During the week I decided that this weekend would be "an at home" weekend to catch up on a few things that needed to be done like baking a couple of batches of cookies, sewing, planting some herbs and just enjoying our local area. All of which I am pleased to say happened!!

It is not often that I take my camera to the beach but seeing as it was such a glorious morning and lowtide off I set. Not only did I get some lovely photos of the sunrise but I was also lucky to catch a pod of dolphins playing just off shore.

A hopeful pelican waiting patiently for breakfast from a fisherman



Sun shining through clouds just on the horizen



If you look to the middle of the screen just behind the line of breakers you can see three dolphin dorsel fins just out of the water. I counted aproximately 12 or so dolphins gracefully swimming along and playing for quite sometime.



Lucky for me the tide was very low today and I was able to walk around the headland to the next beach and found this cave.



My footprints in the sand and ripples in the water





We are lucky enough to live in an area where we have wetlands virtually at our front door. This is a favourite walk of ours especially either early in the morning or just on dusk.









After giving the garden a hose the other day I noticed this spider web. I reminded me of the delicate crocheting that a great aunt of mine did many years ago.



This maidenhair fern is my pride and joy. I have learnt over many years and much expense that there is no such thing as an indoor plant. I have a few maidenhair ferns that I alternate - I give them a week in and then a week or two out in a part of the garden that has filtered sunlight but able to benefit from any rain. The other ferns are pretty but this one I am very proud of.




Today is National Neighbours Day and our lovely neighbour next door has invited us in for "drinks and nibbles" around 6 tonight. So all in all I have had a great weekend and hope you all have to.

Hello again. I have sadly neglected my blog over the last few weeks - not due to lack of interest but the usual excuse - lack of time. A very good friend of mine knows my obsession with fabric and last week this piece arrived in my letterbox. I will have to come up with a very special project for this one however in the meantime I will just enjoy looking at it and handling it.




I have had a few trips to "Spottie" over the last couple of weeks and of course you just cannot come out emptyhanded. Just as well I picked up these couple of pieces as I had a phone call from a friend a couple of weeks ago for two more "boy" baby bags.



Below you can see a photo of the two bags which I finished off this weekend. I just love the nursery rhyme fabric.




Unfortunately I have not had time to spend on my oriental quilt. Hopefully I can spend a day or two over Easter on it and make some headway.

Around to the weekend again. The weeks just seem to be flying by - almost the second month of the year has gone.

Now that I have finished my "mini projects" which are shown in previous posts I have picked up my oriental quilt again. Today I have made some progress and sewn the blocks for the first row together. Tomorrow I need to cut some more of the black sashings that go between the blocks before I can proceed with anymore sewing. If I can get the rest of the sashing cut tomorrow hopefully I can get another row or two sewn together next weekend.

I went shopping this morning and bought a couple of 55 litre storage bins. Added to the other storage bins I can now get some sort of order into my stash and I even have a little room left to add to few more pieces of fabric when I next go shopping.

Whilst I was sorting out my fabric I thought I might as well photograph it.

Food for thought




Fantasy


Tea for Two

Fun fabrics



Oriental flavours



Florals



Sewing Notions



Country cousins



Christmas



FQ'S

I was feeling a bit lazy by the time I got to photographing my collection of fq's and so I just pulled out the drawer holding them and clicked once instead of doing the sorting bit.




Now that I have had a look at the fabrics in "categories" I can see some areas that need to be improved in such as fantasy, country, sewing and Christmas. I will work on these when I next go shopping and report in!

Here is another example of fabric waving to me as I walk by. Very good friends of ours have just bought a caravan and are planning on doing quite a bit of travelling around Australia over the coming years. The fabric just screamed their name out and now these placemats have pride of place in their caravan.






We wish them many happy trips around Australia following the "maps".

I love fabric of all sorts and can be easily entertained by just walking around fabric shops however each time I am indulging in my entertainment pieces just start to wave to me and say here I am just what you have been looking for. As was the case with these cute chickens and their knitting needles. Now this had to be bought for my DIL who until about 18 months ago had not knitted and now she cannot put her needles down. Just what we needed in the family another "addict". I have my stash of fabric, hubby his CDs and books, DS with his DVD's, comics and other collectables and now wool and needles. I suppose it could be worse!!!!!!!!

Anyway these chickens just had to be made up into a knitting roll of which I did not have a pattern for but by "googling" in knitting roll I found what I thought would be a suitable pattern with various size spaces for needles of varying lengths, circular needles and a tape measure.

I have been very neglectful of my blog lately not due to lack of interest but a lack of time.

I have come to a standstill on the oriental quilt for the time being as I have stopped off to do a couple of smaller projects. The following is a photo of a tablerunner and matching placemats I made for a friend. She likes a things bright so I hope these fit the "bill"



Very bright - but I just love this fabric and hope my friend does as well.

When I am not sewing I do knitting of a night in front of TV. I knit squares for Wrap with Love and I then pass them onto a friend who sews them together. I do not like the sewing up process so we have a good arrangement going. Looking at this basket of wool - which is about half of the wool I have - I will be knitting for quite a few nights to come!



While the rest of the country is sweltering our garden is certainly enjoying the heat especially the hibiscus.

HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY

This week-end we are celebrating Australia Day and in true Australian fashion we are celebrating in the heat surrounded by bushfires. We will be having our traditional Australia Day BBQ as an inside/outside BBQ - cooked inside and eaten outside - due to a total fire ban on wood/coal using BBQ's. Sydney reached a maximum of just over 40 degrees yesterday and everyone - including us - went to the airconditioned shopping centres.

I am making good progress with the new quilt. I have now a total of 30 blocks all at some point of construction and I spent last weekend playing with them and getting them in the right position. Now that I am back at work sewing time is limited to the weekends. If time permits today I will get more of the black sashing cut and then perhaps I will get a chance to lay the blocks out again for a final fiddling. Once I am happy with the "look" I will then number them in readiness for sewing together.

I stopped work on the quilt last weekend to make a "mini" project but more about that later.