Great grand child arrived

Just to say that after 28 hours and finally a cesarean (sp) Gaby had her baby boy. No one allowed in but her mother for today as she is exhausted and so am I. No sleep until I was rung at about 5.20 am. Actually I think we all are, but all appears to be ok.

Geelong stuff

the power has just gone off so I hope this is ok on batteries for a while. A couple of samples of what I did, a class photo, a better one of our teacher Dale Rolleson, and my desk.
this was an embellisher or needle felting machine class. The first was using a paper napkin with various things below and above it and roughed up a bit with hand stitching and a nice stick I found, the next was using texture using loom ends of silk, lovely stuff.
Busy day but more on that later.

Home from Geelong

I am home, I am tired, I have visitors, who thank goodness are old friends and dont mind that I am not quite with it.
I left Geelong a bit before 8 am yesterday and arrived home at about 4.45 pm having taken a few wrong turns and been detoured around on back dirt roads due to a bad accident on the main highway.
Listened to the football grand final and was home in time for the last quater.
All very exciting as the underdogs won.
We have been out to breakfast and I feel totally not with it.
No Great grand child yet either.
I bought this mini quilt from a very clever quilter called Judy Hooworth, I have always loved her stuff but thought this one which is one of her river series was outstanding. Her class room was next to ours.
I have loads to show and am too tired to wrestle with it today. Just lets say it was a great week but now I need to get over it. Unpacking to do and washing to get done.

Australian Native Orchid Show

We were up early this morning and heading for Adelaide as John wanted some bark to re pott some of our orchids.
I love going to the show but was a little disappointed in the number of exhibits and what was for sale. I did buy a couple but not sure what they will look like.
When I got home I went out and took some photos in the shade house, not such a good flowering this year, last year all the dendrobium speciosum were in flower but they tend to flower one year and then not the next.
Any way there are still a few quite spectacular ones out at the moment.
We are out for dinner tonight and then I will be off in the morning for a week. Going to do Dale's class at Geelong, a long drive but it should be fun.

A lump of wood

I went to put this on the fire and looked at it and decided that it needed its photo taken before I burnt it.
Bits of lichen and bark and rough bits wonderful texture so much to see in something destined for the fire.
Today was windy again, I ventured out to look at ponies and delight in foals racing around their mothers and playing with each other. I have a nose that keeps running and I sneeze horribly.
We went in to shop early, so early the bank wasnt even open, and here I was saying that as I had been to Adelaide and back last night I would have a sleep in, no such luck.
The meeting last night had its highs and lows, the new chairman is not exactly diplomatic or polite, we will see what comes of it, we do have two new committee members, but last time they were on they didnt do much so again in for interesting times.
Nothing exciting done today, except I played with some alpaca fibre which seems to needle felt reasonably well and did sit for a few minutes working out how to make something on a knitting nancy, once I got the hang of it it was fun. I have a fabulous new book called something like the braiders bible.

Photos and texture

I dont quite know what happened yesterday but somehow I didnt post, I think because the dreaded hay fever is attacking me and making me feel a bit 'off'.
When we walked the other day I loved this on the dirt road by the sea, obviously someone was having fun and making a sea dragon out of an old glove and some sea weed. I just had to take a photo.
The other is looking towards the Bluff jetty with a magnificent mallow flowering by the side of the road.
Warming up again today and very windy. We had another colt foal yesterday, It looks like another colt year, ok but sales are slow and the cost of gelding has gone through the roof.
We were terribly pleased that the Gray's of Elargee stud have bought one of last year's colt foals, he won at the foal show last year and is a very nice colt with just the breeding they were looking for. They arrived about 5 pm on Tuesday night and loaded him up and left yesterday morning.
Lovely people and we had a great time talking ponies over dinner the night before.

Joyous

This is the last one of these until I get home, she is my favorite although John calls her Julia!(After our Deputy Prime Minister).
I went to the physio today who tuttted about my back and sent me home tired and not feeling like much.
I have managed to get labels on most of the selling items I have for Geelong.
I am expecting pony people for dinner tonight, and have generally tidied the house but thought I had better get this done early before they come.

Small dolls

A few more small dolls that I have been finishing off to take to sell at Geelong at Fibre Forum.
I am slowly getting there, labels done and trying to price stuff and hoping that my back wont give out on me when I get there.
I have physio appointment for tomorrow which I hope will fix things a bit.
Freezing cold and blowing a gale here all day, we did manage a few showers so that should help with the amount of drying we had and the pretty warm conditions of last week.
Thank you to all who expressed concern over the fire, we are just thankful that it was no worse.

Alison Cole workshop

Pinned and tacked down and not finished at all. Using mulberry bark and tyvek and soy fibre on the cream and irisene film and angelina with some silk noils and paua shell on the blue.
I am feeling my back and hip tonight as I am still feeding ponies, well I think I am only feeding one at the moment as the house on the property that my daughter and her family live in caught fire yesterday in my grand daughters bedroom. Far too much excitement, she lost her precious cat and there is nothing much worth saving in the room, a heater not turned off at the wall switch was the cause.
About 5 fire appliances, 2 police cars, an ambulance and several other fire vehicles. Luckily it was contained to the room and no one was home but the whole house is full of the remains of black acrid smoke and is not very habitable.
Not much more to say, I feel rather upset about the whole thing.

A mix of photos

I was in Adelaide yesterday doing an embroidery class with Alison Cole, a great class although I have used most of the stuff she uses but unfortunately I had to be up early to do feeds and the traffic to Adelaide was slow so I arrived feeling a bit brain dead. I am supposed to go back on Monday but I will see as next week is very busy.
These are probably the last of my northern photos, vegetation on a dune on the way to William Creek, part of a rocket from the Woomera range that dropped down somewhere near there as well, the sign about the old Ghan railway which has been superseeded by a different route and a new and modern and very expensive train through the centre.
Finally one of the old drays, at various times I think they used horses, cattle and even possibly camels to pull these huge things, must have been a nightmare when it rained and almost worse if you had to cross a sandhill.
All of the last three are in a small reserve, along with a few graves at William Creek.
the last is a bit of a view of Anna Creek station homestead area, I think this looks more like the workshops, we went through in the bus.
I have just finished reading a fascinating book called Red Sand, Green Heart by John Read who was an ecologist in the 1990's with Olympic Dam.

The Breakaways and a Coober Pedy mine

I rather liked the explanation of the black and white dogs and why the hills were called that, the third hoto is taken from a look out looking down to the creek line with a few trees.
then the wall of a mine, this is what they look like and the lovely colours on the walls, with a line of potch (before the mineralisation becomes opal) that was followed and then the last one is of us all getting on our miners hats before trying our luck, not much luck was had, better to buy from the miners!!
Here it is a warm north wind after a few showers last night, drying out quickly and I have hay fever and John has kept me awake snoring, I am not sure if his is hay fever or a virus.
The foal is so far ok, but I am not holding my breath.

Coober Pedy photos

sorry I have been not posting for a couple of days but we have had a few disasters, a foal whose mother wouldnt accept it which means feeding every 2 hours but at last I think she is letting it drink.
Complicated by being in Adelaide yesterday for most of the day and having to be up through the night. I ache all over.
These photos show a bit of the town of Coober Pedy, with underground houses and mines, then a bit of the moon plain with the mica on the rocks, it was incredible and all sparkly in the sun I think the aboriginals call it the starry plain. Then a bit on the dog fence which is erected to keep the dingo's away from the sheep grazing lands, interestingly they also keep out the feral foxes and cats who eat all the small hopping mice and lizards so ecologically it is a two sided thing.
Then a photo of the dog fence going across the moon plain and finally one of the mesa's who form the Breakaway Ranges. I loved them and there are more of this area to come.

William Creek, overnight.

So this was William Creek, first stop the Pub, where every one who is anyone and many who are not have left their calling cards in many different forms.
we all had a drink of some kind and most bought a stubbie holder at the exhorbatant price of $10.
Then there was the dog on the couch out the front, I thought he was dead but he did finally move.
From there we went to Tent city and found our allocated tent, ours was no 12, inside two camp stretchers made up and a towel. Where was the chair we were promised? How were we to get shoes and socks on and off sitting precariously on the edge of a camp stretcher? we managed.
Tent city was past the airstrip and on the Gymkhana grounds, with a set of cattle yards full of cattle and a big shed where we were to eat and an ablutions block miles away across the desert sand.
Entertainment before the sun went down and the cold night set in was to be Bronco branding, in which a large station manager on a very large horse surrounded by about 6 ringers (stockmen) hurled a raw hide rope at an unsuspecting calf and dragged it across to a set of poles where the ringers converged on the calf and threw it to the ground, no branding, just a dob of paint so you know not to get that one again. It was the beginnings of a new sport we were told, a bit more politically correct than in the past. They even managed to drag in 3 of the girls to act as ringers, I might add they were pretty hopeless.
That over just for fun several of the ringers did some bare back steer riding and all either jumped off or got thrown off for their pains, a few bruises and rodeo limps were in evidence at dinner.
Entertainment was in the form of a bush band with a very good meal of beef and salads and some nice wine, we staggered off to bed at about 9 pm, having been up since before 6 am that morning, but the party went on until 2 am, not so much fun for those of us in the tents near the band.
I went to the loo at about 4.30, luckily I had packed a torch as the lanterns didnt make it through the night, and as I walked down the tent lines it seemed to me that every tent I passed was snoring!
Walking back I looked up at the vast and starry night sky, it really is a huge and wide land out there.

This great brown land I live in

Lat week end we were by the sea, on Wednesday night I was sleeping in a tent in the middle of no where, near a town with a population of 3.
It was the most incredible experience. We flew out of Adelaide and after 2 hours landed at Coober Pedy, having flown over salt lakes and as we flew in marvelled at the hillocks all over the place that the opal miners had made.
The airport was a tiny tin shed.
We were loaded into buses and driven another 2 hours out into the desert.
We passed through the dog fence, which has been erected to keep the dingo's out of the sheep country so here we were in cattle country and on Anna Station, supposed to be the biggest single station in the world, owned by the famous Kidman family.
We were on the famous Oodnadatta track. Not much wildlife we did see 2 emu's, but mostly red sand and sparse bushes except in the creek lines where the trees were bigger. They have been in drought for nearly 10 years but then at Coober Pedy the average yearly rainfall is about 4 inches, when the rain comes it is usually about an inch at a time or more and then everything changes and it is a sea of flowers.
The William Creek pub is justly famous, calling cards from all over the world are here, and yes we had beer at the pub, more on that tomorrow.
I took loads of photos but it is amazing when you look at what you didnt take.
We were taken to our tent city and found our allocated tents, lines of blue ones.
I think I will tell this over a few days so I can get more photos in.
The reason we were there? It was the far north's turn to host the Regional Development boards conference, and host us well they did, John is the Chair of our local board.

DollsI have been making

Finishing off a few dolls over the last week or so. The little blue one is for a trading table and the other, well she has been sitting around unclothed and bald since 2002 and I thought I should finish her.
They are both Jill Maas of New Zealand's designs.
Celia sitting at the top hasnt got her hand bag or her dog, but they may get there.
I am not sure if her hair suits or not but hey, she can wear anything!
The little blue one is a sweet one to embellish as you like.
We are off to Coober Pedy tomorrow and wont be back until late Friday, we had a big mix up about where we were staying but thank goodness it is now fixed, we could have arrived and had no idea where we were supposed to be.
I do know that tomorrow night it is a tent at William Creek.

More photos of Second Valley

I dont think these boat sheds are used any more but they make a wonderful derelict sort of photo, more of the sea and waves crashing, then looking north along the coast and finally across the valley and little township.
wet and windy here today, i have spent most of it inside trying to do things to little dolls, mostly it means searching through boxes of 'stuff' and then more boxes, amazing what I have found.
I think I am supposed to be tidying up for packing to go on Wednesday, its not happening, but then there is tomorrow!