Bye bye cafe blinds -and other developments

We have a south west facing patio. It gets a lot of sun and a lot of rain.

For years we had those plastic cafe blinds on four sides -but they quickly went cloudy, then dirty, then they stretched and buckled and the zips failed.  Time to get some new blinds! The first two were installed this week -they are mesh and have stronger framing and more user-friendly maintenance.

Can't wait for the others to be made so we can enjoy this patio for more weeks of the year. 

We took the chance to get rid of the last remaining vertical blinds in the house.  Hello insulated concertina blinds. These windows face north so we want to be able to keep the heat out on very hot days, but we also want to be able to see out and let winter sun in.

I will be purchasing filmy white drapes for this bedroom to go with the blinds. 

The quilting is finished on my latest quilt, which I am calling 'fly away home'. Need to get on to the binding, but I have been busy with a few events outside the home this week. 

One of the events was our community quilting sewing bee. I won these pretty fabrics in the door prize! I know I don't need any more fabrics but it is always nice to get new fabric. It often inspires new combinations with older fabric from the stash. I came home with some donated blocks which I want to wrangle into a community quilt. Someone donated them -perhaps they cut them the wrong size..it was a bit of a puzzle but I have an idea to use them and make a nice quilt with them. 

It is pomegranate season -we have to process and use these soon. 

We also have olives to process. 

And the citrus is ripening fast too! We are soon going to need to process grapefruit, tangelos and meyer lemons, but I am hoping these mandarins will be edible without processing. 

I had better stop going out! There is work to do here at home!