Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

 

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

 

Project Spectrum - March - Red/Pink

 

My I Cord So-Called Scarf

I am feeling a bit embarrassed about my ISE scarf. After being so late in sending it off, I'm not even sure that the lovely recipient likes it! I suppose it was a bit left of centre. It was an experiment and I don't personally think it was a very successful one. I didn't even take a photo of it myself, as I had taken so long to organise to send it off, and at the last minute the camera battery was flat and I didn't dare miss the posting opportunity.

Just in case anyone else wants to reproduce my experiement and maybe make a better fist of it than me:

My I Cord So-Called Scarf

Choose a selection of yarns in a colour scheme that you like. I put ten I cords into this, each one in a different yarn. They can be all the colours of the rainbow, or harmonising, or complementary, or clashing - I made it a good mixture of colours and textures but some people (including, I fear, poor Marji!) would find it too busy that way.

Choose an approximate length for your scarf, erring on the generous side. You could make a short one, of course, buyt you won't be able to do as much with it afterwards.

Make ten I cords in approximately this length. Don't have them all identical. I used 5mm dpns (US size 8) and six stitches for each one, and as the yarns were not uniform this gave different thicknesses of I cord. You could use an I cord machine but I think they only take fine yarns - which would be lovely, too!

When you are done, lay them out flat on a large flat surface like a bed. Play with them, arrange them, intertwine them, until you like the arrangement. Then catch them together carefully in quite a lot of places with a few stitches using sewing thread, and make some of those intersections with beads or buttons, if you like. You want it to hold together, but to have plenty of gaps left over.

Now you can wear it as you will. Wrap it around, pull one end through a hole, pull the other end through another hole, wrap it around your head - decorate it more, scrumble all over it, whatever!

I am going to be making myself one, so when that is done I will take photos and demonstrate some of the ways it can be worn. In the meantime, look at Marji's picture and imagine!!

Playing with Picasa 2

This is the four photos that went into the spooky montage.

I feel a desire to play with photo software coming on!!! 

Playing with Picasa 1

I thought I would experiment a bit with Picasa's collage functions. I really like this result, it looks a bit spooky! 

E is for Embroidery

This is the first stitched piece I did for my course, a couple of weeks ago. It is the first time I have ever done this type of embroidery - I have done squillions of cross stitch and woolwork pieces, and know how to do most embroidery stitches, but I had never done this sort of 'free' embroidery before. I am actually quite pleased with it and I'm glad to say that my tutor was too! We are now doing a stitched piece every week - the next one is appliqued, as is the one I have to finish off this week. And I think the next assignment is an applique too. Can you tell I am having fun!!! 

Books!

I'm obsessed with books. We are drowning under the weight of our book collection. So when I saw this meme somewhere I had to do it!

Meme instructions : Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of. (I'm having a fight with Blogger and can't get it to underline, so I will mark them as GOT instead of underlining)

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - GOT
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger -GOT
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams - GOT
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald - GOT
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - GOT
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling - GOT
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell - GOT
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller - GOT
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien - GOT
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - GOT
Lord of the Flies - William Golding - GOT
1984 - George Orwell - GOT
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling - GOT
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - GOT
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut - GOT
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown - GOT
(Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk)
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Secret History - Donna Tartt - GOT
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess - GOT
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - GOT
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - GOT
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis - GOT
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
(Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell)
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien - GOT
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - GOT
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman - GOT
Atonement - Ian McEwan
(The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - GOT
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - GOT
Dune - Frank Herbert - GOT

That was an interesting exercise - go ahead, do it, you know you want to!

D is for Dolman

Another Jersey photo from the same holiday. This is a dolman, an Iron Age burial site. Jersey had a number of fantastic dolmans and other standing stones - I love visiting these and it is something that Australia rather sadly lacks! Nothing beats the feeling of walking along that path and standing under the stones - unless it is going underground to see them, which I was able to do in some of the other sites. (Which got interesting as I was six months pregnant at the time!) 

D is for Daffodils

This field full of daffodils is in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. I took this photo when we there on holiday in 1993. I loved the effect of the whole field full of them with the clouds and the castle in the background. 

Diary of a Hypochondriac

This is going to be blather about my health, so I advise everyone to skip it :)

I went to the rheumatologist yesterday, who was fantastic. He took a full history, looked at my test results, and we talked.

I do have fibromyalgia, as suspected. I probably did all along, it's just that I first went to my GP I think I put fatigue first on the list of symptoms and pain second. That was three and a half years ago. Since then I have had most of the blood tests repeated, to cgeck that I really really don't have various things wrong with me. I had several sessions with a therapist last year who taught me some really useful stress management techniques that I use regularly and that have really helped a great deal. Over the last six months the fatigue has receded very slightly. But the pain has got worse .... and worse....

Basically I feel like I am in the first stages of flu - every day. Most of my major joints hurt all the time and most of my muscles are stiff and sore. I can no longer climb stairs (in either direction) with any degree of ease. Even getting on and off buses requires me to move sideways like a crab. I can't kneel or sit on the floor (not without requiring a block and tackle to get me up again). Anything more than a tiny bit of walking makes me hurt so much it is not worth it. I feel like an old lady, and probably walk like one. I am held together by painkillers. Every day is a litany of generalised aching plus specific pains (the places move around from day to day - this morning I am hurting in my left knee and my lower back, as well as all over - they are different types of pain).

Yet I test negative for all the arthritic conditions, my thyroid function is fine, I do not have diabetes, and although I have a little ostearthritis in my knees it is not bad enough to cause all the problems.

Fibromyalgia is probably the same thing as chronic fatigue syndrome, and they are both labels for a very real condition that can't be properly tested for. There is no test to prove that I do or do not have it. It has been described as arthritis of the soft tissues, only it isn't arthritis. It is most probably a neurological condition.

I;ve been referred to a fibromyalgia clinic, which are apparently almost unknown in Australia but my rheumatologist has a real interest in the condition and knows these people. Hopefully they will come up with strategies to help me manage this. He's also prescribed Naprosin and told me that it is better to take that, plus pain killers as required, than to live on Panadol. It will be tomorrow before I can fill the prescription - I am hoping that it helps.

So, that's my boring health problems. A chronic, incurable, semi crippling condition that no-one really understands. On the other hand it supposedly does not cause degeneration of the joints or the major organs, and won't actually kill me.

Four Things

I'm just procrastinating here, there are things I should be doing but I like this meme!

4 jobs I have had - temp typist, records indexer, librarian, MUM!
4 movies I can watch over and over - Gone With the Wind, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Vertigo, Phantom of the Opera
4 places I have lived - Essendon, Melbourne, Australia; Chiswick, London, UK; Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK; Glen Waverley, Mebourne, Australia
4 TV shows I love - Dr Who, Mythbusters, House, Taggart
4 places I;ve been on holiday - the Flinders Ranges, South Australia; Vancouver, Canada; Paris, France; the Lake District, UK.
4 favorite dishes - fried rice, chilli prawns, macaroni cheese, good pizza
4 websites I visit daily - ABC, my blog to read through my list of favorites, Bureau of Meteorology, The Age (a Melbourne newspaper)
4 places I would rather be - in bed; in France; in the V&A museum in London; actually I rather like being here too!

No tagging, this has been around everyone!

Lurgy is Lifting

George is back at work, the kids are more or less OK apart from a minor sniffle from time to time, and I am still feeling like ****. A quietish day today before another two or three days of frantic running around. For a SAHM I seem to be spending too much time not staying at home!!

The trip to the Eye Hospital was time consuming but reassuring as they have decided that it was migraine and that everything else is fine. We hear too much complaining about our health system, often with justification, but I want to say publicly that I have been hugely impressed with everyone at the Eye Hospital, they have all been very courteous and efficient and pleasant and it was all free!!

On the down side, I didn;t realise that I would be getting the atropine drops again. I didn't even have my sunglasses with me and I had to get myself home on public transport looking like the Corpse Bride and unable to cope with the sunlight - of course it was a beautiful sunny day!

Tomorrow I am off to a rheumatologist - I test negative for all the arthritis conditions but have consistent symptoms, so I expect I will end up with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, which is just another way of saying chronic fatigue syndrome, but every now and then I feel I ought to pursue these avenues just in case someone actually finds something else wrong with me! I asked my lovely GP for a referral to someone nearby, which she did - but of course the appointment I was offered was in the city, actually opposite the Eye Hospital where I was on Monday!

Some knitting is happening. I am plugging away on the Diamond Patch jumper, plus occasionally picking up the purple socks that I was supposedly knitting for Baby Bear but which will probably go to George because she misled me about sizes!!

I have finished my Scarf Exchange scarf though it won;t be posted till Saturday. I am not very pleased with it, sadly, but I hope that Marji is OK with it. It didn't turn out quite like I had hoped, but I;m sure she can find a creative way to wear it. I still have to do one little extra thing to package up with it, and take photos of it. I think that if there is another scarf exchange I will not design my own next time, I have loads of scarf patterns that I fancy knitting and I might use one of them.

I was going to mumble something about resolutions once a month, wasn't I? Well, here goes:
1. Decluttering - well, a brief start was made, and then fell apart under the onslaught of constant heatwaves. But all the yarn stash is now neatly in boxes on shelves, and yesterday I started tacjling two large piles of stuff that have sat in their 'temporary' homes for about six months. I did say it would take all year! George has also streamlined the supplies in the study.
2. Food - well, let's draw a veil over that, some days I am good and some days I am bad!
3. Exercise - oddly, I did more in the hot weather (lots of swimming) than since it cooled down a bit. Sort of doing some exercise.
4. The course has only just started but it is so much FUN and I have so far thrown myself into it. I am definitely keeping up with this resolution.
5. Curb spending habits - um, not really, me bad.

C Is For Curly-Whirly

Meet my Curly-Whirly, alongside Snakey who just happens to match.

I used some leftover acrylic, as mentioned in a previous post - it was a Lincraft own brand but I am pretty sure it was one of their relabelling of well-known European yarns that happened last year - very good value too as they were identical but much cheaper. I think it was the same as Filatura Di Crosa's Hopla. I also used another Lincraft branded yarn that was another fancy European yarn rebranded, but can't remember a thing about it!

This was crocheted - much easier than having millions of stitches on the needle - but boy did it eat up yarn! That's why I added the extra yarn, as i ran out of the first yarn too soon and the scarf was still too narrow. Unfortunately the only yarn I had which looked right with it is a bit scratchy and I am going to have to be careful not to let actually touch my neck - a pity because the original yarn is nice and soft, like a cloud!

I am keen to do another, wider one of these, with beads. I really liked the one Yarnivorous did and I;m thinking of something like that. 

5 Weird Things About Me!

I wrote this post several days ago but since then we have all been coping with the Lurgy. The kids had it first and weren't too sick, then they gave it to me, and now George is a quivering lump in bed. I dragged myself to my first day at TAFE (subject of another post sometime soon) on Friday with a zig-zagging temperature, spent Saturday morning running errands, the afternoon in bed and the evening drinking too much with friends, and yesterday hanging around the house feeling like ****. Now it is Monday and I feel even worse but I have to go into the Eye Hospital for my final checkup - I am hoping to stir the quivering lump to drive me to the station on the promise that he then gets the rest of the day in TOTAL PEACE as I will be out till late afternoon (I have two appointments, one to do a final test on my eyes and then a final checkup three hours later when those results will be ready along with everything else).


Well, I;ve been tagged by Cathy with this meme, so here goes!


Groundrules: The first player of this game starts with the Topic"5 weird habits of yours" and people who get tagged need to write a blog entry about their 5 quirky habits as well as state this rule clearly.In the end you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.

1. I cannot watch television, or indeed sit in a chair at all, without doing something with my hands. Mostly, I knit (or do bead embroidery, or crochet). Sometimes I read (well, turning the pages is doing something with my hands!) Sometimes I play Snood on my daughter's Gameboy (actually sometimes I do that FAR TOO MUCH!!) But I just CANNOT have my hands unoccupied.

2. My DH is going to hate this one - I cannot share a bed with anyone. I snore, thrash around, steal the covers, generally make myself unloveable, and then complain if my companion so much as twitches or even breathes. So we have come to a happy compromise - we sleep in seperate rooms now. Secretly I think he is relieved!

3. I have a real phone phobia. I find it incredibly hard to make phone calls. Not so much the making appointment type of call - I have no problems ringing the doctor or whatever - but ringing actual people to have an actual conversation is really hard for me. I can ring DH, that's fine, but that's about it! On the other hand I do not mind talking to people when they ring me, it;s just that actual making of the call that's hard. I like to email people, though I am also horrible at returning emails! (Several people are waiting on emails from me right now, so if you have commented on my blog or emailed me recently, or even not so recently, I will reply to you!)

4. I do not drive. I took driving lessons 15 years ago and sat four driving tests. The first one was far too early and I was not ready, so I;m not surprised I failed (the instructor made me sit it too early, I then changed instructors). The next test, I did perfectly except for mucking up a three point turn - I just touched the kerb and was failed on that. The third test was on an absolutely freezing cold, icy morning and I kept stalling the car. By the time I took the fourth test I had decided that if I failed that, I was done with driving. And yes, I failed it, on something so trivial that I cannot even remember. I personally thought I drove better than half the lunatics on the road, but no, I failed on something so small that I don;t think anyone ever does it in real life. At that point I then gave up! I was going to take driving lessons again a few years ago but then came down with chronic fatigue syndrome and haven't had the energy since, which is a shame because using public transport is rather tiring...

5. I am painfully shy and worry about everything, all the time, yet most people (even good friends) see me as sociable and calm and capable. I am obviously a really good actress!

Now who to tag? Actually it now being some time since I wrote this post, and my brain having left home somewhere in the midst of all the disgusting hankies I have been using, i think I will leave it open to anyone reading this1 i know this a cop-out but it's either that or wait another several days.

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.