Gisborne retreat day 2

Lots of sewing and fabric appreciation has happened today

my blocks are all finished, tomorrow they will be sewn together

Tonight's dinner, will have  to fix the photo at home

Maxine's show and tell today, a beautiful quilt top she is still working on.

Maria has made a heap of progress with her quilt top started by her daughter 20 years ago.

Margaret has been making children's quilts to go to Jan Mac for children affected by the fires...front

And back

Another Margaret quilt, front

And back.

Maxines wall hanging, it is now finished.

The back of another Margaret quilt, I missed the front. I have managed to have a walk morning and afternoon today so made my daily steps, pretty happy with that.

Time for bed for me now, more tomorrow.

Happy stitching

Christmas Gathering

Tracee very kindly invited myself and Carleen to join the City Girls and the Gisborne Girls for a sit and sew and Xmas lunch yesterday. We had two games, much laughter and a Kris Kringle.

Elyte and Annie unwrapping and dice throwing during the first game

Maxine and Tracee watching

Carleen, Anne, Robyn and Elyte

Marina and over the back Julie by Tracee

Maxine putting on her special Xmas glasses

Our second game, wrapping a parcel using one hand each

It was not easy keeping one hand behind  your back!

Margaret stepped in to hold the spare hands!! 🤣

We had a lot of laughs during this, the first game was unwrapping a present while wearing oven gloves while the next  person tried to throw a 6 on a dice.

That was very funny to watch too.

Tracee's beautiful tree.

Here are the Kris Kringle swaps

And the all important group photo! Such a wonderful group of women.

Happy stitching.  😊 

FNWF and zooming with Chooky and friends

 Last Friday was Friday Night with Friends, hosted by the lovely Cheryll,

I decided to get stuck into my knitting, I was on the first sleeve of my baggy winter jumper

I didn't take a photo of where I finished Friday night, but I carried on while zooming with Chooky and friends next morning

We have a name and logo! 

These ladies were stitching away when I joined in

Later there were more. I lost connection and as I was cold decided to go off for a bike ride

Cloudy and windy but it was a good ride, until I got to the shops where there many people, I forgot it was the school holidays, so I diverted off and rode around the side streets instead of following the beach path.

A few hopeful pelicans were waiting by the boat ramp.

Back home I did some weeding, a little too much I think as I have pulled a muscle in my back, something I often do when I garden for too long! I should know better, but you know how it is when you are so close to getting an area finished.....

Sunday I drove up to Gisborne for a sit and sew with the City Girls, Tracee our host and Margaret.

Margaret's quilt Farm Sweet Farm, quilted by Tracee, stunning quilt

This is a fantastic group of ladies, we have so many laughs together

Tracee, Margaret, Gail, Annie, Anne, Robyn, Marina, and me.

We had a lovely lunch created by Tracee and lost of yummy nibbles to pick at while chatting and stitching. We all met thru blogging and have known each other for over 10 years now. We have not been able to have a catch up because of the virus and lockdowns for nearly three years so yesterday was a special day. I always come away from these catch up days feeling so happy. Photo kindly taken by Phil Tracee's partner.

Tracee's dog Justice enjoying the love!!  (Sorry for the fuzzy photo)

So with knitting Friday night and Saturday the sleeve is finished

and the second one on the way.

It has been a wonderful weekend of stitching, chatting and catching up with special friends.

Happy stitching.

Not a lot

 of sewing has been happening this past week, I have been putting hexies together in the evening

these will be going into the Mystery Hexie quilt once I have finished the row I am working on, I jumped ahead a bit with these.

The heart quilt is all together and has a scrappy binding, I have to go over it now and sew in all the little bits I missed with the zig zag, also the endy bits from the zig zag need to be sewn in too, then the binding and it is done.

We have had David's sister and brother in law staying this weekend, we haven't spent any time with them for quite a while thanks to covid so it was good to have a catch up, I forgot to get a photo but did capture Basil the Welsh cardigan corgi

Basil listening and hiding his ears.

We had a good walk along the beach this morning.

The photos have jumped again, I received these beautiful flowers from Tracee

and these beautiful flowers from Margaret.

Here is Basil waiting patiently while I take a photo, he was in a hurry to get back home to see where his family was.

I went over to Leopold last week to do last minute shopping and called in to see Carleen and Des, quilting and geocaching friends. Their front garden is full of rose bushes and the perfume is just beautiful. Des very kindly picked me a bunch to bring home. Their perfume is still filling the house after a few days.

While I was at Leopold I saw this Tomte in a shop window and just had to bring it back home with me, it is so soft and cuddly! I am off to do some endy finishing.

Happy stitching.