Meet Floyd

You may recall that Mick bought a motorcycle, sight unseen when we were in the north of Western Australia.

Well, “Floyd” has been collected and installed in the shed.

He’s a rather fine looking specimen.  Apparently, he was originally painted red, but faded rather quickly, so was resprayed in the black and gold John Player Special colours.  There were lots of accessories with him, which is handy.

He is a 1985 model and hasn’t been registered since 2011, so, as can be expected, he needed a little bit of a tidy up, just due to general deterioration.

It wasn’t long until Mick had him pulled to bits.

Mick has bought him new tyres and has some bits and bobs on their way from the BMW shop in Perth, who are most helpful and give great service.  Items generally arrive in about three days.

So, why “Floyd” do you ask?

He is a 1985 BMW K100RS.  They have a rather square shaped engine and were known as the “Flying Brick”. Do you see where this is going?  “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd.  Mick’s mind works in mysterious ways.

Hopefully, Floyd will be on the road before too long.  His motor runs really nicely and sounds lovely.  I can’t wait to try him out.  There is the standard seat, as well as an additional “King and Queen Seat”, which is more plush.  It should be a nice and comfortable ride.

The Week That Was

Rather than have a big catch up like last month, I’ll try to have something more regular.  So where to start?  How about stitching? That’s logical.

Remember I set my self a lofty goal of stitching for 15 minutes each day during November.  Well, let’s see how I have gone so far.

Yes, I have kicked that goal, and on most days far exceeded it.

1st

2nd

3rd

For something different, I completed one EPP unit for the Blue Quilt.

After a false start….  I don’t know where my brain was.

4th

This was the first Friday of the month, so Friday Night With Friends, hosted by Cheryll.  Guess what I worked on?  

5th

Chooky hosted another Zoom session on Saturday morning and I was able to pop in nice and early.  Mick was up watching the World Cup Rugby League, being played in the UK, so it worked in well.  More secret stitching, so nothing interesting to share.

6th

Once again, I worked on something different.  I did some knitting…..for much longer than 15 minutes. I’ll explain a little further down the post.

Now onto other things….

Of course, we had our drive to Orange on the cold snowy day and then the gas was cut to our area due to the floods.  To recap, the main gas pipeline runs under the Macquarie river, just out of Bathurst and the flooding has eroded the river bed and broken the gas pipe.  Apparently, this is the biggest gas outage ever in Australia.  Well, we still don’t have our gas reconnected, although very large crews are working their way through town.  They expect that all of Bathurst will be reconnected by tomorrow.  The other poor towns will have to wait longer.  The gas people are working on a solution to put in a temporary gas line to Oberon, Lithgow and Wallerawang by the end of next week and after that, and when the flooding recedes, to reinstate the gas pipeline in a permanent fashion.

On Thursday we visited the Lifeline Book Fair in town.  I was hoping to find some more of the Elm Creek Quilt series, like I did last time, but no luck.  I’ll have fun continuing to look for them.

As you can imagine, we didn’t come home empty handed.  Look at that beautiful Mrs Beeton from the 1890s and for just $3.  The next book down has a very small story for each day of the year, usually only about a page long.  I’ll have fun reading them from the start of 2023.  The others are just reading pleasure.

We had a big day on Saturday, having started early with Zoom and the Footy.  We drove down to Katoomba and I called in to the wool shop I had visited a couple of weeks ago to buy another ball of wool.  As I said earlier, more on that in a moment.

After a nice lunch in a cafe, we attended an afternoon garden wedding.  Finally, after two aborted attempts, due to the COVID-19 shutdowns, the big day arrived…….and it didn’t rain, although it was a bit cool.

The setting was beautiful.

Complete with tiny ducklings.

The sun on the cliffs of the Blue Mountains was a nice backdrop.

Such a lovely event.

Back home, in the garden, our Zephryn Drouin rose has bloomed and added a nice pop of colour to the back yard.

It is virtually thornless and blooms right through the warmer months, so is a favourite.

We picked our first two strawberries yesterday (no photo as we ate them straight away), so they are now netted to try and stop the birds from eating them all.  Yes, that is a lot of strawberry plants.  They have kind of gone a bit feral.  I think there will be jam.

Now, back to that wool I keep referring to…..

Remember I had my fun day out at Katoomba and bought some wool.  

Well, I had a beanie pattern in mind and knitted it up the day after I bought the wool.  I figured I wouldn’t feel as guilty about buying it if I used it straight away.  It looked like the photo on the pattern……..but instead of being a bit slouchy, it was more like a skull cap.  Oh my goodness, what a massive fail.  I did take a photo, but it is so bad I’m not even going to share.  Needless to say a Plan B was required.  Hence, the return trip to buy another ball of wool.

Yesterday, I hunted out the Dad’s wool winder from when he used to spin wool.  I can’t believe it was even where I thought it would be.  Anyway, the first attempt at a beanie was frogged and wound into a ball, ready to start again.

Then, I had a search on Ravelry for something that looked nice and was relatively easy, settling on the Violet Waffle pattern.

It is worked on a circular needle. 

I made pretty good progress yesterday, so should have a finish fairly soon.  I like the texture.  Let’s hope this version is a success.

Lastly, the good news is that while I’ve been typing this, our gas has been reconnected.  Now I can shower in the house, rather than the caravan, and we can use our stove top.  Hopefully, we won’t need the heater, but it is now working too.  Happy dance.  Let’s hope the other towns don’t have to wait for too long.

Out and About in October

Considering we had just returned from a big trip, we were out and about rather a lot during October.  Where does one begin?

We arrived home just in time for Bathurst’s busiest week of the year - the Bathurst 1000 car race.  Although we have no interest in the race itself, we love seeing the town come alive and like to go and have a look at the street parade on the Wednesday.

There are always cars on display in the shopping centres and various businesses around town.

This was the first year that the race was back to full capacity after the pandemic, so it was really disappointing that the weather was so bad.  Yes, it rained on their parade.

Firstly, the race car transporters drove through.

Followed by the racing drivers. Some were lucky enough to be in hard top cars, but those in the sports cars made use of umbrellas.

On Saturday they have a Street Fair in Kings Parade in the centre of town.  We weren’t going to go, but it was advertised that the Cricket T20 World Cup would be there, so Mick wanted to have a look.  Well, it turned out that the Cup itself wasn’t there, it was just a promotional thing.

Mick tried to hit a six using a virtual reality bat.  No luck.

We watched a fellow playing with fire for a while.

There were hardly any people there in the morning, because, as you can guess, it was raining.  The roving photographer for the local paper was there and we ended up with our photo in the paper.

The next event was my favourite Church Fete.  Can you believe it - the weather did play nice.  What a pleasant change.  I assisted with the White Elephant stall, as most of the parishioners are rather elderly.  The day was very successful.

That was on the Saturday and on the Sunday we went for our motorcycle ride on Snubby, the Silver Sidecar.  

The motorcycle club in Orange held a small bike show in the little village of Millthorpe.  A few from our club rode up to have a look.  There were some really nice bikes there and it was nice to catch up with some mates we don’t often see.  Yes, the weather was nice for two days in a row.

I loved the seat on this old little Honda.

One of my friends and I have been planning a day out to Katoomba for ages and we actually made it happen.  Of course, the weather was rather bleak, but fortunately, not too wet.  The main purpose was to visit a little wool shop called “The Granny Square”.  

Don’t you like this lamp shade.  So simple and clever.

I need more wool like a hole in the head, but of course I came home with some.  I really liked this cowl on display, so have bought some of that wool.  I’ll probably use a different pattern, but I just love the subtle colours.

The wool is hand dyed.  I had recently come across a simple beret pattern, so bought some dark green to match.  I’ll share more soon. Oh, and a couple of other bits and bobs came home too.

Over the road was a “Street Art Walk”.   Let’s have a little stroll.

As can be expected from such a creative area, there was lots of other street art as well.

I loved these wrens.

We visited the famous “Carrington Hotel”.  The interior is rather grand, as expected from such an imposing facade.

It was a lovely day out and I’m sure, now that I have time, we will have some more.

Are you tired yet?  There’s more.  We really did do a lot in October.

Mudgee has an annual “Sculptures in the Garden” that we like to attend.  We didn’t think we would get there this year, but on the Wednesday the weather looked like it may be OK.  

We drove past lovely crops of canola and hope the farmers will be able to harvest it when it is ripe.

Windermere Dam is full, for the first time in 27 years.  All this water flows into Burrendong Dam and then down the Macquarie River, which is flooding.  The rain that has fallen since we were there will have kept things at capacity, so the flooding downstream will continue for some time.

As we drove into Mudgee we could see rain all around the district, but we were so blessed, as we did not receive a drop on us while were at the exhibition.  Here are just a few of the sculptures.

Back home, we attended another art exhibition. This time at the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.  It was all works by Linda Jackson.   I remember from her association with Jenny Kee, “Koala Blue” and “Flamingo Park” back in the early eighties.  She was quite a trail blazer.  Her work had such a variety of styles.  The exhibition was titled “Romance of the Swag” and featured art depicting several of the areas we have recently visited.  Just stunning.

There was a caravan and camping show down at our showground, so we went and had a look.  There wasn’t a lot there, as many exhibitors were unable to attend, due to the wet weather and road closures.  It was still fun having a look at caravans and realising that we are very happy with the one we have and wouldn’t swap it for any on display.

We did come home with a sticker for our van.  It is now official, we are “Off to See the Wizard”.

The last event we visited was the local open gardens, which we attend every year with my friend Lisa.  They haven’t been on for the last two years, so it was nice to be out and about to see them.  Once again, the weather for the weekend was actually nice, before reverting to wet the next day.  Here’s a little taste of what we saw.

Phew!  They say that once you retire you wonder how you had time to go to work and it has been a bit like that this last month.  There is so much to see and do at this time of year.  November will be the same.  Having said that, there is too much, as there are so many things we would like to see and do, but already have other commitments.  Not a bad situation to be in.  We will never be bored.