A Weekend Sweatshop

Last weekend I attended a quilting retreat organised annually by the Quilters Guild of NSW at the Jamberoo Valley Lodge. Linda and I left home at about 1:30pm and headed south, arriving at about 3 pm with only a short tour into Jamberoo when we missed the turnoff.

What a beautiful place to stay. Our sweatshop was set up in a huge room with a group of peacocks displaying to the peahens and of course we ladies at the door. What a show to arrive to!

Meals and teas were delightful and of course the company was hilarious. Much learning from each other was achieved as we wandered to and from the iron or just taking a break from our sewing drudgery to peek at other projects. Communal input was given for all sorts of decisions about our own projects and then ignored completely or accepted. A great way to work!

There were lucky draw prizes (I won a fabric pencil with changeable leads) and a game of patchwork bingo and there was  opportunity for short walks or just a sit in the sun.

I was able to achieve my step count by completing a circuit of the room each time I walked to the iron. My three projects for the weekend each progressed to the next stage in the process:

1. My England quilt now has hedges, rivers and woodlands
2. My Snail Trail coat has had a face lift with beautiful facing to realign the previous collar and lapels
3. My Starry Starry Night blocks are complete and decisions have been made about the final quilt top design.

The experience was a great way to get to know some of the others a little better. I had met some people previously  but others were new faces. And all their projects were inspirational. It was a very similar experience to the quilting weekend I attended in Maine USA in 2011. 

My new coat

When I was sorting Surrey's clothes out to send to charity I kept his many cotton shirts for patchwork fabric. However, I also kept his polar fleece coats and vests as I had seen some lovely patchwork results with those as well. On the weekend before last I made a coat for me with lots of significant fabrics from my stash. I cut the side seams, underarm seams and sleeve seams to leave me with a flat surface but kept the collar and zip intact. I then sewed on strips of fabric to cover the surface and resewed the seams, resetting the sleeves.

I am really pleased with the result and hope to get a lot of use from it in cold weather. At the moment it is too hot to even model it.

Spring in full swing

Spring was heralded by the a very poor hatching of one chick from 10 eggs. He was cute while he lasted but via a series of errors on the part of mumma hen and myself he has since died. No more chicks till next year now as it is too late in the season to hatch healthy chicks.

My sweetpeas are magnificent and smell so beautiful in the house when I fill a vase or two.

The Callistemon near the carport put on a great show and the grape cuttings are all  looking healthy.

Since I moved the roses in the ground along the back wall of the house  into pots in full sunlight they have thrived. Of the seven or so I transplanted in July only one has died. They had been suffering where they were for years and we had had very few flowers.

I love the nasturtiums! I have this colour range at the back door and another beautiful one that is dusky pink in the front garden in amongst all the normal orange and yellow ones.

The bamboo at the front steps (dug from the great bamboo dig 2 years ago) has now decided to start growing. I have 5 huge shoots growing skyward. I am watching the pot carefully to ensure no roots penetrate through to the ground.

Blossom and Rain

The blossom is out for spring and drizzly rain greeted us soon after we arrived.

 

However, on our way in we had to stop and clear up a few trees that had fallen further. These were cut by Terry and Ellie last time but had now inched lower so the car would have been scratched on the way through.

 

 

Even Geoff's new fruit trees were flowering and looking well so the watering system must be working. We are now considering extending this new watering system to all the fruit trees.

Geoff experimented with his new time lapse video camera. The results were good but more experimentation is needed.

Grey Shrike-thrush

 

Grey shrike-thrush eggs in the tool shed

Subsequent note from Ellie: Yes, it is a Grey Shrike Thrush.  It looks like a male and the eggs look right too. Apparently there are 3 to 4 eggs and both parents sit on them. The female is smaller and has a streaky throat or breast... It must be their large eyes that make them look curious or inquisitive. They have a few really lovely clear calls.  

Our main job for the weekend was to start mending the chairs that were becoming quite dangerous. We were hampered a little by the fact that we did not want to disturb the bird in the shed sitting on three eggs. We think it is a Grey Shrike-thrush. Next time we'll be able to use some chisels and files rather than just a screwdriver to clean out the old glue. We did mend one chair (only took about an hour) and now we know what we are doing any further work will be a bit quicker.