Yarnivorous

G'day all! Nathan got a new toy today.  We walked into the city, hopped on a rail bus (they are replacing the catenary and doing trackwork on the harbour bridge railway lines) and wound our way to Chatswood. My goodness Chatswood was crazy. Everyone wanted to go shopping there. It has an open air shopping mall, two indoors malls/shopping centres and a few hundred metres of shops lining the road to the carparks. People were everywhere. I had discovered that there was a sewing machine shop about a kilometre from the train station, so we went for a walk.  The cars were banked up in both directions - we were walking faster than the cars fleeing Chatswood. And we just so happened to find a second sewing machine shop that had not shown up on my search. We talked to them, we checked out the other place, we walked back to the first place and Nathan lugged home the overlocker you can see in wherever mobile blogger has put the picture. (oh, he did pay for it first. He said that his ...

G'day all! Today I did Nathan's washing. I hung one load of washing out to dry. It was almost sunny this morning, with only a few little patches of rain to be seen on the radar. I did the second load and hung it inside. Then I walked to Quiltsmith, a pleasant walk. As I walked to Logan's Patchwork, it was raining. It has rained 50% of the time since then. Please make it stop. It has rained in Sydney every day for the last 8 days. It started on Good Friday and hasn't stopped since. OK, it might stop for 10 minutes or even two hours, like it did this morning (I saw this big glowing thing in the sky! It was really bright and its rays felt warm on my skin). Thank heavens on our three day jaunt out of Sydney, we found a sunny place that was glorious. I am editing pics of it but as usual have so many to choose from. You know what really makes me cranky? The weather bureau forecast has said "showers possible" every one of those days (except Good Friday, whi...

an addendum to the last post (of mine, not the music!) I stopped at a petrol station today to fuel the car up, ready for its return. I decided to pump the tyres up as they have been going down every. single. day. The tyre inflator thingo was out of order as someone had stuck it on 60psi (yes, we still use psi even though we are in all other ways metric). The guy at the petrol station said go tell the guys at the tyre and auto place next door - they look after it. The manager at the tyre and auto place said one of his boys would check my tyres. How nice! The "boy" comes out and looks and says "Those tyres are bald! I'm not touching them. They are sh*t. You'll have an accident with them in this weather!" Ahem. And the rental company says they will give me a free day's rental. I think I want something more than that. Company starts with B by the way and is something that we do each week with our households and governments do each year...

G'day all! Today I am glad to be alive. I'm glad not to be in hospital. I'm glad to be telling you this story. Nathan and I popped off for a drive for a few days. We went up to Gloucester (NSW, not England!). We drove around and looked at stuff and went for some walks of variable length and difficulty (today's was a doozy!). Then we headed out to the coast cos I like beaches and sea and water and estuaries, etc. That was ok, pleasant enough but not much that made me want to stop. The weather had gone from being brightly sunny inland to threatening rain so we decided to start making our way home. OMG. The only time I've been stuck in such traffic jams was when we decided to take the I80 (in California) from where the 880 or 280 (can't remember which) joins it on its way to Sacramento. Admittedly the Californian traffic jams involved anything up to 8 lanes of traffic but even the modest two and three lanes of the Pacific Highway coming into Sydney (90, 80,...

G'day all! Ah the fun continues here in Sydney. One never knows what is going to happen next, but let's just say we are trying to find a new social group. We went to see Sir Terry Pratchett talk on Sunday evening. We had been looking forward to it for ages. Well it was a social disaster - we didn't realise certain people who don't want to associate with us were going - and a bit of an all round disaster for Nathan because Sir Terry talked about death and suicide a whole lot. And that raised a few bogies for DH, reminders of people he knew and one person he saw splatted by a train. That is the problem with having an amazing memory - it remembers the bad stuff that many of us gloss over and forget. So after looking forward to it for ages, umm, not so good. Then his work friends started shunning both of us, and we are not really sure why. It seems like it's time to be 15 again. But we did get to go into the opera house - I've never been inside. I would lik...

G'day all! I have been such a bad naughty girl! I deserve a good spanking! I've been buying loot cos a) Quiltsmith have 25% off fabric for all of April (except they are closed over the long weekend next weekend, boo hiss for Easter falling on Anzac Day and ripping us off a public holiday! Oh but I only work three days a week and miss them anyway...) and b) I don't have enough variety of loot to do all the things I want to, and c) I like to buy something from a place if I visit, like I did with Calico and Ivy. (and dang, I just realised that some of the homespun broadcloth at scroatfight yesterday would work well with some of the stuff from Calico and Ivy.) Here's a sample of my loot up to earlier in the week: I do have better pics of the various items but I'm saving them up to talk about as we go along. I am particularly delighted with these: The leather gloves I ranted about in an earlier blog post. They are just a wee bit small but I figure with wear will loose...

G'day all! I've been busting a gut to get to an IKEA for ages. Today? Well. Hmm. Service was non-existant. They had some nice sized plastic storage boxes, but no lids! After tracking down someone with an ikea shirt on, the boy looked and said "No, we don't have any lids for those boxes. People take them." And then he wandered off and played with the batteries! I kid you not. I rather wondered if he has Aspergers. I usually like their fabric but today, meh. I liked a couple of the doona (duvet/comforter) covers but not for what they wanted for them. I've got two up here and they will do. Sometimes their sheets are cheap *and* good quality but the cheap ones today were just that. I bought a cheap lamp. Now it did say on the description "suited for IKEA lights blah and blah" but it was not obvious that I had to buy them on the spot. Now that I look at the box, it does say excl E27 and E14 on the top only. I didn't look at the top, I just...

G'day all! So many things to show you and no pictures of any of them! It isn't even me being slack. Y'see our flat has no outdoors area *at all*. Nothing. Nada. It faces south, which means in the southern hemisphere, it doesn't get much natural light, especially with three enormous trees blocking whatever sunlight bounces off the flats next door. I can't take pics outside because the only flat areas are either covered with possum poo (mmm, anyone for worms and all sorts of interesting bugs?) or are under the washing lines. (The washing lines here have some of the best views! Sydney skyline views! I sometimes think I'll go sit out there and do some work, using my mobile for internet on the laptop but a) I need a seat to sit on and b) mobile's 3G network is verra verra verra slow.) Or are roads and carparks. (The waterfront just down from our place - never said it isn't pretty!) I've been busy. I've done lots of walking. On Monday I took ...

G'day all! Actually, I'll be up before the crack of dawn tomorrow... 5:30am. YIKES! I have to fly to Melbourne for a training course. 7am flight. Have to be at airport by 6:30am. Normally I'd take the tram and the train but I figure that tomorrow I'd best take a taxi. Oh, I also should get the details of where I am going eh? Thanks for reminding me! LOL It's going to be a long day as my flight back leaves Melbourne at 6:15pm. I'll get home sometime around 9ish, just too late to get some takeaway for tea! But I might end up having leftover roast chicken, though I'll be having that for lunch if I can keep it cold enough. Things are calming down here, thank heavens (and thanks for your responses :-). I'm too busy at present to worry about being lonely. The place is still fairly musty despite me cleaning it from stem to stern several times, spraying tea tree oil around, sprinkling the carpets with bicarb.... I reckon it is endemic to the place. Th...

G'day all! I cracked it today. All week I have been cleaning, cooking, cleaning up after cooking, managing to get work done in between shopping trips (we have cutlery and crockery here and a chopping board and one good knife and some utensils and pots/pans but no mixing bowls or stuff like that - the accessories), I've been encouraging DH through doubts and fears, I've worked like a navvy. I've dragged loads of shopping back from the shops at the other end of Glebe Point Road (and whilst it is technically is only 1.7km, or a mile away, but it is mostly downhill on the way there and uphill on the way back and on the way back is when the trolley weighs a bit. (better than having to carry it all myself though!) Today I cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen - we were going to have a guest and I wanted it to be nice for him. We had breakfast out with some of Nathan's workmates and oh gosh, dullsville! They were excited about what they were talking about but they are co...