Sunday - Fun Day

We were planning on having a fun day on Friday, but that was delayed due to Mick seeing the dentist following his tooth ache while we were away.  Hopefully, it is now all sorted and won’t give him any more grief.

We hopped in the car nice and early and headed east.

We drove across the Blue Mountains via the Bells Line of Road.  This is the first time we have crossed the mountains since 2019, before the major bushfires and more recent flooding and landslides.  It was good to see that the bush is starting to come back, although quite a few trees are obviously not going to recover.

We stopped at Kurrajong Heights to take in the view of Sydney in the distance, as it was such a clear day.

We enjoyed a rather decadent breakfast at Richmond.

The purpose of our trip was to visit Craft Alive at Hawkesbury Showgrounds, and in particular Hans Martini, who is the distributor of Grace quilting machines.  Yes, he remembers the lady who originally purchased Monique from him back in 2015.  We will visit his business at Mittagong once we return  from our trip for some lessons, have him give Monique a once over and purchase a few extra bits and bobs.

We had a wander around and I purchased a couple of extra blue fabrics for the Natalie Bird Blue Quilt I will be making.  

You would have thought I would have more than sufficient to choose from in my stash, but they are either too dark, too light or too grey for some parts of the quilt.  I needed that Goldilocks coloured fabrics and came home with a few.  They are Laundry Basket Quilts fabrics.

There weren’t many quilts on display, but there was a suitcase quilt exhibition.

Who’d have thought that such a variety of quilts could be made from outdated curtain fabric, and this is just a few of them.

There wasn’t really a lot to see, but then I’m used to attending the Sydney Craft and Quilt Show, and when you get down to it, I don’t need to buy anything.  Therefore, we were back on the road, heading home before lunch time.  

Rather than just backtrack over the road we drove down on, we went over to the Great Western Highway to travel home.

A bonus was seeing that the Magpie Markets at the Lawson Public School were on.  Beauty.

What terrific markets.  We arrived at lunch time and they were still going strong, with lots of food stalls as well as arts, crafts and vintage. We just shared some delicious dumplings, as we were still full from breakfast.

This was my favourite stall, as it had some vintage sewing bits and bobs, as well as other retro items, not that I needed to buy any.  I could have a very large stall of the vintage sewing bits and bobs I have here already.

She transported her goods in this intriguing vintage folding caravan.

They were made in Sydney in the 1950s.

She even had a copy of the advertising brochure from when they were made on display.

It was a quick trip down and back, as we were home before three o’clock, but it was nice to just go for the drive.