Thinking straight at last!

I want to say a sincere thank you to all my lovely blog friends who contacted me after our campervan accident.  It was just so beautiful to see your love and concern.  I know you will understand that I wasn't able to reply personally this week, but be assured that I REALLY appreciated your comments.

I feel as if I am thinking straight at last!  We were walking around in a daze for a few days, especially during the four days it took for us to get ourselves and our goods home.  We are thankful for family members who did the thinking for us when we were incapable of it!

The week has been spent:

• thinking things through.  We have come to the decision that our camping days are over.  We're not getting any younger and there are ways of fulfilling our passion for bushwalking and bird spotting without all that is involved in driving, maintaining, insuring and registering a motorhome. It looks as though the van will be written off, but in the unlikely event that it is repaired, we will sell it.

• finding a place to put another houseful of gear (... well, a mini house).  I guess having two toasters in the cupboard will be useful when we have family with us at Christmas and two electric jugs will be good when we have lots of people for supper.  The crockery and cutlery have gone into the picnic port* and I'm very happy to throw out the old plastic gear that has been in there for years.

• filling in forms (and all that is involved in gathering all the necessary information).

• answering the phone.  You realise what wonderful friends you have in times like this.

• sending this little project off to a magazine.

• cleaning up the garden, revelling in being in short sleeves in the warm sun in the first week of winter.  It's exactly how I remembered it (and hoped it would still be) from 34 years ago when we last had a winter in Queensland.

By the end of the week, the house was clean and I even polished a lot of the furniture!  Accidents have a strange effect on people evidently!  I was almost ready to get the sewing machine out to work on a design that has all the embroidery done and now needs to be sewn together when one of the magazine editors contacted me asking for small projects with embroidery. Of course that is what I just love to do, so it was out with the pencil and paper and the last couple of nights have been spent happily using some gorgeous Cosmo variegated threads.

I also made time to get out some fabric for my next "Thread Saver" project. (See here for the original post).  I hope to cut out lots of squares and draw the diagonal lines so these are sitting on the machine ready to make more Half Square Triangles. This thread saving idea is becoming addictive and I'm so glad I'm actually planning projects to sew this way.

Now for a little bit of Oz education for you!

*  I thought you might be interested in my "Queenslandism".  We have always called suitcases "ports" in Queensland and it is interesting the reactions you get when you use that word in the other two States of Australia in which we have lived - usually a look of "whatever is she talking about?" and "ports are what large ships go to".  I haven't found anyone other than a Queenslander who calls them "ports".  It's not as silly as it sounds either, as it comes from the French word "portmanteau" and in typical Oz fashion, we abbreviate just about anything that has more than one syllable!  There are a number of instances when each Australian State has its own word for an item. You can tell where people come from when they start talking about the apparel you wear when you are swimming: it could be swimmers, bathers, cozzies, or togs, depending where you live! I'm very happy to be living back in Queensland where they can understand my lingo!!!!

 

Have a great week.

 

Blessings

Val