Sunday 27 September 2009

A Bit if This and That

Mick sent me this picture of the dust on Wednesday and suggested I “Blogerise” about it. This is the black bitumen road near our place and the tyre tracks show just how bad the dust was.

That was on Wednesday….. move forward to Saturday…….

Although we’ve been having lovely warm weather I have been a doomsayer suggesting that there is bound to be another cold snap just to remind us of where we live. Yep, it arrived this weekend.

We had planned on going camping along the Bridle Track with the Sydney Sidecar Club for the annual rally. We went last year and it was a really friendly, family oriented rally. The Bridle Track is only about an hour from home and is a rather rough dirt road alongside the Macquarie River developed to get to the Hill End gold fields in the 1850’s and has some spectacular scenery. If it has just been cold we would still have gone, but it was blowing a gale and scatty showers, so it would not have been at all pleasant.

So, we went to Oberon instead – in the car. Oberon has it’s spring garden weekend this weekend, and we thought we would rug up and have a look around……that was until it started to snow just after we arrived!! So, we found a pub with a roaring fire and had a counter lunch instead. As we had nothing else planned for the day, we just went driving along lots of back roads and finally back home in the late afternoon.

When we woke up this morning we were also getting scatty snowy, sleety showers and apparently Oberon had quite good snow overnight. (Oberon is about 1100m above sea level, we are about 750m.) Therefore, we just stayed home today. This is our back yard this morning.

Seeing as we weren't camping I've been doing other bits and pieces.
This afternoon I made pretty pink invitations for Mum's 80th birthday party next month. We are having High Tea at a coffee shop in town. It should be lovely.
There was also baking of banana bread for afternoon tea. Yummy. The recipe is from here.
I looked at blogs yesterday and Jenny from Elefantz reminded us of the September challenge is to now make a sewing machine mat to go with our cover. I must admit, I'd forgotten all about it. Jenny made hers in an hour. Well, mine took two and half hours from deciding to make it, to designing it, finding fabric, clearing a track on my sewing table to finished product. It is a bit rough and ready, but it will certainly do the job.
I just wanted to keep it relatively simple. The fabrics are the same as for the machine cover with a pink peeper to give it a bit of a lift.

My machine just fits neatly on it.

Ta Da! Now I have to make a thread bag and pincushion to match. I just have to locate the pattern in a magazine. I know the pattern......I just have to find it........
Tonight, I have also completed the mammoth task of sewing up and filling the woollen pincushion. It has silica sand for a filling, which is something different. Apparently the silica sharpens your pins.

I have also been working on wash cloths this weekend, but no sneak peeps allowed.

8 comments:

Carlie said...

Your sewing mat turned out so nice and I love your cover too. Also I love the wool pincushion. Did you design it?

Jenny of Elefantz said...

It's beautiful!!! And matches the cover perfect!
Well done on accepting the challenge, your next mission should you decide to accept it... LOL! Sorry, got carried away. ;-)

I just *love* that pincushion!! Is there a pattern??

Snowy? Sleeting?....and I'm in the POOL!? Do we, or do we not, have one very large and diverse country?

Hugs
Jen
xxxx

Anne said...

Well done. On the topic of weather, add flooding to the list of extremes - had that too :0)

marina said...

What a gorgeous machine cover and mat. It is beautiful not to mention your pin cushion.
We have had a bit of rain in Victoria this last week too. Hopefully it will bring our reservoir levels up a bit.

loulee said...

Weird weather huh? I was stewed last night and threw all the covers off.
Your machine mat is sweet, love the cover.

Julie said...

Gee, that road does really show you how bad the dust was. Very interesting, I'm glad you "blogerised" it. lol

Selina said...

wow! I really LOVE that pincushion!!

Kate/Massachusetts said...

I love everything you did! The machine cover and mat are beautiful, and that pincushion is so very pretty! Thank you for sharing!