Quilty Post.

I am a little late to the party.
Park City Girl is Hosting this Bloggers Quilt Festival.



I am rather a contrary non joiner, but I have decided to join this. Even though they are having Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, & we are having Autumn here Downunder, Quilts are really timeless, & seasonless, after all.

I am entering this quilt, which I designed myself, because it is original.
It is a very simple quilt, but it is full of bright colours, and I called it "Gratitudes".
I made it as a gift for a very good friend, to say thankyou, for all she does to help me, & for being a lovely friend.

I quilted it very simply, on my domestic machine. It is not really wonky, but it was hard to get a good photo out on the clothesline.

Go & visit Amy, she has the full list of entrants, as well as some lovely music!

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This next series of pics are not quilt related at all.

When my mother was a little girl, her family were very poor you might say. My Grandmother was the local postmistress for the district. This meant she handled all the mail in the district, from her home. There was no official Post Office. She had wonderful stamps she had collected & years later, when we were children we felt we had much treasure in the old stamps our grandmother had kept.

Our Grandfather was the local Roadman. He was the maintenance man for the local roads. It was his responsibility to keep the roads free of slips, which often happened when the weather was really wet- as it frequently was, in the valley where they lived. He also had to keep the 'water tables' clear, so the water did not wash out the metal roads.

How different it all is, today, in that area. The roads are wide & are now sealed. There are still occasional slips onto the roads, but of course, there is much heavy machinery to deal with such events.

My grandfather used to cycle many miles on his old bicycle, with his implements for work carried along with him.

My mother was an only daughter. She had 2 older brothers, & a younger brother. The small house where they lived had little space for a family, so her older brothers slept in tents. It was a very cold valley, so I really dont know how they managed to keep warm.

My mother was born in 1920. She was a long baby, & the nurse told my Grandmother that she would grow to be a 'very tall woman'. Hah! She barely made 5'2", & was tiny all her life.

She had few toys in her childhood, but this little blue metal enamelled teaset was one of her treasures she kept. I loved it as a child, & always mourned the fact that it had one cup missing. I had a plastic teaset, & I substituted the missing cup with a plastic one, which I still have.

As you can see, the set was made in Germany, as stamped on the base of the teapot.

Over the years it has sustained some chips off the enamel. I did play with it, & I let my daughter play with it occasionally, though of course she had her own modern teasets.

I also let my granddaughter play with it, and on looking at it recently I saw there was a little teaset of my daughter's tucked away with this one. The other little set is one plate, one cup & one saucer. It too is metal, with a blue enamel, but it has a little design on the edges. It was made in Hong Kong.

So many memories!

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Yesterday, we went to a Country Court, to see what sentence the guilty attacker of our friend would get. Having pled guilty, he got a 'discount'. WTH??

'Normal' discount is 25%. Because our friend had had to give evidence, before the little scrote pled guilty, he 'only' got a 10% discount!

I see no rhyme or reason to the way the justice system works. The outcome amounts to a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket.

Little wonder people take justice into their own hands.

A bitter lesson to our friend's children.

This was the stand of trees we passed in the lane we walked, leading to the Court. Such attractive trees, with lovely bright bracts.

They lined this carpark, in the lane, & I wish I had taken the photo on the way into the court. The sun was weakly shining on the way there, but it had clouded somewhat when we returned to our car.

The copper colours are some type of bracts, not flowers. Sorry I have no idea what sort of trees they are.

Colbie Caillat, Dreams Collide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzA6J2_Mtb8