Christmas Day Moments

How do you gift-wrap a door?

My "Mr Ed" door for the sewing room. That should keep dogs out.

Strawberry Santa:

I've never seen these before, but when I got home I googled it and found heaps of variations on turning strawberries into Christmas-related goodies.

I usually wave to these three chooks as I go past:

But this time I just pointed the camera at them.

We had to drive through the fire area on the way to lunch. At the southern edge of the burnt area there are two houses apparently undamaged, but with their gardens all burnt around them. Fantastic work by the CFA to save them. I don't know if these nearby hay-bale people were set up by the owner of one of those houses, or of the undamaged building in the background of this shot:

Their signs say, "Merry Xmas", and "Thank you".

Elsewhere today fires have caused the evacuation of a few towns in the holiday areas on the coast, and there are reports of up to 60 homes lost already. Let's hope no lives have been lost.

Christmas Eve

It must be nearly Christmas, here's a Christmas beetle!

 Found in the back yard this afternoon.

The plants in my front garden got a Christmas present today - mulch!

 I while ago I mentioned that I was trying to find a mulch that would be alright to use here (can't find that post to link at the moment). We can't use wood-chips because of the fire danger, and I don't really want to cover my garden with pebble. In a comment, Dee suggested mushroom compost. Yesterday I found somewhere that sells mushroom compost, but then I noticed they also had this wool/manure mix. Wool definitely shouldn't burn!

This evening I spread it around all my plants. Hopefully it will stop them drying out so quickly. Tomorrow will be a test - it is going to be hot and very windy.

Black and Blue

A drive through some of the nearby fire-affected area this morning:

Black landscape, blue sky.

Longest Day

Today the dogs went on a road trip:

Who do you think is in charge?

While they were away I had a chance to lay out my mystery pieces on the floor without the dogs re-arranging them for me. Here is one dog-free arrangement:

Here's another option, where I have rotated the units in the upper left and lower right so that they make a green square instead of a brown star:

This way it makes more sense that the "santa hat" units from week 2 had to be in sets of 4. I also changed the orientation of the 4-patches.

These arrangements don't include all the shapes we have cut so far. Those other cut pieces may be involved in filling the empty sections in the centres of the blocks. Or perhaps they are part of a border. Or maybe the blocks will look nothing like anything I have imagined!

Mystery Step Four

This extra post is for the mystery link-up, without all the extra stuff I mentioned in Saturday's post.

I'm making a quarter of the mystery pieces for starters, so I made eight sets of this week's units:

Green instead of red, and grey instead of black. It was fun to sew these unusual units. I'm really looking forward to seeing how all the different units fit together in the final quilt!

I'll add a link to the weekly link-up when Bonnie activates it later tonight.

Here's the link-up! Go and check it out. There's a lot of beautiful quilts in progress.

Fire Aftermath

This morning we walked to a spot not far from our place which has a view across some of the area affected by the bushfire on the weekend. It showed us just how close to home the fire came. The closest burnt areas are only 2 or 3 kilometres from us.

Burnt grass on the right, and burnt trees in the background. The owners of that house with the green roof up on the hill must be thanking the CFA today. The house is surrounded by burnt bush, but seems to be intact.  We know others were not so lucky. About 14 houses were destroyed by this fire.

Cows grazing beside burnt pasture, with lots of burnt bushland in the background.  Imagine what this view was like on Saturday.

Waiting

Today we all waited.

Jack and Dot stretched out for a sleep on the stairs:

The weather changed in the early afternoon, bringing lots of rain, and not the fierce winds originally forecast. It was a more gentle, and very damp, change. So we waited for the restriction on returning home to be lifted.

At about 4:00pm, the warning was downgraded to Advice. Advice that the fire is still burning, but not spreading beyond the 4600 hectares already burnt. It is not a current threat to nearby communities. So we packed up the cars, and headed towards Lal Lal. Unfortunately 5kms from the town:

There was a road block. The police had not yet been given authority to let people back in. So we waited. A lot of people waited:

There were about 15 vehicles parked around the intersection, waiting. Others arrived, but drove off, perhaps to look for another road that was open. While we were waiting, we did receive notification that our electricity supply had been restored, which was good to know.

Finally, at about 5:15, we were allowed back in, but only if we could prove we lived in Lal Lal. Guess who hasn't got around to changing the address on her licence yet? Fortunately someone else in the family has.

So, we are home, we are safe, we had a very interesting weekend!