And all was cool and calm

The storm didn't eventuate, but we are thankful for the cooler air and looking forward to a more comfortable night's sleep than last night.

Then we saw the light

Glorious shafts of sunlight kissed the distant city skyline.

Before long the storm clouds began to gather

... and the cool breeze became a gale, buffeting the market umbrellas and sending paper napkins flying!

It's been a 'stinker' of a day here in Sydney

...as they say in the classics!

So we took ourselves off for dinner with good friends at a cute little harbouside cafe where we watched the sun setting and periodically held our fingers up to test if that promised southerly change was on its way.

We all enjoy a paddle on a hot day! (Scatterday Challenge for January - Nature #2)

... not just humans :-))

Did I say she has ‘attitude’?

Polly the Sock Monkey

Flickr Tags: sock monkeys

I’ve been temporarily diverted from my quilty endeavours by this little cutie.

A friend has recently had a baby girl so I thought I’d try my hand at making her a sock monkey.  They’re soft and cuddly characters, and those long skinny limbs and tail are perfect for tiny hands to grasp.

Do you like how Polly turned out?

It’s so satisfying seeing a few pieces of fabric gradually turning into a creature, albeit inanimate, in one’s hands.  The very best part is the final touch - stitching the cheeky grin!!!

And if you think you’ve detected the beginnings of an obsession you may be right!

… or who!

We love our weekly “Location, Location” and “Relocation, Relocation” on Lifestyle TV (or as they are known in our house, “Kirsty and Phil”) so you can imagine how excited I was to look up and see Phil Spencer himself being filmed poolside at the house next door to where I was sitting - against a spectacular Sydney Harbour backdrop that will have every English viewer gasping with delight when whatever-it-is is broadcast in the UK.        Now, the question is – why were they filming here in Sydney?

You never know what you’ll come across at the beach…

A cork

a big leaf

a scrap of bobbly seaweed (remember when we used to pop these juicy beads between our fingers?)

a delicate twig

a little piece of cuttlefish

a tiny, tiny leaf

(I've included these partly because our Scatterday theme for the month of January is "Nature" - thanks Di!)

… but after I had finished my stroll along the beach this morning I found an even more exciting subject to photograph.

Double Delight of a different kind

Bonnie Hunter’s Double Delight Mystery Quilt is gradually taking shape on my sewing table.  I’ve chopped, sliced and diced my fabric, and now I’ve begun to stitch it back together.  Surrounded by tiny piles of tiny blocks created from tiny pieces, I’m at the point of no return!

I’m using up as many of my accumulated fat quarters as I can – but unfortunately adding other unwanted ‘fat quarters’!!!  So yesterday morning, armed with my camera and ipod, I took a brisk walk down to the shore of our glorious harbour.   The sun shone, there was a cooling breeze wafting off the water, and this was my vista…

And the water was crystal clear…

What a delight!

A Day at the Cricket

Make a Smilebox postcard

A good friend gave us tickets for the new Victor Trumper Stand at the SCG where we had the most amazing view of Australia V South Africa. The sky over the city changed hour by hour (which I found as interesting as the cricket) and dark storm clouds came up in the afternoon - but amazingly passed us by, allowing us the time to win the Test!

Lots of hexagons pieced too!

Double Delight update

Not much delight here so far, I'm afraid. In fact, I'm still chopping and stitching my 'uglies' for Part 1
It was simply too mind-numbingly boring to rotary cut 120 blue squares, 360 light triangles and 120 gold triangles. So I'm doing a little cutting, a little stitching, a little pressing, a little cutting....you get the picture!

I'm confident that these little square in a square blocks will look much more cheery once they have their gold/yellow triangles incorporated.

The only thing sadder than a silver reindeer on Twelfth Night

... is a pair of silver reindeer. Yes, it's that time when the glitz and tinsel of Christmas must be packed away for another year.

Here is my entrance hall tonight, baubles all packed up in cartons to be stacked away in the storeroom, and the weary Christmas tree ready for the 'little men' to come and take it away.

What a difference between that and our entrance a couple of weeks ago!

Three Wise Men?

Twelfth Night, 6th January. is traditionally associated by Christians with the visit of the Magi, or Wise Men, to the baby Jesus.

But did you know this probably occurred a couple of years later, and not 2 weeks after his birth when we celebrate it? What's more, nowhere in the Bible does it say there were three of these characters. Could have been two, could have been five!

My friend Andrew even goes so far as to speculate that they never existed at all! What do you think?