Here are some of my favourite quilts from Calico Christmas. I do not have time to post all of them. If you want to view the larger pic just click the image and it will open up the larger version.

Just had a great time in Auckland at the Calico Christmas quilt show, with the ladies from Kierunga Quilt group. We were treated and spoilt all weekend. It was brilliant to just let sombody else do the organisation, especially when they did it so well. Thank you to Shirley and Colleen for making it such a good time. And thanks to all the other ladies for all the goodies passed around.
The first view is of the sun rising, taken from my hotel room. The second is from a room at the front of the hotel over to Auckland CBD. The hotel is the Byron on Spencer, a nice tidy comfortable place to stay on the North Shore.

The apple blossom is looking so good today, I just had to upload all of the pics.

Those daisies in the garden are getting taller and taller. They look so good. But the grass is getting very long too. Well the bits of grass in between the mounds of clover. Hope the grass cutting guy comes back from the UK soon, or the neighbours will start to complain.

My good friend Manuela just came over this morning for coffe. Look at the beautiful little bowl she brought me, how cool is this. And how kind is Manuela.

Spent all day yesterday with my youngest son in the Emergency Department. You can see why above. He broke his toe while running in the garden and stubbing it on a rock. We left home at 11am and got back to the house at about 4:30pm. It was a lovely Hawkes Bay sunny day and we missed it sitting watching the sick and injured passing by. Just so greatful that all he had done was broken a toe. A big thanks to my darling hubbie Peter for keeping Callum occupied by ripping up health leaflets and making Origami Birds and Boxes.

Peter went for a walk yesterday and took these pics of daisies for me.

Peter spent all day cooking these. It is a year since he started his current job, so his turn to provide morning tea again. The first batch mysteriously disappeared! The second batch were burned! But the third batch were just right and had to be hidden so they would reach his work colleagues.

Do not tell Peter, but they tasted as good as they looked.

Shadow daisies as the tear in the Ozone layer went past overhead.

Rock rose and ant from the side of our garage. The petals are so thin and paper like, they look like they need a good iron.

Bees on a globe thistle in my mum's garden back in the UK.

Have finished the hall redecoration and have converted the hall from this...........











to this.

The daisies in the garden are starting to get quite tall. My grass cutting man is on holiday in the UK for a month.

A host of sunny osteospernum daisies.

Sunflower and feverfew from our old garden. I will have to get round to planting some Sunflower and other seeds here soon.

Tree ferns in the sun.

New leaves at Cornwall Park

Blossom snow at Kierunga Gardens.

A couple of weeks ago I did a class through the Hawkes Bay Patchworkers with Gail. This is Gail's original quilt and below is my version. It was an excellent relaxed class, I had a great afternoon. The different quilts produced on the day were amazing. I was sat between Manuela who was working with cream on cream beautiful sutle prints. The lady at the other side was using black, grey and misty purples. Then inbetween was my in your face quilt. I am really pleased with the result, but it would be nice to be not quite so bright sometimes.

Beautiful white Irises that live along the side of our house.

I have been really busy over the last week doing up the sitting room. We have converted it from this to .......... this mess and then to ............ the final version. Which I hope you agree is a big improvement, well we think so. And all because I was fed up of the yukky beige carpet. I am heading for the hall next, as I would like to get it finished before I start work in October. Now where did I leave that paintbrush.

Peach blossom and a freesia for the first day of spring.

It is the last day of Winter and look who came to school today. He or she is only 5 days old.

I am feeling very smug with myself as I now have a Kiwi driving licence. Passed the theory test this afternoon.

Peter has fixed both the oven and the washing machine and the sun is shining.

All we need now is for the shower to magically cure its reluctance to give us hot water and things will be brill.

Some tall Napier palm trees.

I have finished the top of my sampler quilt at last. Remind me never to do one of these again. Not my cup of tea at all. But it has been an interesting experiance and I have learnt a lot. Mainly measure 2 or 3 times before I cut. I had to redo the sashing as I had miscounted the number of strips I needed, which meant the sashing ended up very very thin. I think in total the sashing took longer than the blocks themselves. Just need to find a backing and get the quilting done.

Nice sunny flower from the beach at Napier. I have no idea what it is, but there were tons of them.

No picture today. I have just accepted a job offer. So I have 6 more weeks of being the happy housewife and frantic quilting before I disappear back into the workforce.

It was a bit cold
here this morning.

Just had our bamboo cut down. Looks a bit of a mess now, just waiting for the excavator to come and dig out the roots.

Finished my three stainglass daisies. The next step is to find some thin chain to chain them together.