Sew Lunch-a-Lot

A perfect Thursday for me is a morning of stitching with my favourite stitching friends, and then lunch. Anyone will do, for lunch, but today it was with Dh. That's always a bit special.

This week I think we all hauled ourselves into our little corner of sewing bliss feeling more than a little shell shocked at the events of this week and all feeling very grateful to be safe and sound. As we sat, the owner of the Quilt Shop has had quilts, quilt tops and myriads of various quilt blocks delivered to her by mail and in person to help with bushfire relief. The finished quilts are stunning and will be auctioned online. They are well worth whatever price they end up going for. The money will go to bushfire relief. The quilts at various stages of completion will be put together and given to bushfire victims. I want to get as much of my own sewing out of the way and then I'll set my mind and my machine to that effort.

In the course of the morning we were asked our opinion of Valentine's Day. Being good Aussie women we all agreed it's a very commercialised day that is more 'American' and therefore not widely observed by us practical gals. My opinion? It was important to me when Dh & I were dating. But now that we're married we can express our love for one another any time. And hence the lunch. Yes, there was a slightly ulterior motive involved. Nonetheless, it was a lunch date without having to source babysitting for children as we would for an evening meal.

The ulterior motive was simple. A cafe in Our Town was sold late last year and reopened today, after a few weeks of refurbishment activity. Dh is the supplier for their coffee and so has spent many hours with the new owner, setting up, training staff, installing umbrellas and barries outside etc. The owner had wanted to meet me so we decided to kill two birds with one stone. Lunch ended up being 'on the house'. A very generous gesture and very much appreciated. It seems many townsfolk and locals to the surrounding area have already been in this morning.

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A little fire update for those who really want to know:

The fires in Healesville and Bunyip State Park are a mere 20km apart and the DSE and CFA are working hard to put out spot fires between them and are working on containment lines to keep them separate. Should the two combine we will no doubt have a direct threat warning issued for Our Town. The winds today are North East and as a result we could smell smoke quite strongly this morning. Right now there are Awareness Messages on the CFA incident website but no Alert Messages. There are some little fires that are just being allowed to burn, as a means of fuel reduction.

I'm just starting to think that maybe our 'Fire Box' needs to go with us when we're out and about over the weekend. Maybe I'll send it home with FIL so he can pop it into his little storage room.