Blurry? Of course the picture’s blurry!
Putting aside my obvious shortcomings in the photography area, have you ever seen an 8 month old labrador who’s delirious with excitement at being both out of his cage and off his leash for the first time in 6 weeks?
Round and round our back garden Chester ran at full tilt! (Sorry, Dr David, he just couldn’t be stopped – until I waved a liver treat at him!)
Chalk up another success for Dr David Lidbetter. We’re so very grateful!
Chester’s new hip has incorporated into the surrounding joint just as it should, and because he’s such a young dog his recovery is going ahead in leaps and bounds. Well, the leaps and bounds will have to wait a few more weeks, but you get the picture.
Chester can start to spend more and more time outside his cage indoors, as long as he avoids slippery surfaces. He can even have some supervised off-leash time on the grass in our enclosed back garden.
Dr David was delighted with the result, and we left his rooms with big smiles.
I think there was even a new spring in young Chester’s step.
While we waited for the verdict we treated ourselves to breakfast at a cafe overlooking the Parramatta River.
Last Wednesday was a big day for us, and an even bigger day for young Chester. We were to deliver him to Dr David Lidbetter’s surgery at Parramatta by 8.30am ready for sedation and x-rays of his new hip.
He wasn’t too impressed when room service didn’t arrive with his breakfast, but soon brightened up when he saw his car harness. 
It was a long trip out to Parramatta, through peak hour traffic, but our boy was very patient, and only heeded a little hand paw-holding when we were nearing our destination.
Crunch time (so to speak). We would soon know whether all the hard work by ‘Team Chester’ (and his Papa in particular) had paid off.
[You’ll recall how we met Lacey the golden retriever at Dr David’s 5 weeks ago when she was there for her 6 week x-rays after undergoing her second total hip replacement. Just look how well she’s doing now. Her big golden retriever smile says it all!]
Our two sample New Life quilts were designed to show how a quilter’s choice of scraps could change the whole appearance of the finished quilt.
Di B’s New Life quilt used brights, while mine featured mainly pastels (no surprises there!)
But no matter which way you choose to put this funky quilt together you must never forget the essential secret to success…
It’s all in the way you hold your tongue!
We threw wide the doors to the garden, powered up the iPod with a few boppy versions of “Dry Bones”, brewed a plunger of coffee, put out a plate of my apple slice, spread out the scraps – and made those dry bones scraps live! 
It was all just a bit much for Di B’s Matilda.
Today saw the inaugural gathering of the St Mark’s Quilters, and I think I can pronounce it a resounding success!
Our fresh graduates from last year’s Stitchin’ Mission were keen to carry on making quilts for the KU Marcia Burgess Autism Specific Early Learning & Care Centre - and how could Di B and I pass up the chance to help our friends grow their quiltmaking skills? Self-indulgent selfless, aren’t we?
We had an impressive stash of these left over from last year…
So we decided (with Linda Hungerford’s gracious permission) to demonstrate how to make these…
Linda’s method of stitching scraps together to create colourful scrappy blocks from “bones” (tiny pieces of useless-looking fabric) is so simple and addictive that, after a short devotion on the Bible passage that inspired our pattern (Ezekiel 37: 5-6), our quilters were soon diving into the St Mark’s Quilters scrap bags and stitching up lots of these…
If you’ve been itching to see what those teddy bears have been up to, here they are at last.
