Continuing on..

Ballarat went from a warm and sunny 30 deg to 9 deg overnight with drizzle, but by 8:00am Lewis was on a mission to destroy the motel room and Phill had gone off to work so it was time to go. One problem not much is open at 8:00 am, on a whim I tried goggling Ballarat Botanical gardens and much to our delight it was close by and open. We spent 2 hours strolling round the gardens, Lewis spent the whole time asleep in the pram and when it rained they had a lovely big glass house full of the prettiest blue and purple flowers (forgot to see what they were called) but they looked like a really big lobelia.

 A striking display of succulents.

 And lots of roses.

They had a really nice craft cottage too where we bought some finger puppets for playgroup. Next stop was gails patchwork emporium in Sebastapol, which is a very pretty shop with very pretty fabrics. It is jam packed with lots of lace, ribbons, trims and buttons  as well as fabric, patterns, gifts and christmas decos too at this time of year, cant show you what I bought there as it's all going into my chrissy swap parcel. Then it was off to meet the lovely ladies at Eureka patchwork Elisabeth has a very very wide rage of fabrics, if you are ever looking for that perfect fabric to finish a quilt this should be your first port of call, they have one of everything! At the moment they are in discussions with the council over how much of their floor space they can use for display, so there is a lot more fabrics out the back which can be seen on their website.

Hope you enjoyed my whirlwind tour of Ballarat, we certainly had fun!

Road trip

Yesterday was our 20th wedding anniversary. Yes how the heck did I get that old without noticing! Anyway the weatherman was working in Ballarat and suggested that seeing all our weekends are booked up until 2015 sometime why don't I drive up and stay and we could go out for tea. So after a quick phone call to see how many kids I could rent out for the night I took off with just the two little ones for a terribly romantic, well a night out. I even took a frock and heels!!! However that's not he exciting bit, on Monday while looking at the map I discovered I would pass right by Ballan and Mill Rose quiltshop!!!!  After listening to shez and Christine tell their stories about the place well I just had to have a detour. It's much bigger than it looks and the ladies were lovely and friendly, even though Lewis wanted to run after sitting in the car and was making his opinion heard! So we went for a run in the park, a banana and came back to have a second look with a much happier kidlet. I found a few things that had to come home, two repros and some orange, I find it really hard to buy nice orange and yellow. The orange floral and white  is for the background of a double wedding ring quilt with scrappy bright rings. I have been looking at one the Material Obsession girls have been making and fighting to resist but  thought this was a bit of serendipity, finding just the right background on our anniversary!

While we were talking I mentioned I worked for Karen, from Mrs Martins, they had her confused with someone else. We got it straightened out when I said "the one who wears the scissors through her head!"Ah yes now they knew who I was talking about and so will you if you've ever seen her out at a show! More about the Ballarat quilt shops next time......

FNSI

Catching up with FNSI which I joined in with at sugarlanequilts I did get motivated to do a little stitching, after watching Miss Fisher of course. I made the centre block for a quilt and then started stitching the rows together.

It looks a little crumpled, it was trampled by a rampaging 4 yr old and her baby brother when I was out on Sunday.

Just a little bit more sewing and the top will be together.
Had some lovely weather today so we got out in the garden and I took some photos while the spring flowers were still blooming.

The Christmas lilies are out along with the alstromeras, I think that's how you spell it, and the pinks are always pretty, my philosophy is to crowd the weeds out, can you tell? I also found a strawberry thief or maybe a garden gnome?

There was also a lot of bike riding going on while I hung out the washing, gotta love a pink motorbike!

Tulley is always ready to pose for a photo, what a joy to be 4 and want your photo taken!

Swaps!

Another lovely parcel from Wendy, my swap partner in Mrs martins gift fairy swap.

Always beautifully wrapped, and inside a very clever block, just right for my sewing corner and a quiltmaker magazine.

ok hope you can see it sideways as blogger still likes to turn my pictures randomly. It's so clever and I think I will frame it to go up on the wall, and I have never seen a quiltmaker mag in the flesh, only online so I hope I will get a chance to hide away with that this weekend. It has an article on quilting feathers which is something I'd like to try. I'm also in for the FNSI at sugarlanequilts to try and get a couple of projects finished off. Here's a taste of what I have been working with, even the selvedge is cute!

Have a great weekend

Expert needed!

My Anzac biscuits won't flatten and spread, they sit  there in little piles looking at me, out of desperation half way through cooking I get the spatula and flatten them down before they set, but I'm sure that's not how my Nan made them! Here's the recipe I use and it's the same as my Nan used, it's from the  Family Circle cookbook.

Hope you can read it sideways!
Here's the results, perfectly tasty but forcibly flattened!

I'm sure someone knows what's going on.