Thankfulness and Patience

July has been a flurry of family visits, crisp winter mornings and beautiful warm sunny days. Bright colours are never too hard to find whether amongst the local birdlife, garden or relaxing sunsets.

Work on the new bridge for our town is well underway, adding a new interest to my walks over the old existing bent, double decker bridge. 

Hand sewing continues to be my choice of creative activity. I'm still enjoying stitching blocks for my Ice Cream Soda quilt, especially now that I have finally decided on how I'd like to join them together into a quilt. My long term hand stitching Fresh Fields quilt also saw some progress - the joys of having more available time during school holidays.  :)

My husband's health has continued to decline :( and my laptop is currently away being repaired after it unexpected stopped working over a week ago. Thankfully my laptop was able to be restored and should be returned in the next couple of days. I've been rather amazed at how much I can do using my phone alone (and very grateful that I had my photos from Instagram on it) and for the use of one of our teenagers' laptops to compose this blogpost. 

"To be content doesn't mean you don't desire more, it means you're thankful for what you have and patient for what's to come." Tony Gaskins. That seems to be a pretty good definition to me :) 


* If you hover your mouse/cursor over the photos above, some will have text details to accompany. 
*** You can read more details about most of these photos on my Instagram feed which I add to several times a week. You don't have to join Instagram to view either - just click on the little blue square camera logo under my blog profile (top right hand corner). 

Beautiful November

With an ever changing mix of friendly familiar, new beginnings and fresh challenges, our Spring days are fast disappearing. We've not grown foxgloves before, as our climate is quite warm but when we saw some seedling at the nursery a few months ago we decided to give them a try. Only one has flowered, gradually opening and developing rich colours over the course of a couple of weeks. Quite a fascinating and beautiful flower, I hope to plant some again next year.

Cricket is a constant focus through the summer months for most of our children and now our youngest, Miss E (8) is also participating - and loving it! 

The purple jacaranda trees bloom for a few short weeks each spring. Our town has hundreds of jacaranda trees and an annual week-long festival centred around them. They sure do make the town very pretty. Grace had opportunity to perform at three events during the week, enjoying each one.

I have made a selection of drawstring bags which I have added to my Etsy shop, along with optional sets of blank greeting cards which I've had professionally printed using my photos. A combination of sewing and photography which I have thoroughly enjoyed working on.

My birthday came and went in a blink - but I still have a little of the gifted artisan Cicada chocolate left to savour, chosen at a market in Circular Quay, Sydney, and hand delivered (thank you my older daughters!).

World War I was the focus for our homeschool History studies this term - making a visited to our local Memorial Park on Remembrance Day much more meaningful.

Last but not least - we caught sight of the supermoon late last night when the cloud cover cleared. It was noticeably brighter and whiter than usual. I find it quite interesting to notice the difference angle/terrain of moon photos taken from the northern as opposed to mine* in the southern hemisphere. We live in an amazing universe.


 *Photographic Note: I used my DSLR with 55-250 kit lens. I was leaning the camera against a balcony post for stability, set to manual mode with ISO at 100, f/11, 1/125 speed. As I shoot in RAW I then edited as follows - Crop, sharpen, increase definition and contrast until I liked the result.

Sharing at Our World Tuesday.

Busy Brights

The Rainbow Lorikeets' noisy call announces their arrival - they are having a wonderful time feeding on the nectar of the Bottlebrush in the backyard. Winter broccoli and the coriander are beginning to flower, as are the Pig Face succulents and many other plants. Birds, bees, butterflies, hoverflies and many other insects visit everyday. The garden is certainly alive! Just yesterday I found the little  pot of pink flowering cactus lost beneath the pink Pig Face so I rescued it to enjoy it's dainty flowers at closer quarters.

On the sewing front, I am about half way through attaching the binding on my Set Free quilt. The fabric is another from Cloud 9's Moody Blues collection, called Sashiko Trees. The more I work with it the more I love it. The little trees bear tiny pomegranate fruits! I'm in no hurry to finish as I'm greatly enjoying the fabrics and gentle hand sewing, especially in the early morning light. Some steady progress was made on my Australia  designs quilt over the weekend too - hoping to return to it soon!

But for now I need to scamper down to the garden and pick some of that almost finished broccoli and some kale, spinach and parsley to add to the lamb bone and barley chowder simmering in the cooktop for tonight's evening meal!


Sharing at WIP Wednesday.