It's Raining

That's good. Living in a dry continent like Australia you learn never to sneer at rain. When I lived in Gloucestershire in the UK it rained so much that everyone complained - though the gardens looked great! - but here people who complain about rain get glared at. And we live in Melbourne, where it is comparatively wet anyway, though we are in an extended (like, 10 years!) dry spell. Many other parts of Australia are in SERIOUS drought conditions and may not recover within my lifetime. Unfortunately today's rain is the wimpy sort that makes the ground damp but doesn't do anything else worthwhile.

We are in the tail end of winter at the moment but all the spring flowers are appearing. One of my great joys right now is watching the daffodils and jonquils pop up in unexpected places all over the front garden. Last autumn we gave Baby Bear and her friend E a big bag of bulbs and told them to plant them throughout the front, wherever they liked. At the time this felt a bit dangerously laissz-faire, but now I am really pleased that we did as it is so much fun seeing them appear everywhere! Pics at the weekend when the digital camera comes home from George's office.

Wombat has been off the last few days with a bad cold and I am starting to feel brain meltdown. Lovely kid, but so clingy when sick! Combined with the inevitable Aspergers thing of KNOWING you are the centre of the universe and thus the most important thing in your mother's life ... by bedtime last night (his bedtime) I was so exhausted that I just wanted to flop in front of the TV and not talk to anyone. (OK, that's actually my typical evening anyway...!) Of course I then had to field two phone calls from very nice people who really wanted to talk to me. R and J, I hope I didn't sound too away with the fairies when I was talking to you last night! I then attempted to watch what was probably a really good documentary about the end of the War in the Pacific, but having missed the first half and being so tired I couldn't really concentrate. MDA was good, though. A pity that it is obviously jumping the shark - why does dross like the appalling Big Brother do so well on the ratings but excellent, high quality Australian drama like MDA has an audience of three tired housewives and their pets?

Started reading Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake last night. Brilliant, scary, post-apocalyptic stuff. Not the kind of book to give you pleasant dreams, admittedly. Fell asleep haunted by the thought of it.

I managed to write the scrumbled hat pattern yesterday - taking all day in between requests for sandwiches and iced drinks and cuddles. It's difficult to know whether the instructions I have written down for various things are sufficiently easy to understand. Part of the construction technique sounds really hard when it's written down but when you are actually doing it, it is quite intuitive and obvious - I hope so, anyway! Over the weekend with get George to take appropriate model shots with Baby Bear (he does that so much better than me) and apply his desktop publishing skills to making it look more polished. I have decided that I am good at the designing and can write the instructions down, but he needs to pull it altogether - I tried on my own but he is much more talented than me in that direction.

Will try to take other pics at the weekend too - daffodils, progress on the scarf exchange scarf, that sort of thing. Speaking of which, I am now suffering a crisis of confidence over that - I fear it is far too frivolous and not at all practical, having looked at progress reports on other blogs.

I've discovered Etsy! Another selling forum, goody. It's still in its Beta phase but looks like it might turn out to be rather desirable. Ebay has its good points, of course, but I will definitely be keeping an eye on Etsy in the future.