Do you like my finished quilt?

No, I'm not referring to this beautiful creation in aqua, teal and white, carefully hand appliqueed by my friend Gay and machine quilted by Nic Bridges http://nicquiltz.blogspot.com/. Gay brought it to Paddington Quilters this morning for "Show and Tell" and we all agreed that it has prize-winning potential! Nic and Gay won first prize for a collaborative quilt at Birmingham the year before last, and the girls at Paddingtom Quilters will be watching to see if this stunner repeats that success.

If you look carefully, though, you'll see a tiny part of the border of Lachy and Merry's wedding quilt, "Alhambra Romance" which I've finally finished quilting - 4 months after their wedding day.

Later note: I've just posted a photo of Lachy and Merry (above) with their quilt the day before their wedding, just after I had given it to them. Yes, I know it appears finished - but I had actually just quilted it lightly all over, as well as around the borders so that I could bind it. It hung in the marquee at their wedding reception, then I whisked it away so that I could finish quilting around every "tile". It was inspired by the tiles on a wall of the Alhambra in Spain, which they visited on the overseas holiday when Lachy proposed to Merry. They were married on the 10th day of the 10th month, exactly 10 years after their first date! You can't rush these things....

It's the little things

Two reasons for joy last night!

Firstly, I discovered that an African Violet, a birthday gift from my dear friend Jan last year, has re-flowered. Most houseplants at "Chez Jobbins" survive under a policy of benign neglect, and all I've been doing is giving this little plant, on the bathroom window sill, a drink of water every time I brush my teeth. No fertiliser, just water. Isn't it gorgeous?

Then the rain came down. Torrential, pounding, drenching delicious rain! It was so exciting to lie in bed listening to it drumming on the copper roof below the bedroom windows. I can't remember when I last fell asleep to the sound of rain.

Weeding and Feeding

One of the joys of belonging to St Mark's is that the church building and its surrounding gardens look so loved. It's in a prominent position, at a busy roundabout, and the message it sends, to the people who drive past every day, is that here is a place people really care about.

And the reason they care about it because their Christian faith is important to them.

The hedges and ornamental beds are always bright with colour, and the bank of agapanthus, planted in memory of a very loved past rector who was fond of preaching on "agape" (Greek for "selfless love"), is just spectacular with splashes of purple-blue in December.

So well tended is the garden that you'd think that the planting, clipping, weeding and cultivating was done by a garden service - but no. Every Friday morning a small band of around six volunteers from our congregation cheerfully turns up do whatever is needed, undeterred by heat, wind, drizzling rain, or cold. Di, in the photo above, is the "Head Gardener".

But the most wonderful thing for us is that once a month they come along here to the rectory and help us to keep the garden ship-shape. We all work together, and for 2 hours the garden is weeded, pruned, landscaped and whipped back into shape. It's positively unbelievable what is achieved in such a short time. I call them the "garden fairies" (though some of them might protest loudly at this!)

Today they came to us for the first time this year, and we really needed the reinforcements!While the men pruned the dead branches from a tree that had fallen victim to the dry conditions, Moo tidied up the mondo grass border, the others weeded and clipped and raked, Boak got covered in "cobblers pegs" clearing the undergrowth from a forgotten area down the side of the house, and I tackled the horrid creeper that is threatening to cascade down from the wall into our topiaried lillypillies.

Of course, after all that expenditure of energy, a healthy morning tea is called for!

Liccy's Special Day

Some colours and some people just seem to go together, and if I had to name the colour that my friend Liccy loves best it would definitely be PINK. Bright or pale, shocking or coral, PINK is her colour.

So for her birthday on Wednesday I cut PINK dipladenias to create a centrepiece on the dining table, I arranged bright PINK serviettes in the empty wine glasses to look festive and PINK balloons on the mantelpiece, the guests arrived to a front gate festooned with PINK balloons, while she blew out a PINK candle on her birthday strudel.

And what colour did the Birthday Girl wear to her party?

BLUE!

[But doesn't that new necklace and earring ensemble, a special birthday gift, look stunning with her dress?]

Back to work

It's official. My lazy days of summer are over, and it's time to get back to the normal routine. That was the shortest January I can remember!

Yesterday was a huge day for both of us, beginning with 8am church. All the children's activities during the 10am service started up again, including the Creche which I look after, and the children seemed to enjoy themselves. I had washed all the toys on Friday, made a fresh batch of play dough, and bought a new table for the little ones to sit at.

In the evening we hosted a BBQ for the 5.30pm congregation (around 40 folk) in our garden and it looked so pretty when we'd set up that I had to take a photo of part of it. By the time they all arrived after church, with the citronella flares lit, it resembled the set of "Survivor" - except that there were no mozzies, we ate a delicious meal (roast pork), there was no grumbling and when the time came they all left voluntarily. Just in time for us to watch the last few exciting deliveries in the one-day cricket.

Woo hoo! Another quilt finished!

Once upon a time, back in the days when I was new to both quilting and eBay, I bought a bundle of gorgeous charm squares in floral pinks and greens, my very favourite colour combination for quilts. I stitched them together, alternating with white-on-white squares, and even added setting triangles along the side and a border.

However I came seriously unstuck when I began to machine quilt it. In a moment of madness I chose to use a variegated quilting thread in pastel shades, but after several passes across the quilt I realised I had made a serious mistake. The beige and pink shades looked passable, but every now and then a blue length would show up in a totally inappropriate area of the pattern.

A more dedicated quilter would have unpicked the machine stitching, but not me - life's too short to unpick metres and metres of machine quilting. I folded it up and hid it in the cupboard where it has languished ever since. Until last week when I decided to have another go at finishing it, using the variegated pastel thread again, and discovered that the more I quilted, the less noticeable the variegated thread became.

This will never be an heirloom quilt. It's destined to be draped over a couch in my pink and green lounge room where it looks quite pretty. However I've finished another quilt, and that's a great feeling!

A day at the Golf Championships

Today I went to the Australian Women's Open Golf Championships with two lovely friends - and realised why I'll never be a proper golfer. These beautiful, fit and dedicated young women not only played eighteen holes under extraordinarily challenging conditions, but then wound down by retiring to the driving range to whack away at more than a few more buckets of balls. I would have been up in the clubhouse relaxing with a long, cool gin and tonic!

Much to my disappointment cameras were not allowed, but I still wanted to bring you a taste of this exciting event. So I offer this photo ... The ball here is not unlike one of the balls used by the players - it's white, round, and has dimples. The grass, too, bears a striking resemblance to the grass at Royal Sydney - it's green. But that's where the similarity ends. Those beautiful, undulating fairways, which we were permitted to cross at certain points, were so clipped and finely groomed I just wanted to lie down on their cool green carpet. I've never seen grass like it!