Join Monica Poole, Susan Carr and all the Blueberries team for lunch on Friday, 16th December 2011.

After lunch, we will have a show and tell of all the projects you have made or started throughout the year. Monica and Susan will also preview their new projects for 2012.

When: Friday 16th December

Time: 12:00pm to 3:00pm

Cost: $10.00 includes lunch and afternoon tea.

RSVP: Friday 9th December

BYO: Projects you have made throughout the year, whether complete or not.

All atendees will recieve a free bag full of goodies to start off 2012!

RSVP by emailing jackie@blueberries.net.au

Join us for twelve hours of fun, laughter and lots of sewing.

Dinner, drinks & nibbles will be provided.

Book yourself in now or get a group of friends together for a little ‘you’ time.

When: Saturday, 17 December

Time: 12:00 PM to 12 AM

Where: Northlakes Function Centre, Pacific Highway, Wyong

Cost: $50.00

BYO: Projects to sew, and alcoholic beverages.

RSVP: Friday 9 December

Click here to book your spot

A road trip of Australia’s fiberglass monuments

The Big Crocodile

“Ne-ver smile at a croc-o-dile
Ne-ver dip your hat and stop to talk a-while…”

Actually, you can do all of those things with this crocodile. In fact, some people even climb all over it and have their photos taken dangling from between its gaping jaws, even though there’s a sign strictly forbidding this kind of foolishness.

Maybe it’s the heat. We’re in the eastern Kimberley, in the town of Wyndham, which claims to be the hottest place in Australia. And with an annual average daily maximum of 35 degrees, they’re probably right.

Wyndham is over 3,000kms from Perth and still another 900kms to Darwin, so the town was certainly crying out for something apart from the weather to put it on the map. Perfect conditions, in fact, for a Big Thing.

As the many estuaries surrounding Wyndham are home to saltwater crocodiles, it seemed natural to create a giant replica of one to sit at the town’s entrance and greet all visitors with a wide-mouthed, toothy grin. The Big Crocodile was constructed with steel rods, welding rods, lots of bird mesh and finished with a generous coating of concrete. It commenced duties in 1987 and has been a popular backdrop for visitors’ photographs ever since.

The Big Crocodile has pretty impressive vital statistics, too. At 3m high and a whopping 20m long, it’s another of those instances where size really does seem to matter. This might almost seem like overkill, but the structure’s larger-than-life scale was deliberate. It provides a valuable community service, posing as a very big reminder to visitors and locals alike why they shouldn’t swim in the crocodile-infested waters.

Campbelltown Patchwork and Quilters Guild exhibition of members work will be held at the Campbelltown Civic Hall Queen Street Campbelltown on the 12th  & 13th November this year.

The exhibiton will include over 200 examples of member’s work, a display of handmade aprons and community quilts.

Visitors to the exhibition can also enjoy lunch at the Quilters Cafe, browse the traders mall, purchase hand crafted item or a ticket in the quilt raffle.

Admission is only $6 so come down to Campbelltown and have some fun!

Blueberries is very excited to annouce that in April 2012 we will be heading off on a 24 day trip to the United States.

Janet Edmonds from Lifestyle Tours is our travel coordinator along with Karen Cunningham, Jenny Wheeler from Quilt Essentials and our very own Jackie Leybourne will be assisting Janet on this trip.

The tour will incorporate the Paducah Quilt Show which is located in Kentucky.  Then by coach, we will travel to Virginia, Wasington DC, Baltimore, Delaware, Lancaster and finally New York.

Just some of the places of interest we will be visiting are The home of US President Thomas Jefferson, Village of Colonial Williamsburg were people go about their daily activities as if they were in the 18th century and a guided tour of Amish homes and farms.

Museums included are The daughters of the Amercian Revolution, Smithsonian and The Baltimore Museum of Art.

For more information on this facinating tour, please contact Jackie at jackie@blueberries.net.au to receive a full itinerary and costing.

Departure Date:  Tuesday, 24 April 2012

A road trip of Australia’s fiberglass monuments

The Big Wine Bottle

All up, there are quite a few bottles in the family of Big Things, especially of alcoholic beverages. But this Big Wine Bottle at the Wirra Wirra winery in South Australia is different from all the others for one very fundamental reason – it’s made entirely of corks.
Of course, the six million dollar question now is – does that make this Big Wine Bottle more of a work of art than a Big Thing? No doubt the debate will quietly rage ad nauseam, so we’ll nip it in the bud now by saying that it can actually be both at the same time. There, conundrum solved.
Wirra Wirra, which is Aboriginal for “amongst the gum trees”, is nestled in the lush and fertile McLaren Vale district, and has been churning out award-winning drops since 1894. Over the decades it’s developed some very strong environmental credentials as well as a creative, slightly quirky ethos; two things that have come together in the form of this rather unlikely Big Thing.
When the winery began phasing out corks for the increasingly popular screw tops, they decided to create a work of art with as many recycled corks as they could find. In the course of this creative journey they teamed up with the local Girl Guides. These young ladies also had a yen for discarded corks, principally for important fundraising activities rather than eye-catching artistic statements. Unfortunately, those pesky screw tops had been playing havoc with the Guides’ ability to raise a buck or two, as the corks were becoming more and more scarce. Sympathetic to the Guides’ plight, Wirra Wirra decided to construct a 10 metre high bottle of one of their most popular wines – the hallowed 2008 Church Block Cabernet Sauvignon-Shiraz-Merlot – to draw attention to the Guides’ cause. After all, it was 2010, which was officially the Year of the Girl Guides.

Several weeks and exactly 55,630 corks later, the imposing structure made its world debut at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in March 2010. A couple of days later it hit the road again and spent three weeks in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall where it made many new friends as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival. After this brief but exciting career, the Big Wine Bottle was returned to its permanent home at the entrance to the Wirra Wirra winery where it remains to this day.

As well as some much needed publicity for the Girl Guides, this Big Thing has also drawn attention to the 2008 Church Block Cabernet Sauvignon-Shiraz-Merlot itself, which isn’t really all that surprising. This wine has been immensely popular with both quaffers and reviewers alike, attracting words such as “vibrant”, “zingy”, “persistent”, “spicy”, “suede-like” and “plump” to describe it. If there was ever a wine that deserved to have its likeness replicated in a 10 metre high cork monument, this was it. Just don’t bring it with you to a restaurant. Not only would you have trouble getting it in through the door, just imagine the corkage you’d be charged!