Rosie & Ripley

We had a delightful Farewell lunch with Mum and Dad today, the tiny tiny little things behind them are a constant delight to grandchildren and great grandchildren. The photo top left is of Michael, my brother Tim's son currently racing in Hong Kong.

Wills and Powers

Spent a pleasant hour with Peter this afternoon signing new Wills and Power of Attorney, another job ticked off our list!! 7 more sleeps!!

Keith & Liuxin

We a lovely lunch with Keith and Liuxin today. Behind the quilt Liuxin is holding (which is a project for a magazine) you can see just a corner of the quilt she has entered into a Quilt Show in Japan, one of the conditions of entering this show is that your quilt hasn't been shown before... I've seen it and it is... as expected... Spectacular! My lips are sealed!

Tennis Friends

I'll miss my weekly game of tennis and the occasional lunch with my friends.

Abigail Rose & Tomos

Look what's waiting for us in London...

Sunny Sunday

After yesterday's grey day with just a hint of rain, that didn't eventuate, Sydney is back to a brilliantly Sunny Sunday with a max of 21c... London is expecting 24c today and getting warmer during the week... it looks like the temp change won't be much different in 10 days time.

David was off early to drive his Albion Double Decker to Bankstown for a celebration. Gwilym and Emily slept here last night or should I say this morning, they didn't get in from partying till after 3am and were off by 10 with Em's parents Meg and Chris who are down from Brisbane celebrating a combination of family birthdays and Fathers Day. Lucky Pennie is left home alone and working hard at packing her hand sewing :-)

Only nine sleeps to go.

Moving In.

I sold the 'Baby Pug' today (our 306 Peugeot), the first time I've ever sold a car by myself... a delightful young girl bought it with her brothers help and doesn't want it till we leave so how clever am I eh??

David arrived home from Denhams in time for lunch with Gwilym, Emily and their friend Chris who helped move all their goods and chattels into our home. Gwil and Em are looking after not only the home, but the garden and the mail while we are away... we are so lucky they wanted to save up for their planned Overseas trip in 2006, we couldn't have left the house empty and they will do a terrific job.

Filming.

Gillian and Phillip are interviewing and filming David about the restoration of his almost 70 year old Leyland Double Decker Bus, they are making a Documentary about all sorts of people who restore vehicles.

After midday David drove down to Denhams Beach (5 hour drive) to deliver then pick up some furniture left in his late mothers Beach House. Little by little bit by bit we are ticking off the chores.

It's Spring!

Thirteen more Sleeps and counting down!!

Today has a lovely feeling of Spring in the air, the garden is full of colour the sky is cloudless and the maximum temperature is 19c, the same as in London so the Sydney Morning Herald tells me.

I have a relaxed feeling because so many things have been done or are under control and are no longer playing havoc with my mind, I won’t relax too much though I’ll leave that for the trip over. I’ve ticked off... Tax, Taxman and Accountant, House Insurance, Cars, Cleaners, Gardener, Doctors, Health Insurance, Passports, Tickets, money and all sorts of little incidentals. Clothes have been bought - some of you may not realize how big a statement that is for me, shopping and Pennie have never liked each other!

Yesterday I finished off my sewing ‘Must Do’ list so only have my lovely little half inch hexagons to play with, today the bathroom got the best scrubbing it’s ever had, the pool has a lovely new cover so will keep out all the leaves and bark that will start to fall off the Lemon Scented Gums soon... and the garden is lovely and tidy.

Tomorrow I’ll get a hair cut and renew my drivers licence because it will expire while we are away, I have to take my ticket in lieu of a renewal notice I’ve been told. Friday David is having another film session with a couple of people who are making a documentary about his restoration of his Leyland Double Decker Bus.

We’ve enjoyed having my sister Meredith and husband Bill staying for 10 days and we’ll see them in the UK in January. A day has been put aside to spend with Mum and Dad, I have presents for them :-)

Nerys, Tim & Jackson Harry with Tim’s brother Simon are in Noosa visiting Tim’s Dad and Sue, Briony and Joon are planning a trip to Korea for her to meet Joon’s family they also plan a visit to London at Christmas time and Gwilym and Emily are moving into ‘333’ on Saturday they will be organizing their travel plans for their April 2006 trip tomorrow.

We celebrated 4 birthdays in style last weekend because we will miss the real birthdays for Briony, Jackson Harry, Nerys and Gwilym, it was another lovely family day with BBQed Turkey on the menu so they wouldn’t miss out this year. Only one more family party to come on the 4th of September when we will celebrate Fathers Day and David’s birthday which isn’t till November, I will go all out at the Fish Markets I think.

Emma and Abi are back in London after a stay in Monaco, Tomos tells me the kitchen is almost finished but they still don’t have any hot water! Abigail Rose is absolutely adorable when we chat to her via the Web Cam she crawls and explores and plays then gives us a great big smile! She will be 9 months old when we get to see her and I can tell she is looking forward to a good cuddle from her Aussie Grandmother.

‘Far Pavilions’ is closing in London on September 17th which is a relief to Tomo, we will miss it but by all accounts it wasn’t the worlds best musical. This means Tomo will be available to audition for other shows.

Off to my last sew and chat with the ‘Ku-ring-gai’s’ tonight... another group of friends I will miss.

Meredith & Bill

My sister Meredith and her husband Bill are staying with us for 10 days while they sell Meredith's very cleverly hand made stained glass brooches and hangings, here they are at Rosehill.

Jackson Harry

David reading to Jackson Harry, I took this photo through the kitchen window so as not to disturb them.

Four Generations at Play!

Lovely Family Day at Nerys, Tim and Jackson Harry's home with Tim's brother Simon helping out with the cooking. After a terrific lunch a very loud game of Backyard Football was played, the two teams competing were the 'Rodds' and the 'Rest of the World' otherwise known as 'The Partners'... the Spectators Gallery was almost full to capacity. Backyard Cricket finished off a great day... Thanks Nerys and Tim!

Hand Sewing

These are my first Hexagon Diamond blocks, they will be my hand sewing while we are away. Today I calculated how much fabric I will need to take, I didn't want to take too much but then again I don't want to take too little... I don't know how many Patchwork Shops I will come across. I've cut enough fabric to make 40 Diamonds each of 5 different colour ways. That's 36 Hexagons in one Diamond times 40 = 1,440. 1,440 X 5 = 7,200 Hexagon shapes needed.

Trivia Night

David organized this year's Annual Dinner for the HCVA (Historic Commercial Vehicle Association). He found the venue, wrote the questions and played MC... it was a very successful fun evening and not only did he look very handsome in his dinner suit he did a brilliant job. The winning table, by a couple of points, was a group of SCQuilters whose aim it is to attend as many different Trivia Nights as they can, they did manage to score a total of 'zero' on the Tough Transport questions but came through on the last round of Trivia. We all had a great night.

Laugh!

Lots of laughs last night, firstly Tim’s brother Simon arrived from Stoke in England just before 9pm... two hours late but we knew that so it wasn’t a problem. The flight was late because a woman on board went into labour so they had to make an emergency landing in Deli of all places... A little girl was born in India but we don’t know the nationality of the mother or anything. How about that to spoil your planned Australian birth eh??   It was wonderful to meet Simon at last and he was excited to be in Australia for the first time.

Secondly... Gwilym, Emily and I went to the Airport to try out my ‘Airport’  on my iBook.   We could get up the Sydney Airport Homepage but couldn’t do any emails or anything, I could have if my server was Telstra or Optus and I think I could have if I was in the Qantas Lounge or something.

Anyway we gave that a miss but on the way home Emily sat in the back of the car with the computer on watching the ‘Airport’ icon... By this time It’s around 10 at night and every now and then she’d say ‘We’re on to (some strange name)... Oh no we need a password’  then as we got over the Harbour Bridge she got a connection but we were on a freeway and couldn’t pull over so lost it.  At last as we were going around a roundabout at Naremburn we connected again... I had to get out of the roundabout of course and we lost it so I backed as close as I could, no luck so ended up turning around and going around the roundabout to see where the signal was the strongest, I parked as close as I could.  

We were on the corner of Chandos and Oxley Streets, St Leonard’s using a wireless connection called NBS and not needing a password... I think in polite circles this is called hacking isn’t it??  :-))    Anyway after writing an email which bounced for some because my Yahoo wasn’t connected to Gmail, we decided to try and Skype Tomos... And we did!!   Talk about laugh...  There were the three of us all staring at a small laptop in a small car in the middle of one of the coldest nights in Sydney laughing to Tomos in London who had our long time friend Merv with him... Better than the movies it was.

Quilts to Westmead Children's Hospital

Yesterday we delivered 15 quilts to Westmead Children's Hospital, these quilts were made by numerous members of the Southern Cross Quilters (my online friends) the quilts will be given to teenage boys over the next few weeks.

The Story behind these Quilts...
Before the SCQuilters Retreat in Sydney last March we called for donations of 8 inch blocks... Black & White with a Touch of Colour suitable for a teenage boy... a prize was given for the best block. More than 300 blocks arrived so I sorted them into themes such as 9 patch, stars, pinwheels or novelty and 13 SCQuilters took a bundle each to turn into Quilt Tops. Machine Quilters were then called for and they volunteered from all over Sydney, Canberra, as far North as Hervy Bay in Queensland, South to Melbourne in Victoria and West to Orange in NSW. When the quilts came back to me several Sydney SCQuilters helped me bind and label them. Then out of the blue two Quilters donated fully finished quilts which made our total donation 15.

The first photo is of the pile of finished quilts and the second is of Lyn, Michelle and myself being taken on a tour of the Hospital... here we are in the kitchens.

Spring!

Six Daffodils have come up to wave their cheery faces to us, a little early for Spring, which is still one month away but it was nice of them to come... it reminds me that I will miss our beautifully perfumed Liliams but Gwilym and Emily will enjoy them.

Flowers, Bugs and Bees

I made this quilt for Briony, it took me three and a half years to hand sew the hexagons into flowers, join them up with the blue hexagons then design and sew the centre piece consisting of a Jug of Flowers. Sewing hexagons by fussy cutting the fabrics can be fun, especially when you see what the finished flower looks like. My friend, Nicole Bridges quilted my quilt brilliantly and what a thrill it is to see it on the front cover of Down Under Quilts. Hexagons are great handwork to take when you are on the move so I've started a new hexagon quilt for the months we will be in the UK.