Development?

17 11 2013

I live in a beautiful part of the country. Close by are farms, farmlets, a large estuary, etc. Work has been going on to run power and install a street light at the intersection of the main road into our subdivision. I wondered if there was more to it than that…

And at the end of last week I found out. On my drive into town, I saw several earthmoving trucks and vehicles on the farmland opposite the newly installed street light, and noticed the cattle were all gone (the horses and the camel went ages ago). A temporary road has been constructed into the farmland and it looks like a new subdivision will be going in there. I checked the local shire’s minutes on their website and found that the land is being divided into six lots, presumably ‘special rural’ lots with small acreage. (Update: I found more info on the application for subdivision on the Shire’s website and each lot will be 5 to 10 hectares — that’s about 12 to 25 acres for those who can’t convert hectares to acres! Further update (Dec 2013): There are five blocks with ‘For Sale’ signs on them, all around 5 hectares, and priced ‘from $690,000’, though I can’t find them listed on the real estate agent’s website yet.

I know I shouldn’t be a NIMBY as somewhere along the line the land where I live was also once farmland, but it’s a shame this beautiful farmland will be subdivided. Where do to the cattle go now?

Here’s some photos of the area I took back in 2010:

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And here’s a photo I took on Friday showing the first stages of the development:

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I hope they’ll keep all the ancient peppermint and tuart trees…

Update February 2014: Well, I bet the developers aren’t happy! Within about two to three weeks of the ‘for sale’ signs going up, the local shire/State health department put up this notice about 20 metres just before the southernmost driveway into these lots (there might be one at the northern end too, but I haven’t driven that section for a few weeks). Nothing like putting off prospective buyers!

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Yes, we live in a high risk area for mosquitoes, and you’d have to be Blind Freddie or living under a rock not to know that; it was one of the considerations we had when deciding to purchase here. But this really spells it out for any prospective purchaser, particularly someone from another state or country who may not know that the entire south-west corner of Western Australia (including Perth) is subject to mosquitoes carrying Ross River Virus, especially areas close to still water, such as the estuary that these blocks front on to.


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Categories : Life stuff

Community Quilt 125

17 11 2013

This was an odd quilt — I didn’t ‘see’ the pattern in it until I saw it as a thumbnail image on my camera, and by then I’d already quilted it ;-). The pink/purple with the cream/black/brown was also odd, although looking at it finished, it seems to work.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

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How to quilt it? Well, as there were so many odd-shaped blocks, I started by stitching in the ditch (ESS, yes EVERY one!). Then I quilted the small cream squares — in the ones surrounded by the cream and black floral fabric I stitched a wavy cross-hatch matrix, and on the ones surrounded by the black fabric I stitched a spiral.

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I followed that by echo stitching 1/2″ in from the edges of each diamond shape, then repeating the wavy matrix in the diamonds within the cream/black floral, and spirals in the diamonds within the black fabrics. So that took care of those spaces.

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Now, what to do for the odd-shaped beige spaces? I started by stitching the centre square in a big spiral, then came out from each corner with a snake-like sweep down the odd-shaped spaces, filling in with circles, then echoing the stitching about 1/4″ from the initial sweeps. I repeated that motif in the other odd-shaped cream spaces on the rest of the quilt.

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For the large cream triangles, I stitched a large circle, surrounded by two smaller circles on each side. Then I straight stitched about 1/2″ in from the seams of the cream/black fabric pieces. I didn’t stitch the black fabric or the pink or brown triangles at all. For all of this stitching, I used a dark cream thread (I ran out of the Madeira, but fortunately had a Robison-Anton thread almost the same colour).

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The border fabric was strange, with pink/blue/purple squarish shapes in it. I kept it simple by stitching a straight line 1/2″ in from the seam and 1″ in from the edge, then stitched perpendicularly between these two lines to create a ladder or bookshelf effect.

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The only ruler I used was the Line Tamer for the long straight lines and stitching in the ditch — everything else was free motion quilted, including the perpendicular lines in the border.

The back:
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Threads used:

  • Top: Madeira (rayon, 40 wt, colour #1082); Robison-Anton ‘Platinum’ (rayon, 40 wt, colour #2571); Superior King Tut ‘Egyptian Princess’ (cotton, 40 wt, colour #947)
  • Bottom: Bobbinfil (white)

 


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Categories : Quilts and fabric stuff