Fire Update

Here's the situation this morning. The black area on this map is the burnt or burning area. The little star I've added to the map is approximately where our house is:

To give an idea of scale, that burnt area is nearly 4,000 hectares, or close to 10,000 acres.

This morning there was a community meeting in Buninyong to brief everyone on the fire. We thought we would go via Lal Lal so that we could check on the chooks, grab some supplies, and just generally make sure everything was OK. As the wind is still from the north, Lal Lal isn't in the path of the fire at present.

However, every road to the area is blocked:

Fortunately we were able to bribe a policeman (not this one) with insect repellent. He let us in for a quick look in exchange for some relief from the flies! At the house we discovered that the power is off. Don't know how long it has been that way, but we might have a fridge and two freezers of food to dispose of when we can get back. We checked on our neighbour who is staying to defend his house. He had his generator on, and sprinklers set up all around the house.

This was the scene at Buninyong Town Hall:

We thought this was the queue to get in to the meeting, but it turned out the hall was full, and none of us would get in. They eventually set up a loud speaker, and a pop-up shade shelter, and distributed water and ice to those outside in the sun before the meeting got underway. There wasn't a lot they could tell us, except that there are 300 fire personnel fighting the fire, and 15 helicopters and fire-bombers. Several homes have been lost, but they are still evaluating how many. There were welfare specialists available to help those who have suffered losses of property and livestock. The weather forecast doesn't look as bad now as it did last night, but roads won't be re-opened until they are sure it is safe to do so.

As we left the meeting, one of the helicopters flew over:

So we don't know when we can get back home. If we are lucky it will be later today, but it might not be.

Fiery Mystery Step Four

Today is the first day of Extreme fire danger since we moved. I decided to leave, and spend the day in Ballarat. I took the essentials: the dogs, my sewing machine, the fabrics for the mystery, a rotary cutter, etc.

I managed to get all the cutting done for the latest step of the mystery by lunchtime. After lunch I started sewing. Here's the bits lined up ready to go:

Some time during the day, a couple of fires started in the vicinity of our town. At first the nearby towns had "Watch and Act" warnings which means "Don't wait, leave now". Later a couple of  "Emergency" warnings were issued, which means "You are in danger and it is too late to leave". I was glad I had left the area straight after breakfast.

Not a good photo, but here is Mt Buninyong from Sovereign Hill Lookout in Ballarat this evening. Behind the mountain you can see smoke from the fires near us.

I completed 8 sets of this week's mystery units:

It was nice to have something a little different to do, to take my mind off the situation at home.

Here's the emergency website a little earlier this evening:

A "Watch and Act" warning in effect for our place. Looks like I will be staying the night in Ballarat.

These fires burnt 3,000 hectares today. Our builder contacted us to make sure we are OK - he knows someone who lost their house and everything in this fire this afternoon.

We will be hoping that it is fully under control before the forecast wind change tomorrow. Otherwise it could turn around and threaten many more homes.

Geese Again

This morning I felt like doing some simple sewing to help me get through the hot day. Rather than start a new project, I printed out a few more Wild and Goosey units. It's a while since I made any. A quick search through this blog shows me that I assembled my last blocks back in March. I've been busy with one or two things since then.

So here's today's output:

Also today I was looking back through my blog, reminding myself of what I was doing at the same time in previous years. Guess what I did on the 17th December a year ago?



Yep, exactly the same!

Even used some of the same fabrics.

The pattern is by Bonnie Hunter, and the paper-piecing foundation sheet is available on the Quiltmaker website. Link to pdf file.

In the Garden

Here are a few flowers open in the garden today.

Look at the fantastic colours in this daylily:

It is one that we rescued from the house about to be demolished in our old neighbourhood.  I'm really happy to have it blooming here!

Penstemon grown from cuttings from my old garden:

Salvia "Indigo Spires", also a cutting from my old garden:

Crinum lily rescued from the hard rubbish collection. It was planted out in the garden, but some of the bulbs were dug up and came here with us. It is still in a pot at present:

 There are at least 4 flower spikes developing, so it seems to be happy here.

And lastly, vireya Princess Alexandra:

She has been blooming since before she came here.

Defect

This fascia join couldn't handle the heat today:

I contact the architect, she contacted the builder, he contacted the plumber, and hopefully this will be fixed soon.

More Painting

Managed to get a bit more painting done this afternoon:

Drawer units, and a few smaller shelves. Still only undercoat at present. I have now undercoated about a third of the pieces I need to do. The last piece I need to do to complete this section is buried under a few other cupboards, so I think I need help to get it out.

Mystery Step Three

Another colour added to the mix! And for me, it's blue. Because I'm only making a quarter of the units, and I wanted maximum variation, I didn't work with strips for this clue. I just cut two squares from each fabric, and sewed them together in a staggered way so that no pairs were the same as each other:

So far, so good! But then I made a slight error. I flipped the pairs from the bottom row up and sewed them to the top row. And it wasn't until I'd made the whole lot that I realised that wasn't a good idea:

Can you see what I've done wrong? If I had offset those rows of pairs, I would have had a complete set of unique 4-patches. Instead, I got this. Look at adjacent units, and you will see that I have the same two fabrics on one side or the other. I may as well have just sewn them as strips!

Probably no-one will even notice when they are all jumbled up in the final quilt, but I was kicking myself when I realised!

So here's a bit of fun with the units so far:

When Bonnie activates the link-up tomorrow night, I'll add the link here so that you can go and check out everyone else's progress.

Here's the link-up! A bit late as it wasn't active before bedtime on Monday, so I'm 58 this week.