Another Week

Has gone by since my last post. And what have I done?

On Tuesday I posted our votes for Saturday's State Election:

On Wednesday we took a trip to Clarkesdale Bird Sanctuary so a couple of blokes could play with tractors. I amused myself by wandering round looking for interesting iNaturalist observations. I found mainly insects, but here's an orchid (bud) I found at home before we went:

Diuris sulphurea, or tiger orchid.

Thursday was my son's birthday, but I could only talk to him by phone. His housemate has caught covid, and although my son has tested negative so far, he is not socialising. He doesn't want to do anything to contribute to spreading it around. So here's a picture of us on his birthday in 2008:

We were having dinner at an Indian restaurant that is sadly gone.

The rest of the week included:

• An exciting bud forming on my hippeastrum:

 

• Getting used to an older and slower laptop, which I am using until I can replace my poor dropped and shattered one.

• Sewing sashing to my heart blocks:

Now I need to make some triangular pieces to fill in around the edges before I can assemble a top out of them.

• Not starting the latest Bonnie Hunter mystery. I took a look around my sewing room and listed all the things that I could see that needed work. I'll be working to finish a few of those before I start anything new!

• Watching the election results unfold on Saturday night. 

• Walking the dogs on days when it wasn't raining (not many), and doing my steps on the treadmill when it was.

Maybe the next week will be more exciting?

Ooops

In an attempt to move a library book away from a potential danger this morning, I managed to knock my laptop to the floor. It isn't happy.

That was an unfortunate (and expensive) mistake!

 

For Jeanette, here's the critter that got the dogs a bit excited when we were talking on the phone:

Turns out it is a beetle! A very strange looking beetle. If I am right it is Enchoptera apicalis, a wasp-mimicking beetle. Who knew there was such a thing?

Retreat

For the first day of our "stay at home retreat" I did a workshop with Suzanne Lyle on improvisational piecing. It was really interesting, although challenging to get my head around. The main difficulty I (and others) had was with cutting pieces the correct shape to join to something already assembled.

Here are a bunch of my "bits" spread out, not in any particular arrangement:

As you might be able to tell from the general wobbliness, sewing those random curves together was not easy. Anyway, it was an interesting session, and I'm glad I did it. Who knows, I may even use some of this in some way in future.

In the evening our small challenge pieces were unveiled. We had to try to guess who made each one, and vote for our favourite. A storm was approaching and I was worried about driving home through it. So I left before it arrived and missed the judging. Here are all the entries:

Not great photos of some of them, sadly. It was fun to see them all. Some people put a lot more effort in than I did!

 

Today I mainly spent seeing what everyone else was doing (wandering around chatting, in other words). However I did take the opportunity to spread out my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks to work out how to put them together.

Hearts:

I have made 6 of each colour of the hearts, but I think columns of 4 set on point will give me a big enough donation quilt. I'm planning to put sashing between the hearts. I'll add the sashing before I decide totally, but if I do go with columns of 4, the left-overs will make half of another the same.

And here are the Scrappy Sprouts:

Some of them, anyway. They will get stems between the pairs of leaves, and neutral sashing between the columns. I have random numbers of the different colours, so would need to make more blocks if I wanted to continue this arrangement. I also had been intending to add flowers to the tops of at least some of the "plants", so this one is still under consideration.

The last thing I did during the retreat was to finish the cross-stitching on my Ukrainian bookmark,

which I started way back in April, and almost finished as I sat beside my mother in her last days. Now I need to decide what I will do with it.

All in all it was a great weekend, although now I am worn out, and will not want to do anything social for a few days to recover!

Linked to the RSC ScrapHappy Saturday post for this week.

The Garden in November

In between rain and hail showers, over the course of the day I managed to get around the garden to see what was in flower. (Lots of photos - feel free to skip.)

Coral Charm herbaceous peony:

Somewhat battered by the rain.

Portuguese squill, close to finishing:

Scented pelargonium, just starting:

Chinese ground orchids, none properly open when I took the photos:

Columbines and echiums:

I found a daylily!

The roses are just starting their first flush of blooms:

Digger's sppedwell is flowering all over the place:

A bit of a cheat as there are only buds on this kangaroo paw:

Wirilda - Acacia provincialis

This Calothamnus is looking very bedraggled:

Grevillea "Bronze Rambler":

Yellow buttons (Chrysocephalum, used to be Helichrysum):

Eremophila:

Melianthus and Euryops daisy in front:

Lavender:

Alstroemeria:

Kniphofia:

Bearded (and wet) iris:

Carpobrotus (pig face):

Sweet peas:

Foxgloves:

Aeonium:

And that's probably about enough! It isn't everything, but this post is getting too long.

At the Show

The Ballarat Agricultural Show has been on this weekend. I popped in for a visit on the last afternoon.

I checked out all the animals I could find:

Had a look at the floral show. I liked this "Seaside Garden":

Although the maker told me later that she was the only entry in that category, so she didn't think winning 1st prize was a huge achievement.

There were some fantastic decorated cakes:

And I had a good look at all the handcrafts. 

This was the section that interested me most:

Some prize-winners in the "commercially quilted" section above, and below the non-commercially quilted and the "modern" entries:

You may recognise my Greenhouse wall-hanging, which I made during a lockdown last year and is about the only thing I have made for myself since the last show in 2019. I was placed 2nd in the "no commercial quilting" category, but I also won the "best machine quilting" prize, which is a $15 voucher for a local quilt shop. 

The quilt to the left of mine was made by the person who is teaching the "Improv Piecing" workshop that I will be doing next weekend, Suzanne Lyle. I am really looking forward to learning some of her techniques.

Variations

I have to make a small item by next weekend. I've had most of the year to do it. But I've just started.

 
Here are the pieces all cut and laid out ready to sew:

After I had started assembling it, I thought maybe it would look more interesting like this:

Or even this:

Or, the final possible variation, this:

I made a decision, and one of these is the final layout. I'll show you which one in a few days when it is finished.

Flowers That Won't Last

These flowers won't last until my garden round-up in the middle of the month, particularly because of the constant rain.

Rhododendron:

Tree peony:

Water

A couple of views of the bottom of our block, which you wouldn't want to try walking across at the moment:

This is all normally dry land, but now has water everywhere.