October is always a busy month in our family, so many birthdays, anniversaries and events added into the usual business.  Mereth and I decided that we were taking four days out of the calendar, and running away for our birthdays.  We went on a little road trip, just pootling our way down to Adelaide on the first day, spending two days doing fun things, then home on the fourth day. It was a fun way to spend our last days being 50 something.  From now on, we're sixty something!!

We went to Burra first, which is a tourist spot about an hour away, where we visited several antique shops, and had coffee in  a secondhand bookshop.  We were all set to leave until I spied a little room with art books, and then we stayed another hour.  Just love all the inspiration in these pages.

We had a little picnic lunch after that, then drove to Angaston, where we bought some fabric at the sewing centre there.

 That was a nice interlude, rummaging through bolts of fabric to find what we liked.  I'm glad I lost track of what I bought this year, because I wouldn't want to be adding the totals from this weekend.

Then it was on to Seonaid's place, where we were welcomed by these two.

Isla adores Mereth, I'm just background noise when she's around.  I guess she doesn't see Mereth as much, whereas I'm always showing up.  All our grandchildren call whoever isn't their real grandmother OtherNanna, which gets confusing when we're all together, so we're trying to educate them to call Mereth Nanna, and me Nan.  The difficulties of having twin grandmothers...

The next day we were off to Hahndorf, to visit the home of Hans Heyson.  He was a South Australian artist, and we've loved his work since we were teenagers, so it was a bit of a pilgrimage, and a nice way to reconnect with our younger selves.  When you're younger there's much more time to be passionate about things, and in later years that time gets taken over by everything else in life.

So it was good to stand in his studio, and remember.

He painted a picture of his wife sewing at a treadle machine, and Mereth and I bought postcards to put in our sewing rooms.  She was sewing baby clothes for their 5th child (there were 8 altogether).

It's such a tranquil image, a lovely intimate moment.

That took longer than expected, so we skipped lunch and went to the next important location; Tricia's Fabrics.  Oh we love that place, so much fabric, and the prices are pretty good too.  I was buying for projects, so I didn't go too overboard, but it was still a decent amount.

Mereth is such an enabler, I was buying half a metre of one piece, and she talked me into taking what was left on the bolt.  I'm glad now, but it made a hole in the Budget!

We grabbed a coffee from Macca's and then it was home for a birthday dinner at Seonaid's.

 She cooked 4 curries and all the accompaniments, and we had a right royal feast.
I don't know how she did it all while wrangling a toddler and a baby,  she has much better management skills than me.  None of us can plate up a meal attractively though....

The next day was local shopping, and a visit to Spotlight, where I resisted Mereth's urgings to buy a whole bolt of a lovely floral.  Absolutely not.  I added some black and whites to my stash and lots of FQs, but I was sensible.

The next day we went home, via Spotlight to buy the bolt I rejected the day before; once I looked at the docket and saw how cheap it was, I realized my mistake.

There will be a couple of backings in this piece, and it's always good to have backings on hand. Then onto Bunnings, for the obligatory Bunnings sausage for lunch, and I purchased some plug-in LED lights for my sewing room.  When I move from here, I hope my new sewing room has windows and good lighting, I"m sick of working in artificial light all the time.

And so to home, and while we enjoyed running away, it was lovely to be home again.  My sewing space is still my favourite place to be.

Turns out, being 60 isn't that different to being 59, who would have guessed?