Possum paradise and next stop on the knitting trip around the world ...

Before we arrive at our new destination I have to share these photos of one of our resident possums. We are having the three big Fleas and partners and assorted little fleas over on Saturday to go through the various bits of furniture, books, junk etc we are not taking with us in the move. As Grandpa Flea was going around the house "making an inventory" (isn't that like a man , I was just going to make a list! ) we moved outside to the area referred to as "under the house" - it's actually an open carport under the house. On a raised concrete area to one side, various tools etc are stored and also the junk we didn't want in the house while we were "open for inspection". There, just cuddled up in a ball on the cold concrete floor, in amongst the various bits and pieces, was a fat furry bundle of possum.
It woke up and had a bit of a scratch,
decided we were only nuisance value, not a threat, and then went back to sleep again.
Today our magic flying shawl is landing in Scottsdale, Arizona where Rachel lives. Aaahh, I remember it well! It was the spring of '85 and I had a fifteen year old boy who thought all females were the devil's spawn, and a thirteen year old, rebellious girl in tow on our first ever overseas trip. We had just come from the Grand Canyon where the 15 year old had bought a book on walking in the Canyon. His favourite part was the page where it warned against taking menstruating women with you, as bears have a very keen sense of smell and are liable to give chase and eat everyone for breakfast. This fitted perfectly with his (then) views about women and if he read the page aloud once, I swear he read it out a hundred times. This did a lot to ease tensions between the siblings (ha ha) not to mention with their long-suffering mother!

Grandpa Flea had flown off to Houston or somewhere on business and left us to our own devices with a rented car. We stayed in a motel/hotel in Scottsdale. This was spring, remember, early May, and the temperature was about 50 Celsius - it was HOT. It was even too hot to swim in the pool! We were all very nervous about being in the US and even more so without the biggest male of the family to protect us (we're not stupid - we'd heard about the range of various violent crimes, race riots and serial killers that lurked around every corner).

The first day we were there I had to visit the doctor as my ears had started to give me terrible pain on the flight from Australia and then on the internal flight to Phoenix. And I mean PAIN. So we spent most of the first day in the emergency department of some hospital, where I was tagged around the wrist and put in a bed with the sides pulled up while the kids loitered forlornly in the corner. Eventually a doctor came and explained to me that I had a pressure build up in the middle ear, and he would have to bore little holes in my eardrums!!! - if I didn't have this procedure, my eardrums would burst and it would probably leave me partially deaf. Now, I'm a coward and I don't mind admitting it. There was no way I was going to have holes bored in my eardrums by some strange man in some strange hospital in some strange city while I was responsible for two kids and had no Grandpa Flea there to hold everything together. To be honest, there was no way I was having it done - period. So after much "discussion" and dire warnings, I was sent on my way with some antibiotics, but not until after I had signed a waiver acknowledging that I had been WARNED and if anything happened to me, it would be ALL MY FAULT. Oh, I also had to pay for the consultation, the drugs and TEN MINUTES OF HEALTH EDUCATION.

I had desperately wanted to drive out to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, but it was so hot that I was too anxious to go - I was worried that if we broke down and managed to escape the resident and transient murderers, that we'd die of heat exhaustion. Instead we lingered in the hotel room all the next day and eventually went for a walk downtown in the late afternoon. I bought myself a necklace in one off the shops and we bought a few trinkets for the rebellious one's friends back home.

Later, we set out to drive to some restaurant on the top of a hill with a beautiful view. It's main claim to fame seemed to be that if you wore a tie there, they cut it off and pinned it to the ceiling with the hundreds of others snipped from hapless customers. We drove around for what seemed like hours - hopelessly lost and me getting increasingly anxious. In the end we stopped at a some sort of chain restaurant, where we had one of the most memorable experiences of our trip (I'm like Roxie - easily amused!). We were trying to order our food and drinks from a waitress who spoke with some sort of broad Arizonian accent. We had trouble understanding her, and she didn't understand us at all! but there was goodwill on both sides. We were trying to establish if the orange drink on the menu was a fizzy drink or a cordial type drink, or fresh juice (my kids were fussy!). After several attempts, the answer was " Well, ah cain't say yais 'n ah cain't say no, 'cahs ah don't rahtly know what y'all tokking abaht". We still laugh about it. So much for English being a universal language.

Scottsdale (as it was then) reminds me a bit of Noosa - it seemed to be a tourist destination for the seriously trendy and well-to-do. Is it still like that, Rachel? It was very charming but I'd only ever visit there again in the dead of winter. With a bit of luck it would only get to 40deg.Celsius!

Back on the magic shawl and home to Australia. Next post we'll visit Janette, Kate and Miss Fee.

A Knitting Trip continued .... with a small detour ...

My whirlwind virtual trip around the world was interrupted by a birthday party for the littlest Flea who turned 5 on Sunday. The house was a great happy chaotic mess of the birthday girl, two little cousins and assorted Mama, Daddy, aunts, uncles and the FleaPas. We had pink balloons, pink icing, pink presents, and a swimming pool cake with blue and red water and the two little cousins and the littlest Flea swimming in it! Oh -do you know how many people it takes to light the candles on a birthday cake? - three - one Grandpa to hold the match and one Daddy and a birthday girl to supervise! Look at the concentration on those faces.
My apologies to Roxie - I forgot to take a photo of the cupcakes with pink icing and smarties (M & Ms) decoration.

Now back to the knitting trip around the world - Maud, Miss Fee,and Rachel have all left a comment about where they come from. This is exciting (to me!). I'm falling behind in my responses, so:

Dianne admits to two knitting homes - California, USA and Exeter, Australia. I've been to California but without knowing the general location, can't say if I've been near Dianne's knitting lair, there. Exeter is in the Southern Highlands of NSW, about an hour and a half to two hours drive from my home. I have been to Robertson and Bundanoon in the same area, but can't recall Exeter, although I must have passed through there. It is a beautiful part of NSW with proper winters, unlike my part of Sydney. Robertson is the home of the "Big Potato" - Australians have a fascination for "big things" - we have "big things" all around the country - the big merino, the big banana (the first big thing in Australia, I think), the big oyster, the big prawn, the big bottle! and so on. Robertson is a potato growing area and so I guess someone had the bright idea of having a "big Thing" to attract the tourists - unfortunately, the big potato looks like a giant dog dropping (my apologies to the good people of Robertson if I've offended you - but someone had to tell you ...)

Next, Kathy of Indianapolis - I have never been to Indianapolis - the closest I've gone is Chicago about 15 years ago. I fell in love with The Field Museum - Grandpa Flea and I spent hours there and still didn't get off the ground floor! It's a bit like Questacon in Canberra, but a thousand times better. My favourite exhibit was the very large clear perspex incubator containing hundreds of hen eggs. As you watched, an egg would start to hatch and it was absolutely mesmerising to watch the little chick struggle to break out of the shell. Nothing like the sped-up sequences you see on TV! I also loved the The Art Institute of Chicago although when I just did a search of its website, I couldn't find the paintings that I remembered. Perhaps they are on loan or maybe even sold.

Willow hails from Los Angeles but is about to move north west to Camarillo. I have changed planes in Los Angeles - I even had a shower at the airport - but have never actually looked around there. The closest I have been is Las Vegas, which is not close at all. I found Camarillo on the map, but again Las Vegas would be the closest I have been. When we went to Las Vegas, it was the first time we had been overseas and we had three weeks travelling around - everywhere. We saw a lot of airports! and learnt from that experience.

Gemma lives in Bankstown, a south western suburb of Sydney. It's an area that I used to know quite well, as Grandpa Flea was living in a boarding house in the nearby suburb of Punchbowl when I met him. But that was many, many years ago and I probably wouldn't recognise it now. My eldest daughter was working there some years ago in the Environmental Protection Agency, but her department then moved into the Sydney CBD. Grandpa Flea's sister used to live at Padstow which is also in the same general area so over the years I've circled around Bankstown.

We now have to do a lightning speed hop over to Finland, where Maud lives in a place called Espoo. Check out Maud's posts on her Venezia sweater - it is a work of art. I can see on Google Earth that Espoo is inland and west of Helsinki but still on the south coast. I now know that it is the second largest city in Finland with about 250,000 people, and is part of the Greater Helsinki City area. And it has a Marimekko shop! I have been to Finland - to Helsinki airport! where I changed planes on my way from somewhere to somewhere - I can't recall now. The airport has some lovely examples of Finnish design in the shops but sadly that is the only part of Finland that I have seen to date. However, for many years - thirty or more, I have worn a Finnish designed silver heart around my neck. We used to have a shop at Eastwood a couple of suburbs away that only sold items from Finland. I fell in love with this particular heart and had to have it. It is looking a bit battered now from years of wearing - I've dropped it a few times on a concrete surface which has left a few marks and when my grandchildren were teething, they used to "gum" it when I was holding them. When we visited Stockholm we stayed in a funny little hotel/bed and breakfast place which was owned by a Finnish family. The owner's brother greeted us like long lost friends and gave us a discount as he had emigrated to Australia and was visiting his brother on holidays! He lives in Granville, the suburb that Lara is moving to. So I do have Finnish connections!!

More next post when I visit Rachel from Scottsdale and Israel and Miss Fee.