No wonder I'm cold!!!

I think perhaps Autumn has hit.

It was very cold when I got up (way too early - end of Daylight Saving plus too many thinkings), and I'm wrapped in Noro cardi, Noro wrap, pjs, tracky pants, socks, moccasins and a rug. According to the weather website, it is currently 6* C, feels like 2* C, and we can look forward to maybe 13* C this afternoon. More like real winter.

I wonder if it snowed on the mountain last night?

I wonder where I put my gloves???

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Bear With Me

Last night I sat up late tidying up files, deleting old software and bits and bobs, and then I installed Mac OS X Leopard, and this morning I added iLife '09 and iWork '09. So this weekend I will be getting used to using the newer versions of the basic software, and reacquainting myself with Pages and Keynote, both of which will apparently talk to Office 07 - quite useful now that work has upgraded everything.
In more computer geekery, I'm thinking it could be time to set up a Wordpress blog, so I can do galleries and stuff, so there may be some messing around taking up my time. I can't promise lots of blogging while that happens, but I can tell you that I've nearly finished the ribbing on the body of my Something Navy, and with two dance classes to watch this morning, I should get quite a bit done! I'm also feeling the sock urge - as Tink noted, it is definitely feeling autumnal down here - today the wind is gusting pretty fiercely (up to 54km/h according to the weather site), and even though it is supposed to warm up later, currently it is only 14.4* C, and my feet are not warm.
I hope you've all got some fun planned for your weekend!
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Sob.

I discovered something awful on the weekend.

It was bad.

Really bad.

Brace yourselves. This is a frightening development.

While partaking of smoked trout dip on crusty bread and sipping some lovely Fifth Leg Shiraz, I started to feel kind of itchy on my neck.

Further checking confirmed it - my favourite red is giving me a rash.

Woe is me.......

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Vacuuming Tipsy Is Way More Fun

Because, really, who wants to spend their after-dinner relaxation time cleaning without some kind of altered perception???
AND when you're tipsy and the dining table has crumbs on it, there is obviously NO POINT in going to get a dishcloth to wipe them up when there is a perfectly good vacuum cleaner already powered up and sucking nicely.
(nb my inner pedant still manages to correct spelling and grammar to ensure that 'you are' is contracted correctly, even while tipsy)

Bring on the tea and chocolate - I need to sober up a little to put the sleeves on waste yarn so I can do the body of Something Navy

Happy Friday Night everyone!

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A reason to love Dove chocolate

The little individually wrapped squares have messages inside - the one I am enjoying right now says:
I'm not ageing - I'm ripening to perfection

Excellent message for anyone surrounded by exhausting numbers of children every day :)

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Life's little (slightly icky) mysteries

Yesterday I left work early for an appointment, then took my son home before going to pick up the girls. Inside I was met by the scruffier of my two dogs, and after shooing him out the dog-sized gap made by a dog-nose pushing open the screen door I discovered the first evidence.
The end of a carrot.
A margarine container.
A plastic bag.
More plastic.
The dogs had gotten inside and ripped into the plastic rubbish bag and strewn the contents across the kitchen.
Sigh.
So I picked up the majority of the mess, left son in front of tv and went to get the girls. Home again, and after some to-ing and fro-ing all the kids went across the road to the neighbour's place.
Then I found the real crime.
A feather.
Another feather.
A noise, I turn around, and there is a young magpie on top of my boxes of knitting essentials (in fact, the box of sock wool, so in fact it was the not-stash), and he/she is missing most of his/her tail feathers. There are blood smears across the windowsill, drops drying on my plastic tubs, a couple of bits of birdshit around the place. The dogs must have managed to corner it in the house - why it was in the house at all I don't know, probably just curiosity about the open screen door.
The MOMD got home just then, and used his superior reach to gently take the box to the open door so the poor bird could get out of our house. It seemed more or less ok, so we didn't want to handle it lest it be rejected by its family. It flew off and we didn't find any feathers this morning.

I hope it's ok.
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Do you ever wonder

what the inside of Kaffe Fassett's house really looks like?
Maybe a universe of wildly clashing colour, texture and patterns, that somehow overwhelms any memory of the summer whites look currently on the covers of so many decorating magazines, in a sensory overload like this:

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I almost got away with it...

Yesterday was not my favourite Saturday.

I didn't get any knitting time at all.

I pouted. I whined. I whinged.

Because I was helping the MOMD get through the curtains. That's right, I still haven't finished making curtains from the Great Curtain Materials Buy-up of October '07. The other weekend I hemmed those that had been done (prompted by the MOMD) and finished the last rumpus room curtain, and we faced the other three enormous, one medium and one small window that still needed doing.
Great was my anguish and despair at the thought of so many metres of curtains.
There's a reason why I didn't get them done while I was still a SAHM - I hate sewing curtains.
Once again - oh how I adore this man - the MOMD has rescued me.
He seems to actually - unfathomably, incredibly - like sewing curtains. It's productive, practical, and uses a machine that (sort-of) vrooms. And it saves us enormous sums of money on buying specially-made curtains (the enormous windows are too tall even for the magic-drape continuous curtaining stuff that you only have to hang and hem).
So that fabulous, dratted man sat at the sewing machine yesterday, refining his skills at seams, flat-felled seams, and hems. He also did a fair bit of pinning.
I was smote by my conscience and could not, simply could not let him tackle all of it alone, so I did the ironing and pinning of top and side hems, and the pressing and pinning of the flat-felled seams that join the drops together.
All day.
Except for lunch, and a trip to Spotties for more thread.
All that needs to be done now to have the two enormous and one medium window in the living room swathed in old-gold stripes is to sew on the gather tape, gather, hook and hang.
The MOMD wanted to get that done last night, after dinner, but was stymied by the sewing machine suddenly not working. Fiddle, fiddle-fiddle. Remove faceplate - fiddle, tweak. Frown. The thread was not being brought around properly, so no sewing - for a little while it looked as though my Sunday was saved from further crushing curtaining drudgery.
But this morning it appears that the MOMD did in fact manage to fix / tweak/ adjust enough to make sewing possible again.
And after the living room curtains there are the one enormous and one small window in our bedroom to go. I know I will be thrilled not to have a glorious dawn prising open my eyelids at 5.12am, but right now I yearn for the time to just relax and knit.

I almost had a day free.

Almost.
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Reasons to move to Tasmania

• We have excellent cheeses, such as King Island and Tasmanian Heritage, which are frequently on fabulous specials at the local supermarket (I'm having True Blue Tasmanian Heritage blue Brie on wholemeal Vienna toast with a glass or two of red - I may or may not need dinner tonight)
• We have fabulous ice cream - Valhalla ice cream everywhere, and the fancy Food Stores have Ice Cream From The Valley, with ice creams of the most incredible awesomeness such as Vanilla Bean and Raspberry, and Spiced Pear and Wattleseed, and various other organically enticing flavours.
• Berry farms up and down the east coast
• Astonishing scenery - I have a spectacular view of Mount Wellington looming over Hobart every morning as I drive to work, and that includes rainbows a surprising amount of the time (low rainfall but high drizzle factor)
• Cardigan weather for so much of the year - great for knitters! (Today was a fine example - a very slow climb to 17.4*C at 1pm, with a rapid drop thereafter)
• Historic architecture around every corner - enough sandstone buildings to give Sydney a run for its money
• Day tripping from Hobart can do three significant tourist towns in three hours - nowhere is more than half-an-hour from the next spot.
• Hobart has all the amenities of a big city with no traffic jams (ignore the locals - 'bad traffic' means taking 20 mins to go from one side of the bridge and across the CBD - 5 mins more than usual)
• Flights to Melbourne are incredibly cheap ($59 shopping trip anyone?)
• While city/suburb prices are catching up with the rest of the country, half-an-hour out of the city and a family home on a big block is suddenly perfectly affordable
• People are nice. It has that small-town feel. You can strike up a conversation with the person next to you in the queue without feeling like some weird space-invading creep who should go back to whatever rural village spawned you (sorry. the wine made that a bit stronger than I meant it to sound. But I don't remember striking up conversations with random strangers anytime I went shopping in Sydney. Or Coffs. Or even Wagga, much)
• And there are some great knitters down here!!!

:>
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Sewing, and invisible knitting

those pics I promised?
Here: and Here:

There has been knitting, too, but mostly it is of the invisible kind - the intended recipients have been known to drop by from time to time, so no looky the knitty for them!


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More smiles

I'm feeling more smiley and spring-like now, probably helped by the very warm day we had on Thursday (30*!!!) - it was so nice to be really warm without needing multiple layers to achieve it!

Today is sunny-ish, clouds dashing around above us, flowers dancing in the breeze (which is prettier to watch from inside the house), cool enough for a cardi but not freezing. Some odd jobs to do, some shopping to attempt, some cooking to plan, DD has a photo session tomorrow for the end of year dancing concert... I'm hoping to squeeze a row or two in amongst the other funs.

Oh, and I have to show you some pictures of the skirt and dress I made for my girls - very cute, the pair of them.

By tomorrow. Promise!
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Warning- disgusting housework analogy ahead

I've been trying to find a way to describe how I've been feeling mentally this week - spluttery, mumbling, muttering, umming and ahhing.. unable to catch any single idea and spin it into a coherent train of thought, always being distracted by necessary but unexciting activities such as making dinner or getting ready for work.

At last, inspiration struck.

(brace yourself, this isn't pretty)

The best analogy I've found so far is the mess and tangle you get when you turn over the head of the vacuum cleaner and discover random threads, long strands of hair, nameless fluff and sadly identifiable pieces of recent children's meals snarled around the roller brush so badly that the only way to get it working again is to get the scissors out and hack apart the tangles until you have a sad little spread of dust and snippets on the floor and a reasonably clean roller ready to start spinning away again.
There is no way to save that promising gleaming strand of an idea, and those half-formed thoughts have been so thoroughly mixed up with the dust of everyday life that there is no way to sift them to clarity again.

I need to take a deep (mental) breath, sit myself down on the floor, and deal with the grunge.

Spring-cleaning - there is no escape.

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I'm not sure about this one...

You Should Be a Social Worker

You are deeply caring and empathetic. You are able to take on other people's problems as if they were your own. Sensitive and intuitive, you understand human emotions well. Helping others gives you the most joy in life. You feel like it's your purpose in life. You do best when you: - Have a lot of responsibility - Greatly impact someone's life with your work You would also be a good philanthropist or stay at home parent.

What Should You Be When You Grow Up?

When I was a SAHM, I seemed to spend more time on Ravelry than sitting playing blocks with my children...
Then again, I like working with people, I run a school library - lots of social work happening there!

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Weekend snippets

It is amazing (or not really) how much you can get done when you have an extra couple of days in front of the weekend!
Over the past four days there has been a visit to the Show, knitting, necessary house-cleaning, knitting, kitchen duties, knitting, DS had a friend over (who came over all eight and begged to go home at ten pm that night, poor little bloke), reading, knitting, clothes washing, shopping, knitting, a trip to the Richmond Maze to see some friends, knitting, watching the first Indiana Jones movie with the MOMD (who was astonished that I had known that he'd never seen them - pure serendipity and sheer dumb luck), knitting, more time in the laundry, muffins, chocolate cake, knitting..... I'm having a lovely time, and no RSI due to all the interruptions :>

***later that evening...***
Well, the kids made mud, then mud pies, then had a mud fight, then painted their limbs with mud, then when they ran out of skin, painted their clothes with mud. It's a good thing that I'm pretty relaxed about dirt (and that no mud ended up on the clean towels on the washing line - that would have been the end of Relaxed Mum and the beginning of Furious Mum, pretty much instantaneously!!!). The MOMD was late home from helping a neighbour put in a new staircase, having stopped for a chat and a beer or two, so I put the kids in the shower in the laundry, and started the dinner, and gave the very relaxed MOMD the mop for the laundry floor. It has taken a couple of hours, but the children are now all clean, dry, dressed, fed, clean of tooth and put to bed. The MOMD will be in bed shortly. I am looking at maybe 90 minutes of unfettered freedom, tea, chocky cake and complete control over the remote. What a great way to finish the weekend!!

So, the knitting this weekend?
A swatch with my new Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed, colour 'Enamel' - think inky blue with flashes of blue and indigo (not allowed to say purple for this one):

I grafted the toe on Berlin #1 and cast on for Berlin #2:

I washed the doll parts, ready to finish seaming and to add details (like, oh, I don't know, ears, a face... things to make it less weird-blob and more recognisable-doll).

I haven't done any shawl knitting (that requires no people talking to me), but I did make a start on the MIL tea-cosy - see Ravelry for details!! (Neri, if you're reading this, I am not showing you pictures - you will just have to wait until you unwrap it)

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Long Lacy Summer

Well, it seems like I'm just asking for trouble, sitting here in Hobart and talking about a long summer, but there's lace involved, and hey, I'll be tripping around NSW for 4 weeks enjoying the warmth up there, so it worry me if Hobart has snow for Xmas this year like they did in 2006 (we were in Hay for that one too). Bells is hosting but in no way organising a Long Lacy Summer, which I had been sorely tempted by, and then my present arrived, and I was lost.

The Wollmeise has found something it would like to be - the Forget-Me-Not Lace Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark - see previous post for links, I'm too hayfevery to bother finding them again.

Proof:


I hadn't got much done today due to four loads of washing, a tax return, and turning the skein into a ball (forgot to photograph that - it's big and round and beautiful). That pic is chart one plus one repeat of chart two, six more repeats to go till Chart 3!!

Time to have a cuppa, guess at clothing for the morrow, and sit down to knit some more. I'm working on my Vegas Anastasia sock when my brain gets too clogged to follow charts, so no matter what happens, there will be colour in my evening.

Yeah, that really doesn't sound like polished prose, but I have cold+hayfever, and didn't take any anti-histamine or paracetemol until lunchtime, so there was several hours of sneezing this morning that smooshed the inside of my head against my skull way more times than is good for me. I should go pat my yarn until I feel better. I could even take it to bed with me like Mad Mad did a while back - no, wait, that was before hers had knitting needles and stitch markers in it. Maybe I should put mine on the table beside the bed instead.
G'night, I'll let you know how my knitting entries go in the Royal Hobart Show this week.
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My Bit of Randomness

Bells tagged me for this meme, and since I haven't finished the Great Flickr Upload yet, let's whip this one in to tide us over :>

Seven Random Things About Me

1. I remember plotlines, subplots, character interactions and significant non-verbal cues from anything I've read or watched and paid attention to. I can give detailed accounts of the flow of a subplot through several books in a series or episodes in a book, and analyse the relationships between significant characters based on not a lot. Sometimes this is handy, and sometimes people have to tell me to stop, they only asked did I watch it last night.
2. Sometimes I get names mixed up, eg calling my children by my dogs' names.
3. I don't like roses much. I prefer tulips once they've opened right out - that egg-shape does nothing for me. I love gerberas, zinnias, anemones, ranunculus and nemesia. I also love structural flowers like proteas and grevilleas, and I love gumflowers.
4. I didn't really learn how to sing until I had my son, and sang him to sleep - I never really knew how to switch into my singing voice before then. I'm still not a great singer though.
5. My husband's birthday is the day before mine. We usually still have two cakes though.
6. I can ignore lollies, milk chocolate, ice cream, custard, most bikkies - but I am very susceptible to dark chocolate, home-made cake or bikkies. My sweet tooth is quite picky.
7. I do not, have never, and probably will never like raw tomato. Big, small, red, yellow or pear-shaped.
   

So, who wants to play? Leave a comment if you do :>

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I Just Can't Do It

I can't bring myself to watch the movie I borrowed yesterday, I am Legend. I thought maybe I'd be able to watch it if the MOMD was awake beside me instead of snoring gently, but no. Only halfway through and I'm not interested in ratcheting my pulse up any higher. It isn't even the rabid-wild-pig noises - I hate sitting there waiting to see where the caught-by-his-own-trap-and-dripping-blood scene will end up (sorry about the pun, those who've seen it). I realise he must get away, because with 45 mins to go he can't be caught by flesh-eating mutant plague victims just yet, but I'm guessing there will be some seriously scary bits between there and the end, and I'd like to be able to fall calmly asleep tonight thank you very much. I'll ask the MOMD how it ended.
So, for the next little while I shall read blogs, trawl Ravelry, and work on this baby-cardi. I might even be able to get partway through the neckband ribbing!
Oh, and today had a bakefest - banana-yoghurt muffins, no egg so school friendly (should the frozen ones last that far), and brownies - wholemeal, a bit too gooey, but amazingly rich. Also a tidying-fest - large areas of carpet are now visible, and hands no longer adhere themselves to tabletops - because a friend was dropping round for a catch-up-fest! (Sorry, that really was one 'fest' too far - blame the adrenalin come-down) We met when she was associate-lecturing at my uni, and had a lovely time comparing work/study etc situations. It was great to just sit and natter with someone in the same profession, looking at the differences and similarities - I am now in an independent school, she's in a public school, but we both have the same sorts of colleague interactions, or grotty tasks like stocktake to face up to. It can be very odd being the only TL in a school, because unless it is a very small school, most staff are not the only teacher of their subject/year level.
Knitting-wise, there is this baby-cardi on my lap, the wildly orange socks (pausing while I deal with this cardi), and then a zillion other WIPs, UFOs and plans! I think though that I shall take up Jae's challenge and get stuck into something I've been thinking of for over a year. More details as I get my act into gear.
Ok, that'll do for now. Have a great Wednesday everyone - we're off to the park to meet some friends from playgroup and admire the new baby!
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Can you BELIEVE these shoes???

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What I Did On My Weekend

There was assorted housework and coddling of scratchy-throated toddler (who shared it with me).
There was a toddler's teaparty - my small daughter turned 2 on Thursday!

In other news, I finished the Knucks for my son:

There was a Craft Fair in town, so I met up with Penni to go through, and Jen and Kate and Kirra from our snb at lunch, and may have had a little yarn follow me home...
- and some buttons too.

The first two balls have decided to be an Argosy scarf (pic soon, I promise), which I cast on last night in front of Doctor Who (WOOT!! The Doc is back in town!!!)
The sock yarn is going to speak to me after I find out the next SKP08 sock tomorrow. I have not quite finished the toe on my first Berlin, but I think I'll get it done tonight - I did another half-repeat and I think it will be nice now. I worked some more on my Wedge Hat, on my Jet vest, and picked up a long-neglected monkey sock and turned the heel.

And now Miss 2 is a-wailing (I stopped jigging her around upside down), and I must went.





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Before I Dash Off

I am here, but school has resumed and I am somewhat lacking in time to knit or blog.

I have been working on the toe of my Berlin sock, and it's all bad. I think I need to do another half a repeat of the lace pattern to get the length right before I do the toe. Time to tink again.

I finished knitting my son's Knucks - now to weave in ends and duplicate stitch some lightning strikes onto them.

My hat is the size of a lunch plate. My head is much bigger. Thus I cannot claim to be halfway through yet. Bring on the dinner plate!

I've been reading La Harlot's meditations on journeys to the land of Knitting. I believe I am a consul.

Time to wash, dress, scoff muesli, and head off early, to do some serious desk-taming before people come in and start asking me for things. So much easier to get work done when no-one else is at work!

Last night was bill-paying night. I sat down and worked through the pile of paper, paying some now and scheduling some for the end of the month. It is so nice to be able to do that and not fret about having no cash left over for emergencies or treats. Paid work has some definite benefits :>

Catch you later
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