Lazy Long Weekend

Hobart Regatta Day today – so nice to have a long weekend after one week of getting ready for term! Lovely mild weather, lots of jobs being done around the house, yesterday we went to the Botanic Gardens and roamed around for several hours spotting changes and admiring the vege garden… Today I have to do a certain amount of knuckling down and sorting out work stuff. Including some kind of trim to take the remnants of purple out of my son’s hair. Oh, and polish shoes.
Knitting? hmm… maybe if I put the cookbook stand on my desk and read and knit at the same time? There has been knitting (a bit) this week, but without the photos are you going to believe me?

Back we are and back I go…

As may have guessed, we are back from our little trip away. We went to Stahan (pronounced straawwn) for 3 nights, camping in our brand new tent, which was lots of fun! The weather was beautiful, and we went on a cruise up the Gordon River through a National Heritage area and learnt lots about the history of the area and why Huon Pine is so special, and then the next day we took the bus to Queenstown (mining town, the moon-scape has to be seen to be believed) to catch the restored Great Western Railway steam train back to Strahan, learning about the history of mining in the area, how to pan for gold, and that steam trains are stronger than diesel trains!

After Strahan we headed up to Latrobe to visit the lovely Tinkingbell and her family for four days. There were kids running around playing games, adults having a turn on the Wii after the kids went to bed, a fluctuating population of children in the tent, a lot of exclaiming over the gorgeous things in Tink’s stash, plenty of sitting and knitting and chatting, and the occasional sugar-free dark-chocolate coated roasted almond or glass of wine. Tink’s family received their very belated Chrissy prezzies, and Tink gave me a couple of knitterly goodies. Tink and I went for a long walk one morning, we took the whole mob to Tasmazia another day (four hours running around mazes – fabulous!) and on our last day visited the Anvers chocolate factory (yum) and then Narawntapu National Park for a walk and a talk on wombats and how to spot their burrows.

On Saturday we bid Tink Happy Birthday and left them to their weekend, and headed into Launceston to catch up with Cindy 2paw over lunch. She had prezzies for everyone, and I gave her a little knitted purse made from a pattern in Little Andean Knits. Pics to follow – I have to dash to work!

It was a lovely break, I am glad we made the effort to go and do it. There will be more camping in our future!

The problem with being on holidays….

is that having so much unscheduled time, the days just roll on and suddenly I find there’s less than two weeks till I go back to work, and I’ve blogged even less than usual!

So recently I:

• was thrilled with the swift the MOMD made for me
• was planning to go to my knitting group’s dyeing day to show it off
• was not thrilled when my son woke up feeling fluey and coughing dreadfully on that morning
• had my own dye fun at home
• enjoyed playing with my stash
• had a family day out around Salamanca on Sunday, including discovering the Mona Foma festival/exhibition/event, which was bizarre and much fun
• played with the vege patch
• am picking lots of apricots, though not as many as last year – I was pretty ruthless with the pruning and thinning in spring
• have picked up an old UFO – top-down raglan cotton cardi for daughter – and am motoring along on that
• have been reading actual books
• sorted out two types of childcare and a dancing lesson
• have been for lots of walks, some of them even strenuous!
• went to the gym, did a full weights session, and am still aching
• coddled my poor dog Holly, who had four back teeth removed. If only she’d learnt to floss at a young age.

(mouseover for names; food dye on cream 4ply)

Next up: a day and a half of prep for school resuming, some dashing around, and then off to the West Coast to camp for four days, then up to Latrobe till the weekend to visit the glorious Tink and her family, catch Cindy 2paw on the way back down, and back to work on Monday 1st Feb.

Can I have a snooze first?

Distractions

I’m on holidays, and yet I feel like I have even less time for blogging than ever! Perhaps it is because term-time has it’s own daily and weekly routines, and things are done there-and-then because that’s all the time I have, whereas during the holidays I am less bound by the clock or calendar, and more likely to get on with that job that I’ve been putting off, or to make playdough for my kids, or to dye yarn, than to sit down and blog about it.

I have been rearranging the rumpus room to give myself a little slice of it that can be pointed out as ‘Mine!’ (no small thing for a family of five in a three-bedroom house). That done, I got out/down all boxes and bags of stash/UFOs/WIPs and laid them out for appraisal:

Today I’ve been taking pics and bagging up balls of yarn in weight and fibre groupings, updating my Rav stash details and starting to put it away again. Knitting has been slow while I’ve had everything out, but hopefully once I’ve gotten everything organised and put away, I will feel less intimidated by the volume of it all and tackle it like an elephant – one small piece at a time!

PS 3 1/2 yr old child included for scale.

Peeved

After a couple of rather warm days (38 and 34 deg C) it is overcast and blustery today, cool enough to wear a shrug inside and make the baking of cupcakes and meatballs a fun task instead of a sweaty chore.

Unfortunately the cupcakes and meatballs are not going to be consumed by knitters and their children at a dye-fest today. Instead they will be packaged up and frozen for later consumption.

Having made the aforementioned cupcakes and meatballs, and skeined and soaked 2 kgs of 4ply wool, and checked the address and got the car back from the mechanic so I could use it today….. my DS woke up with a nasty cough and sore throat and feeling very sorry for himself. There will be small (and very small) children there today, and I cannot drag an unwell child into the car, drive 40 mins, infect everyone else and drive home again. No matter how much I was looking forward to playing with colours and fibres and seeing my friends.

I am feeling a little peevish.

First week of the new year!

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all been enjoying the beginning of 2010. I’ve been having a satisfying week, getting stuck into a lot of jobs that were not urgent enough to force myself to do during term time. I’ve also been enjoying family time, and time to cook, and listen to podcasts, and garden, and the occasional spot of knitting.

1. Lavender, 2. Chest freezer, 3. Sewing shelves, 4. washing, 5. iPod speaker dock, 6. Over halfway, 7. Cardi yoke, 8. Plum jam, 9. Seedlings, 10. Lavender and Carnations, 11. Silvanberries, 12. Clean fridge

explanations are in the photo descriptions on my flickr pages. Pretty much self-explanatory though.

PS the fridge is in fact not in another universe at 90* to our own plane of existence. Maybe I should look at my photos after uploading them and before blogging.

New Year’s Eve

After a year full of family, friends, work and travel, I am finishing 2009 by cleaning and rearranging the house, camping in the backyard in our new tent, enjoying some completely unstructured and timetable-free time with my children and hubby, making large and colourful plans for the garden and my hobbies, and sitting around reading books and drinking tea or chilled wine (depending upon the hour).

We made good on some of our plans for 2009

• to go bushwalking (once),
• camping (in hand with our brand new tent),
• exercise regularly (interrupted somewhat by the winter of germy woe)
• do more family things – there have been cafes, museum, parks, dog walks, visits to relatives, performances…

I have passport application forms ready to fill out, I have been rearranging my knitting and sewing stashes as part of the end of year clear-up, I have washed and clipped dogs, washed some house windows, weeded garden beds, am sewing things for my girls….

All in all, a year that provided plenty of challenges but many moments of fun and friendship. I look forward to more of the same in 2010!!

I wish all my friends the very best opportunities in 2010, and look forward to talking with you all in whatever form we can manage!

Season’s Greetings!

(Multi-lingual greetings here, arranged with Wordle)

Warning: No pictures!!

Because if I wait to transfer/upload/link them, you’ll be waiting till after xmas!

Recent happenings:

* Much baking. Nigella’s kids’ bikkies (I love my food processor). Also Simplicity Chocolate Cake from NMAA cookbook. Most excellent whack-it-in-and-whizz-it-round cake ever. Makes awesome cupcakes.

* Cleaning. Eg windows. Then it rained for two days. I’m not cleaning any more windows until I want the garden watered.

* Washing. Eg every blanket, doona cover, and knee rug in the house. There are times when an hour and a half to wash the sheets is a little longer than I’d like to wait. The express function is neat though.

* Shopping. Well, not really. Major purchases are being held off till the Boxing Day sales. Scored some great bits of fabric from bin at Spotties. Looking forward to some sewing.

* Knitting. Xmas meet-up at (Rav link) Bishopstone’s house. Finished practice tea cosy for MIL. Felted it. V cool, but needs a little more hand-felting to even out lumps. Much knitting of sock.

* Carols. By the Bay. Julie Anthony. Shiny costumes and much performing. Not a lot of singalong for two and a half hours. I hung a head-light (no idea what they are called, little LED light on adjustable elastic headband) around my neck and knitted on. Home after 11pm. Do I need a nap today or what.

Time to go hang out more washing and put more on and have another cuppa and go to the shop to order a ham etc etc etc.

Catch you soon!

Defence

Clothe my feet in history

Write my life through patterns

Paint my dreams with colours

Knitted hope – joy – strength – pain – fear – weariness

persistence – determination – enthusiasm

laughter

These stitches are my armour