My Birthday Week 2020

In this part of the world things are hotting up, with  social interaction outside the home. While Victoria is now again under lockdown with the virus going mad there, it seems in NSW things are getting back to normal.
I say this as our eldest daughter was  up from Sydney for a week, for the school holidays. I  have spent 4 days out, and it has felt like nothing has changed, especially the traffic, and the amount of people out and about. The last day, was lunch at the Greenhouse Tavern, which recently opened back up.
 

View from Verandah Greenhouse Tavern Coffs Harbour

Out door area

We have been here quite a few times of course, but one of the problems is, it is situated on the highway, so traffic passes by constantly. It was bumper to bumper the whole hour we were there. It felt normal. The meals here are very cheaply priced, which is why we go. I had a delicious rump steak and salad.

 

 The chairs and tables are a little further apart than normal, but you didn't feel like the next table would breath germs on you haha. Again we had to sign on, as we did last Sunday with my sisters outing, which is for tracking people in case of someone having the virus, and hand sanitizer readily available. I do not mind these precautions at all. 

Largest Plant  Pot I have ever seen. Bar is in the entrance area. Plants are real.

My other outing was at the beach cafe on my birthday, several days before, just the two girls. This cafe has a very nice atmosphere, overlooking the ocean. My lunch of fish and chips though was awful, coffee great. The crowd here  were a bit too close for comfort, and rules far more relaxed. No signing on for instance, and no booking, no hand sanitizer.

Lining up for coffee after bulk of crowd had gone.

 I find it very disconcerting when whole family and friends all line up at a counter.... creating a crowd. It makes me nervous. Never the less it is holiday time and a lot of people have descended on our little community which is good. If my immune system wasn't playing up I would probably handle it better.

Tables had been spaced apart.

Following our last day lunch we went down to the Jetty area to show off the improvements that have taken place down there. Again lots of traffic, and we had coffee at one of the stands near the beach. It was delicious and they had hand sanitizer at the tables which was thoughtful.

These little turtles are all embedded in the pathways. Only tiny.

View out to the entrance, someone painted the blocks years ago in the middle of the night. Look like lego blocks.

 

Surf School in Training

 

Steps partly  covered in sand now, but is a lovely area down to the beach. Good amphitheater.

Beach area from the step, enclosed by Marina and  0riginal Jetty

 Lots of sculptures have been placed around, we couldn't resist this one.

Our motto now is to help the smaller businesses, so chose this coffee van rather than another restaurant. Although everyone is hurting.
 

Coffee Van

Last photo as they were cleaning up and it was about to rain so we dashed for the car. It was a great week in all despite the weather. Oh and I am wearing my new insulated coat, very toasty warm.  lol


Till Next Time.

Hardanger and Me

For those who follow me regularly, you might remember there being odd snippets of an embroidered  Hardanger cloth I have been working on. There were three of  us, making this cloth, and all have now finished after 4 years of sewing it.
 I looked up about Hardanger and got this. 
 History.... Hardanger Embroidery is named after a region in southwest Norway in the county of Hordaland by the Hardanger Fjord. However, it is thought to have originated from the Middle East. From there it spread to Europe with ties to the Reticella and Venetian needle laces.

 

 

 These are quite big cloths at least 1 metre across, possibly 1.2m, I actually haven't measured it exactly and it is all packed away now.  Made on a cream Cashel linen that we purchased from a specialist Needlework shop in USA. Linen is very hard to get in Australia, and often cheaper to buy direct from America, or it was back then.

 

The main stitch of Hardanger is Kloster Blocks, which makes up the basic pattern, from there, little smaller areas are created, within the Kloster block pattern, and can be embroidered by cutting and drawing several threads out so intricate weaving can be done. 

I must admit when we started these cloths, it never occurred to us it would take twice as long as we thought.

 

 

My biggest problem now is I wonder who would like this cloth after I am gone. In the meantime it is in a bag waiting for the Dining table to be cleared of seed sorting so I can put it on there for a while. It is not a cloth that can be used when beetroot is around, that is for sure. 

 

 

I have now got back to a drawn thread cloth, that I started just before this one, and hope to finish it off. I have stopped going to my Monday embroidery group as of last week, due to me being highly autosuppressent, but hope to now and then do some of the drawn thread so when I do go back it is also finished.

 Many things are taking my time, as I have started decluttering again, getting the garden going between rain which seems to be part of our everyday lives, going through old projects, patterns, and just a great deal of paper stuff that I have collected.

 

 

Today, for some reason, I got the urge to cook up a storm of slices and cakes. I have no idea why so much, and quite a bit of it is frozen now. 

 

Chocolate Chip Coconut Slice, Whole of Lemon Cake, Chocolate Brownies and Rock Cakes, and as a family we call nobbies, which came about when dad was a child, who knows how long that word has been in the family. My dad would have been 92 this year. He told me even his friends of the day would call them that as well. It's stuck now.

 

Taken a different day but a bit clearer, although crumpled.

I hope everyone is busily occupied, while we wait out the current events.

Till Next Time, stay safe and well.