Golden days

We are having a spell of lovely warm 30C (85F) days, and the roses are flowering their heads off; the whole garden is perfumed with them at the moment. This is the eerily-named Crepuscule (Twilight) the most spectacular plant in the garden.
Beautiful coppery-apricot flowers, strong perfume, hardly a thorn - every garden should have this one!
This is the 'Melbourne Cup' rose - if you watch the race on the TV next Tuesday you'll see long hedges of Crepuscule growing beside the track. The bushes are pruned in late August (with hedge-clippers) and specially fertilised to ensure a glorious display on the Day.
Here's a close-up. Thanks to the rain we had last month, the flowers are the largest ever, though mine have been neither pruned or fertilized.
And across the path, another beauty, Just Joey, is coming into bloom.
Around by the carport, the crab-apple is covered in frilly pink and white - a display to rival cherry blossom, I think.
This is Malus ioensis 'Plena' - no fruit to speak of, but pretty autumn leaves.
This spring is the best we've had in years, everything is so green and fresh, I'm trying to store it all up before the hot winds of summer arrive to turn everything dry and dusty.

It's hard to kill a rose

My garden was planted 10 years ago, when I built my current house. I planted nearly 50 of my favourite roses (it's a big garden, far too big as it turns out.) For the first few years they were watered every summer, using a dripper system. Then the drought really set in, and with it came severe water rationing.
For the past 5 years they have had to rely on rainfall alone, and by the end of summer, they look pretty sad. But amazingly nearly all have survived, and this winter and early spring we've had better rains, and the roses have responded with lots of new growth.
So I've been waiting for the first flowers.
The lovely old-fashioned Mme Alfred Carriere is always the first,
closely followed by the little climber Pinkie, bravely budding despite some dieback from last summer. I have 3 bushes of Mme Alfred, all grown from cuttings from a friend's garden.
It's so nice to have some roses to pick at last.
Quinces belong to the Rosa family too, and my tree is a joy - maybe I'll even get a crop this year.

All wrapped up

It's been a while since I posted, but I've not been idle. Not, unfortunately, sewing.
Mr T's plastered arm has been a right nuisance, to me as well as to him. Riding a bike (his usual mode of transport) is forbidden, so someone has to drive him to the station for his commute to TAFE in Bendigo, and to his part-time job - we live about a mile from the town centre, and it's winter...
Domestic duties like washing up or - Heaven forbid - cooking are also out of the question.
So chauffering and general Domestic Goddessing duties have eaten up some sewing time. Add in two family reunions, a grandson's Year 8 graduation, and some Goldfields Quilters stuff - no wonder Bauble production has slowed down.
When I do make it into the sewing room, nothing works out as planned, anyway. The last attempt at a Bauble wound up in the bin; it seems as if my brain doesn't have room for creativity, being stuffed too full of the mundane at present. So for the moment, I'm making small crafty gifts for the upcoming trading table. There's a Quilters working bee on Saturday, I'll show you what I've been making after that.

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However, there are still some Baubles you haven't seen yet. These were the result of some experiments in wrapping strips of fabric around a ball. Here's the first one -
I'd like it more, I think, in different colours.

Then I did this -
fine cream cotton, embroidered in pale green and lemon.
I called it "Simplicity".

The artist's day

I've been working on a new Bauble. It's just not going right. This morning I unpicked two days worth of embroidery.
Then I drove Mr.T to the doctor's - he who went on a trip to the snow late last week, and predictably, fell off his snowboard. Nasty swollen wrist.
At 11, he rang "I have to go to Bendigo, the local x-ray machine is on the blink." (his Mum, Ms. J. is at work all day) 60k round trip to find out if his wrist is broken.
I came home, surveyed the needlepocked and slightly grimy Bauble, and sewed up a new one.
4.15, back to the doctor for a verdict on the x-rays.
6 p.m, Mr. T finally emerged, resplendent in a large, knuckle-to-elbow plaster cast.
Arrived home neck and neck with Ms. J, cooked dinner (fried rice, the best thing that happened all day. Enough left over for Ms. J's lunch tomorrow, too)
After dinner, devise a plastic bag/elastic band combo for Mr. T's shower in the morning.
8 p.m. stuff new Bauble. Turns out I should have used a heavier interfacing, the seams twisted as I stuffed it. Aaaagghhh!

Running repairs

Initially this blog was supposed to be exclusively about the process of making Baubles, but looking back over the posts so far, it all seems a bit too earnest, somehow. When I think about the blogs I most enjoy reading, it's the off-topic stuff that makes them more interesting to me - glimpses of domestic life, pet stories, sharing of links, even (occasionally) travel pics.
Like this one, written by a Japanese-American woman living in a rural Japanese city. Tanya shows us her quilts, but she also talks about day-to-day life in Japan, giving us fascinating glimpses of a different culture.
Or my friend Susan, a fellow Victorian who can make almost anything entertaining, from the antics of her menagerie to her completely over-the-top Christmas decorating, as well as her knitting and quilting activities.
So I'm diversifying, beginning with a small domestic disaster, and a happy ending.
My washing machine is old. No, I mean really old. I found the original guarantee:
the date is December 1981 - that's over 27 years ago!
It's had a hard life, with more than a few battle scars. Way too old to have any electronic components, it still works just fine.

When I moved house around 10 years ago, the plastic lid got badly cracked. I filled the cracks with Superglue - problem solved..

Last week, something heavy fell on the lid, the cracks came apart, and one corner of the lid broke off entirely. This effectively put the machine out of commission, because there's a small pressure switch behind the lid which makes everything go round, and now there was no pressure on it...

Of course I could have just bought a shiny new machine, with a computer and assorted electronic gizmos, that might last for two or three years at best - but, why on earth would I dispose of a perfectly good machine, with years of life left in it? There had to be a way to fix it.
I Superglued the cracks again, which sorta worked, but it was still pretty wobbly. Pity it wasn't a pair of jeans, then I could put a patch or two on it!

Then I remembered the sheets of plastic someone gave me, which I use for cutting templates. About the same thickness as heavy card, but much tougher. Out came the glue again, I cut a couple of patches, stuck them on, and weighted them down for a few hours.

Voila! Good as new! Now, if it would just stop raining, I'd do some washing...