Oops!

I have discovered that in my last blog post the last part did not publish. I actually wrote that post in stages on 2 devices, our PC and my iPad as the photos I wanted to use were on one or the other. I suspect that I didn't click on 'Save' on the iPad which doesn't have the automatic save of the PC version of Blogger.
So the part where I called that certain male from my high school years an 'opinionated boofhead' was not published, as well as 2 photos.
The cake...

And the group photo that has become a tradition...

Two of our teachers are in the front. left hand side...

My friend Jean brings her camera and tripod and battles poor/difficult lighting conditions to produce this wonderful memento of the day. As the numbers of attendees increases, Jean also has to deal with fitting everyone in the photo, just like last year! She not only gets everyone organised for the photo but also ensures that in the days after the reunion, everyone receives digital copies of the photos, including a very professional version where all the names are listed at the bottom of the photograph...Jean does a brilliant job! 

We meet again...

Last Saturday afternoon I went to a reunion of my high school cohort. This year was special as 2014 marks the 50th year since we started Year 8...gasp! Yes 50 years!!! For the last 5 years, we have had a reunion get together every year and I've loved them!

But this year, I wasn't so sure that I wanted to go...I really did feel quite reluctant.

And the reason was simple...I had heard that a particular person (male) would be attending for the first time. This person had managed to be quite nasty to me for 4 of my 5 years at high school...it started in year 9 with him calling me a particularly nasty name which included the taboo, (in my opinion), 'c word'. At other times he would claim that, as I was a friend of his younger brother, (a lovely, polite boy) and that he hated anyone who was a friend of his brother, therefore he hated me. So for 4 years, he gave me 'a hard time' whenever I was unfortunate enough to be near him. Please don't feel sorry for me as I had many friends in high school and this bloke was just an A grade pain in the butt! I believe that he bullied others as well...especially male students who were not 'cool' according to him. But for a while this year all those memories flooded back...

He wasn't at the venue when I first arrived but I kept an eye out...he turned up but I didn't recognise him at first...I think I had to ask another person who he was! lol. I stayed away from him, preferring to talk to other fellow students. I figured that he wouldn't recognise the 63 year old me,so I was 'safe'. 

What I looked like aged 17...

Despite my misgivings about attending the reunion, I was having a wonderful time catching up with old friends.

It was getting close to the time when the reunion would be at an end and I felt this surge of annoyance with myself for 'hiding'...so I walked up to this man, to whom the recent years have not been kind in the physical sense, and said 'hello * ' He needed to check my name badge and then he greeted me like a long lost friend... I couldn't think of anything much to say so I commented that the last time we had met, he was an alderman (it was in the 1980s before the term 'councillor' was introduced) with the Brisbane City Council. He then proceeded to remind me in detail about all the things that he achieved in his council ward during his one term....humble was not a word to spring to mind. And it wasn't long before his conversation showed that he is quite  very racist...so it was time for me to end our 'catch up' conversation. The good news is that he didn't belittle me and that my teenage opinion of him has been vindicated. 

Art Show 2014...

Well it's all over for another year...this year I was involved with the event over the whole weekend; unlike last year when we were away for the weekend to help at the Wandoan Camel Race Day.

Opening night on Friday is always an excuse to dress up...

The hall is filled with paintings for sale...lots of 'floral' paintings this year...

The church pews are rearranged and heavy boards placed on them for all the craft items to be displayed...

The pews are rearranged and hidden...

This year the Art Show was not opened by a politician...an artist called Glen Gillard did the honours...

Greg, the organiser,  introducing Glenn, who is on the left

On the Saturday I am usually rostered to help in some way with the Devonshire Teas...over the years, I have worked my way up from selling tickets for the D Teas to assembling plates of scones, pikelets with jam and cream :-)

I only worked in the morning as I had a school reunion in the afternoon...

On Sunday we still had a church service; a very cosy affair with the congregation sharing the space with the crafts. Father Jack commented that if any of us were cold, we were welcome to buy any of the beanies and scarves for sale on the craft tables :-)

After the service, parishioners walked around the craft tables and quite a few items were bought!

On Sunday afternoon I came back to help with the 'packing up' procedures...collecting up each exhibitor's items and then checking the inventories...can be slow work. (sadly it became obvious that there had been a small amount of  thieving as some unsold items were missing :-( ) 

Items are collected into bundles ready for checking the inventory sheets; these sheets are all done via the computer these days and show what items have been sold etc...

On Friday night I had fallen in love with 3 paintings by the lovely Gwen Kelso...they were all of flowers; a complete departure from my normal art purchases which are usually landscapes. So on Sunday afternoon I went a little earlier so that the show was still open...and I looked and looked at the 3 paintings...finally I decided on the one with mauve/pink poppies with lots of royal blue and purple in the background. 

Later in the afternoon when Gwen came in to collect unsold items I went up to her and reminded her that I had been a Supply/Contract teacher at the same school as she had taught at..she did remember me and when I told her that I had bought one of her paintings, she gave me a big hug! The children in Gwen's classes always had a sketchpad in their desk drawers and every day after morning tea, her students would sit and draw in those pads for 20 minutes...it was a brilliant way to settle children and I'm sure that many students would have continued to draw for pleasure even when they left Year 4.

Gwen Kelso...

The organiser of the art show did not have final figures for monies raised when I last talked to him but he had been very pleased with the progress totals on Sunday afternoon...

I had sold 95 tickets in the Raffle but none of those lovely friends and family had their tickets drawn, but the money raised is very much appreciated.
Unfortunately there is a bit of glare on the glass of the pastel drawing of a very old door.

The 3 prizes in the raffle. 

So the 30th Annual Art and Craft Show was over for another year!

Pews all pushed back into place...

Ten Years...

In late June, DH and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. Compared to many of our friends, who are these days celebrating 40+ wedding anniversaries, I guess we could be classed as newlyweds! Lol. But considering I never expected to remarry as I was quite happy with my life, it just shows 'that you never can tell!'. And I can say in all honesty that it has been a wonderful 10 years!
So this year the bridal party from that ceremony in 2004, went out to lunch; DH's younger brother had been his Best Man and, his cousin, and also my best friend for over 30 years, was my bridesmaid.
Then and now photo...

My BiL and SiL were on 'grandparent duty' that day, so young Ashleigh had to tag along...she was so beautifully behaved...in the photo below, my BiL had left to go an pick up Ashleigh's brother from school...

Interestingly, my marriage to DH linked 2 branches of the family back together...a split had occurred 2 generations ago but no one knows the reason. For example, DH's branch had stayed in contact with one great aunt but  Pamela's side of the family did not, so her generation did not know a significant part of the family...they do now though! And conversely DH's family did not know the branch of the family in the US...they do now... :-)

Sitting between cousins who 12 years ago didn't know the other existed...

I love the view out of the windows at Eatons Hill Hotel...

Now over 10 years ago my friend and I purchased some fabric featuring hydrangeas and her plan was that she was going to make DH and I a quilt for a wedding gift. Time was her enemy so plans changed and the quilt was to be a first anniversary present....you know where I'm going with this don't you? A week before this year's anniversary, my friend and I went shopping for some homespun to complement the 2 fabrics that we already had...my friend was now determined to make this quilt in a week! The original pattern that she had selected with lots of pieced blocks was discarded in favour of sewing a series of borders around a large central panel of hydrangea fabric.

Thanks to a wonderful quilter at Taigum, the pieced top, batting and backing were dropped off on the Sunday, when I also chose a design for the quilting. The wonderful Toni had it all quilted and ready for Pamela to collect on the Wednesday. My friend then sewed the binding on this huge quilt and had it ready and waiting when we met for lunch on the Thursday! Phew....

The quilt is huge and so warm...well worth the wait as it's so special! And I can still see why Pam and I fell in love with that fabric all those years ago.

Mini Quilt Swap; Embroidery Theme...

I signed up for this swap earlier this year which entails making 3 mini quilts for 3 different swap buddies. The embroidery themed one was the most recent with a posting date on or before June 30. For this mini, I was matched with Peg, who I happened to know, likes the colour red. So I had this idea for a redwork mini. A while ago I had stumbled across some redwork designs on Pinterest and naturally I 'pinned' them otherwise I know I would never be able to find those sites again! Lol. 

I decided to use the pansy design, so stitched away on this secret project. 

A friend offered me some lovely red pansy fabrics for the border but when I went to make the border, both of these fabrics had 'patterns' that were too large scale and would result in some rather cut off pansy clusters...so I went to my smallish stash of pansy fabrics. My collection seemed to be in the blue, mauve colour schemes but there was one fat quarter with small pansies and the colour red was featured...so I had found my border fabric...phew! 

So a day before posting was due I finished the little quilt. Cheryll, who is the organiser of this swap, had sent us all some quilt labels we could use and also printed coasters which would be sent with each mini. These coasters were personalised with our name, blog address and the theme of the swap. To my horror I saw written on the coaster that the mini should include stitched inspirational words on sewing, but it was too late for that...so Peg got a wordless mini quilt! But she was fine with that! :-)

The backing and binding fabric came from JoAnns in Monterey, so well travelled fabric! 

I forgot to take a photo of the coaster and a few extras that I slipped in the parcel...the pins and tailor's thimble came from the shop in the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry...a place I loved!! This is Peg's photo. (oh and a Beatles badge from Liverpool! )

Another great swap! Now I'm just waiting to see what the postie might be bringing me...

Looking back...

DD2 'booked' half a day with me today so that she could look through old family photos with me. You see, she is 30 later this year and is already planning her party, but more importantly, she is planning her invitations! She has found a US site which uses interesting templates to produce invitations with a bit of a 'wow factor'. The one DD2 particularly likes is a collage of photos in the shape of '30'. 

So we spent a lovely couple of hours looking through albums and boxes and folders of photos. It became obvious that DD2 was not interested in photos of her teen years...'I have this well-groomed image, mum', she opined! 

So what was wrong with the photos from her 'op shopping clothes phase'?...or the red or pink hair-dye phases?  Or the chunky Doc Martens phase? Or the wonky self cut fringe phase? She only wanted photos from the era when her mum made her clothes and did her hair! lol. 

So together we scanned chosen photos and also scanned some slides. Then it was time to go online and start completing the collage for the invitations. It took her a little while to put photos in place...because they have to be shrunk a fair bit, some of the photos had to be discarded as they just didn't work in a smaller format.  But eventually she was happy with how it all looked. 

The fancy US site she was using was having a few problems and DD2 actually lost all the work she had done inserting photos into this 30 outline template...so I lent her a USB stick to save all the photos, as she had to head off. 

That left me with a folder with a lot of delightful photos on my PC. I decided to Google 'free collage programs' unlike the one that DD2 was using, which involved some cost. I found 'Picmonkey'...so off I went to have a bit of a play with the collage feature...

This is the result...No fancy shape mind you, but I like it! And it was easy and fun to do!

A few weeks ago DD2 asked me to be in charge of the 'Picture Board' for her 30th...'Like the one you did for my 18th and 21st,' she said. Hmmm I thought that might be a bit old fashioned these days, I mean with all this digital technology around...might have to ponder about this task. :-)

Missing...

I guess I've been a bit lax in the blog writing area these last couple of weeks. Only one reason for this...I've been a bit busy! 

One thing that has taken up my time is making my annual donation to the parish Art and Craft Show. Each year I make a knitted throw, enter it, and if it sells, I forgo the 75% share of the proceeds and donate the lot to the parish funds. This makes up for the many times each year that I don't really help that much at Parish fundraising. (I rarely bake these days for example)

This year though, I knitted 2 throws...one to sell and one to raffle! Both are mohair and both use a simple slip stitch pattern and both were fun to knit!

The first one finished was the one to be raffled so we could pre-sell tickets...I called this one 'Memories of Marge' in honour of an elderly parishioner who passed away late last year. She had purchased my donated throw last year as well as one I made about 3 years ago.

My labels;which are from Moira Wallis in Melbourne...I last bought labels in 2006 and in case Moira is retired as I've bought her labels for 20 years or so, I have another label maker's name from Shez.

And yesterday I handed over the second rug which will be arranged on display ready for a buyer at this weekend's Art Show! 

This photo shows the back of the throw...it's just 'resting' after a light blocking...

This one I've named ' No Rhyme or Reason' as it is just random colours. 

Regular readers will notice that 'random' in this case means many of my favourite colours! :-)

More posts soon on all the other busy things I've been up to!