Show and Tell Friday at My Romantic Home.

I've decided to join in with Show and tell Friday at My Romantic Home.

I had a lovely Friday. One of those days when you are so proud to be a Mum.

When you think to yourself what lovely adults your children have grown into.

I met my daughter in town for lunch.

She tracked me down to my favourite quilt shop,

where I was having a little show and tell with Claire over today's op- shop finds.

We had lunch in one of our favourite cafes, just over the road from the quilt shop.

Then we went for a little stroll through our favourite shops,
and I fell in love with this gorgeous Tamsin Cooper broach.

I was sitting by the fire with the cat and my crochet just after five when

"she who is proficient at separating eggs" turned up with a beautifully wrapped little parcel.

You know what it was don't you?

The Tamsin Cooper broach of course.

She had used the excuse of it being Mother's day this weekend

to get it for me.

We kind of have a family policy of not entering into the whole commercialism

of Mother's day,

so it was a lovely surprise.

Thank you so much Beatie :) I love it.

In Memory of Matt.

In memory of my brother Matt, who saw his last sunrise on the morning of May 5th 2009.

May you always have a saddle for a pillow, a good dog, and a clear view of the horizon.

White Bunny's combinations.

White Bunny has new undies!

They are referred to in polite circles as "combinations".

Please don't mention to anyone that my bunny's undies
are made out of an old pillow case. Although it is quite cool to say you had undies made from flour bags during the war. Somebody not very far down the road from me who is fairly closely related did actually have flour bag undies during the war, and wears it like a badge of honour. She was only four at the time though. She didn't persist with the habit. Don't know if I'm allowed to blog about your wartime undies Mum?

I found this fantastic book at the library.

It has draftable patterns in all sorts of sizes

and you can make over 120 garments from all eras of history.

Fabulous!

I spent a few hours tracing the patterns onto luchwrap paper.

They didn't come out quite big enough

to fit the porcelain doll that I had in mind,

and were too big for the 18 inch doll,

so white bunny was the lucky recipient of the combinations.

I will just draft the pattern up acouple of sizes to make it fit the doll.

That's a job for another day.

Of ducks, rhubarb and pianos.

It's opening weekend of the duck shooting season here in New Zealand. An important part of Kiwi culture or (culcha as we call it:P). It runs from the first weekend in May till some time in June. I don't know when, but I assume the duck shooters do. Preparations are made for weeks beforehand. Ducks are fed grain to attract them to your particular water way, Mai-mais are constructed or re-furbished (hut made out of whatever is to hand that will afford reasonable camouflage and access to said ducks without said ducks noticing - yeah right!) on the edges of lakes, and duck calls are practiced (there's a special device used to make duck calls something like a mouth organ crossed with a reed), and decoys are dusted off in bloke's sheds all over NZ. This year there are supposed to be slim pickings in the Waikato and Northland due to the drought conditions, but I don't expect that will put anyone off.

In the Taranaki Daily News on Saturday morning in an article entitled, "A day for 'real' men",

a certain Mr Mc Donald is quoted as follows: "Any self respecting duck shooter has a black lab. You can get away with yellow or brown labs, but anything that's not a lab is not a dog."

(Lab = labrador ). Get the picture?

My weekend has been very busy blog chics, although no duck shooting was involved, and no ducks were harmed in the making of this blog post I assure you. It began with a four hour trip to move a piano, bought on Trade Me for my son's 21st birthday. I managed to find one in Hamilton, where Callum is at uni, and to press gang flatmates and a friends into muscle power to move it. It took four of them, and was such a delicate and intense operation, I completely neglected to take photos because I was very busy telling Jessie not to trip over the flower pot and Jason to mind out for that low branch!

This is where we always stop for coffee on the way to Hamilton. It's almost exactly half way, and is very remote, but oh so cute, and always good coffee and scones. It's a little coastal village called Mokau. This is the River Run cafe. Famous for it's whitebait fritters, but I can only vouch for the coffee!

This is over the road. State Highway something or other. Can you believe that? This is a main road.

Had to have a go at a woolshed or too as we sped past.



Today I have been very busy domestic goddess wise. Everything at the Magpie House is spic and span, and even the garden is weeded and the lawns mown.

I found this when I was cleaning Sarah's room.

The blog Goblins got me for a while as I procrastinated about weeding and mowing. I had to take a little diversion around the blogs first - while the ground dried out you understand...

Having achieved all that I thought I might cut some of the rhubarb
that grows in my weed /compost heap
and make it into something.

Which I did. I put it into a modified ginger crunch recipe that originally came from Sweet Mary's blog.

And it came out like this! I did a little taste test, and you can't taste the rhubarb that much, as it is a bit overpowered by the ginger. It's kind of a bit like a rhubarb ginger crumble slice.

Very elegant I think.

A Ta-Da moment!

A little bird might have mentioned that I've finished my knitting. It's a triumph of perseverance to get past that last sleeve. But I'm delighted with it. We had a long photo shoot, myself and the Magpie Cat, who advised me on many aspects of camera operation, and in the end told me to just put it on the automatic setting and hope for the best.









Very soon these nasturtiums will be mulched by the first frost. So it was nice to be able to preserve them for posterity. This is the back gate to "Piggling Bland's Garden."

So named by "she who is proficient at separating eggs," when she was very little.

In the story by Beatrix Potter, Piggling Bland inhabits a marvelous pottager and skips around in her white petticoat eating conversation peppermints. Mine started off being a pottager, with companion planting and all. But the white cabbage butterflies completely ignored the marigolds put there to ward them off, and just layed their eggs with gay abandon. My brassicas were a scene of complete devastation, and I gave up and the pansies and roses and nasturtiums took over. But we did have conversation peppermints there at one of the birthday parties. We have a recipe for same. Rather sickly I recall.

I have started to list a few of my handmade things on Felt, which is a site quite like Etsy, but based in New Zealand. Etsy looked all a bit difficult, but would love your comments and advice

on your experiences with selling via Etsy. This little cardy is for my little Great Niece Lucy. It's just a Lucy kind of cardigan :P But shhh! don't tell her. I want it to be a surprise.

I also found this dear little viola growing merrily away in the cracks in my paved area behind Piggling Bland's garden. I couldn't resist taking a piccy of it. It's so jolly.

I also found this in the garden. I usually do!!!