The best laid plans.........

You never know what is around the corner do you? I have not posted for the last week as I had practically no access to my computer. Bill's machine crashed to morning after we arrived home, so he purloined mine to use in conjunction with his laptop till the tech could put a new disk in his three days later. That didn't turn out to be the end of the story either. When this computer was purchased some time last year he bought two Raid disks which were supposed to mirror image everything on the machine - BUT - he was sold Raid 0 when he needed Raid 1, and consequently had to rebuild the new machine from scratch! The only good thing is that the tech was able to convert the disks to Raid 1 (I have no idea what they are either) so in future all the information and software will be on the other disk - and there won't be so much hair tearing etc etc. Of course these catastrophes only ever happen when there are several panic deadlines and many jobs coming in.

I was also not best pleased to realise I had come home with bronchitis, which I am still fighting, but hopefully getting better now, and thank heavens Bill has remained well. I think I would have left home if he had got sick on top of all the other problems, men make terrible patients!

Enough of the boring problems. I will talk about the top photo at the end of the post. The second two photos are of parts of my sister's garden in Buderim. She maintains that you garden there with the secateurs in one hand and glysophate weed killer in the other! Buderim is built on beautifully rich volcanic soil and has some really stunning gardens. We brought home a large box of cuttings from her garden, most of which are now growing happily in mine. Unfortunately there was one beautiful red flowering shrub which did not like the journey home in the air conditioned car, so that will have to be replaced at Christmas.

I have hardly had time to do anything creative, but needed a few more souvenirs to take out to a stall the Friends were holding at a fete yesterday. This is some painted brown paper which was rather fun. I bought some Winsor & Newton Iridescent medium while I was away and I have so far mixed it with some dynaflow paints also some other powders. Shall have to do some more experimenting later .

These are the finished results - darker than I intended, but I was in a hurry and discovered I only had black chiffon in the size large enough to cover everything - of course!

They all went out to the stall at the Palm & Cycad fete yesterday which is in the top photo on the post. I realised I had published the wrong photo, so posted the correct one, but cannot click and drag tonight. Sometimes I can and sometimes not. Tonight is very definitely not!

We were very happy with the public response to our stall, but oh boy what an early start - I had to leave home by 6.30 am to drive out and help set up the stall.

The photo is a bit dark, but is showing Maya, our wonderful visitors services officer, explaining about a cocooning caterpillar. She has a large collection of beasties which she has collected from around the Gardens, which keep the visiting children enthralled - they are housed in portable boxes which can be taken around to schools or to fetes like this one, and act like a magnet to draw a crowd. She is also researching which caterpillar turns into which butterfly and what the food source is, all useful information for future reference.

Time for bed, before I tackle all the filing tomorrow, then hopefully I can clean up my workroom and get back to doing something interesting!