friendly frankie

lucky me, this 'rather desperate housewife' brooch by hungry designs arrived in the post on friday. thank you frankie!

your adventure is about to begin...

Ah!!! I've been ready to embrace this weekend for a few days...

Moving further into an early nana-hood (!), I had a couple of requests for baby blankets and so, I have been learning how to embroider from this op shop book. This book is fantastic: clear diagrams and simple instructions. I treated this first quilt as a primer of sorts, using chain, laced chain, twisted chain, lazy daisy, feather and sheaf filling stitches around a few animals on a children's textile from Ikea.

I think it's safe to show a small reveal of the rest of the pressie (otherwise, look away sis!).

Petals/leaves ready to be assembled into Autumn bunting...

:: Autumn leaves before ::

...and this perfect papercut card for the new parents: Our Adventure Is About To Begin.

You might recognise papercut artist Rob Ryan's distinctive style; we found this at Ryan's wonderful London shop at the Columbia Road Flower Market and simply couldn't resist!

Great Ocean Walk

In denial about summer's end, we made a last ditch attempt to capture some of that summertime feeling and went camping on the Great Ocean Walk.

From east to west, the GOW runs alongside the Great Ocean Road, starting at Apollo Bay and heading westward towards The Twelve Apostles. If you are super keen, we reckon the whole walk would take just over a week.
But if you are not that hardcore, you can drop in and out as you wish. Even a small section of the walk will reward you with spectacular coastal views, the beautiful forests further inland in the Cape Otway National Park, and the many lovely bays and inlets. The campsites have rainwater tanks (!) and lovely tent beds - quite posh really. And as much as I enjoy being one with nature and all that, I really do HATE camping food. Instant mash is weird and wrong. Any camping food advice welcome with open arms!!
In fact, the bad food is the one thing that really prevents me from being more enthusiastic about camping....that and the emphysemic toads that lived in the bushes at the Cape Otway campsite.

It's not as ridiculous as it sounds (or maybe it is. elmo had a good laugh at me).

As we were making our instant mash (grrr), we heard a low lying sound from the bushes.
A regular, breathy, deep, ribbit kinda sound [shudder].

I kept expecting a R.O.U.S. to jump out and tussle with us!

We only heard them a few times once we were in the safety of our tent, but due to my overactive imagination, we scoped out other campsites on the way out for next time, emphysemic toads not welcome thanks!

Call Parks Victoria to grab a permit for your campsite, you won't regret it!
Don't you love a long weekend? This Easter holiday: completing sewing projects in between bouts of work-procrasti-nation
Watching: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Thank you ABC2!)
Listening: Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings new album (Thanks heaps elmo!)