Diva diva!!

We all went along to Baby Bear's play the other night and she was magnificent! I know every parent thinks their child is the most talented and wonderful, but she really did bring the house down with her Scene 1 performance of a spoilt, punk princess. Very funny and scarily convincing! In the second half she had a much smaller role which she did well but wasn't a standout. It's a little community youth theatre group that makes sure that all the talented kids get a part that showcases their abilities, so as a general rule half of them get a starring role in the first half and the others in the second half. Other kids who are enthusiastic but not so talented get nice little bits in both halves. Everyone was excellent and the audience thoroughly enjoyed it. There were two matinee performances on subsequent days and now it is all over and done with until next year. That might leave her some time to practice those four instruments she plays (clarinet, flute, piano and viola), spend some time with the Church orchestra and the school concert band, and maybe join the Church youth band (she has been invited to join but hasn;t had time so far this year!!)

She and George are over at the primary school spreading mulch right now. Wombat is at his friend's place. Even the dog is out (also spreading mulch). Later on we have to go to the shops to get some scripts filled, have icecreams, and for me to check out a skirt that George wants to buy Baby Bear at Urban Angel. Then home to make a pavlova for tonight - big cousin L is coming over for dinner, a refugee from uni where he is living in college and they don't feed them on Saturday nights.

I just sat down to skein four balls of wool I dyed the other day. The intention was to put them on Ebay. I decided to dye them in the ball to see what happened, and wanted to skein them to show off the full range of colours. (This is commercial yarn that I was never going to use - four 50g balls of cream 5ply that I've had hanging around for years). As I started skeining I decided that the colours were so gorgeous that I was going to keep them and turn them into something for myself! I used turquoise and hot pink Landscape dyes and the result is a scrummy purple in different shades with spots of turquoise and fuschia here and there. Maybe a lace scarf or something. Definitely too gorgeous to sell! I will try to photograph them this weekend.

I escaped for the day yesterday. George took the day off work and I ran away. Actually I went to Chadstone (large shopping mall) and spent the day mooching around there. It was a good place for people watching - as it's the school holidays it was quite illuminating to watch the teenage mall rats and decide that my daughter is never going to look as tarty as that! I wandered around, considered buying some clothes and eventually bought two very fine cardigans (one pale pink ballerina style, one black with pretty floral embellishment), spent hours in Borders and bought some books on special and Belle Armoire magazine, wandered around some more and finally caught the bus back to our neighbourhood mall, where I did the supermarket shopping and was finally collected by my loving family in time to go home and cook dinner for them. (Which was frozen pizza and an apology for a salad - hey, it was my day off!) I was then too tired to do more than a few rows of ribbing on George's sock.

Looking back through this blog I seem to write a lot more about my family than ab0ut knitting. I guess I am not the fastest knitter, plus is seems boring to say 'I did another X rows on such-and-such a project today'. The truth is that knitting is what occupies most of my waking thoughts. I;ve always knitted, but I'm sure I;ve only got this obsessed over the last couple of years.

Prima Donna

Baby Bear has spent all day Monday, all day yesterday and then three hours last night rehearsing for the play, which opens tonight. She spent yet another night with our friends making props, but slept at home last night - wonders will never cease! But this morning she woke up overhyped and overtired and did a really good prima donna imitation for a couple of hours, which wound up Wombat to an unbearable degree, and they were at each other hammer and tongs for some time. Fortunately I eventually managed to separate and calm them, and then after she had had some breakfast and done some vacuuming (not as punishment, it's a weekly chore that I often do for her but decided it was time she did something round the house!) I let her go round to her friend E's place for the day. They are both in the play (in important roles - E always gets the ingenue, Baby Bear gets the character role) and probably both as bad as each other right now. But E's mother doesn't have an autistic child in the middle of it, as I do, so I figure will be better able to cope with them both being prima donnas than I would.

We're all going to the play tonight. Wombat should be OK, with some meds and his Gameboy - and he'll like the second half which has lots of circus acts in it.

I took him to see The Son of the Mask yesterday, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. He pointed out that it was like a cartoon, and he was right - it had a very similar feel to the old Loonie Tunes cartoons, plotwise and everything, and was a good laugh. Then we did some shopping - he wanted the Spongebob the Movie PC game, which he spent his pocket money on, and I bought the original three Star Wars movies on DVD, which we are working our way through not. (We only bought the DVD player just after Christmas, so buying DVVDs is still a bit of a novelty!!)

I photographed some dyed wool yesterday that I am going to put on Ebay but forgot to download the pics, so they are at the office with George. I love dying my homespun but haven't done any spinning for ages, so I decided to dye some commercial yarn that I had. Will post pics when I remember to download them. I LOVE dyeing, it is so much fun!

Steaming ahead on the sock that has been taking so long. And now to sit down and knit something which cannot be revealed yet.

Hot hot hot

At least in Melbourne we always have a topic of conversation if we are stuck ... the weather. Unseasonably hot this weekend, more like midsummer, and rather unpleasant. I spent Saturday flaked out in front of the fan, knitting (on the project that cannot be named right now). George was running around with the kids taking them all over the countryside, and was exhausted when he got home. They all seem to have enjoyed themselves, though, which is good.

Yesterday felt like trial by stifling heat. We don't normally go to church during the school holidays, as there is no Sunday School. (OK, I don't got very often regardless!). But the minister was leaving and it was his farewell service and informal thingie afterwards, with lunch, so we rolled up. Well, it ranked up there with the pope's funeral and Charlie's wedding in terms of overcrowded and long. We got there twenty minutes early and still had to sit at the back of the foyer, rather than in the church itself. I reckon I'd have seen and heard more if I;d stayed at home and watched it on the telly (so to speak). It was incredibly hot, we couldn't really follow the service, and Wombat was having a bad morning. Not that I blame him, under the circumstances - I would have liked an excuse to behave the same way! I took him across the road for a cold drink for half an hour at one point, which helped a little bit. The service went for 90 minutes, which is about par for the course. Then the farewell bit - which went for another 90 minutes and was FAR TOO LONG. By the time we got to the lunch I;m surprised we didn;t all get food poisoning because it had been sitting out in the hall for an hour in the heat. (Actually I don;t feel too well today but I think that is a general reaction to the heat of the weekend and being far too tired).

Baby Bear had been playing in the Church Orchestra so had spent all that time, plus an hour's rehearsal beforehand, dressed in long black pants and a long sleeved white shirt - and then after a hasty lunch the orchestra had to race off to another gig. She was very hot and bothered by the end of it all!

I then sloped off to the local mall to chill out (literally, it is well air-conditioned!) and do the grocery shopping, among other things. Mostly I sat down and had a very long cold drink and read a beading magazine, then went and worked my way through pattern books at Lincraft. Anything to sit down! At least it was fairly cool. And the cool change had come through by the time George came to pick me up afterwards.

It's a lot cooler today. Much nicer. Baby Bear is out doing final rehearsals for the play she is in - rehearsal and costume fitting today, rehearsal and then dress rehearsal tomorrow, performances Wednesday night, Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon. She is a busy girl!! She spent the night with some friends last night and they apparently spent a lot of time recording each other on the computer and downloading songs. Sounds like fun. She assures me she has had enough sleep - I hope so!!! She's spent one night here this week, what with Moe and then last night's sleepover, but I got a chance to talk to her briefly this morning and she seems happy and relaxed.

I almost finished short-rowing the heel on George's sock - the second of the pair that it has taken me nearly four months to knit!

Peace, Perfect Peace

George has taken Wombat down to Moe to pick up Baby Bear, who has been spending some quality time with Nana for a few days. Leaving me ALONE!!!! Can you hear me cheering!!! I did one of those Myer Briggs tests once and it confirmed my suspicions that I actually NEED time alone to recharge, that being with other people drains me of energy (no matter how much I like them and enjoy their company) - and I definitely need some time out after a week of school holidays. Not that I don't like my children or being with them - actually it was only Wombat for most of the week - but Wombat can be very exhausting. In fact that's the main reason why Baby Bear went down to Moe, because he had a very bad day on Monday and things were getting quite fraught. He's been OK for the rest of the week but rarely quite relaxed. A doctor's visit confirmed our recent thoughts that he might have had a chronic sinus infection for some months - he's now on antibiotics and hopefully that will whack anything nasty out of his system. (No, I don't support the indiscriminate use of antibiotics, but he hardly ever takes them and I know from experience that sometimes chronic infections really need this to get rid of them).

I took him to see Robots the other day - quite good fun, lots of cute background details and enough movie references to warrant taking a notebook and pencil along with you! I then somehow ending up being persuaded to by him a new pair of pajamas (Simpsons), a Gameboy game (Banjo Kazooie) and two new DVDs (The Incredibles and the Spongebob Squarepants movie) - it sounds awful, but anything to keep him happy. Yesterday he had a friend come round to play - this went very well for the first three hours but when R's dad was delayed coming to pick him up (waiting for a washing machine repairman, poor chap!) they both got increasingly bored with each other over the next hour and a half. When R finally left, poor Wombat had a nasty meltdown, which wasn't a lot of fun for either of us. He did calm down and I only have a few extra bruises, but I'm afraid I was quite glad to see the back of him later on! Mind you he phoned me when they got down there - he'd obviously slept on the journey - and hearing his sleepy little voice saying 'I love you Mummy' made my heart melt all over again. He should enjoy today, he likes going to Moe and then they are going to cousin D's dairy farm afterwards, and Wombat LOVES going there!

I had a gloriously slobby evening after they left. I put on some videos of stuff I'd recorded and watched an eclectic mix of programmes, which when I think about it pretty much covers the range of stuff I like to watch - a Real Crime programme, a documentary about the development of the English language, Jerimiah and CSI. I made some progress on a new knitting project that I cannot go into in case the intended recipient reads this blog, but although slow going (enough K2P2 ribbing to stretch around a football field!) it was peaceful and harmonious to knit - I use that word specifically because I am using, for my first time, Bendigo Knitting Mills Harmony (also known as Heirloom Breeze, if you buy it in the shops rather than direct from the mills) - what a fabulous yarn! It is a mixture of wool and cotton with some lycra in it, and it feels like heaven to knit with. It is soft and relaxing and I just love it. It knits up beautifully evenly and the finished fabric is just gorgeous.

I need to wash the floors (yuk!) and hang out some washing, then it's back to the knitting and a day of peace.

And this is a completely gratuitous shot of Sirius looking lazy and smug. Note the red under her nose - she is half Pharoah Hound and blushes when she is happy.

i took this photo in January of the then half-done denim cotton shawl. I finished it last night (photos to follow at the weekend when George is at home with the digital camera). I knitted it in Elle denim cotton, hoping it would be a good substitute for Rowan denim cotton - it's half the price. I wasn't sure until I had washed it three times in hot water and tumble dried it, but now I love it - it had a terrific soft hand to it and has faded just nicely. I have to put a button on it and then it will be perfect for wearing with jeans. I particularly want to wear it with the new jeans I just bought - which have silver embroidery and sequins on them!

I Know I meant to Blog More Than Once a Month...

but things just got away with me recently. Easter was great, though it felt odd having it before the school holidays rather than in the middle of it. We went to George's mum's for a couple of days and hung out with the family and the family dogs. Sirius had a ball and wore herself out.

The Great Easter Bunny Hunt for the year went off brilliantly. It's a good place for it, as G's mum lives on a small bush property and there are lots of cunning hiding places. The kids were thrilled to find the trail finally finished with a proper rabbit scraping and pile of rabbit poo. I have visions of us still doing this when they are both grown up!

It's the last day of term today and Wombat is, true to form, sick. I really wondered if he was putting it on when he collapsed with a severe headache five minutes before we were due to leave, but I realised that he had a nasty sinus headache and it was genuine. Now it's after lunch and he is feeling much better after dosing with paracetamol and decongestants.

Unfortunately this meant I had to miss the Box Hill S'n'B meet that I wanted to go to, but hopefully at least two other people went along. I was going to teach Linda to knit socks but she is happy to wait till next term. It's an unpleasantly hot and windy day today so staying inside isn't such a bad thing, though. We might even swim later on in the hottest part of the day. I thought I'd had my last swim for the season about three weeks ago but today and tomorrow are both forecast to be 30C so the water might have warmed up enough for me to enter without dying of heart failure!!

On the needles - well, I finished knitting the pink cotton Summer Poncho over Easter though I haven't sewn the (very small) seam that is needed - I suspect it will be too small for me and will end up being worn by Baby Bear, who will look better in it than I ever would. Still working on the denim cotton shawl though not too much to go on it. Also still working on George's socks, which have taken forever this time because I have been doing too many other things.

Plus two other projects which will be revealed in good time!