Life happens, even when you aren't looking!
G'day all!
Time is slipping through my fingers. How did it get to be near the end of the day already? How can I not have blogged for all of August? How can it be September already? Signs of autumn are showing up everywhere - stressed trees are losing their leaves, non-stressed trees are starting to go orange and red....
My garden is going bonkers but I'm starting to worry that I won't get many more tomatoes ripened. I've got many many green tomatoes, like I'd say at least 20 kilos/50 lb of the things are still green. The weather has been pretty average the last week or so, though it is meant to become a bit sunnier now.
I would like my eggplants to keep producing/start producing. The little finger sized ones have been going great guns but the bigger ones have only really just started getting into it. The capsicums are coming along nicely though I'm learning not to expect too many fruit off the one plant. I only seem to get three or four capsicums off many of the plants.
But I have been getting some good yields even with the weather being bonkers - hot one week (30C+) and cold the next (struggling to get to 20C).
Today I've done a bit of spinning, plying up about 220m of a rather rustic yarn. Four years ago I bought some fleeces at Oregon Fleece and Fiber Festival (OFFF). I had them processed by a couple of different processors. The dark fleece from a sheep called Odette came back rather full of VM (vegetable matter) and neppy. After wondering what to do with it for three years, I'm just going to spin it up and deal with it being rustic. The big lumps of veggie matter and lumps of not-well-carded wool get pulled out, the rest are being spun up. The result is a quite bouncy yarn, not exactly butter soft but not too bad either. I think Odette is/was a Corriedale.
I pieced the back of a quilt. Then I fixed up the front of the quilt. It is a simple design, some leftover jelly roll strips pieced together then cut into long strips, joined by white.
And for whatever reason, even though all the pieced strips were the same length, by the time they were sewn onto the white sashing strips, the last one was a full inch longer than the first pieced strip. I had to rip out three nearly 70" long strips.... Who would ever think that such simple things could cause such annoyance?
Remember, pins are your friends. Pins were the only way I could make those bad boys all play together nicely.
We had some excellent fun on the weekend. DH's parents were in Vancouver, BC. They wanted to visit Butchart Gardens. We managed to co-ordinate well enough that we met up in Victoria on Vancouver Island and went off to the gardens together. They took a Harbour Air seaplane from Vancouver, we caught Kenmore Air from Seattle.
It was excellent fun!
The float planes navigate by sight - they must remain low enough to be able to see features in land (or I guess water). They can't fly through clouds that obscure the ground. They can't fly if the clouds are too low. This means the views are amazeballs. On the way up, we got to see some splendiferous views - the islands and Puget Sound are so pretty. The mountains would've been pretty too if there hadn't been puffy cumulus clouds in the way. I was able to recognise where we were most of the way - it is cool being able to tell where you are from your memories of how the roads go and the sights you see along the way when driving. (Links - take offs and landings, going up, coming back.)
Victoria put on a lovely display for us on Sunday. It was sunny and so pretty, and a wooden boat festival was on.
Monday was meet up with the parents day and be chauffeur driven in our rather large, double-decker "limo" to the gardens. They are impressive gardens, I must say, and worth visiting. (Click the link if you want to see more pics - there's too many to put in the blog.)
Also impressive is that after an incident with a carelessly flailing hand (not mine), my phone still works after bouncing two or three times on some rocks and then PLOP! Straight into a little man-made creek. I think some credit must be given to the protective case I keep it in (Tech21's D30) and to Samsung making the phone water-resistant. It isn't waterproof but it should be okay if it gets rained on or falls in the toilet, etc. And so far, so good. I took the case off and dried the cover carefully, then flicked the phone a few times to get water out of the headphone jack, and dried it again, then took the back off and dried any water there (around the speaker in particular). The phone was still working through all of this, btw. It only turned off when I, ahem, accidentally dropped the battery on the ground. Oops.
My lasting memory of that will be the gasps and the looks of horror on peoples' faces as they watched the phone bouncing straight towards the drink. I was pretty peeved at the hand flailer, especially as he stood in the way through the whole thing, but also half amused by the aghast looks.
If that isn't a good ad for my now outdated Samsung Galaxy S5 and my D30 case, I don't know what is.
Just as we left the gardens, it started to rain. Timing, eh?
The in laws then took off back to Vancouver after a spot of arvo tea and a beer, we wandered in the rain to dinner and our second night in Victoria. On Tuesday morning we looked at the weather with some trepidation - it was grey but apparently not foggy and the cloud ceiling was high enough for the planes to fly. DH had a meeting to go to at noon and we expected our 9am flight would get us home by 10:30am at the latest.
Just as well the meeting was at noon because our flight was late and then we got caught up re-entering the States (can you believe there were five Australians out of six passengers on our flight? I didn't even realise it until we got to Seattle - they sounded normal to me and it was only when I saw their passports that I realised they were normal but not American if that makes sense) and it was after 11am before we left Kenmore Air. Good thing the bus trip only takes 20 minutes and a bus showed up right smartly when we got to the stop.
Canada gave us parting gifts - DH has a cold and I'm fighting it off, though I think it is a losing battle.
Did I buy yarn whilst I was there? Is the Pope a Catholic? (Some people will debate this.) Of course I bought yarn! I bought yarn of varying Canadian-ness.
Yarn processed in Canada (well roving, Briggs and Little), yarn dyed in Canada (Indigo Dragonfly) and Italian yarn imported and distributed by a Canadian company.
I must show off some of the things I've been knitting recently. I've been on a shawl kick even though I forget to wear the danged things. Do love knitting them though - there's no pressure about them fitting. As long as they can wrap around your neck and hopefully even your shoulders, it is all good! Must remember this blogging thing more often.
anon!
Time is slipping through my fingers. How did it get to be near the end of the day already? How can I not have blogged for all of August? How can it be September already? Signs of autumn are showing up everywhere - stressed trees are losing their leaves, non-stressed trees are starting to go orange and red....
 |
| No, not yet, I'm not ready! |
My garden is going bonkers but I'm starting to worry that I won't get many more tomatoes ripened. I've got many many green tomatoes, like I'd say at least 20 kilos/50 lb of the things are still green. The weather has been pretty average the last week or so, though it is meant to become a bit sunnier now.
 |
| Thriving, half-fallen over tomato |
 |
| Big tomato! |
 |
| Little plant, many capsicums/chillies/bell peppers |
 |
| Eggplants! |
I would like my eggplants to keep producing/start producing. The little finger sized ones have been going great guns but the bigger ones have only really just started getting into it. The capsicums are coming along nicely though I'm learning not to expect too many fruit off the one plant. I only seem to get three or four capsicums off many of the plants.
But I have been getting some good yields even with the weather being bonkers - hot one week (30C+) and cold the next (struggling to get to 20C).
 |
| Fruits of my garden |
Today I've done a bit of spinning, plying up about 220m of a rather rustic yarn. Four years ago I bought some fleeces at Oregon Fleece and Fiber Festival (OFFF). I had them processed by a couple of different processors. The dark fleece from a sheep called Odette came back rather full of VM (vegetable matter) and neppy. After wondering what to do with it for three years, I'm just going to spin it up and deal with it being rustic. The big lumps of veggie matter and lumps of not-well-carded wool get pulled out, the rest are being spun up. The result is a quite bouncy yarn, not exactly butter soft but not too bad either. I think Odette is/was a Corriedale.
I pieced the back of a quilt. Then I fixed up the front of the quilt. It is a simple design, some leftover jelly roll strips pieced together then cut into long strips, joined by white.
And for whatever reason, even though all the pieced strips were the same length, by the time they were sewn onto the white sashing strips, the last one was a full inch longer than the first pieced strip. I had to rip out three nearly 70" long strips.... Who would ever think that such simple things could cause such annoyance?
Remember, pins are your friends. Pins were the only way I could make those bad boys all play together nicely.
We had some excellent fun on the weekend. DH's parents were in Vancouver, BC. They wanted to visit Butchart Gardens. We managed to co-ordinate well enough that we met up in Victoria on Vancouver Island and went off to the gardens together. They took a Harbour Air seaplane from Vancouver, we caught Kenmore Air from Seattle.
 |
| De Havilland Beaver, from the trip back |
It was excellent fun!
The float planes navigate by sight - they must remain low enough to be able to see features in land (or I guess water). They can't fly through clouds that obscure the ground. They can't fly if the clouds are too low. This means the views are amazeballs. On the way up, we got to see some splendiferous views - the islands and Puget Sound are so pretty. The mountains would've been pretty too if there hadn't been puffy cumulus clouds in the way. I was able to recognise where we were most of the way - it is cool being able to tell where you are from your memories of how the roads go and the sights you see along the way when driving. (Links - take offs and landings, going up, coming back.)
Victoria put on a lovely display for us on Sunday. It was sunny and so pretty, and a wooden boat festival was on.
Monday was meet up with the parents day and be chauffeur driven in our rather large, double-decker "limo" to the gardens. They are impressive gardens, I must say, and worth visiting. (Click the link if you want to see more pics - there's too many to put in the blog.)
Also impressive is that after an incident with a carelessly flailing hand (not mine), my phone still works after bouncing two or three times on some rocks and then PLOP! Straight into a little man-made creek. I think some credit must be given to the protective case I keep it in (Tech21's D30) and to Samsung making the phone water-resistant. It isn't waterproof but it should be okay if it gets rained on or falls in the toilet, etc. And so far, so good. I took the case off and dried the cover carefully, then flicked the phone a few times to get water out of the headphone jack, and dried it again, then took the back off and dried any water there (around the speaker in particular). The phone was still working through all of this, btw. It only turned off when I, ahem, accidentally dropped the battery on the ground. Oops.
 |
| Impressionist picture thanks to a dunking in the water |
My lasting memory of that will be the gasps and the looks of horror on peoples' faces as they watched the phone bouncing straight towards the drink. I was pretty peeved at the hand flailer, especially as he stood in the way through the whole thing, but also half amused by the aghast looks.
If that isn't a good ad for my now outdated Samsung Galaxy S5 and my D30 case, I don't know what is.
Just as we left the gardens, it started to rain. Timing, eh?
The in laws then took off back to Vancouver after a spot of arvo tea and a beer, we wandered in the rain to dinner and our second night in Victoria. On Tuesday morning we looked at the weather with some trepidation - it was grey but apparently not foggy and the cloud ceiling was high enough for the planes to fly. DH had a meeting to go to at noon and we expected our 9am flight would get us home by 10:30am at the latest.
Just as well the meeting was at noon because our flight was late and then we got caught up re-entering the States (can you believe there were five Australians out of six passengers on our flight? I didn't even realise it until we got to Seattle - they sounded normal to me and it was only when I saw their passports that I realised they were normal but not American if that makes sense) and it was after 11am before we left Kenmore Air. Good thing the bus trip only takes 20 minutes and a bus showed up right smartly when we got to the stop.
Canada gave us parting gifts - DH has a cold and I'm fighting it off, though I think it is a losing battle.
Did I buy yarn whilst I was there? Is the Pope a Catholic? (Some people will debate this.) Of course I bought yarn! I bought yarn of varying Canadian-ness.
Yarn processed in Canada (well roving, Briggs and Little), yarn dyed in Canada (Indigo Dragonfly) and Italian yarn imported and distributed by a Canadian company.
 |
| Lovely Canadian woolly stuffs |
anon!
Your veggie garden has been generous with its produce. Phil once made green tomato pickles or chutney with some green tomatoes we had. Or there's fried green tomatoes, like the movie. Quilts can be so annoying sometimes!! Your sea plane ride sounds wonderful. We did one over Sydney Harbour a few years ago and loved it. Lucky your phone kept working after it's swim.
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