What a weekend...

G'day all!

I am still recovering from the weekend. Never knew that it could be so exhausting to spend an afternoon in a park.

(Not GF but decorated by my youngest niece, who is now hmm 14 or so I guess)

Saturday morning I choofed up to the guild's annual textile bazaar. I actually managed to stick to my budget, even though I bought a beauty, a hint of which is seen here:

It doesn't have a doffing stick - that is what an old screwdriver is for! After a bit of fiddling and a bit of oiling of the axles, it was good to go! (You might be able to tell). So I've been playing with fleece and carding it. I've even started getting adventurous and putting cut up silk thread into it (I bought a heap of fine silk thread from Marta a while ago and dyed some up but without a drum carder getting it into fleece is a PITA).

I got home by 11:30, just in time to kiss Nathan goodbye as he rode down to the park. I discovered I can get my bike in the back of my car along with four foldy type chairs and a heap of food and crap needed for a picnic. I zoomed off to the park and discovered that without Nathan in the car, he (the car not Nathan) doesn't scrape on the speedhumps in the park road. Hooray!


Do you like this present from J? A pineapple plant! It is living in the greenhouse now to keep it warmish. One of my sisters turned up with a horrid disease (not her husband or one of her sons, though they were there, just one of the fluey viruses going around that makes you feel like death warmed up) and my brother and his mob were there too. They gave me gift vouchers to a big hardware chain. LOL. We are now halfway to buying a BBQ cos our old one was someone else's cast off and had been run into by an exhousemate (long story but I can't blame the housemate cos Someone Else(s) had put the BBQ in the driveway after trying to burn the house down with it..)


(The park runs cattle in the southern part - it used to be a sewerage farm and still has a main sewer running through it - poo-ee! There are dead trees all through this part of the park - salinity has killed them off. Salinity is not just a problem in the country - the city is affected too.)

Heh. More of Nathan's friends turned up than mine. R&M, with their two kids, T&P and J turned up out of my friends. OK, the mailing list I used to advertise the gathering up and died the day before I sent out the invite, so it didn't get out to all the people I thought it would, but I still think it is a pretty poor effort. I had given warning about 6 weeks before and said put it in your calendar with a rough idea of what was happening and then a confimation a week before (but that was when the mailing list died), and another only a day before cos the mailing list was up and working again and people were asking me what was happening as they hadn't gotten the earlier email (hello, there is this thing called the phone or email!). I guess the weather didn't look so good (it did not rain a drop). I did find it rather disappointing - after all it wasn't just any old birthday or any old gathering and not one of them said they would not show up but then again none said they would... and if I mull over it more I'll get grumpy. Or I'll cry, again. I should have asked for RSVPs so it is partly my fault for assuming lots of people would come. I am glad to know that Nathan was surprised that his workmates were more willing to turn up to the gathering than most of my friends. On the bright side it meant that I got to eat not only some of the yummy Lemon Meringue Pie from Silly Yaks but also some of my sister's excellent sponge.


(I spotted this little bloke nosing around in some grass at Braeside Park. He didn't like me getting about 3m away to get this shot but when I was quiet and still he stuck his head out to have a look-see.)

Sunday was expected to be a lounging around the house type day except I had to go shopping and Nathan needed various items to set up a watering system and then ordered a cubic metre of mushroom compost (not very well composted mushroom compost to be honest) and some pine bark chips, which were delivered on the driveway. Before I could put my car away, we had to move all the compost and chips. That took some time of serious shovelling. Oh and I added more mulch to parts of the front yard that needed it - more shovelling.


(A dragonfly on a rock by a creek)

Now for some comment followup.

Two people managed to guess that there are chooks on the horizon! They are my birthday present. We don't have them yet cos we need a place to keep them and Nathan has to build that. We'll only get three or four chooks so they will be able to live in an A-frame chook house. It has to be made vermin and fox proof cos we almost certainly have foxes around here and I saw mice in the compost bin last month (but I chucked a bucket of sheep fleece washing water in it and next time I opened it there was a drowned mouse - take that, mouse!). (Blasted pommie ancestors bringing foxes to hunt, along with bunnies and other stupid things like blackbirds - how ignorant and homesick were these people?) We'll have to get feeders and stuff and also tubs to put chook pellets in to keep them away from vermin. So chooks are a little way off yet.

Over 20 people wished me a happy birthday. Thanks for all your good wishes. I pulled a name out of the list - Spinning Sue, come on down! What would you like? Yarn? Tops? Carded fleece? Something Aussie that you miss?

Plus for those who had a ping at the mystery object last week, it was the washing machine on spin. Those names went into my random picker (on this occasion write the names on bits of paper and throw them into the air). Mog, come on down!

Just as well I got paid for my first week of work, eh? It will replenish the coffers a little. I still have to list some stuff on ebay - haven't gone back and tried to get it working yet. Plus I still have not updated my online shop, either the yarnivorous one or the etsy yarnivorous one. So much to do, so little time, and so little energy to do it with (I ate something that disagreed with my cursedly delicate gut and the repercussions continue three days later....).


Plus I've been doing Even More Dyeing. I should get serious about it but I love playing with the colours so much that doing repeatable colours seems dull and boring.

anon!

Comments

  1. Anonymous7:21 pm

    I'm glad you had a good mumblieth despite the hiccoughs. When you are as old as mumble you have to be able to shake these things off!!
    Chooks!! How exciting. What are you going to name them????/

    ReplyDelete
  2. It still sounds like you had a party though( hope you don't get bug from sis)
    I was disapointed in my bash too in a way but mainly because a certain former friend made it seem that every party that came later was extensively better than mine!
    At least I had my closest mates and thats what counted!!!
    Love the porcipine(indulge me there,we called them that as kids,and it reminds me of my little bro)
    Keep us informed about your efforts with carder,its next on list(after the Louet of course)!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous3:40 am

    WOOO - HOOO - Wow Miss Yarny - must have been the pull of the old girl (me that is) to make my name fall the right way up!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous6:02 am

    Ooooh! How exciting! Surprise me... :-)

    If its any consolation I turned mumbly 3 years ago and its okay.

    I'll email you when I get home from work. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. It sounds like you had a fab time!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yay, I'm a good guesser!
    What are you going to name the chooks?

    Those that didn't bother to come to your party missed out.
    The most important thing is that you enjoyed the day
    Lindy

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hey, at least you had a party, right?! :) I'm just hanging out with my family. I'm so wild...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous4:30 pm

    You know how I said I was nearly twice your age? Well, I take that back as I was under the impression, from your youthful looks, that you were to be turning 30!

    It sounds as though you chose a lovely spot for your picnic, and that you had a fine celebration.

    Well done on the carder buy from the guild bazaar. I was demonstrating spinning all weekend at the Whittlesea Show, so missed out on the bargains at the guild. Next time, I'll keep an eye out for a great carder too.

    ReplyDelete

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