Trying again....

...to catch up!

(Warning - this post is only a little bit sewing related.)

First of all, a finish from March - which I haven't yet shared.

My wee squirrel project (not planned but I had to do it anyway!) is complete —

This was a SAL run by Larisa (@stitchingnotes) and Irina (@nordiccrafter) on Instagram as part of their Sip Tea and EPP fun.

The inside of the sewing folder —

And the outside, opened up. It looks wonky because I didn't remove the bits and pieces before taking the photo! —

There was lots of scope for embellishing to your heart's content, as and how you like.

I had a wee hunt through my bits and found the wee hand tag to stitch on —

and had fun learning how to stitch these sweet bees —

A few more finds; tiny buttons and some tape tape (!) —

Although this started as a free sewalong, I did end up purchasing the pattern for the extra details as well as saving me having to flick back and forth through Instagram posts. The pattern is available via either of their Instagram sites.

Now a farm catch-up from March. Three weeks ago we had some much needed rain (we were in drought) but unfortunately it all came at once and the farm flooded.

It was an unusual rain, quite localised, which caused the river to flood quite differently than any previous floods we've had in the 18 years we've been here. We had extremely fast rising water, resulting in a flash flood which didn't give us time to move the animals the way we usually do.

This is my first photo I took that day, from the deck of the house. When we can see the river from the house we know it's going to flood. Usually that takes a couple of hours —

But the photo below is only 16 minutes later. The river is usually just beyond the horses. I couldn't get to them to move them, the water was already too deep and too fast - luckily they both swum to safety, although it took us a couple of hours to actually sight them in the distance (on the other side of the river) —

The herd (200 cows) were in a similar situation, we only just got them out of their paddock before it was completely under water.
These photos show all our 'bottom flats' covered about 1½ hours later.

The water trough below is just visible! —

Of course you get to the stage where all you can do is wait for it to go down again. The sun came out and the kids came over to explore. We were able to play in some of the shallower areas!

Out came the kayak —

All the kids got at least two turns, so it was lots of fun!

By 5.30 that night, it had gone down a lot!

And then it was all over, except for cleaning up the mess! This photo is taken from over the river - all of the flats you can see were covered in water the day before. It took nearly three weeks to re-build fences (a lot of posts were broken) and clear the debris.

Co-incidentally there is a weather watch for Northland tomorrow....heavy rain and strong winds (ex-Cyclone Fili). We've prepped as much as we can do but are hoping it's not going to be as severe! Time will tell.

EDIT: it now looks like it will veer off to the east and mostly miss us 😊

I haven't been able to sew for a few days so in between times I hope to get back to my bears and stars -they're too cute to ignore for too long!

'til next time,

happy stitches,