Friday 15 May 2015

After an unplanned blog holiday I am back again.We have been busy with work around the house, finishing some projects, a little trip away up North and spending time with family. It's easy to spend a morning wasting time with a four month old!

Mike and Myles
Oli in his school uniform.
I have finally finished two of my patchwork projects. My very large 'Big Fat Flower Garden' is all done and now keeping us warm on these very cold Mt Vic nights.

The pattern is in a magazine/book called 'Old Quilts Made New' and is called Pansy Patch by Carolyn Davis. It's hand paper pieced and hand quilted in large stitches with Pearl 8 cotton thread. You can see the quilting better in the pics below.

It took me ages to make but I am very happy with the result. It's the first quilt I have hand pieced and quilted.

At the other end of the size scale I also finished this little number. It's only 13" by 13" but has over 320 pieces.

It's a Kerulea design from a pattern I bought about 15 years ago. It's foundation pieced onto thin fabric so that you don't have to remove the paper once it's been sewn. I now have it on my sewing room wall.

I also finished a lead light skylight diffuser with a gum leaf design. I found the design on the net then expanded it and adjusted it a bit freehand to make it fit the required measurements.  It's not installed yet but I think it will look much better than the fake lead light that is there at the moment.


Mike has been busy moving soil from our driveway to the back of the house as during the last lot of rain we had the driveway turned into a quagmire. Mud was everywhere. The driveway is now much flatter and has a rocky base so we will see what happens the next time it rains and decide whether further gravel is required.

The driveway in front of the house.

The back of the house showing all the soil Mike has moved from the driveway.
He has also exposed the back of the brake van by removing a huge amount of tangled vines. Underneath was a lovely stone wall that my brother must have built many years ago.

We now have some new garden beds to plant out and the hot house to restore and make productive. Mike was originally just intending to cut away the vines on the side of the hothouse and then fix it up but one thing leads to another .........Finishing the hot house is still some way off yet but there's no rush. We have found that if you identify one job to be done here, you have to do three other jobs in order to be able to do the job you originally identified!

Life at Mt Vic is very easy. Mike has settled into retirement without any regrets and is not missing getting up at 4.30 every day and travelling in to the Opera House. Now that it is getting cold we have the Rayburn going in the kitchen and I am getting used to its ways. It warms the house really well and has a great stove top, oven and warming oven. It's a shame the water heating part is not working but hopefully it can be fixed one day. Right now though the gas hot water is fine and on demand. No fire lighting required to have a shower!!

We have also started doing some bush walks as we are surrounded by many tracks and stunning views nearby. We have walked down Lockyers Track and back up the Cox's Road at the end of Mt York Road. That was about 10km and quite steep at the end. Then we did another one going down Lawson's Long Alley to Hartley Vale and back up Lockyers Track. That was 11.3km and we were quite exhausted when we got back to the car. On Monday we walked from Govetts Leap to Evans Lookout in Blackheath and back again. The views of the Grose Valley were spectacular. It took about 2.5 hours return and we both had jelly legs by the end due to the steps but it was well worth it.

We also went to Perry's Lookdown (by car!) and the views were equally spectacular and of course it was a beautiful day too.


We are so lucky to have all this natural beauty at our doorstep!