The Countdown

The youngest Sweetie keeps a firm eye on the countdown for Christmas as do I. However our counts are for different purposes.

His, bless him, is for THE DAY, less than 40, I believe and mine is for the number of quilts that I have to quilt before THE DAY.

12 days ago I was at 26 quilts, and I nearly went back to bed for the rest of my life, now as of late last night I am at 18 quilts. So it is much better, however the pace is mind numbing.

At times like this I ask myself 'why is it sooooooo bad?' Too many extracurricular activities with the boys, ie Monopoly games and card games and maybe too much chewing the fat with them. As always it is a juggling act, however it is okay and this too will end. If only it wasn't the Monopoly games and the chewing of the fat as well.

Redwork

One of my loves is redwork - this is for a quilt made from Bronwyn Hayes's Red Brolly designs. I admire her designs so much and I always make them bigger so that I can use stem stitch instead of the normal back stitch and I can make them into a quilt that is bigger.

Hydroponic Strawberry Update

The 'before' picture.

The 'now' picture and we are eating lettuce with every meal. The Hairiest Sweetie mumbles something about 'not being a %^&* rabbit'. I just smile vacantly and serve him dinner.

We have moved them from their original location to a newer better spot and all automated with their own pump as opposed to the gravity feed that I used to have to do as many times a day as had the energy for. There are tiny little strawberries. Today I'm planting tomatoes, pumpkins (or punkins if you're my friend Robyn), capsicums, cucumbers, rockmelons, watermelons, basil, mizuna, rocket, spinach. That'll do me.

When I started I was going to use as many growing mediums as I could find, however the coir blocks have many difficulties soooooo I have bisbanded with that idea and decided to use a perlite/vermiculite mix to replace the the coir in the final two dutch leach trays.

Stop Looking - I Found It

I have included some more pictures that are rather pretty.

Well after all the panic yesterday, re the quilt backings, I calmed down enough to take the washing in and there they were neatly folded and placed on the wire fence behind the washing line. As I said my last memory was of folding them up. I was pretty happy with myself after that although I was flummoxed with myself and felt that I was getting some early practice in for my dotage.

Yesterday was a day of hardly any quilting and much packing up of quilts to be sent to their owners. So the donga is looking much emptier.

The hydroponics set up is going along extremely well and we now have some strawberry flowers. The white fly moved in to the lettuce and set up their camp there and then just as they were becoming a major infestation the hover flies moved in and ate most of them. As I always say - calm down and wait, nature will take care of it. The birds are visiting the hydro as well so we might have to protect the strawberries from the birds, although I am loath to take this measure. One of the main reasons for growing strawberries hydroponically is to get them off
the ground so that the bobtail lizards don't eat them. They also like the locquats and grapes that we grow in the garden, and they are welcome to as many of those as they like, however strawberries.........well they are different. Maybe at the end of the season we might be tired of the strawberries, bring it on I say.

FOQ 456 or it seems like it

Just some more eye candy from the FOQ

Well I'm back quilting and working to get all the tops to their respective owners before Christmas. My plans, this morning, have been postponed somewhat as I have 'lost' the backing that I washed for the two quilts that were to be done in the next couple of days. At the moment I am scratching my head in wonder as I remember washing them, hanging them on the line, watching them flap in the breeze and then folding them up when they were dry. The memory ends there at the moment. Tim, the hairiest sweetie, is watching me walk past things and then quickly turn and pick them up just in case they are tricking me and will suddenly appear somewhere where I have already looked. The next destination for my rather intensive, and yet haphazard searching, will be the donga - the place where all the quilting and swearing takes place on this property. The rules about swearing here are simple - it's either the shed or the donga. Tim doesn't swear very often and when he does we all know that it is REALLY bad. Anyway I am really 'pushing the envelope' and working CBD pace instead of my normal Darwin-in-the-wet-season pace. They took the girl out of Darwin, however they didn't take Darwin out to the girl. For all you out of Australia, Darwin in the wet season is a time of extreme humidity and temperatures in the low to mid 30s (Celsius) and of not moving very fast and drinking a lot. Mould grows on most things and fungal infections become very common. Even now I love humidity although I don't miss all the prickly heat rashes and the cracks behind the toes. It would rain at about 3 o'clock every day, fairly pelting down like stair rods and everything went 'aaaah'. The 'wet' was also a time when it wasn't safe to swim in the sea due to the sea wasps. I think their proper name is Portuguese man o' war. Great days.

I'll just run down the donga and see if those #$%^& backings have turned up.

Still Dancing

Well I've just realised that I haven't posted for a while. I was away from home for a while attending PULSE WA Regional Arts Conference. Very interesting and held at Denmark Agricultural College in Denmark on the South coast of West Australia. I came home and the very next day went on school camp. I then came home and to cut out all the details of sickness and other crap, I'll just tell you that I opened my fourth box of tissues last night. That means that I have used an awful lot of tissues in a week, all on one nose. My nose is holding up well as I slather it with Pawpaw ointment at every opportunity - looks a sight, but hey, I'm not going out much.