A Very Belated September Update

After returning from our trip away, back in mid September, we seemed to hit the ground running.  I have just been looking through my photos to see what we actually did.

Of course, we went to the quilt show in Sydney.  Then we bought “Rosie” and sold “Snubby”.

We also sold a little Honda CT90 that Mick did up as a COVID project.  I never did get around to blogging about it.

Our lemon tree needed to have its huge crop harvested.

We used them to make some lemon butter, something we haven’t done for years.  We should do it more, as it is such a simple process.  Hopefully, we will have another, larger crop of lemons next year.

Of course, when you make lemon butter you end up with leftover egg whites, so a little batch of blueberry friands were made.  Although there were no new recipes tried, it was nice to revisit these that have not been made for a very long time.

The weather warmed up enough for us to have our breakfast on the back verandah.  It was so nice……then, of course, it turned cold again.

The garden continued to wake up, with our crab apple putting on a great show

The bees were loving it.

We experienced our first thunder storm of the season, providing us with a double rainbow in its wake.

I like to change out the little shelf in our kitchen each season.  It was fun to hunt out a few items that feel like spring.

I thought there would be more to share, given we seemed to be so busy, but looking back, much of our time was tied up with buying and selling vehicles, which involved a lot of mucking around.  Mick then spent quite a bit of time starting to tidy up “Rosie” and plan her fit out for camping.  For me, it was spending time in the sewing room.

It was nice to be back home and getting on with life.

Bye Bye Snubby

“Snubby” the silver sidecar has been a part of our life for over twenty years.  We picked up the bike on Mick’s birthday back in 2002.  It was one of the first shipment of the model into Australia.  We enjoyed riding her as a solo, towing a little trailer with our camping gear and even shipped her to the UK to travel around for two months over there.

We crashed in outback NSW in 2008, fortunately with no real damage to either of us or the bike, but it cured me of riding on dirt.  Mick had always liked the idea of a sidecar, so took this opportunity to add one.  He really enjoyed the process, as it was quite an engineering challenge.

We continued to have lots of fun holidays travelling this way, even upgrading to towing a camper trailer.

You can see more photo of her over here.

Gradually, he made improvements, the most recent being the leading link front suspension.  Snubby has won several awards for “Best Engineered”.

Snubby has 115,000kms on the clock and all of those were for having fun.  She was never a commuter bike.  

However, times change.  

We thought we would be out and about on the bikes more now that we aren’t working, but to date that hasn’t happened.  We now do our travelling with our caravan, rather than with the bike.  She has done less than 1,000kms in the last four years.

After much consideration, Mick decided that it was time to pass her on to a new owner and on Friday she headed off to her new home in Victoria.  

Maybe, a tear was shed, but it was the right thing to do.

However, we still have “Olga” the old girl BMW sidecar and some other bikes to enjoy.

A Big Catch Up - Odds and Sods

Although I have written quite a few posts lately, there are several odds and sods since Tony and Lou returned to New Zealand I want to get down here.  

Let’s go back to the middle of April……

You would think that after all our travelling to Queensland, then Sydney, then Baradine, then Sydney again, that we would want to stay firmly at home for at least a few days, but that didn’t happen.  We heard that there was a book fair being held in Blayney, so decided to have a little day out.  

It was beautiful autumn weather and there is nothing better than driving around the Central Tablelands when all the autumn leaves are on show.

Our first port of call was the nice little coffee shop for morning tea.  Each year the Blayney region hosts a hay bale art trail.  We have gone for a drive around a couple of times before.  This year there was a rather clever tea pot out the front of the coffee shop.

Once refreshed, it was time to hit the book fair.

Travelling back home we drove through the pretty elm tree tunnel, that hadn’t really changed colour at that stage.  These trees were nearly lost to elm tree beetle a few years ago, but were luckily saved.

Through the final row of poplars just out of town, to end a lovely morning out.

This little pile of books came home with us.

Our little shelf in the kitchen had been decorated for autumn at the start of the month.  In the lead up to Easter it had a little change.  Being such a busy time this year, we didn’t put any other Easter decorations out.

Once things settled down, the autumn theme returned, complete with some of our street tree leaves.

A milestone was reached in April.  We have now owned “Sophia” the Moto Guzzi motorcycle for thirty years.  We bought her new in April 1993 and have travelled all over the place with her, even to Western Australia.  She doesn’t get out much these days, but we still enjoy going on the occasional ride.  Now that she is 30, her registration has been converted to that of a historic vehicle, which is much less expensive.  Where did those years go?

Now to May.

I set my goals each month, hoping to meet them, but not always being successful.

I did do some reading, managing to read four books.

The first one was a bit of a nostalgia exercise.  This book was found in a street library and I just had to read it for old times sake.  I used to read some Lucy Walker books back in my 20s.  She is a West Australia author who wrote sweet and innocent romances.  They were usually set on an outback station, with a young lady arriving from the city or England and not fitting in, and not liking a bloke and then something happens to throw them together and they discover they love each other and they all live happily ever after.  It was quite funny reading one now.  They were written in the late 1960s and 1970s and are really showing their age in how people lived and the society norms.

I read The Tea Ladies of St Jude’s Hospital while we were at Lake Cargelligo, and mentioned it previously.

The Lifeline Book Fair was held a  couple of weeks ago and of course we had to go and have a look there too.  I was happy to find another of the Elm Creek Quilters books and have already read it.  They are such a pleasurable read.

I ordered my final read through Booktopia, which is really unusual for me, as most come from op shops, street libraries and caravan park book exchanges.  The significance of this book is that the author is my cousin.  Now that she has retired she has written a murder mystery.  It was quite a good read too.  I hope she goes on to write some more.

My exploration of new recipes was very limited.  I found a recipe for Berry and Maple Bircher Muesli in the good old Coles magazine.  I’ve been wanting to make some for ages and never get around to it, so this was the time.  It was rather yummy, but more suited to the warmer months than now.  It will certainly be made again.

Mick celebrated his birthday with a little cheesecake, his favourite.  You’re never too old for a sparkler on your cake.

We had another day out too, going down to Lithgow, but that will have its own post.

So, all in all, a busy time and not as much to catch up on as I thought.  Hopefully, I will stay on track a bit more from now on.

Pretending to be Distinguished

Today we took part in the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride.  This is a motorcycle event where you dress in your most distinguished outfit and go for a ride to raise funds for men’s health.  It is linked to Movember.  The first event was held in Sydney back in 2012 and has now expanded to 107 countries and in that time has raised about $44 million!!!

Bathurst ran this event for the first time last year and we joined in then.  This year there were about 60 participants in the Bathurst ride and we collectively raised just over $14,000.  Not a bad effort.

There were some rather well turned out riders.

There were also some beautiful bikes participating, including many different eras and styles.

Olga, the old girl BMW sidecar was our bike of choice this time, as she suited the event the best.  We were not all that distinguished, but we were warm.

We went on a short ride around the area.  The weather was nice and sunny……NOT!  It was freezing cold and mizzly rain.  

It is not winter as yet, but the temperature was only 7 degrees C, feels like 4 C. Brrr!  Fortunately, the mizzle did not turn into real rain.

We had a half way regroup with a coffee van, who did a roaring trade, and then completed the ride at a local pub for a sausage sizzle.  Everyone was very happy to enter the warm room.

We had an enjoyable time, despite the miserable weather, and look forward to the event next year.

On an aside, the Rylstone Swap Meet was held today as well. It is generally a great little swap meet and we enjoy having a stall.  We were tossing up which event to go to, all being weather dependent.  We are rather glad we didn’t go to Rylstone, as it would have been rather bleak holding a stall there and in this weather there wouldn’t have been much of a crowd.  Hopefully, next year they don’t clash and the weather is better.

Another Week Over

I’m finding it interesting to try and remember what we got up to in the last week.  It never seems to be much, but once it is written here there is just a bit.  I suppose the fact that we are not having to try and fit everything around going to work makes life much more relaxed and enjoyable.  So, what did we do?

On the stitching front I seem to be setting a trend of not sticking with any one project, rather jumping from one to another.  I probably need to settle on something and finish it soon.

Firstly, I finished cutting out the background for my Denyse Schmidt project.  It is now nice and tidy in a project box, waiting its turn.

Last week I mentioned that I was in the process of adding the borders to my Twister Quilt.  I told myself that I wasn’t going to bed on Tuesday until it was finished……..So, I cleaned the bathrooms, pulled everything out of the big hall cupboards and tidied them up, did the washing and ironing, cleaned and descaled the coffee machine and my iron……in effect, just about anything to avoid adding the border.  

Finally, at about 9 o’clock at night I bit the bullet and went into the sewing room and got stitching.  I hadn’t realised how big this quilt would be.  It is 84 inches by 75 inches.  After only quilting a tiny baby quilt it will be quite a jump to quilting this on the frame.  I’d really like to have it done in March, but will do a couple of more small ones first and see how I go. 

Here it is, ready for the next step.  I do still have to piece the backing and fortunately, I will have just enough fabric for that.  I now realise that I have not made the binding long enough, but will fix that up a little later.

Ages ago I made a pile of bibs from a couple of panels I found hiding in my stash.  However, they haven’t had their snaps added, as that is another job that I just do not enjoy.  I have been using the metal snaps and quite often they don’t go on properly.  Anyway, my neighbour’s grandson needed a few bibs, as he is teething, and this was the good excuse to get them finished, so he could have a couple.  Yes, more dramas with adding the snaps.  I have now been shopping and have a pack of a squillion colourful plastic snaps.  They should last me for the rest of my life.  So much easier to apply.

It is such a good feeling to finally have them all completed.

At my stitching groups I have continued to work on my EPP Dresden sections.  I now have enough for two sides of the quilt completed.  If I continue to get four done each week, they will all be completed by the end of March.  I would be very happy with that.

Finally, I have once again picked up my knitting needles.  Remember a couple of weeks ago I had started a scarf/shawl and said how I was rather obsessed with it?  Well, not long after that I dropped quite a few stitches, in the pattern section.  I tried to pick them up and continued to get in more and more of a muddle, so I decided to rip it back to the garter stitch section, but still had no joy picking up the stitches.  By then I was over it, so ripped out the whole thing, back to the start.  Even as I did it, I didn’t mind too much, as I knew I would enjoy knitting it once more.

On Wednesday I started over and have now passed where I was up to previously.  Yes, I’m really enjoying it again.

I have completed my 15 minutes each day last week, although most days it wasn’t all that much more.

My tally to date is:

15 minutes day/week = 7/7

15 minutes day/February = 25/26

15 minutes days in 2023 = 55/57

Success rate = 96.49%

I’m pretty happy with that.

I’m linking up with Kate from Life in Pieces.

Now onto other things.

Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday, so we had to enjoy some pancakes for breakfast.  Yummo.

We’ve been making preserves again.  This time Tomato Sauce, using my Grandma’s recipe.  There is another pile of tomatoes sitting on the kitchen bench, so more cooking this week.

We were out and about on Saturday, as the annual Bathurst Street and Custom Motorcycle Show was held in the centre of town.  Mick took in “Floyd” the new to us black BMW and “Snubby” the silver BMW sidecar.  “Snubby” didn’t want to start, so a jump start was required.  He nearly stayed home.

It was a good thing that Mick did take him in, as to our surprise he won the trophy for “Best Engineered Motorcycle”.

We had to laugh, as Snubby would have been the scruffiest bike down there.  However, all that red section at the front is rather technical and not something that was just bought off the shelf.

Two of our mates also won their sections, which was pretty nice, as most of the bikes were from out of town.

The number of bikes on show was huge and it was just as interesting looking at the the bikes that just came as lookers.  The streets were lined with motorcycles.  A great thing for town, as most were visitors and many stayed for the weekend.

Here are just a few of the variety of bikes on show.  Lots of sparkling chrome.

Later that afternoon we went for a drive out of town.  Some friends had gone camping and we popped out for a short visit.  

They were camped at “Flat Rock”, a popular spot by the Fish River, out at O’Connell.  You can see why it got its name.  There are lovely big, flat granite rocks by the river.

It is a really pretty spot, and was looking lovely with a nice flow.

On Sunday we went for a drive as well, this time visiting the Sofala Show.  It is always a nice little country show to attend.

After a few years of entries being down, the pavilion was looking good.

We didn’t stay all that long, as it was quite warm, but it was a nice little interlude.

So, that wraps up another week, and nearly, but not quite, another month.  I can’t believe how fast time is flying.

I’ll be back with a wrap up of the month and March’s goals next.

To finish, here are our nice bright crepe myrtles.  When we bought this house the back corner was a thick shrubbery.  We notices a tinge of bright pink just at the top of fence height and were surprised to find two crepe myrtles.  They have grown quite a bit since and add a nice pop of colour to the garden at this time of year.