Quilting Meme

Susan has made up a quilt related meme so I have decided to have a go at it.

Bold for what you have done (mine's in purple as well),
italic for what you want to do and
leave the rest plain.

1880s reproduction fabric
1930s or feedsack fabric
3D folded flowers
Afro American improvisational style quilt
american piecing by hand
american piecing by machine
Amish style quilt
Anjii's Angles
baby quilt
bag
baltimore applique
Cathedral Windows
celtic applique / bias work
christmas themed [ quilt, wallhanging, stocking, etc ]
colourwash
cotton fabrics
crazy patchwork
curved piecing by hand
curved piecing by machine
embellished with embroidery, beads, etc
english paper piecing by hand
exhibited a quilt overseas
foundation piecing
full sized bed quilt
had an original design published
hand applique [ needle turned ]
hand applique tacked edges
hand applique with fusible / blanket stitch
hand dyed fabric [ yours or someone else's]
hand quilting (tried but failed dismally)
I spy
item for an animal
japanese design
kaleidoscope or mandala [ not stack and whack]
landscape quilt
log cabin
machine applique
machine embroidered
machine quilting
made a prize winning quilt
made a quilt on commission
McTavishing
medallion quilt
miniature
nine patch
non traditional quilt
participated in a group challenge
patchwork or quilted clothing
pillow
quillow
quilt as you go (doing my first at the moment)
quilted commercially with a longarm machine
raffle quilt [ all or part ]
reverse applique [ hand or machine ]
round robin
row by row
sampler quilt
sashiko
scrap quilt
seminole
silk fabrics
sold a quilt other than a commission piece
stack and slash
stack and whack
stained glass quilt [ any method ]
stencilled quilt
strip or string piecing
taught quilting at any level
tea cosy
traditional quilt
trapunto
whole cloth
woollen fabrics
written a quilt book

Signs of Spring??

About this time last year I noticed a little plant in the back yard (mind you our backyard is a triangle about 1m x 12m x 4m) . We had just cut down a gum that had been damaged in a storm and found it under the rubbish on the ground. I decided to leave it and see what it would grow into.

Over the past year it has shot up and is now about 3 1/2 m tall - it is a wattle., not sure which one - looks a little like a Queensland Silver wattle. Some lovely visiting birds must have 'dropped' the seeds.

Over the past two months the tree has been budding and I have been looking and waiting to see the flowers open.

Didn't hang any washing on Thursday, yesterday we had a really decent lot of rain and I didn't hang any clothes outside but today.......

What a lovely surprise when I went out to hang the washing - the sun was just getting up and 'hitting' the tree and amongst the green leaves some beautiful fluffy balls of gold.

It seems to like spring when you see new flowers opening up. I know that this is a winter flowering wattle but when I look outside and see the golden flowers it just brightens everything up

PS - Some wattle are very fast growers - they also have a short life span - this one has thrived on neglect - only gets water when it rains, I have never watered it, cared for it, trimmed it. I just admire it! Of course, now that it has had flowered when they die off I will trim it hard to stop it from seeding as it is very invasive. Also if left unchecked will grow about 5m-7m but will only live about 10 years.

An Inconvenient Truth

Last night I watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

I have always been a 'greenie' - I can remember when I was about 12 my father, who had spent his life on the sea as a fisherman, was offered a post on a whaler. It would mean we would have to live on Norfolk Island (I think that was the island), anyway I can remember carrying on a treat, telling my parents I would never speak with them again. My parents didn't go, my father refused the job but it had nothing to do with my tantrums more an economic decision. Anyway, I was a greenie way back then and still am.

I have had solar hot water for about 25 years, put in a water tank 2 years ago, planted trees on my tiny suburban block, switch to power saving light bulbs and water devices, turn off my computer, printer, etc when I am not using them - I don't keep anything on standby if I can help it - I switch off, and, hopefully, by the end of the year I will have solar electricity on my roof to decrease the amount of electricity I use from suppliers.

Watching the movie last night made me wonder how many of us really try and do our part or do we leave it up to governments and big business to sort out. A lot of people and governments have an 'ostrich' attitude to climate change but what will that mean to our grandchildren?

How about everyone who reads this blog entry does 5 things to help reduce their impact on climate change?

Then how about they get five friends to do the same - then get each of those five friends to get five friends and so on. Let's see how many people we can get to make just five changes.

So go on tag 5 people to join us now!

Put the sign on your blog site to remind people to make changes - I have made a simple one to use, just right click and save it to post.

Please link to the blogsite Pledge Your Support to Save the Planet
so we can keep a tally of how many people join us.

Add your comments to the new site and send your friends to it so they can read the message too - If you leave a comment on the other site and post the banner on your blog I will add your link to our growing list.

Let's see if we can start our own blog virtual march of supporters!

The Meaning of Life is 42

I was tagged last week for a Thinking Blogger Award and so I have now thunk it…!

As we all know the meaning of life is 42 but I wanted to delve a little deeper.

This morning as I was feeding the magpie lodgers (see April New Residents) and my mind wandered off into that weird area that sometimes happens (in me anyway), - I thought that the magpies are serving a purpose on good ole Mother Earth – they eat insects. Now if all the birds that ate insects were to disappear we would be over run with the little critters – Mother Nature’s balance.

That in turn got me to wonder about us as a species – of all the creatures on earth we are the only ones that, to me at least, don’t have a purpose. If the human race were wiped out tomorrow it wouldn’t effect the balance of nature or earth except, I imagine, Gaia would breathe a sigh of relief and figure she could now heal the planet after we stuffed it up (sorry to those readers who subscribe to Genesis/AlmightlyBeing).

The average person is born, raises a family and dies – leaving a barely registered footprint – we haven’t done anything spectacular – we have lived, enjoyed our lives but not left anything remarkable except our children, who begin the cycle again. OK, there are people who do leave an indent – people like Einstein, Stephen Hawkings, Louis Pasteur, Mother Theresa even Attila the Hun through to Bill Gates whose claim to fame is that he has a disgustingly large amount of money and he inflicted Windows onto 80% of us computer nerds. Each in their own way has affected the way we live but without any of them the world would still turn and in some instances damn better too.

So what does this all mean? What the hell are we on the earth for anyway? Is there some ulterior purpose that we haven’t discover or is it all from the mice? (Those of you who cannot understand the references to mice and 42 need to read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and all will be made clear)

Don’t get me wrong – I love being here, wouldn’t swap it for anything but in the far reaching depths of my mind I look at my magpies knowing they have a real purpose and then I do wonder what the hell we are supposed to do while we are here beside destroying each other and the Earth?

In accordance with the rules of this tag I, in turn, must tag 5 bloggers who make me think.

Therefore I tag
Molly Brawn Chronicles she makes me laugh and think at the same time
Stomper Girl a wit with a climber & a cherub, not to forget Mr Fixit
Two Lime Leaves I love her wonderful mosaics
Rooruu who take wonderful pictures; and
Ali The Quilting Orchardist (I love reading of her adventures with kiwi fruit)

Those were the days ....... part 2

Continued from the last posting ....

When we got a cold or a sore throat Mum would give us Heenzo. It was some concoction made from a concentrate purchased at the Chemist. Mum would mix it with vinegar, sugar and water and it would sit on the shelf in a great big bottle waiting patiently for us to sniffle or sneeze. (See poem at end of story) Oh yes, hands up those who had a camphor bag around their neck? Mum made little tiny bags that were pinned to our singlets and inside was a camphor block. We wore them all winter long, sitting in the classroom smelling of camphor.

In school we wrote with a scratchy pen, nib and ink. If you were well behaved you got to mix up the ink for the week and pour it into inkwells in each desk, its was a watery wash out blue. Later, when I was about 10 I was given a fountain pen by Mum and Dad, whoa, was that a technical marvel! When I went to High School, I had a fountain pen with a drop-in cartridge so you didn’t need to fill them from a bottle anymore.

There were no supermarkets. We had corner stores, which were not necessarily on a corner. Our sugar and flour was carefully weighed up, while we waited, in brown paper bags. Biscuits were bought from a big tin by the pound or half pound. We selected the sort we wanted or we could buy broken biscuits – those left over at the bottom of the big tin. Bread was bought fresh by the loaf or the half loaf, wrapped in tissue paper, but beware …... if you were sent to the shop to buy half a loaf of bread there was no guarantee that it would have a centre by the time you got home. The taste of fresh warm bread torn from the centre of the loaf is still one of my fondest memories. Mum would make our food from scratch. If she wanted a pie, she would make the pastry, cook the filling and add it all together. Remember the smell of the kitchen when you got home from school, the roast in the oven, freshly baked biscuits and cake.

There was no such thing as Fast Food - I guess the only thing that would come close was the local Fish and Chips shop but even these were not around when I was young; think I was in my teens when they started to become available. You could buy a penny worth of chips (about 1 cent), but it was a special treat and not something that was a regular occurance.

Our mothers' cooked all our food, there was always biscuits in the tin and cake and every night we all sat around the table and talked to eat other. We ate what was put before us, we didn't leave the table until we had finished and we never got up from the table without asking.

When you bought a pound of tea, it came in a cardboard box and you had to keep the label. Once a year, Mum would take us into the city and we would get our new shoes for the next years schooling, look at the Christmas windows in DJs (David Jones) and trade in the Lan Choo tea labels.

A large room would have on display all sorts of wonders – teapots to tea towels, sheets to trays, dishes to cutlery, cooking pans and pots to scales and rolling pins. And beside every item was a little card telling you how many labels you needed for that item. Things like 50 labels for a tea towel, the more expensive the item the more labels were needed. It was fun to look through all those “free” gifts and make suggestions for what Mum should choose.

After shopping we would have lunch in the City. What a treat! Sometimes we would go to the Woolworth’s cafeteria where you sat on stools and watched the food go along a little conveyor belt waiting for the waitress to collect it and bring it to the counter for you. It was fun to say “look there’s my milkshake” and watch hoping the waitress would miss seeing it and it would ride the conveyor belt back out to the kitchen then back around again for another loop.

If Mum was feeling rich we would have lunch at Cahills. I can never remember the meals there but I can always remember the dessert – ice cream cake with caramel sauce. A scoop of ice cream wedged between two pieces of fresh sponge cake topped with cream, then a generous helping of their famous caramel sauce poured over the top. Mmmmmmm. If we were extra lucky Mum would buy a cardboard tub of caramel sauce to take home, what a joy!

My eldest sister worked for the MLC, she would check the new policies. At the MLC they had punch card operators who would punch out information to work out the bonuses on policies. It was very modern and very technical. Sometimes she would bring the punch cards home for us to see. Great big rectangles made of cardboard with tiny rectangular holes punched into them to represent the information. The computer took up the whole floor of the building; nowadays she could have bought the whole computer home as a laptop!

And then there were members of the opposite sex. By the time I was 13 or so, I was pretty interested in boys. I had a few boyfriends and we would walk to the pool or meet there and hold hands. If he was very forward or if we had been going together for a long time, he might even kiss me on the lips. Shock horror! Sleeping together was something our parents did or if we had relations to visit you might have to sleep with your sister. We couldn’t imagine the steamy sex side of relationships; they just didn’t exist at that age.

Girls who were considered “fast” generally kissed on the first date. The rest of us would whisper about them behind their backs. As we grew older, around 15, sex began to be more detailed and most of the girls my age knew someone who had “gone all the way”. Sadly those girls generally ended up pregnant with their babies adopted out and their school life and dreams shattered. One of my friends became pregnant, I remember she was studying ballet and hope to become a dancer with a ballet company. She was around 15, her parents locked her away, and I never knew what became of her or her child.

Every Sunday, after lunch, my parents would take the family for a drive. Everyone would pile into the car and we would set off for some place around Sydney - Kurnell, Blue Mountains, Sans Souci or just driving around. There would be a thermos of tea for mum and dad and one for us kids filled with cocoa. My mother always called my dad the “Human Compass” and no matter where we went he could always find his way back home. I can remember when I was 15 we moved to Guildford in Sydney’s West. Off we would go for our Sunday drives and Dad would say “lets go down this street or up that one” and before we knew it we were lost, but somehow he used to always find Cowpasture Road, a long meandering road, once we landed on that he knew exactly where he was. Once we ended up in a place called Blacktown. A place way out in the bush, that only had a few houses and a shop or two. I remember my parents commenting on how far away it was. Guess where I now live and have lived for nearly 30 years – Blacktown!

When my sisters were older they were allowed to stay home or go out with their friends, I, on the other hand, always had to go on the drives.

This photo was taken C 1955 at Narooma - we went to the snowy mountains in Winter in the canvas tent. The other photo shows some of our wonderful winter clothing..... lol

Whenever my sisters went we would entertain ourselves by singing all the latest songs. My sisters used to buy the “Boomerang Songbooks”. These were little paperback booklets with the words of the latest top 40 songs in them. So there we would be driving around Sydney, singing at the top of our voices, with no musical accompaniment, no car radios in those days. I wonder now how my parents managed to put up with it. I know I have no singing voice and I don’t recall my sisters having much better.

Well, those good old days have long gone but I can recall them all with love and laughter.

Would I like to go back there again? Okay some things were better. I regret not being able to walk in safety in daylight and night but there is always a price to pay for progress. And I regret the loss of innocence for our children and grandchildren, they are forced to grow up long before they should. Childhood should last until their mid teens or longer but sadly often today its gone at 10. Drugs, peer pressure, sex and alcohol are introduced to our children long before they have the maturity to say No.

But still there are many advances that have improved our life – advances in medicine; technology has brought the world closer together; more opportunities for women;

For me personally – my husband and our wonderful sons, their beautiful partners, all whom I love dearly. The opportunities I’ve had to travel and be educated.

Not to mention owning my home and how could I give up my computer, the internet, mobile phones and DVD’s, my own car and the freedom to drive wherever and whenever I want. I can go to the supermarket and buy anything from anywhere. I can watch countless television programs from every corner of the world; watch movies with dinosaurs or aliens, ride on trains or spaceships. With the internet I have friends all over the world and I can “talk” to them daily with my keyboard and share my life. I can walk into a shop and buy Chinese vegetables, grown by Australians who were born in Europe. No longer is it meat and two veg for tea. Now I can have Thai stir fries; Italian pastas; Russian Chicken; with French pastries or British puddings. I can drink wine from anywhere in the world or bottle water from the world’s purest springs.

Because of the wonders of modern medicine, I can still be with my husband who was diagnosed with a brain tumour over thirteen years ago. He had experimental radiotherapy and a year ago, chemotherapy. Thanks to medical technology I can cuddle my beautiful grandson. He was born with a congenital heart defect – tetralogy of fallot – that would have meant a very short life span if he had been born in the 30’s or 40’s, instead we can look forward to a full and rewarding life for him.

I wouldn’t swap any of it for the world but I wouldn’t say no to another 100 or so years to hear my grandson say – I grew up in the 10’s and the 20’s – ah, those were the days!

Those were the days ..........

I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s. So the saying goes, “those were the days”.

We would walk to school and home again each day, except if it was raining and then we would reluctantly catch a bus. So what, lots of kids still walk to school but we lived about 3 ½ -4 kilometres from it and thought nothing of walking the distance and further. We would walk to the local swimming pool, a mere 4 kilometres and then back home again.

School lunches were packed by Mum and if you were very lucky on Mondays the school sold pies. For recess (little lunch/morning tea) you got a bottle of milk provided by the school. The milk was delivered by the milko each morning and left outside under the trees. If you had been very good at school and extra lucky you were given a skewer and had the privilege of stabbing each bottle to pierce the foil lid and stick in a straw.

Milk was delivered to everyone's home in the early hours of the morning and came in glass bottles. Some people were really lucky and got their bread delivered also. On Fridays sometimes the vegie man came around in his cart and sold fresh vegetables and fruit; those that your parents didn't grow.

When I was young there were no inside toilets - the toilet was situated down the end of the yard, well away from the house. The toilet was emptied by carters who come once a week to empty it for you. No such thing as sewers.....lol.

We walked to the movies, every town had a movie house. On Saturdays in the wintertime off we would walk to the local cinema about 4 kilometres. Sadly, it close down when I was about 8 and we had to catch a bus to the next one although occasionally we’d walk the 10 kilometres or so. Still, wintertime saw us all lined up for the Saturday afternoon movie. Being daring and brave we would get a 'pass out' at interval and go home. Then the following week we would come back for the show after interval using our pass out that we had kept from the week before. There were always two movies, one before and the other after interval. There was the Movietone news of the world and a cartoon, and sometimes an episode of a serial. Sometimes we would sit upstairs dropping lollies on people’s heads, and yes, we did roll Jaffas down the aisle.

At home each night after tea the family would gather around the radio, no tiny transistor, this was a magnificent piece of furniture. We would listen to the latest episode of "Superman", "Yes, What?" remember the character Greenbottle? Or "McCakie Mansion" and "The Green Door". It was so exciting listening to those tall tales. How they fuelled our imagination. During the day Mum would listen to the “soapies” - When a Girl Marries”, or “Blue Hills” and many others. Television did not arrive until I was about 8 and then it was black and white and about 40cm wide and everything locally produced.

My middle sister had an old Vauxhall car, built in 1937. We painted it the same colour as our house with paint that Dad had left over. It was a great car. When she was a bit older she bought a VW and boy did we have fun in that car too. Those were the days of no seat belts and many friends. We use to pile about 9 of us into the VW. Those of us that were lucky got to sit in the front. Usually only 3, the rest jammed into the back, including the package space, sometimes we even had a dog shoved in too. OK, looking back I know it was really silly and we were very lucky that my sister was a good driver and never had an accident but I can still recall the fun of it all.

Do you remember, those of you who are my vintage or older, how you could go for a walk at night in absolute safety? My sisters and I would wander the streets after tea; I was probably only about 6 when I can first remember doing this and my sisters 13 and 16. Yet we were as safe as if we were locked up tight in a castle. My parents had no concerns for our safety because there really was no danger. If you went out through the day or night, you could leave your windows open. Often the house was unlocked. No one would every think of breaking in. Those walks at night were fun and often we would pick flowers from the gardens we passed to bring home for Mum. Every one would do the same thing and hardly anyone was offended by it.

We had crackers on Cracker night. Actually we had them for a few weeks right up till the big night. Tuppeny bungers guaranteed to blow a can sky-high! Yes, we did blow up letter boxes with them. And rockets that we thought went to the moon. Remember throw downs? Little squares filled with tiny pebbles that you threw to the ground, they landed with a bang and threw the pebbles outward (often into the legs of the person you were aiming at). And what about Tom Thumbs? Little tiny bungers that you bought on a string, all laced together. You would unlace one or light the whole lot together.

For weeks leading up to the big night, the local kids would gather bits of wood to make a bonfire. Then on the big night we would all get together, light the bonfire and let off all our crackers, including the special ones our parents had managed to hide and keep secret from us. Crackers with magical names like Fiery Dragons, Catharine Wheels, Jumping Jacks. Sky Rockets, Flower Pots, Roman Candles and of course Sparklers.

STAY TUNED TO BE CONTINUED..................