Maybe in Oz

A couple weeks ago I got one of those last minute half price concert ticket emails for Dolly Parton.  I LOVED Dolly Parton when I was young.  Loved.  She had a tv show for a couple years and I would religiously watch it every Saturday night.  I don't remember much about the show except that it involved lots of sequins and she would always end the show with "I'll always love you."  So needless to say, I jumped at the chance for cheap tickets to see her.  She might be 68, but I figured if she's been around that long it was bound to be a good show. Her sequins didn't disappoint, and it was very enjoyable hearing her live.  She told great stories in between the songs and played several instruments, even a tiny little saxophone covered in rhinestones.  When it came time to 9 to 5 we got a good giggle out of watching the 60+ in the crowd dancing along - not the normal sight you'd expect to see at a concert.  Then she finished up and several wh...

A few months ago I stumbled upon this adorable quilt on Pinterest: I'm not very good at making quilts on demand.  My brain needs time to process the fabric and pattern and I have to see that light bulb go off in my head before I start the next project.   I received a jelly roll of Asian fabrics for Christmas, and one morning a few weeks ago I woke up knowing what that roll of fabric needed to become.  I started sewing the strips together 4 at a time and then cut them into strips.  I kept sewing and cutting until I had an entire quilt top of pieced 2.5" squares. Once the top was done it was time to think about the backing.  I had purchased a few meters of this black print a few weeks ago because it was on sale for $4/meter, an almost unheard of price in Australia.  I knew I'd find a use for it some day but it turned out to be perfect for this project.  I knew I wanted to do something similar to the elephants on the original quilt bu...

Today I went to tea with some friends.  The word tea seems like a simple word, but around here someone asking me to join them for tea could mean one of several things; 1. literally a cup of tea, 2. lunch, 3. meal sometime between lunch and dinner, or dinner.  In this case tea meant lunch. We went to a tea room in Armadale, the fancy pants part of the city.  When I got there each place setting was laid out with a Wedgewood plate, tea cup, and saucer set.  Each setting was different and very beautiful.  We ordered tea and it came out in a matching teapot with a strainer.  Being the amateur that I am I started dumping my tea in my cup, completely forgetting about the strainer.  I soon figured out that those mint leaves were meant for the strainer but was still confused about the proper way to pour the tea. I vaguely recalled that I was meant to drink the tea with my pinky up but this felt a bit funny so I man handled it instead.  Then they br...

WE, the people of a free nation of blokes, sheilas and the occasional wanker, we come from many lands (although a few too many of us come from New Zealand) and although we live in the best country in the world, we reserve the right to bitch and moan about it whenever we bloody like. We are One Nation but we're divided into many States: First, there's Victoria, named after a queen who didn't belie ve in lesbians. Victoria is the realm of Mossimo turtlenecks, cafe latte, grand-final day and big horse races. Its capital is Melbourne, whose chief marketing pitch is that "it's livable". At least that's what they think. The rest of us think it is too bloody cold and wet. Next, there's NSW, the realm of pastel shorts, macchiato with sugar, thin books read quickly and millions of dancing queens. Its capital, Sydney, has more queens than any other city in the world and is proud of it. Its mascots are Bondi lifesavers who pull their Speedos up their cracks to ke...

This weekend we got to enjoy Phil's Christmas present, a trip to Adelaide to watch the Tour Down Under bike race.  We headed over early Saturday morning and hopped a bus that took us to McLarren Vale for the 5th stage of the race.  We claimed a good spot along the road just after the start and took in the atmosphere as we waited for the race to start.  Right next to the start line was a gum tree missing most of its leaves; perched on a branch was a koala taking a nap, unimpressed with all of the racket surrounding it.  Only in Australia. The race started in a flash of colour and spinning wheels.  The sound of all of those bikes ring by just seconds apart was impressive.  After they passed we boarded the bus and headed down the road to Willunga in preparation for the hill clim portion of the race.  The bikes passed by five times in total before an exciting finish just after the hill.   We stayed right in the middle of Adelaide City,...

Wow, this week was a scorcher.  Four days of over 41 C made it a record-breaking heat wave and let me tell you, Melbourne is not built for the heat.  Most houses and trams don't have air conditioning and the roads start to melt and train tracks start to buckle.  The Melbourne Star  ferris wheel is a great example of how poorly this city copes with the heat - when it opened in 2008 it only ran for 40 days before a hot day caused the structure to crack.  Five years later the rebuild has finally finished and the ride is now open, though no doubt anyone who knows the history is afraid of riding it. According to my car it got up to 47C.   It was so warm that the A/C at worked stopped functioning properly and we were #20 on the repairman's list.  Numerous fires also ignited with one large one still burning through the Grampians.  Thursday evening our entire area was blanketed in smoke, and when we looked up what was in the area we we shocked to se...

Summer weather has finally arrived which means it's no longer quilt season, it's time to explore Melbourne season.  Today we drove to Lake Mountain, a bit East of Marysville in the Great Dividing Range near Melbourne.  In the winter months, Lake Mountain is a snow resort but the rest of the year it's one of the Seven Peaks of Victoria that bike enthusiasts like to ride up.  There is a passport with each page dedicated to one of these peaks, and the goal is to ride each one and get the passport stamped. Lake Mountain toboggan run Phil set off on his bike from Marysville and I took a relaxed drive up to the top to explore.  It was a beautiful area, covered in gum trees of every shape and size.  Unfortunately the area burned very heavily in the Black Saturday bush fires of 2009 so some areas of vegetation were only a few years into the regrowth process. Burned trees at the top of Lake Mountain  Even with this devastation still visible the area was sp...