Alpine Adventures

I had a little adventure last week, taking some students away for a Geography field trip.

We set off at dawn with the "The Settlers Sing Songs of the Snowy Mountains" blasting away on the bus stereo. That was my idea.
First stop was the Golden Arches in Cooma for breakfast. Unfortunately I did not have time to visit the Vinnies, which is really well stocked. I was only there a few weeks ago, so I managed not to go in. I needed some new fingerless gloves to wear so I went looking for those instead. Gloves from Vinnies are a bit risky, especially if you need to wear them the same day. A lovely lady told us all about the flags and the mosaics at Centennial Park in the main street.

I bought a CD from the information centre - more music to play on the bus. I had heard this country artist called Jay Podger on Australia All Over ( a radio show) singing "Fishing in Eucumbene" so I thought that would  be appropriate for the occasion. Did not realise the other tracks included "I to sing and yodel" and "I'm married to a beer bottle". oops.  The students seemed to like it though, and later on I heard Jay singing from the back of the bus and got all confused until I worked out someone had recorded the music from the stereo to play to her boyfriend later. Haha.

Next stop was Jindabyne. The kids watched "The Man from Snowy River" on the way. Jindabyne turned out to be quite a long stop for me, since I had to take a young lady to the medical centre for an x-ray. Meanwhile the rest of the students went off to Dalgety to have a closer look at the Snowy River. I did not mind missing out on this since I had been to visit this lovely town last year. Here's a lovely picture of this beautiful river. And another.  And here's what it looked like last time I was there.

Back in Jindabyne, we had a coffee and a pastry and looked through the shops. It was a bit pongy, I found out by overhearing a shopkeeper talking loudly on her phone there had been a sewerage incident and the place had literally lived up to its name of "Nuggets Crossing".

I bought a funny hat for the Pickle, who never wears beanies. I wanted her to be snug and warm for her Cubs camp coming up this weekend. It will be minus 3 overnight and she'll be in a tent. Gulp. So I had a brainwave - buy her a funny hat and she will love to wear it! It is polar fleece (she hates itchy wool), bright pink with a long dragon tail complete with fuzzy purple spikes running all the way down to the tassel. It also has ear flaps. Mission was successful, she has worn it to bed every night this week so I am hopeful she'll wear it out in the cold on the camp.

Note skis on wall _ these were inside and out!

Our accommodation was at the rustic Carinya Alpine lodge, basically a school campsite. It has skis screwed to the walls for decoration.
I was lovely and warm in my cabin, and when I woke up in the morning someone was serenading me with "Oh what a beautiful morning" Here's the view from my cabin door, looking down to the river.

reminds me I need to plant some poplars along my bottom fence. Taken sitting on the bed (small cabin!)

The rest of the day was taken up with Geography field trip type stuff. I can't show you too many photos because most of them have students in them, but here's me trying to keep warm at Smiggin's Holes and at Charlottes Pass. My sister helpfully pointed out that I am a little teapot. I am rather round due to wearing all the clothes I brought with me at once 
Here is a beautiful snow gum, the only tree that grows about a certain altitude in this part of the world.

We visited Miss Heidi's Austrian Tea House on the way home, it is well worth a visit if you are ever passing through Cooma (it's on the way out towards Berridale). I had a delicious homemade apple strudel and a coffee so think you could stand your spoon up in it. Here's the view from Miss Heidi's. There used to be a funpark for kiddies there with statues of fairy tale characters, but sadly vandals destroyed it all one day, I found these sad ladies around the back  I have a lot more to say, but I am having trouble getting my photos to load. I will just leave you with the latest item in my shop, a size 4 pinafore which is fully reversible and made out of grey cord and an old Sheridan doona. 

Quilted Yellow Box, and another book review

So I decided to make an "art quilt". If you look at it cross-eyed, it looks like a tree! Here is the actual tree that I drew on graph paper to make the pattern. That's Maggie the Kelpie bounding off to find me a stick.

After I had charted the tree, I began making HSTs in various shades of green.
Then I purchased $3.50 worth of white fabric for the background.
It was hard work matching up the corners of the squares. I sewed them into rows, with white fabric at either end. Some of the HSTs were half white and half green to give an uneven shape to the tree.

I quilted the green section with a U shape, which I hoped gave the appearance of leaves. I was aiming for this sort of leaves (modelled here by James May for some reason)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1jWs13xUSg I used brown thread, a spool of Molnycke that is probably a collector's item now.

The white background I quilted with wavy lines, in some sunset coloured variegated thread. It is not the best machine quilting ever...I did have a glass of sherry before I began to help relax!
I used green bias binding around the edge.

For the label I wrote on a strip of fabric and fused it onto the back. The back BTW is a sheet I scored at St Vinnies recently, pure cotton. It would make a nice sheet, but people around here are rather fond of matching sets, and besides, it now has a large rectangle cut out of it.
The label went diagonally across the corner of the quilt, next time I will leave a bit more room at either end of the writing, as I have sewn the binding onto it obscuring the capital E.

Here is one last shot of the quilt with the yellow boxes in the background

 I am really quite pleased with it, and am planning on giving it to a random Craftster in a pass-the-parcel swap going on at the moment. Check it out here http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=380729.0

Now for the book review: The Sterkarm Handshake by Susan Price.
This was a gripping yarn! I have no fingernails left after reading this book. It reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones' multi-dimensional story, Hexwood. It had a lot in common with the Owl Service, by Alan Garner. In this story a 21st C company sets up a time tunnel to go back to the 16th century. Their purposes are to exploit the vicious tribal people they find there, living on the border between Scotland and England. An anthropologist is sent back to live with the Sterkarms and to find out more about them. Trouble is, she falls in love with the beautiful Per, son of the head of the clan. If he was around today, he'd be a metrosexual.
I thoroughly enjoyed this time-travelling yarn. It was full of suspense and danger. The 21st century entrepreneurs underestimated the Sterkarms, who may not have the technology but are wise enough to stick up for themselves. There is also the added romantic element of Andrea and Per, who make a lovely couple. The 16th C was described so vividly I could almost smell it as I read the book. One thing puzzled me was the book's categorisation as a kids book. There are no kids in it. It is scary. There are sexual elements to it. I think it is a book for young adults, or for older readers. I am about to start the sequel, A Sterkarm Kiss. Highly recommended.

In other news, I recently arrived home from work on Sunday to find my darling daughter had cooked me a cake. She even cleaned up the kitchen, so that there was not a trace of the cooking except for the final product. Her father helped her to light the oven but apart from that it was all her own work. Not bad for a nine year old!

The coffee pot in the photo is one of my favourite Vinnies purchases. It is a Corningware percolator from the seventies, in mint condition. I got the feeling it was a wedding present that had never been used, and kept in a cupboard all this time. It certainly gets a good workout in my house! Here are some more gratuitous photos of my coffee pot. The design (my friend google tells me) is "country festival"

Here's a photo of sunset on the Snowy River at Dalgety, where I went on an outing to find some platypuses whilst on Staff Retreat at Jindabyne in May. No furry friends were forthcoming, but I did find some enormous wombat holes down by the river. I stomped my way through blackberry bushes, bullrushes and past the wombat holes to get to what I thought was a platypus, but I found out on closer inspection it was a rock. Dalgety was a lovely quaint hamlet and I wish to return and spend some more time poking around there.