Dreaming about rugs

I have someday plans to buy a new rug for the living room.  If the ordinary obstacles of everyday life were swept aside (you know, money, availability &tc so forth!), then my shortlist for browsing would certainly include the Gee's Bend rugs from ABC Carpet and Home (take a look here) or Amy Butler's new range of rugs (take a look here).  It's nice to dream...!

"Making Toast" by Roger Rosenblatt

"Making Toast" was in this weekend's Spectrum magazine, in the Sydney Morning Herald, but it originally appeared in the New Yorker here.  It's wonderful, simple, complicated, clear writing, about the time when his adult daughter died suddenly, and her parents moved to live with her widowed husband and young children.  Small telling details, rendered in prose that isn't soppy or over-egged, so you feel all you should in this snapshot of grief and mourning and travelling into the days and weeks after such a death, but without manipulation.
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Worth reading. 
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Spring blossom

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Isn't that beautiful?  Just about to burst!  My favourite sort of blossom (?crabapple) - deep pink buds, paler as they open then white in bloom.

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It was windy last night, and this morning the garden had a confetti of white blossom petals on the grass - not even sure where the tree may be (the one above was photographed while I was Out'n'About); but it's another sign of spring.

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Wattle in sunlight

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Just because it's beautiful.

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Quilt in progress - one from the scraps

Last summer, I sat down with a box of scraps from the previous twelve months, and started sewing.  One result was Scrap Box Jig, one of my entries in this year's Sydney Quilt Show.

Lots of fun there!

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Another result was another Scrap Box quilt that's off being quilted and will be in Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine early next year:

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What surprised me was that from a not enormous box of scraps (10 litre box, about the size I'd use to hold the fabrics for a single project) I easily got two quilts, a throw-ish size and a bed size.  And I can look at each and name the quilts from which each fabric came.  They're a great sort of memory quilt, and happy ones to look at, with lots of good, cheerful energy.  The fabrics are varied, but I think they work well together.  I didn't try for matchy-matchy as I sewed each block, nor when I assembled the blocks together into a quilt.  Just went with next please! and let them work as they would.  And they did.

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Red camellias

These are from my parents' garden.  Just beautiful.

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Breakfast at a café: II

Different café, different breakfast from another weekend. 

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One way and another, I'd never had Eggs Benedict, despite seeing them mentioned often in books/food articles etc etc.

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Two poached eggs, two slices of Turkish bread, bacon and hollandaise sauce.

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Also yum.  When cut into, the egg yolk oozed delightfully over the bread.  Aaaaaah.

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No lunch required after this one, either: just a spot of tiffin mid-afternoon to tide over till dinner time.

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