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!