A Weekend away then tackling the cucumbers!

We had a plea from our daughter in Te Awamutu to come help her and hubby Dave look at houses.  They have sold their last house and have not decided on a new one yet.  Oh well, why not I thought and we packed our bags, organised a cat feeder and patter and headed off up the line on Saturday morning.  As our grandson Sam (who now lives in Perth) was being picked up from Rebecca by his Dad in Taupo, we arranged to meet there for lunch.  The day was beautifully sunny and very hot.  It was nice to catch up with Sam and we will go visit him in Palmerston North next week. He and Grandad were having a great catch up.

We then went off to find somewhere for lunch that wasn't McDonalds, and strolled from one end of Taupo to the other looking at various yummy looking options.  Once fed and watered it was off to the park so the two granddaughters could let off a bit of energy.  Hayley wanted to go on the wee train so it fell on Nana to do the honours.  Here we are going "Toot, toot" and having a great laugh.

The girls posing under a ginormous tree at the park.
 Our other two sons came to Rebecca's for a BBQ that night so we got to see the two youngest grandbabies too.  What a treat that was.  It was so lovely to see Dayn and Hamish...I have really missed having her around here.  Their new house and job are so much better though that it makes it worthwhile.

Sunday we ploughed our way through 5 houses, liking a couple but nothing that was a certain thing.  The house they were really interested in was pulled off the market on Sunday morning.  The kids are going to carry on looking as there is no real hurry at this point.

Home Sunday night and on Monday I finally finished sorting out the big brown quilt with the yuk backing.  Went home early afternoon and started cutting up the 8kgs of cucumbers that were sitting in my Vegetable drawer in the fridge. They needed to be soaked in salt water overnight, so had to get started otherwise they would go to waste.  What a  mammoth task cutting so many cucumbers up....I think there were about 10 of them, mostly a pretty good size.  They happily sat on the bench overnight and dewatered themselves or whatever it is they do!

Started quilting...it is a very easy panto, but when I rolled up for the fourth row, I forgot it was offset and should have restarted at row 2.  Hmmm, spent the afternoon mucking around and unpicking.  Maybe tomorrow I wont be so tired?

Went home to finish making the pickle and had to cut up 16 onions!  What a detestable job.  Got out my trusty old food processor but still the eyes were watering.  Suddenly remembered what my youngest son Richard would do when having to cut up onions so did the same....

Swimming goggles are really good for onion cutting duties.  Richard used to use a full face mask pair and used look like a right idiot.  My goggles are much more sophisticated and I look more like a left idiot I feel. LOL.

Anyway, this is the result of a very long process (including borrowing my friend's pot cause mine was not big enough).  Next time I will not wait until there are so many of these green things to process!

The picture is a bit wishwashy, but it does look more edible than this.  Shall let you know how it tastes...it had better be good!

Now I'm off to bed.  Got to finish this big brown quilt tomorrow and get another one underway.  Want to make a small quilt for Wine Country Quilts, so need to whip through these last four pantos and give myself a bit of free time.

Thanks for reading and look forward to talking with you again.

Blessings
Clare