Not more socks! And some things about me.

G'day all!

Happy Equinox! Today the day and night are the same length. Tell me about it! I now get up in the dark and if I haven't laid my clothes out the night before, I have to fumble around in the dark bedroom trying not to wake poor Nathan up! The sun rose just as I hopped on the train today. That is on the way to work, not the way home of course! ;-)

Some things about me (cos I can't be bothered thinking about 100 things):

1. I get very cranky whilst driving behind slowsters, wanderers and the indecisive. I also get cranky with people who are impatient, people who don't use their indicators (blinkers), and people who are nasty to learner drivers. Go figure.
   
2. I can't eat wheat, rye, barley, oat or dairy products. Yes there are still lots of things I can eat, just not takeaway.
   
3. I have a *thing* about knitting socks at present. Sock yarn is more important than any other yarn in my collection. At present.
   
4. I have been knitting for about 30 years now, on and off.
   
5. I got my first spindle in July 2004 and learned to spin on it at the end of August 2004.
   
6. I got my Ashford Traddy in January 2005 and boy did my spinning start zipping then!
   
7. I am known for being a very "chatty" driver. Ahem.
   
8. I love driving places, just not in traffic
   
9. I love visiting our High Country - Mt Buffalo, Falls Creek, Thredbo are magnificent places that everyone should experience a lot. Especially in summer when the wildflowers are out.
   
10. I love cross country skiing even though if you ever want to sell the car.... I've only done it twice and it nearly killed me both times cos I am unfit.
    
11. I am really into native plants, like Australian natives. I particularly like anything that doesn't grow in Victoria - Western Australian natives are most excellent and unfortunately often hard to grow here. I collect verticordias, petrophiles and isopogons, lechenaultias. I also collect brachycomes, which are somewhat easier to grow.
    
12. I have about 70 David Austin and Old Garden roses. I love roses too. The thornier the better - it ain't a rose if it don't have prickles!
    
13. I keep trying to grow my own vegies. Sometimes I have spectacular successes but mostly I have dismal failures (like growing three metre high corn only to have a rat come and chew all the cobs and then poo on the only one it didn't chew....)
    
14. I've been to the USA (mostly Madison, WI, a day in Chicago, one in NYC) and to England. And to the north island of New Zealand, but you guys are so like us that it doens't make much difference.
    
15. I've been married for 18 months. Egads.
    
16. We honeymooned in Western Australia during wildflower season. I drove us most of 8,500km (over 5000 miles) in three weeks in my weeny little car.
    
17. My car is mine, not our car. My husband can hardly drive it cos he is 6'5" and looks like an ungainly grasshopper stuck behind the wheel. I've had it longer than I've had him.
    
18. We bought our house in December last year. It is weeny. We have paid off $900 of the principal already after paying close to $5000 in mortgage so far. Only LOTS to go!
    
19. I like dyeing stuff.
    
20. I am addicted to colour.
    
21. I am solar-powered. I need solar energy to power me up in the morning. Once I have a good dose, I last until several hours after sunset.
    
22. I turn *mumble* on 3 November this year. Regular readers are invited to the party on 4 November 2006.
    
23. We have two cats, Nutmeg and Cheshire. We got them 13 months ago from an animal protection society.
    
24. I am rather reserved and shy amongst people I don't know.
    
25. I can be loud/noisy/extremely silly/a showoff amongst people I do know.
    
26. I have mostly gotten over being worried about what people think about me. Mostly.
    
27. I am the youngest of four and have 9 nieces and nephews.
    
28. I am an iNFp. This personality type is over-represented in bloggers. Quelle surprise!
    
29. I say "Quelle surprise!" when I am being sarcastic.
    
30. People often don't realise I am being sarcastic about something.
    
31. I want to run away from work and dye lots of yarn and sell it and make lots of money from it. Nice dream.....
    
32. I want to run a yarn shop where people can drop in and fondle yarn and chat and knit stuff and craft stuff and spin stuff. And give me money so that I can keep the shop open and make a living. Nice dream....
    
33. I have a PhD in fetal sheep anatomy and physiology. So that is Dr Lynne to you! ;-)
    
34. There is a market near where I did my PhD. I'd bring home legs of lamb, etc, for my housemates and I. They got worried about it.
    
35. I know more about sheep placentas than most people in the world, especially about the shapes and forms of each little individual placenta of 70 or 80 parts.
    
36. I am a terrible hoarder and DH is a magpie too.
    
37. I was brought up on a steady diet of SF tv shows such as Star Trek (none of this DS9 and Next Gen for me!) and Blake's 7. Babylon 5 remains my favourite show of all time
    
38. I cried when I heard that Andreas Katsulas died. This means no more G'Kar. G'Kar was my favourite B5 character. I never got to meet him.
    
39. Meeting Bruce Boxleitner was the biggest let down ever. Stunningly handsome man in the flesh (it really doesn't come through on film/tv, let me tell you!) but he didn't want to interact with the fans.
    
40. Peter Woodward (son of Edward Woodward) signed my tshirt in a certain place at a B5 convention. Cons are good fun and so was Peter. The smaller the "star" the more fun they were cos they had nothing to prove or reputation to maintain. They were there for a Good Time.
    
41. And I have a sense of humour, I hope, about my old con-going days, and I love Galaxy Quest.
    
42. I identify myself as a geek. I hang out with geeks. It is great to hang out with knitting geeks.
    
43. There are no geeks in my workgroup at work. This is very sad.
    
44. I like trians, planes and automobiles. Not the movie, the real thing. I stop to watch diesel and steam trains go by.
    
45. I love Thai food.
    
46. I insist on having at least three vegetables with my dinner. And that does not mean three onions, or an onion plus a potato plus a pea.
    
47. I hate red cabbage. And bitter things.
    
48. Yes, I hate coffee. It is bitter. I don't drink tea either, but will have a peppermint or lemon tea thanks!
    
49. I like chocolate but I can't have any dairy in it. At all. This is a problem cos I don't like bitter things and this includes bitter dark chocolate.
    
50. I would like to work in natural resource management.
    
51. Sometimes I can't wait to be old and be able to look back on my life with satisfaction and enjoy being able to wear clothes that I wouldn't dare wear now.
    
52. Sometimes I am scared of getting old and finding I haven't done the things I wanted to.
    
53. The original Star Wars trilogy is my favourite set of flims. I don't have the DVD set yet. I need the DVD set.
    
54. I hardly ever get colds and flu like other people (hardly ever, not ever!). So this recent bug has me constantly surprised cos I forget what it is like to have a real cold rather than some horrid virus that just makes you feel crook for week.
    
55. Both my parents are dead and so are all four grandparents, all long gone.
    
56. I miss having a connection to my past and to family history. Mum tried to sweep most of hers under the carpet and mostly succeeded.
    
57. I have to be very methodical about some things, like putting my handbag in certain places only, otherwise I wander around for hours (or so it feels) looking for it.
    
58. I tend to be a bit scatterbrained unless I am really interested in something. Then I am very focussed. Apparently this is a bit autistic. I think it is just me.
    
59. Last one! Ummm, I prefer reading blogs to 99% of the shows on TV. You guys are real! If virtual.
    

Remember my pink stripy socks?

Voila! (NOT Wallah! as I have seen on some blogs)
(There's another thing that gets me cranky - poor grammar and spelling, and misuse of words. Yep, I used poor grammar earlier but that is a stylistic thing, not ignorance.)

Or from a different angle:

Golly - it is hard on your gut sitting with your legs up and also not leaning back. Can't lean back cos the photo won't be very good! The socks fit better than they seem to - they have a little toe wriggling room which the jaywalkers don't.

The stripy heels of doom!


Finally, as I wandered across a recently opened bridge at lunchtime today, I discovered that it has a lot of glass panels displaying the number of immigrants to Victoria from each country in the world up to the year 2001. It said that about 687 or so Sudanese refugees were living in Victoria by 2001. I hope the number is significantly greater than that now cos if it isn't, I've met about half of the Sudanese here. Our neighbour M is Sudanese and he has a great community of people around him. Nathan is a brother (despite being rather white) and I am a sister (despite being very white). We like it :-)

Oh, before I go, Katt, the last lot of wool in the one with the pics of dyed stuff that is one I didn't dye - it came like that. My experience of dyeing acrylic/wool blends is that if the wool and acrylic are blended together well, it comes out heathered, or if there is one strand of each then the wool takes up colour and the other doesn't. Hope this helps!

anon!