out taking these photos on my way to the lake for my morning walk with Wendy. And this morning I remembered to take the camera because the weeping cherry trees in the Chinese garden are fully flowering.

It's that blossom thing again, it won't be here for long so you have to make the most of it. And after all, we have to have some sort of benefit for all the frost still hanging around, annihilating the new seedlings. It is just so cheerful with so much blossom around.

Rare Stitches

Our Friday 'patchwork' sewing group has been fairly small of late with a few patchworkers away each week, but we take our handstitching so we can all fit round the table.
This is Kerry's project (the wrong side) and you can see how very precise Kerry is by the amazing line of pins along the edge. Next time I hope to show the front of this lovely quilt.

It is rare indeed for us to see Leonie stitching! Usually she is behind the counter cutting fabric, but today was definitely worth having the camera as Leonie was actually sitting stitching for a while, some really pretty flowers.

Oh no, Couch Potatoes!

While we were happily sitting at our whirring wheels on the other side of the room at Spinning Group, 2 couch potatoes appeared. Worse still they had dreaded electronic games, one chanting red, black, blue, green, oh no black, blue, yellow.......and the other absorbed in bips that didn't q-u-i-t-e make a tune! However the creators of the dreaded games designed them to need re-charging causing the couch potatoes to find alternate entertainment after a while.