Scatterday - M

M is today's sinking letter, and the categories are:
sport,
foreign,
animal,
modern quilt.

Sport is not my thing. I'm stretching the definition to include games:

Monopoly. I was given a set by an aunt when I was in 5th or 6th grade, but it wasn't long before Mum banned it from the house because of the fights that arose. My son bought this Star Wars set when we were in the US in 2000, but he tired of it quickly after being thrashed by someone who played not just to win, but to destroy everyone else. So it seems Monopoly is not suitable for children or adults!

Foreign:

Movies! Even better, movies that all start with "M". This selection are all classics, for one reason or another.
Mughal-e-Azam - a quality classic from 1960.
Mard - a "so bad it's good" classic from 1985.
Mujhse Shaadi Karogi - very funny "leave your brain at home" comedy.
Main Hoon Na - the first Hindi movie I saw, which indirectly lead to me studying Hindi and travelling to India.

Animal:

Merle. One of my imaginatively-named dogs! Merle is a blue-eyed merle.

Modern Quilt:

I haven't made any quilts that fit the definition of a "modern" quilt yet. So here's something that isn't modern at all! I picked it up for a couple of dollars recently. I love the title: Every Kind of Patchwork. It was published in 1978, although this paperback edition is from 1983. It doesn't include anything involving rotary cutting, which is probably the basis for just about every patchwork technique these days. But some of the designs are quite timeless, and would look like modern quilts if they were in modern fabrics.

As usual, you can check out all the other Scatterdayers via Cinzia's blog here.

Buzzing

As I walked under this nearby street tree today, I was surprised to hear bees buzzing.

The bees had noticed something I had missed; the tree is covered in tiny flowers:

It's only a week to winter, but when the sun shines like it did today there is plenty of food for the bees to gather close to home.

Seedlings Update

It's about time I posted some photos of the TreeProject seedlings, as I haven't since they started germinating in February and March. (You can click on "TreeProject" in the label cloud over on the right to see the previous posts).

Here's the blackwoods, Acacia melanoxylon.

Some are nearly ready to plant out, while others are still germinating or have recently been transplanted into tubes where nothing germinated.

The messmates, Eucalyptus obliqua.

Woolly teatree, Leptospermum lanigerum.

And the ones I don't like working with - the hedge wattles, Acacia paradoxa.

Perhaps a close-up of one of these will explain the problem:

Those spines are sharp!

Waste Time Exploring the World

I love Google Street View. I've used it to wander around random places I'll never see in real life. I've used it to show students the places they migrated from 40 or 50 years ago. I've looked at places I lived in as a child. But this week I found a fun way to waste a lot of time, Geoguessr. It's a game that drops you somewhere in the Street View world, then you wander around to try and figure out where you are. Once you think you know, you click on a map to make your guess. A game consists of 5 rounds, and your score will be higher the closer you are to the correct spot.

There are all sorts of clues you can gather - what side of the road is the traffic on, are the speed limit notices in miles or kilometres, are the roads well-maintained, how big are the vehicles?

The type of vegetation helps, and if it is sunny you can check the direction of the shadows to work out if you are in the northern or southern hemisphere (you are told where North is). What do the people look like? As well as looking around, you can look up and down, which might reveal mountains behind the building in front of you. But the best clues come from signs. You can zoom in to look at them (but not if you play on an iPad, I'm told). What language are they in? The longer you spend exploring, the more likely you are to find a sign telling you the name of the place.

In my early games I was happy to guess somewhere in the right country, but soon I wanted to be more exact. Today I got my best score so far, 30971. If you want to try and beat that (play it a few times to get the hang of it first), follow this link to the challenge: Beat my best score.

And speaking of signs, today I saw this:

This is a tattooist you would not want to go to. Misspelt signs can be repainted, correcting tattoos might be more painful!

Quilt-In

Over 250 quilters gathered today at the Geelong Quilt-In

for a fun day filled with sewing, and talking, and listening. Yummy morning and afternoon teas sustained the participants, while traders displayed tempting fabrics, books and equipment.

I enjoyed catching up with some friends and meeting some new people, while making progress on my sunflowers quilt. And on top of all that, I was lucky enough to win one of the door prizes!

Meredithe Clark Feathered Star template set (retails for over $30), two spools of lovely cotton thread, and a very cute pig tape measure.

Thanks Jenni for breakfast and the ride to Geelong, thanks to whoever donated the door prize I won, and thanks to the Geelong guild for putting on a great day!

Chilly

Tree dahlias flowering in my garden:

They provide lots of food for the bees, but it was a bit cold today for them to take full advantage of it. Here's one brave worker out on her own:

I followed the bees' example and stayed inside most of the day, keeping warm by doing some quilting.

Morning Sun

These beautiful eucalypt flowers near the tram stop on my way to work were providing breakfast for honeyeaters and parrots before the rain moved in for the rest of the day.