The beach today

I decided that a quick play on the beach was just what the 'vet' ordered for Hugo today. Our closest beach is North Shore which coincidently has a leash free area for dogs, not that I let Hugo off his leash as he is on strict 'not too much exercise' orders still from the vet.
What a perfect day and what a spectacular view of Maroochydore. Look at our lovely clean beach and not another person in sight!

Hugo loved the sand, digging was very exciting!

Wherever you are have a lovely day,

Today has been glorious with just a few clouds floating across a perfect blue sky. We had breakfast with Sean, Vince's son who is studying engineering here in Sydney he is also a keen sailor. This weekend is the Sydney to Southport offshore race and Sean is sailing on Alegria, we watched the yachts line up ready for the start at 1pm our time from our hotel room, too far away to tell which boat was which but a wonderful sight to see 70 or more sails out on the harbour.

I decided a quick walk around circular quay was in order after breakfast, to blow the cobwebs out of my head after a very social evening at 'the cocktail' party. The amazing variety of bite size food that kept appearing was incredible, then just when I thought I could eat nothing else bite sized dessert arrived in the form of mini lemon tarts and my favourite dessert creme brulee, yummy. We had a great evening, its so good to catch up with people that you only see a handful of times a year.


These two seagulls had alot to say about the harbour bridge....can you see the people taking a walk along the top? Apparently its become one of the most popular tourist things to do, I must say its something I would quite like to do so maybe next time we come to Sydney I will just have to be brave and have a go.
Tonight we are having dinner at Cafe Sydney which is located in the old customs house, I have put a link to their menu, dont know what I will choose yet, although as I rarely cook fish at home I generally eat it when we are out and the fresh fish here is Sydney is very famous, what would you choose to eat?
bye for now.

I'm in Sydney

Just thought I would let you all know that I am in Sydney for the weekend, Vince has a conference to attend and I am well...yup, you guessed it, shopping. Having had a our flight delayed from Brisbane we were delighted to finally arrive at our hotel at 11pm to be told they had upgraded us to a junior suite! It is an amazing room, this is the view from one of the windows, the other window looks out over Darling harbour.

We are off to the Opera House tonight for cocktails...whoo hoo, I will tell you more later.

Visit to the vet

I am feeling a bit frustrated today as I have had to take Hugo to the vet, I have been worried for the last week or more as sometimes I have to literally drag him when he should be walking and no amount of coaxing and food tempeters will get him walking any distance. Bev, the puppy trainer from SEDA visited today and even she could not get him to walk along nicely so we decided a visit to the vet was needed. After a very thourough check up it has been decided that Hugo does have slightly sore elbows and so he has drugs to take for the next ten days and is on complete rest....yipee says Hugo and I may even get some stitching done! We are hopeful that it is just growing pains as he has certainly grown alot in the five weeks that he has been with us, he now weighs 11.6kg.

Fingers crossed that is is just growing pains and nothing more serious, otherwise my Hugo may not pass the test.

My year of the swap 2000

We were hoping to go for a drive and have a picnic lunch yesterday, but it rained all day which was great as we really needed it.
So, I thought I would tidy my quilt cupboard which has got a bit messy as I have loaned a few samples to some stores, which is very exciting as it always stimulates sales.
Whilst I was refolding some of the quilts which I like to do fairly often so the creases dont become permanent, I was remembering the year 2000 when I joined in alot of swaps, there was a chicken block swap. a row robin and of course the Y2K swap.

My chicken block swap is as you can see finished.

My row robin which I really love is also finished.

Yes, youve guessed it my Y2K swap is still all in the packets that it arrived in, it was such fun swapping those 2" squares + a signature block with so many ladies from around the world... I wonder how many of those squares have been made into quilts? Did you join this swap and have you made a quilt? Does anybody know, perhaps there is an online gallery of these quilts somewhere? Or maybe we should start one?

This is my mum, Ruths Y2K quilt, its just brilliant, she has done a colourwash of Australia, the signature squares are the inner border and all the remaining sqaures she used in the outer border which I think is very effective.

7 things about me

Well, apparently Lyn from Moore Patchwork and Quilting has tagged me....not that I knew what that meant so after a little investigation I have found out that I have to tell you seven random things about myself and then tag 7 other people who have to do the same!
Well the first question is 'do I know seven people?' umm, well I hope I do but its possible they have already been tagged...anyhow here goes with my seven random things,

1. I left school when I was 16 but dont tell my kids as I made them stay longer!
2. I started my first business when I was 17, spinning dogs hair int yarn for my customers who then knitted with it, some of it was gorgeous, my favourite was the hair from the Chow Chow dog was my favourite....soooo soft.
3. I rarely watch TV, I listen and stitch, if there are any subtitles etc the family read them out on auto pilot so I dont miss anything!
4. I love reading, in fact my whole family does so we share the books. I hate being the last one to read the book as its all chewed by the time the last person gets it and everyone else knows the ending but you!
5. At the age of 10, I was one of three girls who attended what had been until then a all boys school, my school report for that first term says that 'for a girl, she is quite good at cricket', I wonder how that would go down these days!
6. I collect marmalade/honey/jam pots and have a wonderful collection which I may share on my blog one day.
7. Always to be seen with a cup of tea and a bar of Cadburys dairy milk....bliss.

So now to choose seven people to tag....I have to put my thinking cap on here Janet, Helen, Rosie, Kim
OK I will have to think a bit harder and come back with some more, have fun

Well, its a chilly 7º here this morning....'thats not cold' I hear you all say....well it jolly well is cold for the Sunshine Coast. My DH who loves to cycle to keep fit went off very early this morning when it was dark and much colder has just invited me to meet him for breakfast in Mooloolaba, yummy, of course I said yes. But before I go I wanted to show you the just finished redwork version of my mini block of the month Magical Christmas Stitching. The stitching part has been finished since the end of November when I launched the patterns, Val one of my lovely stitching ladies has beautifully handquilted and bound it for me and it looks great. If you want to see it 'in the flesh' so to speak the ladies from Attic Crafts are borrowing it for the show at the end of this month in Melbourne.

There are a few stores offering this BOM a couple of different ways, pattern set only or with fabrics/threads etc. If you are interested try Mrs Martins Quilt Shop or The Patchwork Angel they both give excellent service and are wonderful to work with.
Well, its time I got changed ready for a scrumptious breakfast in Mooloolaba, wonder what I will have?

Today I got a lovely email from a lady who is opening a new quilt shop and wanted to stock some of my products, she had these scrabble letters at the top of her email.... well it got me thinking about the board games we used to play as children. My brother, Andrew and I had a junior scrabble board which we learnt on. I still love to play scrabble, do you?
Whilst I was rummaging in the toy cupboard I also found a game which I loved to play with my paternal grandmother, Halma, I really love the challenge of this game, I am actually quite good at it and so no-one will play with me!

Then of course I found our much loved 'Pick up Monkeys' I think there may be a few monkeys missing from this box... they certainly got played with alot.
What have you got in your cupboard??
bye for now

Chaos reigns in my workroom

Its official, I have moved onto the dining room table..... due to the overwhelming amount mess on my workbench and the rest of my workroom....I want to know where the tidy fairy has got to???
I seem to have piles of:-
1) exciting new fabrics, braids and buttons
2) design concepts drawn and fabrics choosen
3) designs stitched, fabrics choosen, pattern half written for a two day workshop I am teaching at in Toowoomba in September this year. are you coming to it?
4) oh yes, end of year accounts to do...YUK

Thought I would share one of the 'works in progress' its probably going to be a bag but then it may change into a cushion, either way I think it will look great. What do you think?

Anyhow, is the tidy up fairy in your house coz I havent seen her in ages and I really need her to come and visit me NOW. Maybe she isnt coming to my house anymore as I ate all the chocolate last ime she was here??

I suppose I could just file the half done stuff in the cute little plastic draws that I have specailly for 'works in progress'!!! Then I could have fun starting something else...mmm...

Finally I though I would share this picture of Hugo with you who was inspecting the quality of the ironing that had just come back from my wonderful ironing lady. Mind you after Hugo had dug to the bottom of the pile a bit of it looked as if it needed re-doing... I dont think the boys in my house will notice so I patted it back into shape! Looked Ok to me, mind you I didn't have my glasses on!

Hugo visits the firestation

Yesterday was a very big day for Hugo and I, we got up very early (well 6am) having been very organised and packed our bag the night before....by 7am we were both ready for our big day out. We had arranged to meet Aslan (another seeing eye dog) and his puppy carer in Buderim so we could travel to Brisbane together for the monthly puppy meeting. Hugo and I got to meet all the other puppies in training and their carers, it was fantastic to see the stages the puppies get to at different ages. It was a very exciting moment when Hugo got to see his sister Hope again for the first time, a kiss was in order!
As you can imagine 10 dogs in one place at one time was a little chaotic, even though they are being trained to ignore each other! So we went off for a walk through the city centre ending up at Brisbanes newest firestation where the dogs were allowed to check out the fire engines and listen to the alarms! Most of the dogs were great and hardly had any reaction to the noise or smells, Hugo was a little unsure and at one stage refused to walk and would have been quite happy for me to drag him along the ground!
Fortunately it was time for a photo shoot, by now Harper had joined us and so the three puppies had a cuddle with the firemen. PS. Hugo is the middle puppy.
I was a bit dissapointed that I wasnt allowed to drive one of those red vehicles, I did explain that I already drove a red vehicle unfortunatley the firemen demanded to know what type of red vehicle I drove? I explained that Sally was a very cute red mini to which they laughed, maybe they thought that I couldnt get up into the firetruck since I was used to my low car!
After our visit with at the firestation we stopped for a much needed drink before heading off the train station, Hugo loved the train and is looking forward to next month when we visit the botanical gardens.