Killing Four Birds With One Stone (and Other Goings on)

We’ve been rather busy in the last week.  On the weekend us and friends Norm and Cath headed off to Canberra to visit the National Gallery of Australia for the Masterpieces from Paris exhibition.  They had visited the studios of Monet, Van Gogh and Cezanne last year on their travels, so were eager to visit this rare opportunity to see their works in Australia. You couldn’t take photos, but have a look at the link, many of the paintings are shown.

After the Art Gallery we ventured to Questacon so the boys could play.  (It doesn’t matter that the “boys” were in their 50s, they still had a lot of fun.) I also enjoyed it, especially the “Perception Deception” display.  Quite a bit you could relate to visual effects on some quilts.

Of course, there was also lots of delicious food – Saturday night Italian al fresco in the cool of the evening (after a very hot day).  We had a bit of a wander around and these trees were just stunning.

Sunday saw us visit the Old Bus Depot Markets, but I came away empty handed, which is highly unusual for me and then had a very leisurely drive home.

Yesterday was Australia Day and the Historic Car Club always attends the event hosted at one of the local villages.

 

This year it was Rockley.  Each year the local Red Cross  holds a white elephant stall and it is always GOOOD! (It is up there on a par with the Church Fete I love.) We were travelling by sidecar and have a bit of room to take things home…….. well…….four bags of stuff went home in a friend’s car! Oh, the books – great novels, patchwork books and magazines, old linens, bags full of mohair yarn, all at giveaway prices….. I can’t wait to go and visit our friends and collect the booty.  I’ll have to wait till then to show you.

I was trying to be good this year and not buy so much, I haven’t set foot in an op shop, bought nothing at the markets, but I couldn’t just leave it there, now could I?  I’ll have to read the books and then move them on.

I also saw this on the CWA stand.  All Australian tea towel calendars dating back to the early 70s.  It looked great.

We had a lovely day, picnicking in the shade of big old trees and then called in at a little pub on the way home to cool down.

Now, back to those four dead birds.  I made this yesterday:

Challenges met:

1. Made from a tea towel –  Jenny from Elefantz

2. String Pieced – Stephanie from Loft Creations

3. Used what I have – Fiona from Dragonfly Crafts

4. Another OPAM finish for January.

I’m pretty happy with that. 

I’d been dithering as to what to make with a tea towel, I had an idea, but not really happy with it, look on the net for inspiration, still nothing grabbed me, when I suddenly thought of this.  It is a totally different idea from what I had and uses a different tea towel as well.  It now makes a set with my applique tea towel from Jenny’s pattern and I think will make a nice little gift.