Weekends in Burgundy

Well, not quite, but we spend quite a lot of time with Mr & Mrs Grand Cru** Vineyard, of Burgundy, France, who are here for Vintage (that's grape picking, for youse not in the know of the vineyard lingo)...


They are lovely people, except Mr Grand Cru is a fiercely competitive Scrabble player, and we played quite a few games of multilingual scrabble, which was great because some things are spelt just far enough off the English spelling that we could use up some odd letters - and Mr Golightly's crowning glory, was zero, which he managed to get in the bottom left hand corner of the scrabble board, which is, of course, a triple word score.  Ten for z, 1 for e, 1 for r, 1 for o, 39 points, thank you very much.  


I took a few pictures:


Dusk:

Dinner:

Dog:

Dark (almost):

And we drank lots of great wine in good company:

And the weather was perfect:

I discussed upholstery options with Kaz, who has a small bench she wants to reupholster in this:

which I've had sitting in the 'Home Dec' box since April 2009, just waiting for the right project... 

We bought some gorgeous quilt backing (108"/274cm wide) From Busy Needles, in Singleton, to make new dressing gowns for me, Kaz & Az and although I had already bought a pattern from Folkwear, we popped into Spotlight & picked up something a bit less... fiddly?  Ornate?  I should be able to get started on these after Wednesday, but I did wash the material tonight, which was a smart move considering how much blue dye came out in the water... I may even wash them again once they're dry, just to make sure it all comes out in the wash.  Sorry, couldn't help myself.

And we won the cricket, so it was one of those weekends which are all good, but now, Gentle Readers, I am knackered, so it's goodnight from me, and Ciao! from him.

Ciao Ciao!  

**Interested?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cru_(wine)

Introducing Elliot Casper...

Mr Elliot Casper R* has been delivered, both physically and metaphorically.  I believe his new owner was delighted, both with her colour choices and the outcome, which I think was pretty spiffy; small problem in that I got his eyes every so slightly out of alignment, but hey, there are no straight lines in nature!

So, here is Miss Nelly with Elliot Casper (and we had to have a secret ballot to determine his name) - I thought Felix and Gilbert were pretty spiffy but it became clear quite early that, true Sagittarian that she is, although she asked for opinions as to the name of this pooch, and quite a hilarious time was had flicking through the baby book, she had already made up her mind and was not going to be moved from Elliot, but she did compromise in the best Sagittarian fashion by allowing the unexpected introduction of a middle name.
   

Now all we have to do is make him a collar & he's done.  The nose, in case you're interested, was a 10-year-old's stroke of genius (no pun intended), it's made of flannelette, and is extremely touchable.


Also, yesterday I lent a neighbourly hand to My Best Friend (aka Mother of the Kidlets) who cracked a bone in her spine, get this, when she was in the wheely bin, tamping down the garden weeds.  The bin toppled over with her in it, and she landed on her back.  Lucky she wasn't crippled, if you ask me.  Anyway, much pushing of trolleys, nipping in and out of shops and consuming of lunch was done yesterday whilst the Kidlets had some fatherly interaction, and then I nipped home to check on the Weeding Wonder and her progress.  OMG.  The garden looks amazingly messy, but it's because all the Trad is now in piles throughout the garden, along with various other piles of things she's collected, which need to GO.  

After that, I made a pouch, based on this pattern, but which I have amended slightly to make it a bit easier - I do like the way she's cut the corners out before sewing up the seams, but if you want to vary the corner sizes, of course you need to do your calculating beforehand & it's not as accurate as the original method but it is probably quicker.  Probably.


Anyway, these are gifts, one for my lovely Ma, and the other for Tonee, who is coming to Bali with us, on Monday.  

And that's it for me, for now.  If I get a chance, Remaining Gentle Readers, I will post from Bali, but no promises.  I fully expect to be working on my tan *snort* and drinking G&T by the infinity-edged pool, rather than burning up the bloglines.  See you soon!


Ciao!

Well, stuff has happened

So, Remaining Gentle Readers, and welcome to newest Gentle Reader BlueLambb, who I believe some of you may know under another name, Miss Yvette #1 (oooh, hope that wasn't supposed to be a secret - you know what Benjamin Franklin said, "three people can keep a secret if two are dead"...)... I have given up work for some time.  There are other things happening in the world which I don't really want to discuss in detail here, but suffice it to say, time to be able to get on a plane and fly westwards as required became very important to me, and the New Day Job turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, so it wasn't a very hard decision to make.


I'm quite sure that the August Institution will cope admirably without me - Our esteemed IT leader got a $1.4 million dollar payrise, so I'm pretty sure they won't miss paying me for six months.  Part of the 'time off' deal was that I wouldn't have to go back to the New Day Job, so they've already advertised for my replacement.  Good luck with that.  They need somebody with the patience of Job, the psychic powers of Uri Geller and the constitution of a Draught horse.  You know me, Remaining Gentle Readers, I have none of those things. I can only make one section of the Sydney Pies quilt a day before I start looking for something more interesting to do, unsurprisingly I never predict the winners of the football, and I get a backache lifting the Vegemite out of the fridge.


 Yesterday, my first official day as part of the great unwashed, was spent... um... washing.  I whipped through it all quick smart, and it was a lovely warm day, so it was all dry by 5.00pm, so Mr Golightly was able to come home to a gourmet dinner of leftover pasta and Kentucky Fried Chicken (his choice!).  He often likes to indulge after a weekend of hard labour in the vineyard, and who am I to deny him that little pleasure?  


Speaking of washing, am I right in my understanding that some people in the US of A do not hang their clothes out to dry in the sun and wind, but instead insist that they must use clothes dryers?  I found this article on the net, and whilst I realise that the Colbert Report is satire, I was a bit worried that there was a germ of truth in this article - one of the previous owners of the house my friend Deb just bought was American - it had two (yep, two) tumble dryers, but no clothesline.  Somebody, please, tell me this is not true!!! 


We had a fabulous weekend in the Hunter, the kidlets had an excellent time with the dog, the dam, the pizza oven, the wineries... just kidding about the wineries.  


Some pics:

Oh yes, and I finally finished this cute little guy, for Kaz's niece Charlene:

The stuffing was done with help from the kidlets and the innards of a cushion, sacrificed for a good cause!  I believe Miss Nelly wants one for herself now, so I'm expecting a visit this week to carry out fabric selection.  Hope I've got enough... *snort*.


Ciao!