Western Australia

I had an actual real holiday (for whole a week). Travelled over to Western Australia to see the other coast. Twas great, left cold wet Melbourne for 25 degree days and not a drop of rain.

Flew to Perth and met up with my sister who'd been visiting friends South Australia and flown into Perth a little later. My sister and I hired a car drove up to meet my father and his partner Jennie in Denham, they're doing the grey nomad thing for 6months and are currently travelling with their camper up the west side of Australia. For people not in the know the drive Perth to Denham is a 9 and 1/2 hour one way trip. Needless to stay we stopped roughly half way in Geraldton to get some much needed sleep.

We would highly recommend the Foreshore Backpackers, clean, convenient and as the name would suggest right on the foreshore. It would have been nice to stay longer but we only had a week and a lot of driving to do.

A word of caution, if your hire car beeps at you it's probably trying to tell you something. On leaving the backpackers we discovered the car wouldn't start...why, why, why? Then I ask the dreaded question, did we leave the lights on last night? shoot. Fortunately Hertz had road side assist with their vehicle and by the time we had finished breakfast at the Jaffa Hut on the corner we had been rescued!

Drove straight to Denham with only a quick stop to check out shell beach, which as its name would suggest is a beach made up entirely of shells. They're very literal with a lot of their place names in W.A. In Denham we stayed at Denham Seaside Tourist Village, which is NOT as Jennie first directed us to the Shark Bay Caravan park. The first was an excellent place to stay with good facilities and a great views the second is a tiny, slightly spooky, fairly dialect place in the 'centre' of town. Thankfully we were staying at the nice place. :)

We used Denham as a base while we visited Monkey Mai, where they feed the dolphins, and had a look around the area. At Monkey Mai we got see the dolphins, saw a green turtle, little shark and had a buffet breakfast/brunch.

After we had a walk around little lagoon (managed not to step on a stone fish) and had an up close look at the wind turbines - I love them :) so useful in generating energy and interesting on the skyline. You can't get so close to the ones in Victoria.

The next day we headed in to camp in Francois Peron National Park. FWD access only, so much fun! 

On the way in we stopped at the old Peron Homestead and had a splash
in the artesian hot tub before heading into the National Park to camp. We decided on the South Gregories as the place to set our camp for the 3 night's we'd be there. The camp sites were spread out and there were only 3 sites per 'loop'. With South Gregories having two loops. You practically had a private beach.

Dad caught some fish, including a wobbegong (shark) - by the tail, with his hands, after it broke his hook...he be a crazy man my dad. We had some vehicle issues so Wayne camped next door came to our rescue with a jump start (twice) and on the way out dad got distracted chatting with us and the car got bogged, again Wayne, also heading out, to the rescue. So yeah Wayne was our hero.

Saw Skipjack point and sis and I walked the 1.5km Wanamalu Trail down to Cape Peron where dad and Jennie met us with a thankfully working vehicle. Sis almost stepped on a snake (python) at the start of the walk - he was a very chill snake though and just slowly slithered off to do his own thing. She spent the rest of the walk delighting in pointing out snake trails...brat.

On Saturday we said goodbye to dad and Jenni to head back down to Perth, again stopping in Geraldton to sleep (backpackers again and same room even). On the way out of Denham we picked up a couple of backpackers and took them a few hours down the road to the Overlander. They were from Malaysia and aimed to travel right round the county, good on'em. One of them was actually a girl we'd seen at Monkey Mai earlier in the week as a volunteer for the dolphin feeding. Serendipity :)


On the way back to Perth before Geraldton we detoured to Kalbari National Park to check out the Natures Window and view.

On the way in we literally drove over a spiny dragon lizard pretending to be a leaf - in the middle of the dirt road. Fortunately he was right in the middle of the car so we didn't squish him. We stopped and shoo'd him off the road. Made the day - so cute, so dumb.

 
Then the next day we took the coastal road towards Perth and stopped at the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park and had a walk around them. Then lunch, they do some good calamari along the W.A. coast, and home. Our lovely brother picked us up from Melbourne Airport at 11.45pm in the wet and cold. Holiday over.

Woodland Christmas kit - owl

This little guy was made using the designs and items from the free kit that came with Cross Stitcher October issue number 284. There are 5 designs, a deer, hedgehog, owl, badger and fox. The original design was for some felt Christmas decorations but I didn't really see the point I making them as I never put up a Christmas tree. Seemed pretty redundant.  Instead I decided to wing it and make some sewing accompaniments.  First off the bat is the owl design - made into a scissor fob.

I did the owl on one side as per the pattern, two threads over two. Then on the other side I made a itty bitty owl using one strand over one. He was a bit fiddly and I'm unsure if all my crosses ended up fully correct but in the end looked incredibly cute. 

At the bottom before I sewed it all up I should have made sure it was a little more pushed out. As it is one side looks a little squished. And it did have a tassel but I didn't like it so snipped it off. I used some random ribbon to embellish the top and glue along my rough stitching on the left side.  And all done. Next up I think a pin keep. 

Bikes and wool

Just a pretty functional yarn bomb in Brunswick.  

Snow Much Fun

I started this little guy ages and ages ago. He's a free Fizzy Moon kit from Cross Stitch Card Shop - issue 92. Once the cross stitching was done I tried to do the french knots for the eyes. Hated them so shoved the stitching in the magazine and threw it in the magazine holder. Promptly forgot about it.

Today I decided to clean. Got as far as flicking through my craft magazine's to see what to get rid of and what to keep before finding this little guy almost all done. Seemed a shame to not finish it now that I'd found it again. (See here a master procrastinator at work)

I cut off his horrible french knot eyes and tried again...and again and again. His eyes are really just ugly. Too closely spaced and made him look like a bizarre zombie snow teddy. Even the ones in the magazine example didn't really look all that great.  In the end I added another black french knot in the middle of his white french knot eye to make a black pupil which I think help make him look better. At least not so demented anyway just a bit googly eyed. 

I had a few gripes, I almost ran out of white and cream and the two red colours used seemed too similar to really make any impact.  I can't even really tell from the finished product that two different reds were used. The button on his belly could also have done being a different colour to stand out more. I was going to use a real button but my cat ate it. Really just gave it a sniff, I blinked and it was gone. 

It seemed like the design could have done with a bit of tweaking before being released for production. But all in all just what you'd expect from a little freebie kit. 

The card that came with the kit is long gone. Not too bothered since I don't really 'do' cards. I have no idea what I'll do with the finished design. Maybe  a gift of some kind...

Post french knot eye surgery tonight;

Finished product;

Crafty Melbourne

Crafty Melbourne :) 

Free group creating in the city Monday's between 9/3/15 to 14/12/15. Shame work will prevent me attending it looks like fun. 

If you get the chance visit Federation square (still one of the ugliest architechture concived) for some crafty fun.

 

5000 Poppies; at the Flower and Garden show

 So the other day I went to the Melbourne International Flower and Garden show.

Really the display gardens at the show were on a whole average and there was only a handful. I enjoyed the day because flowers and I went with friends but they really need to ramp up the 'garden' bit of the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show. 

But on to the highlight, the '5000 poppies' group had an awesome display created by Phillip Johnson / Phillip Johnson Landscaping. I'll let the pictures speak for me:

Michael Powell Second Hand Shopping Win

I picked up this little cross stitch from Savers ringwood the other week. Normally I have a problem with buying second hand cross stitch when it pops up in opshops because quite often even if I like the design there will just that one stitch that is the wrong way round. My eyes will inevitably keep being drawn to that one place...over and over. 

But this one was lovely and despite being a bit squished in the frame a complete bargain. I'd looked at designs by Michael Powell before and liked them but nothing had inspired me (yet) to buy. I'm generally a design opportunistic buyer - I see I buy, I don't search. Also I'm not a fan of doing cross stitch designs that rely so heavily on backstitching.  I get disheartened waiting for the design to appear and stop stitching or feel at the end that the backstitching was too messy or invasive to the finished design. I think there is probably a greater chance of me not liking my finished work when lots of backstitching is involved too though that might just be personal bias rather than substantiated fact.

 

So I get my purchase home and open the frame up to see it I can tighten up the design since it wasn't sitting well in the frame and got a pleasant surprise. The frame was actually hiding most of the cross stitch :)

So for $2 I got a fully completed, well done mini cottage IV designed by Michael Powell and a spare frame. A very good day.

I brought a more appropriate frame and here you go, all the lovely with almost none of the work. I feel a little guilty. 

The design is framed up a little wonky but it's not really noticeable with the design set back from the glass.