Above _ Emmy and ME!
Hi all , here are, the belated ‘snaps’ from our mothers day lunch at Petersons' cellar door, just south/east of Armidale.. (This is once where Sean & Emmy held their Wedding, in the grounds).
A lovely, bright blue sky day, with simple BUT beautiful food.
We are finally as ready as can be!
The house is FOR SALE!
Here are some of the beautiful photos that are appearing online.
Not taken by me of course, but a professional.
He even professionally got up onto the roof to take the picture of the view!
I have been here 12 years and it has been a beautiful house with lots of memories, but its time to move on.
Above: Is the view from the upstairs (and the roof) of our house, towards the south eastern edge of town, in its beautiful autumn glory. The red roofed stands are the Armidale Showground. We have always had great views of the fireworks.
We were a bit disappointed with the valuation, but maybe we weren’t being realistic.
However Grahams property has been valued at more than we expected so it’s all swings and roundabouts.
If your wondering about this house name its a Scottish name - Blair Atholl.
(We’ve been there to visit Atholl Castle Click to a link for more info!)
It’s was once the seat of the Scottish Stewart Earls,,,,, and those that know us well will get the joke.
One of the reasons we decided to sell was that this is MY house and after being married for 8 years maybe its time to combine our finances and buy a property together.
This will be OUR FIRST HOUSE! (well… together)!
So, we are looking for a 4 bedroom house, fairly new and low maintenance. It still needs to be a classic style so it will fit in with my vintage style of decor. We NEED more garage space so an extra garage/big shed, or the space to build one, is a MUST….. A big kitchen would be lovely, as would space that I could make my sewing room. We need room for all our collections and more room for the (yet to materialise) grandkids to run around.
There are only two houses about that are sort of ‘okay’. Not far from where we are now about a 5 minute drive…. We are hoping that something perfect will pop up when we are ready to buy ---- otherwise yeek!
This past weekend Graham and I went with the car club to ‘The great Nundle dog race’. This has been an annual event in Nundle for many years now and is a great fundraiser for the school.
Nundle is a small town south east of Tamworth. I’ve not been there before but it’s a pretty little place.
It was a beautiful day too, warm and sunny.
The dog races are a huge event for the town and great fun. I guess that there must have been over three thousand people there and therefore over 1000 dogs!
These aren’t all working dogs but family pets of every breed you can possibly imagine,, and before I go further,,, we didn’t take ours. We’re not sure how WE would have coped with the excitement.
Above: This was a side race – with dogs chasing a bait – a “humanely killed ‘on the road’ fox tail from the previous night”…. hummm
loads of foxes without tails in the Nundle area then… But the best doggies at this (which I don’t have photos of) were the Jack Russell's!
Mad little things!
Anyway, the idea is that the dogs race in small medium & large dog categories. They also have races for age groups for the kids. The main race is for working breeds only and is very serious. The greyhounds and whippets also have their own categories and they run fast and straight.
The idea is that each dog needs two handlers, one holds the dog up one end of the oval while the other person walks backwards down the field trying to keep eye contact with the dog. The winner is the dog that crosses the line first AND finds its handler. So the dogs need to be fast and smart!...............
Well the result is chaos, dogs go everywhere! My description of it doesn'tdo it justice.
Then there is of course the fancy dress parade, what can I say?
Whoever thought of this as a fundraiser was a genius – much more fun than a school fete.
Below is the ABC local news story on the event.
ABC Local news By Lisa Herbert
Once a year the northern New South Wales town of Nundle goes to the dogs.
Yesterday thousands of people and their pooches made their way to the small town for the local primary school's major fundraiser.
The day is packed full of doggy activities and culminates with the big one - the prestigious Great Nundle Dog Race, a 100 metre sprint for working dogs.
The day's events started with dog jump which was won by a bull mastiff cross called Shank. He scaled 2.08 metres without too much trouble. Shank's owner, Mark McGuire, wasn't expecting too much. "He surprised me. I didn't even think he'd even make the first jump and he ended up winning it!"
A red cattle dog called Red, owned by Stan Smith of Boggabri, won the day's feature event - the Great Nundle Dog race. Shep from Tamworth ran second. Jin of Merriwa came in third .Mr Smith says his best friend didn't do a lot of training for the event. "She gets walked every day. This is just a fun thing."
The event raised more than $12,000 for the local school. Principal Ian Worley says it's a lot of money for a school of 60 children. "It's a major fundraiser for us but it also brings people into the town.
"It puts technology into the classroom. A lot of it goes towards assisting students to go on excursions." Principal Worley says some people take the dog races very seriously. “They get pretty competitive. People aren't allowed any aids that might help attract the dog to them but we had to confiscate a few this year. "We had people trying to sneak snacks in or the dog's favourite rubber ball!"
So, I felt like a scrappy project and this is it.
Even all the light background fabrics are scraps.
I’m making 2, one as a gift and a smaller one for me – I think I’ll give mine a Christmas theme.
The larger quilt will be 82 inches square.
I’ve completed part A, which was the 85 nine patch chain blocks.
I’ve put it aside for awhile until I can get some other projects out of the way.
But part B will be the 200 + of the double diamonds blocks.
I decided to do an update on this project only to realise I hadn’t blogged about it before!
Shows how busy my life is at the moment – but it will soon be back to normal as our new Nurse Unit Manager starts on the 1st of May and I can return to my normal role.
Anyway, I am currently working on The V&A quilt.
In 2011 Mum and I spent the day in the V&A museum in London.
I bought a package of fabric in the gift shop.
These are new fabrics based on traditional designs.
The design of the ‘Ikat’ fabric, pictured below was taken from a patchwork coverlet
made in Britain, dated 1797.
So here is the quilt as it currently is up on my new design wall,,
… in my newly cleaned out and reorganised ‘Quilt Cave"’…
The block is my own design, but closely based on a traditional ‘rolling stone’ block. I’ve added some complimentary solid colours and the final blocks, that I’m working on now, are salmon pink.
Currently I also have two quilts patiently waiting for me to find the time to bind and label them. I have finished the top of the larger ‘Redheads’ Quilt and its waiting to go off to the quilters….. and I have another project on the go – aptly named ‘Under Pressure’ which I will blog about soon!
It was held near Armidale at Petersons Winery where Sean and Emmy had their wedding a few years ago. Great thanks to whoever took the above great pic from and posted it online (so I could pinch it)! We were watching the plane and helicopter from the ground so its wonderful to see the view from their side. 
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