SSO Concert - 'Pictures at an Exhibition'

We have been down to Sydney again to the Opera House.

We left poor Teddy in special care at the kennels, but this was a big trip for us. We came down by train but we will be flying back.

 

Finally we see the conductor Simone Young with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.. 

 

Here is the lovely Gail striking a pose in the forecourt.

 

I've still got a walking stick , blah. But its very good for getting people to move out of my way!

 

 

It was great, but not as great as Lang Lang who will now be the benchmark.

Graham and I stayed at the Novotel Darling Harbour.

Which turned out to be a right kerfuffle as the light rail had maintenance and it was a literal pain to get to the Novotel by bus with a walking stick and still dodgy hip...

.... 

But look at this beautiful egg dessert at the Ternary Restaurant. 

Once the white chocolate shell was broken it was full of mango and passionfruit. YummEE 

 

Great Eastland Rally Armidale

Graham and I have been on the organising committee for a car rally this year.

Originally I thought by the time this event came around I would be 6 weeks post my hip replacement,  however my surgery was postponed by 2 weeks so I was still hobbling around with a walking stick.

Anyway, it all turned out well, everyone had a great time and we even made money to donate to charity.

This below was the final night dinner which I will come back to at the end of this post. 

Saturday started with morning tea and a welcome speech from Bron.

 Attending were about 90 people from Tamworth and the coast.

After tea and cake it was a back roads run to Guyra, which Graham marshaled at a corner and we took photos of every car, (for the slide show at the dinner). 

 I'm not going to post photos of all the cars as there were too many. but here are a few.

 Then it was lunch at Guyra Bowling club.

 On Sunday there was an around Armidale run.

I didn't go as I thought it may be a bit much in my current less mobile state. I had also done the run with Graham when we mapped it out in early September.

It seemed to be very successful, people took wrong turns, got lost and overall found it hilarious.  Like herding cats. Maybe they learnt a bit about the towns history as well? 

And it showed off their cars of course.

 

Sunday night was the presentation dinner at Armidale Bowling club, in the ballroom.

I blew up all those balloons by myself, with a helium canister of course. Everyone else was too chicken in case one burst, that will make my mother laugh. We tied them to old tools that Graham had in the garage.

Balloons and helium were donated by local businesses.

 

I also designed all the place mats and Graham helped me laminate them. 

(I hate laminating, its plastic that will take years to break down, but I could see no way around it in this instance).

 

 The fun facts must all be true because I got them from the internet... (-:  

 

The idea was to get people talking at the table and we got 

the idea from something similar from a past rally. 

(But mine are better). 

 

The rally participants all took them home so they must have liked them.  

I've also passed on my word documents to another club who asked for a copy to pinch the idea for their rally. After all,  we pinched ideas for lanyards from another rally. That's the nice thing about car clubs we are all happy to help things evolve.

 

Bron made all the pickles and I made the labels.

Graham also ran the quiz and the slideshow. 

The committee were very pleased with the beautiful trophies which 

were made by Bron's Grandson, Jackson.

https://www.houseofjackson.com.au/ 

Then the raffle was drawn, with winners picking the prize of their choice.

 To my relief, my quilt was one of the first prizes picked. Its gone off to Inverell.  

A lady, its very pleased winner, came up to me later to personally thank me. I was pleased too YAY!

Then we gave out the awards, tidied up the room, popped the balloons and went home.

PHEW!

We had a great team on the committee well done everyone! 

P.S. December 2025 update..

Bronwyn (Rally Director) and Judy (Rally Secretary) 

won the joint club person of the year  for 2025. 

Well done ladies!  

'Are We There Yet'? July 2025

It's been a long time since I've posted about a finished quilt, so here is my next finished project.

'Are We There Yet' is a small lap quilt or a wall hanging using a cheats panel for the centre.

Lots of flying geese in the border and I've matched the colour to the sunset. 

 This one is going to the Car Club to be raffled at the rally in October.

I did my old trick of buying a wide back and using it for both the front and back. Its Basic Grey Grunge in a dark blue. 

 

Sandra has again worked her magic on the machine quilting. 

This pattern is called 'Every Which Way'.

 

I have 2 more quilts waiting for me to hand finish the binding so expect some more quilt posts before the end of the year.

But first, off to hospital to sort out the dodgy hip.
 

 

A Winter Wonderland! (Maybe not). Saturday 2nd August 2025

Boy, did it snow. This is the heaviest snowfall in Armidale since the 1980's.

It started off fluffy, nice and pretty..

 It confused a Magpie.

 Then it didn't stop.

 We wouldn't have got out of the driveway.

I'm glad I am now retired as it would have been a nightmare trying to get nurses into town to work. 

Also getting them home from work. I imagine there were a lot of double shifts that weekend.

That's our red roof completely white.

The roads are all closed, people are stuck on highways.

THEN THE POWER WENT OUT!

We were lucky that ours was only off for several hours, but many people had no power for days.

There have been so many horror stories of older people stuck at home with no heating. 

THANK YOU to the poor essential energy people having to go out and do their best to fix things with impassable roads and in dreadful conditions. 

Hi my Mum's Dear Readers,

It's Miss Lizzy here to tell you how much I luvvved the snow!

It was sooo much fun.

At 4 o'clock, when we took Graham out for a play, 

he'd throw our toys and the toys disappeared into the snow!

I had to dig around to find it, snow flew around everywhere, hilarious!  

I got covered  in snow. Mum said I looked like a big snowball.

 

Teddy didn't like it, it was too close to his undercarriage.

 

Did you know that I think it is my job to monitor the goings on in the park next door?

 

When people visited the park to look at the snowy view 

I had to lope down the hill, barking, to let them know I was keeping an eye on them.

 

 

Then I found that the snow came up further than my leg pits and it was hard work getting back up the hill because I needed to jump through it.

 

I can eat snow, its a bit cold like ice cream, but tastes like water.
 

Until next time

Love and (cold) wet noses from

Miss Lizzy

 

I'll take the blog back now, thanks Miss Liz for your thoughts on the snow event.

You can see how heavy it was by how the tree branches are weighed down.

The trees that suffered the most were the pine trees, surprisingly for trees from the northern hemisphere huge trees just collapsed, in a concertina effect. What a mess and the whole town smelt like pine.

Wattles didn't fair well either, but the biggest damage was to the gums. Branches down everywhere. A lot of branches were just bent but when we had big winds a couple of weeks later huge limbs where crashing down. A month on its still bad, dying branches are everywhere.

Worse was damage to peoples roofs, gutters, collapsed sheds, the roads are a mess. Everything's a mess.It was just a total disruption to normal life.

Then Sunday morning all silence under a blanket of snow. (See first photo of the post as well).

It was gone by the end of the day and melted into great rivulets of water and slush.