A long Sunday

G'day all!

What an excellent Sunday it has been. Not a bad weekend either. Yesterday, well what did I do yesterday?

*blush* I didn't knit in public. After trying to get some stuff organised, I got a phone call from my brother, reminding me about the meet-up at my sister's place to go and look at the memorial park where we are going to install the olds. So at midday I trawled off, taking photos of the freaky clouds over the Dandenongs as I drove (btw, that isn't blue sky, that is really blue cloud behind the foggy stuff)


and then after lunch and chit chat we hopped in the car and had a look at the possible sites.

Here's the view that we want, looking southish towards the Dandenongs:


and sorta north-eastish to the Yarra Ranges


Why is a view important?

Cos here is the view from out the front of Home:


And here is the house I grew up in:


And the primary school I went to, conveniently only two doors up from Home:


I snapped these shots yesterday since I was almost driving past. I also squinted up the sideway and found that they still have the two lilacs, so sometime soon I am going to have to go ask them and see if I can get cuttings. One lilac isn't particularly special, but the other one, a short pale mauve lilac came from the garden of one of Mum's elderly friends and so it has some family meaning. The cutting is about 50 years old from a plant that was planted possibly two centuries ago. Hmm, distracted from the reason that the olds need a view. They had a great view of the Dandenongs from home and now they will have a view back. OK, so they aren't in a position to enjoy it exactly....

Mum would also be pleased cos there is a bandstand nearby. The old man would never take her dancing enough. Mum liked dancing. No excuses soon! LOL!


So by the time I got home at 5pm, it was a bit late to grab my knitting and head out to a shop to knit cos they had all shut (except for Borders but I didn't think of them, instead thinking of cooking dinner).

After making myself some very yummy chicken soup, I wandered over to see the last performance of the show Nathan has been involved in. It was a caberet type show and was quite pleasant. Most of the performers were amateurs and most of them did a very good job. Nathan's mum was sat on by one of the professional artists as part of his act, but she shunted him off quick smart. There was a man there who looked disturbingly like a skeksi in the audience. It was the professionals that really did let the side down. No names mentioned but there comes a time when people should admit their best is past them and they should disappear gracefully into the sunset. Nathan got a certificate for being the "recipitent (sic) of the best piano player award." LOL Plus he got given a cyclamen, which was nice but he says next time he won't do about 30 rehearsals in 8 weeks and six performances for a certificate and a cyclamen - some $$ would be nice instead. He had no connection to the theatre group at all except for knowing someone who knew someone....

Hokey dokey, today. Today we got into the garden and hacked away. We hacked lots. We hacked so much greenery down that we have to get Nathan's dad's car and trailer to take a heap of stuff to the greenwaste recycling place. The front yard is now more bits of hacked down shrubs than it is shrubs. We haven't finished yet by any means. It was so pleasant outside that I wandered around in a little tank type swimsuit top (and pants and shoes!). Probably about 18 degrees and nice in the sun.

We went out to a plant nursery" for a while and Nathan bought a three way grafted nashi pear. It cost much less for the three way graft than for three plants that we have no place to put. We picked up a 500mm tub to put it in for only $7. It should do ok until we get our own place to live in, whether or not it is this one. We also bought some green manure seeds to sow in the vegie patch, plus a lot of cheap potting mix and cow manure from the local enormous hardware supplier.

I washed some of the yarn I have been spinning and hung it out to dry. What I did is called setting the twist, but I call it sorta washing it cos it involves a bucket of hot water, a bucket of cold water and some eucalyptus oil to make it all smell nice. I dunk the yarn into the hot water, shove more and more in, let it sit for about 5 minutes, then hoik it out and squeeze the excess water out, then put it into the cold water bucket to shock it and maybe felt it a little, then back into the hot, back into the cold then into pillowcases or cushion covers and into the washing machine for a spin around the block. Most of it managed to dry on the drying rack, unlike my clothing on the line - miracles do happen.


Some Wendy Dennis polwarth all plied up:


An experiment in about 200g of mostly red merino blending through to blue merino/silk mix via a red/blue merino/alpaca? mix. The colour is off - it goes through to navy but the camera just could not get a good shot and I can't fudge the colours well.


The other Wendy Dennis that I spun up that is a mate to the hot pink and blue yarn, but I separated out the salmon and blue and plied them normally not navajo style:


Knitting? You want talk of knitting? None of that here! Maybe tomorrow, but tomorrow is a public holiday and I'll probably be in the garden again, hacking more shrubs to death. We are contemplating taking down two trees, though one is too large for us I think. The other one likes to play with the power lines when it gets windy and it is a blasted useless thing that develops lots of enormous black scale (big as your little finger nail, honest!), drops its leaves two months before anything else, has a perverse liking for whacking people on the head when they are wearing hats and harbours weeds in its gnarled base. The Etherknitter has said gardeing is not necessarily a gentle past time, and at present I'd have to agree!

anon!