More Concrete

The position of the walls and the door of the outdoor living area mean stepping through dirt or mud to get to the front of the house. So an extra bit of concrete was called for. This morning before I went out:

 This afternoon when I got home:

Next job will be to create a garden bed around the new concrete, with a stepping stone to get to the tap.



End of month stash figures for April:

Thread:
One spool emptied
One spool purchased
Year to date - down 6 spools

Dress fabric:
Nothing used, nothing added
Year to date - down 2.25m

Quilt fabric:
Used 0.6m, nothing added
Year to date - up 2.3m

Farewell to a Nursery

A few years back I first visited Newlyn Antiques and Nursery, but it is now in the process of shutting down as the owners retire. They held an auction recently of all the remaining antiques, and now it is the nursery's turn.

We really don't need more trees:

 Although they have a huge range of fruit and ornamental trees to go.

We made a small contribution to the clearance:

Mainly shrubs this time. My selections included a white herbaceous peony "Lady Bird" and a couple of hellebores.

The property is going to be auctioned at the end of May, so the sale will continue until at least then. I suspect we might make further visits before it is gone forever.

Retreat - Sunday

Beautiful elms shade the grounds of the retreat venue:

I think it is a while since anyone had a barbecue:

After lots of laughter and interesting conversations and lovely meals and even more sewing it was time to pack up everything and head home. My main achievement for the weekend was making and attaching the 5th border on my Rajah Revisited:

The quilt has grown a little since the last time I posted my progress 4 months ago.

Group photo before we all departed:

I got home at about 5:30, where a couple of dogs were overjoyed to see me again. And I was happy to be home, too.

Retreat - Saturday

A chilly start!

Interesting frost designs on someone's car.

An early start for people setting up stalls for the Lancefield Farmers Market, as the sun appears at the end of the street:

On this pre-breakfast walk, I noticed that the nursery had a sale on trees. And right near the front fence I noticed a tupelo, Nyssa sylvatica. I first admired this tree in the Ballarat Botanic Gardens seven years ago.

Later in the morning I went back and bought one:

then popped it in the bathroom of my room to keep it safe for the rest of the weekend.

Here's our workspace:

Empty because this was before breakfast. That's my Elna Lotus in the foreground, and you can see the hourglass blocks I worked on yesterday. My first challenge was working out how to make them so that the seams would nest when I sewed them together, but I came up with a method that worked. By lunchtime I had made quite a few more:

In the afternoon I finished the binding on a charity quilt that had been giving me a few hassles.

I think this is my 14th charity quilt quilted. I intended to completely machine-sew the binding, but I forgot that the new machine has a different width foot than my old Elna, so I had too much seam allowance. That meant the binding couldn't nicely cover the stitching on the front, so I ended up having to hand-sew the front of the binding, and it was hard going. The whole quilt suffered a bit:

 I'm hoping that waviness will relax with time.

Here's the back view so you can see the quilting:

I also laid out the rest of the Bloom blocks to finalise which fabrics will go where,

then I prepared a few of the applique parts for the next blocks. Photos of those can wait until the next Bloomer Party next Saturday.

Retreat - Friday

My room for this weekend's retreat:

Just a fairly plain motel room, brightened up by my Carolina Chain quilt. The retreat actually started this morning, but I work on Friday morning so didn't get here until later in the afternoon.

Notice my computer optimistically plugged in. The "free wifi" didn't work in my room most of the time, and my phone had no signal for most of the weekend. "Emergency calls only" or sometimes, "No SMS connection". I was in a communications black hole! So much for my plans to blog as the weekend progressed. This and the following posts are being written after my return home.

I had asked for vegetarian meals. Here's tonight's dinner:

Definitely lots of vegetable matter! Roast veges, and salad. (Subsequent meals were more balanced, fortunately.)

I made a start on one of the projects I brought with me, photos tomorrow.

Case Moth

This morning I was checking over the TreeProject seedlings. Some of them are getting very tall, and would be ready to plant out if there was some chance of good rain to get them established. However, I found that a number of the eucalyptus seedlings had been decapitated, and this was the culprit:

The larva of some species of case moth. It has constructed its case of twelve or more sticks of equal thickness:

Unfortunately those "sticks" were the main stems of multiple eucalyptus seedlings. In the shot above you can maybe see the silk wound around the sticks to keep them together. You can also see the severed stem of the tree on the right-hand side.

Fascinating as the case moth is, I couldn't really allow it to continue munching its way through the seedlings, so I carefully removed it:

That's it sitting on my gardening glove. I took it to a young eucalypt about 3 metres tall elsewhere on the block. The tree has plenty of thin branches that the case moth can use to extend its protective cocoon without endangering the life of the tree. When I checked back a few hours later, it had moved off, so I hope it lives out its life happily in the bigger tree.

GPS Beanbag No-No

Warning: Do not do this!  It is not legal in this state. The GPS has to be attached to the car.

My new GPS has a window mount, but the windscreen on my car is a long way forward - too far to reach from the driver's seat. So today I made a little beanbag for it to sit on:

Side view so you can actually see it:

I filled it with crushed walnut shells, so it has a bit of weight to keep it in place. To test it out we went for a drive this afternoon. The beanbag held the GPS at a good angle and didn't slide off the dashboard, so I think it is a success. And the dogs enjoyed our trip to the Ballarat Botanic Gardens: