African Flower Chain: Link 4

So, we've had snow and ice. Then we got rain.  Lots of rain.

From Augrabies we went to Pella.  Pella is a very small town on the banks of the Orange River.  It started as a Mission Station many years ago. The Catholic Church in the center of town is still very much the hub of the village. We stayed over on the Klein-Pella Date Farm not far from the village.  We camped right on the banks of the river, with no-one else around. (Except for a troop of baboons in the nearby bushes)

From Pella we traveled through Namaqualand.  I hiked through there last year this time and I was expecting carpets of flowers. We got buckets of rain.  And cold.  The flowers that were there were hiding their faces from us. 

We camped in a very wet Springbok and then traveled on to the Ceres mountains where we stayed over in Citrusdal. Wet again. We could see the snow on the mountains.

The next morning the rain looked like it was lifting.  We chose the scenic mountain road from Citrusdal to Ceres, passing over and through the Ceder Mountains.  An absolutely gorgeous part of the world.  There was water everywhere.  It ran down the mountain and formed waterfalls and cascades where ever we looked.

That night we stayed over on a beautiful farm called Fynbos Guest Farm between Ceres and Tulbagh.  It is a beautiful place with lots of animals to entertain the travel weary kids.  Geese, chickens, pigs, sheep, donkeys, goats, horses.  Name it and it was there, and ready to be pampered.  For the first time in many days the clouds cleared and we could see the stars. It looked promising.

We woke up to clear blue skies.  What a gorgeous sight. 

Snow-capped mountains in bright blue sunlight.

Again we took the scenic route through the Boland, traveling through Worcester, over the Franschoek Pass into the Franschoek valley.  Another breathtaking sight.

Franschoek is where the French Huguenots settled after their arrival in the Dutch Colony in the late 1600's. Today it is prime wine country with many vineyards and world class Cellars. 

I placed my fourth flower at the Huguenot Monument.  It is on a bench behind the statue.  The monument is such an impressive structure that I tried to put it in an unobtrusive place.

We loved these few days.  After eight years in the desert we marveled at all the rain. We loved wearing thick warm clothes and our eyes drank in all the wet scenery.

African Flower Chain: Link 3

Our next stop was Augrabies National Park.  The weather looked promising after the previous nights cold. The sun was shining and life was good.

Augrabies Waterfall is in the Orange River close to where it becomes the border with Namibia. It is the dry season so the falls were rather 'small' according to the locals.  Still it is an impressive site.

We camped in the park above the falls and woke up to monkeys trying to steal our breakfast!

My third flower is at the lookout point right above the falls.

African Flower Chain: Link 2

After a two day stop-over in Klerksdorp to visit old school friends, we are back on the road.  

We took all the back roads which lead from the highveld of North West Province to the Kalahari of the Northern Cape. 

We passed farmland and quite a lot of mining activity on the way. We spent most of the day on the road and only reached the Witsand Nature Reserve at sunset.

We woke during the night from rain (and cold) and when we looked outside this morning there was ice everywhere!  The rain froze during the night. The officer at the Reserve told us they had never experienced this before.  Another cold first for us.

Two very common sites in this area:  Huge 'versamel voel' nests where many birds live together in a sort of 'apartment block' and Springbok.

I left my second flower at one of the lookout points in the reserve.

Have you seen it?

African Flower Chain: Link 1

Snow. Not something I often associate with South Africa. But yesterday, we had snow in all 9 provinces of the country.  We received our rental camper in the snow and we arrived back in Pretoria in the snow.  What a way to start our trip!

We set off from Pretoria from where we followed the Magaliesberg Range to the west.  All the time with heavy cloud cover and cold.  Near Rustenburg we turned away from the mountain towards the south west. 

We passed Derby, Koster, Ventersdorp and arrived in Potchefstroom in the late afternoon. The countryside changed from Bushveld to Highveld. We saw different antelopes, a warthog, lots of ground squirrels and mongoose and a wide range of birds. It felt good to be back in this country.

We have a lot of family history in Potch.  My mother went to school and university there, my Mother-in-law grew up there, my father-in-law studied there and my husband did his army training there.

There are lots of stories to tell about the family and their history in the town and university, so it was appropriate to start my chain of flowers here. I tied my first flower to the street-name post on the corner of Gerrit Dekker and Steve Biko streets.

Gerrit Dekker was a professor of Afrikaans literature, and an author among many other things. Steve Biko was an anti-apartheid activist and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement. 

Let's see where this chain leads us. Are you following?

Never too young...

The Princess trying her hand at crochet

African Artifacts close-ups

Remember the African artifacts I told you about earlier?

They are all piled into a corner waiting to be packed. 

Here are some more close-ups.  

Crochet Experiments

I came upon this blog post by Creative Fidget a while ago via Pinterest. 

It made me think of the pile of t-shirt yarn I made ages ago and haven't used yet. 

(Now that I am packing I think of a lot of things I stash for later use....)

My experiment with crocheting a piece of t-shirt yarn into a spiral has produced this.  I tried different ways of  covering the yarn to expose it more or less.  I think if I alternate the color of the t-shirt yarn and the color of the crochet yarn, I might just get something interesting going here...

Now back to packing...

On show in New York

For the very first time I have a piece of my own creation on display in an Art Exhibition.

If you are in the New York area, please go and have a look at this great show, 

curated by the very talented Joetta Maue. 

The show opened last night.

Checking in while Sorting out

Just to proof that I am not doing nothing...  

Just because I am not creating doesn't mean I'm not keeping my hands busy!

In preparation for the big move I'm sorting through the whole house. 

Purging, filing, cleaning, and all such constructive things. The moving company will do the actual packing but we have to sort everything and make sure they only pack the things we really want to (and are allowed to) take to Australia.

Lots of magazines staying behind.  I know this is really sad, but I've decided to go digital from now on.  Much kinder on the trees. And the storage space.

You can't pack candles, did you know?  They melt and make a big mess in the box.

My biggest achievement so far was to reduce a huge, and I mean really huge, pile of school books, artworks, reports, photos, etc into a neat filing system. I kept everything but without any system.  If it wasn't for Pinterest, I wouldn't even have known that it was possible to have a system.  Now I have a file per child per school year, each containing that year's photos, reports,  awards and samples of their art and written work. 

Really cool, if I say so myself.

The next challenge is my work space. Desk, sewing station and fabric stash. 

This is going to be a biggie...

Just when you thought life was getting boring...

...everything changes.

We came back from Australia and everything was as it always was. 

Good.

Then I got very good news:  My 'My daughter" piece was selected for a show in New York.  

Yes, NEW YORK.  My first. To say I'm thrilled is an understatement.

For the local scene I was preparing a new quilt to go into the Quilt Art 2012 exhibition here in Dubai.  I entered two existing pieces and one new (unfinished at the time) piece.

All still good.

Then my Dad got sick. I flew down to SA, spent some good time with him, left him to recover and came home.

Came back to the news that our contract in Dubai will finish soon and it is time to move on. We always knew it was coming, after all, we are expats, we don't stay in the same place for ever. But we thought it might last a bit longer...

While my head was filled with moving and relocating thoughts, my Dad passed away...

Now I am back from South Africa for the second time this month.  I am packing our house. I will go back to SA in July to help my mother pack her house. 

New horizons. For both of us.

But there's a new dawn on the horizon.  We are moving to Australia.  If all goes well we will settle in Adelaide. It's a small, beautiful, green city. Very different from Dubai. 

Life is still good.

(Oh, and the new quilt never made it to the show - still unfinished.)