One lonely little flower

One lonely little hexie flower - that's the sum total of the craft I have done in nine days!!!

We just arrived home last night from a little holiday catching up with lots of friends. The round trip totalled about 2000 kms. We're thankful for safe travelling and lovely hospitality from a number of friends. The main reason for the trip was to attend the 50 years reunion with fellow students who attended Sydney Missionary and Bible College between 1962-1965.  I hadn't seen most of the people since I finished college 47 years ago!  Can you imagine what fun it was trying to work out who was who! It was a special time of celebration and remembering wonderful times together.

Of course, there was far too much talking to even think about doing craft! The only reason I achieved my one little hexie flower was because a car transporter truck caught fire on the M1 Pacific Highway and we were stuck on the road for 65 minutes. You can see a photo of the inferno and read about the loss of a Maserati and a rare British car (as well as the truck!) here.

Some lovely friends took my husband and I out to the Hunter Valley Gardens as a treat for my birthday which is coming up soon. The Gardens are quite spectacular, even in Autumn.

The day was topped off with a fabulous lunch at the Billabong Smorgasbord restaurant.  I have never seen so much choice - the range of food was amazing - and delicious!  Needless to say, we didn't need much for the evening meal!

We visited a number of quilt shops during our travels.  Sadly, our local quilt shop closed down a couple of weeks ago so I took the opportunity of stocking up a bit on pink and burgundy while I had access to quilt shops:

Some neutrals for stitchery backgrounds:

A couple of purples and a yellow:

And a couple of threads.  For years I have chosen to use Anchor stranded cottons as I prefer their colour range and the quality of their thread. Because we have lived in the country for decades, I have made sure that I always have every colour in the Anchor range so that it's there when needed.  Lately it has become increasingly difficult to purchase the threads as most stores have taken to stocking DMC.  Imagine how happy I was to find a little country store where I was able to purchase all but one of the numbers I needed.

Now I hope you don't mind my sharing a proud moment in our family.  Our son, Philip, builds custom engines for top racing Super Cars and Dragsters. In his field, he is known as 'Phil the Legend' not only for his amazing rotary engine work and his manifold design, but also the races that have been won by cars he has built or worked on. He made history over the weekend with a world record, racing the fastest Nissan in history. You can see and hear what the driver had to say after the race here. (the black car on the left is the one).

I've done the unpacking and have three loads of washing all dry, and restocked the fridge and pantry with a trip to the supermarket, so now I had better fold the washing and get to the ironing.  Thank you to the lovely people who commented on my last blog post - I'm sorry I couldn't thank you individually this week. It took me for ever to process all the e-mails that came in while we were way.

Have a great week ... and happy stitching!

Regards

Val