Sunday, March 22, 2015

FNSI

Friday was the monthly Sew In night with Wendy  from Sugalane Quilts. It's a virtual meet up every 3rd Friday night of the month........  and a good reminder that there is only another week left of the month to get any finishes completed before a new month explodes upon us!  So far this year, I seem to be doing mostly knitting - currently working on 3 major projects, which just happen to be all by the same designer - Laura Aylor.   They are currently in various stages - but Friday night (and most of Friday as well) was all about attempting to complete the sleeveless dress I've been knitting up ....... and yes, I completed the knitting part of it!!  Now I just have a number of threads to sew in, and it needs to be washed and blocked so the hem sits nicely - which is why this post has been slightly delayed....... I wanted a good shot of it to post up lol

For those of you who are curious about my other two projects ....... Park Slope is a t-shirt which will be great for Autumn and Spring weather




And Ingonish which will be super warm in the midst of winter since it's made with a thick 10ply yarn.  I love the design on the front of this - but I have to say I was not overthrilled with this yarn - perhaps that's because the yarn I chose got so held up in the post, I ended up purchasing whatever was available locally.

 I'm really enjoying my knitting these days and look forward to getting a few pieces into our wardrobes.
Hope you all have a great day
Sharm

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Continuing with the Travel



As promised I'm back to share how the rest of our travel holiday went ......
River at Maclean
From Glen Innes and the standing stones, we headed up the New England Hwy to stay overnight in Gatton which was the closest place we could get to where my Dad currently lives and spent some time with him helping him to tend to a few things including looking at moving back to the area he grew up in and has spent most of his life.  So after leaving Gatton, Rosewood and Brisbane behind we headed down the Pacific Hwy in the hope of calling in at a number of coastal townships..........



Instead we were met with major traffic works which had traffic slowed down to just 40kms in many places, and lots of traffic lined up trying to get onto the highway ....... thus after one stop for fuel, we were not game to even stop for a drink until we made it into Port Macquarie where we ended up staying for a couple of days!


Our cabin was right where we got to look out over the water.  The rocks right along the river section have been painted and decorated  in all sorts of ways by people over the years









While we were there, we bumped into a couple we had met briefly at Copeton Dam, and ended up spending the rest of the day with them and heading out on a boat cruise with them which was lots of fun!    

 
After spending 2 nights here, we were ready to move on heading south and making our way around the outskirts of Sydney as best and as quickly as we could!



DH was pretty keen to go and have a look at Blowering Dam which he has often talked about heading to for some fishing, but had never got there ..........









.........so after checking out the map and taking a turn off at Gundegai........

 
we ended up heading to the little town of Tumut and stopping in a cabin there right on the Tumut River for another couple of days............

Blowering Dam is located in the Kosciuszko National Park .....

and in the morning, on the dam, it was cold as you can see by what Pete is wearing.  But as is the case with all holidays, at some point they come to an end and it was time to head back home again.  All in all, we had a lovely time away together and it's been nice to share some of that with you!




 



National Park - unfortunately we didn't catch any fish here
 
 

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

30 Years!

We've been away on a holiday celebrating our 30th Anniversary!   Thankyou to those who have emailed or posted a letter to see if we are ok here, its nice to know we are missed when my blog gets a bit behind.  Since I'm a bit time poor with back to work, I'll post our trip in a couple of posts.......

Time seems to fly by these days......  anyhow, a week after our anniversary we took off on a road trip with the boat behind ...... heading across the border into New South Wales ....... 
 

Our first day of travelling was just the perfect day, with good weather and apart from some minor road works and a herd of cattle scattered across the Newell Hwy  we kept on travelling for just on 13 1/2 hrs to Inverell.  Here we stayed in the town overnight

And had the best breakfast of the entire trip!!!  I absolutely fell in love with Inverell.....

We stayed at Copeton Dam just out from Inverell for a few days (no internet, so no blogging)...... but we did go out fishing with DH catching a Cod which being legal size, we were able to keep!  He caught a couple of other fish while there, but let them go again :)

While he was out fishing another day, I took advantage and went out in my kyack














and had some fun taking a number of photos! 








 I loved all the big boulders, ferns, ferral goats and the landscape around the place ....... not to mention how peaceful it was!
 
We were staying in the caravan park at Copeton Dam in one of the cabins there, and with school holidays over, it had minimal people there and was just so wonderfully peaceful and relaxing...... I could have stayed here for a much, much longer time ..........

As well as knitting, I'm currently reading the Diana Gabaldon books - the Crossstitch, or Outlander series which started as a series on Foxtel not so long back.  So when I found out that a little town not far from Inverell has the Australian Standing Stones........  well, I was able to talk hubbie into allowing a detour to have a look see..........    These are found at Glen Inness on the New England Hwy.  They were placed here as a tribute to the Celtic Heritage Australia has and the town was chosen out of a number of towns who put in for the privilege.  It was an agreement between the Austrlian Celtic Society and Scotland to allow this .........
It was fun to stop by and see them ....... but then it was time to keep going as we planned to call in on my Dad for a day or so to see how he was going.........   I'll leave you with these 2 photos of the standing stones, and continue our trip in the next post........