Yesterday was my anniversary.....

12 months ago, Theresa and I visited Hettie's Patch, I bought a stack load of fabric and a new obsession was born.

Edited to add - I meant to blog this yesterday but was too busy putting together another quilt......photos soon.

News in Brief

• Miss R is at a Leadership Scout Camp until tomorrow afternoon. Mr G is working. Don't quite know what to do with all this blissful time to myself.  :-)
• We're heading off to the Gold Coast on Monday. Back on Saturday. Only doing one theme park - 2 day Dreamworld pass - and tossing up between a day in Brisbane or a trip to Mt Tamborine. Also visiting Mr G's birth mother who, it seems, lives very near Ikea, so no prizes for guessing where we'll probably end up.
• Had a Learning Review this week with Miss R's teachers. They gave her a really good report which was fabulous to hear. Of course there is room for improvement - she needs to be more organised and needs to speak up more when she doesn't understand - but overall she seems to be keeping up with her peers. From comments made, it seems that they keeping her learning difficulties in mind when assessing her, which is good to know. Things seem to be going well socially as well.
• Having to watch my sugar and fat intake is having an impact on the scales. Won't know for another month or so whether it's had any effect on my sugar and cholesterol levels, but clothes are feeling a teeny bit looser.
• We've been endeavouring to get our 2 dogs to sleep in a crate at night, rather than in our bed. Mainly because they don't always want to go out the doggy door in the middle of the night, and I'm tired of cleaning up messes in the morning (not every morning, but enough to be a nuisance). The older dog has taken to it easily, but the younger one starts whimpering at anywhere from 1am to 5am. I never did enjoy having broken sleep.....
• Watched this week's episode of Lost and bawled my eyes out. Like sobbing, not just a bit teary. (Bit embarrassing really.) Don't know now whether I can face the last few episodes, but as I've been watching since the beginning, I have to persevere. And no, I have absolutely no idea what is going on.
• Have decided that the quilt I'll make for my cousin's wedding will be green with grey & black but haven't decided on a pattern yet. I was inspired by this quilt.
• And now I'm off to wash the dishes and vacuum the floors, ready for the housesitter.

Quilt Fair, Melbourne, Sat 1 May 2010

Theresa, Clare and I flew to Melbourne yesterday to go to the Australasian Quilt Convention.We had an early flight out and a late flight back. It was a great day! By the time we caught the SkyBus into Southern Cross Station and caught the tram out to the Royal Exhibition Building, it was right on 10am when the doors were opening. And we left about 15mins after the doors closed. I was amazed that we spent the WHOLE DAY there but there was just so much to see. We went to a couple of the seminars but the rest of the time was spent browsing the many stalls, looking at the beautiful quilts (some not so beautiful IMHO but everyone has different taste and I could still appreciate the amount of work that had gone into each one) and looking for a bargain. Clare was on the hunt for some Kaffe Fassett fabric and she did find some, but alas, a fat quarter wasn't enough.I didn't intend to buy fabric, as I have plenty in my stash, but bought some Prints Charming FQ's that are hard to find now, and some green for my next project but really didn't come home with a lot. I did buy a small cutting board and a gadget for sewing mitred corners when binding (rather than folding the corners) but I'll have to have a little play with that before I decide if it was a good buy or not.

I'm really looking forward to going again next year.

This morning I've had a lovely time checking out the websites of various exhibitors. And I really, really, really want a long arm quilting machine with stitch regulator - but that's a mere pipe dream......