Yarnivorous

G'day all! (in which I get political, unusual for me) Every year on the 26th of January, we celebrate Australia Day. By celebrate, I mean we get a day off, usually attached to the weekend if at all possible and have a barbie and a booze up.  That is the classic Australia Day. For some people, it is Invasion Day.  For others, it is Survivor Day.  The indigenous don't have much to celebrate. For me?  This year I have a feeling of dismay.  I'm so disappointed in the direction my country seems to be heading.  We've been an inclusive society for all of my life and longer, though the first immigrants breaking the White Australia policy found things pretty tough (and I'm not even talking about the Asian refugees of the 60s and 70s - I'm talking the Greek and Italians who came to Australia after WWII.  Yep they are white but the wrong colour white - not the lily white skins of Poms who burned red in the fierce Australian sun). We are turning into a...

G'day all! Oh I live in busy times at the moment.  I seem to run from one thing to the next. A couple of weekends ago - it is already a couple of weeks ago! - we trawled out to Vashon Island to visit a friend and also see my quilt hanging up in Island Quilter. Nice, eh?  Even if I'm not going to wrangle Blogger into displaying the pictures nicely. I made the back (the grey and green version) first.  I liked it but not as much as I thought I would.  It is too grey and we see enough of grey in Seattle. Then I had another go, this time with white.  I also changed up the blocks - in the grey version, all the blocks are surrounded by the opposite colour and then feed into the same colour.  In the white version, the edge ones float - they don't have a border.  That looks pretty cool, eh?  It makes it look completely different. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  It is the largest quilt I've made.  And I made...

G'day all! We've now been in Seattle for two years. Wow.  Just wow.  Two years.  Where has the time gone? The other day I was thinking about how I've become a lot more confident at navigating my way around the place.  Even just yesterday I (ahem) decided to try a different way to get to the "local" IKEA and ignored the way I've been using that maps recommended.  I did get there, with only one u-turn and that was because that particular exit of the interstate only let you turn right, not left.  The rest of it I made up as I went along.  It helps that many but not all of the roads around here are on a grid, even the ones with proper names rather than numbers. The freedom machine, first on the ferry! These days, I only use maps when I haven't been to a place before or am going to it from a different place or need very very specific details of where the place is.  Sometimes roads are one way only and that can make things extra fun....

G'day all! I remember years ago thinking how old I would be in the year 2000.  It amazed me - I'd be quite old! Well it is 2014 now and umm, I'm afraid to tell my younger self that I'm now even older.  A whole 14 years older than I was in 2000.  Am I any wiser?  I'm not sure.  I'm less ranty (believe it or not, especially if you drive with me in badly behaved traffic or when I'm uptight, like driving a whopping big moving truck (whopping big to me - a fourteen footer)) and more likely to bite my tongue instead of opening my big trap and saying something tactless/offensive.  I am still happy to say the word toilet though....  I am definitely more wrinkly and somewhat more scarred.  But I'm still here and that is what really counts. So 2013, where did you go?  People say that the years go faster as you get older and I'm quite frankly worried about that.  It's starting to seem that all I need to do is turn around and a new year is upo...