Group Christmas Lunch

I can now share with you the teapot cosy I made for my group's (Connected Quilters) Christmas lunch "Kris Kringle". There were a lot of steps but it wasn't hard to make. The pattern is "Afternoon Tea Party" by Nancy Green of Pink Sand Beach Designs.

We had a nice bunch of gifts, crowned by Colleen's masterpiece Christmas tree made from fabric and decorated with sweets, a lovely lunch and lots of laughs.

Lisa, our host and the collector in our group, had recently found a magnificent lounge suite and my newly finished snowball quilt looked great photographed on it.

Christmas Treats

I saw these little mini Christmas puddings on another blog (Wendy's) and made my own version. Aren't they cute? We are having our quilting group's get together today for lunch. The puddings are made from Dark Chocolate Royals biscuits, royal icing, Jaffas and sliced green "musk" sticks. *Another version I have seen uses red M and Ms and snipped mint leaves with white choc melts instead of icing.

I aslo made a fruit cake for each of my friends from a recipe gleaned from the Glen Innes CWA or Anglican Church catering ladies (many of whom are, or were, one and the same!). They are steamed in "soup" tins, not baked.

Snowballs Quilt all finished!

The day has finally come ... I have completed my son's Snowballs Quilt. I re-basted the quilt and changed from invisible to cotton thread and voila the machine quilting worked and stayed flat without puckers. The Kaffe Fassett fabrics and design are just so lovely and he will like it a lot I'm sure.

Gippsland Visit

My husband and I just had a few days away in our van in Gippsland, Victoria. We stayed at the Buchan Caves Park with as many as three other campers at any one time ... beautiful trees, peace and quiet and grazing kangaroos. It rained heavily two nights but the days were fine although steamy!

We enjoyed the walks around the park especially the track to the Spring Creek Falls.

Buchan is not far from the Alpine and Snowy Mtns National Parks and we took a day trip to see the Little River Falls (swollen by the heavy rain) and Gorge and the Snowy river at Mackillops Bridge.

The Gorge (up to 500m deep in parts) is the deepest in Victoria and an amazing and unexpected sight. The road into the Snowy River is not wide enough for cars to pass for about 11km and it's quite scary to look at the drop out the window ...

Little River Falls:

 Little River Gorge Panorama:

Snowy Mtns National Park:

 Snowy River:

Group Art Quilt

Our finished group charity quilt was languishing folded up in a bag waiting to be raffled or sold ... so I hung it up in our living room for the time being and it looks fabulous. It is for sale if you know of an office, boardroom or home that would love to have it. It is 85 " (216 cm) wide by 59 " (150 cm) deep and has a full width hanging rod pocket on the back.

More Rock

This is my latest find - a 16 x 18 x 1 cm slice of Spherulitic Rhyolite - the same material and process that can form thunder-eggs. I got this from a Sydney Rocks area gift shop (how appropriate!).

I particularly like the variety of colours and shapes and see the little blue one that looks like Australia except Tasmania is on the wrong side?

This piece comes from the Mt Hay area near Wycarbah in Central Qld. The little town is famous for its Mt Hay Thunder Egg Park. There is a large rhyolitic lava flow at Mt Hay. The process is that gas bubbles were trapped in the lava flow during solidification, creating pockets which were later filled or partially filled by lava flows of siliceous material which may be agate, jasper, quartz or other materials. The rhyolite may be varying shades of green, brown and red, while the spherulites encased may be many colours including blue, red, brown and amethyst.

Note for Quilters: Some of Kaffe Fassett's fabrics have been inspired by geology!

Interesting "Rock"

Recently some friends commented on my interesting volcanic agate "bomb" or "thunder-egg"so I thought I would share it with you. Thunder-eggs are produced by volcanoes and look very nondescript on the outside but hide beautiful colours in the middle. While the structure of the whole “eggs” are remarkably similar, their interior agate, opal and quartz cores– along with inclusions of rhyolite shards, moss, and plumes– provide an endless variety, no two being exactly the same.

I have a bit of a soft spot for rocks ... at school I wanted to do Geology for my HSC but my school didn't offer it, even though my Physics teacher's major had been Geology, and then I considered doing it at Uni .... but was dissuaded by the fact that in the late 70's females weren't allowed underground in mines so that would have seriously limited my employability. I chose textiles instead. I wonder how my life would have been different if I had chosen the other path? Lapidary and fossils instead of patchwork? A remote country home instead of city one? I like to look around me at rocks and landforms when we get out travelling and orienteering and plan to visit volcanoes on our travels whenever possible. I am a sucker for gift shops and museum shops with polished stones and fossils!