Finished items and a rush of blogging!

Little cardy I started knitting many moons ago, sewed up a couple of moons ago, and finally got the buttons on one moon ago. The little monkey looks really cute in it. People at childcare must be able to identify my child immediately because for the last two years her only jumpers have been in that yarn...

A little Lion brand Kimono sweater for the lovely G in Sydney. Her Mummy liked the wool, having seen it so frequently on my child, so this little one is for her. The pattern was uber simple (lacking in the finishing department), and I think I'm confident enough now to add some 'fluff' - like an edge and a neckband. But goodness help me if I have to knit in that pink stuff again. I think three years with a yarn is more than enough. I'll bundle it up and weigh it and offer it up to the first one who wants it.



And the beehive hat from Stitch and Bitch Nation. I look shocking in it, although my DH doesn't seem to think so. And Lily looks absolutely gorgeous in it. Anyhoo, best go. I'm killing time waiting for Lil to wake up after she decided to adopt '2am-5am is party time' as her mantra. I knew the sleeping all night was too good to be true!

Oh, and a new blogger to check out - the lovely George! http://georgieskitchentable.blogspot.com/

I'm spinning around

Well, not yet I'm not. But as of tomorrow I will be the proud owner of a spinning wheel! I've often been tempted, but thought that my husband would baulk at the idea of yet another fibre related craft. But today there was a notice on our work notice board, which mentioned (amongst many other things) two spinning wheels for sale and DH not only drew my attention to it, but even mentioned the spinning wheels specifically! I took it as permission to engage the enemy and purchased myself a little upright thingy. I'm so very excited. Add to this the fact that my lovely mother bought me a little wet felting kit over the weekend, and Lily slept through the night for the first time in ages, and I got to knit the whole way to work while DH drove and I tell you that I'm about as happy as I can get.

I am not gone, I'm just away...

sad - a friend's father passed away. I cried at the funeral, even though I didn't know him really, mainly because I could feel my friend's pain. I wanted to pay my respects to man who made G into the wonderful man he is.

bittersweet - catching up with G, even under such sad circumstances. He normally lives so far away. And also catching up with beautiful people from Sydney who came down for the funeral.

happy - Big Lilly and Savannah coming to visit. Savannah saying 'Meow'. Our girls playing together at Questacon - Mini Q. Sidesplitting laughter shared with Big Lilly and Nicole. Ah, if only I could bottle it.


busy - traveling hither and yon to see relatives.

chocolatey - around 3kg of chocolate received at last count...

fatal - my accidental hitting of a bunny on the way to the airport this morning. The universe punctuating the end of Easter perhaps? RIP Flopsy.

Pictures are worth a thousand words...

mainly because I can't be bothered to write much. Here are some photos of my spoils from the Harlot Happening, my finished-bar-the-buttons cardy and the wonderful wool from Happy Spider half fashioned into a baby cardy... not in that particular order because I'm lazy.

Heaps of Harlots!

A fantastic time was had by all at the Harlot Happening tonight. Thanks to Taph for organising a fantastic night, Jejune for the great puzzles and poster , Bells for blogging, and all the fantastic folk who donated and joined in the festivities. I scored bigtime, but you have to wait for the daytime hours for the pictures!

Harlot? Who you calling a harlot?

Ooooh, a Harlot Happening....

Canberra Knitters

Just found this site for Canberra Knitters


Well done Taphophile, Bells, Jejune, happyspider!

I look forward to being excited and inspired (even more than usual) by these lasses and their seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of all thinks knitting that happen in our fair city.

Knitting patterns from the year I was born

All I can say is that I'm glad I have no conscious memory of the fashions that year... which was 1974 by the way...

Shopping Sherpa is looking for an 8ply vest pattern for a one-year-old that would only use 135gms, so I went looking through stash to see if I could help. No luck sorry Sherpa, but I did find this hideous vest which uses lots more wool in appalling colours. [Get a load of the kid's sticky-out ear!]


And you could make one for yourself too. Or you could just forget the kid and make yourself a snazzy new, um, shirt (or as I call it, the holey moley bum-show-er-off-er-er).

Where the Hell is Matt?

Might be the exotic locations, or the music or just watching someone brave enough to dance in public, but I love this vid.

Weather to be moody by...

This was the weather in Canberra last night, as seen from Yass.

Angry and dark. And amazing.

Edit: Everyone's talking about the rain and hail - neither of which we got on this side of town...

Curse the universe

I'm a little sick. A little tired. A little pissed off with the universe and fate and luck and all that bollocks. I'm considering changing my twitchy fingers logo to be an extended middle finger. Anyway, rather than wallow in my cornucopia of unpleasant feelings, I thought I'd make a knitting needle roll. I think its pretty.

When I finished it, it was sitting in the sun and the reflection was bouncing of my daughter's green beaded butterfly shoes...

Another project I'm undertaking at the moment is the restoration of this lovely chair. We were driving through Exeter the other day on the way to Nowra and this masterpiece was sitting by the side of the road with a whole lot of junk.
I've wanted to restore a chair for a while, but didn't really want to spend any money on it! And there is was. I'm in the process of removing the varnish at the moment, and I'll need to repair a split in one leg. Nan gave me some lavender velvet to recover the seat with so I'm on my way. I love the idea of a chair with a story and history, even though I don't know what the story is! I'll post when its done. When I'm finished I think I'll drop a picture of it, and a thank you, into the letterbox of the house that it was sitting in front of. You know, just saying thanks for the chair...

Anyhoo. I'm going to try and do some cleaning or something so that I get rid of this nasty fug. So that I don't get to tonight and realise all i've done is wallow. and make a knitting needle roll.

Admiration of others

We went down to Nowra last weekend to see my Nana for her birthday. While we were down there DH's aunt gave Lily a 'Jemima'. For anyone who doesn't know, Jemima is a doll on Playschool. So this new Jemima is actually Lily's third Jemima.

Each of them is handmade. The non-knitted Jemima (known as 'other Jemima') was made by my Nana for my little sister. Its about 20-25 years old, and barring the lack of elasticity in her knicker elastic she's doing pretty well. Occasionally her hair becomes detached too... Her dress is beautifully made and I know was made with love. I'm grateful that my sister has shared her with my daughter.

The smaller of the other two is 'Jemima'. She's one of those reversible dolls. The other end is called 'Princess Fiona'. DH's great aunt picked her up at a church fair.

And the big 'Jemima mummy' was the gift from Aunty Jayne; provider of cuddles, kisses and fun, as well as piles of books and toys.


In terms of detail and craftsmanship, these two knitted Jemima's are just incredible. Jemima Mummy has roses, and hair ribbons, and picot edging on her clothes. Jemima and Princess Fiona even more so with individual flowers/patches on the dress, hair and hand ornaments and many-coloured clothing.

I know they're a little old-fashioned and some of the yarn is a little '$2 shop' in colour, but the work that must have gone into these... well I'm speechless. And I just want to throw out to the blogmosphere my thanks to the two old ducks that I don't know who are the artisans who crafted these treasured toys... as well as to the old duck that I do know (hi Nan!) another artisan who has inspired me so much to try and replicate her talent. And has given me half of her sewing room under the guise of 'cleaning out'.

We saw another talented old person, my Pa, on the weekend too. He's been bragging about the bag I made... saying it's 'bloody beautiful'. This is high praise from Pa - not that he's not generous with his praise, but its usually reserved for when I grow something he's struck for me, or bear him a great grand-child. And better yet, he's made a template of the handles from the bag and is going to make a stack of them for me so I can make some more! You rock Pa.

And to finish off this mammoth post, I attach a picture of my bubby girl with her two new miniature favourite toys - Sleeping Booffie (Beauty) and her Daddy-boy (Prince - but a pretty high accolade as she calls her father Daddy-boy. I'm just Mummy). She waltzes around the house singing the theme from Sleeping Beauty 'I know you, I've walked with you, Once Upon a Dream'... She possesses at least two of the things I prayed for in my child - a great imagination and a love of singing. She's also a very happy child so I guess I got the bonus deal!

Uh oh....

I've made the move into the new Blogger too... cross your fingers for me.

Busy busy

I've done quite a few little projects in the last couple of weeks that I haven't posted. The first was a gift for the lovely Josie. She was clearing out her stash in preparation for her move to China and offered me some lovely mohair-y type wool which I snaffled very quickly. I wanted to knit with it immediately and somewhere between casting on and row four it struck me that I could make a stole type thing for her with the wool to take with her to China! I knew she'd like the wool - she did buy it after all - and I did one of those "wind the wool around needle twice then knit" stitches. Any way, she loved it. And it can be worn as a stole, a scarf, a shoulder warmer or a snood! Talk about versatile. Better photos will follow...


Then I made this bag.

Nan had given me an old bag from her next door neighbour's mum, who had just gone into a home. It had these beautiful old handles.... so i unpicked the fabric, painted the handles and used two materials from Nan's stash (which seemed made for each other) and voila! I love it.


And finally, Golden Sun Moth (Synemon plana) - an attractive moth with green eyes, clubbed antennae, and no functional mouth parts. It lives for about 2 years, which they live almost entirely underground as larvae. They emerge after about 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, with their fully developed eggs, search for a mate, lay their eggs and die. They only live for two to five days, as they cannot feed. Its another of my threatened species series... this poor little mite is critically endangered.


Anyway, got to run - meeting the girls for Indian - Yum!

It wouldn't be Australia Day without a barbie...

and a small fire... Go Geoff, go!

Perhaps this is as good as it gets....

Lyrics from 'Beautiful World' great song by Colin Hay of Men at Work fame...

Tagged!

My goodness - my first meme. Thanks sadieandlance!

Here are the rules.
1. someone tags you,
2. you post five things about yourself that you haven’t already mentioned on your blog,
3. you tag people you’d like to know more about.

1. I'm addicted to systems of organisation. I'm constantly trying to find ways to make my work and home life more organised through sites like Flylady and DIY planner and lifehacker and organized home and the best free organisation software around [Australian too!] Thinking Rock. I love the idea of being able to have a streamlined, chaos free life; structured so that everything gets done when it needs too. I even went so far as to create a document called 'traits of an organised home' [summarising many of the applicable features from the sites above] which worked beautifully for about a month. Then collapsed. My intentions are good, but I usually get sidetracked by craft or something that seems far more important than ironing and end up not doing all the things that would make my life easier...

2. I love reading. I'm ravenous when it comes to the 'right' book and snatch every moment I can to devour it. My favourite authors are Margaret Atwood and Marion Halligan (great Canberran author), but I'll go for any Australian fiction really. I could go on and on about books. But I won't.

3. I smoke. I hate it. I love it. I must quit.

4. I'm a recovering alcoholic. My drinking was bad just before I fell pregnant with Lily, but I didn't drink during the pregnancy so I thought I was 'cured'. Things got pretty bad after she was born, and culminated in one big night when I was so drunk and out of control that I shaved my head [I previously had shoulder-length hair].

I realised then that my drinking was out of control. I've been a AA 'boundary rider' for a while, and it was certainly the catalyst in helping me stop drinking, but I find much more strength in the behavioural management approaches to drinking. I found AA spent too much time wallowing in alcoholism - I'd got my life back and wanted to spend it doing things, not moaning about how bad it was 5 nights a week.

5. We have a cat named Rosie and my daughter's name is Lily. I often get them mixed up. I love flower names and would love to name other children Holly, Jasmine or Patterson, but am frightened of becoming like the women in Keeping Up Appearances who are Violet, Rose, Daisy and Hyacinth. My Nana is alot like Hyacinth actually, but that's another story.

So there you go. I tag, Shopping Sherpa, Miss Minnie and Taph. I can't tag 5 as I don't know anyone else that has a blog and reads this regularly!

Cheers
N

Man it's hot...

It's 10.40pm and it's 27 degrees... that's 81 degrees Fahrenheit. And the songs running around my head are:

• I'm feeling hot, hot, hot
• Might as well be walking on the sun
• It's gettin' hot in here {we've already removed our clothes...}
• Burn, baby burn, disco inferno
• The heat is on
• Light my fire - gonna set the night on fire {its already on fire Jimmy}
  
• Hot in the city
• Some like it hot and some sweat when the heat is on {no kidding}
  
• And anything by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers

(Many thanks to my darling husband for his un-natural knowledge of 80's music...)

Sweat, I mean, sweet dreams...

Ah, the sands of time...

We went through a pile of things at Mum's today and found a heap of my sister and my old Barbies. Here they are - sans clothes. Note the bent arms and variety of skin colour.


Then I noticed that the new Barbies that Lil had were different. The arms no longer bent - just straight. Or jointed (the dancing Barbie). mmmm I wonder why the change. Then the really old one with weird-ass white fuzzy Marge Simpson hair and a slanted swiveling waist... and the really large Barbie with the checky grin...

I'm no fan of Barbie. But I was once, and its kind of cool to see my daughter playing with the toys that I played with 20-odd years ago. But I often feel the need to wrap them up in cotton wool so that they more closely resemble a normal woman...

Bye 2006

My crafty end to the year... it was strangely satisfying.

There are gonna be some changes around here...

I feel the need for a new look for the new year, so things may look a little dodgy for a while... hope you don't mind!

And I hope you had a lovely christmas or holiday and have recovered from any family traumas.

Thank god its nearly over

I'm really not that into Christmas. Shocking I know. Previously I've been called the Grinch, Scrooge etc, but since Lily came on the scene I've had to make a concerted effort to be 'christmassy'. We've dressed the tree, sung carols and done the present wrapping. I've even encouraged her use of bubbles to make Santa's beard - as illustrated here...

I draw the line at tinsel which I believe was thought up by vacuum cleaner companies so they could cash in on the Christmas period. Anyhoo, I have been doing a few Christmas craft things, like little birds soft tree pattern and Wee Wonderful's Elf Stitchettes which are pretty cool...

And that's as far as I'm going. (But I decided I liked non-sewing machine related crafting again and so I did a bit more embroidery...)


And this time in three days most of the hoo-har will be over and we won't have to think about Christmas, other than the Christmas sales... not that I can do much damage in Nowra which only has a Scablight.

The other good news is that this f**ken year will be over soon. I'm so over 2006, especially the last six months. I can only hope that the make-your-life-hell fairy will decide to go and bug someone else.

But the best news is that my little sister will be home from her south american trek tomorrow! Yay! Lil thinks she's just been on a plane for the last six weeks...

So Merry Christmas everyone (well the several folk who have continued to read my sporadic ramblings). I hope that you are safe and well, and happy.

Kisses

A little Rudolf...


A bit of a Labyrinth swap I just did... I made the Bowie fabric myself!

hehehehe

CRAZY CAT LADY...

My sister would soooo be pissing herself laughing at this if she 1. read my blog and 2. was not climbing Machu Picchu... we used to joke that she'd end up spending her days with 'Mr Whiskers' as her significant other!!
http://www.prankplace.com/actionfigures.htm

I miss her....

Sometimes life is a cravat...

I was just at a meeting and this guy was saying was retelling that story of two mountain climbers on Everest....

"...on the way down one of them broke his leg which is generally a mountaineering death sentence. Never-the-less his friend continued to bring him down the mountain, even though exhaustion of both energy & supplies had set in. Tragically, just as they were nearing the end , the injured climber - Joe Simpson - fell over a cliff. For a couple of hours Simon Yates was being pulled inexorably towards the mountain edge by their shared rope. He cut the rope."

Turns out the broken leg man survived, but its a terribly sad story.

However the guy telling the story mixed up crevasse and cravat... and all I could think of was a man stuck in a cravat. Like this...

A weekend, and a world away...

I spent last weekend in Brisbane with the wonderful L, her hubby and beautiful bubby. It was bubby's first birthday and there was much celebration. More than that there was just time to be with my favourite Brisbanites - just 'be'. We didn't go anywhere (besides the park for the birthday), we talked and played and cooked and laughed and it was lovely. I was sad that N and Lily couldn't come up with me, but I was able to spend some really lovely time with my friend without having to be concerned about my own kin. And I made a cute little dress for bubby - a similar version to one I made for Lily last year - with a little doll with matching dress... tres cute.

And that kind of (!) brings me to this post. I enjoy blogging. But I began to feel that blogging, and keeping up with other blogs was not fun. It was one more pressure on me (self-imposed pressure of course) and keeping up came at the cost of family, friends, and time to actually craft! It made me feel bad that I didn't blog as often, didn't create as much and didn't seem to have it all together like so many others seemed to do. I know this is a warped view of the craft community, and that we all deal with similar pressure, but it began to bring me down. So I've decided to adopt a more reasoned approach. Balanced if you will. I will blog when I feel I can, and when I have something to report/show/say. I love reading others blogs, and get so inspired by the wealth of amazingly talented people out there, but given that it is the internet version of reality television I can probably live without the blow by blow accounts and catch up on them when I can.

I guess this is more speaking out loud. And there aren't that many readers so few who will really be 'affected'. I'm just putting it out there.

Hey... where you been so long?

Just a note to say I'll be back on track shortly... Just had a bit of down time and will have a report ready this weekend!

Bloody sploggers...

They've taken 'Where am I going... and why am I in this handbasket'. I don't know if I'll ever recover.

Work's not so bad...

Compared to many, I have such a lovely working environment. A recent move has me sitting near a window, overlooking trees, and when I choose to go outside I see this…




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_Triangle

We’re just across from the lake, the High Court and the National Gallery, forward of Old Parliament house the National Library and the National Science and Technology Centre (or Questacon).

Today I walked past all these things on the way to the Rose Gardens in from of Old Parliament House… it’s a beautiful day and I came back to work feeling so refreshed.

On another note, have you ever seen such a beautiful child…

Lily and Daddy went down to Nowra on the weekend and spent Sunday morning on the beach. I think we can assume she’s over her wave fear… I, on the other hand, spent the weekend making curtains and watching Scrubs series 3

Stacks of slack...

Sorry for the slackness... busy week last week, and this week on leave - which is even busier! We just got our mushroom compost and mulch delivered so we've been busily laying it down to protect and feed our little plants.

Last Friday we headed down to the coast for the long weekend. Lil was so excited about the beach. You should have seen the excitment in her face! Unfortunately it wasn't long after that she started crying and saying 'home'. Beach freaked her out. We found a happy medium in the Lagoon, where the water is calmer and there were more little kids (obviously the aforementioned kids are absent from the photo below - it was 7am). She and Daddy made heaps and heaps of sandcastles.


I also did a little knitting with some wire and beads I had hanging around. I think I could become very fond of wire knitting...

See ya

A bad start to the week...

We left Nan's early yesterday and I drove most of the way back. I was only about 25 minutes late to the planning day, but already people were right into the drum segment of the morning. Oh dear, I thought. But it was great. These guys were from Monkey Jump and the drums (and maracas and sticks) - even though played by mild mannered public servants - made the most incredible sound. The rest of the day went as planning day's do. Eh. It was held at the National Museum of Australia, so DH and Lily wandered around for an hour or so until it was time to pick me up. I think they had a better time than me... I was tired and exhausted from all that 'planning' and a little grumpy.

Shortly after we got home I began to feel a little 'bloated' and not long after that I was struck down by some gastro-type illness. It was not a fun night. Today hasn't been much better. So I'm home. Two quick snaps... a bag I made ages ago out of a placemat - complete with little magnet clasp thingo - tres professional.

And the other is a sneak peek at something I making for someone... The blogger herself will know what it means (and anyone else who reads her blog...). It will be fashioned into something fantastic and amazing, then packaged up and sent south. Just as soon as I can spend more that 5 minutes at a stretch away from the bathroom...

And the wind blew

After 10 days from hell, we've had a lovely weekend in Nowra for DH's Grandfather's birthday. We came down Friday, and spent the night watching the Bulldogs lose their chance at the Grand final (sad for DH; I'm indifferent). Then a beautiful warm day (bit of wind) with family, great food, and lots of laughing at children (Like poor Lily when she jumped in the pool with me. Let's just say it was very 'bracing'. Not so funny was her picking up the phrase 'bugger him' from Uncle Dave...). On Saturday night I spent the night playing with my Nana's 'new' Bernina 1630. It was alot of fun! It writes, embroiders, and pretty much runs itself. A far cry from my old Elnita (Elna). I've made a couple of things for various blog-folk. Watch this space for sneak previews.

We got up early this morning and got ready to come home. My grandparents had just got home and had narrowly missed being hit by a falling tree. My grandfather's cat-like reflexes and the early hour were the only things that had stopped them being squashed. Nana got hot coffee all over her lap, but better a hot coffee than a large tree...

The wind had picked up heaps and by the time we left there was a gale force wind warning. The road was littered with broken branches and detritius was flying about everywhere. DH and I commented that it you wouldn't want to be a motorcyclist out in this weather; too dangerous. Just out of Kangaroo Valley we had to stop because of an accident. It was only 100m in front of us. A motorcyclist had been hit by a falling tree and struck off his bike. His bike had continued on without him for a further 200m until it hit an oncoming car. The poor driver of the car - visibly shaking - was telling people to turn around. It had happened moments before and the Ambulance arrived about 2 minutes after we got there. As this was one of the only roads back to Canberra we stopped tentatively under a huge gum. DH got out to see if it was possible for us to pass. That's when he saw the ambulance officers lay a sheet over the man. Meanwhile, more and more people were getting out of their cars to walk up and see what was happening. Right up to where this man was laying. Upon finding out what happened, many were just pissed off that they'd have to go hours out of their way to get home. This man's death was considered more an inconvienience than a tragedy. More an interesting story to tell than the end of a life. We turned around and tried to go down the Berry Road, but only 2km I had swerved to avoid 3 trees on the road. Given Nana and Pa's close call, the accident we'd just seen and the prospect of driving at least 100km through heavily tree'd forests we decided to come back to Nowra. DH's parents decided to try and get back to Canberra via Ulladulla, but got stopped by a fire. It ended up taking them 8 hours to get home. If it had been DH and I we'd probably have done the same, but we couldn't do it to Lily. Anyway, we're back at Nana's and will be doing the dash back early tomorrow morning because I've got a planning day for work.

The whole thing has shaken me. I can't identify exactly why, but it was just so sad and tragic. And close. And real. I thought writing about it would help. It hasn't helped me understand why I feel so bad, but I don't feel anxious anymore. Thanks blogmosphere.

Australian Lungfish...

or Queensland Lungfish,

• are a link with our prehistoric past
• has gills and a lung
• can grow up to 2 metres long
• is pretty freaky looking
• has kept me busy for a day or two...