Holidays

We have just spent ten days away visiting dh's extended family.

One of our stops was a little town in the Snowy Mountains near Mt Selwyn called Cabramurra. DH's sister and brother-in-law live here. You can only live in this town if you work for Snowy Hydro as it is in the middle of a National Park. It is Australia's highest town.

Such gorgeous views.....

The houses are made to 3 or 4 different designs and there is a block of units in town for singles as well. A lot of facilities are available to the townspeople; private ski slopes, tennis courts, heated swimming pool, hall, fishing club with a stocked dam just for children to fish in; and the hobby club where you can do pottery, quilting, mechanical work etc The pub is popular with locals, and there is a general store. The school is from kindy to grade 6; and well catered for with a fabulous building and resources including their own ski equipment, bus etc. I am sure I have missed lots but this gives you an idea of what is there. It is approx an hours drive to the nearest towns for shopping (Tumut, Tumbarumba and Cooma). The town gets alot of day visitors.

The snow we saw was only around Cabramurra and was about a foot deep, deep enough but not too deep. It was the children's first time seeing snow; and boy were they excited as we drove up the hill towards the town and the snow!

Must be one of the highest playgrounds around! We all had a fantastic time toboganing.

We visited dh's aunt in Wagga who does spinning. What an amazing woman! She regularly attends Wagga Handweavers and Spinners group, teaches newcomers to the craft and does educational displays at events.

I wold love to learn to spin, and am looking about for reasonably priced spinning wheel with bits. The children are very interested too. AuntDH also does weaving, something else very fascinating. The loom was packed away so we didn't see a demo. Maybe next time????

AuntDH naturally dyes her wool, and the rug pictured above is an example of some of her gorgeous colours. Her favourite thing to use is the scale insect off gumtrees, this gives a pinky colour. She is always trying new things and while we were there I was able to see a test piece made from a garden weed; a gorgeous olivey-green colour. So cool to do the dyeing without chemicals!

Amongst AuntDHs display samples (and there were LOTS, so intersting) was some camel fibre. Oh my oh my this was soooooo soft. I would never have guessed it to be so soft.

A jumper hand spun and knitted quite a few years ago, felt really really nice. Not too heavy and apparantly extremely warm. Very cute design.

This protea was in AuntDHs garden, such beautiful colours.....

While in Wagga we went to a BBQ at one of DHs school friends. A fantastic BBQ area and I tell you what, the kids had a fantastic time playing with the other kids and all those toys!

Spotted this very cool looking ute while out and about, had to share it.

In Temora we went to the Aviation Museum which has old war planes done up. It was really good to go. Be fabulous to visit on a Fly Weekend when they have lots of air demo's. 10,000 people hit the town on those weekends.....WOW.

This is a Tiger Moth.

And stitching? Did I do any while away? Not much. I had a go at hand piecing and put together a four patch block that I am pretty pleased with. I also visited 'Patches of Heaven' in Temora. sigh, it could have been so tempting but all I bought there was a cute little button (pic for another post!). Having DH and the youngest in the shop probably helped my tempation too!