Crazy critters

G'day all!

Well I'll be hornswoggled. Over the last week or two I've had lots of new people commenting on my blog. If I am not careful, I'll start feeling bigheaded. A couple of you have emailed me privately. You'll have to excuse me for not replying yet - I'm a tad busy at present and a bit distracted by ex-house woes. Even getting six comments on a post starts getting me all het up about how can I reply to everyone, especially since blogger mostly does not pass through people's email addies - I dunno how the big name bloggers can deal with it all 8-) Thank you all - it's a privilege.

The other day I needed a little retail therapy so I went off to a local craft/material shop in town. I found the BESTEST glass Christmas ornaments EVER! I just have to share them with you.

A Christmas elephant on a little circus trolley. Cos elephants just smack of Christmas, don't they?


A teddy bear on a crescent moon. This one made me laugh in the shop. Laughing in shops at christmas ornaments is Wrong - people look at you funny. What does the bear look like he is doing? To me the bear looks like he has been caught in the act - his grumpy face seems to be a bit surprised at the interruption. Excuse me!


A kingly gingerbread man monster who has wiped his nose across his face, possibly when uprooting the Christmas tree he is carrying. I wouldn't want to meet this gingerbread man - he and the Stay Pufft monster might get along well though. (BTW this is the one ornament I thought was "OK.")


This is the best one of all. This is the stuff that nightmares are made of. A soldier with glittery eyes and what is happening with his mouth??? Expect to see him in the next horror flick. (he won't photograph well either, even spookier, so maybe he won't show up in the next round of horror films...)



Here is some of what we did in the garden yesterday. The previous owners were very fond of a range of plants that provided lots of green and variegated leaves and lots of screening. We want a different garden. So this:

with its lantana, cotoneaster, viburnum (not a pretty viburnum, a dull one with weeny flowers), gazanias and something else we couldn't identify, is now this:

Five reddish most Austin roses (two yet to be planted), a number of native grasses and daisies and some eremophilas.

We are still worrying ourselves half sick about this stuff with the ex-house. Stress hits both of us in the gut. Some of the demands, well, ok. Others - like umm excuse me? Someone went and emptied two pots on the back yard. Wasn't us. Plus more rubbish has blown in. Wasn't us. I've spent nearly 8 years picking up other people's rubbish - junk mail, chip and lolly wrappers, plastic bags, paper wrappers, little sachets and other stuff with Chinese characters on them. For some reason rubbish blows into the place. Anyway, no more mention of it. Not today anyway.

Speaking of stress, the sock is past the heel. I knitted about 5 inches and a shortrow heel in four half hour train trips. I knit fast when I am worried. I found the other sock and discovered that it is not that dissimilar to the sock I am making. The toe is different but I've used a short row heel on the other sock, and the stripe placement is different but I am not too fussed. I just want to finish the sock so I can make another sock to mate with another unpaired sock. I am usually not into matched pairs of socks but around here, we want our handknitted socks to mate up with similar socks. Not that they are breeding all by themselves - pity. Once these two mateless socks have mates, I can get some pretty pink self-striping sock yarn. (Thank you guys for your comments and offers to buy yarn in the US and send it on a bit cheaper - I will keep that in mind. You will need to keep in mind that I can't do bank transfers or US dollar drafts - these cost up to $25 a pop! Paypal is our friend though. And I must pay Jillian.)

I can also now go back and finish the picovoli tee I was making - I ran into some issues with the neck flopping around but I've worked out a solution that I think is quite reasonable. Pics later, after I've finished the arms. LOL.

Finally, here is a most beautiful creature (I'm not kidding) though he gave me a shock when he came running up next to my hand as I was folding up the cardboard in the recycle bin.

He is sitting on the bottom of a two litre juice bottle. I think he is male cos his abdomen is quite small. He is a juvenile huntsman just finally growing out of his baby stripes. Baby huntsmans have stripy legs. Dunno why - camouflage? Telling adults that they are juvenile?

anon!

Comments

  1. Anonymous10:41 pm

    Duuuuude! Whatever. You just bought a house. Have I said anything?? I am so not worried about it! Really. You have enough to be stressed over.

    No worries, right??

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4:07 am

    The spider. You see, I have a terror of spiders equal to my fascination with them. So I will gladly sit and watch one spin a web for long minutes.

    But if that same spider should touch my person, or, God forbid, hang down in front of me as I go through a doorway, look out.

    I don't think I could live down under. I'd never sleep. We have tiny (relatively speaking) arachnids up here.

    (BTW, sometimes I try to reply to your emails and I get bounced. I'm not ignoring you.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh my god, I was laughing out loud with those discriptions of christmas ornaments! Too funny!

    Awesome spider too. So is he going to be eating all the nasty little bugs that eat your wonderful garden plants?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think your ex-landlord is a blethering idiot (that's the polite version). Sorry it is still dragging on, I can sympathise with the effects of the stress, it gets me that way too.

    The Christmas decorations are wild. Quite bonkers :-) The gingerbread man is scaring me. Not quite as much as the spider though! Actually I wasn't freaked out when I saw the spidey photo, I'm a bit better about them these days. Mind you we saw a programme recently about Aussie animals like spiders, snakes and crocs and the folks who go in to extricate them from where people don't want them. I never want to meet a funnel web spider!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous5:22 pm

    I've been bemused many times by how casual or pedantic landlords can be. I once sprayed cooking oil all over a wall in a flat and couldn't get rid of the stain (a long, and rather funny story, that one). Was sure I'd lose the bond, but nobody said anything.

    Later I rented from an aquaintance through an agency. He moved out, leaving mouldy carpet that was so dusty you could see shadowing where the furniture had been. I had to get it steam cleaned. When I left, he bitched about the glow-in-the-dark stars we'd stuck on the bedroom ceiling (and had forgotten about).

    When you do these things your landlord has asked you to, take photos. If you can, take someone who can act as a witness. Even better - get the estate agent to look the place over before you leave. Then you can prove any rubbish was dumped or blown in later.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The spider - first reaction on seeing it: sharp intake of breath! - second reaction: quick look around the walls of my living room. Yes I have a phobia. Trying to get over it but cannot even look comfortably at the spider knitting pattern in Barbara Walker's 'Charted Knitting Designs' Only spiders I have liked: Charlotte and Inksy Winksy.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Loooooooooooove the spider as long as he's at your house and not mine.

    We have a lot of daddy long legs at our house but we also have the occasional huntsman.

    I think the teddy ornament is really cute.

    Cathy

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous10:11 am

    Ohh what a beauty your spidey is! Whenever they find their way into my apartment, I photograph them before catching and releasing them. :) I'm so happy to see someone else who likes spiders too.

    ReplyDelete
  9. LOL - you've managed to terrify me twice in one post!! First with the zombie nutcracker guy and then with a giant spider. Shudder...I am one of the wimpiest people you will ever see around spiders. Particularly large ones. Thankfully they don't grow very big in this area of Canada - the biggest I've ever seen was still only about 1.5 inches across. I can totally deal with them if they stick to their spots though - it is the ones that skitter about the house or drop down from doorways that send me into fits of "is it on me, is it on me?" hysteria. Ridiculous, I know.

    ReplyDelete

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