Sojourn, not a sewjourn....

And here we go..









First day of a little trip away, first time Mummy has been away overnight... goodness...



And she goes away for a week!!

Wow, look at the difference a night of uninterrupted sleep makes!!!

 A trip to Melbourne, celebrating some fun discoveries....

What a fun juice shop... it smelt amazing!

Hello my darling friends Rosie and Andrea from Made By Andrea. 

This is a darling place Andrea loves with its chocolate and high teas.

 Walking past this sweet garden bed to get to....

L'ucello! Wow, what a beautiful find this little shop is!

 A vintage look paradise.... lots of ideas.. and right in the city... I would've gone there every day for lunch...

Every display is a delight.

You'd never know it was in this funny little building with an old fashioned lift.

I do love a bit of plant life in a decorating scheme.

And then there was this little part of the city..

 Look at the trees growing out of the windows... it's Storyville, the bar!

Ohhh yes!

It's fun to be a grown up girl that can visit these places!

 Alice in Wonderland garden.

The big mushroom, is there a caterpillar on top?

And don't forget a swing!!!

Everyone should get to try one!

I love being a grown up!!

 And a girl!!

 Another beautiful catchup with Robin...

A quick dropin to Spellbox, and what an appropriate spin of the wheel "Oracle of Adventure"!!

What a fascinating piece this is! I'll have it!

And this one too!

And a wee sugarfree ice cream for me in the Royal Arcade...

And the vegetarian heaven where you can get a Chick'n parmagiana (all meat free) or chips and poutine!

Hmm... what's next? Meeting Lynley from Perth, and we are off to a women's festival!

 Still no sewing! Hahahahah

Making mud angels

You may be wondering where all the sewing show and tell is.... Me too!

The concrete holes have been pumped out, and the mud has been pumped out here into the yard... and this has kept a 3 years and 4 month old boy especially, in trouble!  

There is no point starting to sew when I can be covered in mud at any time. Here is a little example...

Ooh, miss 7 lost her gumboot.

 Master 8 is pulling it out.

Master 3 skipped the gumboots, and is just having fun getting stuck.

And now he is lying on his back and kicking like he is at a swimming lesson. Hahahahah.

Making mud angels.

Hmm... maybe I can sew next week...

Gypsy

Oh I love this cloth! This is the perfect cloth for divination - tea leaf reading, tarot cards, runes, oracle cards, iching, scrying... all in the heart of the gypsy....

I appliqued this gypsy lady in shimmery and sparkly fairy frost fabrics, then added hand rendered details with fabric paint and free motion machine embroidery.

Ooh! She is divine! I will have to make one for myself another time.

Are we sewing yet?

Well, it's relatively back to normal here, and we counted our lucky stars that our power was on the entire time, we enjoyed air conditioning and fans throughout the monsoon and our floors were not flooded to cause ongoing damage.

So much water fell that that dam was at about 13 percent capacity and was suddenly about to overflow. If it went over the edge, the dam may have broken entirely, and flooded the whole of Townsville. And so, a decision was made to release water that flooded the town's river. Many areas of town were evacuated and their homes were flooded.

Sacrificing some to protect more than that.

And so it's a time to be grateful. The children wanted to bake, so we made these profiteroles, which love a wet, steam oven.

We have linked up a series of steel planks to get around the yard so that we are not getting bogged.

 But that doesn't stop the children playing in the mud anyway! Hahahah

Hopefully some more stitching soon!

Not floating away yet

We are still here after a few tense days. I couldn't concentrate on the cloak enough to give it the attention it needed, so I stopped working on it for now.

These eskies had to go up on the trampoline so they wouldn't float away.

That is a cubby there. The water was up 10cm in the bottom of it. Can you see that the toy trucks were placed on the roof for safe keeping?

This was all underwater only days earlier.

All this tension made me grateful.... Very grateful it was a new moon.

Did you know the moon's gravity causes tides because it attracts the ocean? So the high tides are always higher at full moon, and lowest at new moon.

And thank the goddess it was a new moon, or the water would have been inside our inner sanctuary.

Perfect time to create a set of two moon phase pillowcases to celebrate.

This colour is difficult to photograph. But trust me, they are bluer than this, and the moon phases are in a shimmery golden creamy fairy frost fabric.

Totally missed my birthday as we were rained in, and so I look forward to celebrating soon to make it up.

Rain Days

The rain fell and fell and fell.

We were worried about the power going off. I was so relieved and satisfied to have so much fresh, frozen and long life food on hold in case we were blocked off for a long time. We can get blocked off from the road in wet season.

I needed some distraction. Look at this beautiful, sumptious velvet. Pure wool velvet I bought at less than half price. I needed a lot of metreage for this project, and would never have bought it at $50 per metre.

Tentatively, I took the first stitches..... I wanted to really focus on this while stitching, to give it the attention it needed to work and turn out beautifully.

Slow and steady, zigazagging edges too...

Would you look at the lint you get from a glowing wool velvet after only one bobbin of sewing!!!

And then this plush and fluffy hood lining and cuffs....

Oh! Look at these colours together!!!

But this only distracted me for a little while....

The wet came 2 months early, and we were relieved that we had half the holes for the house footings concreted., although the other half were filling with mud and water and were constantly caving in.

Salvaging the holes by sucking out water and mud then filling with more concrete increases the cost of the build, and we were worried about the rising level of the water.

For a while, we kept our eyes on the water levels by pulling on the cardboard that had been the formwork for the concrete footings.  The air and water were warm as you can see.

Fresh rain water, checking out what was floating along, and a little boy loving the splash and fun in the water.

Let's hope it eases up soon.