The Mad Hatters' Parade

I have to share this photo of our youngest grandson Hamish in the Mad Hatters parade at his school.  The children made the hats at school - with a lot of dedicated help from the teachers I would say, and then the Grade 1 and Grade 2 children paraded before the rest of the school - and doting parents!

 Hamish is on the right.  You should be able to click or double click to see the photos better.

This is the lovely page I have just received from Janny in the Netherlands - the last page in this round of swaps.  I can't believe the year has gone so quickly.  This year is vanishing before my eyes, a quarter of the year gone already - scary thought!

Absolutely fabulous weather here at present, lovely cool nights and sunny days with not too much breeze.  Too nice to stay indoors so I am off to fertilise some of the plants in my garden.  I hope you are all enjoying the weather you like.

Soggy, soggy day

 There is not too much happening around here today - the wet season has made its presence felt well and truly. We have had over 500 mm rain in the last 6 days, 100 of them since midnight and it is only 5.30pm, so there is plenty of time left for lots more before midnight tonight!  these are just two photos I have taken in our garden trying to show the rain - which doesn't really show up at all. 

Of course, today was the day I needed to do a big shop at the supermarket, but at least that is all undercover and I didn't have to brave any flooded roads.  Many of the schools have had to send children home early and some have probably still been caught out by some of the flooded creeks in the district.  This used to be a frequent occurrence in the 1970s, but of course we have had a population explosion since then, and there are some very amazed people at what is happening.  We are nicely high and dry, shouldn't be worried even if there is low level riverine flooding tonight with the high tide.  That really amazed me when I was first married, the idea of two floods a day with the tides was so different from the inland floods I was used to - a couple of days to come up, a couple of days staying up and another couple of days to go down again!
I even went to my water exercise class yesterday in the pouring rain!  We were like drowned rats getting into and out of the undercover swimming pool and it was exceptionally noisy with rain beating on an iron roof!
Now I had better go to look at the pickled pork I have cooking for our dinner tonight.  I have done a bit more creating, but nothing much to show yet.

I am on a mission

I have all these pieces and more sitting on the end of my workbench - I pull them out and look at them...and look a bit more...and put them back again.  but NO more.  They need to be used and I need to make a lot of souvenirs

 I am sure everyone has a stash of pieces waiting to be used - I don't think these even qualify as UFO's, but they will turn into something.

 The piece on the left was part of a sample for Playways many moons ago - I haven't thrown anything out yet, but I think I shall be soon, I am getting desperate for storage space!

These papers can be jazzed up and used for covers I am sure...........so, watch this space!
We have been getting lovely rain for the last few days, badly needed as we haven't had a proper wet season yet, but I am a bit sick of it now, and the forecast for Monday is for anywhere between 100 and 300 mm.  I am supposed to be going to a water exercise class on Monday morning - not sure I want to if the rain is as heavy as that.  This class is supposed to be helping me build up my muscles in preparation for the knee surgery.  There are about 40 in the class and some of them are in a really bad way, so I don't feel sorry for myself when I am there.  At least my knee will get better, the ones with MS are very unlikely to.

More pages

 This is the second last month for this round of page swaps.  Above is the one I sent to Peggy in USA - her theme is shades of pink

and this one came to me from Anne in Germany.  She has used inchies on pieces of felt, and some lovely embroidery around them all.
I don't have anything else to show you yet, I am working on my April page to send away, but can't show it yet.
I have been back to have the stitches out of my hand, which is working very well, so I am thrilled about t hat.  However, I had a big whinge about my right knee which has not improved at all so the upshot is that I shall have a total knee replacement on 5th June.  That gives me three months to sort my head around it all, time to exercise and strengthen my leg muscles, and then nearly 4 months before we want to go away on a holiday!  Sounds easy when said like that, I hope it works like that in real life.  It will be done here in Mackay, I don't have to travel away and I have great faith in my surgeon.  He replaced a knee for a friend of ours a couple of weeks ago and Arthur was walking without a crutch in five days.  I hope I can do the same.

Orangequat tree

We recently bought an orangequat tree and planted it in the back garden.  I had been looking for a kumquat tree, but the only ones available did not look very healthy and this tree looked very lush.

I had never heard of this before and assumed it was some new hybrid, but when I googled I found it is a cross between a Satsuma mandarin and a Meiwa kumquat and was developed in the US in 1932!  There were 6 fruits on the tree which I watched very closely till they eventually ripened.

 There was not much to make jam out of, but the microwave came to the fore and this is the result.  I am thrilled to discover the fruit is really tasty - now I shall have to wait 12 months for some more fruit to make some more!

These are the latest bits from Fabulous surfaces.  The piece on the top right has been finished as a brooch, but I am not sure if I want to make them all into brooches or not, so I am thinking for a while.  I didn't feel I had quite enough highlighting with the sprays I put on after I had used the white spirit - or maybe I did not put enough treasure gold on.  Anyway I then wiped across the top with some moulding gel and brushed on some luminarte powders.  The photos don't really show up the colours properly, I tried lots of different ways to take them and edit them, this is the best I can do.

My hand is recovering well, but I seem to have burst the stitches in one of the cuts so I am having to be careful.  There will be a bit of a callous there, but it will be in the crease of my hand so will not be a worry, and my fingers no longer ache or stick half closed!  That is what the surgery was all about so all is good.

Not much happening

We went to a concert on Wednesday night which was simply wonderful - Chamber Philharmonia from Cologne in Germany.

Lots of Vivaldi, Bach, Tchaikowsky and Mozart, all in a local church on a very hot night with no air conditioning.  The poor Germans must have nearly died of heat, but it didn't stop them from playing beautifully and entertaining the large audience!

That set me up well for Thursday:

which is why there is not much activity around here.  I can feel my fingers again now, there must have been a huge amount of local anaesthetic pumped into them, but it is all good - no pain and plenty of movement.  Can't take the bandage off till tomorrow night so I am very limited as to what I can do - that is probably the aim of the doctor anyway!  I tried a  bit of typing yesterday with somewhat interesting results - multiple letters instead of one as I couldn't feel how hard I was pressing.
Beautiful rain here today at long last, our tank is full again and the garden has been well watered.  We have been missing out when all our southern friends and family are complaining of having very little summer and far too much rain - can never please everyone can you!
Now I am off to read a book for a while and also catch up on a few blogs.

A little bit of playing

 I always forget to start typing before I upload any photos!  The one above shows a notebook cover I have made from the tissue which was painted and gilded and wiped with white spirit.  The slip had similar treatment.  I need to practise some more and not be so liberal with the gilding next time - but I like this anyway.

 This one has been turned into a cover for a visual artist's diary.  I scrumpled some silk then attached the cords and beads to the base fabric which like the one above has been rather too liberally gilded!

 It hasn't been quite all play - I needed to restock the souvenirs as they have all sold and I have been very slack about making more.  I should have Three of the reddish ones, but some how in a tidyup late yesterday I have lost one!  I know I had it just before 5 pm, the gremlins must have been since then.  I only had the final stitching round the outside to do - grrrr - I hate tidying up anyway, but I couldn't find most other stuff.  At least I know it hasn't gone out of the room, yesterday morning was rubbish bin day and I hadn't finished it till after that.

Here are a few more magnets to add to the collection as well.  they are small enough for travellers to slip into handbags or whatever to take home.
Now I need to make the next fabric page, and easy one this time - shades of pink.  That gives me plenty of scope, even if pink is not my favourite colour.  I am having two trigger fingers on my left hand repaired next Thursday morning and I may be restricted with sewing for a few days afterwards.  The results will be all good though, and should get rid of the pain and clickiness in my fingers.  Hopefully it shouldn't stop me blogging for more than a few days either.