I can’t believe it’s been about three weeks since my last post, where did that time go? In my defence, work has been busy, and I’ve been busy at home. Getting the garden and property in general ready for summer, cutting grass, clearing bits of dead bushes, pruning etc, in readiness for the risk of a bushfire. I added some more sprinklers to the rooftop sprinkler system, which is designed to protect the house in the event of a fire nearby, and which of course I hope I never have to use.
During last week we had two or three days of weather which was more like winter than almost summer, very strong winds, rain, and cold. Fortunately there was not much damage to my property, a couple of branches down out in the paddocks is about all. Sadly though a large dead tree which has been standing, dead, in the paddock since I moved here almost 10 years ago did fall over. By the look of it I reckon it could have been dead for 5 years easily before I moved here, so I guess it had to fall over at some point. I had planted some new replacement trees around it, and fortunately it didn’t fall on any of them, so that was lucky. They are only about 2 or 3 feet high yet though, since they only went in last winter, so they have some growing to do.
I’ve also been doing some craft stuff. I bought my new overlocker last week, but haven’t really had much chance to play with it yet. It’s a Husqvarna, here. My only reservation about it so far is that it doesn’t have a free arm, but I do still have my old Singer machine, which I think I can get serviced, and use the free arm on that. The reason for picking the Husqvarna was that the front part opens up so that you can see more easily to thread, and it also has more room to the right of the needle. Also the cutting blade is underneath, which means more space around the needle, and it comes with a five year warranty, against only one year on the Singer I was considering. I’ll write a more complete review of it when I’ve had time to play with it a bit.
Yesterday was ATASDA branch meeting, for which we were supposed to make a Christmas card to exchange. It’s been years since I did any card making, but I burrowed through my box full of bits, and found some blank cards, which was a good start. Also some tissue paper with a gold pattern on it, and some brown card. I tore the tissue to a Christmas tree shape, cut a pot shape out of the brown card, and stuck both onto a card. A few weeks ago I had picked up some flowers which had fallen from my olive trees and pressed them, so they came handyfor little stars. A gold sequin glued at the top, and a line of stitching round the edge of the tree in gold thread, and voila! I was quite pleased with the result.

Now I have to find something to take as a gift to Red Hats next Saturday, and I still intend to make zines to taking to writing group on Sunday, but for now, back to the garden. The storm has left more leaves and rubbish lying around, and since the forecast is for 37 degrees on Tuesday I want to get some more done before it gets too hot.