My neglected garden has given me gorgeous Mr Lincoln roses, filling my house with their sweet scent. 

Garden, on the list........after I finish with the mess and madness of cleaning and totally reorganising my studio. So, still not making stuff, 

but as I clean and rediscover bits n bobs I am planning, designing, mentally creating. 

The weather is changing, autumn brings lovely foggy mornings, clear air, warmer days. 

Mist and fog on the hills Friday morning on my way to town. The paddocks are so green, such a difference to the dry dust bowls they were just a month ago. 

Back to cleaning..........

Rainbow after the storm.

Roaring winds, horizontal rain, scared horses, hiding dogs, we were in a mini cyclone! Sunday afternoon, about 2:30pm, out of the west, a small, fast moving, intense storm cut a path through our property and many others for many kilometres, leaving trees down on roads and across power lines causing a blackout.

No power for 26 hours when you live in country NSW means no water because the tank water is fed into the house via a pressure pump, so no showers, and no flushing toilet (and the on site sewerage system is in danger of going off because there is no aeration pump, thankfully didn't happen). Hoses to chook houses and horse troughs were not working either, so out with the buckets and down to the horse shed to the only tank not fitted with a pressure pump. We have a gas cook top so having a cuppa and cooking dinner was easy enough. We use old kerosene lanterns on the verandah and in the garden so they came inside. 

As the hours wore on battery backup in our local telephone exchanges wore down and so the exchanges were off line. Mobile phone batteries flattened and put many more people out of the loop. 

We have 10kw of solar panels generating electricity everyday, but we cannot use this power as it is sold into the grid and we buy back from them. Annoying, but on any other day we are happy that we have a small income and don't think about not being able to use it directly.

Many years ago I lived an alternate lifestyle without grid power and had none of these problems, and now I realise how dependent we have become on electricity.

Daughter number 3 visited today and made me a peg rainbow to cheer me up.

  

Mmmm, I think our back door has been open too long! Summer and we live in the country, so the back door, which opens onto a large verandah, stays open to let cooler air in. A busy wasp has built a beautiful mud trumpet around a screw. Soon it will be filled with small spiders and insects in suspended animation. I don't know what wasp or how long I will have to leave the door open! And yes, the door is painted with chalk board paint and friends and family do leave messages on it.  

Grand daughter number 1 learning to ride on the old pony her aunt (daughter number 3) rode at pony club all those years ago. 

This is what she is aiming for, to be able to ride in the local show like her aunt (daughter number 2) does.

No ribbons this time, but they did have fun. 

And so back to making stuff.... using up bits and pieces, a 'nanna' purse,

and a little rosebud basket made from felt dyed with eucalyptus leaves, backed with linen. 

I like this shape, I will try creating some fabric with pieces of my rust and eucalyptus dyed

scrap stitched onto very stiff backing. Bigger next time, more useful. 

The Art soiree at the Show and nothing to wear! I rummaged the bag of goodies I brought back from India last year and made a sparkly jacket from a second hand saree. Worn over a dress from the back of my wardrobe and some more Indian bling.

Today is the busiest of our 2 show days, all the ring events, the goats and chooks are judged, the cavies and rabbits too. Kids pet show and grand parade in the afternoon. 

Hubby is a steward in the chook section, and daughter number 2 is competing in the ring on her large ex racehorse. She and the horse slept over at the showground last night with many others, today is an early start, there is so much to fit in. Daughters number 1 and 3, the grand daughters and I will cheer her on before we all have lunch in the CWA Ladies hall. They make the best scones and slices ever tasted, and their lunches are tasty too! https://www.facebook.com/CWA.Recipes

It will be a long day, finishing with fireworks. 

Showtime.....

One of my entries in 'any item made from paper or recycled materials', placed second. The competition was tough, I was beaten by a wall hanging made almost entirely of discarded muppet/sesame street toys!

The local Agricultural Show is in full swing, beginning this morning at 6am with Edwina from the Sunrise TV show doing live segments with excited local school students as a cheer squad. Go Gresford! More info here:

http://gresfordshow.com.au/ 

I and 3 other stewards spent the last 2 days sorting and displaying nearly 300 photographs for the Photography section. Judged yesterday they will be viewed by hundreds. I always like to see the locals' reactions to the 'People' category as they look for familiar faces in the photos. 

  

Mmmm, I sometimes wonder how the spiders get into the house. this little one hitched a ride from the chook house! He has since been relocated to the garden., or did he end up in my breakfast omelette?  

Refreshing rain. 

Not too heavy, soaking in, greening the grass. The grand daughters will be able to run to the cubby house without raising dust. 

The soothing sound of rain on the tin roof and cooler temperatures mean I can power on with my Show entries.  

A leather shoulder bag for 'Any article made with paper or recycled material'. The leather was salvaged from a lounge chair dumped in the forest, the lining is an old rolled oats cloth bag and the latch a very old key.

I have also finished a black cat pencil case with a zip for his mouth.

OK, cuppa time is over, back to work!

Busy, busy. Making stuff to enter into our local Agricultural Show. 

This tiny journal is finished. Leather bound, attached to a chain with small pencil on chain clipped on for ease of writing in this 'faerie' journal.

Now back to work on the other 14 entries!

 Ahh, breakfast with the birds.....

a galah

a pair of king parrots

a sulphur crested cockatoo

A crested pigeon called in too, but was too shy to pose for a photo. 

All of these birds have babies to feed and I don't mind the mess of seed husks and poo they leave on the verandah because I know they are doing it tough this year. I am surprised so many birds managed to breed and keep their young alive. The galahs park their young ones in nearby trees while they forage for food to feed them with. The youngsters spend most of the morning in the 'creche' emitting the most mournful squeaks. They are able to squeak on both the in breath and the out breath and continue for hours! The parents return with full crops and feed the seemingly starving babes and then park them in another group of trees until afternoon feed time. Sometimes I must admit I do shoo them away! But right now I'm off to shoo the satin bowerbirds off my figs. The greedy pests have even broken through the bags I had over several branches! Grrr...

Finished and ready to wrap for Hubby's birthday. I backed them with bright fabric from Spotlight and because the pictures were not square, added some of the same to one side of each. 

These photos were taken in spring when there was lush green grass for the gnomes to lurk in. More rain falling now, so soon we will have green again.

More inspiration from Pinterest, a magazine footstool.

 A stack of cooking magazines, 2 old belts from the op-shop, a piece of leftover builders ply cut to size, a piece of wooden pallet dressed through the thicknesser  for the feet and a cushion from off-cuts from another project. Voila! Just what daughter number 3 needs in her new house! 

Why should I store her "very useful, not to be chucked out!" magazines? 

Now what else has she left behind....?

Loving this cooler weather, and nearly 10mls of rain is giving the paddocks a soft green haze already. 

2 more days of rain predicted, lovely.

Ahhh, rain, cooler and less humidity. Animals, garden and I are all happier. I've been busy making stuff, look, the first of 3 happy gnome cushions for hubby's birthday.

I sent photos of his favourite garden gnomes (he has a garden full of them!) to Spoonflower to have them printed onto cotton fabric and soon Mowing Gnome will be joined by Sleeping Gnome and Hunting Gnome. 

I am really happy with the results from Spoonflower and now I'm thinking I can have some fabric printed to make dresses for my grand daughters, though maybe not gnomes!

Not made by me, but by daughter number 2 who thought her bed needed something more. Antlers cut from ply, painted and mounted on wall, draped with fairy lights.   

Last weekend was party weekend, daughter number 3 and her fiance had the official engagement party here with a superheroes theme. My daughters seem to like themed parties and dressing up. When they were little their dress ups box was always empty because they were wearing it all. Dressing up was imprinted on them early!

Our front paddock, the party venue, resembled a Hollywood movie lot as more and more super heroes arrived. The party was for older relatives too, so the resemblance was even closer because the oldies looked like a bus load of tourists having a gawk! 

Beautiful daughter number 3 in our dry and dusty paddock.

Some oldies dressed up and played the part well. I interrupted a conversation between my brother The Joker and hubby Spock and got this look!

Pinterest is addictive! I could spend hours just looking at everyone's pins, finding new ideas, dreaming.....
I have gleaned some great ideas from Pinterest, and something that worked well was drawing on crockery with sharpie pens. Yes, sharpies! After leaving to dry for a day or so and then baking for an hour the drawing is permanent. Probably shouldn't scrub or pop in the dishwasher though. I've decorated a cup and saucer for a friend who's not well to cheer her up and now I'm looking for more stuff to draw on!

Yesterday was Australia Day holiday, a day to contemplate what it is to be Aussie, or a day to recover from the excesses of Australia Day itself? Mmmm, well hubby and I went to the big smoke, Newcastle, and ate Indian food, looked at a Viking boat, watched an American movie. All normal Aussie pursuits. But as a reminder of who Australia once was here is a pic of some amazing street art in Newcastle.

Blah, waiting for rain, 98% humidity, overcast, still, sweating profusely.
Moving day for daughter number 3 and her partner (and their 2 big dogs). Out of my granny flat and into their new house. Amazing how much stuff they have accumulated over 2 years. And how did it all fit into that tiny one bedroom flat?!
Sunday is moving day for daughter number 2 and her (big) dog. Out of the big house and into the granny flat. I'll wait and see how much stuff she accumulates!
Ahh, now I have a spare room! Mmmm, what to fill it with? I think my daughters (3) may have inherited the "accumulation of stuff" gene from me!
Whew, time to sit on the verandah for a while to cool down and write a report for my friend's on line arts zine www.issuu.com

Hot, hot hot, too hot to make stuff, so a blog it is!
Oh, and paint my toenails!