Rag Rug tutorial

Today, I’m going to show you how to crochet a rag rug, like the one we made for the Maid’s Quarters. In fact, it’s exactly the one we made for the Maid’s Quarters. Cleverly, we took photos as we went along…
Are you ready? Then let’s go…

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The Maid’s Quarters opening event

We held the opening of our new Maid’s Quarters on Sunday and we have a number of very special guests attend. This is Elsie Schilling, who was the second maid to live and work at Benga.

The lovely Elsie Schilling

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The Maid’s Quarters

Oh, it’s so exciting! The official opening of our Maid’s Quarters is this Sunday! The installation is complete, the lemonade has been made, chutneys have been bottled and Christmas cakes have been baked. Everything is ready for Sunday!

Wandering around the finished exhibition, I love looking at the tiny details. I don’t want to give anything away, after all you can come and visit it yourself, but I couldn’t help myself with this one photo which we’ve pinned to the corkboard in the maid’s bedroom.

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The Wagga quilt

Things are bowling along with our Maid’s Quarters and it’s starting to look very realistic. There’s one special item I wanted to share with you today, which comes from our collection. It’s called a Wagga quilt and it’s on the Maid’s bed.

Forgive the boxes, we're still unpacking!

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Behind the scenes – The Maid’s Quarters

One of the things that makes working in a museum so exciting is the setting up of displays. Currently we’re creating the Maid’s Quarters, setting up a bedroom, kitchen, pantry and laundry in a 1930s style as if a maid still lived here.

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An antidote to grumpiness (chocolate brownie recipe)

We’re currently in the process of setting up our Maid’s Quarters, which consist of the Maid’s bedroom, the kitchen, the pantry and the laundry, as a museum display. We’re gathering old clothes and shoes, old linen and trinkets, canned food and old starch packets and setting they all up in the Maid’s Quarters. It’s like making a set for a theatre show or a tv show. It’s a lot of work but a lot of fun.

But I’ve been thinking about the kitchen in particular, and the types of meals that would have been prepared there. They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, and thus the food cooked there would be the lifeblood of the family. I’ve been thinking about how you can, at times, nurture the soul through the stomach and cook delicious food that makes you feel good too.

And then, sometimes, you need to cook things that are tasty treats of sometimes food. This is where today’s recipe fits in. A friend of Heritage Hill wrote up the recipe for these delicious chocolate brownies and called them “An antidote to grumpiness”.

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