The Second Week of March

I can’t believe we are already half way through March.  The weather continued to be more summery than autumnal, but today a cool change has come through, dropping the temperature by 10degrees C from yesterday,  now being in the low 20s. This last week has been rather full.

On the garden front, we have been enjoying the show put on by our dahlias.  Out the back, after a very prolific second flush of beans, they have now finished and the bean and zucchini plants have been removed and composted.  That only leaves self sown tomatoes, eggplants and spinach left for this season.  It looks rather bare.

Inside, I have my little shelf in the kitchen where I make little seasonal displays.  

I didn’t get around to sharing my summer display, which was rather simple this time.

This has now been replaced, for just a week, with a St Patricks Day show.  On Monday they can go away and Easter can come out.

We have been out and about.  

On Saturday, while Mick was at bowls, I took myself along to Kings Parade, in the middle of town and listened to a Carillon recital. You may remember that Mick and I went on a tour of the Carillon last winter.  Pop over here and read a bit about our visit to the wonderful feature we have here in town.

Back in the day, there were regular recitals on the Carillon on Saturdays at lunch time.  It was just a background to our normal lives.  We didn’t consider that this was something rather special.  Once the carillon was automated, those recitals stopped.  Now that the clavier has been installed and local carillonists trained they are starting up Saturday recitals again.

I took a folding chair and parked myself in the shade of a big tree, as it was a really hot day, and listened to the music while doing some crochet.  I may as well crochet, as you can’t see anything, you just listen.

Anyway, the draw card was a visiting carillonist by the name of Peter Bray.  He is a young man, who is a senior carillonist at the National Carillon in Canberra.  This was his final performance in Australia, before travelling to Belgium to compete on the world stage. He went four years ago and did very well. He played a mix of traditional, popular and contemporary music for about an hour.  I have just discovered a YouTube clip of some of the performance. It’s worth have a short look at.

By the end of the performance I had completed another spiked granny square. It was a delightful way to spend some time and I think I will keep an ear out for future recitals, and if the weather is nice, go down with some handwork and listen to the music.

Last weekend I had participated in one of Chooky’s impromptu Zoom sessions, during which I completed two more squares, with another added during the week.  There is just one more to make before I consider that I have enough to turn them into a small rug. I am getting down to the dregs of some of the colours, which is a great result. Hopefully, the last square will be made before the end of the month.

On Sunday we had an early start to drive up to Oberon.  The sunrise over the town was pretty.

The reason was the Oberon Swap Meet, at which we had a stall selling some bits and bobs.  The weather was lovely, not too hot, and it was a nice social day out.

I even read a book this week.  This one was shared by Lou.  A very interesting read.

It was about time to try a new recipe.  I used one of the last of our zucchinis, that had grown a bit too big, and made some zucchini chips.  Yummo!  All you do is slice the zucchini, dip the slices in an egg wash, then crumb with a mix of 1 cup panko crumbs, half a cup grated Parmesan and a teaspoon each of garlic powder and Italian herbs. Lay out on baking trays and give a little spray of olive oil.  Bake in the oven at 200C for 20 minutes.  We initially served them with aioli, but in the end preferred homemade tomato sauce.  I’ll definitely try them again and will also try with egg plant cut into chip straws.

Back in the sewing room, I have completed my two fish for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, one using the feature colour of purple for the body and the other for the features.  Such fun.

I mentioned previously that I want to make a second fish quilt using batiks and this month I made a start. What a difference to my colourful version.  I’m loving how they look.  I have the first three months’ blocks fused, ready to stitch down the appliqué.  The stitching will be a project to work on at Scrub Stitchin’.

Yesterday, I started to prepare to quilt my next quilt, getting the backing pieced and on the frame.  Now I’m off to cut the batting and make a start.  Hopefully, next week there will be another finish. No, this is still not my One Monthly Goal, but another UFO I want to get over the finish line.

As you can guess, I have continued to manage my 15 minutes of crafting a day.

Treasures

During November we visited a couple of garage sales and of course the Gulgong Swap Meet.  As a result a couple of treasures came home with us.

Firstly, at the Swap Meet, in addition to Mick’s bargains for Rosie the Suzuki Sierra, I came home with one treasure.  On Saturday afternoon I had been for a wander around and didn’t find anything of interest at a reasonable price, but did see one thing that caught my eye at the back of a stall of old tools and generally rusty things.  It was full of old tools. Of course there was no price on it. I mentioned it to Mick, and couldn’t get it out of my mind, it was so unusual.

On Sunday morning I went back over and it was still there.  I asked a price, he asked me what I would offer - $5 and he said “What about $10?”  Deal done.  One happy Janice.  So what was it?

This old tool box/trug/basket thing made out of a kerosene tin.

I’ve never seen anything like it and it is so well made, with the cut edges rolled over wire, like in early cake tins. A true depression art piece.  I now need to get a couple of flowering pot plants to sit in it on the back verandah.  Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love it.

Now to the garage sales treasures.

We are now on the lookout for LPs, as we have a working turntable once again.  The band “Wings” is one of Mick’s favourites and we came across this record.  He was rather happy to find it at a good price.

I never knew that there was a quilter living diagonally over my back fence in the next street, until there was the sewing room destash garage sale after her passing.

There were quite a few treasures that I didn’t need, but some that did need to come home with me.

“The Making of a Peaceful Day” by Anni Downs has been on my “One Day” list and I already had the pattern book.  Finding the fabric pack, ready to go, was a great score and had to come home with me.  Now I have a project to work on once I finish my Blue Quilt.

Anni use to sell packs of 16 layer cake size pieces of fabric.  There were two packs of Contemporary fabrics and one of more traditional at the sale.  Yes, they now live here.  I have been planning to make the Crossroads Quilt by Treehouse Textiles, so the contemporary packs with some supplementary fabrics from my stash are now in a box ready to go.  This will be my project between Christmas and New Year, while Mick is glued to the tele, watching the Boxing Day Test Cricket.

A couple of books, some more random fabric and a pounce pad also found there way to my sewing room.  Just what I needed…..not.

On the same day there was another garage sale with craft items.  Also a deceased estate, but mainly spinning and weaving supplies.  Ooh, there may be a swifter….fingers crossed.

No, there wasn’t a nice concertina swifter but there was this, which for me was probably even better.  It does the same job but is homemade and you just move the pins to suit the size of your shank of yarn.  Why was this better?  Because I realised that it had been made by my Dad!  Dad was the Mr Fixit in the local Spinners and Weavers Club and liked to tinker making things.  There were quite a few things that looked suspiciously like his work.  He had a thing about making little boxes and there were a couple there, so I was pretty sure he had made this.  I showed it to my brother and he confirmed it.  I’d been kicking myself that I hadn’t kept one when the house was sold, but now I do have one.  Score.

At the same garage sale there was this interesting wool with a Japanese label.  It should knit up nicely.

The final treasure is a case of “Small things amuse small minds”.

See the little kitten with the yellow hat?  I have had the one with the blue hat for quite a few years and now have a matching pair.  They are only about two inches high.

I have quite a few kitch items decorating my sewing room, some of which has been with me since I was little.  I made this shelf when I was eight.  We were going to learn some woodwork at school, so I needed to know how to do it beforehand.  (I’ve always been a bit of a control freak.) The pattern came from a 1950s Home Beautiful magazine and had to be enlarged via a grid - no photocopiers for enlarging back then.  I bought the little squirrel at the white elephant stall at the school fete at about the same time.  I loved the fluffy tail.  Its ear got broken at some stage, but Dad glued it back on.  The little horse is even older. I have no idea where it originated from.  It has a broken leg that has been glued back on.  There is a little hole in the top of its head and I popped the feather in there when I was a kid.  On the lower shelf, the little tin is a money box and was gifted to me by a school friend.  I have another smaller tin with the same picture of a girl stitching.  The jug in the middle is a vase that Mum had forever.  Some years ago she was going to get rid of it.  No way!  I had always liked it and do use it to hold spring flowers.  The other little jug has been with me since primary school.  Back then it was popular for groups of women to go on a bus trip to the Blacktown Shopping Centre, when shopping malls were a new concept.  Mum brought the jug back for me on one of those trips.

So, lots of treasure, none of much monetary value, but all of it has made me happy.  It doesn’t take much.

Other November Happenings

After wishing for a quieter month, it didn’t quite pan out that way.  Firstly, how did I go with my non-stitching goals?  

READ A BOOK - Fail

TRY A NEW RECIPE OR REVISIT AN OLD ONE - I thought I had failed, but then I remembered that I made a Honey Ricotta Tart for a Christmas party, which I haven’t made for quite a few years.  I forgot to take a photo, but it turned out well.  I actually made it twice, as I did a trial run first.  They were both successful.

GO AWAY IN THE CARAVAN - Yes.  We had planned two weekends away, but in the end cancelled our little trip to Braidwood for the Airing of the Quilts as the weather forecast wasn’t the best.  I’ll get to the other weekend away in a minute.

KEEP MY BLOG UP TO DATE - I started well, but then petered off.  No worries, I will do a catch up now.

As I said, we had a weekend away in the caravan.  We ventured over to Gulgong for their Swap Meet.  Our initial plan was to go over on Friday, play the tourist for the day and then set up our little stall on Saturday for Sunday.  The weather forecast was for hot weather and we would be camping off grid, so we decided to delay until Saturday.  Yes, it was hot - 35 degrees C on both days.  Thank goodness for the awning.

We enjoyed a nice morning tea at Mudgee on the way over.  Mick had Basque Burnt Cheesecake and it was delicious.  I enjoyed some fruit salad.

We had our little stall selling bits and bobs.  We did OK, but the numbers of lookers were down.  Most of the selling seemed to be between stall holders.  The hot weather wouldn’t have helped.

While we may not have sold a great deal, we did find a couple of bargains.  Mick found a basket for the roof rack on Rosie the Suzuki Sierra for next to nothing and he also found a UHF radio for her - brand new in the unopened box - at about a third of the normal price.  He was very happy. We also bought 2kg of fresh cherries.  Yum!

We headed home after lunch and the ute started to have a few issues when we were going up hills.  Yes, we were towing, it was hot and there was a head wind, but it should have handled it with no worries.  We would stop, let it rest and the warning lights would go out……until the big hill coming out of Sofala.  We limped to an area where we could get off the road.

And this is how we came home.  Very sad.  Thank goodness for NRMA membership.  The van was dropped off at home and the ute taken into the service people.  They decided that the problem was that the transmission oil had been overfilled. We never touch that, so not sure when it was done.  Anyway, the main thing is that it should hopefully be fixed and wasn’t anything more serious.  The test will be the next time we tow the van in similar conditions.

We’ve had a couple of other little outings.  

The first was to the Christmas Fair and Swap Meet at the Bathurst Showground.  We didn’t have a stall, just went as lookers and bought nothing.  There was a car show on as well, which had some tasty vehicles on display.

We also had a quick trip to Sydney last week.  As Mick has now been playing lawn bowls for the best part of a year, he felt it was time to get a decent set of bowls, rather than using his Mum’s ancient old set.  The perfect early Christmas present.

We travelled over the Bells Line of Road in rather misty conditions.  You could see the very low clouds as we were leaving Bathurst.

It was rather lovely and atmospheric.

We knew there were roadworks at Mount Tomah and had to wait a while for the escort vehicle to come along.

It was hard to get a photo of, but they are doing some major road stabilisation work near the Botanical Gardens.  This is due to bad bushfires going through the area in early 2020 and then only a year later getting repeated torrential rain, causing the road to collapse.  They are going to have huge pilons buried deep into the ground.  Not an easy fix.  Quite a few of the roads around there, including Mount Victoria and Jenolan Caves were severely impacted.

As we reached the lower Blue Mountains we started to see beautiful Jacaranda trees and some bougainvillea, both plants that don’t grow in our area.

We were ready to stretch the legs by the time we reached Windsor and had an early lunch at our favourite cafe in the mall.

There was a beautiful Christmas Tree on show.

We haven’t visited Windsor for a while and since our last time there have been a couple of murals added to walls.

You know I love some good street art.

After that it was down into the madness of Sydney, pick up the lawn bowls and head straight back home.

We’ve had quite a few visitors this month too.  As I previously mentioned, some friends from Queensland stayed a couple of days at the start of the month.

Then, we had some visitors to dinner from Victoria.  It was Susan from Granny Smith’s Quilting and her hubby.  We had a lovely evening and we may have cooked up a project to work on next year.

We then had some more visitors from Queensland stay for a few day, an old workmate of Mick’s and his wife.  It was nice to catch up with them.

Finally, more Queensland visitors, my cousin and her husband stayed for a couple of days.

Quite the revolving door, compared to usual.

I think that’s enough for this post,  I’ll share a little more soon.