An unexpected trip interstate

Last week I had an unexpected trip interstate to Victoria. Unfortunately my daughters’ father had passed away and I was needed to accompany them to help with their 2 children. 

Here we are at 6am at Brisbane Airport...

Travelling with little children has always been a challenge and in our case we had a 2 hour flight, followed by a 2 1/2 hour drive before reaching our destination. 

The girls had lots of appointments etc so my job was to look after the little ones. Most of the time we stayed in the motel room as outside was quite cold and there was even some rain. 

I had brought some items in my luggage to help occupy a 1 and 2 year old.

Two little cuties ‘reading’ some of the picture books I brought with me 😍

And of course I had a scribble pad plus some coloured pencils...


And who doesn’t love a picnic? Even if the picnic cloth is a towel and the picnic is inside 😜

No photos but one day that I was minding the girls, we went outside to a little grassed area in the motel grounds and had ‘races’. Holly loves playing what she calls, ‘Ready Set Go!’ So with me pushing little Carrie in the stroller, Holly, Carrie and I played races...I got puffed before them! 🥴😂

We also played dressups with items in my suitcase...

And because DD1 and DD2 are modern young mums, they had downloaded children’s shows on their iPads and this Grandma was quite happy to use these to amuse my charges. 

And 2 of the teddies that live at my place also came on our trip as I knew that Miss Holly loves playing with them...

The brown bear is called Billy Bob and he averted a few ‘meltdowns’ as he is a particular favourite of Holly’s. 

The 5 days flew past and we were all relieved when the funeral was over.  It was in Maryborough where the girls’ dad had eventually relocated. I made sure I introduced myself to their dad’s partner as it was ridiculous how we had both pretended we hadn’t noticed each other. 

And so on the Saturday we drove from Avoca where we had stayed, back to Melbourne to catch our flight home. 

It was great to be home! 

Mothers Day

Last week I thought it was time to finally put away all the Easter decorations. It’s a bit early for a Winter display but then I thought...Mothers Day! 

So it was time to get out the mini quilt that I had received in a Mothers Day Mini Swap a few years ago.  And that’s my mum in the photo. 

And then I thought I’d bring out some of the floral patterned china that was packed away in cupboards...most of these items have been gifts over the years.

I love hydrangeas and family and friends have given me lots of lovely items with those flowers on them


Years ago I fell in love with this pattern and saved up to buy this plate...


My daughters have given me 4 Mum mugs over the years 😍


And there is DH’s mum! I usually like to buy a bunch of chrysanthemums around Mothers Day as my mum loved them. Because I was going to be away for 5 days, instead I got a potted flowering plant instead.




Hope all mothers had a lovely day today and received lots of attention and spoiling from their offspring 😍

Wool on Sunday

Joining in with the monthly Wool on Sunday over at Rainbow Hare.

With the cooler weather the knitting charity that I support  has been inundated with requests for warm items, especially blankets, beanies and gloves. 

Over Easter, I set to and joined some bags of donated squares into blankets...

And then there was a bag of smaller squares with a different style of granny square design. It made a lovely knee rug...

The lady who gave them to me normally joins her squares into rugs but she felt like a break from joining after donating quite a few of her rugs to the group. And I certainly didn’t mind helping out. 

I also had been storing some blankets that I’d made up in the warmer months from squares crocheted by a friend. Because so many items that left the K4BN storage shed for distribution , there was now room for more donations. 

These beautiful and warm blankets won’t be in storage for long; they will be distributed very soon. 

A total of 9 blankets made from the bags of donated squares that I’d been given to join. 

And at the moment I’m away interstate for a few days and in spare moments I’m using up some US variegated yarn that a friend brought back as a gift for me years ago, to make a baby blanket; most probably an item for K4BN.

And that’s Wool on Sunday for May 😄

Another Easter; another time

Firstly thank you for all the lovely comments on my previous post on Easter this year.

For some reason this year, my thoughts went back to an Easter long passed. But first a bit of background so I will digress from Easter for a while. 

It was 1971 and in the previous December I had graduated as a teacher. 

I even have a few photos from that graduation night...in my little bedroom getting ready. My long hair has been teased and combed and pinned into curls at the back of my head by the hairdresser in the shop on the main road in our suburb.

Note the cretonne curtains and the vase of daisies on the dressing table...we always had vases of homegrown flowers in my childhood home. 

1971 was the first graduating class ever, where long white dresses weren’t mandatory for the female students...so I made a frock in apricot fabric with a gold braid trim...

This photo shows my mum and I all dressed ready to head off to the Festival Hall...and the cretonne curtains in our lounge room. 😉

After the graduation ceremony, there was the graduation ball at Cloudland...a big night! 

Next day all students gathered in the old Assembly Hall at our Teachers’ College. 

I took this photo before the ceremony started. I’d been looking for this photo for years as the present day university on the site of the old teachers college is always asking for old photos. Amazingly I came across the photo just the other day! 

The occasion was when we were to be given our postings. In those ‘Olden Days’ all of us students were on teaching scholarships and we were guaranteed a job at the end of our course. How lucky were we? 

The next photo is of my friend Linda and I, waiting for the ceremony to begin where we would learn of our first posting.

( I was posted to my local primary school where I had been a student 7 years before and Linda was posted to an Ipswich school where her dad was headmaster.) 

So late in January 1971 I started work as a teacher on probation with a Grade 5 class. 

After a few weeks I decided I didn’t really like the job. By today’s standards, the children were angels but there were 38 of them in my class. If the other Grade 5 teacher was away, ( and this older woman seemed to have a lot of ill health 🤨), I would be expected to open the door between classes and teach both classes, so just under 80 students...unheard of later in my career! 

There were 3 of us graduates appointed to the school that year and as well as our daily program, the headmaster instructed us to write full notes of all lessons in the 5 hours of teaching time. 

So I soon got a bit disillusioned ( and tired) so to keep myself going, I promised myself that if I still hated the job by Easter I would leave even though breaking the bond (2 years service) meant all the scholarship money had to be repaid. Each day as I marked the class roll, I’d count the number of days left before Easter. 

Finally Easter arrived and I was looking forward to that 4 day break. I had bought an Empisal brand sewing machine with one of my first pays as a teacher. 

Here’s an image of that model that I found on the Net.

I spent the weekend cutting out garments and sewing them up...it was so therapeutic. That, plus the fact that mum kept up a supply of toasted hot cross buns and chocolate eggs, my mood lightened. I no longer wanted to walk out on my job and indeed went back with a metaphorical spring in my step. 

And for some reason my thoughts this year turned to that Easter from long ago. 

I didn’t think there were any photos showing that first sewing machine, but when sorting through old photos of their dad for my daughters, I found this one...

There on the right just a glimpse in its plastic case...

I only kept it for 3 years. Its tension problems got to annoy me, so in 1974, Ellie the Elna became my new machine. Still have her and use her despite having  a much newer Janome. 

Easter 2019

Easter has come and gone as has one third of 2019...scary isn’t it? Lol

With the advent of becoming grandparents, so too have new Easter traditions evolved. This year I wrote a letter to Anthea inviting her to help me decorate the shelves of the hutch. Her mum slipped the letter into their letterbox ready for Miss A to find it. She was thrilled 😁. So very soon after she came one morning to help me.

Another newish Easter tradition is an Easter Egg Hunt. 

Two of the grandies were going to be away for Easter, so their egg hunt was a bit early...

Each of the girls received a book in their Easter goodies bag, along with a bunny Easter egg and a little soft bunny.

Miss A went hunting for eggs during the Easter weekend. 

Because Anthea loves ballerinas, her little bunny was dressed in a tutu and ballet shoes and a tiara. 😊

I was a bit self indulgent and went to the Bed Bath and Table 50% off sale and bought some more Easter decorations...

And talking of traditions, this year a group of the Green Hills female parishioners decided we’d wear hats...

So that was Easter 2019

Wool on Sunday

Once again linking with Janine’s monthly feature Wool on Sunday over on her Rainbow Hare blog. here

This month Janine wrote about 2 lovely projects...I loved both! 

So this last month I’ve finished another of my scrappy chevron throws with the same colour ways as usual because I usually buy yarns in my favourite colours! Lol

This is one of the 4 throws that I started mid last year; casting on, knitting about 6 inches on each then popping the started project into a ziplock bag. My reasoning was that I would be more likely to pick up a project that is already started and continue with it rather than dither around when I knew I had to cast on 200 stitches and do foundation rows. And it worked! I now only have 1 project left and 3 throws have, or will have gone to fundraising for charity. 

In last month’s WoS, I wrote about the rainbow baby blanket that I had made for our #5 granddaughter. This prompted DsD3 to suggest that maybe I could make her a rainbow blanket 😉. But instead of the waffle stitch pattern of Meredith’s blanket, DsD3 wondered if she could have something similar to Holly’s blanket that I made in 2017...

Holly on her blankie...note that ‘same old same old’ favourite pattern of mine. 😉😆

So here is the progress on this latest rainbow blanket using just the 7 colours. 

And I’m using a yarn brand I haven’t used before, Paintbox. It’s a lovely soft yarn and very nice to work with. 

With the weather looking like it might at last be cooling down, I look forward to some ‘good knitting weather’. 

Wool on Sunday; March 2019

Once again I’m linking in with Rainbow Hare’s monthly feature, Wool on Sunday.

This month Janine wrote about a particular project which had caused a bit of angst and then as the project was progressing well, it started to become obvious that the pretty pink yarn would run out 🤨 https://rainbowhare.com/2019/03/03/wool-on-sundays-160-an-abrupt-halt/

Originally I meant to write this particular post about something that had happened in early December, in the January post, but completely forgot and wrote about something different. 😆

So... in early December I got a message from DsD1 which featured a photo. 

The photo showed a mini Christmas stocking and regular readers would remember how each year the knitting charity group that I belong to, make and fill such stockings for distribution to the needy in the community. 

DsD1 explained that our granddaughter Abby was given the stocking at a school concert and it was indeed one of the K4BN stockings. 

Now Guluguba is a small locality near the town of Wandoan and is a long way from Brisbane. 

So I set out to find out how K4BN stockings got out that far. 

My search took me to a K4BN member Rita. Last year Rita set herself a personal challenge to Knit 1000 mini stockings...and she did. I was to find out that Rita had indeed made and filled the little stocking that Abby received. 

Rita wanted the children in one of the many drought affected areas of this country to receive her stockings. Apparently her family comes from the area and she still has family there. 

The ‘Family Courier Service’ that Rita mentioned as to how she sent filled stockings out to the area for distribution referred to family  members who travelled out there for a wedding. Then I discovered that DsD1 and Dan had gone to the same family wedding...Dan’s cousin had married Rita’s cousin's daughter!! Definitely a small world 😉😊

And I believe this generous lady is once again knitting mini stockings for K4BN.