Queens birthday weekend.

I'm a day late posting this, but I lost that day!
I'll let you know if it turns up again!

It was a long weekend here, the Queens birthday no less, gawd bless her. I find it quite funny that we get a day off for it here in NZ and yet in the UK we didn't. Wonder what sort of cake she's having?

On Saturday we were busy for most of the day just sorting out stuff, filling the Landrover with things to take to the dump and I cleared a lot of my craft stuff out of the barn in readiness for a party that our neighbours are organising for a family member. I figured that they wouldn't want to do any sewing, so apart from a couple of projects that need to be done on the table tennis table, everything is back in my craft room. It gets cold and damp up the barn in the winter so necessary to bring it all back in.

I'm working on another one of these..

It's all pinned and I started hand quilting it at Thursday craft, now being held at Jan's. The trouble is I missed the big table and realised when I got it home that two out of the three rows needed to be pulled out and redone, it had all bunched up! Bugger! Anyway it took a fraction of the time to re-do them. So this wasn't really a portable project at that stage.

Sunday we were up and out early, we went to the Farmers Market that's held every Sunday in Hamilton.

How cute is this wee guy with his little trolley? 

This 'statue' stands there all day like that, then when someone puts some money in his bucket he fires his gun! Scares the shit outta some people, bloody hysterical.

Here's the guy who makes our Sunday Farmers Market breakfast

 A Chicken & sweetcorn pasty, just one of the yummy flavours he does.
Washed with a cup of flat white coffee.

 

 Followed by waffles (from another stall) with blueberry jam and cream!

 

A few autumn leaves left hanging on against a first day of winter clear blue sky

 

 Colourful flowers

Always busy, which I think is great.

After the market we had some things to take to the dump, 

then it was time for Clydes 'hair' appointment.

The background noise is the car wash outside.

!

He looks chuffed to bits doesn't he! lol
He smells lovely and clean.
Afterwards we went to a garden centre with a cafe, that allows dog's in the outside area, and met with a couple of friends for coffee and Joe had more cake! Bloody guts!

So yesterday, Monday, I went back up the barn to do some more to the blanket quilt but it was far too cold, so I took the Landrover up, filled it up with the last of my bits up there and Joe carried one of the trestle tables down to the house for me. I was able to sit in the family room with the log burner, watch TV and sew whilst Joe worked on an assignment for the operator training he's doing.
I got quite a bit done and finished the last few rows of hand quilting that evening.

It's all ready to have the binding put on, which I'll do tomorrow. I hope to put the binding on the Stashbuster quilt too, I'll sew it by machine to attach the strip to the quilt then take them down to craft on Thursday to finish it by hand sewing.

This coming weekend we're going to have a full house for a few weeks. Michael & Natasha are moving in with us until our top house(rental) becomes vacant for them to move into. It's going to be lovely having them here, it's been a few years since Michael lived at home. He went out for a drink when he turned 18 and pretty much never came back home. He always was independent.
It's going to be quite interesting too, their two cats are coming with them!

Happy days xx

Before I go I would like to thank all of you for your lovely and very kind words you made after the death of my friend Sharon. You can feel pretty isolated being so far away when something like this happens, you all helped to bridge that gap. You're a good bunch you know. ♥

That's it, back soon
♥♥♥