A walk along a creek

G'day all!

It has been a totally superb day today. Sunny and almost warm! The sun makes a big difference in warmth I've decided. No sun = gloomy and yucky, sun = bright and happy!

Today I woke up at 6:45am to the sounds of one of the cats wailing to be let out. It is easier to let her out than have her scratch the carpet and wail and then go pee/poo somewhere inside (no we don't have a litter tray cos the cats get plenty o' outdoor action, so to speak).

Then I had a great and totally wonderful realisation.

I've been worrying about how to pay for my bendi purchases. I know I will buy too much. It is just the way things are. This year I will likely buy some fleeces. I'm totally into washing fleece. I don't enjoy processing the fibre so much after that (even flicking it can be a pain, literally, in either the hand, fingers,thumb, thigh or face if I am particularly uncoordinated with the dog slicker. No we don't have a dog but the slickers are good cheap cards/flickers). I have no idea why I like taking dirty fleeces and washing them but I do. I love seeing yucky coloured stuff become white fluff. Even stuff that stays brown or grey is good, though I've worked out I prefer white or silver fleece.

So it is 6:50am and the cat is out and I suddenly realise that I have to claim back a heap of money from the govt and from my private health insurer for some allergy injections and for some work on my teeth LAST year! Woo hoo! We're in the money!

I went back to sleep until 8am :-)

So I claimed the money and it was good, and then I went for a two hour walk along Gardiner's Creek (which I want to type as greek for some reason....). Gardiner's Creek has one of the main bike paths to the city running alongside it. It is not as fast a path as riding up Dandenong Road (aka Princes Hwy) but Dandy road has these things called cars and trucks which tend to do whacky things like pull left hand turns across the bows of cyclists. (Remember we drive on the English, aka the *correct* :-P~~~, side of the road.) This bike path meets up with the ones that run alongside the Yarra (aka the path I took all those photos of the city from). Anyway, it is a shared bike and foot path. It is very urban with patches of indigenous flora, and the creek has waaay too many ashes and oaks and deciduous trees on it, but I will torture you with many pics of it anyway :-)




A reminder of seasons now past.


Can you see the soursops reflected in the water?


I believe this is a chestnut teal.


All sorts of teals and a wood duck.


A nice spot to sit and knit.


Wattles are hard to take pics of - they overwhelm the camera's beady little eye.


But I got this European honeybee in shot! Took about 10 shots to get one in focus and visible....


Who knew that drains could be so pretty?


For my non-aussie friends, what on earth are these poles used for? They are quite tall - about 3 and 5m high. They are paired - one set at each end of an oval.


And for my American friends, what on earth is this weird contraption?


The RPM sock is done! Hooray! The pic doesn't show it well, but can you see how the pooling/striping of the yarn interacts with the travelling purls that swirl around the sock? Cool, eh? The travelling purls actually go in the same direction as the pooling yarn, but the purls break up the pooling and almost give the sock the appearance of a lattice. I'll try to get a better picture soon.

Bendi tomorrow! Woo hoo! Our black sheep gathering, our maryland (and not the chook/chicken cut either!). It's just gonna be me and my baby (car that is). SEX on a grand scale!

anon!