Home again, home again ....

We're back home again after a Probus trip - three days on a bus and three days at Ballina - it's a long way. We broke the trip up at Coffs Harbour, but had a ten hour trip on the way home. Not my favourite way to travel, although we did have plenty of stops. I never thought I'd be one of those groups of 'oldies' who get off a bus en masse, all with their little name tags in case they forget who they are (oops! did I say that?) - but here I am and despite myself, I enjoy the trips! We may look like a bunch of old farts, but there are extraordinary lives behind the ordinary faces. We went to the naval Museum at Ballina, and on display was the ship's wheel from a ship sunk in WWII - and in our group was a 90 year old who was on the ship when it went down! He told us the story - absolutely incredible. The women staffing the front desk were overcome with emotion and wanted his phone number so the "boys" could get in touch with him for more details. He is the most delightful person - and amazingly fit - it's a bit humbling to be overtaken on a hill by a 90 year old!!

Saturday Sky - on Tuesday
This photo was taken at the sculpture garden of Thursday Plantation, a tea tree oil company on the north coast of New South Wales (sorry, the link wouldn't work - you can google it). It was a very interesting garden with a tea tree maze, a rainforest walk, and lots of mosquitoes - I think they breed them so you need to buy the tea tree oil to take the itch away!



Saturday Sky in Advance!
We'll be away again next Saturday, so I thought I'd get some credit up! If you look VERY carefully, you can just see a tanker on the horizon on the right of the photo.


Not the best photos, but the best I could do - and here is another not so good photo for Roxie and Carson. I went out on th deck last night for something and saw this little sweetie popping her head out, ready to venture forth for mealtime. She is very shy and I had a great deal of difficulty finding her on the screen as it was so dark - this is the only photo that had her in it - the other ten were of the tree trunk! Enjoy - sorry it's a bit blurry.


I went to the Guild meeting on Monday and was bombarded with baby jumpers for AIDS babies - forty of them! All different colours - and sizes! It's amazing how we can never all knit the same pattern and get the same size! We've given up doing rugs from squares for that reason. We now use strips!

Day 57 - I'm not ready for autumn ....

Autumn used to be my favourite time of year because the weather is usually cooler and we don't get the winds that invade spring. I love the cooler days and crisper nights, getting out my slippers again and reaching for the hot water bottle at bedtime.

The first of March marks the start of autumn in Australia, and a few days ago I had thought that the leaves of the Ginko biloba were starting to change, then convinced myself that I was imagining it. But the first yellow leaf fell from the mulberry tree today - a poor, lonely thing on the ground. And suddenly I realised that I'm not ready for autumn - but is it the season I'm not ready for, or this stage of life? I'll be 63 this year and am very conscious that both my parents died "young" - 69 and 70. If I follow in the family footsteps that gives me just six or seven years to do all the things that I've left undone. Perhaps that explains the obsession I've had with numbering the blog days - mmm - I'll have to give that one some thought.


Oh well, enough! Looking on the bright side - literally - I heard the rainbow lorikeets making a great fuss outside, this morning. Usually they only make that sort of noise when they have found a hapless possum outside in a tree in daylight (possums are nocturnal).


Sure enough, the lorikeets were prowling around one of the possum boxes, scolding, peering inside and generally disturbing the possum's slumber. In this photo you can see the possum having a bit of a scratch while one VERY cranky lorikeet scolds me for taking a photo!

Being laid low with "the cold", I've not had much enthusiasm for anything including knitting, so have limited myself to finishing another African jumper - knitted in plain red as I started it on the trip to Bundeena last week and didn't want to cart two balls of yarn around - and a couple of dishcloths - these latter in a vain attempt to use up some of the mountain of yarn that lives here. By the way, thank you Janette and Roxie for you get well wishes - and permission to whine! That brought a smile to my face! Little did Roxie know I'd get all morbid instead!

Day 34 - It's Raining - Rain & Broadband!

Can you believe, it rained yesterday! and I got connected to broadband! Of course all good things have a down side - it took me ALL day on the phone with the techs to get my connection working and then it threw me off last night at 1.00am (wh should go to bed earlier) and I've been on the phone all morning - mainly on hold -listening to music designed to drive you to drink - until I got reconnected again. Ahhh - the elctronic age - it saves soooooo much time - not.
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Here is a photo -at last - of the baby jumpers I have been knitting If you look carefully, you can see one of our possum boxes in the tree behind. We love the wildlife around here, but I have the crankies with the possums at the moment - the bigger brushtails have kicked the ringtails out of all the possum boxes, and the ringtails are more vulnerable than the brushtails. To add insult to injury, one of the brushtails has taken up residence under the house in the space between the floor of the study and the ceiling of the bathroom. AND not only that, I got up one morning recently to discover that my beautiful cyclamen pink cyclamen (Ha! work that one out) which lives on the table on the deck, was sitting there with all the flowers intact, but every single leaf eaten off - just bare stems surrounding the flowers! It looked very funny. Back to the baby jumpers - the knitting group I attend at Cherryhills has been producing dozens of these jumpers to go to Africa. Someone's mother's church group asked for help, so superwomen flew into action.

Annie Blatt's pattern is still giving me lots of problems - I admit to being spatially challenged - refer back to the school uniform disasters - I admit to reading a paragraph of a pattern and knitting 10 rows with a line of bobbles on the 6th - then discovering the next row says: AT THE SAME TIME INCREASE blah blah blah. Even acknowledging these deficiencies on my part, THE PATTERN IS BLOGGING CONFUSING!!

So I'm still tetchy.

Just for you, Roxie:


This is a large birdsnest fern that grew (self sown) under the airconditioner outlet at home - it obviously thrives with the constant drip of moisture.

By contrast, here's a photo of a tree fern that has been severely burnt off in the all the hot weather we've been having:



Also a photo of one of my my bromeliads that has survived the hot weather in relatively good condition because it's in a pot out of the sun: .Don't ask me why my photos are all over the place in relation to the text - I"VE ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT I"M SPATIALLY CHALLENGED and TETCHY!

Ms 4 year old Flea is arriving at 2.30pm (it's now 12.10) for a sleepover and we are having people for lunch tomorrow. Not a bed is made, including the little Flea's which is still stripped from the last Flea invasion, not a dish is washed, not a cake is made, not a chicken thigh has been marinated, not a dip has been made,and not a thing has been hung on the line (probably will need rewashing because i t's so steamy and washing smells very quickly if not dried straight away- so much for the water conservation drive) and there's nothing decided for tea tonight. Sounds like someone has tied me to a chair in front of a computer screen and said "FIDDLE YOUR LIFE AWAY, FOOL". On the upside though, Ms 4 loves her mama - and Grandma Flea doesn't score it for a kiss or a cuddle when mama's there. BUT when we have sleepovers, I'm very popular and get lots of juicy little wet kisses on the cheek and heaps of cuddles. I feel better already.

Conscious as I am of throwing many punctuation and grammar stones at those other people who DON'T CARE about our language, I am also conscious that I live in a glass house and do VERY occasionally slip up myself. Of course it's NOT MY FAULT- oh no - (I learnt this one off Grandpa Flea - Mr Infallible!) - any mistake is the result of a typo!! So my apologies to my fellow grammar police out there.

Peace to the world - in my dreams of course.

Day 30 - I Forgot Our Wedding Anniversary!

I have NEVER forgotten our wedding anniversary - but today I did. As Grandpa Flea rarely remembers it, it was not such a disaster, but I can't believe that I forgot. 42 years married might explain it and I have had a lot of other things on my mind.

Good news - today I signed up for broadband - it will take about two weeks for the modem etc to arrive, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I finished another little jumper for Africa when we were travelling - they look really cute in the bright colours. Annie Blatt is no easier than before - I discovered last night that, despite careful measuringand counting, one front is longer than the other - you know what happens next - creative blocking! I've unpulled it too many times to do it again. I'll start the two sleeves tonight and with a bit of luck will finish the cardi by the end of the week. Then I'll have to go back to Eloise or it will finish up as a permanent UFO. I have just tried to upload some photos but it is taking forever so it will have to wait until our broadband starts.

We have a meeting with the builder later in the week to finalise our contract for the townhouse. The year will go quickly, but I wish it were already built (hope the tense is correct - people in glass houses and all that ...). We have taken our house off the market over the hottest part of summer but the pressure will be on to get it sold before our new place is finished - otherwise I'll be putting out a call for food parcels!

Our garden is looking soooo bad - I think we will lose at least two tree ferns this summer - they are all self sown, and have all prospered until last summer when we lost a couple in the heat. Every time we go away we lose something in the garden - this last four day absence meant we missed the watering day and it coincided with very hot weather. There is not much we can do about it.

I'm glad you didn't mind the rant, Roxie - I'm not as tetchy today, but still not happy about the state of the world.

Day 7 - Little Flea

Yesterday we babysat the littlest Flea (4) while her Mama and Dadda had a very upmarket lunch to celebrate Dadda's birthday - ?52. I can never remember ages - not even my own children's. (That apostrophe nearly got me). They arrived home with a computer - a PC, so once they have it up and running I might be able to post photos from there. Apparently OSX is a known "issue" to Blogspot. In the meantime I'll try on our old computer which has an earlier operating system but in all respects is a very sick girl.

I have now finished 3 more baby jumpers for Africa and started a fourth, but will have to give some time to Eloise before I can indulge myself with the little projects in the Knitting Calendar.

The weather in Sydney is crazy at present - yesterday it was blistering hot and the forecast was for more of the same today, but it is overcast and very mild. Usually our summers have days of hot weather followed by a cool change for a few days then hot again. This year we have been having very hot and very cold (relatively of course) - we've even had several nights where it was cold enough to put a heater on!

This is a blah entry - I have been feeling very blah with nothing to say for a few days now , so am signing off to do some blah housework - it might perk me up a bit. Or maybe I should indulge myself by starting a new knitting project. Do stop by again - I'm not always like this!.

Happy knitting.
PS - Lucia - I love your blog

Day 4 - Life as I knew it ...

Well, Janette was not joking when she said that my life would never be the same again - these blog things take up so much time frustration - (1) I can't load photos - a common problem according to the "Help Group". (2) It takes hours to browse around other peoples' blogs (because I don't have broadband yet) and (3) updating each day is time comsuming. Even worse is that I like writing the wretched thing! Perhaps I'll change to an "author only read" blog and just use it as a diary. But that still doesn't solve 1,2 or 3!

Thank you for your postcard Janette - the holiday sounds really good. And thank you Shelley for stopping by - I'd love to visit New Foundland one day - it's on my (long) list of places to go.

My "incentive list" has done nothing to curb my eating - I nearly called it the "humiliation list" as it is meant to go down, not up! I thought that logging my progress publicly might help my motivation, but guess what - it hasn't worked. Still, tomorrow is another day ... so long as it's not like today with a very long lunch with friends who cooked all sorts of yummy things including hand-made chocolates (and we all know it's rude to refuse to try things, don't we?)

Yesterday I managed to buy some more acrylic for the baby jumpers for Africa and finished the one on the needles. I think they'll be a constant companion this year. They are good mindless knitting for in the car etc. I've also done a few more squares for a blanket in Caressa yarn that I started in a vain attempt to make my stash look smaller. It's also mindless. Eloise is still bubbling along - I've nearly finished the second front and still have two sleeves to do. It won't take long. By the time it's finished I might be able to put photos up - blogs without photos are not much fun. I still haven't located the angora for the calendar scarf but might be able to do some of the loop stitch floral pins with the yarn that is findable.

Happy knitting.

Thank you for the warm welcome

Thank you everyone for the warm welcome to blogland that you've given me. I've posted individual replies in the comments bit. We are currently trying to sell our house to move to a place more suited to our arthritic knees - in the process I've had to store most of my ENORMOUS stash away and hide all the other junk that normally clutters the house. I've quite fallen in love with living in a neat and clean house with the beds made! But (there's always a but ..) I've stashed everything out of sight for the inspections (don't open a cupboard door or it all falls on you) and I've carefully put my camera somewhere which is now quite irretrievable from the creaking memory banks - as soon as I find it I'll post some photos of Eloise. As well as Eloise I'm also knitting funny little baby jumpers for babies born with AIDS in Africa. Someone in one of my knitting groups has a mother who belongs to a church group which is knitting/collecting them for a charity somewhere (note: this level of vague detail is typical of my life these days!) Apparently the poor little newborns go home wrapped in newspaper to keep them warm. The instructions are quite specific - follow the pattern exactly, use only acrylic and no pastels as they may never be washed. We take so much in our own lives for granted.