Category Archives: travel

post cruise & post covid! – Owl Hare & Hollow

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We had a great time in New Zealand and it was so nice to be back on board a cruise ship again. The weather was perfect, it’s a beautiful country and we enjoyed having a balcony cabin so we could just watch the views from our room. Sydney Harbour put on a good show  for our sunset sail-away.

We had a few days scenic cruising starting in Milford Sound – it really is a beautiful place, reminded me of Alaska. It wasn’t as cold as last time we were here but there was still snow on top of the mountains.

Here’s me in the pink.

 

Of course everywhere you go in New Zealand its just filled with picturesque scenes of old lovely old buildings like this church perched on the side of the hill and its just green everywhere!

The highlight for us was visiting the Whakarewarewa  Village. The steam pools were so hot the geyser was spraying quite high and the ground is hot under your feet. It’s not a tourist village but a real home to the people who live there. Unfortunately I can’t upload the videos I took but I have a couple of pics.

Overall we had a great time, but near the end of the cruise we had a bit of a cough and a sniffle and tested positive for Covid. Fortunately we were not too sick at all but as we did not want to bring it home to DD we decided to stay away until we both tested negative. So our holiday was extended another week or so while we lay around at a house at the  beach just resting and recuperating.  We’ve been home a few days now, still not 100% but pretty good.

I took my Owl Hare & Hollow embroidery panels with me on the cruise and I really enjoyed doing them – it’s so relaxing – and I was glad to have them with me when we extended our time away.  I just love this quilt pattern. I think its going to be a long term project though as I’m not so good at English Paper Piecing which I’ve been putting off but I was able to complete five more panels while away.

and I’ve started on some of the easy blocks:

On the home renovating front we’ve been ‘ghosted’ by the tradie who gave us a quote for some work so we have had to start again – finding a new person to come and quote. It’s so frustrating, this is the second tradie who has done this, given a quote then ghosted us when we ask for details to make the deposit. I wish they would just tell us if they don’t want the job and with Christmas coming up that will probably slow them down as well.

Bonnie Hunters Mystery Quilt starts today so I am planning to do that over the coming weeks. I need to pick our my colours so I can get to work on the first clue and finish up a donation quilt thats almost done.

Linking up with:

Back from the beach. Sorting the sewing!

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We’ve been home for a few days now after having a week at the beach and visiting DS in Wagga for a few days. This time I took some embroidery with me. I enjoyed sitting outside on the verandah in the afternoons listening to the ocean.

I haven’t embroidered for years and I would like to get back to it and improve skills. This pattern was from a class with video instruction from Clever Poppy that she ran recently. 

We’ve had lots of rain here and flooding in town on Monday. We are fine as we live on top of a hill and it seems to be going down quickly here. Other places in the region have been badly affected and I’m so glad we cancelled our big holiday to avoid the flooding.
I’ve started going through all my sewing projects, WIPs, UFOs and scrap stashes and making a list of everything that needs finishing. There’s a lot!  I found quilt tops, sewing projects and patterns I had forgotten about and finally found my misplaced Splendid Sampler blocks. I’m bagging everything up from each project into clear bags so I can easily see what I have and putting them on the open shelves instead of in drawers so they don’t get forgotten. 

I’m feeling as though I’d like some more routines back in my week. I listened to a TED talk recently about stages of retirement and we’ve been enjoying the first ‘holiday – freedom’ stage a lot. I’m just feeling now like I’d like to have a bit more organisation in my week. I’m not tired from working anymore and I have more energy to do things. Not sure where I’m going with it but thats my thoughts lately. I also want to get back to more regular blogging. 

We have a big few weeks coming up with birthdays, my in-laws 65th wedding anniversary and our 40th anniversary. I love this time of year with the lead up to Christmas – lots to do and this year will be our first Christmas with family since Covid started so it will be great to get back to normal I hope. Covid changed so much – did it affect your end- of year get-togethers? Do you feel like life’s returning back to ‘normal’? I’m getting my covid booster vaccination this morning  as its on the rise again here, then time to catch up on blog reading.

RSC – Flimsy is done!

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 I’ve been busily sewing up my RSC blocks since I last posted (and we had a week away) and I’m pleased to post that I’ve joined them all up.  I spent some time trying different layouts and decided I liked the pattern better not on point.

Heres how it looks on the bed…

I’m so happy with it and I loved making it. I want to add a border, possibly dark blue or yellow – or perhaps both, so I will think on that for a while.

I’ve also taken a bit of break from being online as we had another trip away for a week. Old work friends of mine from catch up ever few years and so a last minute get-together was arranged. I have missed the last few so it was just great to see everyone again. 

DH and I stayed on for a bit of holiday and visited lots of lovely beaches down the South Coast, walked for hours most days and then laid about enjoying the ocean view from our cabin on the beach in the evenings. 

Heres a few pics of our time away..

View from inside our cabin as the sun comes up

… and we just walked down this little track to get onto the beach…

We also did some travelling to a few different places,  countryside is SO green and there is water everywhere. This is at Tilba – the place where River Cottage Australia was filmed.

Tilba is a National Trust Village with lots of lovely old shops and pretty gardens. 

We bought some cheese, jams and chutneys from the Tilba Dairy and I can recommend them – very tasty and plenty of  gluten free products.

The fragrance from The Bath Patisserie was lovely & it was filled with all sorts of luxurious bath products so I picked up some lovely soap for myself.

While we were away Queen Elizabeth passed away. I remember watching her Christmas address every year as a kid, it was just part of our Christmas Day growing up, and singing God Save the Queen each week at assemblies. Each classroom had a picture of here above the blackboard so she was very much part of our lives as kids even though we live in Australia. I think she was a remarkable woman given that she was never meant to be Queen.

So we’re back home now until our next trip in November and I’m feeling ready to get more stuff decluttered. I want to get new carpet put down in the lounge room and give the bathroom a ‘refresh’ – so thats what I’ll be mostly working on as well and finishing up Summer in the Country before I start another quilt.

I’m off to catch up on my blog reading & linking up to SoScrappy  Quilting Patch and OhScrap.