I'm excited...

...because I will have a strawberry to pick in the next couple of days. I have never grown strawberries before and am so pleased that this plant has so many strawberries on it. The first crop of fruit was eaten my some mystical creature/animal in the night!! I don't know what the creature was but it only ate the strawberries and not the stalks or any other part of the plant. I have moved the plant closer to the back door behind a fence in order to keep it protected from harm. I know it sounds like I'm a bit pathetic being so excited about a strawberry plant but we have had such a bad summer with none of our vegetables producing fruit for us. The only ones to benefit from the plants will be the chooks when they are let lose in the garden this coming weekend. I will keep you posted on the strawberry plants progress.

How time flies

I just looked at the date of my last blog entry and forgot how time flies.
Last time I blogged I had intended to have some of my creations made and ready to post here but I have to say that I haven't made a single thing in this time. However, I plan to do some sewing this afternoon so I may have something to show for my effort.
So, in the mean time I thought I would share with you my passion of photography and some of my favourite photos of my garden. Some may look overexposed but they were taken on a dewy morning.

Just a small selection......

....... of the beautiful collection of cloth dolls I have from my many friends I have met on the net over the past 9 years.

While re-arranging my studio yesterday I came to realize what a wonderful collection of cloth dolls I have been fortunate to have received in swaps from Internet groups. I decided to keep these wonderful dolls all together on a set of shelves so I could gaze at them and remember all the wonderful friends I have met on the net since I started cloth doll making about 9 years ago.

Until I started making cloth dolls I didn't know anything about the net let alone how to chat on line with anyone and become firm friends with them. Some of my bestest friends are cyber buddies that I have never met and probably will never meet but that doesn't deter me from meeting new net friends almost on a daily basis. The generosity of my cyber friends is just so amazing, when I tell my 'real' friends about my cyber friends they look at me with a strange look and think 'what a loser" but if only they knew!!

Anyway, what I really want to tell you about is the wonderful mountain bike I was lucky to get from Free Cycle today. I have wanted a bike for a long time so I could try to get fit and now I have one I am over the moon. It needs a little bit of work and 2 new tyres but that is minor work that I am going to enjoy fixing. And yes, it was a 'cyber friend' that was there at the right time to help out when needed.

Do the frogs know something?

I am sitting here writing this while family of little brown frogs that live in a garden just under my lounge room window are calling to me. I wonder if they know it is going to rain even though the sun is shining. These little creatures live in a large leafy plant and love nothing more than getting a little shower from my hose when I water my garden, they come out and croak away to their hearts content. Unfortunately they have to be content with the hose and not rain because we haven't had a lot of rain for a few weeks now.
I do wish you could be here with me, the frogs are croaking, the wind is blowing and rustling the trees and the wind chime I bought for my husband is playing a little magical tune for me. So all in all I can say I am reveling in the wonderful nature that abounds my beautiful bush sanctuary.

New doll

I have just finished this Healing Doll. I got a bit carried away with the beading as I always do. Once I start I find is hard to stop, In was just going to add beads to the front but continued on the back as well. I love the feel of the beads when I run my fingers over them so I just continued beading until I had covered all the red and blue pattern on the fabric.
She is approx 4 inches long not including the hanger or tassels. Her face is a clay mask I made and painted with bronze paint, another thing I love doing with my dolls. I love the texture of paint on fabric so most of my dolls lately have had their bodies painted.

It has been a little while since I last blogged. I have been playing Grand Mother and coping with the extreme heat for a couple of weeks. Playing Grand Mother has finished but not the extreme heat we are experiencing. We have had several days of 40+ and I can tell you that is is very ard to get through the day whith no air con. I told my husband 3 summers ago that if the heat continued (then is was around 30!!)that I wasn't going through another summer without a proper cooling system. Well guess what? Three years later and we still haven't got one. It is very rare that we experience such conditions in my little part of the world and I cna only think that is is going to stay this way each summer. So, I think next year will the the year to do something about it.
I have posted 2 photos of the same subject. One was taken by my 10 year old Grand daughter Ivy and the ther one was taken by her ? year old Grand Mother. We took lots of photos while Ivy was visiting, it is a hobby that we both enjoy as does her Father. She seems to have inherited her Father's talent for photography because on several occassions she took some fantastic shots. Here are some more of her work.

I have been makink Dotees for about a week now. They are so easy and quick to make that I have made about 8 of them so far. I have seen them on the web on various sites and didn't take too much notice of them until a friend in a Yahoo group showed us some of the ones she made. I decided to try my hand at one and have been making them all week. I accidently found the blog of the creator of the original Dotee it is such an inspiring blog that I have visited it several times this week.