I do so love this blogging community of ours, hot on the tale/tail of Rosey's visit comes our wonderful weekend to Toowoomba to attend The Hand Made Expo event at the Jondaryan woolshed on Australia Day. More on that later plus I have just written a post at Lilly Cottage blog with lots of lots of photos, when you have finished here go and have a look...but only when you are finished visiting me here...OK?
Before we went to the expo, darling husband and I managed to offload our three lovely but so ready to go back to school children to Grandma and Grandad from Sunday morning to Monday night and down/out/up I have no idea which way, we drove to Toowoomba. We had the car laden up with our goodies for the stall, our suitcase and a five disc 101 song best of the eighties box set and away we went. Now there was method in our early arrival besides a couple of days to ourselves and that was we had plans to meet up with the ever lovely Kris from Tag Along Teddies and her darling husband. Now I wouldn't have had either of these fun outings with wonderful people like Rosey and Kris if it weren't for blogging...how special is that?
Anyhoo we drove into Toowoomba, stopped at our most favourite Information place ever and had a quick cup of tea in the park there...how beautiful the trees are...sooo green...
Quick call to Kris and we arranged to meet at Highfields, just outside of Toowoomba and one of my favourite places, for lunch at the Chocolate Crow...and then a little retail therapy at The Quilters Angel on the village green.
You now only a true blogger would take photos of their lunch and only someone who loves that blogger very much would let them take a photo of their lunch before they were allowed to eat it. This was his and this...
was mine and I would like to be lady like and say that I didn't eat it all as it was huge but that would be lying and i did eat it all and it was delicious!!
This is Kris who is just the nicest person in real life and in blogville, kind, caring and oh so generous. She kept me company whilst I went shopping and tried not to knock over everything in The Quilters Angel.....oh OK she really really wanted to go too and that was just a good excuse and thankfully the darling boys got were amused for most of the time we were playing with fabric installing bluetooth into our new car....that does take some time don't you know... when darling one rang to see where I was after they had finished I was unable to keep the disbelief out of my voice when I answered 'still here, where else would I be' really give me an inch and I will take a mile.....as long as there is a good patchwork shop there.
Following our scrumptious lunch and shopping we were kindly invited back to Kris and Geekboy ( that isn't his real name but we are using it to protect his identity don't you know)'s house for drinks hot or cold or both if we wanted...see kind! They have a gorgeous little cottage and we were greeted by two cute furry faces at the gate. Wombat...who would love you if only you would throw the ball to him..
And Lilly, who was just a bundle of fur in constant motion....I tried really really hard to get a photo...
But this is the one that probably sums her up best of all. We had a lovely visit at Kris's house, so lovely that we realised we only had 45 minutes to go and check into our hotel and get ready to go out to dinner ( which was also with Kris and GB). As soon as we arrived at the hotel it bucketed down and we had to wait another 10 minutes to get our suitcase out of the car and then when we did, there was a whole new weather experience in store for us.....clouds...we had our heads in the clouds quite literally...OK some people call it fog but it was clouds...OK..so this is a picture of the clouds..
Oh and our new car...see all the things jammed in there from Lilly Cottage?
For dinner we went to the lovely Weis Restaurant that had a huge smorgasboard of seafood (bleah yuck yck) and other gorgeous foods. Kris and GB loved the seafood and were not at all put off by my bleahs and yucks from the other side of the table.
I mean to say just look at all those shells and stuff....
Of course I managed to eat ( yes more eating) my share of non seafood or meat type things and some rather lovely wine and then 3 hours later we waved our good byes in the rain and fog...OK it had lost a little of it's magic as clouds when we couldn't see 2 foot in front of us on the way back to the hotel. I had several little lavender boots to finish up before the morning when we had to be on the road again by 6.30am....OK that bit is also a little bit wrong....I wanted a sleep in and a lovely breakfast but no we had a quick cup of tea and then drove to Jondaryan for the Handmade Expo.
We were greeted there by the wonderfully bubbly team of Leisa, Micki and Miriam who were very excited to see us. Admidst the bustle of sheep being rounded up as we were unloading, with the occasional llama as well we unpacked into our spot in the comparitive cool of the woolshed. By 8am I felt like I needed a shower and the day was yet beginning....we had a great spot and everyone was friendly, but it was stinking hot and I mean both the stinking and the hot bit, they were having sheep shearing demonstrations at the end of one half of the expo...oh thank you thank you whoever organised for us to be at the other end.
The crowd that was there early in the day wasn't really into our stall which on the bright side was kind of lucky seeing as our mobile eftpos machine couldn't get a signal when there were people in the woolshed and the one early sale I had I was out in the middle of the paddock wielding the machine as if it were a metal detector or geiger counter of sorts trying to get a signal and then when I did I stayed midpaddock and processed the credit card there. See that bit was fun...for any body watching!
There are heaps more photos as I said at my other blog Lilly Cottage and almost all of it is available still for purchase if you love any of it!
Here is the view to the left of us...
across from us..
This is Trishalan Designs sp ace and Trish is our Old Petrie Town neighbour. She specialises in hand dyed threads and fabrics and oh so many other wonderful things. She has a website Here and whilst they are not our colours exactly we know how to find just what we want and NEED in her store, I love to make my mini art quilts with her fabrics.
These are the few of the shoulder bags I designed and made especially for Jondaryan...good news they are all still available and they are all one of a kinds....
I even made the lovely Kris one of these bags ( they are just big enough for your keys, phone and coin purse) and hers had a vintage bellydancer on it, forgot to photograph that one, but here she is unwrapping it.
What a wonderful two days, of course I need a week to recover, children went back to school today and I slept for three hours!! Thankyou Kris for the best day and a bit out we have had in a long time, also thank your GB as my darling one is so thrilled with his bluetooth thingamee as it was nice to have another harrassed one for him to talk to. Thanks also to the lovely Kerryanne without whom you may never had so many photos to be bored by I mean look at, she made us promise.....
Unitl tomorrow or the next day when I have some wonderful valentines love to share...and it's all mine mine mine which isn't really sharing I know but I will share the pictures...ttfn kiss noises Linda Lilly Cottage
