Thursday 31 October 2013

Thursday 31 st

Hi all,
Down to business first of all tonight.   

In spite of a really enthusiastic response when the dinner was first suggested and when people were asked to register to attend, not enough people have followed through and we are faced with the need to make some decisions.  


Firstly let me reassure those who have booked.  We will be having a dinner, it will be on the same night and it will be in Brisbane.  We may, however, have to change the venue and the point at which we need to make that decision is rapidly approaching.   


If you do intend to come along and just have not committed to buying your tickets, then unfortunately you have until close of business Monday the 4th to purchase your ticket and email Angela with a copy of your EFT receipt in order to confirm your booking.  If we do not have the required numbers to meet the minimum by then we will need to make alternate arrangements or pay for people who will not be attending and I do not intend to do that with AHQ funds.


I might add though, that if you do come you are going to be in for a special night as at least two of my absolute favourites from "over there" are coming along to the dinner no matter what.  Okay, so if you know me well, you know that I have lots of favourites - what can I say - you have read the thank you messages - there are lots of really lovely guys and girls over there, some of Australia's best if you ask me. 


I have asked the one we know of as "the Money Honey" to be our guest speaker but we are still waiting to see if he gets approval for that.  Hopefully he will, but if not we will still have the pleasure of his company and the company of at least one other of the lovely fellows I came to know this year. 

I am sorry you have such short notice but Angela and I are beginners at arranging functions like this - we are quilters you know, not function planners - but ticket sales have been open now for two weeks and we had expected a better response given the initial feedback we had.  


We will keep you posted with how things are going and will give an update on Tuesday night.

.....

Time for a couple of messages from grateful recipients.

Afternoon Liz,

I just want to send you an email and say how thankful I am for your Quilt and other gifts that I received today, and I must say most of the Australian and other nations I work with admired your work and detail, it will be an item that will stay with me well after my time in the service. This is now my 3rd tour of Afghanistan and 7th deployment in the Army and I have never received any thing such as this with the amount of work and detail, I have already been wearing my beanie around at night as its starting to get cold in XXXX
.....

Dear Shirley,

I am writing this to thank you as I have just become the proud owner of a laundry bag that you made for us soldiers living and working over here in Afghanistan.   I made the mistake of leaving my old one behind, so when I was offered one that you made I instantly picked one that was covered in Aussie flags and looked like a pair of beach shorts.

My family and I also live in XXXX and we went on a holiday to XXXXXX, for a week just before I left to come out here. I have to agree with you it is a beautiful place. Hopefully we will visit that part of XXXX again, however I have another 7 months left until I get home so it will have to wait for now.

Anyway I will have to finish now, again thank you for the bag you made and for your support for myself and all of the troops serving over here. It is hard being away from family and friends for such a long time but we all know the job we are doing is a worthy one.


I know this is a short post but I am pushed for time today  - before I go though a small bit of news.  Our Deployed Quilter received her quilt!  "I got my quilt and it is beautiful I love" was just a snippet of her reaction sent to me in  a Facebook message overnight.  She is planning an email so I will wait till I get that before passing more on.  

I will also wait till then to show the whole quilt as it has her first name on it and I need to get that scrubbed unless she is happy for me to share it as is but in the mean time here is a reminder of some of the blocks, chosen at random.   There were so many more awesome ones but you have to wait to see the whole thing. I could not share it before because we were being "watched"!








 Last thing every Thursday I publish the list of those who have posted things off for this week.  Once again, if you are not on this list and think you should be please let me know.

Angela
Judy C
Judith
Karen B
Keryn
Maree
Nancy
Noeleen
Pam Y
Su
Sue N

Till next time ....................keep spreading the word and happy stitching!  JMxx 








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