Just Because I can...

I am posting this cute picture of Sirius. If I shook out the polar fleece blanket you would see that it is quite lacey. She eats her blankets, so I don't spend a lot of money on them, just buy a length of polar fleece every winter which only costs a few dollars. She feels the cold a lot, because she is very skinny and has very short fur, but I only ever made her one coat because she ate THAT and it was quite a bit of work. On cold winter nights she oozes under the covers of the water bed to stay warm. Spoilt? Moi? 

B is for Beaded Whimseys

I've already posted a picture of this bead embroidery thing I did some months ago, but I think it is a good B picture too so here it is again, slightly fiddled with.

Beaded Whimseys is the name given to this sort of thing in Victorian times, and I believe Native Americans used to make them too. Mine is probably more heavily beaded than theirs were. I just love the name and it is such fun to make. It lives on the low bookcase with all our best ornaments and when people see it for the first time they tend to pick it up and look at it from different angles. My mum thought it was a horse's head and it does look like one from a certain angle! The best comment was from my 25 year old nephew N, however, who took one look at it and said 'Bloody Hell!' in tones of awe.

This is made using plastic and glass beads, sewn onto patchwork cotton with Nymo thread, and stuffed with polyester toy stuffing. It's almost as tall as a sheet of A4 paper (which I used for drafting the pattern).

Diamond Patch Jumper

I started this jumper last summer. This photo was taken nearly a year ago. I then put it aside for a million and one other things, but I have picked it up again and have made a lot more progress. I'm about half way through the body (I am making it tunic length) and this time I am not going to put it aside! It will have long sleeves, I intend wearing it as a jumper over things rather than a top in its own right. I don't like wearing hand knitted tops on their own. I went to a lot of trouble to knit myself one from the first Sally Melville book and hated wearing it! Not the fault of the designer - I really like some of her designs - but just that I discovered I didn't like the feel of wearing something like that next to the skin. I'm knitting this is a 50/50 cotton/acrylic mixture than actually feels a bit like linen. It is a bit rough at the moment but has nice drape and I think it will soften when washed. It is Stonewash by Elle and I am very pleased with it. It was fairly inexpensive (I may have got it in a sale, I can;t remember, but it is a reasonably priced yarn anyway) and I think it will make a great jumper to wear with jeans. These days I nearly always wear jeans all winter! I never used to wear them much at all but I seem to have more and more pairs now and I really feel comfortable in them. The colour in the photo is very accurate. 

Cant ... Stand ... Heat ...

We are having a heatwave here - yesterday about 40C, I think, and today forecast to be 43C. We don't have airconditioning so the house is only marginally cooler than outside. There is actually a crappy old air conditioner in the study, but there's only room for one person at a time in the study, and no room for a comfy chair, so it's not much use for a family of four! And frankly it isn't up to coping with temperatures like this, I've got it on at the moment and it isn't doing much at all (and it's only 10am!)

There are bushfires all over Victoria, one of which is in the same general area as George's mother. She is safe and the fire almost certainly won't get that far, but she must be suffering with smoke and worrying about what will happen. She has an evacuation plan and is a sensible person so won't put herself or the dogs in danger. In the past she would have fought it if it had got that far but now she is older she will evacuate if it becomes necessary. Everything is thoroughly insured and if you live in the country in Australia you have to be a bit dispassionate about this sort of thing.

We're in the city so will be fine, though we can see the Dandenongs (hilly range to the east of Melbourne) and they have certainly been known to explode in fire - no sign of it yet but we have a long day to get through. There is meant to be a change later tonight - will I live that long!

I have been meaning to take some photos but my eyeballs start melting every time I go outside, so although I will try to get to it it might not be today. I think I will only go outside to jump in the pool!

My scarf exchange scars stalled around Christmas - I have done the main part of it but the fancy bits remain to be done - this week, I promise! It will still be done in time.

My Eye!

Well, it was a way to pass the afternoon - in the Melbourne Eye and Ear Hospital Casualty Department. There we were, gently squabbling over what to do yesterday afternoon, and I had one of those episodes with my eyes. I had one last winter - which resulted in a dash to the doctor and being told that it was probably an atypical migraine. When it happened again yesterday George phoned the doctor and he said to go straight to the eye Hospital - which is of course a half hour drive away.

It is a wierd thing that happens. A small swirling shimmering blob appears in the centre of my vision, gradually grows larger and larger - when it is over about half of my vision the centre starts to clear and it works its way out to the very edge of my vision and then disappears. It takes about half an hour is is very disconcerting. Then I feel shaky and unwell for several hours afterwards. I do get normal migraines, where I get a thumping headache and feel sick and shaky and have vision disturbances, but different ones (I feel like I am looking through a fog). This is freaking scary, though, because it is so sudden and so inexplicable.

The Eye Hospital was magnificent, wonderful staff and service. I had my eyes thoroughly checked over, and have to go back in three weeks time for one more test and a check up. It wasn't that pleasant - the test for glaucoma wasn't nice and the atropine drops to dilate my pupils was AWFUL!! But my eyes got a clean bill of health, and assuming the next test is also clear, which they think it will be, then we can assume that it is just an atypical migraine and I won't need to get checked out every time.

The drops in the eyes thing was horrible. I couldn;t focus on anything for a couple of hours, and bright lights hurt my eyes badly for several hours afterwards. It was odd when the focus starting improving and I could actually read again - but only one word at a time. It made me realise how slow readers must read, something I have never done.

I did a bit of sock knitting while waiting to be called. Then when I had to wait half an hour for the drops to take effect I picked up the knitting again - and I couldn;t focus on it! It seemed cruel to be stuck there with two books and a sock to knit and not to be able to do any of it!!

Anyway, today I am fine. The stress of yesterday caught up with George (he then went out in the evening to a meeting that turned out to be rather fraught - I insisted that he could go, he wanted to stay at home with me!) and he is sleeping in. The house is full of kids - Baby Bear has two friends in the pool, and they are nice kids and no trouble at all. Wombat has a friend over who is driving me mad - he keeps whining and the two of them won't concentrate on anything for more than five minutes at a time. The same boy came over yesterday morning and his mum stayed for a coffee, while his little sister 'played' with the boys - she whined and complained and wound Wombat up so badly that the visit ended very badly. They are both whiners, something I cannot stand in a child! If mine ever whine they are dealt with promptly because we find it such an unpleasant trait. I am counting the minutes till he is picked up and taken home again.

I plan to take some photos today, some for the 'B is for...' week and some other stuff. I have put my stash into ten large plastic boxes - and to George's immense credit he did not at any stage say I had too much wool!! I want to photograph that. It is part of the grand decluttering that is slowly happening. i need to go and do some more in another room today.

We have lots of hot weather forecast, which I loathe. At least we have the pool, which I will be in later on!

Of films, and curly-whirlys, and sealing wax...

In the last few days I have got to see The Chronicles and Narnia and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Two lush, epic films in one week, what bliss! I love a really richly visual film (and not all films are, or at least not to my taste). I love films where I am craning my neck to see every detail of the sets and the costumes as well as enjoying the story, and these two certainly fulfilled all that.

Narnia - I was apprehensive about this because it would have had to be pretty special to gain approval from someone who knows every word of those books backwards. And it matched up surprisingly well. I don;t know that the beginning shots of the war in London were necessary, but they didn't harm it. I disliked a couple of the voices - the wolf chief of police and the centaur general didn't sound quite right and I think they were a sop to the American audiences. Other than that, I loved it. I admit I cried during most of the film. The Narnia books were something that held me together during a not always happy childhood, helping me imagine being an empowered child in a fantasy universe. To see that come to life was pretty powerful.

I must say I was surprised it got a PG rating, I thought it warranted an M rating. The scenes of Aslan's death and the final battle scene were not remotely suitable for young children. I would still have taken my kids to see it with an M rating (they are 9 and 12) because I allow certain, carefully picked M rated films, and prepare myself for suitable discussions about them. But there were really little kids in the audience and I think their parents need their heads read. Having said that, I read the book for the first time when I was six and I have never forgotten the impact that Aslan's death scene and the girls' lonely night vigil over him had on me.

Harry Potter - also with an M rating, justifiably. The big problem with the Harry Potter films is that they started off three hours long when the books were comparatively short, and now the books are getting longer and longer, the films can;t be made commensureably longer otherwise no-one would sit through them. So a lot of the endearing details that makes the books so lovely to read is lost in the translation. But I still thought it was pretty mindblowing and loved it. It is great to see the same actors actually growing older, and I hope they manage to keep them contracted for all the films! Is it my imagination or does Michael Gambon try to sound Irish from time to time? Is it deliberate or is he chanelling the late lamented Richard Harris?

The climax was as shocking as it was when I read the book. Even though I knew exactly what was going to happen it still affected me the same way.

The merfolk were every bit as creepy as I hoped they would be. I have always found mermaids and mermen creepy, never cute and cuddley as they are often portrayed, and for once they were shown as I always think of them!

As unexpected bonus was David Tennant - Ok, so he was a bad guy, but I confess to being rather taken with the latest Doctor Who. When he transformed back to himself from Old Man Moody I half expected him to say 'New teeth!' like he does when he transforms from Christopher Eccleston.

There are still films that the kids want to see over the summer and I will probably take them to, but nothing to beat these two films.

Now curly-whirlys - I had a sudden urge to make one last night. I thought it might be something I could do with the stuff that my SIL gave me for Christmas that I had dyed. So I grabbed a crochet hook and started. Well, the stuff is not suitable for actual wearing, I'm afraid, it is coarse and not very lovely to work with. So I think it will be used for art projects, of which there will be many over the next three years while I am at college! I found three balls of a soft, light, bulky acrylic that I thought would be a nice scarf and started on that. Well, it is crocheting beautifully and feels like a nice light cloud, but goodness those things eat yarn! There won;t be enough to make it as wide as I wanted. I am considering adding another yarn as well but I only have single balls of suitable candidates and I specifically wanted it to be a stashbuster so I am not buying anything for it. I might add a row of plain double crochet on the short side, I think I have enough of something suitable for that, and just have it as a narrow curly-whirly. I think I will make some more, I have a number of patterns for sundry variations of this type of thing and I like to wear scarves as accessories in the winter.

Sealing wax - I was just being silly there!

2006 ABC-along - A is for Angel

I have joined a most intriguing Along, something I tend not to do. Called the 2006 ABC-along (see the button in the sidebar somewhere), we post a picture every two weeks throughout the year, starting at A and ending up, hopefully, with Z! (I forsee an aweful lot of zebras at the end of 2006!)

This is my A picture - A is for Angel. This was taken two Christmases ago at our church during a special Christmas session for children. I borrowed a child's hal for the photo - I like the effect of the roof light above me that looks like the Star of Bethlehem. I have used sepia tones for this photos because I dislike the glowing red of my cheeks! I prefer to look this way than a version of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. 

I'll Take the Plunge

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, mainly because I usually break them within days. But I am going to try something new this year. I am going to list some resolutions and then write a short update on each one around the first of every month. I have read somewhere that writing down things you want to do makes them more likely to be carried through, and I really want to see if that works! So here goes (in no particular order)...

1) Declutter the house. (This will take AT LEAST a whole year!) The house is beyond control at the moment. There is STUFF everywhere and it is impossible to keep clean. A systematic decluttering needs to start. I did actually do some last year, of which I am proud, but I need to carry through the momentum.
2) Be more aware of what I eat. Not go on a diet, or aim to lose weight - but to make sure that I consider what I am putting in my mouth. To think about what foods make me feel good and what foods make me feel bad.
3) Do some light exercise for 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Probably only in increments of 10 minutes, and it won;t be anything too dramatic. I am seriously overweight and I have chronic fatigue syndrome, and a bit of exercise can only be a good thing.
4) Open myself to ALL the creative possibilities available in the course I am going to start. Not to steer clear of things because they look too hard or because I don't have the energy.
5) To work on curbing my addictive spending habits. With specific reference to stash enhancement - odd balls can be purchased if I really think they can add to the scrumbling stash in a useful way, and jumper loads of yarn only to be purchased for a specific project, preferably when I am nearing the end of a previous project.

I think that's enough! I will write myself a brief account of how each resolution has fared around the start of each month. I don't actually care if no=one reads this, this is for me!

This is the bag my SIL gave Baby Bear for Christmas. She didn't make it herself, but bought it from a local craftswoman who uses all recycled materials in her work - not only the jeans but the trims are recycled and so pretty! 

This is the front side of the bag my SIL made me. I just love the different cat fabrics, I think they are so cute. The handles are rather neat - fabric ruffles over the PVC pipe you buy in hardware stores. 

The mohair blend that I had a go at dyeing. I was surprised that the colours were so dull as I used the same dye as in the orange and pink sock wool. I think it will make an interestingly subtle scarf. 

The four lots of sock wool that I dyed last week. This will make four pairs of socks and I will be starting the purple ones (for Baby Bear ) tomorrow, as I have nearly finished the Regia ones I am making for George. 

This is the bag (back view) my SIL made me for Christmas. 

Sirius in a pensive mood. 

Ally (who lives with Sam) wants to know where HER Christmas present is!! 

Sam (who lives with George's sister and her family) got a Christmas present too. 

Sirius KNEW that was her Christmas present. 

Happy New Year!!

OK, that's not an original title for a post on New Years Day, but who cares!! I always like New Years Day, it makes me feel that I can wipe the slate clean and start all over again.

It's been far, far too hot here. Yesterday did reach 42C as forecast and at one point (too late in the day for it to be like that) I felt as though I was inhaling a desert wind. The day before I visited a friend who lives two short blocks away. I had a drink of water before I left the house, and by the time I reached hers I could feel myself dehydrating again. It was so bad she actually offered to drive me home afterwards! But I refused as that would have seemed too, too silly, but goodness it was hot. And yesterday was worse. I did spend a few hours of it in a shopping mall where the air condition was making things bearable, if not cool. (I actually LIKE supermarkets in heat waves, they actually are cool. It was tempting to spend too long in the freezer section!)

Then when I came home various relatives were in the pool cooling off, having spent the day cleaning out the flat our nephew (and their eldest son) is about to move into. They stayed for an early barbeque before returning to the Latrobe Valley. We usually have people round on NYE but this year hadn't got round to organising anything, so it was a nice, early, impromptu celebration instead. And for once on NYE I only drank one light beer and a glass of wine, so no hangover today!!

And then during the late evening, almost everywhere in Melbourne cooled down - except us. It was still 30C when I went to bed and I don't think it cooled down much below that until 5am, and now it's horrible again, though it is supposed to cool down later in the day. Ho ho.

So not much knitting has happened, except for a few rows of George's sock in front on the fan from time to time. I have been dyeing wool, though, and when I get hold of the camer might take some piccies. I have, in the last week, dyed enough sock wool for four pairs of socks (having got my hands on some cream sock wool), and dyed five balls of the mystery stuff I got for Christmas. It was all an interesting experiment. The sock wool being 20% nylon, didn't take up the dyes as well as the 100% wool I have been using up till now. I expected that, of course, but it was still interesting to see the results. Not one of them turned out exactly how I had expected, but that is most of the fun of the dyeing method I use, and I was pleased with all of them. The mohair with the polyester thread running through it was interesting, too. As expected, the polyester didn't dye and keeps a faint white line through the yarn, which I think is quite nice. The mohair dyed up much darker than I had expected. Interesting and subtle, where I was expecting vibrant. It might make a really interesting, subtle scarf, I think.

George is at church, which must be very hot as it isn't air conditioned and the ceiling fans won't be enough after such a hot night. Baby Bear is reading - she spent the night on a mattress in the lounge room in front of an open door. Wombat is watching one of his Christmas DVDs, Stuart Little 3 I think. (Which is a badly animated travesty of the originals, but he likes it, which is what counts). I need to find the camer and take photos of dyed wool and the bag my SIL made me for Christmas which is just too cute to be believed. She makes lots of patchwork bags. This one wasn't actually made specifically for me, it was one she made herself but when I saw it and raved over it she decided I was a more deserving owner of it! In the last couple of years she has made me a darling little pouch with my initial on it and a little caretaker gnome button to look after the contents, and bought me a multi-coloured leathered pounch in a Provence market - she and I both love bags and I love every gift from her!!

We are one-third of the way through the summer holidays (yes, I do count!) and we haven't done a cinema trip yet. I think a trip to see the Narnia movie must be ver close, as I am certainly dying to see it and I think the kids are too. George doesn't really do movies (though I dragged him to The Incredibles and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy last year, and he enjoyed both of them) so we might leave him at home.

I am going to get out the Diamond Patch jumper this week and start on it again. I did a bit last summer and then it got put aside, and now I have decided to get on with it. It is in a nice stonewash cotton in a paleish blue. As it doesn't get that cold here, I find a cotton jumper is quite good enough for most of the winter, and i want to wear it this year.

TOO HOT!!!

Blimey, it's hot! In Melbourne we only expect hot weather in February, really, when the children go back to school. But we've had lots of hot weather already and I am frankly sick of it. We don't have proper air conditioning - there is an ancient unit in the study, so I can read blogs in comfort! But the study is tiny and I can't spend all day in here without going mad.

Funnily enough, while writing this, a friend just phoned to ask us round to share her airconditioning this afternoon!

The swimming pool is coming into its own and I think Wombat had five swims yesterday. Of course this meant he ended up with sore eyes - though he insisted his eyes were not sore, which would have been more convincing if they had not been puffy and half closed at the time! It usually takes me all summer to even get a faint hint of bather strap marks on me, but I came close to getting sunburnt yesterday - not something I try to do, certainly.

Christmas was lovely. George's family was all relaxed and cheerful and we had a great time. It was quite cool, which seems impossible to believe only a few days later. (The forecast for tomorrow is 42C, which is 107F). The food was excellent and plentiful but a modified version of traditional Christmas food, so lighter and healthier but still just as yummy. My contribution (apart from crisps for hungry moments beforehand) was a huge pavlova, masses of fresh berries and a bowl of cherries. Unfortunately I decided to make the pavlova in Moe rather than make it here and try to transport it down there, and using a different mixer and different stove resulted in a less than perfect pav - never mind, everyone else seemed to like it! Berries are in wonderful, plentiful season at the moment, and I ate huge quantities of them - mmm, boysenberries!!

Much extravagent gifting occurred, of course. Wombat was thrilled with his Nintendo DS, Nintendogs and the complete set of Futurama DVDs. Baby Bear paraded around in her new clothes and jewellery. (They both got books and other DVDs as well). George gave me a lovely silver bangle, the kids gave me earrings. We gave him DVDs, Borders book vouchers and a polished ammonite paperweight (he collects interesting paperweights). George's mother gave me a cute red necklace made out of beaded beads, and his sisters were most inventive - one gave me a gorgeous patchwork bag she had made (she makes lots of them) and the other gave me 50 balls of white yarn she had found in a market to experiment with dyeing!

Since we came back I have been wilting in the heat, swimming, and dyeing yarn. (It's been a bit too hot to spin, though I have managed some knitting in the evenings sitting in front of a fan). I have dyed three lots of sock yarn and intend doing another lot this afternoon, and five balls of the Christmas yarn are in the dye pot at the moment. I have to say that sock yarn does not take up the dye the way pure wool does - hardly surprising, of course - but all my dyeing is experimental and I just love the way it often turns out differently from what I might have expected.

I have finished the basic stuff for the Scarf Exchange Scarf and will do more on it next week. I am trying to finish off a pair of socks I have been knitting for George for ages, so that I can knit up some of the sock wool that I have dyed. And I want to get back to my Diamond Patch jumper, which I started last summer and then forgot about. I haven't done much of it but I really want to get on with it.

And now I can think of nothing better to do than hop in the pool!

Update

The washed and dryed skein of kinky barbed wire relaxed a little, especially after I gave it a good 'twang' or two when it was dry. No pics as the camera is en route from Sydney.

Have spoken to George about this supposed trip to Sydney - he is as p****d off as me with his company for taking so long to decide and then organise it, too. He has told them that unless all arrangements are in place by tomorrow morning he is withdrawing his offer to go up there for two weeks to work fulltime for them. He also told them that if they thought he was getting cross, they should talk to his wife!

Not that I feel any better about going. It;s not that I mind going to Sydney, I like visiting there and it would be fun. It;s the fact that I do not know, still, whether when we leave here on Christmas Eve whether we are going to his mother's for three days, or going there and then driving slowly to Sydney, spending two weeks there and then driving slowly back - the best part of four weeks probably. I just can't get my head around the lack of decision. I hate leaving things to the last minute and that's what this feels like. I would much rather, at this stage, just spend the holidays here, but to have George around a bit more than he has been.

I am still ploughing away on the secret scarf exchange. I decided that I wanted to make myself one too, but that I would have to do them both together for various reasons (can;t go into details because she knows who she is!) That means that I am now 3/4 of the way through the two and I am bored, but I daren;t stop because I will lose momentum and might not get it done in time. Especially if we go away for a month - if we do there are a couple of projects that I want to sit down and get on with that have been very neglected. There's a particular something about what I am knitting that is making my neck hurt, which normal knitting doesn't. I know what it is but I can't find any other way to knit this particular thing and I just want that bit of it over and done with.

Enough whingeing, let's get some more secret scarf done tonight at least!!

Very Bah Humbug again

Not happy, not looking forward to anything at the moment. George is in Sydney three days a week and it is getting harder amd harder to cope with things in his absence. Every single week there is a crisis of some sort while he is away that I have to deal with on my own. The kids are getting increasingly feral without him around and I feel myself turning into a fishwife as I try to control them. Then when he is here he is tired and bad-tempered and doesn't want to deal with anything. The last two weekends he has barely been at home as he runs around doing things for other people, not for us. I just want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head, permanently.

On to more cheerful things - I have started spinning again! I learnt to spin two years ago, with a series of lessons from the Guild in Melbourne, with a great teacher. I did lots of spinning throughout 2004, using some of the masses of fleece inherited from George's mother and sister who were delighted to get rid of it! Their spinning enthusiasms are over nd done with but they had a smallish flock of fleeces stored away between them! But no matter how much practice I got I still always seemed to overspin and I still can't work out how not to do it. But I had fun, and spun various skeins of yarn which I dyed in various colours and have used in scrumbling and other odd-ball stuff.

For some reason I haven't really touched the wheel this year and it has languished in a corner gathering dust. George bought me 2kg of fluff last year to turn into a jumper for him and I think I was abit afraid of trying to actually produce that much consistent yarn that wasn't overspun. But finally my fingers started itching to spin again and I dusted off the wheel last week and steeled myself to have another go.

Yesterday I plied some stuff I had spun a year ago and then forgot about. I was glad to see that I could remember how to do it without any problems! But I was horrified at just how overspun it was. When it was plied and skeined and I took it off the niddy-noddy it kinked and curled and looked just like barbed wire. It is soaking at the moment and I am about the wring it out and hang it to dry, hopefully with some weight on it. I only want to use it for crumbling anyway so it doesn't really matter.

And then I got the bags of fluff out and started spinning. It;s mostly cream wool with a small amount of alpaca and mohair, and has little flashes of colour throughout it in blue, green, yellow and red. (Are they the alpaca and mohair? I don't know). I can see it as a nice rustic jumper with some simple cabling. I;ve spun half a bobbin so far and yes, I am still overspinning. What am I doing wrong? I've even checked in a spinning book and as far as I can see I am not doing the things that cause overspinning. More practice, probably.

I attempted to teach myself to navajo ply yesterday, too. That was interesting! I had that feeling of needing three hands. I sort of got the hang of it though I doubt if the resulting yarn will be useful for anything except extreme novel effects in scrumbling. I wanted to learn this because, although I have so far spun undyed yarn and then dyed it, I am tempted by those lucious space dyed rovings I see everywhere, but don't so much like the candy-cane effect of plying that sort of stuff. (It has its place and I would do some of it like that, though). I definitely need more practice before I let myself loose on good stuff to navajo ply!

I am going to do some more spinning today because I do find it soothing, and I really, really need soothing! It is Thursday, and I still can;t a definite answer out of George about whether we are going away on Saturday for three days orfour weeks! I don't even want to go away for four weeks but he has been dithering about us all going to Sydney for two weeks while he works there. We did this three years ago and it was all right, though very exhausting for me because he was of course working for sixteen hours a day and I had to amuse the kids in a strange city on my own. (Not that Sydney is strange, as such! Just that I have an appalling sense of direction and find unfamiliar places hard work). And now he has turned his phone off so that I can;t ring him and complain that he never talks to me!!

Not only do I want Christmas to be over and done with, I think I want everything to be over and done with.

We haven;t wrapped his presents yet - at this rate they won't get wrapped as I am feeling unChristmassy towards him in a big way!

What's That?

And this is what Sirius did while we were taking photos of the possum. She stood on her hind legs and danced around on them for ages, including dancing backwards. She was absolutely intrigued! When we finally chased the possum off she raced after it until it was safely in a tree. 

Get me down!

This is a brushtail possum, also common here. It is much bigger than a ringtail, about the size of a really solid cat. We found this one climbing up a pole in the carport one night. When it reached the ceiling of the carport it realised it was stuck and couldn't work out what to do next. (They are not the brightest of creatures). You can't pick up a possum - they pee furiously on you and scratch you ferociously - so we had to poke it with a broom to get it to go down. It peed all over the broom handle and then scampered off. 

Who Turned the Lights on?

This little cutie is a ring tail possum. They are very common where we live and many people dislike them because they eat roses. Well, they don't eat ours (why should they when next door is a positive Maxims of roses compared to our McDonalds?) and we love them. They are noctural and are rarely seen in the daytime - but this one couldn't sleep and was wandering around in bright sunlight. 

No I'm Not!

Sirius says that, contrary to popular opinion, she is not spoilt at all! 

Spoilt Dog

We have a very spoilt dog! 

And the pool. Although it can't be seen that easily, it is a boomerang shaped pool and as such is an icon of Australian pool design - apparently it was designed as an amalgam of the standard rectangular pool with the Hollywood inspired kidney shaped pool. We get a lot of use out of it! 

This is the patio leading out from the family room, which we use as another room in the summer months - even on mild winter days! There is a big built in barbeque just out of shot on the right. We've just bought a big glass topped table that can sit 12 so we have no excuse for not entertaining! 

My house

I started going through some of the older photos we have on our computer and decided that some of them might be interesting to post on here. This was taken of our house in summer 2001, I think, but it hasn't changed much since then. That isn't our car, we had visitors at the time who had hired a car in NSW. We love our house, even if it does have lots of structural problems. It is 40 years old and when it was built it was a really advanced design - inside it is designed to 'bring the outside inside' and has huge picture windows. 

Not quite so much bah humbug

I have recovered a little Christmas spirit due to an unexpectedly nice night last night.

It was shaping up to be the night from hell. Baby Bear had a concert (called at a week's notice, natch!) at school. Christmas Carols were happening at Wombat's school at the same time. Wombat does not do singing, group activities, etc, including listening to same. Last year was so horrendous that I still feel sick when I think about it. As George wanted to attend, being President of the School Council and needing to press the flesh, we agreed that I would just stay at home and he would go on his own. Then we got this notification that Baby Bear was doing this Christmas Soiree, and couldn;t work it out.

Finally we decided that George would drive us to her school in time for the concert, return for the Carols with a medicated Wombat who would hopefully at least behave for his daddy, if not exactly enjoy himself, and that when the concert was over I would phone George and he would leave with Wombat and come and get us. I approached this with much trepidation, Wombat having thrown a small wobbly when told that he would have to go to the Carols after all.

To all our surprise, he actually behaved beautifully, enjoyed himself, and even ended up singing with the rest of his grade. I almost cried when I saw this happening! Baby Bear's concert was wonderful, and when I phoned George he raced over to pick us up, leaving Wombat at the school, and we got back in time to see him singing with his grade. Accompanied by the slice of pizza and the 'lemonade' thrust at me by my thoughtful friend B, it topped off a lovely evening.

Baby Bear's concert was rather hot and sweaty (we were waiting for the cool change) and I could see that the parents in the audience with water bottles had done it before! There was the usual mixture of awfulness and considerable talent that you find in any school musical performance, even at a school like Blackburn High were a lot of really serious musicians go. Needless to say Baby Bear is definitely one of the best! (And I am not just saying that - honestly, I am a truly proud mummy, but her teachers say it too).

She had told me she had a surprise performance, and I read through the programme and assumed she meant her solo on the flute - playing Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which she did extremely well and got a much better tone out of her flute than almost anyone else there. But I realised what she really meant when she and her friend A got up to do the final small group piece, and only A was holding an instrument. Baby Bear sang Deck the Halls and I thought I was probably swelling with pride visibly. She has the most fabulous voice and we are hoping to get her some voice training next year. There was much applause - she was the only person to sing a solo, or in fact to sing at all except for the choir at the end - and I think a lot of people were thoroughly impressed.

So it was a far nicer evening than I had expected and I am feeling far happier about the time of year!

Today Wombat had an EEG so George and I spent the morning at Monash Medical Centre with him. Unlike this time last year, he cooperated fully, so I will be more included to accept the results than I did last year. We shall wait and see.

George dropped us off at Chadstone Shopping Centre afterwards, and he went to work while we did a little shopping. I got some calendars that I had wanted to round out the Christmas presents and he got to spend his pocket money on some dance game for the Gamecube featuring Super Mario. Anything that combines computer games with actual exercise has to be a good thing! He is busy playing it now and seems to be jumping around all over the place!!

Yummy Helen's Lace!!

This delectable little pile is three skeins of Helen's Lace from Lorna's Laces. It is a laceweight 50% wool and 50% silk and it really does have a beautiful sheen to it, it's not just in the photo. I;m not entirely sure what to do with it - each skein has something like 1200 yards in it, which is enough to knit a smallish shawl but not enough to knit some of the really big elaborate ones I would like to try. I think I will use one skein to knit the pattern that comes with the yarn inside the label, and then maybe use the rest to knit lace scarfs. I am not an accomplished lace knitter but i want to improve my skills, and I would rather knit four different lace scarfs (I presume I will be able to get two out of each skein) than two more small shawls. The colours are just divine and I wish I could have got it in every colour it comes in!! 

Warm

It's quite warm today but probably not quite warm enough to get me into the pool, which will still be a bit chilly. The kids (and friends) are about to go in and so I might be tempted in a couple of hours.

I spent yesterday in bed with a migraine. It;s been ages since I got a full-blown migraine, so I guess I should be thankful. Today I am in that slightly fragile state that comes in the wake of a migraine. Fortunately we had a quiet weekend planned. Or rather, I did. Baby Bear had a birthday party to go to yesterday, which she thoroughly enjoyed, followed by playing at a carols concert. George has been helping our lovely big nephew move house. He babysat for us on Friday night while we went to George's work Christmas do (which was OK but very noisy and the food was only adequate - no I didn't have a hangover yesterday, I didn't drink much at all).

The mystery scarf continues to grow, slowly. I have been experimenting and have abandoned a couple of the experiments, though I will keep them in case I can use them in something else further down the track.

I have been spending a lot of time recently reading blogs and looking at other people;s work and wondering why they are so prolific when I, who stay at home, doesn't have a job and would apparently have acres of free time, take so long to do anything. I think I answered my own question - less time reading blogs and wasting time, more time creating!!! I procrastinate too much and spend too much time reading magazines and stuff on the computer. It is good for inspiration but there must come a time when I have to actually USE the inspiration instead of thinking about it!

Wombat has just announced that he won't go in for a swim if the others don;t go in, and they don't seem to want to. So I have just offered to sacrifice myself for a too cold swim with him. At least I will get some exercise!!!

Another peyote stitch bracelet

This bracelet was a slightly different application of peyote stitch. It is made up a series of peyote shapes, each constructed separately, and then sewn together, a bit like crazy patchwork. Then I added accent beads and a couple of peyote stitch flowers that I had made. It was VERY time consuming, far more so than the freeform peyote, but I really love the effect and I will definitely use this technique again. I used a variety of glass and plastic beads, mostly from Lincraft, but also leftover from another project that I had done (which isn't quite finished and photographed yet) which we very high quality glass beads from Beadalon in the US. 

Bah Humbug!!

I HATE DECEMBER!!! The hype about Christmas, the crowds in the shopping centres, the rising hysteria in the schools, it drives me nuts. Don't get me wrong, I love presents (both giving and receiving!), I love spending Christmas Day with George's family (who actually like each other, don't fight, and have a low-key but still yummy Christmas lunch every year). But why do we have to have 24 days of idiocy beforehand? I;ve done most of my present buying, but I do still have to go to the shops for the normal stuff like everyday food, and the shopping centres are horrible at this time of the year. The schools are ridiculous - all the fuss and rushing around over Christmas preparations and end of year stuff - it was slightly easier in England where Christmas and the end of the school year were six months apart. Here, because the school year ends just before Christmas, we have a double whammy.

Children on the autism spectrum, like Wombat, do best under a quiet, humdrum routine, with no excitements or discombobulations. Just what we don't get in December! His teachers do their best to make sure that he is kept as quiet and on routine as possible, but the rest of the school is becoming increasingly excited and hysterical so it's hard for him. He gets worse and worse until Christmas, after which he calms down again. It doesn't matter that we keep Christmas low key at home, it;s all the external influences that wind him up. I suppose I could homeschool him and get rid of the TV and all electronic items and never let him mix with any other children, but I don't think tactics like that are appropriate anyway.

George has a million and one functions throughout December, hardly any of which I am invited to. Mostly client functions at work, but also for all the voluntary committees he is on. This keeps him out of the house many an evening in December, which I dislike. This year is at least twice as bad because he is also spending three days a week in Sydney at the moment. I feel like a single mother during the week, stuck with a disabled child going increasingly haywire, and an overhyped 12 year old as well.

I HATE DECEMBER!!!

Once Christmas has passed things quieten down. George will be taking the last three weeks of January off, and that's when we will really be able to relax and enjoy ourselves. We won't be going away, just lying by our pool and doing simple barbeques for friends. I can't wait.

Knitting stuff - I have been struggling with ideas for the International Scarf Exchange and have finally reverted to my original idea for the scarf. Now that I have settled on that it is going great guns. But as my scarf recipient managed to work out who I was (I;d never make a secret agent, blew my cover immediately!) I will not say anything about it until it is finished and received, which won;t be until February, probably. Suffice it to say that it is coming along nicely and I like it so much that I am making a similar one for myself too!

My first Beaded whimsey

This is the first of what I plan to be a series of Beaded Whimsies. This term was apparently used in Victorian times for bead embroidered animals and the like and is also, or possibly mostly, applied to similar items made by Native Americans. I;ve only done a little research on the name, so please advise me otherwise if I am wrong!

This is totally my own design, bead embroidered onto some colourful patchwork material (which you can only see on the back, which is unbeaded). I am new to bead embroidery and find it easiest to do on a flat piece of fabric, so I did the embroidery on one piece of the fabric, then folded in the raw edges and whip stitched the two together, right side out because you can;t really turn beaded stuff. Then I stuffed it with polyfill, finished off the whip stitching and covered all the seams with enough beading to hide them. I know most people do the doll/thing first and then bead the stuffed item, but I am finding that really hard to manipulate right now.

I am planning a series of these. The current one in progress has stalled while I knit things, though. I really loved doing this!! The beads are a mixture of glass and plastic beads, nothing exotic or expensive, all from Lincraft I think. 

My first attempt at freeform peyote

This is my first real attempt at freeform peyote. I had a go last year but hated the results so much that I discarded it and forgot all about it. This bracelet is much better than that first attempt! It is made with a variety of seed beads and other glass beads including pearls and flower beads. 

I'm so excited!!!

Today I enrolled in the Box Hill TAFE Diploma of Arts - Studio Textiles/Stitch. I've been wanting to do this for about three years, ever since I realised the art potential of fibre beyond knitting other people's patterns.

I was initially slightly put off because at first glance it seemed to be heavily biased towards embroidery. I don't have anything against embroidery but I am not a natural at it. I've done lots of cross stitch over the years but always following other people's patterns, and never had the desire to design in it. But having checked out graduate exhibitions from this course on the web I have come to realise that there were all sorts of textile arts being used by the students and today confirmed my feelings - I was told that they had 'lots of fibre people' and that I could use any textile media I wanted to, so long as I experimented! I got really excited when they said that there are always some students who want to explore 3D work in greater detail and that they had studio facilities for that - I do want to do this, very much indeed!

It's every Friday during term time, for three years, plus lots of homework, about the equivalent of another full day a week. Some of the subjects sound boring - OHS, that sort of thing, but being a TAFE I would expect subjects like that, and the bulk of the course is design theory and practice. Dyeing is apparently a big favorite, so my eyes lit up when they mentioned that!

I'd forgotten the delights of enrolling at tertiary institutions - fill in this form, get it signed, go downstairs to the cashier, be redirected by the cashier to another room, go back to cashier, go back upstairs to give in my receipt number, wait while they find the form I filled in half an hour ago... but it's all done and dusted and I am officially a student for 2006! It felt very odd indeed getting a student card - the last time I had one of those was in 1987, and prior to that was my very first uni one in 1979!! Baby Bear was with me, it being her curriculum day, and she rudely laughed at the photo and said 'Mum, why are photos of you always so awful?' Well, she was certainly right!

Then we went to the Box Hill S'n'B. Baby Bear has been aching to go all year but I was afraid she would be bored. She was, though very polite and well behaved. In the end I gave her some money and sent her off to Diva (cool jewellery shop) to buy a birthday present for one of her friends and to spend some of her pocket money. By the time she had thoroughly done over Diva (and found a pair of earrings that she said would be perfect for me - I went back there on the way home and bought a pair of diamante skull earrings, how could I resist!) it was lunchtime so we ate and then went home - to be greeted by an answerphone message from Wombat's teaching aide saying that he had run out of medication. At that stage it was a good hour and a half after he should have taken his lunchtime dose so I had to hare over the school. Fortunately he was OK, we are trialling a new medication and it really seems to have worked so far.

I asked if I should do any preparation over the summer before the course starts in February, and was told to read everything inspirational I could find in the textile/fibre field and maybe start keeping a scrapbook of ideas. So I shall spend happy hours reading some of my many books!!