Wordless Wednesday

Merry Christmas

A very merry Christmas to any readers who are both reading this and celebrating it.  Eat lots of great food, give and receive nice presents, and enjoy your family and friends if you can.

Wordless Wednesday

House photos

Rather than do a hugely picture heavy blog spot, here's a link to a Facebook album with photos I took around the outside of the new house on Saturday.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=100548&id=1274941519&saved

or

http://picasaweb.google.com/deadeyeconstance/NewHouse#

There's lots of inside photos too but they include the vendor's stuff, so I don't want to publish them.  I took them more to get an idea of where we could put things.

Back to the grindstone.  Considering that we probably won't move in till April, G's list of essential jobs to be done while he is at work gets longer every time he speaks to someone.  I am sorely tempted to stop answering the phone!

Our New Home

http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-vic-vermont+south-107049445

Now, while there is many a slip, etc, I think I can announce that we are buying this house.  Unless there is a disaster.

I don't know how long the link will be up for.  Hopefully by the time it goes down I will have my own pictures to show off.

Now all we have to do is sell this place.  Oh, and pack :(  That has started.  George is doing his sergeant-major thing and pushing us to do everything ASAP even though it will be three or four months before we can move.  Books are being packed by the hundred.

It;s a pity I'm not doing the Decluttering by Numbers thing any more, I must have put about 300 books and magazines in the Op Shop pile yesterday!

Unfortunately in the last 12 months we have moved MIL into a new house; packed/unpacked/repacked my father's stuff; and now this.  So it feels like our third move in a year even though it isn't.  The last time I did that (four moves in 14 months) I collapsed in a heap for two years before being diagnosed with CFS.  (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) .I'm not sure how I am going to cope!  And I need to find a job as soon as possible after moving to pay the increase in the mortgage.

Wish us luck!

Decluttering by Numbers - The Last Post

Well, we are negotiating over a property that we LOVE, and we don't get that, there's another I fancy having another look at, and plenty more on the market too.

So we signed up with an agent to put our on the market last night.  Which means that Decluttering by Numbers has to come to an abrupt close, as a whirlwind of decluttering and packing needs to start right now.

Just for the record, this is Monday - Wednesday of this week:

IN


2 x exhibition catalogues
2 x trashy magazines
2 x craft magazines

TOTAL  6

OUT


2 x cooking magazines, recipes removed  RECYCLE
30 craft magazines  OP SHOP
1 shirt beyond repair and not interesting enough to reuse  BIN
1 x trashy magazine  RECYCLE
3 x photocopied bundles of paper  RECYCLE
2 x mouldy pillows (casualties of the Great Indoor Waterfall Affair)  TIP
1 x broken desk chair  (broken in such a way as to not be mendable)  TIP
7 x my father's books OP SHOP

TOTAL  47

47 - 6 = 41

We are taking a storage unit at the weekend and putting all of my father's stuff in plus anything else we can box before then, and presumably further boxed items afterwards.  It makes sense to box the majority of the books and craft materials right now, even if it is a few months before we move.

And other regular blog posts will probably cease for the time being.  I will continue to blog when I can, and when I have something to say or show, though.

PANIC STATIONS...

Decluttering by Numbers Week 4

IN


2 x craft magazines (subs)
1 x skirt
1 x top
1 x DVD Box Set (me)
2 x trashy magazines
2 x craft magazines
1 x pair shoes
1 x PS2 game (Wombat)
4 x books (me and the kids)

TOTAL  15

OUT


6 x decorative tins (OP SHOP)
1 x tray (OP SHOP)
8 x craft magazines (OP SHOP)
1 x craft magazine with two patterns removed (RECYCLING)
2 x trashy magazines (RECYCLING)
1 x Notebook magazine (OP SHOP)
1 x top (OP SHOP)
1 x very ugly bracelet (OP SHOP)
2 x cooking magazines, recipes removed (RECYCLING)
26 of my father's books (OP SHOP)

TOTAL  49

49 - 15 = 34

So Outs exceeded Ins again.  Not doing so well on the curbing spending but at least the decluttering continues slowly.

We put in an offer on a house early in the week and were turned down - that was why I thought I might have to abandon this and declutter and pack urgently.  We are continuing to househunt actively and declutter actively, and I will continue to document it until the urgency returns.

For what it's worth, I liked the house we put the offer in on, especially the kitchen, but I do not feel more than a mild regret about missing out on it.  I don't think it was truly meant to be and I never did.  There's quite a bit of property around and we will keep looking.  This weekend we have been inside two that were horrible, looked at one from the outside that we didn't like and one from the outside that we will definitely be going back to look at properly.  I will continue to post updates in my Monday post until something definite happens!

And thank you to all my kind commenters and their good wishes, it was all very well received and made me feel better about the whole thing.  I swing between depression and excitement (well, most of the time I just feel tired, to tell the truth!).

Onwards and upwards for more decluttering!

Teddy Bear Tuesday

Would you believe, this is a teddy bear turned into a rock by enchantment?  It is waiting for the spell to be broken by Gandalf the wizard but he is too busy with some ring or something and keeps getting teddy bears confused with other small creatures with furry paws.

In the meantime he is 2.5 cm tall and 4cm wide.  I think he was asleep when the spell was cast and was lying down, otherwise he would be somewhat short and portly.  I can't remember the type of rock he was turned into, I thought it was malachite but looking at it closely I am not so sure.  He lives in the display cabinet with the other teddies and creatures waiting for the day...

In other news - yes, some of you made wise guesses, we may be moving house.  The indoor waterfall of ten days ago convinced us that the house was, indeed, not worth saving (it is crumbling, leaking, sinking, etc, and sadly, though only 40 years old, seems to have been built under almost no building regs at all.  IT would cost more to save than to rebuild, and after doing the sums we have decided that rebuilding would be overcapitalising and selling it as a development block and moving on is the best thing to do).

I really don't want to move because I love this house, and because moving is such a PITA when you have done it as many times as I have in my life.  (I counted it once and it was enough for most people three or four times over).  However we have been looking for a little while in a desultory way and have realised that there is plenty of decent stuff in the same suburb that would suit us and allow the kids to stay at their present school, which is important to all of us.  Baby Bear only has a year to go - a year in which we definitely should not be distracting her by moving, but she will just have to cope!

Trouble is, once we find the right place and buy it, we will have to sell this IMMEDIATELY.  Which means that Decluttering by Numbers will become Decluttering and Packing in a Total Panic, with no time to record things.

I will keep my half a dozen readers posted.

Decluttering by Numbers Week 3

IN


3 x craft magazines (sub)
1 x book (Wombat)
1 x magazine (Wombat)
4 x pairs shorts (Wombat - he hadn't had any new ones in three years so he needed them very badly!)
2 x trashy mags
3 x manga (Wombat)
2 x craft books
1 x DVD box set (Waking the Dead Series 6 - me - obsessed)
1 x set Maryoshka measuring spoons to match my measuring cups
1 x hoodie (Wombat)
2 x DVD box sets (Wombat, pocket money)
1 x pair cheap shoes (me - glittery!)
1 x craft mag
1 x Australian Women's Weekly
1 x DVD set (me)
1 x Decor cake box

TOTAL  26

OUT


58 x craft mags in massive clearout OP SHOP
1 x Notebook mag, recipes removed RECYCLING
14 x my father's books GIFT (to someone who will apreciate them!)
2 x trashy mags RECYCLING
2 x cooking mags with recipes removed RECYCLING

TOTAL  77

77 - 26 = 51

Yay!  Sort of winning.

It is just possible that Decluttering by Numbers may cease rather abruptly in the near future, but if that is so it will be because (good) circumstances may be about to force a decluttering of a speed and magnitude that won't leave me time to record it.  Watch this space. 

8 Things Thursday

8 more pairs of shoes!

Teddy Bear Tuesday

For once I can read the label on the bottom of this quite tiny teddy.  He was bought in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, though exactly when I cannot tell.  I spent a weekend there in the early 1990s and then lived near there from 1994 - 1999.  I remember it very fondly indeed.

Vital statistics - he is nearly 3 cm tall and 2cm wide at the widest point (which includes the dog).  The dog must be meant to be a Scottie or a Westie or something, though proportionally he would be the size of a dalmatian I think!  Unless teddy is a toddler :)

Lots of nice places to walk a dog in Cirencester.

Decluttering by Numbers Week 2

So here goes again.  Remembering that my main goal was for the Outs to exceed the Ins.  I also thought it might be a way for me to curb my spending!


IN
3 x underwear for Baby Bear
2 x trashy magazines
1 x DVD (Toy Story 3) for the kids
1 x craft knife to replace the many that I own but cannot find!
1 x lime green nail polish (yes, for me!)
1 x craft magazine (subscription - actually I thought the sub had lapsed, I think they are trying to encourage me to resubscribe but I can't afford it)
1 x magazine from my old University College (subscription - a life-time one)
3 x pairs cheap and cheerful shoes (all on sale)
1 x DS game (pre-owned) for Womat
4 x food magazines
1 x DVD set (Dragonball Z Series 9) for Angus - late spending of birthday money
3 x CDs (Baby Bear)
2 x DVDs (Baby Bear - all of these five using her pocket money)
1 x craft magazine
1 x cook book


TOTAL   26




OUT
11x knitting booklets OP SHOP
1 x plastic chopping board that looked as though it had a skin disease BIN
3 x trashy magazines RECYCLING
I did over another two laundry shelves and chucked 4 x empty bottles that had been there for several years RECYCLING
and 9 x ancient dead things BIN
4 x pairs boy's shorts, outgrown OP SHOP
1 x cooking magazine with recipes torn out RECYCLING
3 x outgrown girl's clothes OP SHOP
1 x food magazine (duplicate) OP SHOP 
2 x CWA magazines (I get them when my MIL has finished with them) OP SHOP
135 x my father's old books OP SHOP (Yes, that does say 135!)


TOTAL  174


174 - 26 = 148


I'm very pleased with the overall number of Outs, even though in a way getting rid of those books is relatively easy.  However there are so many boxes of them (loads have already gone before I started this) and they make up a very major part of the clutter that needs dealing with, both physically and mentally, it is important to have the incentive to work through them, and to record it.


I am spending way too much money.  And this isn't even including Christmas present spending, though I am reducing that this year.


Now on to next week!!

Friday Update

I finished the bead embroidery! It was perfect to work on during the last three hot days when I couldn't face sock wool.

When I say finished, it isn't really. It isn't backed or turned into anything. I made it the right dimensions to make a cuff (with the addition of a clasp of course) but I don't think I would wear it and it isn't good enough to sell.

But it definitely brought back to me how much I love bead embroidery, and thanks to Freebird I have been reminded of, and encouraged to rejoin, the Bead Journal Project for next year. I had attempted it twice before, but both during the time I was studying, and I never finished it. The first time I joined in, which I think was the first year it ran, I only did about four months worth, and the following year I dropped out almost immediately. But now I have a real incentive to do it properly!

So watch this space.

Teddy Bear Tuesday

OK IT'S NOT A FLIPPING TEDDY BEAR!!!!!!!

Right, now we've got that out of the way.

This is at once the oldest and the newest addition to my display tray. I've had him since I was quite young, about Grade 4 or Grade 5 I think. I loved him to death - he is made out of squishy rubbery plastic and used to live on my desk in my bedroom. Goodness knows where he came from, I think they were quite popular in those dim distant days (in the 1970s - for the historically minded!)

I found him when I was going through my father's place in June/July. He immediately came home with me and went into the display tray. Even though he reminds me of my father, which isn't necessarily a good thing, he reminds me of rare happy moments as a child, too. And look at that face - who couldn't love him!

Vital statistics - 4cm tall, nearly 6cm from elbow to elbow.

Next week will be a more conventional teddy bear, promise!

Decluttering by Numbers Week 1

So here goes.  Remembering that my main goal was for the Outs to exceed the Ins.  I also thought it might be a way for me to curb my spending!

Ins
1 DS game (pre-owned) for Wombat
1 PS2 game (on sale) for Wombat
3 trashy magazines
1 food magazine
2 craft magazines
1 DVD box set (Modern Family) for the children
1 dress worth of  dress fabric

TOTAL  10

Outs
1 pair boys dressy black pants, outgrown OP SHOP
Large piles of redundant paperwork, equivalent to approximately 5 magazines worth in volume RECYCLING
1 duplicate bead magazine included in Bead Expo entry OP SHOP
4 of my father's old books OP SHOP
Clean out of laundry shelf not touched for about six years yielded 4 empty bottles (would normally count as consumables and not in this list, but as they had been there for so long they were clutter!) RECYCLING
1 kids' party cake magazine supplement OP SHOP
Big magazine clearout and tidy up - 9 magazines OP SHOP (and many more shelved)
1 Australian Women's Weekly, recipes removed RECYCLING
1 trashy magazine RECYCLING
1 ugly stuffed frog from my father's things OP SHOP

TOTAL 28

28 - 10 = 18

Good, outs exceeded ins last week!  But that spending didn't go down much.  I need to work on that.

Friday Update

I went to the Bead Expo and a bead embroidery class last Saturday.  I had booked the class a couple of months ago when I was feeling very low, lacking in energy both physical and mental/creative, and thought it might help to kick start me a bit.  In the meantime I have recovered some of the lost energy but haven't really got any more creative than socks and hand towels, so this was still looking like a good idea.

And it was!  I was intrigued by the teacher's (scanty) information.  I couldn't find anything about her (Cheryl Hartwick) on the web other than her listing on the Bead Society of Victoria and I was interested in her style of bead embroidery, which looked similar to mine but was not identical.  She uses brightly coloured printed fabric as the jumping off point for her work and I wanted to see how that would work.  The class was advertised for Beginners, which I know I am not in terms of bead embroidery, but I hoped she would forgive me.

It was fun.  She did forgive me.  I snuck Harry along for the ride and once I had confessed about my complete lack of noviceness, I passed him around and felt quite chuffed at the responses.  I didn't exactly learn anything but it had the desired effect of making me put needle to bead and cloth once more, and I felt energised being around beady people.

She takes the aforementioned brightly coloured print cloth, backed with a substantial interfacing (she uses iron-on, I prefer to tack felt down to the back because I can;t abide doing hand-stitiching through anything sticky).  Something in the pattern or the colours, or both, starts her off (shapes, whatever) and then she lets her mind and hands run away with themselves.  With lovely, colourful results.

I am not too sure about this particular piece I am doing.  The beads are cheapies because I didn't want to waste good ones on an experiment.  I don't think I have done the best design I am capable of, by any means.  But I feel thoroughly back in the groove and feel lots of good projects will flow from this in one way or another.

I will finish this piece and I will blog about it.  I thought it was interesting to take day by day photos for this week, but I won't take any more until it is finished now.

Oh, and a couple of items came home with me from the Bead Expo.  And they were bought before Decluttering by Numbers was initiated, so they don't count!

This was the fabric I used.  The overview shows how I used the central leaf as a starting out point.

After outlining the leaf veins and doing two lots of shadowing around the shape of that, I added some extra, bigger beads and worked them into a design.  Wombat at this point said that it looked like someone who had just realised she had missed out on a shoe sale!  (He knows too well how addicted to shoes his mother is).

A day later and I had filled in various bits.

 And this was yesterday's finishing point.  I have marked out the dimensions of a cuff on the fabric and I will stick to that size and shape, though whether it turns into a finished cuff depends on how I feel about it when I have got that far.  I will blog about that when I have got to that stage.

 And these are the things that followed me home.  The only Robyn Atkins book I don't own.  A Bead Zapper thing that melts beading thread (when you want it to!)  Wombat asked if it was another Sonic Screwdriver.  I agreed that it could be,  And Silk Strings, very hard to get in Australia and absolutely luscious.

8 Things Thursday

8 pairs of shoes I have worn recently.

Wordless Wednesday

Teddy Bear Tuesday

Do any Australian readers remember Viva La Wombat?  Until I googled them I had assumed they had gone out of business years ago, but apparently not.  Though their website is a good way NOT to encourage business because I could not find a single stockist properly mentioned.  It sounds like they might have gone into selling stuff overseas more than here.  Maybe not.  The website isn't very helpful.  But it has some good pictures on it suggesting that they have moved with the times and kept on designing fun stuff.

In the late 1980s I loved their stuff and collected various bits and pieces.  I still have a T shirt, I think, and a coffee mug.  When my kids were little my mum bought them stuffed toys and sent them to England.  And I collected a few figurines like this one.

Vital statistics - 4cm tall, 3cm wide, bright and cheerful and not at all like a real koala!  He also appears to have dog fur on him.  No great surprise there!  I bought him in Melbourne , though I can't remember if it was before we went to England in 1990 or on a visit back here in 1994.  I have another couple of figurines that will show up eventually, though they won't be teddy bears - a kangaroo, a wombat and a crocodile, I think!

Decluttering by Numbers

Inspired by Taphophile I might try to do some decluttering of our hideously cluttered place of abode and hold myself to account for it.  Let's see long I can do this for!

I will post, on Mondays, what I have brought into and turfed out of the house.  I have set myself some rules.  As a lot of the current clutter is the crap from my father's place, that most definitely counts.  What does not count - consumables (food, drink, toiletries, cleaning products, medicines, and the sort of stationery that is bought to be used fairly promptly, like staples and printer paper).  (I am also excluding Christmas altogether from this list - both what I buy and then give as presents, and presents received.  That's just too hard). Also not counting stuff purchased by other family members off their own bat.  Or The Age, which we get home delivered, read and recycle (and the local paper, likewise). What does count - IN -clothing (for me, and also for other family members if I chose it and pay for it), books/magazines/other newspapers no matter how they arrive in the house (except for library books), stash items of any kind, any other STUFF that I acquire in any way. OUT - anything from the 'In' categories that goes out to (a) the rubbish/recycling if it cannot be used by someone else, (b) op shops or other charitable institutions if it can be used by someone else, (c) any gifts that I might make from stash items.

I am not setting myself a target, though I guess aiming to have OUT exceed IN would be good.  But it might help me to keep track of things.  So I am keeping count as of today, and will report weekly.

Repurposing may occur.  I will blog about it if it does, but it will not be included in the numbers.  Let's stick to a simple equation!

Oh, and when I list something as going to the op shop, what I actually mean is that it goes into a designated box or bag which, when full, goes to the op shop.  That's the way we have always done it, and the system works.

Wish me luck!

Friday Update

A completed pair of socks for Baby Bear. Knitted in Miami, made in Italy and sold in Australia through Bendigo Woollen Mills, where I bought it in the Back Room on special some time back. 40% wool, 45% cotton, 15% nylon, and 100% satisfaction from the recipient!

The Grumpiest Bird in Creation

I've said it often enough, but I'm going to say it again. I can't draw. I drove one of my TAFE teachers to distraction by saying this, though it was difficult for him to contradict me; for everything he could point to that I had done OK on, I could point out two travesties of the word.

I can't remember exactly what I wanted this robin redbreast to look like, but I think the fact he turned out so obese and grumpy worked really well. It's meant to illustrate the William Blake verse

Robin Redbreast in a cage

Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons

Shudders hell through all its regions

from his Auguries of Innocence.

I sponged the background with acrylic paint.  The 'drawing' was done separately, with conte crayon and watercolour pencils, and the lines from the poem done in Word (each line in a slightly different font), printed out and each line cut out separately.  They were all sprayed with Boyle Gloss Spray, (which I get from Riot Art), which I use to waterproof anything that comes out of my domestic printer or anything else that might need waterproofing, and stuck down with acrylic gel medium.  In doing this collage I discovered that full strength acrylic gel medium does not work as well as when it is slightly watered down.  It certainly sticks and seals, but it left the surface slightly tacky and I have to keep a piece of acrylic transparency stuff over it.

It's not the world's best looking bird, but I reckon that obese and grumpy is what would be likely to happen to a wild bird in captivity if it took the opposite approach to pining away and dying!

In November I am Reading...

Owing to the seductiveness of the local library, I did not read the Millenium Trilogy last month.  I am still working my way through the huge bag of library books I borrowed!  Since the start of November I have read these three.  In case that looks like a lot, (a) I do read a lot and (b) the top one was short and I read it in two nights, the middle one is huge and I am only halfway through it, and the bottom one was mostly read in October but finished on November 1.


Can I strongly recommend Leanne Hall?  This is Shyness is a Young Adult book that gripped me totally and utterly.  It is quirky and funny and sinister and completely believeable.  One reviewer described it as an urban fairytale and it really is, in the genuine sense that fairytales aren't pretty in pink, but are much more sinister and visceral than that.  Rumour has it (I can't find the reference, but Baby Bear, who got me onto it in the first place, found it somewhere) that a sequel is in production, and I will be extremely happy to read it.  Such wonderful characters and such a great setting deserve more stories!


The Half Brother is the one I am halfway through at the moment.  It is by the apparently highly famous Norwegian author Lars Saabye Christensen.  I'm afraid I have never heard of him.  He's won all sorts of prizes.  He's a bit like a Nordic John Irving, I think.  It's the twisted tale of four generations of Norwegians, mostly unmarried mothers.  They live an unconventional life, there are episodes of muteness and circuses and alcohol, physical disabilities (the narrator is very short, his father is also very short and has a peculiarly crippled hand), death, love and mystery.  I am personally thinking that I have guessed a big twist in the tale, quite early on, but I will have to finish reading the book to see if I am right!  And if I am not, then I want to wring the author's neck for apparently planting an obvious clue and then doing nothing with it.  I think it is a bit overwritten, but on the whole it is quite engrossing.


The Life of Pi won the Booker Prize in 2002, plus other prizes, after inevitably having been rejected by several publishing houses.  I love a story like that!!   It's an odd little story about comparative religion, zookeeping and survival at sea.  I have read that various people have tried to make it into a film.  I'm not sure about that.  I wonder if a film would lose the spiritual aspect and make it all about animals?  Would it end up more Madagascar than the book deserves.  The author has a robust attitude to this - apparently he has said something like, if people don't like the film they should buy the book and read it instead, and if they do like the film, they should buy the book and read it to compare!!


My handbag book recently has been a Nevil Shute.  I  read masses of Nevil Shute when I was a teenager and young adult, and even experienced my own An Old Captivity-style  hallucination shortly after reading it when I had a raging temperature and a dose of flu and was reading a book about King Arthur.  Good old-fashioned thrillers.  I finished that the other day and have replaced it with another Victor Canning, but I haven't started that yet and can't remember the name.


For the rest of the month - well, I would still like to read the Millennium Trilogy, but I still have several (and a half) large library books to read through.  Plus as soon as they are read I am reading Towers of Midnight, Book 13 (!!) in the Wheel of Time series, which I started reading before even conceiving Baby Bear, who will be finishing school as the final book appears next year.

Teddy Bear Tuesday

Ok, so this is an actual BEAR!!! And a big one at that. He measures about 4cm tall and nearly 3cm wide at his widest part (well, a bear's got to sit on something!)

Unlikem ost of my other bears, this one is handcarved from wood. I bought him at the Gippsland Field Days either last year or the year before, I can't remember when I went there, near Warragul. There was a stall selling a whole variety of wooden things carved by the proprietor, who was busily engaged in carving as you watched, and he uses the offcuts of wood to make little animals. There were animals of all sorts of descriptions, but I particularly loved this bear (and a dingo, who will appear later in this series). Despite being much bigger than most of the collection, he is very light, being wood instead of ceramic as most of them are. He has a rustic charm and definite gravitas.

A Car Dependent Society

We are constantly exhorted to use public transport to reduce greenhouse gases and the use of fossil fuels.  I am lucky enough to live in a suburb which is fairly safe to walk around in and is reasonably well served by trains and buses.  I have a short, if steep, walk to a bus stop, which (sort of) connects with a train service.  From my house I can get around all of Melbourne in one way or another, without the use of a car.

I am not trying to sound like a saint.  I don't have a driving licence.  When George is around I am only too happy to let him drive me where I want to go, or pick me up.  But I try to do weekday things without expecting him to ferry me hither and yon.

One of those things is the grocery shopping, which up until now I have tried to do in one big shop per week.  It;s a boring thing to subject the family to, so I prefer to do it on a Thursday or Friday, getting to the supermarket by bus and having the groceries delivered by their delivery service.  It costs me a few dollars, and I can't get barbeque chicken (which I never buy anyway) or icecream delivered, but it is otherwise very convenient.  (The icecream I get in monthly hits, with George's assistance).  For the elderly and disabled with no-one to drive them, it must be a lifeline.  For me, it is a necessary convenience for which I am prepared to pay.

Our household consists of two adults, two teenagers with hollow legs, and a dog.  Because of the delivery solution, I tend to buy everything at the supermarket.  We get through quite a lot of stuff every week.  I have just been informed in a letter from my supermarket that they will no longer, as of next week, be delivering any cold items.  Approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of my weekly shop is perishables - dairy, meat, fruit and vegetables.  They will, of course, be charging the same amount as now to deliver half my shopping, if I continue to use this service.

The letter ends with the immortal line 'Just a couple more ways to make your shopping easier!'  The exclamation mark is theirs, not mine.

This will make my life harder.  I will either have to (a) rely on George more, (b) change supermarkets (unless the other one changes its policies to match), or (c) get a shopping trolley and change the way I shop.  I haven't decided yet.

Coles Supermarkets, I'm ashamed to still own shares in your parent company.  What are those people who really cannot change their ways going to do?

Wordless Wednesday

Teddy Bear Tuesday

The observant among you will notice that this is not a teddy bear. But I don't just keep teddies in my display case. It is, obviously, a frog. Bought many years ago somewhere in Australia, goodness knows where. He is made out of clay, by hand (not mine!) and Ilove the extremely goofy expression on his face. He is about 2.5cm long and nearly 2cm tall and always looks as though he is going to jump sideways off the display case into some froggy Nirvana.

Hungry and Weird

The Hungry Ghosts, Anne Berry

I've been fortunate to have found some wonderful books at the library recently. Actually, I didn't find this one, Baby Bear got it from her school library, and I am impressed that they are buying new, good quality books like this in a state school these days.

It is a whimsical but quite hard-hitting mixture of family drama and magic realism, set mostly in Hong Kong from the late 1950s to the handover to China in the 1990s. Some of it moves to England and Paris, and it ends up in modern day Hong Kong. The author lived in Hong Kong and has drawn on her own childhood for a wonderful sense of place, but I sincerely hope that the actual narrative is made up!

It seamlessly blends the story of a dysfunctional, expat family with Chinese ideas of ghosts (you will find out quite a lot about the festival of Yue Lan, the 'ghost month'). Alice, the main character, dopes not fit in with the rest of her family. Her sisters ignore her, her mother positively hates her, only her brother and father love her at all. She is a 'problem' child - her mother 'needed' to produce a son, and Alice was the third girl in a row and deeply resented by her. In early adolescence she is 'possessed' by the ghost of Lin Shui, who was brutally raped and murdered by a Japanese soldier during the Occupation of Hong Kong in WW2, at about the same age that Alice is at the time the haunting begins. By taking up residence in Alice's body, Lin Shui can hang onto 'life', actually a halfway house between real life and real death, and keep herself amused. Unfortunately her idea of amusement seems to be behaving in a poltergeist way, And Alice is increasingly blamed for disruptive, out-of-control behaviour.

Alice's sisters are sent to boarding school in England where they behave appallingly and are ultimately expelled. Their life continues equally badly in Hong Kong, as they drink and sleep their way through the colony. No matter how badly they behave, however, it is always Alice and her 'problems' that the female members of her family carp over.

Alice inevitably turns to drink, gets pregnant, has an abortion, drinks more, the family functions less and less with every passing page. The critical turning point comes when she/Lin Shui behave badly at an official function, gets dragged home by her furious mother, and her much loved dog Bear is run over. The mother refuses to let her take the body home to bury it, instead hurling it over a cliff.

Alice leaves Hong Kong to live with her grandmother and uncle in London. The ghosts (oh yes, she has been joined by other ghosts - but I won't spoil that surprise, you need to read the book!) don't like it there and their behavious cause her to be kicked out. She is a hopeless drunk by this point, hardly surprisingly, and has a breakdown in the supermarket where she is working. She is rescued by a magical woman who takes her home and cares for her and performs some sort of magic, which I presume is meant to be, or at least reference, some sort of voodoo, and the ghosts lose a lot of their power. Alice, slightly healed, moves to Paris, makes a disasterous marriage, divorces, and ends up happily running and, finally, inheriting a restaurant. The ghosts have come back, of course, but seem to behave better when Alice has her life under more control - a symbiotic relationship? She writes to her parents three times but her mother always intercepts the letters and destroys them. This destroys her father emotionally, who loved Alice the most of his children and is devastated that she has vanished and made no attempt to contact him.

Eventually the inevitable happens, and the parents return to England to retire. Their horrible, grasping daughters 'deal' with them, one making sure she has somewhere to live free of charge while supposedly looking after them, the other ensuring that she need not actually do anything but that her share of the inheritence will be comfortable. The father dies. Alice's name is not put on the gravestone.

Alice eventually decides to make an attempt in person to contact her family after 30 years. She tracks them down quite easily. An appalling tea party happens at her brother's house, a scene that goes down in the annals of so good that you cringe but will remember it for ever. The ghosts play up BADLY. Alice is devastated at her father's death. She visits the grave and is further devastated to find that her name is not on it. She visits her mother, mouldering away into dementia in a nursing home, and finds out that the letters never reached her father and that he died believing she had abandoned him.

Alice tries to kill herself by walking into the sea, but the ghost of Lin Shui saves her, for her own selfish reasons. If Alice dies, she loses her own tentative grasp on life. Alice decides to return to Hong Kong.

The book finishes with Alice living a modest life in Hong Kong, nothing like the opulence of her expat days, but happy. Lin Shui finally lets go during a Yue Lan festival. But once a year she comes back as a Hungry Ghost for three days.

It was an amazing book, absolutely unputdownable. And beautifully written. I am going to seek out Anne Berry's second book and read it. Read it if you enjoy a bit of horror with your magic realism and your family dramas!

Friday Update

Surprisingly, some craft still occurs in this blog.  This is the latest pair of socks, Scrappy Socks, for George.  Made from the leftovers of six other pairs of socks.  He likes them!  Knitted to my usual pattern (for him) of 68 stitches on 2.5mm needles.  The yarns are a mixture of Patonyle, Spotlight, Opal Hundterwasser and Araucania, so from the el cheapo to the sublime!

What Really Happened When Darth Vader Retired

With profuse apologies to George Lucas...

Mr Dark Vader married, lived happily ever after with Mrs Darth Vader and a couple of little Darth Vaders, and on a sunny Sunday afternoon he indulged in some gardening.

Mrs Darth Vader decided to bake some biscuits.  She baked coconut macaroons, because they are a favorite of L from Death Note.

Using this cookbook.

Then choc chip Anzacs.

Using the recipe from this book, which half a cup of choc chips added to the mix, which was originally Wombat's idea and makes for particularly wonderful Anzacs!

Meanwhile the Darth Vaders' dog came

 and went.

Then she started to make basic butter cookies using the recipe in this book

 to which she intended adding mixed nuts and Craisins.  Some visitors popped in to see the Darth Vaders at this point.  Three large glasses of wine later, the biscuits were finished, but she forgot to put the vanilla essence in them so they taste a bit nothingy, and the photo came out all blurred!

And Mrs Darth Vader was going to do some gardening too, potting out some herbs and petunias, but by the time the wine had been drunk, the visitors farewelled and the last batch of biscuits cooked, it was time to cook dinner.

So much pleasanter than rampaging around the Federation wheezing at people...