An Unexpected Road Trip



You might be wondering how I come to be standing in front of a gypsy wagon??? Well if you can make it through this post you will soon find out ..........Early in July after almost a year of looking and such we managed to find a Ute for Pete - it took a while as he was just a little specific in what was required - 4WD, single cab, diesel, manual, in good condition with a good tray, something comfortable that we could both sit in for longer trips comfortably, preferably not bucket seats and naturally the right price range...... So we were blessed when we found it. 
 I didn't post about it at the time as it was just a few days before my important Bendigo trip away with the girls and a "ute for the man" didn't quite fit into blogging ........ fast forward to today and we set off at 6am from home to head down towards the outer area of Melbourne to go and have a look at a canopy for said Ute. 

Rolling hills at Lima

 Since we were heading to Yarra Junction, hubbie decided we would forget about using the freeway and we headed from here, through Yarrawonga and Benalla towards Bonnie Doon....... the sun was coming up when I decided I would take a few photos as we went ..... and kept going as we passed through lots of little places on our way to our destination 3 and a half hours away.....



Buses heading to the snow at Mt Buller

 

Coming into the township of Yea
 

heading up the hills towards Kinglake & Toolangi

We head to the Toolangi side of the range

We passed through lots of different country on our trip today .... check out the black trunks of the gums in the Toolangi Forest.  Did you know Toolangi was the home of the poet  C.J. Dennis?  Toolangi is filled with tree ferns as well.  These are old stomping grounds as years ago we lived in Kinglake when the children were all small - Stacey was born when we lived there ....

An old brick well at Chum Creek we passed through

Launching Place

We had a lovely trip down to Yarra Junction, even better with all the traffic heading the opposite direction towards the snow ..........


 long story short - we had arranged to meet a chap at Yarra Junction to look at the ute cover he had advertised on Gumtree.   

Yarra Junction reserve

He turned out to be a lovely fellow and we were chatting for a good hour - we ended up buying the cover from him - it even came with a lighting strip inside the canopy and a roll out awning on the side!  And fits great, just how Pete wants it to as he has a few extra plans for it. ........

Bakery at Yark with the Stag out front

So on our return trip Pete was revealing "the ute" was being made ready for a bit of travelling around since the canopy can also take a small boat on top (which I'm guessing is next on the list lol).........  So after a bit more conversation "the ute" is now  lovingly referred to as MYRTLE!  So you might say that our trip back from Yarra Junction was the beginning of Myrtle's Meanderings ........ more so when we made a stop in Yarck where we planned to get a pie from this bakery .......
check out the pig inside at the table lol .......

Inside the Yark Bakery

unfortunately the line was sooo long we gave it a miss, but looking up the road a bit further was a lovely lady sitting at her Gypsy Wagon with lots of goodies.  She was very happy to show us her lovely wagon and let us take some photos (she didn't want to be in them herself lol)..... .....
And look at the great bargains I came away with.........  Just $5 for the braids and buttons together and $10 for 8 ladies hankies and 8 mens hankies!!! 


Gypsy Wagon, Yark

All my goodies from the Gypsy Wagon!

What a lovely fun unexpected road trip today! 
 

 

Pete busy chatting with the lady and her doggie

 





I'll be looking forward to sharing more of Myrtles Meanderings with you in the future.  Now isn't that a lovely thought!

Myrtle with her newly purchased canopy - see the awning there??

 

 

 

 

Its all about the Hexies

Firstly thankyou for all the lovely compliments about the blogging tablecloth that is slowly taking shape thanks to all the lovely signature hexies various ladies have sent.  For those of you who still want to make a hexie to send me I thought it would be easier to put the details here to save having to go back through older posts to get the details.......
The finished hexie size is 2.5inches ( that is 2.5 in along each finished hexie side).  They will need to be done on white, cream, calico, pale lemon or pale yellow fabric, but feel free to embroider them in whatever colour you wish.  Pop your name, blogname, town or country you come from (like you can see in the previous post) ....... I'm so happy to have blogging and snail mail friends sharing in this tablecloth.
 



Meantime I've been busy getting to work on making some flowers with 2 more of the signature blocks that arrived.  I'm working on them in the order they arrived here, so next is the one I received from Anthea  of Hibiscus Stitches- who also happens to be hosting EPP!  The chook fabric just seemed to work so well with the embroidery thread used. For those wondering what EPP is - English Paper Piecing - you have shapes cut from paper, you then tack material around the paper to form the shape  these shapes get sewn together after which the papers get pulled out. (that's it in a nutshell)


And then I was able to get started on the signature hexie from Sheryl. from Sewing After Seven.  I just love the embroidered flower sitting in the S.  I spent lots of time changing my mind about which fabrics I was going to use, but eventually ended up with these......... I still have a bit of stitching to finish on it yet

It's nice to be getting my handstitching mojo back after such a very long break. Wishing I was home this week to be able to stitch and sew a few more things that need doing!  Anyhow I'll leave with this photo of Cliffy - the lorikeet who our son got as a baby when he was around 15 - he's the one that is now married with 3 children living in Townsville - which makes Cliff around 15yrs old!  It's hard to tell he's a lorikeet with all the feathers he continues to pull out and he just won't

leave his small cage, except when I have it against the bigger cockatoo cage out on the lawn so he can play in the grass and dirt without being attacked by other birds ..... yes, well apparently on Sunday arvo he tunnelled his way out without us knowing until we drove in after a quick pick up to find Cliffy sitting at the front door waiting to be taken inside - after all it was 5 oclock - the time he usually calls out to be brought inside.  He got so excited when he saw me bringing his cage up from the garden and jumped straight inside with a "goodnight cliffy" to us!!!! Gotta love it!!

Stitching and Sunshine

 

Last night was the" Friday Night With Friends" sew in (FNWF) hosted by Cheryll from Gone Stitching.  I started off working on a bit more of my jumper I'm hoping to get finished this month ..... Bear River by Laura Aylor.

But I'd also decided it was time to go and pull out the tablecloth I'm working on for the "Beehive"

Especially since I've had another signature hexie arrive in my mailbox!  Thanks so very much Susan.  It's kinda cool having the map of Queensland embroidered on it since that was where I was born and grew up.  Our family have also spent several years (in several houses) living up there - so a very big thank you!!.   I now have 7 lovely ladies who have taken the time to make a signature hexie for me to add to my blogging friendship tablecloth. (or see below this post).  I've pulled out some of the new fabrics I bought when we were away earlier this year to use and managed to get some more hexies made up as well as getting one signature flower completed!  My plan is to make up the flowers in the order in which the signature hexies arrived so that I can link back to each of those wonderful ladies.  The flowers are rather big as I hadn't really expected to receive very many signature ones since its quite an effort to embroider one up and then post it out, so I feel very blessed with those I have here - so there has been lots of consideration to which fabrics bring out the best in the embroidery.  This first one is from Lin

 

 We've been having sooo much rain of late that the rivers are flooded and the paddocks are so full of water that I've had  minor flooding across some of the roads on the way to and from work this past week!  So it's been wonderful to have a Sunny day today - still quite cold mind you, but without the rain.  Scruffy and I were able to go for a walk along the river track and check out how high the water is getting.

It won't get high enough to cause damage to any of the housing as further down in Yarrawonga they are letting water out through the weir gates.  I took Dad to go and have a look at it.  While we drove there today, it is actually within easy walking distance from his unit so he is planning to head back here now he knows which way to go.

Dad checking the water flowing out and below you can see the bridge over the wall which crosses the Murray and links Victoria to New South Wales.

 

July Roundup

Yes, we are already into August!  This year is just flying by isn't it?  So I best get to the July round up for all the OPAMers lol.  I managed several finishes in July - 5 knits :  The Milky Way by Laura Aylor test knit shawl, and 4 Hats - all Woolly Wormhead patterns. I just scraped the last hat in "Celestial" a lace pattern using one of the yarns I purchased at Bendigo a couple of weekends ago (remember that big haul I came back with lol??)  I feel good to already be using some of it, but can you believe I already am thinking I really should have got some cottons while I was there??? hmmmmmm  This last hat got delivered today to Son No1's Partner who seemed rather happy to receive it........ forgot to get a photo of her wearing it though!

We have certainly been getting our fair share of rain during July.  All the paddocks and yards are are full of water and many of the roads are getting overflow.  Our poor yard hasn't fared too well, especially when a certain somebody needed to move the ute ...... ahem......

Meantime I finally got to doing some "deep" cleaning in the lounge and dining room area which has been needing some TLC for a while! 

I even decided it was time to move the writing desk back into the living area, remove everything from it (which needed to happen in order to be able to move it from the bedroom), and start from scratch putting items on it rather than just dumping all my writing gear straight there! Time for a complete declutter and look at the writing things I actually use, as opposed to those that have been sitting on the desk for years just because I happen to be hanging onto them!!!   Between you and me ....... I think I need to declutter in a few other places as well !

Amidst all the rain we have had a couple of days here and there with some sunshine ........ the wattle is out in flower and the bees are busy!  Sometimes when I see them so busy I wonder where their hive is and briefly think about having a hive of our own ....... briefly....... with just the two of us here now, we don't use enough.
Anyhow, sure hope your week is starting out well and you can find some small blessings in each of your days.

Hugs,

Sharm