Back from the Cold Country

It was cold, too - about as cold as it is here today, it's not very nice......there is no sun, just grey clouds, but the sun will shine again one day.

My brother has been laid to rest in a peaceful country cemetery with tears and chuckles.  Tears because nobody likes to say a final goodbye, and chuckles because of anecdotes told about him by various people at his send-off.  Now there are just two of us, another younger brother and me.

Our motel backed onto parkland beside Quart Pot Creek, the creek which flows through their town.

 It was quite cold late in the afternoon.......

........although that didn't bother the local ducks.

On Saturday night Kevin and I attended 70th birthday celebrations for Bill who directs Thursday night's choir, and who has been a mainstay of theatrical and musical life in this town (and in many other places) since first treading the boards at the tender age of six.  The choir sang a song, a few of us who belong to both choir and uke group performed a song specially written for the occasion......Bill was really thrilled by that......lots of (fortunately mostly short!) speeches, and jokes, and fun.  It was a happy end to a week of sadness, and an affirmation that life does indeed go on.

Tomorrow's slow cooker dish will be beef cooked in dark beer with bacon, carrots and onions - just the thing for the cold day which is forecast.  The following day it will cook chicken, bacon and vegetable soup.  We don't buy ready-made soup, home-made is much nicer......and probably better for us too, as there in no added salt (unless the dish really needs it, which this won't - the small amount of bacon used will provide enough), certainly no added sugar, and nothing artificial at all.

Some of the stories told last week were about my mother, a woman who didn't enjoy cooking and wasn't, in fact, much of a cook - unlike her own mother.  My mother gladly seized on convenience foods as they arrived on the market, sometimes to the detriment of taste and flavour!  I can remember a packet of apple dessert which was supposed to be a layer of pastry, then a layer of apple, then another layer of pastry - like an open-sided pie.  What none of us realised (probably no one read labels then) was that there were two of these concoctions with a layer of cardboard in the middle to separate them.......we thought it seemed a bit chewy.......tinned soups were her best friends, and packet cake mixes weren't far behind.

The uke group is getting into some rock music, would you believe we play the Rolling Stones' song "Honky Tonk Woman"?  The idea of playing heavy rock on inky-dinky ukes appeals to our sense of fun.

Recently a cardigan which has been on the knitting needles for ages was taken up again, as a recovering shoulder didn't lend itself to the fine movement required.  One of these days it might actually be finished.  Pattern is "Peasy", and as it is knitted in one piece from the neck down there are an awful lot of stitches on the needle while knitting the body.......it is already the length required, I am just making it a little bit longer.  Finishing it will be a great achievement, let me tell you.

"Expensive dinners not the most enjoyable.
It is a mistake to think that in giving a dinner, it is indispensable to have certain dishes and a variety of wines, because others serve them.  Those who entertain frequently often use their own discretion, and never feel obliged to do as others do, if they wish to do differently.  Some of the most enjoyable dinners given are those which are least expensive.  It is this mistaken feeling that people cannot entertain without committing all sorts of extravagances, which causes many persons, in every way well qualified to do incalculable good socially, to exclude themselves from all general society."

Even inexpensive food can, and should, be tasty.........so long as the cook reads instructions before serving it.

Enjoy your days!

Ponderings

The Chateau des Wombats is not having a great week.  Last Friday morning my younger brother died after a short period in hospital.  I was the oldest of three children.......and now there are two of us.  We don't think about outliving younger siblings, do we?  Or younger cousins; one of my cousins died early last year and he was three years younger than me.  My grandparents all lived into their eighties but my parents were in their seventies when they died, and now one brother hasn't made it past his mid-sixties.

However, I have decided that I was put on this earth to accomplish a certain amount.......and right now I am so far behind, I can never die.  I'll be here forever.

So......sometime during the coming week we will be driving north to the Cold Country, to the town where my brother and his wife made their home several years ago, to say goodbye.

Yesterday it rained, and this was the view over our back fence - this picture wasn't taken yesterday, but that rainy day view is timeless.

A mob of kangaroos has been visiting, spending some time on the hill behind us.  We never tire of seeing them; back when we lived in the Big Smoke we never thought we would one day be seeing wild animals from our kitchen window!

Isn't that better than suburbia?  Peace and quiet and a lovely view instead of closely-packed houses, and traffic, and noise?

My mind hasn't been on sewing fiddly-diddly quilt blocks for the past several days, so they are still not quite finished - but as there isn't much left to do now, it won't take much work to do so.  Somehow they don't seem important.

Yesterday's rain and today's cold (it is freezing outside) are great weather for cooking.  Yesterday I made a huge pot of chicken and mushrooms in pinot noir sauce in the the slow cooker, and an aniseed myrtle apple teacake.  Today the slow booker (it's quite large) is cooking a big pot of pumpkin soup with green Thai curry paste and coconut milk, a wonderful dish for clearing out one's sinuses.  In case you were wondering aniseed myrtle is a 'bush tucker' flavouring; my packet was bought earlier this year in a town an hour north of here, at the Armidale Keeping Place.  First a cake batter is made and poured into a tin, then sliced apples are layered on top (the cake batter rises up round the apples), after half an hour the cake comes out of the oven and is sprinkled with aniseed myrtle powder, then it is popped back in the oven to finish cooking.  It is really really nice.......if you can't get aniseed myrtle the recipe would probably work with cinnamon, but it wouldn't be the same.

"Mourning for a brother or sister is worn for six months, two months in solid black trimmed with crape, white linen collar and cuffs, bonnet of black with white facing and black strings ; two months in black silk, with white lace collar and cuffs ; and two months in gray, purple, white and violet."

These days people don't seem to go in much for heavy dark mourning clothes, do they?  We often don't even have a funeral now, we have a 'celebration of life' and are asked to wear bright clothes instead of sombre black......but however it's done, it is still a farewell and tears are still shed.

Enjoy your days!

A finished project

Finished projects have been few and far between for several months, but hopefully will happen more now!  My top is finished, if you wear glasses you might want to make sure they are adjusted properly.  The fabric is a bit eye-popping......but rather gorgeous.

The front, it's a bit hard to see but the centre front is gathered to make a sweetheart neckline - pattern is Jalie's "Sweetheart Top".

The back, and as the print is asymmetric it was a wee bit tricky deciding where to place the various pieces so the pattern didn't form headlights on the front.  A viscose-blend knit in green, yellow and blue, and the green is much prettier than it looks here.  Green doesn't always photograph well, sadly.  The print design is bugs, moths, wings, and feelers; it looks as though the images were played with on a computer and this is the result.

Finished is a good feeling.

Now the project being worked on is the monthly block for my quilt group, last month's was a cutesy-poo owl appliqué and this month's is a cutesy-poo and fiddly-diddly pieced dog.  Fabric is supplied and we are asked to make two, one each with a red and a green background.  I don't mind making the blocks as they end up in charity quilts, but oh dear - cutesy-poo is difficult for me, and cutesy-poo and fiddly-diddly is even worse.  The fabric supplied is not good quality and one of them is a poly-cotton blend, so let's hope it doesn't melt when ironed.  Ah well, sewing it will keep me off the streets tomorrow, won't it?

The uke group had its moment of fame and glory a couple of days ago, and we even made the local TV news that night, and the front page of yesterday's paper, in all our glory.  For some reason I was the one the camera lovingly lingered on, double chins and all.......not a pretty sight, folks.......my fingers (and my gorgeous and somewhat expensive uke) were filmed in close-up while I was just noodling round on some chords, perhaps because no one else was playing at the time.  It's probably like many other skills - I know I'm not a marvellous player, but to someone who can't play a note it may have looked very impressive.

It's the same with sewing and quilting, isn't it?  We are critical of our own work, but when someone who doesn't sew sees a quilt we have made they are gobsmacked.  Blown away sometimes, even.  Does wonders for one's self-confidence, doesn't it?

This weekend is a long weekend for the Queen's Birthday, and I hope she is suitably impressed that her subjects on the far side of the world are having a holiday.  The monarch's birthday has been celebrated in Australia since the arrival of the first white settlers on the east coast in 1788.  Perhaps one day we will decide that we are a mature enough country to celebrate on our own behalf, and not on someone else's.

The following excerpt from my etiquette book shows how such matters stood in 1885.

"In Australia we have no titled or hereditary aristocracy.  The Australia colonies are, however, "Crown Colonies" at the present time, and will probably ere long be "confederated", and when that event occurs the title suggested by Sir Henry Parkes, late Colonial Secretary of N.S. Wales, may serve to bind them before the world still closer to the parent country, Great Britain, namely "The British Confederated States of Australia".  As colonists are constantly, to use an everyday expression, "going home" to England and visiting European countries, it is well to understand something of Regal and noble ranks and titles, and the order of precedence of the Royal family and of the nobility and gentry, etc., etc., etc."

Australia achieved Federation in 1901.  My paternal grandmother who never visited England in her life - indeed, who never left Australia's shores (although my paternal grandfather had migrated from England as a young man, and lived the rest of his life in Australia) used to talk about "home" - meaning England.  She may not have liked it much if she had visited, as England has long had the reputation of looking down its nose at 'Colonials'.

Enjoy your days!