X

I should be eXiting stuff like this and Xing things off my "to do" list ... not joining in more stuff ... but when I found This I couldn't resist joining in (how could I resist something like "Wednesday ABC? lol) ... even if I only keep it up for a while until I get busy or whatever ...

hmmmm ... If I understand how this thing works, we should be posting something about the letter X ... er ... I picked an easy week to join didn't I?

Actually ... X is not that hard ... not when you know that you have photos of an Australian plant that just happens to be called a Xanthorrea ;-)

... and yes - it is a real plant - if you don't believe me check it out here - http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1145455.htm

(not that the picture is that great or anything, but it does prove they exist and I am not making the name up!)

Now ... where did I put those photos? ... or ... more importantly - because my photos are sorted out according to when they were taken - when did I take take those photos? LOL

I don't know when I took the photos I was thinking of ...

- they were some that I know I have taken at several different times, mostly in the bush around this area - in the hills near here and in some areas a bit further away while on Land Rover Club trips/etc - and I have even put some of them on my blog a year or 2 ago - here

... and yes - it was for a similar reason I am posting X things here now!
so ... to save repeating myself here - if Xanthorreas are not enough X stuff - then go to that post and see some more X things ... none are X-rated, but there are pictures of Xylem, Xylol, an XS650, Xanthorreas, "chemical X", X-rays AND an X-ray machine! ... no picture of xanthan gum, but there is a link to my Xanga blog (that I never post to) and a picture of some xylophagous xylophiles ... and a few other odd things ... lol

... but, when I went looking for those Xanthorrea photos, I found these photos instead - I had forgotten about these!

I took these photos in April 2007, up in some hills near Mum and Dad's place on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland ...

The Xanthorreas are the spiky things - the trees in the background are gum trees (Eucalyptus)

here are some more - this time showing the trunks that some of the species have:

... now you can see why they are also known as "grass trees" - lol

and here is a scribbly gum ("the scribbles" on the bark are actually caused by an insect that attacks this particular species of gum tree) and some more Xanthorreas:

and no - the tall spikes are not garden stakes or poles - they are the Xanthorrea's flower spikes!

... these ones have finished flowering - the spikes will probably all end up falling over/get broken off/etc before the next flowering season - each time they flower they grow a tall spike which is covered in buds which open up into white flowers as the spike finishes growing (and if the spike is in the middle of growing and there is a really hot day they can wilt and end up bent over or even all twisted/curly instead of straight - I used to like finding the weird shaped ones in the scrub when I was a kid!

Talking about finding photos ...
(and this also kind of fits in with X - and it being an "unknown")

... while getting lost in cyberspace, and finding out about this ABC thingy, I looked at a few other blogs of people who are doing it and found this blog post (about what the cat dragged in - lol)

and I left a comment on it ... and I also spent half an hour searching for the photos of a particular B%&%^ grasshopper we get around here, so I could stick one of them on to my previous blog post and link to it ... but do you think I could find it? - no - so now here I am looking for something else and what do I find instead ... yes - the grasshopper!



problem was ... I remembered taking these photos, and I remembered seeing these grasshoppers while on a nature walk (with a group of people) in the local grasslands ... trouble is ... turns out I actually took these photos in the back yard on a different day than the one the nature walk was on! LOL


The amazing thing is ... I think the grasshopper on that blog was in Italy ... the link that said what someone had identified it as showed a similar one that is found in America and this one here is similar too (in fact this one looks more like the Italian one than the American one does ... but looks can be decieving) ... of all the thousands (millions?) of grasshopper species around the world ... or even just how many there are in each country - and there end up being some that are so darn similar but are at opposite ends of the Earth!

anyway ... X is also what one does against a WRONG answer when marking a test/etc ... or to cross out a mistake ... and I think deciding to go blog surfing last night was a mistake - because I am still here - and it is not last night any more! (it is after 5am and the sun is coming up!) oops?

eek! - loonies on the road!

There are 2, soon to be 3, reasons why the roads around here have just become a more scary place to be ...

1. DD got her "learner's" licence (to drive a car) today! (she has not actually got behind the wheel yet though - she got it just before she started work so she has not had time to have a driving lesson yet).

2. Last week I did the motorcycle "pre - learners" course (we have to do the course before we get the learners permit) and then I got my motorcycle learners licence
(I have had a car licence for about 30 years)
... and today I rode this home from the shop DH and I bought it from:



mmmmm shiny new (well new to me - it is actually second hand but only a year old) bike ... and no I am not going to go and get a pile of weird piercings and some "tatts" (not that there is anything wrong with that ... except that DH, and my parents, would probably definitely freak out if I did - lol ... DD may or may not mind and DS would probably think it was weird but cool - with DD and DS - it is probably a case of "piercings/tattoos are great" - but on Mum?! - not so sure there - lol)

3. DS, who has had his drivers licence for a year now, decided that he wants his motorcycle licence - so his Christmas present was that we paid for him to do the pre - learners course (which is not cheap, but one has to do it before one can get their motorcycle learners permit here - it is a 9 hour course (1 day or 2 x 1/2 day) where, in a group, you get taught the basics of how to ride a motorcycle and how to do it safely ... and you ride their bikes so you can do the course before you buy one of your own) ... he does his course in just over a week's time - and if he passes it (most likely, unless he is stupid and doesn't do what they say or something) he can then get his motorcycle learners permit and then he will probably get to borrow my bike to practice on because at the moment he can't afford his own ... in fact I am not sure if he has the money to buy himself a helmet that fits him (the law, and common sense, says you need one), and some gloves and a bike jacket, (they don't call people who ride in shorts and t shirts "squids" for nothing - that is what they look like after they fall off - lol) and possibly some boots (unless he already has some that are ok or he fits an old pair of DH's or something) ... he had a helmet and jacket (for when he went on the back of DH's bike) but he has grown a lot taller/etc in the last couple of years and they don't fit him any more (but they do fit me ;-)

so ... at any given time in the next year - there could be one or 2 (or even 3 if DS finds a mate who lets him ride their motorbike) of us out on the road in/on vehicles with with "L" plates on ... but at least one of them (DD) will have someone sitting beside her to tell her what to do ... lol)



yikes! - both kids old enough to be driving?! - when did that happen? - I am sure they were still playing in the sandpit and learning to read and write, and needed an adult to take them across the road safely, just a couple of years ago ...

My Mad Mind ...

I am not sure anyone can ever know what actually IS inside my mind ... but here is a vaugue representation, in the form of an art quilt, of what one might find in there:



hmmm - I should have made that bottom border a lot narrower, I think it would have looked better that way ... to late now though - it is done and delivered ...
It was my entry in the Unique Stitching Art Quilt Challenge, and I delivered it (it is handy living in the next suburb to the person who runs it - lol) a couple of weeks ago.
The theme was "portrait/self expression" - so, me being the contrary person I am, I decided to do my 'portrait' from the inside out - and do an expression of what is inside my mind.
Once we paid our entry fee (which went to a cancer charity ... I forget which one) we were given a bit of fabric which we had to use some/all of in the quilt (and at least some had to be visible on the front) ... the yellow bit is what I got ... and it was a "me" type of fabric - one I like - and it was tempting to only use a tiny bit in the quilt ... but then I would have had to find another background fabric for my "thoughts", and this bit was perfect for it ... so the whole bit got used ... maybe I should ask if she has any more? ... then again ... I need MORE fabric like I need a hole in the head! ... I already have more than I can use in this lifetime ... but it is amazing how often I still can't find a suitable bit for some particular project or a bit that "looks good with these other 2 fabrics" that is the right size for using in a mystery quilt ... and when I look at how much of it is "normal" quilting fabric (reasonable quality 100% cotton) there isn't a lot of that - just huge piles of all the other stuff that I have managed to accumulate over the last few years (from garage sales, op shops, freebies when people bring scraps to quilt meetings/etc, it is amazing where one can acquire fabric sometimes - lol)

anyway ... I have been doing other things at the same time as this blog post, and now it is time to go get DD from work ... (she works at a fast food place and she has been working a lot lately because quite a few of the regulars have gone away for Christmas) ... so the silly dog photo, or whatever else I may have thrown in here while I was at it, will have to wait for another post ... LOL

Exhibiting Myself

I still have not blogged about the other 3 quilts I had in the Canberra Quilters Exhibition back in August ... so it is about time I did!

The quilt I did blog about was the Bookworms one that I blogged about here.

I also entered this:


Which is actually a re-arranged/added to version of the quilt that I Entered in the Tasda (now called ACTTAA) exhibition a couple years earlier - and blogged about here [note to self - add link]

... later, when I found this saved as a draft and actually posted it: er ... actually I don't think I did blog about that!

so ... I went and found a photo:



hmmm - I didn't realise how much better the new version looks! (although it was only meant to be, and look, temporary ... and the quilt show version was hung a bit better too ... and I have also decided that it is not temporary any more - I plan to leave it as it is and hang it up on a wall somewhere in the house - lol)
btw, it still has the same name as it originally did - "Exhibiting Myself"
(and it wasn't meant to sound rude ... really ... why don't you belive me? - LOL)

For the "Tiny Treasures" (miniature quilts) I entered this:



... which I actually made back in 200something - when it was the "International Year Of Rice" ... the idea for it came to me when i was wondering how on Earth one would make a quilt with that for a theme ... and the idea came to me when my mind was wandering while I was walking around the supermarket, so I just had to make it! The background fabric was a bit that I dyed at the Scquilters "Fringe Retreat" a few years ago, I drew the rice plants after spending some time "googling" pictures of rice plants, and I used stitches that look like rice grains (I think it is called seed stitch?) to quilt the bits of the quilt that didn't have the rice plants or the ripples to hold the layers together.

Yes - I sometimes have fun thinking up interesting names for my quilts/etc - lol

The other quilt I entered was another one I made a couple years ago - it was actually done as a mystery quilt on the mq yahoogroup ... this one was MQ9 which we made one day in the middle of 2003 (sewing instructions posted to the list bit by bit - every hour or 2 - during the day) ... it was probably a month or 10 later before I actually finished the quilt - lol

(probably about March 2005 - because that is when I took a photo of it finished ... it is also when I took photos of the fabric I chose/used for MQ10 - and I vaguely remeber deciding to get MQ9 finished before we started doing MQ10 - lol)

This is it hanging in the quilt show - and as you can probably tell - it is the one I need a better photo of - this one is a bit blurry (which is why I made it a small size)



I did take a few other photos of it (including those I took in March 2004) ... but they are all either just as blurry/etc

... or the quilt is underneath the dog!

[where IS that photo?!!!]

... 2 1/2 months pass by ...

(I must have had other things to do besides hunting around for a photo ... or spent too long getting distracted while looking for it ... so I had saved this blog post and then forgot about it ... I was originally doing it back at the start of OCTOBER ... and Christmas got here before I got around to posting it - LOL)

anyway ... this time it only took me a couple of minutes to actually find the photo I was thinking of!



well ... now I have at least made a start on catching up with one of the heaps of things I intended to post to my blog a lot sooner than this but still have not posted yet ... maybe I will get around to posting a few more things sometime in the near future ... or maybe not ... life is still a bit busy ... and I still have a couple of journal quilts I should have finished a week ago, and one more of them that isn't even started yet! (so of course I came in here and did this tonight, instead of going out to my sewing room and doing that - LOL)

Talking about "tonight" - it no longer is ... is is now well and truly morning (3:30am actually)
so I probably should go to bed and try not to sleep in all day tomorrow - LOL

Seasons Greetings

hmmm ... it has been quite a while since I posted anything here ... oops?

(maybe they should move Christmas to a more quiet time of the year? :-)


btw, if you don't like the card - there might be a different one on one or more of my other (even more neglected) blogs ... depends how many more cards I get around to creating and how many of my other blogs I get around to posting to this evening - lol

(there are links to some of my blogs in the side-bar of some ... and they should all come up in the list you get if you look at my profile ;-)