Slow progress

G'day all!

Well my week off work is up. I still have the weekend but where did my week go?

I think I know the answer to that.

Travelling into town only to find out my passport stuff is unacceptable. Dropping off nineteen skeins of yarn at the guild, and having to weigh and price them all after labelling them the night before. Of course I got some bits and pieces at the shop whilst I was at it....

Talking to a home loan mob and finding out we can borrow enough to buy a house whilst remaining comfortable.

Looking at houses online. That has probably taken up about 10 hours of my last two days. Finding out that I have to buy a place in Noble Park cos we are about $50K-100K short for the areas I'd like to live in. Could be worse. I could have to live in a place that is 1.5-2 hours one way commute each day. This will be about a one hour one way commute, or not much more than now. That hour or two a day makes a big difference. Given a choice of having a new place on a tiny bit of land that is out beyond the 9 circles of the Styx or an older place one with a decent bit of land is in the boondocks, I am going for the boondocks. Turns out that Nathan would like to live in the area we now live in too. Ah well, time will tell - maybe we'll trade up in a while, or have an investment property and really feel like the Joneses!

Checking out the "vibe" of Noble Park to see whether it is tolerable. The local supermarket looks pretty skanky but I can always do a fortnightly trip 15 minutes up the road to one of my favourite ones.

Cleaning up half of the garage, hopefully the worse half cos it was the part with the real junk in it rather than the boxed up stuff. Anyone know any Barbie doll collectors? I have a few mint in box and others that have never been removed - in my younger days I didn't want to play with these special Barbies, I just wanted to see what ones were in the brochure, the ones that never got released in Australia and were therefore more worthy of lusting after... LOL Yesterday the big bin arrived and we started filling it with rubbish from the garden and the garage:

Today we almost finished filling it (no pic but gee it filled fast once Nathan started carrying stuff out). We have a LOT of junk, and I mean junk that is junky rubbish, not just wires and bits of irrigation plumbing that are actually useful stuff. Soon we will have far less junk!

Digging out half the compost/dirt/cow manure mix from the pile in the front yard where Nathan was building a raised garden bed and carrying it around to the back yard in buckets, where it became my vegie patch in foam boxes. For 8 boxes I think I lugged about 32 buckets of "potting mix." Here's five of the boxes with onions and kohl rabi (seeds), capsicums and eggplants, capsicums and onions, asian greens and a thai birdseye chilli, lastly corn, minus boxes of corn, lettuce and zucchini (excuse the blodges in the bottom RH corner):


Cleaning the house up a bit - consolidating junk ready to be binned. Vacuuming. Doing about six loads of washing. An hour cleaning out the freezer after J left the door open all night. I have pics, but not of the big garbage bag of food I had to throw out. The pics are graphic. I shall share them another time. You will need to be strong to survive seeing the pics.

Doing a bit of spinning. Haven't taken a photo of the two most recent works/WIPS. Here are some of the earlier ones:


Left to right - alpaca, corriedale, merino/flax, wensleydale all lined up on Nathan's piano stool. I admit the alpaca was spun last week, not this. (clickable for bigger image)


A wee bit of Wensleydale in a never to be repeated colourway (what a shame!)




Some "Tropical Birds" in merino/flax mix. It has more green than shown in the photo. (clickable for bigger image)


The corriedale, showing the blend of coloured fibres.


The alpaca, which is actually oatmeal coloured.

Knitting a baby singlet and starting to embroider it. Takes longer to embroider than it does to knit. Honest!

And for something totally different, the most ugly tulips in the world, which is why I like them :-) They are called something like Flaming Parrot (should be a type of cocktail with that name).


Last, a boy and his other cat.


anon!

Comments

  1. Anonymous8:11 am

    You've been busy, and you sound so chipper!! You will be able to own a home, and have a good reason to get organized (the one thing I like about moving). All the newly-spun yarn is yummy, I especially love the earthy alpaca. BTW - the mailman left a KP surprise at my door last night. First glance at the order and invoice and all seems well. I actually thought y'all would go more nuts. I'll send it this weekend, promise, after I inspect (fondle) everything!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8:20 am

    jon and i moved this july. we're about 20-30 minutes from where we used to live, depending on how the traffic is going. we still shop at our old grocery store :) it helps that my mom lives 5 minutes from there, and we go to her house to use her washer and dryer. grocery stores where we live now are crappy and overpriced.

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  3. Good lord, you have been busy. No wonder preparing to move and all! Hopefully it won't be too much of a hassle to get everything together and in order! Love the yarn you spun up, what great colors. And don't you love spinning alpaca? It's one of the easier fibers to spin.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous6:27 pm

    Well done on the new house ! I am still dreaming of the day.... The wensleydale looks divine, and if you are serious about finding a home for your Barbies, I may be able to match them up with a good home. My oldest friend collects Barbies, and I am sure he would be willing to make a reasonable offer :) Email me at rhubarbandcustard@mac.com if you want his contact details.

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  5. I love that firey plant really lovely.

    Your cat looks the same as our cat.

    Happy knitting.

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  6. I like your veggie garden! We had to put all of our frost/damp-tender plants in the greenhouse, finally, so our back garden looks rather bare without lush bananas and cannas and the like!

    Isn't it amazing how much stuff you find you have, that is either total junk, or needs to go to the charity shop. I filled a charity bag last week with clothes, and just filled a bin bag today with other junk out of the wardrobe and drawers.

    As always I covet your pretty bright coloured yarn :-)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous10:46 am

    I love your ugly tulips too! How does alpaca spin? It's fairly soft and feels so delicate, and it doesn't look like you put a lot of twist in it.

    - MJ

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