The Long Way Home...

After the excitement of having N visit and playing at Summer School there was still more to come...on Tuesday morning we set off from Katoomba for a leisurely touristy trip down to Bathurst with a play at the Blackheath off-lead park and drives down into the Megalong Valley - she went for a short walk in a lovely glen (NP so no dogs allowed, I stayed in the car)...

and to Hargraves Lookout.

Once in Bathurst it was straight to The Home Patch to shop and pick up the pattern for the 2015 Stitch-A-Long project, Nature's Journey...we did have a lovely walk in the evening around the river track and a chat with a family of other kelpies and their Humans...we stayed in Bathurst and on Wednesday started out to our next destination...

On the way we stopped in Orange and had a walk around the Botanical Gardens...lovely...

Then it was onwards to...very exciting...a couple of nights where these live...

Chookyblue's farm!...lucky lucky...

The Human got to play in the Chook Shed with Chookyblue & Fairy Girl and Mr Chookyblue had some rams being sheared so the Human went down to the shed and watched for a while.  Thanks Mr Chookyblue for letting her watch and learn a little bit.  In the Chook Shed she finished hand stitching the final long seam on her Anna quilt and Chooky had a lesson in hand piecing...of course they were so busy stitching photos were forgotten! Most excitingly she worked some more on Some Kind of Wonderful and then they folded her quilt top over Chookyblue's finished quilt and took a photo of them together...

Cool huh!

If it wasn't for the threat of storms that meant we had to get going quickly on Friday afternoon, the issues with the bottom "hemline" would have been sorted and the final sashing strips/border put on...almost there...It was so much fun stitching for real with Chookyblue and Fairy Girl.  Thank you so much Chookyblue Family for having us to stay at your place.

Once we were on the road again it was downhill all the way and back home... overnight in Parkes and she managed to find three, yes three!, fabric shops she just had to check out Saturday morning!!!

Well, that is our Summer School trip over for this year and she is back to the working thing again...looking forward to next year's trip already!

Woofs and Tail Wags...Jindi

The Sun Came Out...

Finally it stopped raining, the sun came out and shone in the blue sky...the whole time the Human was inside at Summer School!! After Wednesday's mammoth effort she did even less on Thursday...drew a line, pinned a seam and sewed maybe six inches of that seam on her Anna quilt...but there was a reason for abandoning quilting projects...The Stitching Post shop was at Summer School and Karen bought along some cross-stitch from her other shop Linen and Threads...an impromptu cross-stitch on linen lesson was scheduled Wednesday afternoon for Thursday.  Karen's husband Brendan put together kits for those who wanted to take part and 8-10 patchworker/quilters became cross-stitchers for a couple of hours...the Human enjoyed revisiting cross-stitch after not doing any for a number of years and managed to stitch a stem...Oh yeah she is speedy....not!

Friday was a sit & sew day (or in the Human's case, sit and socialise!) so she fluffed about a bit more.  For the second workshop on the weekend she chose Miss Emma, which can happily be made from stash and scraps, and managed this...

She did machine sew when she came home in the afternoons and by the end of Summer School the Welsh Quilt started on Wednesday looked like this...

 

N came back down for the weekend, as she wanted to got a festival that was on in Katoomba, but the Human didn't get to see much of her as either N was at the festival or the Human was at class/Saturday night dinner and N had to go home Sunday before the Human came back from class...oh well, they did have a short further catch up and maybe next year can work it out better as it was great to see her and chill out together...

There was a scheduled recovery day on Monday for maybe a little bit more shopping or sight seeing but it rained so so hard that we stayed inside all day except for a very short excursion...the Human worked a bit more on her Some Kind of Wonderful quilt that she had also been stitching each evening...it had come on holiday as strips and pieces and by the time we left Katoomba it looked like this...

We left Katoomba on Tuesday morning to start on our way to a very exciting destination...

Woofs and Tail Wags...Jindi...

And All The While It Rained...

A few Saturdays ago the Human starting packing "things" that smelt of her taking off for a while...I was not being left behind so I hopped in the boot and off we went (Larry is a station wagon so the boot is my travel kennel)...Larry drove a very long way...in the rain...more rain...and more rain...*sigh* no opportunities for park plays for a long time...we stayed overnight in Cowra at the most awesome motel unit where I was very welcome and it stopped raining long enough to go for a walk up the road to see rabbits (she wouldn't let me chase them, spoil sport) and a couple of wallabies checked us out...back on the road Sunday it was, surprise surprise, raining...no stopping at the off-lead park I had been very much looking forward to...finally, there it was, our destination...

Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. The Human was very excited as that meant Summer School!!!

First we had a very special visitor...the Human's friend N, who lives further north in NSW was travelling back from Sydney and took a detour for a couple of days...very exciting and a lovely way to start the holiday....it rained Monday and Tuesday, a lot, but we walked to the shops Monday morning and in the afternoon they walked from Echo Point to Katoomba Falls along the cliff walk (I had to stay home it is in National Park)...at the end of the track when trying to figure out which road to take back to town the Trolley Bus came...a fun way to ride back into town, like a vintage tram on wheels instead of tracks!...when they sat down at a picnic table to sort out their directions this fellow came down to keep them company...

Tuesday saw them offf down the mountain to Glenbrook to meet K at Post Office Patchwork, lunch at a vegan cafe in Leura, Rubyfruit, declared as delicious and an afternoon browsing the Leura shops.  Of course, they left me behind but I had a lovely backyard all to myself this year so it was OK.

Wednesday morning N headed north to her house and the Human went to Summer School.  When she came home P-faff was set up for the duration of our stay. This year's quilts were based on English Frame Quilts...during the day fabrics were cut and once P-faff was ready she even did some sewing...amazing isn't it!....strips sewn on a square...really, I don't know why it takes her so long to do so little and goodness knows how it took her all day to cut out one square and some strips!! *sigh*...

Framed Centre Square

More on Summer School later...and the very exciting thing we did after...stay tuned!...

Woofs and tail wags...Jindi...

SKOW...Believe It or Not - Progress!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I have been quietly working away on Some Kind of Wonderful over the last few months finalising the applique/stitchery blocks in small increments as time permitted without bothering to blog as I went...I had even put one strip together - but it was a whoops so let's not go there - anyway, yesterday afternoon, to celebrate the 1st day of the New Year, I wrapped my head around two little inescapable facts - 1. I had to wield the rotary cutter and cut 2 1/2" squares I had somehow missed preparing at the outset, and 2. I had to employ the quick unpick *sigh*...

By the end of the day...

2 full and 9/10ths of the 3rd, strips pieced...it would have been three if I wasn't one 2 1/2" square short and it was too late to be wielding sharp objects of the rotary cutter variety and I did have to get up for work this morning, so I went to bed.

Still a bit to go, including finishing off the applique on one block, but you never know, it could happen...

Happy Stitching...