The family at Easter

The family got together for Easter. We had a great turkey dinner made by me and as we seldom all get together at the same time anymore with the kids working and just living their own lives, we did manage to get a family picture.
Michael, Jim and Arnie at the back and Nicole and I in the front.

Sydney part 2

I wondered around Sydney all afternoon and noticed that there were coffee shops on almost every corner. The other thing they had a lot of was Thrift stores. Every charitable organization you can think of has a thrift shop in Sydney. I went through a couple of them, but it was the same junk that is in the thrift store here. I did find a quilt shop, but it was closed on Mondays

I also found a really cute hotel on the same street. Very colonial looking

Vancouver Island

I was on Vancouver Island that last week of March. What a great trip. It was a business trip for Arnie, so we were able to eat in lots of great restaurants. So it was basically a trip of sight seeing for me, eating and visiting with our aunties. Arnie's aunt Ruth is in Campbell River and my aunt Alice is in Nanaimo. I haven't seen either of them in about 5 years so it was great to be able to spend time with them both. Our first day started at 4am after only 3 hours of sleep for me. I have been having a bout with insomnia but after a few days on sleeping pills and getting my sleep patterns back in sync I have been sleeping like a log. The first day was a bit rough. We took the ferry to Sydney and got there about 9:00 am. After a couple of calls into local marinas Arnie dropped my off in Sydney for the morning while he went on some more calls. I was in the downtown core, so the first thing I did was head for a coffee shop and had some fabulous coffee and a oat square. It was a horrible rainy day and being right on the water it was very windy. My umbrella got trashed and I got quite wet, but hey, I was on vacation, so it didn't matter. I wondered through a few gift shops and clothing stores. Everything was expensive, but it was all designer clothes etc. Arnie met me for lunch and we went to a Greek restaurant. It was fantastic food. I had greek salad and a lamb gyro, and Arnie had the same.

Falling leaves

I finally got my quilt finished. I took a class by Carol Piercy and this is her own designed pattern. I dyed my background fabric and some of the fabrics in the leaves are my dyed fabrics. If I did this again I would try to have more contrast between the background and the leaves. I didn't know when I made it that there wouldn't be enought contrast. I also did a different design for the beading than the pattern.
I hung it on my sewing room door. My daughter's cat got into a package of muffin mix while we were sleeping and threw it all over the dinning room. And then pulled the hanging off my sewing room door and rolled around on it with the muffin mix. If that wasn't enough, one of the cats peed on the hanging, so that when I got up in the morning it was wet, stinky and coated in wet muffin mix. Now I have laughed at stories of how pets have messed up quilts, so I guess it was karma. I had done the label with a Martha Stewart permanent fabric pen and guess what? It's not permanent. Now I have a blank label that I will have to unstitch and redo, probably with a micron pen. I should have used that in the first place. It didn't wash up great because the batting shrunk a bit. And it was hard to iron around the beads. It is in my sewing room now, and will not have a home until my daughter and her brat cat move out.