Yarnivorous

Sunset over Puget Sound

2012-01-27T12:12:00.001+11:00

Omg, drop dead gorgeous...

Australia Day

2012-01-26T18:12:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

Ok, it isn't Australia Day here yet, but it's been Australia Day back home for about 16 hours now.

It is sorta weird being in a place that is similar but still quite different to home. Homesickness is starting to kick in. There's still plenty to explore here but I've started noticing a certain longing for familiar things. I went to a knit night at Bad Woman Knits tonight - one of DH's friends lives in the same building. That entertained me but it also reminded me that once again I have to start establishing connections with people.

DH's job is going great guns so far. Tomorrow he will presenting to the Big Boss. He's only been there for 2.5 weeks....

I am heavily into house/apartment hunting at the moment. The place I've liked the look of most is the place that is furthest. Typical! It isn't particularly close to a supermarket either (though I now realise it isn't very far at all, I just forgot about a certain place that we drove past), though I am starting to think that is what Amazon is for. After all, I have to drink the company Kool Aid, even if it is not my workplace. Anyway, the rental market is pretty tight and I am starting to get a bit worried. We only have another week and a bit at this place, and then? Of course even if we get a place, we don't have our furniture yet. We've done the living without furniture thing before and it gets very old very fast. When we moved to Colorado, a workmate of Nathan's brought round two garden chairs, and we used them for about a month as arm chairs. We slept on a full/double bed size futon on the floor (we did that for the entire stay in the US cos after a while, we sorta liked it and the idea of finding a normal, larger, off the ground bed was just too much hassle).

This lady sits on a bench opposite an older gentleman.

The weather has been kind and cruel to us. After the excitement of Snowmageddon last week (seriously, Seattle is hilly, like it has really steep hills, the sort of hills that you need to plant your foot flat to the floor in a car and they are impassable after snow, and the place half shut down), we had a weekend that was like Melbourne in winter as a cold front hits and then starts clearing. Monday was brilliantly sunny and I went to Ballard to see the locks and the railway bridge and as it turns out the beach and the Olympic mountains. It was brilliant!

Then it was grey all day yesterday and semi-gray today. I have never seen so many shades of grey before, nor of steely, dull blues.

The person who is helping us with the househunting is working out I am not your average chick. I got overly excited (ie I thought it was in the slightest bit exciting) that the bridge at Fremont opened its drawbridge. It didn't worry me that it meant we were stuck there for the time being (maybe about 5 minutes, if that), OMG THE BRIDGE IS OPENING! Bounce! I took pics of it. I put one on G+ but I've not edited any yet.

I'm really hoping that over the next couple of weekends we'll be able to go for a drive and see something other than Seattle. Even if it is raining on and off. Saturday's forecast is for mostly sunny!!! But that would be twice in a week and this is Seattle in the winter! I was told that Monday's weather was unusual, then again Snowmageddon was unusual. It is all unusual for me. I've never lived here before.

Some kind person gave her a scarf in the snow last week.
I hope it kept her warmer.

Snowmageddon was fun from my POV. We didn't lose power, for starters, no trees fell on our property, we weren't trapped in our neighbourhood (snowploughs and buses!), etc, etc. We got to experience snow! Kids and their dads were having snowball fights outside.

I have been knitting. I pulled out the cowl I started umm four times? Now it is the right size and is getting close to being finished. I should get pics of it, but we don't really get good light here - we are in a courtyard facing east and the best light we get is reflected off the south-facing places by us. I've also finished the sock that has taken me forever and started a new sock. The new sock is also taking forever, but I've not been knitting it much.

Anyway, I must cease rambling and go to bed. It is late and I am reallly tired, first time in ages I've let myself get this tired.

anon!

Wow, just wow

2012-01-16T18:23:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

I am being a bit slow on this blog updating thing, huh?

We've been in Seattle for just over a week now. We have had internet since Friday afternoon (for an apartment with laid on internet, it caused a LOT of hassle and running around. I spent six hours with comcast until they said "Oh, it hasn't been paid for at that address" though the phone and the cable tv were with them.... It only took three hours to get the cable tv going. No we are not having cable tv in our apartment, when we get one....)

Olympics and seaplane.

It is minus 3 Celsius outside. To my poor little Australian sensibilities, where if I was home in Melbourne it would be 32C (80s F), it is amazingly cold. And I really need a nice warm winter coat. I have a raincoat but it isn't insulated and so is not nice and snuggly warm.

Afterlight looking towards the Olympic Mountains.

I have been perusing legwarmer patterns on Ravelry. I think they would be rather practical if I want to wear tights or leggings with my boots. I have snow boots from my time in Colorado. Maybe old boilers shouldn't wear legwarmers or leggings but I don't care. If you've got it, flaunt it.

Afterlight on the foreshore of Puget Sound

I have found two yarns shops so far, though I didn't use the net. One shop is in a building that a friend lives in. Just as well we don't live in that building! I just had to have this rainbow sock yarn, though I don't think I'll knit socks from it - I already have a rainbow set made from this yarn's sibling.

Of course this yarn followed me home. It is my favourite colour.

I haven't said how much I <3 the Space Needle. It is 50 years old this year and still whizzing into the future. It is also about 400m from our current residence. It helps me find my way home when I'm navigating the maze of one way streets. About every third street goes two ways, just to add to my confusion. When I am walking, I don't care but once in a while I try to drive the wrong way down a one way street....

Deal with the wonky. It really isn't the
leaning Space Needle. But it is a shot
taken at night

I've been doing a lot of walking when the weather was (only slightly) kinder to this poor wayward Californian, ahem Australian. (When people ask me what the weather is like where I come from, I say like California cos it is easier than laying it all out.) I've taken lots of pics, some of which I've shared in this post, but never fear, I have plenty more, mostly sunset, pics and pics from the Space Needle. I've pics that show it snowed half of today, with snow about 3" deep lying around, just hanging out, making things look pretty and white. I am quite sure that in another couple of days I will be well and truly over snow, at which point it will start raining instead and I'll be able to whinge about that instead cos rain is just grey, not pretty and white.

Afterlight on Seattle downtown and Mt Rainier.

Normally I would have edited a heap of pics and stuck them on Flickr, but I have somewhat of a backlog from Hawaii and home that I am still uploading. Hooray, the blogger pic uploader is much less clunky than it used to be. It fits in with the rest of the stuff. Plus you can put captions on and left/right/centre the pic! Hooray! Now if only they would integrate blogger with google+ (look for me there, I post things there a bit cos it is easy to chat with Sydneysiders there, share pics with peoples and it integrates with my android phone like that (snaps fingers)) so any pics from the phone upload and voila! I can share them.

And what do you call someone who lives in Seattle? (Hint, it fits quite nicely with the Space Needle and the forward into the future idea.)

anon!

Another year over

2011-12-30T10:50:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

And I've been doing lots!

This has been a pretty incredible year. Not necessarily the happiest year ever but all sorts of things have happened.

We have seen lots of stuff - going to NYC and back to San Jose was pretty darned good. We've made some good friends. We've lived comfortably in Australia's largest city.

And the New Year will ring in changes.

On New Year's Day, I'm driving back up to Sydney to supervise the packing of our gear and its removal to the States. Plus I'm taking some extra bits. On the 4th, I am going to the airport and getting on a plane for Hawaii (meeting up with DH at Sydney airport), where we will spend a couple of days. Then we get on the plane to Seattle and a new life.

I'm going to miss family and friends and Australia and the long days and summer. I am a long days person. DH isn't "validating my feelings" about this, which causes arguments. I am sure things will be fab in Seattle, I am just not good with rain and cold and short days. I don't deal with temps under about 15C with any sort of grace - I get cold, like finger-numb-and-stiff and nose-numb-and-dripping. Even if I dress warmly I get cold. I am after all Australian born and bred. Melbourne gets cold in winter, but Californian-type cold, not temps that you find in a fridge or a freezer. When it is damp it feels even colder.

This just means I'll have to knit Even More Mittens and hats (and line them with polar fleece to make them warmer). And there will be new things to see and explore, and if they carry the nice bread I found in Wholefoods in NYC and Campbell I'll be happy (cos they will also have the amazing range of GF and DF "icecream"... what, I shouldn't eat icecream if I am cold? 8-). I'll take along a good supply of chocolate cos sometimes WF doesn't carry the one that is edible - GF and DF chocolate is surprisingly hard to come by. Most of them have traces of both gluten and dairy, and some dark chocolate outright contains dairy (the horror!).

So if I do not blog over the next few days, you know that I am getting ready to leave (again), and that you have my felicitations for a most fabulous New Year. Make it a good one!

anon!

Long time between drinks

2011-12-24T19:33:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

We are now down in Melbourne for Christmas. My little old bomb (car) made it down without a hitch. 900km/560 miles over two days, in part because we left in the afternoon, too late to make it in one day and in part because I hate driving that far in one day, particularly with only one driver.

We have visaed. (That isn't a word, btw.) It only took about an hour and a bit, most of which was waiting in a queue. I managed to read about four pages of my book in that time. You can't take knitting into the consulate. At least they provide magazines these days. The first time we went there, we didn't take books, there were no magazines and the tv was showing the screen saver for the DVD player it was hooked up to. And we were there for over three hours. OMG, nearly died of boredom.

We were told we should expect the visas next week. Hooray!

So Seattle, yes Seattle for all those who guessed correctly, is GO GO GO!

And we will be living in Seattle, not Redmond. Nathan has not joined The Evil Empire, though I really now think Microsoft is not The Evil Empire any more. No, a different company is that. One Nathan hasn't worked for.

I have one more day of work before knocking off for Christmas. I have to go through the attic here and figure out what I want to take with me to Seattle, what is staying behind, how much I can really take with me - I will be driving back to Sydney with Nathan's bike and some boxes of stuff as all our stuff is leaving from Sydney. I have to be back there on the 3rd of January, and will probably go up on New Year's Day just to give me plenty of time (aka a day) to get organised. But I'll have to hire a car most likely because the car I was going to use has decided to have a little rest, and is spending Christmas in a shopping centre carpark with a dud immobiliser or a dud wire.

Hmm, now that I've ignored the blog for a couple of days, I can say I've finished work for the year (I have to go pick up the laptop after it gets more RAM), and the visas with passports arrived yesterday! Hooray!

I have managed to do very little this Saturday arvo, except drive to and from the inlaw's place a few times (argh! I didn't have a key for the house!), read through some old stories I wrote years ago that I found in the attic (alas, I wrote up more of them on my old old laptop but it got stolen and I hadn't backed up the stories, so I only have the handwritten parts. I know one was somewhat more extensive than what I have written down!), and burn the gluten and dairy-free shortbread bikkies (thank heavens they didn't all fit on the tray, so I have about 12 left. I hope I don't decide to water the garden or anything this time around!). I even avoided the golden orb weaver spider who had cunningly placed her web across the best access to the nectarines, which are just coming into ripeness. Alas, about 70% of the nectarines are affected by rot, even though it hasn't been dewy or wet recently. I presume they need to be sprayed to stop them going rotten.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas, or a nice break depending on your religion or lots and lots of moulah for working on Christmas Day, and may no nightmarish santa claws haunt your dreams!

anon!

Grey day

2011-12-12T14:09:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

At last I can make an announcement. Hooray! This has been weighing on me for a while.

Today DH resigned from his job. Yep. We are blowing the big G off and going off to a new and exciting location.

Sydney's weather, grey and a bit cool, is preparing us for what awaits.

We are going to a place renowned for its rainy, foggy, cool weather. Am not looking forward to that part. It is a couple of states up the coast from where we lived for a couple of years.

Any guesses yet?

In the meantime, we have had an extra exciting weekend. But blogger just ate my great long ranting post - it completely lost 90% of it and I am now peeved with it and do not want to play with blogger any more today. Plus it made me log in again. Humph. I think that deserves a flounce. It even gave me a 404 page not found error.

There is so much to do, so many places to see before I leave Sydney next weekend. Sigh. We are going back to Melbourne for Christmas and to get new visas (there's another clue). I have to get the results of blood tests to see if the Big C is staying in remission but I can't find anyone who knows if they have been received. I guess it is time for more phone calls.

anon!

Brisvegas re-entry

2011-12-12T13:27:00.000+11:00

G'day all! Whoops, forgot to post this before the PiLs arrived, and I've hardly been online all weekend.

I am very glad to be home from Brisvegas, though not glad to be home for reasons I cannot reveal until Monday (AFAIK, I am fine, DH is coping, but in the next month there will be some big changes!).

So how are you all?

I am rather stressed, for reasons that will be revealed soon. I have so much to do. Tonight the PiLs are coming to visit, which means moving furniture again and cleaning the place. Did I mention that I've been away for a week? And have Even More Stuff to put away?

Ah well, it will all be good in the end.

So the conference was good, very good. I learned a fair bit, not the least of which was that even without much sleep, I can still put on my own little show and pretend to be a bouncy outgoing type, until I run out of food at least. I had a lovely time at one of the dinners (the dinner where they offered me more than two party pies, a manky sausage roll, and eventually found a plate of prawns and smoked salmon...like doods, that is not dinner, especially when lunch was lentils and rice and there was something like 7 hours in between meals. I graze my way through my day, normally). I seem to have a knack of ending up talking to the overseas visitors. One chap had lived in Seattle for 28 years, and another lives in San Jose about 3-4 miles from where we used to live if that. Another lives near Toronto, which I have visited. Another lives in Sheffield, UK, and likes both Monty Python and Pratchett. My boss picked on me because apparently I had two of the visitors eating out of my hand pretty much, but it was noisy at the dinner and they both turned out to have hearing issues (they had hearing aids). I danced like a crazy thing, though I nearly passed out because I cannot do what is effectively high impact aerobics, sing and breathe all at the same time. Like what is wrong with me? Really. Oh and they had a smoke machine too, just to add to my breathing issues. I stood at our booth and talked to people for hours. I extraverted, or at least pretended to be an extravert, for quite a number of days. It's only taken me how long to learn how to wear that hat?

There is a reason why I want to crawl into my hidey hole and pull a lid over it and pretend that I don't have a number of deadlines hanging over me....

I was vastly entertained by the opening speaker of the conference, Amanda Gore. She is like me crossed with my boss, extraverted and on speed. The lady's stage show would imply she is mad as a cut snake, though I have the feeling she isn't. Anyone who can get a pack of dour occupational hygienists all standing up, arm in arm, singing "Always look on the bright side of life" has to be pretty darned cunning I reckon. (Although the lady next to me walked out. She couldn't take it any more. Someone else sat down next to me and we had a brilliant time - me and him and the other lady next to me....) Now not all occupational hygienists are dour, as you might realise. My boss isn't and most of the Bright Young Things amongst them aren't either. Some of the older ones really know how to get their groove on too. Amanda gave us a lot to remember and be grateful for.

Must post this little one before getting onto the Big News.

anon!

Ah, sunny Brisvegas

2011-12-05T21:28:00.001+11:00

G'day all!

Ah sunny Brisvegas....

Apparently the weather is craptastic all the way down the eastern seaboard. Someone did not even bother checking the weather forecast and is mighty she brought one long sleeved cardie with heer, cos it is a mite chilly at the moment... Brisbane is tropical, for those not in the know and I expected it to be warm...

Mental note for anyone interested, the supermarkets close with the shops on the weekend...that means don't leave it until six pm to go get some stuff.

Conference has been good so far. Talked to lots of people, sat through two awesome talks and two average ones, scared a few people, attracted others (to the work stall which I am manning for a couple of days).

I'd talk more about the two speakers I really enjoyed but I am writing this on the phone. However, I will say I am a walking joy spot and will be happy to show you my gratitude glasses, and that CT scans are apparently quite good for you. A little exposure to radiation has a protective effect against cancer.

Who knew?

Anon!

Oh for the life of a jet setter

2011-12-03T00:26:00.001+11:00

Gday all!

I am off to Brisvegas.

Hooray.

For a conference, not for a holiday. Not so hooray. I'll be manning the stand for work, along with a coworker.

I expect to be knackered by next Thursday.

At least there have been no major dramas so far. Here's hoping it stays that way.

Woot, boarding is about to commence.

Gee, thanks optus for not letting me connect!

Now coming at you live from brisvegas

Anon!

I hate my left foot

2011-11-24T19:10:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

Actually, I lie. I only apparently hate my left foot. I really very much like my left foot. It is very handy to walk on a foot. (Two feet are even better as long as they are shared equally between my two legs.) My left foot is more shapely than my right foot. It is even more shapely at the moment, after I viciously brutalised it on the locking wheel of the chiro couch yesterday and then whanged two toes on the edge of the shower today after tangling in the shower curtain (why yes, I am talented!). It is also prettier colours than my right foot.

But I can walk and run on it so the damage is fairly cosmetic I think. I hope. I wonder if I will damage it a third time later today or tomorrow?

I have been crafting! Will miracles ever cease?

When the going gets tough, the tough get knitting. I had been avoiding knitting cos I thought it was making my lymphoedema worse. Well if I am wearing my compressive sleeve, yes it does. But if I don't wear the sleeve? Also the puffy hand I've had trouble with is slowly de-puffing and is much happier if I don't wear the sleeve.

So, I have knitted a top out of yarn I bought in California and knitted two fronts and a little bit of the back of a new cardigan. I'm too stupid to have taken pics yet and the weather is lousy. At least it seems to have stopped raining now - it's rained almost non-stop since Monday afternoon (it is Thursday afternoon here) and I'm getting a little over it. I do have a little sneak peek of the cardie though:

(picot edge, backing done in left over sock yarn!)

Knitting is relatively easy to get pics of in the wild, unlike quilt tops....

The tough also start cutting into favourite quilt material and making quilt tops. I've made three tops in the last four weeks or so. One quilt top is rather lurid but I think will be liked by a small girl who is into rainbow colours and brights (not me! I am a big girl!)

and the other quilt top is a little more tasteful:

Do you like the sneak peaks and their artful perspective shots? Alas the only times I have had a chance to get pics have been on windy days. If it is still, it has been raining recently. Summer in Sydney is like that (though it hasn't been very summery these last couple of days - it's been cold and wet). Sydney is subtropical, almost, and gets scads of rain in summer but also gets cool changes with rain from the south. It gets the worst of both worlds - summer humidity and all year round cool changes.

We had the cops at our block of flats on Sunday night. I think it was Sunday. I didn't notice at all. I was sound asleep as someone's ex came by and made a helluva ruckus, banging on doors, yelling, etc. I stayed sound asleep as the cops showed up and I remained sound asleep as he was dragged away. I think I deserve a medal for being a champion sleeper.

Dangnabbit, I just broke the second last of my favourite plates, exactly the same way as the third last of my favourite plates, by putting it on the cooktop and not realising I had turned on the element under the plate rather than the element I wanted to turn on. I hate electric stoves. At least gas warns me when I do something stupid....

anon!

gah

2011-11-14T23:12:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

Sydney has pulled out a stinker today - 38C! No wonder I am feeling a little hot under the collar, even though I am not wearing a collar....

I've been a bit quiet recently. I've got a lot on my plate currently - travel last week, a whole of of disruption coming up that I cannot yet talk about. Keeping secrets is so blah, at least this sort of secret. Of course it might not happen either, so it makes it even More Mysterious!

(There's a few hundred of my "close personal friends" there. The way people put themselves into other peoples' pictures indicated an intimacy unknown to the photographer.)

On the weekend, we went to Bondi to see Sculpture by the Sea. We and about 5,000 other people. I think I under-exaggerate. There were people EVERYWHERE.

We saw some really nice sculptures and some that I rather wondered the point of. I appear not to be into avant garde sculpture. And some were "affordable" if you like that sort of thing and think $5,500 and upwards into the hundreds of thousands of dollars is "affordable."

But I am still editing the pics. There are many many many pics, and that is only from the lot I took on my little point and shoot. Nathan took hundreds on the dSLR, all HDR. I'll get some more pics on Flickr soon. I have a little preview on my Google + account. I am putting little bits and pieces on that when I want to link to something quickly.

(that is a lot of green - green = algae = lots of yummies in the water.)

Bondi beach still whiffs at the end where it goes into the cliffs - it might be a stormwater drain empties there. Apparently the sewage outfall got moved further out to sea, making your chances of meeting a Bondi cigar lower. Bondi has long had a reputation for floaters and sinkers. I could never work out which is worse - the horror you can see floating? Or the one lurking on the sea floor, waiting to be squished between unsuspecting toes?

(Can you blame that bloke for standing on his surfboard? He doesn't want to touch the water. He knows what lurks just under the surface....)

(Ah, the forecast cool change has swept through. Hooray! It was only about 5 hours late. And we had one of The Best Sunsets Evah tonight but I was at the swimming pool and did not have a camera.... sigh. Egads, I am getting to know more about my neighbours than I'd like too. Everyone's windows are open and some folks are getting quite umm close if you get my drift....)

Bondi is a fave place for tourists to hang out. It does have a lot of places selling food, drink/grog, surfwear and bathers. Like LOTs of bathers (togs, swimwear, cossies, bathing costumes, swimming trunks (men), etc). Did we buy some more bathers? Umm, that would be a yes....

The beach itself does look pretty. It is also a good spot to go perv at some nice bods. It isn't really my place - I refuse to try to suntan and umm, well the old bod looks best in a 50s number these days. Something with lots of structure and not eensy weensy strings.

anon!

A black and terrible storm

2011-11-09T19:36:00.001+11:00

Gday all!

I was hoping to fly out to Sydney this evening but well I think the attached pic tells a story...

All flights delayed and the storm is about an hour wide... dangit!

Anon!

Hooray for a domestic

2011-11-05T16:36:00.001+11:00

G'day all!

We are in sunny melbourne and within ten minutes of ferrying off the plane had a domestic.

I very clearly said I was intending to go to the loo, which I did. Nathan headed that way too, only to the men's.

He disappeared. I waited for the luggage, cos I wasn't leaving that behind and I thought he was in the loo still.

I could see there was a bus about to leave and I now had the luggage, but still no nathan. I was waiting inside. I hear my name, and nathan is outside. He had been buying tickets for the bus. I already had tickets for the bus.

We missed the bus. We had a domestic.

He expected me to just know that he was buying tickets. Cos I am psychic, doncha know.

I thought he was still in the loo. After all we do have those sorts of days once in a while.

So now he is all huffy and stalked off because I'm not a mind reader. Yes he was doing a good thing but if he had said I'll go get tickets, if he had communicated with me, we wouldn't have a rather public row. And we'd be at the railway station by now.

And sniffle, my scissors were in my handbag and now I've lost them cos security took them away, and they were the best little scissors I ever had.

Anon!

Hooray, another year older

2011-11-03T18:39:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

Hmm, maybe I should have given this blog entry the title "Boo, hiss, another year older..."

I am currently very much in two minds about this whole birthday thing.

a) I am very grateful to have managed to reach another birthday. Five years ago I assumed that I would reach 80-something. After the fun of the last couple of years, I'm grateful for every birthday I hit in apparently good health.

b) another birthday means I am getting older. And I already feel like a wrinkly old bag some days, especially next to the lovely young things* that Nathan has as workmates. Now people say they are not wrinkles, they are experience lines, so oh boy I must be rapidly gaining experience in this game of life! And I can tell what expressions mainly cross over my face from the patterns that are worn in. And I'm not fishing for compliments either, cos when people tell me I am beautiful, I know they are fibbing or extrapolating the truth somewhat. Now if they said I am not bad for an old chook, I would get huffy and say I'm better than not bad and I'm not *that* old, but I know where I sit in the beauty stakes. And that is fairly and squarely in attractive enough, not pretty nor beautiful nor gorgeous, and for that matter, not plain nor fugly.

(*I like to tease the LYTs - I like to tease people it turns out - but then I think about it and at their age would I have thought it was pretty freaky to have a married old bat teasing me? Oh you bet your bottom dollar I would! When I was 19 I though the 23yo who hung out with us was old! So I can't imagine how old these 25yo kids think I am! If any of you are one of those kids reading this, sorry, hope I'm not upsetting you! Though the chiro was extremely flattering yesterday, bless his cotton socks. He is also a kid. And I called his flattery. Anyway, I can't imagine what I'll be like if I manage to get to 80 or 90... I'll be outrageous!)

Speaking of beauty stakes, I haven't shown off my hair. I think I will have to go bottle blonde. Am sick of having dark blonde hair with red lights in it. I got some blocks of hair bleached out last week and then had magenta dyed into it. The magenta is pretty but I really liked the bleached look. It made my face look so much lighter and brighter. Apparently I am meant to be bright, light blonde. Who knew?

We went for a lovely walk in Ku-Ring-Gai Chase national park on the weekend and the pics are from there. We did the same walk as the whoopsy one we did last time, only in reverse and deliberately, with food and water this time, as well as a stop over at the kiosk in Apple Tree Bay. My goodness, those 1.5 cans of lemon lime Solo went down a treat!

Alas one of the chaps with us was on call and even though most of the calls are not important, wouldn'cha know it, this time around it was something important. And even though he had one or two bars on his phone, there was no internet. Poor thing had to run all the way up the big long hill, only to find crap reception up there too! It only got better when we got on the train, which you would think would kill connectivity (being a big faraday cage and all).

There is one critter I wish I'd gotten a picture of. I kid you not, we saw a turtle! A sea turtle. It was not very big - not full grown but probably about 40cm across the shell. It was swimming around in the inlet (photo above, but not of turtle!) but by the time I'd gotten the lens cap off the camera, etc, it had dived and didn't come up again in my sight. But I did get pics of a lyrebird:

and a goanna/monitor:

and a skink and bugs of different types.

Birthday party up here is tomorrow. Then we're off to Melbourne for the weekend, a family thing on Saturday and a party at a friend's place, and then Sunday is either my family or off to a not-really ren fair. Monday is filming for the training scenario I am working on, then more filming for other stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday, then I fly home (to Sydney). It is confusing having two homes.

anon!

Another anniversary

2011-10-27T09:09:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

It is a year ~~today~~ yesterday since I finished treatment for cancer. A year since I last walked in for my zapping by a flesh-searing relativistic particle cannon (thanks, xkcd for the best ever comic!).

I remember being a little sad in a way - I was living by myself in Melbourne, I was seeing my workmates two days a week, and I was lonely and bored. At least I saw people regularly when I was being zapped!

I also remember waiting for the weariness I had been promised to kick in. Hello! I am supposed to feel exhausted now! Where's my exhaustion? I was tired if I didn't get my sleep each night, but I'm always tired if I don't sleep enough. I think that is fairly normal. It's just I needed an extra hour or two.

But I didn't. I felt better and better every day, though the "sunburn" got worse for the next week or so. The chemo had knocked me around so much that the radiotherapy was a walk in the park in comparison.

(Hmm, this blog post took a lot longer to write than I hoped, like a whole day, because Chromium has some issues on linux....)

Anyway, it is a year and I'm grateful to still be here. I've been reading the Occupy Wall Street Tumblr "blog" and I am really quite horrified. I am one of the 99% but as an Australian in Australia (and I believe it would stand if I lived in New Zealand too), I get free healthcare. Because my income is above a certain level, I have what Americans would call a co-pay on seeing a GP (primary care physician) but all of my chemotherapy, my operation and my radiotherapy cost me nothing. Nil. Nada. Not a cent. The anti-nausea medication and lotions I used cost me, but even the Neulasta and 2 X Emend tablets only cost $30 a pop and when I went on the dole (did I mention we have a welfare safety net too?), they only cost $6.40 for each script. Each Neulasta shot cost my government somewhere around three thousand dollars. Emend isn't that expensive but it is not a cheap anti-nausea drug. If I was an American, I'd probably be dying right now. (I may be anyway but I hope not!) DH's job had just ended when I was diagnosed and we could not have afforded Cobra (extension of the work private health insurance after work stops paying for it) and we certainly could not have afforded to pay cash for my treatment.

So hooray for Australia, for taking care of its people. I'm quite happy to say being on the dole sucks big biscuits - it only brings home a bit over $400 a fortnight and is a lot of work (unless you are signed off work like I was), but from what I read, a lot of Americans working full time don't bring home much more than that anyway. Which also shocks me. And here we get free healthcare when we earn so little. (People will argue that it isn't very good because they can wait two years for a knee operation or to get a filling done but that is better than never ever getting that work done or having to line up at a fairground and get treated in a horse stall surely?)

(Whoops, I just realised that pic is not straight...well I still like it)

OK, off the political pony now.

Next week it is my birthday. And right about now would've been my parent's 60th wedding anniversary. I remember their silver wedding anniversary and the bowl that the lodge gave them. It was such a different world then.

Now that it is almost the next weekend, I have to say what a lovely weekend I had last week. Nathan decided that I should have an early birthday celebration because some friends are going to be away for my birthday. Even though he was under significant work pressure, he found a recipe online for a yummy GF/DF sticky date pudding and got the ingredients and would've made it except KB wouldn't let him cook it in her kitchen. That was sweet of him and her! And it was yummy (though the sauce was a bit sweet and gave a helluva sugar rush).

(This flannel flower was growing in some sandstone in the back yard of the house being warmed)

Saturday we had a housewarming up in Hornsby, which was very pleasant. Nathan and I were the only Australian born people there. The rest were adoptees.

(Sunset from the loungeroom of the house being warmed)

Sunday DH had breakfast in Balmain with some friends and then I joined them for a walk around Ballast Point (two separate links), which is technically in Birchgrove but eh, it's all Balmain to me on that peninsula. It set things up for a very nice day. But we still don't get the verse on the oil tank sculpture. (The full thing reads, "Stone statues of ancient waves, tongue like dingoes on shore .") Today's pics are mostly from that walk.

I wonder where we will go this weekend? And what we will see there? Exploring the harbour is fun :-)

anon!

Dodged one bullet...

2011-10-20T07:30:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

Well yesterday we dodged one bullet, and got hit by another. Nathan will be off to a funeral soon - his grandpa died. Grandpa was old and tired and had had enough. We knew he was on his last legs, and had pondered sending Nathan off to see him but a) not enough time and b) some work issues. Nathan will miss him even though they only talked a couple of times a year and saw each other even less often.

(Why won't I be going to the funeral? Because it is going to cost at least $500 per person to fly there and back, and OUCH! I should go for the family but Nathan agrees that it is $500+ we could put on the mortgage... Driving is out of the question as it is about 1400km/870m away and my car is small and old.)

So things have actually improved here over the last few days, despite Grandpa dying. Thank heavens. I am surviving the antibiotics (some give me dreadful side effects that you don't need the details of but not these ones so far, yes I am eating soyghurt every couple of days) and they seem to be working. They must be working because I am much less crabby and much more full of cope, plus I've walked hmm, 9km on Monday, 2km on Tuesday, 6km yesterday.... by tonight assuming I stay awake long enough I will probably have walked another 5 or more kilometres and gone swimming (I hope). I woke up a little early today - DH had a restless night and by the time he got to sleep again at 5am, I was pretty much wide awake. My knitting continues slowly - the item is all in one piece so I will only have a few ends to weave in, hooray! I also have some ideas for a quilt, particularly given my quiltalong group is getting going again after a rather long northern summer hiatus.

(Nasturtiums are pretty to look at but I have NO IDEA how people can eat the things. Or doesn't the latexy sap permeate the flowers?)

anon!

Oh to be joyous

2011-10-17T23:12:00.000+11:00

G'day all!

Well things continue on their craptastic way here. It never rains but it pours. We are expecting some not particularly happy-making news. Once any and all of it happens, it will probably be a relief!

(I feel a bit like the harbour seal on the left of the pic - no matter how high I hike myself up, I just keep getting inundated)

I'm underinspired and quite frankly lonely. In the last week, I've talked to my MiL on the phone and Nathan and to my workmates and bosses on the phone (thank you MiL and bosses for helping sort some of the crazy). That is it. I didn't really talk to anyone on Friday night because I was knackered. It appears I have a pelvic infection. I'm now on antibiotics and am regaining energy. We usually have breakfast with a couple of Nathan's workmates on the weekend but we didn't have breakfast with either of them. (Nathan had breakfast with some people he jams with.)

(Boom, crash! NB the seals are not sitting on the rock that wave broke over. Man that was magic watching those big waves come in.... I could have stayed there all afternoon watching them. I love the sea. I live only about 12km from the sea but central Sydney lies in between it and me...)

I am feeling underwhelmed by my social life. I've talked more to this danged character in my head than to anyone else in the last three months. He keeps surprising me. At least someone wants to talk to me!

OK, whining done.

I have been knitting! Alas my arm is puffing up quite a lot at the moment, but I am hoping it will calm down again in a few days... I am knitting continental as my usual flicking technique appears to be annoying my hand. I am a good girl, I am using some of the yarn I bought in the USA. I do not have a pic of the knitting yet. I've almost done enough of it to model. With a singlet (tank) on. No freebie views here! Not without dinner, flower and chocolates first...

I was a naughty girl yesterday, I bought some fabric at Scroatfight. But it was $3/m instead of $10-16/m... I don't have plans for it, yet... I also saw these (scroll down a ways) on Jane Sassaman's (fabric) blog and umm, well I only bought half a metre of fabric, just to play with, from Quiltsmith. I've never had any real interest in hexies before but umm well those just blew me away. Oh and did I say that it's not only knitting that is an issue for me? Anything that makes me bend my arm 90 degrees or more (handsewing, knitting) does. And bike riding, though my arm is straight. Dangnabbit. This blasted cancer has stolen a whole heap of things from me, and I am cranky with it. I don't care about the chunk out of my boob but I do care about my ability to craft and do things that make me feel happy (knit, sew, bike ride, other things that I can't think of currently), and I do care that my plans to become A Lady Of A Certain Age with the blabbermouth to go with it may have been interrupted. (OK, they certainly will be interrupted if I get run over by a bus tomorrow... but you may be able to sympathise anyway.) At least I will soon turn another year older. It is a year more than I expected when I was diagnosed!

(Is there a bright light in the future? Is it an oncoming train or just Pigeon Point lighthouse?)

Today's good things. I went swimming. My ring fits my finger again, and I can almost get it on the finger it was designed to sit on. (I made the ring what 12 years ago now... until the lymphoedema diagnosis, it always stayed on my middle finger.) We bought a new fluorescent light tube and starter for the kitchen - the old one was talking to me in some form of morse code, only I don't know morse code, or maybe it was aliens trying to communicate. Or maybe it was just busted (it hurt to have the light strobing. It really hurt). I walked at least 9km. The weather cleared up after it poured rain last night and the forecast is lovely. And it seems that summer is on the way a) 28C later in the week and b) it is starting to get humid on warm days. 27C and a few showers on Sunday. Ick!

anon!

What a bumpy ride

2011-10-12T23:09:00.001+11:00

G'day all!

Well what a fun time we are having at the moment. Re-entry from the US has been super-stressful. DH is having work issues that I am not at liberty to discuss. They are impacting severely on him and therefore on me.

We had a fab weekend - BiL and SiL2b came up and we hung out and did fun stuff, going for long walks in Lane Cove NP and then up in the Blue Mittens (no longer mountains, thanks SiL2b!), and I thought DH was a little sorted. But no. I am truly at my wit's end with him. I don't know what to do.

Hopefully I can relay more interesting and positive stuff soon, but for the nonce,

anon!

Returning to base

2011-10-01T20:52:00.000+10:00

G'day all!

What a whirlwind visit it was to the States! Nowhere near long enough to do everything I wanted - I reckon I got about half of everything done....

Our flight home was uneventful - exactly how one wants it to be. We nearly missed getting our bags on the first plane as we were slightly later than I wanted to be getting the car back to the rental mob, who had misplaced their end of the contract and then Nathan thought he'd lost his corporate credit card... but he hadn't, he'd just put it in his pocket after they couldn't find the contract....

One excellent thing about flying American Airlines out of San Jose down to LAX is that they codeshare with Qantas, so our luggage was checked right through to Sydney. It meant we saved a good two hours in LAX, though that meant we spent two more hours sitting around rather than stressing our way through security.

We had a lovely not-quite-guided tour of LAX as we were driven from AA's American Eagle terminal to the usual AA terminal (where we got off thinking it was the end of the line). We had dinner there at the Chili's. Then we trawled off in another bus to the international terminal, and did not have to go through security again. Hooray!

The bus trips were pretty amazing. The bus trundles along by the runway, an active runway. There's suddenly a roar and vvvrrr-rrrrow! A plane takes off about 50m away. On the first trip everyone was very serious (I wasn't, I made an aeroplane passing by noise, which I now realise is based on a plane I've never heard in real life - a Spitfire - and startled some people) but the second trip, the people on that side of the bus ducked and then laughed. Like how helpful is it it duck when the plane is about to crash into the bus? Anyway, you get to see all sorts of planes and activities and stuff. Whilst I am in two minds about air travel - it is hellishly expensive on fuel and greenhouse impact but is really the only way to get halfway around the world in less than a day - I am still a bit of a plane freak. Seeing an Air NZ 777 reminded me that I've met the man who designed its rudder. Passing by an A380 (the plane we flew home in) underlines how massive these jets are. The thing's got about 50 wheels for starters (ok, really only 22 can be counted in my pics) and outmuscles every other kid on the block.

I ended up with a window seat on the way home and oh bliss, noone sitting next to me! (Nathan was in premium economy. At least he didn't tell me all about the champagne this time.) It is sooo much easier to get comfortable if you don't have to wriggle away from someone all night - I don't really want to snuggle someone whom I don't know or worse, drool on their shoulder... At least a snuggle doesn't leave a mark. Our bags took forever to appear but arrived before customs did a rolling stoppage and we were out and in a taxi on our way home within ten minutes of grabbing our bags! Quickest time ever! (It does help that now I know that wool yarn, whilst technically being an animal product/fleece is actually not what Customs/AQIS is interested in.)

I have lots of catch up posts to do. At the moment though, Flickr is having a massage (really! That is what they tell me) and I can't upload pics on it and can't be stuffed uploading them on blogger, so this is a pic-less post.

anon!

California here we've come

2011-09-25T02:02:00.000+10:00

G'day all!

We've been in California almost a week now and I have neglected the blog in favour of catching up with a few people and umm, doing lots of shopping... Just as well we only brought one suitcase with us cos I had to go buy another one.

You want pics? I only have pics of NYC. I have some from the coast here and a couple of sunset and some from a bay cruise up out of SF but you don't come to San Jose for the scenery.

We are about to take off for the weekend to visit the Sierra Nevadas, Lake Tahoe, etc. If I am lucky, I might see some aspens in their fall colours. I love aspens. I've seen them naked, in first flush of leaves, in full leaf but never really in their yellow fall party dresses.

I have to run - we are picking a friend up from the station in an hour and we are by no means ready yet.

anon!

We have escaped New York

2011-09-17T13:11:00.000+10:00

G'day all!

We have escaped New York city. It is a most fabulous place but totally OTT. I have pics to share but not until we have real internet. And I had a lovely time meeting up with my crazy fiber lady friend (links later) and a Ravelry BC mate.

We have left our teensy hotel room (apparently they used to be girls' dorms from way back when) and now are lounging in comfort in a Holiday Inn. We appear to have a king size bed with a pillowtop or maybe memory foam.

OH BLISS!

(Excuse me whilst I roll around on it, enjoying the support and softness.)

Apparently I am about 60-70, or at least my body appreciates some good old fashioned comfort.

(Our $368/night plus fees and taxes and charges bed was like a rock. Me and rocks don't get along too well. Also the bathroom was so small in the previous hotel that I wanged my head on the wall trying to get out from under the water jet aka the shower and you could not sit straight on the toilet - you hit your knees on the wall. Here you'd have to be a giant to hit your knees there's so much space!)

We are now in the wilds of Pennsylvania for the PA Energy Fest. It looks like a cross between a hippy festival and a serious renewable energy fest. Should be interesting!

Only one more day and a bit to good internet (well I hope it is ADSL or something). I thought I needed a cord to make the camera talk to the laptop but I believe the work laptop has an SD card reader. Hooray! Then I can load some pics onto flickr. Double hooray!

Time for beddy byes. We are still jetlagged, if you can't tell from my writing, and need a good night's sleep or two. Alas tomorrow night will not be it - we have to be up at 4am to drive to Philadelphia to catch the plane to San Jose.

Do you know the way to San Jose, do do do do do dododododdodo?

anon!

New York, New York

2011-09-15T05:21:00.000+10:00

G'day all!

Sorry, no pics yet. Our internet allowance is minute, rather like our hotel room. But I'm in NYC and it is very NYC. Lots of traffic, lots of noise, lots of horns and squealing tyres (I have no idea how they manage to squeal tyres when it is bumper to bumper traffic). Lots of people.

I have not seen too much in the way of people cutting back on spending. There are people shopping until they drop. Wholefoods was doing a roaring trade. (Oh how I've missed you, Wholefoods! Your glorious $1.99 a pound organic apples... your beautiful cheap organic produce (organic veg in Oz is expensive) ... your huge range of gluten and dairy free icecream... your gluten and dairy free frozen meals... rice chips... and today I even found some decent fresh GF and DF bread! But our minute hotel room doesn't have a fridge or a microwave so I have to hold off until we are in San Jose.) Then again I guess I am in one of the most expensive cities in the world, at least this end of it is. (I'm near Central Park and not far from Times Square.)

Anyone want an I<3NY tshirt? I can get them pretty cheap 8-) I only passed about 20 stalls selling them in my 20 block walk. 20 blocks in NYC is not really very far - the blocks are longish but narrow, unlike Melbourne's square blocks. Sydney has long blocks too.

Time for me to go back out into the humidity again. It is 80-something F and quite humid. I think I should go for a walk in Central Park. Tomorrow I meet up with a friend, and on Friday with a raveller I've never met. Then we are off to Pennsylvania on Friday night, and then San Jose on Sunday.

anon!

Onwards, outwards, upwards

2011-09-11T17:19:00.000+10:00

G'day all!

Looks like the big G is having a few issues at present - I can't post under the new Blogger interface and then when I provided feedback as to why I've swapped back to the old version, the Google doc failed. So some lucky engineer somewhere has to sort that out.

Wonder if this post will go through.

I am looking forward to visiting friends in the States. They'll notice a few changes - I'm wrinklier and my hair is somewhat shorter and darker (though given it has not had a chance to sunbleach yet and I've done the chemo thing, it isn't that surprising).

(Rosa laevigatum has beaten all the roses to flowering)

Spring is definitely sprung here - over the last two weeks, the trees have suddenly sprouted beautiful lime green leaves. I love spring green. The wisteria is in flower as are the crab apples.

But I am feeling a bit flat. My story writing has slowed down quite a bit and I feel a bit lonely. Odd that I should miss characters that are like imaginary friends but they have run out of story for the time being. I've still got quite a few notes to transcribe, which is nice.

I'm also feeling a bit old and shabby. Last year I was in emergency mode and coping magnificently with things. Emergency mode is no longer required, instead I am finding the new normal. In finding the new normal, I'm finding that I am vain. I did not know that having long blonde hair was how I thought about myself, though I know I was rather resistant to getting it cut off. Or long eyelashes. Or relatively dark eyebrows. I've never been an amazingly pretty chickie babe, but I'm not particularly ugly either.

Now I have short, dark blonde hair with reddish lights in it. My eyebrows have come in anywhere from invisible blonde to about 20 darker ones and somewhat thinner (of course I have plenty that are growing where I don't want them but I've lost the monobrow ones!). And my eyelashes are piss weak, to be honest. My face seems to have gone insipid. And wrinkles have bloomed like flowers. 9 months without hormones will do that to one it seems.

And I miss being able to pass for a few years younger than my real age.

People tell me that character and cunning grows over the years and can make a woman more attractive than she was at say 20. I should have plenty of character then and even more attractiveness. I've dealt with enough, and I keep dealing with plenty of crap too. But it doesn't mean that I don't miss some things like occasionally turning heads and being valued for something shallow like appearance.

Funny, isn't it that I am learning more about my depths but miss the shallow stuff most. I always knew I had depths. At least noone thinks I am a brainless blonde bimbo any more - I should look on the bright side!

And mostly I do.

BTW, it's DH and my 7th wedding anniversary today. I would love to say seven years of wedded bliss but as in most marriages, it has its ups and downs. I'm glad to have made it through another year :-)

(Pics of sunsets from around here - I go out every day and take pics. It fascinates me, probably dull as dishwater to other people though)

anon!

I can haz haircut

2011-09-09T18:23:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

I had my first proper haircut this arvo. I got rid of the duck's butt/mullet, and have a style cut.

Is skeered now.

Is looking like my mother. Except my photo is skewed again... It must be a bug in mobile blogger.

Is very skeered.

But the haircut is pretty cute.

Must work out what I am taking to the usa... We leave on tuesday!

This extremely shallow post brought to you by poet's day.

Anon!

She sews socks by the seashore

2011-09-07T20:55:00.000+10:00

G'day all!

I am sure some of you have entirely forgotten I started this blog to share my knitting conquests. It has gone a little sideways from there over the last while, and I fear it will go more sideways yet.

But at last I have found the pics I took of the Tardis socks, though they are not the Best Evah shots.I embroidered on half the Tardis markings whilst sitting on a park bench at Glebe Point.

Do you like the view the socks (and I) had? That's the Anzac Bridge with the Sydney Harbour Bridge underneath it. I admit that there isn't too much of the seashore there, more just a border of rocks but it is still a very pleasant place.

The finished socks do not have Police Box embroidered on them as the sock yarn was too thick. As it was, I bollocksed up part of it trying to write police box on and had to duplicate stitch over the manky bit... Shhh, don't tell anyone, ok? :-)

Hmm, blogger has a new interface and I am not sure I like it as much as the old one. Of course I've been using the old one for years and one does get set in one's ways. It would be very nice if the editor didn't get stuck at pictures. I might have to provide some feedback about that!

Now speaking of seashore, earlier today I went for a walk along the promenade along the harbour down the bottom of our street. I know that we have skinks around our block of flats - I've taken pics of them before and yesterday nearly stood on one when I was walking back from the laundry. Today I saw about 15 skinks sunning themselves on the rocks along the harbour front. I'm guessing most of them were common garden skinks but two were rock skinks, which can grow up to 30cm long!

Here's me crawling along the edge of the harbour (ooh me back! I've done my SI joints again and my lower back is a bit crabby), gawping at skinks. They are almost as good as crawdads, though crawdads usually will have a go back rather than running away.... Anyway, I am the biggest kid you'll ever see. If it's a critter of almost any sort, I'm so there! Unless it's a leech. Leeches squick me out.

anon!

Toddling onwards

2011-08-30T22:51:00.000+10:00

G'day all!

Just a quickie - I am being a very bad blogger. But I have been blogging for over seven years now. My 7th blogiversary was 10 days ago, and I totally forgot all about it, like I do every year!

I have a pair of socks to show off, if I ever remember to get pics of the finished items. I finished DH's Tardis socks in time for his birthday, though I did not put the police box words on them as I need a much lighter weight thread for that - the sock yarn was too heavyweight.

We had a most excellent party at one of our favourite restaurants here (Haiphong Harbour I think it is). 24 of Nathan's closest friends up here in Sydney. I had a lovely time crapping on (aka talking to people). Nathan made various of us get up and move around the room, reshuffling the deck to get people to talk to different people. At first I started off talking to people that I know reasonably well, and then moved to other people only two of whom I had talked to before, though that turned out well too and we had a lovely discussion about how nerves work and umm how reflexes work, especially in absence of input from the brain. I can only think of one reflex that does not use skeletal muscles (hmm, I may have just thought of another...) and neither of them are ones that we talk about in polite society. I rather offended one member (ahem) of the party, though I apologised, but the other two I was talking to were amused by my delicate terminology.

For some reason along the way, I doodled a fish that turned into a rabbit shark. Be afraid, be very afraid.... Imagine a shark that can jump like a bunny and breed like one too. (Could it jump the shark? Dunno!)

I made two yummy GF and DF cakes, and I would like to say that I very much regret polishing the remains off over the next couple of days, but umm, I don't regret it at all and would keep on eating them if any was left. Not that I am greedy or anything. I may have to make another orange and almond cake as the first one was so yummy and I still have half a bag of almond meal left and it will go off doncha know 8-) Plus one friend had a dodgy gut that evening and had to go home and missed out on the cake. Plus another friend got caught up and couldn't make it to the party.

DH wanted to go to IKEA on Sunday (!!!) and we ended up managing to get one of these into the car along with a 195cm (6'5") DH and a 200cm (6'7") friend. If you saw the size of my car, you might be impressed. (It is a five door version of the Geo Metro for my US readers.) And the 2m tall guy said "Oh, there's more room than I expected." Which isn't to say it was comfortable but if it had been my previous car he would've had to have chopped his legs off to get in the back of the car....

In more interesting news, we are booked to fly to the US on the 13th of September. 13-16 in NYC. 17-18 in Pennsylvania. 19-29 in Mountain View, CA.

I'd better start emailing a few of you, yes? It will be marvellous to catch up, though I still haven't booked our internal flights around the US (not for want of trying but more because DH is stalling on that part...).

I've been taking a picture (or several hundred) of sunsets from Glebe Point over the last while. Every evening I am here in Sydney, I am taking pics if the sunset is any good. There's been a couple of doozies recently. I've been fascinated by the sun's progression along the horizon as the days lengthen.

Anyway, more another time, like pics of the socks!

anon!

His baby takes the evening train

2011-08-24T20:03:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

I am on my way back to Sydney. I'm taking the train and bringing my bike with me. I decided to cough up for first class in hope that I don't get sitting next to me a pimply fifteen year old heavy smoker who has a nasty skin condition involving a lot of peeling skin which he can't leave alone... Shudder

I am glad I didn't have to move the bike and my luggage more than about half a kilometre... As it is, I'm knackered!

Oh we are off (and as I love to say, we are going as well - does off have a meaning of rotting and being stinky issue of oz and nz?).

Anon!
Ps hope the pic isn't rotated but it is fairly much how I feel as present...

White bloom

2011-08-23T17:01:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

Some lovely spring blooms for you against a blue blue sky :)

Tests all came back clear, hooray! I am looking forward to getting back to Sydney and having a rest! I've been on the social rounds for days now and this hermit needs a break. I'm not used to seeing so many people 8)

I have three days to finish nathan's birthday socks. Pity I forgot to take them to the clinic with me, I could have had a good hour of knitting instead.

Tomorrow evening me and my bike are off to Sydney on the train. I'm going first class :) Percy the bike will be in a box...

And it looks like I have to book tickets to the usa too!

Anon!

Sunday arvo on the Yarra

2011-08-21T16:09:00.001+10:00

Tres bon indeed

:-)

My bad

2011-08-18T07:21:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

I am very bad today. The airport had a shop with all these pretty watches, a rainbow wall of colour and umm, I succumbed. $20. My old watch still works but I broke the strap and in trying to make a new strap lost half the buckle.

Very tempted by a pink watch and a blue one and a purple one... And a green one...

Off to Melbourne in minutes for my mammo and ct scan. Hope my new watch distracts me :)

Anon!

Greenthings

2011-08-16T18:07:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

Spring is certainly in the air :-)

Trees are starting to leaf out and I am sitting waiting for the bus home in tshirt (and pants you will be pleased to know no doubt...).

Tis very nice. I just wish I could get a shot of the tshirt I am wearing. It appears that my arms are not long enough to take a picture of my side.

In another week I should have at last finished dh's socks. I started them in January or February and they still aren't done. Won't it be nice to see some crafting pics on this blog?

On Thursday I have to fly to Melbourne for the next round of cancer surveillance tests. I did the bloods last week locally (and you should have seen the bruising I got! I've still got a yellow patch on the inside of my elbow). Then I find out how things are going in a week from today.

Thanks for all your kind comments from the last post, I really need to follow up all those that I can...

anon!

One year

2011-08-07T12:12:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

A year ago today I was in home after spending two days in hospital. I was recovering from surgery. The cancer had been cut out of me and was gone, hopefully never to return. Time will tell on that score!

What an amazing year it has been. So many things have happened and not necessarily good things. DH got a job in Sydney and had to move 500 miles away from me. I recovered from the operation and then did radiotherapy basically on my own, with some help from friends and family. Some friends offered me a job, a job that I enjoy. I hope I am giving them back as much value and friendship as they have me. DH was diagnosed with ADD and has continued to struggle with the repercussions of that to this day. His meds have made a big difference but when you've struggled all your adult life with being so clever yet feel like such an idiot because things that come easily to others do not come easily to you.... Two of Nathan's cousins have married, and I have been reminded of the value of family. I finally feel like part of DH's extended family. I am a bit slow on that score. I have learned so much about myself and about others. I have much to be grateful for.

It has not been a good year for knitting. I was able to knit not long after the operation but after developing lymphoedema, I've had to cut back on the knitting. I can tolerate up to about 15-30 minutes at a time. I'm a fairly quick knitter but only having up to an hour a day of knitting if I don't have other things to do means I don't get a whole lot done. I've been knitting a pair of socks for Nathan for months now, and have not finished a very cute cardie that has been waiting for umm, months (I have to do part of a button band and sew on some buttons and that is all!).

I've been sewing and quilting a fair bit. Making my own dresses is both tedious and fun. I've learned a bit more about quilting too.

I've been writing, probably too much, possibly to the detriment of family and friends, but I realise one reason for writing. It is because family and friends are so far away. I am not lonely when I am writing. The characters talk through me. It is like having another life.

I moved to an inner city suburb of a city that I have never enjoyed. I've moved away from the little wilderness of our suburban garden into a small flat with no outside area. But I have realised that nature has a way of asserting herself in the smallest and strangest places, even in the inner suburbs of the most populous city in Australia. Ferns grow on the old brick buildings. Plants find crevices to push their roots into. The thrilling call of currawongs floats on the air. It all delights me to find these little things that tell me nature will prevail.

I've discovered that though Melbourne is my home, I am pretty smitten with Sydney. Just don't make me drive around it or go places out of walking distance.

I've learned to stop. Just stop and be. It helps that just down the road I can find things like this:

I have always loved water. It amazes me that we live on a world where water can form liquid, not just ice nor just vapour. I never tire of watching water.

And sunsets are pretty grand too.

I've rediscovered a child-like wonder at the universe and where I am in it. People up here think it is funny that I look at the city as I walk along the road. It astounds me that I live where I do. I've been here for over four months now and I still am gobsmacked. If I had a Green Planet Yarn or My Sister Knits here, like I did in the US, and an outside area to have plants and a BBQ on, it would be almost perfect. As it is, it is pretty darned good. (Yes, I got over my whinge in April.)

All in all, I am grateful to still be here, to still have the opportunity to see and make and love and grow. Thanks for sharing the ride with me :-)

anon!

We saw the sea

2011-07-30T16:53:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

We went to Manly beach today. It were luvlee!

Remember it is technically winter here.

And for the first time in years, we have a tv! It was the real reason for going to Manly. Nathan's previous boss is moving back to the US and we have acquired his telly.

But really the highlight of the day was the beach. I said hello to the Oz side of the Pacific :-)

anon!

Well that was fun!

2011-07-26T16:15:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

This is a post of Too Much Information.

Today I trotted off to the doctor and had a little contraceptive device fitted.

Today I discovered what a vasovagal response is (the quick version is it is a form of shock where your blood pressure plummets and you go all wobbly and faint). Apparently my body didn't like something being inserted where nothing had been before....

The doctor congratulated me on having a moderately severe reaction. It took an hour before I started looking and feeling human again. The nurse and the doctor were in and out checking on me. They told me I was very brave,etc, and very sweaty. I sweated so much I soaked a "bluey" (one of the blue backed disposable sheets).

At least I now know what is going on when I do that - I've had similar responses to other events before. Now I know to eat sugar and sip water.

I am hoping the device gives me no further issues. At least if it works, I only have to do this once every five years.... Cos I certainly don't want to feel like that too often! I've still got slightly wobbly legs...

I think we now need a pretty picture to help us recover from the trauma..

Anon!

Monday again?

2011-07-25T15:59:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

I have many things to get organised at the moment. Like my photos. Yes, it stopped raining at last and I got some photos of my new Bendi stash. I didn't realise that I only bought one skein of yarn for me. Then again, I have not done a lot of knitting recently and do have enough yarn for a little while yet. And I've got a good 10 or more 55L (60Q) boxes at home full of yarn... hmm... But I'm struggling to keep up with everything whilst this blasted story is percolating out of my head like a bubbling spring. I'm not writing a lot of new stuff for it currently - I'm getting it onto the computer, out of my notebooks. Over half of it is written longhand because I can't always carry the computer with me and I sorta like writing it out rather than typing. I still have plenty to write, I am just letting it brew. (Sounds like coffee, doesn't it?) When it wants to come out, it does. It's like a volcano of writing - I get carried away with it. I don't notice time passing. I was on the bus the other day nutting something out and almost missed my stop I was so happily daydreaming. I thought I was THREE stops away!

I have been struggling with Nathan's socks that I've been knitting two at a time on the one set of circular needles. I just don't like knitting that way. The socks start getting surprisingly heavy by the time you've divided the ball of yarn in two and stuck it in the toe of the sock, and you are past the heel. OK, it is the same weight but it flaps around more and drags on the needles.

So I put one sock aside and suddenly? Much easier! Less weight. Faster. Not that it is worth taking a pic of to show you because they are navy coloured socks with white toes = really bad for taking pictures of, and the one I've been working on is only about 10 rounds longer than the other one.

We now have a small sound system for our server here. It means we can have music playing or when we watch a DVD or iView or something, we don't have to wear headphones. Hooray!

Plus Nathan's ex-boss is going back to the States shortly and we are getting his monster tv. I have not had a TV in ages. It will be weird. I will be able to watch whatever I want when I want, if I want. I guess we'll need some form of antenna thing - I am making the assumption that it is digital and comes with all the digital crap. Whoops, very important tuning stuff. Hope we can get decent reception in this concrete and brick box we live in.

And the car is in for a service and needs the carburettor overhauled, a CV joint rebooted (not as in computer reboot) or something and a couple of little odds and ends fixed.

Which somehow makes me think of this youtube video. The One Ronny and his frozen blackberry.

Hopefully I won't find something I absolutely must must must have this coming month, though I am going to have to spend some time in Melbourne again near the end of August. I have my one year check up.

I really should fix some pics up to post them. Blogs without pics are boring. I might do a post from the phone of some pretties I saw today whilst out walking.

:-)

anon!

Only 46mm of rain today

2011-07-22T23:26:00.002+10:00

And counting... 9 hours to go for the 24 hour rainfall total...

G'day all!

I was getting a bit of cabin fever today (even though I went out in the pouring rain last night) so I went in search of gumboots.

Target has sold out of gumboots. Everyone bought them yesterday. Kmart has not sold out of gumboots, well not if you are a girl between say 3 and 8.

Alas I am a somewhat bigger girl with a fair grip on this earth (some might disagree - I have been compared to Luna Lovegood before - but I take a 9-10 in women's sizing (Oz and US) or about a 41 in European sizing).

I looked online. $60 for pretty gumboots, up to $130! Ouch. I'm not used to them costing more than about $30. Then they wanted $19 for shipping from 5km away from here to my place. I sorta lost interest in them at that point. The place doesn't have a shopfront either that I could pick the things up from. Then I looked online and found that gumboots are around USD150! Holy guacamole, they are only gumboots! I could buy a rather nice pair or two of knee high leather boots for that price now that the winter clearance sales are on.... Admittedly walking through gutters full of water would ruin the leather boots.

I guess I could go to Bunnings (Home Despot equivalent) but they would be ugly and dark green with red on them and a Bunnings label. So not the cute gumboots of my dreams.

I could buy yucky ones and paint them but that would mean finding appropriate paints for PVC (AFAIK gumboots are not often made of rubber now).

Or I could suck it up and just buy the local ones online.

People whine about how wet Melbourne is, but let me tell you, when it rains in Sydney, it does not muck around with this drizzle stuff *and* it is just as likely to rain for days, only it does it tropical style. We've had a few short let offs in the rain since Tuesday night but we've had 244mm (nearly 10" or all of San Jose's rainfall) of rain this month, and only about 20mm of that fell before this week. Yikes!

Anyway, more is forecast for the weekend, and I now truly understand why gumboots were in all the shops earlier in winter. And why they are all sold out. 8-)

anon!

Wonderful weather for ducks

2011-07-21T20:26:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

I am hanging on getting you some pics of my Bendi haul but umm, well we've had over 100mm of rain in two days, and you can guess what that means?

No pics!

I am not that sure that ducks would like the weather at the moment. It might be a little wet even for them!

So tonight I walked to the swimming pool. Or maybe I should say I swam to the swimming pool. It is about half an hour away, so a nice walk.

It was especially pleasant tonight. It was raining that hard that the water running down the gutters was making a noise like a creek bounding down a hill every time it hit the tyre of a parked car. And there are a lot of parked cars on the street outside. If I had shut my eyes, I would not have been able to tell that I was not by a creek.

Especially if I was standing in it, which I occasionally had to do to get across a road.

It was lovely. My own urban creek hurrying to the sea. Not that it had far to go - it's only a couple of hundred metres away. Make that creeks - they were running everywhere. Both sides of the road, along the footpaths, down the lanes. The stairs were a waterfall, the roads were awash... The footpaths around the park are not exactly flat and formed their own little lakes.

I did rather wonder whether I should just wear my bathers to the pool.

But on the way home! The heavens opened on us. I very much regretted bothering to get changed into street gear for the walk home. Everything was awash. The gutters were running so hard and wide with water that you had to give up trying to jump over them and either walked up the road or waded through. There was no hope of staying dry. The rain was even coming through my beautiful rainbow umbrella.

My shoes were so squelchy with water that it was starting to push back out through the ventilation holes as I walked.

Do you like my gradient dyed fleecy pants? Or could it be that the bottoms are so wet they are dripping...

I think that I will go and buy some gumboots from Target tomorrow, assuming they still have pretty ones in my size. I might only need them once a month (though three days of this week would've been handy!) but on those days they would be realy handy!

anon!

PS wish us less rain. It is getting a little tiresome - I am running out of warm dry clothes and will soon be layering shorts and tshirts trying to stay warm....

Hooray, my bag arrived

2011-07-19T20:41:00.002+10:00

G'day all!

My bag arrived bright and early at 8:30am. Alas, I was not yet out of bed. (I should realise that if I get cold, I can't sleep, and I got very cold last night due to my own stupidity, and couldn't get to sleep until two am.... silly me!)

But I have most of my stash from Bendi, and the rest should arrive tomorrow I hope. Of course cos I didn't take pics before the clouds rolled in and then the rain started, and it is supposed to rain on and off for the rest of the week. So much for our beautiful winter weather - Melbourne weather has followed us up here, except this weather came from a totally different direction. I'll blame the Kiwis instead - they live to the south east of here and that is where the ratty weather is coming from at the moment.

I'm not used to the sound of rain. It hasn't rained much for a while - I've been spoiled by sunny days :-) Now water is running down the stairs outside and dripping off the balcony above us and the trees... It is quite soothing really.

Do I have any crafting to show you? *blush* I've been writing madly when I've had a chance. This blasted story wants to be written and it is taking up crafting time. I have so many things I want to make but a story that noone is ever likely to see is chewing up a lot of time.

We just had a lovely musical interlude when a friend came around and Nathan played piano and we sang Flanders and Swann songs.

The amusement of the day was a lady was soliciting donations for breast cancer. I looked at my arm, encased in its elastic compression sleeve, dipped my head in a sorry, and hurried on. I was tempted to say I've already donated a couple of lumps of tissue to breast cancer, about so big (holding them in my fist), but rain was threatening and I needed to get to the shops. Plus I donate to the national breast cancer research mob and the cancer council and the occasional other cancer charity, plus environmental groups. I'll probably get back onto the MSF bandwagon too. There's only so far one can spread oneself.

now that it is wednesday, eek, I started this somewhat earlier on Tuesday I shall bid you

anon!

Home again home again jiggedy jig!

2011-07-18T13:36:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks. I am looking forward to not jetting around the place for ooh, a month...

Got home half an hour ago, if that. Alas one of our bags hasn't gotten home yet - it didn't make it on the plane so I have to wait for it to show up. Given we nearly didn't make it on the plane, it isn't surprising - because we can't webcheck in when we are away and because mobile check in doesn't work on Android, they bumped us off and then back on again.

I rather hope my bag does show up. I bought it for $35 or $40 in the US and it is an ugly carpet (not crapet as I first typed) bag with wheels. For some reason I really like it, so it must remind me of some family thing. I've noticed that I tend to like things that remind me of stuff from when I was small. I told myself it was a stupid thing to get and I shouldn't buy it and I made myself walk around the shop and go out and come back two days later and it was still there, so I bought it. And it has been excellent, if ever so slightly too large to be cabin baggage.

I am a little fussed about it arriving by taxi because I don't have a good record with taxis and where we live. There are three roads with similar names around here - ours, Avon, 50m down the road and on the other side of the street and Avon lane, nearly opposite our street (taxis get them all mixed up) plus our place is currently hard to get to. They are doing roadworks at the end of the laneway that is the easiest access and because they are doing work on the balconies here (hmm, maybe I need to move the car?) they have blocked off the walkways (with scaffholding to reach the balconies) and we have to tromp across the garden bed and step down about 50cm to get to the entrance for this 2/3 of the block.... Now that is fun when you have 30kg (nearly 70lb) of luggage to handle!

But I am home and I will have a good gnaw on Qantas if my carpet bag doesn't make it home too cos it has most of my Bendigo stash in it and a bunch of other good crap like my raincoat. (The rest of the Bendi stash I have entrusted to Australia Post - I managed to stuff a small satchel with 496g of tops, weight limit is 500g, I ROOL!)

I spent half the weekend in the garden pulling out weeds (OMG, so many weeds, so many dead plants). After 11 or so years of drought, all of the drought-tolerant plants are turning their toes up because we've had average (or above) rainfall in our part of Melbourne for about 18 months and the plants just can't cope with the amount of water. The water table is very high and everything is damp. It is great to have it wet, just a bit peeving when we've set the garden up in a certain way and now it isn't the right type of planting!

The cats remembered us - they are getting better at that. Nutmeg actually sat on Nathan's lap and stood on mine! She has not been a lap cat since she did something unsavoury on my lap and got belted for it. Cheshire decided to jump on my lap last night. He isn't very good at jumping on laps.... His front paws landed on my leg but his back legs were scrabbling at the air (ie he completely failed to jump). I have a pair of matching claw prints in my leg now. Egads it hurt! Drew blood from all 8 claw holes. I'm going to look ever so pretty at the pool with the micropore tape all over my leg.

Anyway, it was a good trip and I enjoyed it. We were up late most nights (family and staying at a share house in their loungeroom!) and up early, so we are glad to get back to Sydney (home) and be able to rest! LOL

It is funny calling Sydney home. Our place in Melbourne is no longer home - it is not our house, I am not at liberty to wander around it, I have to ask for permission to come in and provide at least 24 hours notice (unless I am invited in). This is now home - it is where I live. It is where at least some of my crap is. The most important stuff. Weird, huh?

anon!

Coming to you live from Bendigo

2011-07-15T14:34:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

I'm at the Australian Sheep and Wool show, in Bendigo, Victoria.

I've met up with a few people, within an hour of getting here had blown my budget, and now I'm waiting for the woolcraft fashion show to start...

Pics of stalls are from Moseley Park and Ixchelbunny. I rather like the Melbourne coral reef too.

For those of you who can't make it here, I hope you like the pics, and those who are coming over the weekend? Have a great time! I've left you some yarn and spinning stuff...

Anon!

Hervey Bay recap

2011-07-12T21:57:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

This is going to have to be pretty quick. Sorry!

We had an AHSUM (that is awesome for the rest of you!) weekend in Hervey Bay.

We caught up with family, we talked half the weekend,

we walked on

and off the beach,

we saw Nathan's cousin married to the love of his life,

we ate, some of us drank,

we relaxed by the pond by the site of the wedding...

Some madmen (and one woman) tried to beat the crap out of each other with sticks.

After all the fun of getting there (we were bumped off our flight because I didn't do web check in cos their security certificate was expired, and they had the end of school holidays, the closure of another airline that week, only one of three runways open the day before.... so BOOT! Off we went. We wouldn't be getting on a flight until late that afternoon. But I whined that we were meeting people and driving four hours north to Hervey Bay, and she checked something out, went to her boss, and came back with the offer to send us direct to Hervey Bay a whole 10 minutes later than our flight to Brisbane was going to leave, and we'd be there 4 hours earlier... and they would give us a credit for the cost of the flight to Brisbane.... EXCELLENT! Doods! We went from grumpy and worrying about missing the wedding to HOORAY! Thanks Virgin Australia!), we arrived so early that I got press-ganged into doing flower arrangements. I haven't done any for a loooong time. My cousin in law and her sister in law to be were working on the centrepieces, so I joined in.

'
Not bad for beginners, eh?

(now with added candle at the reception)

My co-arrangers had to leave to get ready for the hen's party. Nathan and I went off to get a decent outfit for him (cargo pants and a polo shirt with the world's most brightly coloured runners at a "formal" wedding? I think not!). When we got back, I found a model for making the flower baskets, so I set to on them.

I'm also pretty darned pleased with them.

My dress came out pretty well (not quite as well as the previous one - I did some little mods that didn't go so well, but I can fix them).

DH was happy for a while

And then we came home to Sydney.

I'll be mobile blogging for the rest of the week - I am on the road, back in Melbourne. Bendi here we come! (Friday - hope to see some of you there!)

anon!

PS I'm now on Google+ - look me up!

Hanging out by the pond

2011-07-10T13:42:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

Just hanging out by the pond, beautiful day... Done heaps of family stuff, all weddinged out. Walked on the beach, got sand between my toes, said hello to the Pacific Ocean again... For us it's been a lovely weekend ( though I am sure the groom's parents might disagree... ).

Back to Sydney tonight, back to reality... Pic is sideways no matter what I do...

Anon!

Flown the coop

2011-07-08T22:06:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

Family wedding this weekend so we flew away away to sunny Queensland.

Long story with our flight, but it turned out really well :-)

Pic of the pictures from the flight has to be this one of Mount Warning, though I am very enamoured of the pics I took of the waters between Brisbane and Stradbroke Island. (however, it turns out that I only took pics of that with the camera not the phone, and I don't have a laptop to download onto this weekend). The actual plug of the volcano is at the bottom of the pic. After it finished erupting however many millions of years ago, it collapsed, creating the fantastic shape that we see today. It's pretty awesome to walk up too :-)

Anon!

A little hint

2011-07-05T22:31:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

Just a little tease of what I've been up to these last few days.

I have a wedding to go to this weekend, and I thought I'd make me some new stuff.

I'm making a hat too but I somehow managed to sprain my lympho wrist last week and it has slowed my knitting right down - woe of woes, knitting seems to aggravate it. I only have about 30 ever decreasing rows to go, hope I get it finished in time!

I seem to have run out of words, and my phone also wants to take a nap it seems so

Anon!

Getting to know you, part the somethingth

2011-07-01T20:45:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

Today I decided that my life would be incomplete without a ruffler foot for my sewing machine.

The first place I rang said "Yes, I am sure we have some in stock." Hooray!

So I checked out the transport website, worked out a plan, and choofed on out. It should take me 43 minutes to get there...

If someone can tell me why I then immediately for on the wrong bus and went to the wrong station, I'd be grateful.... Lol

40 minutes after I left, I was wandering around the right station, trying to find the right platform. I found a map that told me what trainline to catch, I found a map that told me where the platforms were, I just couldn't find something that told me which train left from which platform. And I couldn't find anyone to ask without leaving the station, which would invalidate my ticket.

Ten minutes later, I spied a sign with a dark blue line on it. Hooray! It was the line I wanted. So I followed the line.

It led me down a manky green, claustrophobia inducing tunnel. They had tried to make the tunnel nice by stencilling vines and leaves on it but even that didn't work. I walked down down down the tunnel and through a door.

To my left were gates to leave the station and in front of me were stairs. By now, I was wondering if I had wandered into some sort of video game, whether I'd meet a wandering monster, what I could whack it with (my sock knitting needles?) and whether I'd find a treasure.

I walked down the stairs, then down another flight and another. I was standing on a wide landing with two steel doors in front of me. Apart from the lime green walls, I rather did think I was in a dungeon. But the doors were very clearly saying Do Not Enter. And there were more stairs to go down.

Hooray, my prize! A train platform! The right platform!

It was only then that I discovered only every second train stored at the station I wanted to go to. And Kogarah is said cog-ra.

After my 43 minute trip took most of 90 minutes, I was only in the shop for five minutes. And my prize cost a whole ten bucks! Hope it works...

Anon!

Sniffle

2011-06-30T20:56:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

It's been a busy week. Lots of things going on.

No good pics to share at this point - I used them all up earlier in the week! Silly me 8-)

I was reading the paper online this afternoon and was totally dismayed to discover that one of my favourite ever footballers died of lung cancer today. He never smoked. He was only three years older than me.

Many years ago, when he was a young man who had come from Ireland (though he was Scottish) to play Aussie Rules, he wrecked one of his knees. I used to go to training (ie the players ran around training for games) and watch. It is long enough ago that my team still trained at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the ground still had a picket fence around it. The pickets were metal, though, not wood. Two sorts of pickets alternated, one had more a flattened button top, the other was a bit pointier. I remember sitting on the picket fence and he hobbled up on crutches and hoisted himself up and sat next to me. I don't think we spoke beyond a comment on how uncomfortable it was to sit there. He had a most fabulous accent.

But from that moment on, I watched this young footballer. In American terms, I rooted for him (in Australian terms, I barracked cos rooting has a somewhat umm earthier connotation to us). I hoped his knee would get him back into the game, I hoped he would fulfill his promise. He played in the winning under 19s team in 1983, just a year after he first arrived in Australia having never played the game before. (He must have wrecked his knee after that game.) He went on to break into the seniors and played 150 games at the highest level in the land. He was named All Australian (snerk) in 1987 and represented Victoria (state) in 1988. His athleticism led him into injury more than once - he usually played in defence and played his role like he was a soccer goalie. He nearly killed himself on the goal posts more than once. Watching your favourite player wreck his knee again, give himself concussion, wreck his shoulders and generally give his all was heart in the mouth stuff. He retired in 1995 when his body said no more.

He still remembered me even after he had retired, what 11 years later.

I remember him (and my memories from that age are not very clear - only after I stopped eating gluten did I start laying down good memories!). I wish I had known him better. I wish I had not been so shy, too shy to talk to him. But I was young and silly and had some idle daydream of marrying into the team that I adored and that made me even more tongue tied. It is funny how the passion has cooled over the years - I am still a Demon born and bred, will be 'til one of us dies, but I've been bitten enough times now to take a step back and distance myself some.

Vale, Sean Wight. You will be missed.

Next time, I hope to be a little less mournful! I may even have some new makings to show off :-)

anon!

More inspiration

2011-06-27T22:36:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

Have you seen the patterns in the current Knitty?

OMG. So. Many. Things. To. Knit.

I think I added 8 or so items to my waaay long Ravelry queue. (That link goes directly to the queue so you have to have a ravelry log in and I am too lazy to go open up all the links to Knitty.)

Double Heelix (socks).

Date Night (top).

Lingerie (socks).

Rhodion Lace Shawl.

Dragon Wing Shawl.

Undercurrent (cardie/hoodie).

Leaflet (short sleeved cardie).

Then I followed a link to Nikol Lohr's blog and read through and added Sally Cardigan to the list. Heck, it can play with the other 317 items I've got in my queue.

The most annoying part? If I knit for very long, like more than about 20 minutes at a time, my stupid lympho arm starts playing up. Grr! It is my right arm and I'm a thrower, I might try picking but I've never done lace whilst picking. Could be interesting! Might not make a difference anyway but I should give it a bash if I make something more simple - I've knitted some stuff mostly picking before, it's just I can throw without thinking or looking at my knitting. I've been knitting like that since I was about 18 and practised until I got it working well for me. I should get the picking going well too, eh?

Today I bit the bullet and quilted my latest little quilt. I was going to practise the pattern on a few scraps but umm, well I got all enthused and practised on the quilt instead. And this is practice for a big quilt. And umm, the quilt is actually flat, I just didn't have a flat place to put it near the lights.

It ain't perfect, nothing I make is, but I don't mind. I like it even with its uneven stitches and distinct lack of squareness on occasion. It is much more heavily quilted than I normally make things. I know how to avoid some of the mistakes I made now and I certainly won't be quilting the big quilt as densely. I'll also be moving it much more slowly - this little one slipped around like a squirmy thing quite a lot. The big quilt won't!

Work for the next three days. I've been wrangling Flash for weeks now, starting to get a bit over it! And then I read that HTML5 is going to take over anyway. But that is ok, if I can wrangle Flash (and I can make Word put a picture in the spot I want it to *and* keep it in that spot 90% of the time) I reckon I can wrassle with pretty much anything!

anon!

Another day at the craft show

2011-06-24T18:02:00.004+10:00

G'day all!

Thanks for the enthusiasms over the dress. I like it! I just wish there was a Sew Serendipity Flickr group. (Maybe I should ask permission to make one?)

I went back to the craft show today. I wanted in particular to do a certain class that I hadn't realised was happening on Wednesday. Too late! All booked out. Sniffle.

But I still went to a number of excellent talks (applique, still dead skeered of applique!), using precuts and nifty templates (bought said templates, only $20, have to try them out now!), talks on colour by Reece Scannell and umm Kathy Doughty from Material Obsession (who I found out are in Drummoyne now and I've been walking within a hundred metres, or driving TWO DOORS AWAY, of the shop and never known! If you follow the link, I walk past the little ferry symbol at the bottom of the map or if I have a car, I go around the roundabout by their shop on my way to (ahem) Spotlight...). (Alas, we got a bit distracted during Kathy's talk as a lady fainted and then threw up as is common after fainting - noone ever mentions that, do they? In the audience was a nurse who went to help when the lady fainted, and was repaid with chunder... whoops.)

I got all horribly enthused about EVERYTHING!

I bought a screen printing kit and 3 extra inks over the ones that come with the kit - I had promised myself that I was going to get one once DH got paid (don't like spending the emergency fund on whims!).

I bought a pattern drafting kit for a lot of money (but I get two hundred patterns for the price of 10 patterns so I figured it was good value and it has a lot of classic styles in it that I can play with).

I bought more fabric, including some Saffron Craig (below).

More yarn (including yarn for a hat that I have to knit within 10 days for a wedding in a couple of weeks).

Some fibre reactive dyes cos Nathan wants to dye stuff and someone 8-) left the dyes in Melbourne. I do have a pic but really? Little packets of dye? No. (I bet he doesn't realise that he will be standing at the sink being a washing machine because it has to be washed in HOT water after dyeing and the laundry in our flats does not do hot water - I ran the whole trough full of water once and it still was cold cold cold.)

I walked to and from the show today - I have no idea how much I walked up and down (but I did every aisle twice!) and on top of that walked an extra 6 or so km! That makes up a little for the hot chips (fries) I bought on the way home. It also meant I saw things like this:

(a car share car that is going NOWHERE - it is boxed in all round by hole in the road digging stuff)

and got take pics of today's loot (by dropping everything on the grass by the waterfront - people probably thought I am mad but at least I got pics!)

and pics of the sunset. (I got to the craft show at 9:30am-ish and didn't get home until nearly 5pm!)

Egads it is lovely around the waterfront at sunset. The lighting hides all sorts of flaws and industrial eyesores, and if you look at the big version of the bridge pic, you might just be able to see the traffic is bumper to bumper all the way across... There's a reason why we pay the big bucks we do for the dumpy little flat we live in 8-)

anon!

PS - pop over to Mandy's blog and Rachael's blog - my partners in crime from Wednesday.

A new dress

2011-06-23T22:20:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

I whipped this little number up for the craft fair I went to yesterday (and will go to again tomorrow 8-)

OK, it took me a fair whack of Sunday and Monday evening too (and I did a simple version without ruffles and as little contrast as possible), and a bit of Tuesday evening when I realised I had not edge stitched the sleeves... But anyway, it was done in time and washed and ironed and all.

It is totally different from the clothes I see being worn around here and y'know what? I don't mind at all.

:-D

(I'd show you the secret inside the hem but I forgot to get DH to take a pic of it. Fabric is "Flora and Fauna.")

Yesterday I was sighing over how good other people's attempts at screen printing were compared to mine. Today? Mine looks pretty darned good :-)

I was puzzling over the low quality of my phone's pictures today. See how little that picture is (if you click through to the full size)? That was a full size pic on the phone and it seemed rather odd at the time but the screen isn't that large (7cm by 9cm I guess) so I thought it was just me. I took that shot earlier on (obviously - that was taken in the sun). It seems that my phone has happily been pressing its own buttons, but now I know that it has a wide range of resolution settings. I hadn't actually explored that part of its settings, or another part that adjusts for things like sunset or fireworks, etc, etc. Guess I'll have to lock the thing so it can't go drawing on its own screen and changing the settings...

I'm back off to the quilt show tomorrow (craft fair). I am thinking I will do a couple more classes (one on an overlocked tote bag if I can make it in to the class) and look at the stuff I didn't get a chance to and oh, get some big rick rack to go with some fabric I have plans for. And see if anyone has cats eyes for toys. And the turner things to help turn soft-toys-in-progress inside out.

anon!

(PS no whining for the nonce! Had enough of whining, have put my big girl pants on and am getting over a sense of entitlement. Thanks for the encouragement!)

(PPS. Today was a few seconds longer than yesterday, and yesterday was part of a second longer than the shortest day. Hooray for the return of the sun!)

Just the ticket

2011-06-22T17:30:00.001+10:00

Gday all!

Had a lovely day today :)

Met up with Mandy and Rachael at the Sydney craft and quilt show.

Wandered around, chatted, saw lots of really groovy stuff, did a screen printing workshop (boy did I get ink everywhere!), bought stuff... I'm going back on friday to do a couple more workshops and look at the stuff I didn't have time to see.

Pics of us, Mandy's tea towel she printed (so clever!) and another tea towel with pink elephants (more so clever!) with Rachael's blue flowers (made with a masking tape resist, cleverness!). My tea towel doesn't have a pic yet...

Anon!

Getting a little punch drunk

2011-06-21T18:41:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

Thank you for the reminders about looking after me and there's only so much I can do. I am aware of that but well life keeps on dealing out blows and after a while you start getting a little punch drunk.

Yesterday my eldest niece had an emergency caesar. I didn't know until this morning when I got a panicked email from my sister, her mother, which worried me greatly. My new great nephew came a month early, just like my first great niece did, and he is a bit of a tiddler at 4lb 4oz (we went metric in the early 70s. Babies are weighed in kilos but everyone says the weight in pounds, lol). My niece has had rhesus compatibility issues with both of them. BUt it is ok, he is doing well for a kid in a hurry. He'll be in hospital for a while whilst his lungs mature some more.

Then there has been the possibility of a trip to the US with Nathan's job. We would've gone to two old stamping grounds and NYC. (Note the we.) It also would've happened at the same time as Sock Summit. But he is concerned that he would fall behind in his work and he doesn't see the point of it all. I am horribly disappointed. I had hoped I would get a little (BIG) reward for putting up with so much. To be completely honest, I have had to deal with a helluva lot of crap since hmm, November 2009 when Nathan's US job disappeared. I don't talk about most of it because it is private and you don't want to tell all online, well I don't, cos you never known when it will come back to bite you. Cancer treatment I now realise was harder and took more out of me than I thought it had, then Nathan got a job in Sydney and we lived apart for a while, also no fun, and events went crazy and since then it has been a total rollercoaster. I've moved to a city where I have very little support and have not made a single friend of my own to date in nearly three months of living here. OK, I should try harder and go to knitty events and hang out in shops and hope I'll connect with someone. I should read the Sydney ravelry boards.

But I am completely knackered. I have Had. E. Nough. Every day I struggle to keep DH's spirits up whilst maintaining my own. I have no energy left for making connections.

I so wanted to have a nice trip, see some friends that I miss, see places that I fully expect never to see again. Everything changed when I was diagnosed with cancer. Making plans for the future is difficult when at any moment, the future could be taken away. OK, it could be taken away by me getting run over by a bus (or as nearly happened yesterday, a car who didn't look for a ped on the ped crossing). But the likelihood of me not making it to 50 is much much higher than for a woman who has not been diagnosed with cancer. And that underlies everything. (So why do I keep stashing like there's no tomorrow? Oh. That is why.)

The squashed cherry on the melted icecream is that Nathan's two best mates up here are moving to the office in Zurich. They have been his staunchest supporters all the way through. He came home and cried for an hour. He said they should go, he would go if he was given the opportunity.

So things are crappy. I am over crappiness. I would like the universe to say "Hey, you've had to deal with enough, here's something randomly good for you." But I know how it works and that sort of stuff only happens in movies.

(and today had started off as a quite good day too. I almost finished a new dress that I will wear to the craft show tomorrow - I only have to do some topstitching around the sleeves. The weather was quite warm before a cold change blew through. It will get better too. I have lambshanks in the oven cooking away. Isn't it funny how they practically used to be given away and after getting publicity, the things sell for anything up to $7 a piece! But mine didn't cost that much.)

Man, I can't wait for tomorrow, so today will be just another crappy day to be forgotten!

anon!

Up and down like a yo-yo

2011-06-20T14:26:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

I'm a total stress bunny currently. Can't really talk about it. I am good but one person in particular is not so good, like really not so good. They are up and down like a yo-yo and I am really struggling to help them. Now I could just walk away and say "Deal with it yourself" but that would create a whole lot more problems than it would solve.

So I really don't know what to do. I am pretty isolated here in Sydney. Yes I can ring people back home but I sorta feel that it is pretty manky to ring people only when I need help. (I'm pretty bad at staying in touch, if you haven't already figured that out!) I've been writing stuff, making stuff, walking, working, doing things to look after me but the load is getting too much for me to deal with. I need some of my energy for ME.

They are seeking help, btw, and are in active care. They seem to have gotten worse, not better so far, but AFAIK that often happens. But the appointment happens once a week and for the rest of the time? Argh!

Anyway, I think I'll track down some SnBs up here. I know Morris and Sons has one on Thursdays (though I am a bit peeved with them due to their pricing policy on yarn. They don't have a price list or prices on the yarn - you have to ask. That gets VERY old VERY fast so I don't shop there much for yarn. I want to know how much I have to stump up from the very beginning, not set my heart on something and discover it will cost $160 to knit from that yarn....). There is one in Newtown (a fair walk away) this Sunday. I need some knitty friends! But I am shy and won't push myself forward (this might make a number of people laugh).

Plus the Sydney quilt show is on this week. I am meeting up with a quilty person and her friend. (I've been working this arvo so that I make up for loss of time on Wednesday.) I have swimming tonight. I am a woeful swimmer - I have two shoulders that are pretty dodgy and I can't do freestyle or backstroke - but being in water is good for my lymphoedema and also just for me. And I am managing to swim 3/4 of a lap now - 75m - in one hit. Hooray for me!

For the nonce I shall try to hang cool, make my new dress (I am sewing lots more than knitting these days but that is because it is easier to sew with the lympho sleeve on), make a new little stuffed dragon (should be extra cute if I can get it to work, have lots of handsewing to do on it) and swim. And work of course!

anon!

Persistence

2011-06-17T22:09:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

One of the things that amazes me most about living in the inner suburbs of a large city (and Sydney is large, over 4 million people and rather sprawly) is the persistence of nature.

I found a little skink in the laundry today. I caught him and took him outside. The pics are on the big camera, not the phone.

Then walking through Ultimo, this fern caught my eye. I often see ferns growing out of buildings, even buildings in the centre of town.

(ok, I'm blogging on my phone again so the pic is at the end)

It's things like this that keep me sane. I'm not used to living in a place where I'm so divorced from nature. I do get to see sunrise quite often, now that it is winter, but sunset often goes unnoticed as our place has no westerly outlook. Things just get duller and duller instead. And the plants around building are not inspiring, and we don't have an outdoors space. The tree that greets sunrise outside our window is lovely but our view is mostly of bitumen, concrete and blond bricks. So I find nature where I can.

And these little reminders remind me that there is more than just bricks, concrete, bitumen and steel in my local environment.

Anon!

Climb every mountain

2011-06-13T21:46:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

Today we climbed Pigeon House Mountain. It is about a three hour drive to the south of Sydney.

It involved climbing some really steep rocky bits (and a whole lot more less steep and rocky bits but hardly any less strenous!)

Feats of athleticism

Many muddy puddles,

and lots

and lots

of ladders

(The second set of stairs in this pic is really a ladder, like a monkey bar ladder with round treads and all. I am *terrified* of ladders like that)

to get to a view that looked like this:

(pity it was cloudy, eh? Apparently you can see about 100km of coastline on a good day and the amazing plateaus and cliffs of the Shoalhaven.)

anon!

Now with added title!

2011-06-11T15:02:00.006+10:00

G'day all!

I hauled out the sewing machine over the last few days and sewed up a little quilt top and backing, ostensibly to practise my free motion quilting.

Cute, eh? I had a few difficulties getting the pic as the quilt top and back kept doing this:

First though I have to make up quilt sandwiches of scrap material and batting (I don't have much scrap! I use it all and my favoured batting is hard to get here) to practise the quilting. Quilty Pleasures is hosting a free motion quilting tute, or twenty.

But colour is the thing and these have plenty of colour. The front is made of some white homespun cut to 5" blocks (aka charms) and a charm pack of Robert Kaufmann Kona square in umm? Classic? (Can't find the label, must be tidying up too much for my own good!). The backing is from my stash of plain homespun, a stash that is still growing as I find more colours that I like. Note there is no yellow or orange. The yellow in my stash got tie dyed accidentally when I washed it with a rainbow of colours. Ooops. (Don't ask me what I did to four metres of ivory homespun but umm, it isn't the same colour either.... oddly enough when the tie dyed towel ran on the homespun, it did not mark the pastel green pillowcase that I'd put the homespun into.)

Whilst I am on a colour kick, I hauled out some more top to spin. Some of Mandie's multicolour with black bamboo that I picked up at Bendigo last year (Bendi is the Australian Sheep and Wool show, the biggest place for fibre in Australia!). I might not be able to go to Bendi this year - I'm in a different state now and the drive is many many hours. The idea of flying down, getting on a bus (cos the trains are cancelled as they are doing major trackwork), wandering around Bendi and then doing it all in reverse is a bit much for me to contemplate. Anyway, most of the top is now spun up. I'm doing a single with it and once it is done will share the results. I think if I have enough, I'll make some sort of little shawly thing with it, a plainish one cos umm this yarn is going to be plenty busy enough!

Finally, this

is what I wake up to every sunny morning. There's been a few sunny mornings recently and having the tree outside the window light up is fab. And thank heavens we are getting close to the shortest day, because I am getting tired of the sun being so far north and then setting before 5pm. I forget that it is winter, even though the temperature tells me so!, and the sun sets early in winter.

anon!

Sunday rally

2011-06-07T17:53:00.001+10:00

Gday all!

Last Sunday I attended my first ever political rally.

I say yes to reducing carbon emissions. Ok, I am a hypocrite because I still drive my (little) car and much much worse, I have been in a plane (and flown places) about once a month since August last year. And I am addicted to Stuff, like most other members of western society. I buy and consume merrily. It is a conundrum that I am still wrangling with.

I sometimes wonder why I care about all this stuff. After all, I don't have kids. (I do have nieces and nephews though.) But for me, it isn't about humans in particular, it is about the whole world. Everything is tied to everything else. We are much more reliant on our environment than we care to admit. Without a biosphere that can support us, we are stuffed, and we'll take a whole lot of the biota with us cos it needs the same conditions as we do. And that peeves and grieves me. All that diversity, all that life in all its infinitely varied forms...

But if enough people stand up and say yes, we want to move away from a carbon based economy, maybe we can make a difference.

Anon!

Catching up

2011-06-07T17:40:00.002+10:00

G'day all!

Will I ever take more pictures of the things I am making? Will I ever catch up with all the things I want to show and talk about, let alone the stuff I want to do?

I've been bad. Yep, I got me more material online. More airmail.

Riley Blake "Happier." I am a sucker for little twee designs with bugs and birds and wiggles and stuff. I also have a half metre of the fabric that is on top of the charms and layer cake.

Plus I bought some patterns, but I forgot to take pics of two of them. I really should tell you where I bought the fabric too but umm... yeah... found the packaging. Above All Fabric.

I spun some lovely BFL/bunny fluff from Ixchelbunny. Go give her some love, she's had a total disaster as her angora rabbit farm has been devastated by calicivirus. Seven years of breeding down the gurgler, her livelihood and many of her little fluffy loves lost.

I have no idea what I'll make with the yarn - I am a bit shy of 300m, which is not enough for socks or for more than a kerchief of a shawl. The yarn will self stripe if rows are not too long. (It will self stripe anyway but it won't show up well.)

I am finally at the heel of Nathan's Tardis socks. omg, this has taken SO LONG. OK, so I am knitting two at a time but really! (Dang, I just had to rip out the heel. I use a version of Cat Bordhi's heel increases and didn't do them on one side of the heel = very wonky heel! At least I can start the heel over again, rather than having to cut out a whole new lot of material!) Still no pics - navy sock yarn, very little natural light here now... if I could hang it out the bathroom window I'd get good light there but umm difficult!

I must remember to go for a walk at the start and the end of the day. Because we don't get good light here, afternoons dwindle into twilight without me noticing many days. "Oh, it's dark, I need to put more lights on!" But once in a while I remember to choof on out around sunset, and sometimes get a nice reward.

Bliss!

anon!

Well it amuses me...

2011-06-03T22:00:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

Why yes, I *do* have an awful sense of humour... But this number plate does amuse me.

Started a new little quilt today. My so bad! But the colours are fantastic and once it is far enough along, I shall share it. It will be very pretty. Much nicer than the number plate...

Anon!

Proof of insanity?

2011-06-02T08:39:00.001+10:00

G'day all!

This might just go to show that I am nuts.

Yesterday's picture was of our rubbish bins.

Our brand spanking new wheely bins.

They are very exciting because:
The lids are not falling off,
They are new and shiny, and last but most exciting of all...
There are THREE recycle bins *and* they are for mixed recycling.

No more sorting my recycle stuff and even better I might have a chance of recycling it weekly rather than about once every six weeks when someones else have not already filled the two up.

Hooray!

Woke up to sun this morning - blue sky is so nice to see.

Anon!

Moving on - Denyse Schmidt fabric

2011-05-31T20:46:00.004+10:00

G'day all!

Yesterday I discovered that the long awaited Denyse Schmidt fabric, Picnics and Fairgrounds, had hit our local Spotlight stores. Spotlight is our version of Joann's.

We don't have the full range of prints that the USA has, but we do have something a little different.

Our own set of 10 colourways. That makes 31 colourways all up, though we only get something like 26 of them, if we can track them down!

Now I know that some peeps will be desperate to get their hands on this fabric. They will want to be, because a set of 10 FQs will cost around USD60, including postage, or 40 pounds sterling. But if you want some, I can get you it, or cut up what I have cos really, it isn't so much me. Just let me know. And of course if you are in Oz and can't get to a Spotlight, I'll be happy to help you out. Plus postage won't be such a killer.

I have to admit that I've been more impressed with Spotlight recently. They changed fabric suppliers. Their quilting fabric is a lot better quality. The homespun is the same price but is better quality. The range of dress fabrics is stuff you would like to make dresses out of. Service is still a bit dodgy but there have been enough staff at my local Spotlight to do the job recently, including helping customers, not just cutting material or taking our money.

The rain dried up quite a bit today. We got something like 90mm or 3.5" of rain in the 36 hours up to 9am this morning, which is a lot for where I come from, though not so much for here! That amount was half the yearly rainfall in San Jose whilst we lived in California. Having never lived in Sydney, the only things I know about the weather are it is warmer in winter, when it rains, it dumps, and summer tends to be sticky with more rainfall than winter has. Sydney is almost subtropical.

Now that I have Helmet in Sydney, I can settle in more. I cannot say how much I enjoy walking around the place, but for some trips a car will make it so much easier (like taking the sewing machine for a service, as I did yesterday, or being out later at night after the last bus has run). Apart from yarn, everything is in a fairly easy walking distance. If I care to walk 4km, I can walk either into the city or to Newtown and get yarn there. Driving is not an option to those places - parking, if you can find it, costs a bomb, and traffic is a nightmare. But I don't need more yarn at present - I have several pullovers-worth with me, yarn for a further two pairs of socks after I finish DH's socks in progress (started them in ?Feb? and they are still not up to the heels. I am doing them two at a time, though. But will they ever end? This is the problem of doing navy blue socks. Dull dull dull!). I don't need more fabric either cos umm, I bought some online recently and Scroatfight has some nice fabrics in and umm, well... at least the sewing machine should be in fine fettle now and ready to take on some dresses and quilt tops and backings and quilting. In between doing important things like earning the money to pay for our hobbies.

8-)

anon!

Twenty years

2011-05-30T22:14:00.003+10:00

Twenty years ago today, Mum died. It was not unexpected. Indeed it was welcome, an end to suffering. There comes a time in the cancer journey where one has to let go.

Twenty years.

Sydney turned on a blinder of a day. Not. A river ran past our flat.

Centrepoint Tower occasionally loomed through the rain.

I rather regret that I never got to really know my Mum. Even though I was 24, I was still the baby. (I still am.) I was not strong, I had to be coddled, I had to be sheltered from life's harsh lessons.

Well Mum dying sure made me grow up in a hurry. I remember when I realised it was inevitable, that only a miracle could prevent it. I raged, I cried in desperation and loss and grief well before she was dead, I was despondent, and finally I came to accept. There is only so much pain and disability you can deal with, and seeing this strong, brave woman barely able to do life's necessities let alone enjoy life was enough for me.

It left me with noone to kick my butt when it needed to be kicked, noone to fix things, noone to hide behind or run to when things got tough. No shopping expeditions with someone else (though I have inherited the happy knack of finding bargains 8-).

I learned to be strong. And I've been learning how to make lemonade when life gives you lemons. (Man, I LOVE strawberry lemonade! So I need life to give me strawberries too ;-)

It has been odd, not having a mother for guidance, pants-kicking and general life experience. I never allowed anyone else to assume the role, not my father, not my sisters, noone, though my mum-in-law is great.

(She would be proud of that baby on her lap - he swam at the Commonwealth Games and is gunning for the Olympics. Her daughter's son!)

I did a PhD for Mum. She wanted me to go as far with my education as I could. She never got the chance, though she was a clever clogs herself (Father was too). I was the brightest in the family, though I have not used my intellect as well as I could - I never really knew what it was to work hard until I got to my PhD. Before then, I worked a bit here and there, and my results show that I cruised too much.

I often wonder who my Mum was. I got little hints here and there. Christopher Reeve as Superman was a bit of a favourite. Graeme Kennedy (Oz tv show host) was a firm favourite, along with Bing Crosby. I remember Mum being horribly upset when Bing died. She liked tv shows like Mission Impossible, Star Trek, anything SF (wonder where I got the dork genes from?), Homicide, Division 4, Matlock Police (Oz cop shows), Columbo and other murder mysteries, later on Blakes 7, Murder She Wrote and Burke's Backyard (Oz gardening show). Old movies, movies from the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, especially musicals with a good singalong track, were preferred over "modern rubbish." Many a Saturday night was spent watching Bill Collins present some classic movie.

She was thrifty, being a child of the Depression and WWII, orderly, organised and crafty. Mum was always making stuff. (Wonder where I got that too?) She always hoped for getting some sort of break, winning the lottery, not having to struggle to make ends meet. But we never lacked for birthday and Christmas presents. She had the sort of pride people develop from a lifetime of managing to hold things together on a shoestring. She was not a nurse but she had to nurse both me and her husband - we were both sickly types.

But this still does not tell me who she was. I guess I'll never know. I don't even have many pictures of her - she hated having her photo taken. I've shared a few through this post but they are pretty much all I have and are mostly from group shots.

I have learned some lessons from her experience though. Always always always get regular medical check ups. If you have a run in with a disease, any disease not just cancer, get it checked regularly. No matter how invasive the test, no matter how much it injures your pride, no matter how darned terrified you are of dying like your mum and your aunt did, GO AND GET IT DONE. If you don't get it done and it is something bad, you almost certainly will die. If mum had had regular colonoscopies, she probably would've outlived my father if they hadn't annoyed each other to death. She would've been 81 this year. But she didn't do the tests and it was too late when the second go-round of cancer was found.

I know she would've been horrified with me developing cancer. Her baby! I would've been plied with nourishing soups all the way through. I would've had even more hats to wear. There would have been many gingerfluff sponges to eat (I wish I had inherited the ability to make sponges but mine turn out like the seaside variety only less salty). I would've been driven to all my medical appointments (note that I did get taken by my MiL to the early, critical ones and I always had friends to take me to chemo - much appreciated :-).

I have a lot to thank her for. So this one is for you, Mum!

anon!

Did I say busting a gut?

2011-05-29T22:05:00.005+10:00

G'day all!

Doh! Had a busy weekend and STILL have not edited photos from last week's costume party.

I always seem to be busy. Poor time management I reckon. I go do things and then feel like a sit down. So I sit in front of the computer and stuff around. Though today I've spun a heap of yarn. I brought my wheel up from Melbourne. But I forgot the spare bobbins! DOH!

I also left the other sewing machine in Melbourne, plus its transformer. Y'know the sort of stuff that you can't really put in a suitcase and bring on up in a plane. But I did bring plenty of fabric 8-) I just have to get the Janome serviced as the bobbin tension seems to have disappeared and it makes an odd squeaking noise sometimes.

Little Helmet ran like a champion on the trip. He was much nicer to drive than the rental car, even though it had all the mod cons, because he doesn't pull viciously to the left. He did slow down on some of the big hills but that is ok cos the drive is now pretty much dual carriageway all the way. Noone got held up cos he slowed down. The road only gets to single lanes through some of the remaining towns still on the highway in New South Wales. They will be by-passed soon enough I guess but for the nonce they are welcome distractions from hammering along at 110kmh. Oh yes, my 20 or 21 year old car sat quite happily between 65-70mph (ok, except up long/steep hills) *and* got less than 6L/100km or roughly 40mpg. Americans would probably know a very similar car as a Geo Metro but here they are Suzuki Swifts/Holden Barinas. Getting over 500km from most of a tank of petrol was pretty darned good I reckon, especially given the last 30km or so/hour and a bit of driving/being a little lost was in Sydney traffic.

Today we found the local Bunnings (Home Depot equivalent, what's the one in the UK?) and bought some storage shelves and some more plastic storage tubs. I want my bookshelf back for books rather than storing linen on it. Plus we are accumulating more and more stuff (new and from home)and I'm still not happy with the cupboard whiffing of mildew even after giving it a coat or two of primer. We worked together to put the shelves together and it was, if not always fun, very rewarding. Then we went out for afternoon tea 8-)

DH looks a bit smug about the new shelving. I'll be making some extra quilts or hangings for them to cover them up and make them pretty. My breast cancer quilt made for me by the chaps over at the Red Barn Co Quilt Along won't always be covering the bottom half of one set of shelves, though the zigzag quilt that was my second ever completed quilt will most likely grace the others for quite some time to come.

Golly, it's suddenly become late. Time for bed! Sleep tight and

anon!

New glasses

2011-05-26T18:18:00.001+10:00

Gday all!

I have new glasses.

They are blue.

They are a little old fashioned, or as I like to say, retro.

It isn't the most flattering pic but will do for one taken by my phone under a fluorescent light :)

Tomorrow I drive the next 560 km to Sydney. I left a little late today but for once it was not a case of "just one more thing." Nope this time was me checking the tyres and noticing one of the nasty cheap things put on by a previous mechanic seemed to have a ripple in the side wall.

Convenient that not 20m away was a tyre place, eh? And they were not busy and came and looked immediately.

Sidewall was delaminating, or in more simple terms, the layers were coming apart. (He used little words.)

I am so glad that
A) I checked the tyres, and
B) We have the spare cash to cough up $160 for two new tyres on the spot

Otherwise I might have had a blowout on the way.

I'm also glad that they were not terribly busy and had a suitable size tyre or two in stock for my ancient little car.

Ancient little car has not sloped a beat so far :) If he does, that is why I pay for roadside assistance.

That was a very long way to say I like my new glasses :)

Anon!

Alas my comments

2011-05-25T23:06:00.001+10:00

Gday all!

Blogger is being very naughty and may not be letting you comment at the moment. Also after an outage 10 days ago, it may have eaten posts and/or comments (but this should be fixed now). Blogger peeps know there is an issue and may have already fixed the internal error you might get when you try to comment. Sorry if you have been trying to comment and it won't let you. You can always email me at natiel311 at gmail dot com.

I'll be back in Sydney on Friday and will blog a bit more then about more interesting stuff :) I might even blog along the way if anything interesting happens or I see some good stuff and get phone pictures.

If you are extra lucky, I might ramble a little from work in the morning, but maybe not.

Today's picture is of Johnston's creek/canal in Glebe, run through the comic filer on my phone. The canal looks beautiful at high tide, yes?

Anon!

Incommunicado

2011-05-24T18:58:00.001+10:00

G'day all from occasionally sunny but often soggy Melbourne!

I'm down here for my next checkup and doing a bit of work too.

Checkup was fine, come back in three months :-)

So that is good news, rather happy with that.

I'm not online much at the mo as I left my laptop behind and left the work laptop at work, silly me. I forgot to charge my phone so I am making this a short one. Enjoy the random picture of Nutmeg.

Anon!

Can you believe it?

2011-05-20T09:03:00.003+10:00

Morning all!

I just went down to the shared laundry to do a load of washing.

Well there was a BAD smell there. Like baby nappies after they start eating solids only worse. (Please don't tell me that baby nappies smell glorious cos honestly, they don't.)

I put the washing on then stuck my head out the laundry door.

OMG.

The sewer has overflowed.

Gross me out.

So I came back to our flat and rang the strata title people. (Three goes at not typing poople. sigh) They have to deal with all of the shared issues of the property (body corporate or HOA type thing).

They said they will get someone out on MONDAY (it is Friday here) to look at it. I'm like no, there's poo and toilet paper on the ground, and they are saying oh it's only a leak and the person in charge of it is moving offices today. Monday will do!

MONDAY WILL NOT DO!

So DH rang the rental agency, who are going to hassle the strata title people.

When I went back to the laundry to leave a sign on the door, warning of the poo outside, another resident was down there. She also rang the strata title people and managed to get through to someone who can do something. I only talked to the very obstructive receptionist (it was before 9am).

Apparently they are going to send a plumber.

I knew there was a reason why plumbers get paid big bucks.

Alas, I had to hang my washing out near the poo. I hope it doesn't reek after this.

I also had a very instructive talk with the other resident. Her stuff is getting mouldy and mildewy too. She lives a floor above us, so it isn't just us being on the lowest level. (actually we live half a level up, very glad about that cos otherwise it could be the drain in our bathroom that overflowed. I have a constant fear of that as you can hear EVERYONE's water/etc flowing through it.)

back later with normality. I hope.

anon!

Oopsie!

2011-05-18T08:16:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

I just realised it is days and days, probably a week since I posted anything! My bad!

I was going to post from the phone on Friday arvo but umm apparently Blogger had an unscheduled outage and I could write all I liked but posting would be difficult. And of course then I forgot.

So we spent the weekend in Melbourne. DH had a medical appt and we have heaps to do on the house. BiL and his betrothed are living there, looking after the cats and generally enjoying the extra space and not living with the parents/in sins.

(FiL admiring his birthday cake, made by sister in sin and BiL)

We left the place In March with a crap kitchen floor, bare wood in the loo and plastered but unpainted walls in the kitchen.

When we left, it had primed walls in the kitchen, tile underlay in the kitchen, masonite in half the loo and a couple of rolls of vinyl to lay on the floor. It took a surprising amount of time just to get that done (partly because apparently my guidance was needed but I was out and about in the car gathering supplies). And half the kitchen cupboards were in the lounge.

Anyway, it is now looking much more usable, even without us having laid the vinyl. (the kitchen vinyl is fake woodboards, very amusing given we have lovely floorboards underneath, just not enough time to sand them and tung oil them.) I am sure my sister in sin will be pleased when the kitchen cupboards are back in, along with the bench.

Nutmeg was delighted to see me on Saturday, so was Cheshire, and on Sunday? Humph! The Nut was less excited. Humph! You went away! But Cheshire has turned into a big sook after getting totally mauled when he got out a couple of nights. He now likes to stay inside and sleep on the bed or the couch, which was Nutmeg's role. She now goes out!

(Unblocked Brambles hat, just big enough to go on my head.)

I have finished a quilt and a hmm, not quite sure what to call the hat. It is supposed to be a beret but it is a slightly sloppy beanie on my head. It might get a bit larger if I block it. I have managed to get a large dinner plate into it. I have cut out a 50's inspired dress for a party on Saturday night - I have to get a hat, pantyhose (stockings are too hard to deal with) and shoes yet, unless I decide to wear some decidedly un-fifties shoes that I already have. I bought cotton gloves yesterday and have to jazz them up. No lady went out without her gloves on! Oh yeah, I am also contemplating getting a brunette wig, just a cheap party one.

Which brings me to something I realised the other day.

When I look in the mirror, I don't see me. I see some stranger with various of my features. Where did I go? What happened to my hair? What happened to my skin? Where did my eyebrows go? Those can't be my eyelashes, they are half the length they used to be!

Now I know very well what happened but I'm feeling a bit unappreciative of the toll the cancer and its treatment took on me. I used to look younger than my years. Apparently I am vain enough to not like looking every one of my 44 years and then some. I want my magnificent eyebrows and eyelashes back. I am sick of having to use eyebrow pencil and mascara. Of course I am grateful to have any eyebrows to thicken up with a pencil and eyelashes to put mascara on - when I did the look good, feel better course last year I had about three eyelashes to put mascara on, my eyebrows were clearly pencilled on and I looked ridiculous quite frankly.

My straw blonde hair is a thing of the past. It is now a dark ash blonde, still blonde when the light hits it. At least it did grow back. It still has some kink to it, even after I've had the first two or three inches cut off. I sorta miss having long hair. I certainly miss having a fringe, though I am told that the short hair suits me well. I am just tired of looking like a boy! (Well, no boy has the next things I'm going to whine about.)

And then there are the wrinkles. Egads, where did those come from? I must've lost some padding in the nine months without hormones. I've even gone so far as to look at anti-wrinkle creams but nearly every one of them contains parabens/hydroxybenzoates (if you think that your skin cream doesn't have parabens in it but it does have hydroxybenzoates in it, they are the same thing under a different name, like paracetamol/acetaminophen) and fragrance. And I can't smell them to see if I can tolerate them. The parabens I avoid because apparently they are found in high concentrations in breast cancers. Lord knows why.

Of course having whined about my lack of eyebrows and short eyelashes, other hair has merrily sprouted that I could well do without. I think they come with the wrinkles. *sigh*

But when I look down in the mornings, there I am. Ridiculous fluffy boot-slippers in pastel colours and my fave pajama pants, or gamer pants as SiS calls them, the ones I made last year. It is getting pretty chilly in Sydney in the mornings now (though this week is GLORIOUSLY sunny :-).

In some good news, after about two months of wearing a sleeve on my lymphoedematous (made that word up) arm, when I saw the lymphoedema massage specialist on Monday, it was pretty much normal. That is good!

I have my nine month check up next Tuesday, so I'll be back in Melbourne again for two or three days. I had blood drawn on the weekend in preparation. Assuming all goes well, I'll drive little Helmet back up here. Poor little thing will be loaded to the gills with stuff. I have NO idea where I'll put it all. I guess I'll be finding a hardware store this weekend and buying primer so that we can seal the mildew in the unfinished insides of the cupboards. The cupboards are quite large but oh yuck, they smell mildewy. They are hard to clean because they are unsealed particle board, lots of cracks and crevices. I figure if I seal the particle board, it will be easier to keep them clean. (Found a hardware store today and bought horribly expensive primer, hopefully fairly low VOC stuff so I don't die of paint fumes with my head stuck to the wet primer inside the closet.)

(As I write, DH is reading back through some of my old blog posts. "Jeez, I'm a mongrel!" he says to me. "You're a husband. It is your job description," I reply.)

So I had best get cracking on my new dress. I have to sew it all together. Am thinking I will give the overlocker a whirl. After all I spent half an hour rethreading it last night just to stop DH from cranking after one of the looper threads broke. I'll have to draw through white thread but I reckon I am up to the job.

anon!

Mother's Day Classic

2011-05-08T19:07:00.005+10:00

G'day all!

A totally perfect day in Sydney today for the Mother's Day Classic. A little chilly in the morning but sun sun sun. Bliss!

We walked a little over 4km to the start line.

(I have a new haircut and have recoloured my hair pink-ish)

We walked 4km around the course.

Argh, how more iconic can you get, unless you are in front of Uluru instead. My home city, Melbourne, so needs an icon. I guess we have our trams but other places (yes, you, Adelaide!) are starting to muscle in on them.

Finishers are grinners!

We walked a little over 4km home! Over 12km all up or a bit under 8 miles. I prefer kilometres myself - they sound a lot more impressive.

Do you like Nathan's dax? (pants)

He made them himself! Plus he made my sleeves.

It isn't too late to sponsor me! Thanks to those who have sponsored me - I really appreciate it even if I can't email you directly.

I admit to having a rather slack afternoon looking at pics, editing them, not getting them all online and also doing a bit of sewing. I finished a new dress/tunic that is technically a muslin but if I dye it a different colour will be very wearable. I worked more on a quilt gift. We went out for tea to my fave Thai place. After a day of slackness yesterday, doing knitting, a little walking, a little bookshopping, and hair dyeing (pink), and eating out with a workmate of Nathan's, it has been a very pleasant weekend. Hooray!

anon!

Oh blessed fiery ball in the sky

2011-05-05T20:08:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

Bliss! 1.5 sunny days and my solar batteries are all charged up again. Hooray!

Last night I discovered that I still can't sleep if the TV is on*. Even if it is upstair's TV that is still on at 3am in the morning (and has been on since about 11pm - they keep odd hours). That is when I found a spare pair of DH's earplugs and BLISS!

Interestingly, I can only find one of the earplugs now. I have NO idea where the other one went. I checked under the bed, under the pillow, by the bed, in the bedside drawers, under the tissue box...

(*When I was a child I was convinced that the best shows were on after my bedtime. Mum would often find me peeking through the folding doors into the loungeroom where she was watching all of these best shows - Graeme Kennedy's "In Melbourne Tonight," "Mission Impossible," "Star Trek," (no original series needed as there was only one then), "The Avengers," all sorts of good shows, all well after my bedtime!)

I've been given a versatile blogger award but I am still getting my list of 15 new (maybe new to me) bloggers together. So I am being slack!

You think I have not been knitting?

I give you

DH in his new hat

(Still can't believe I had never heard of popcorn ceilings before I went to the US and now I can't blasted get away from the things - you would think we are back in San Jose with that roof!)

I thought it would be such a quick hat but the ribbing became a little tedious, maybe a lot tedious... If nifty looking. Top down, my own pattern in Nundle's luscious 8ply (more like a worsted weight but I'm not complaining!) bought at Coffee and a Yarn in Newtown. The colour in the second pic is pretty close to the mark - it is a bright orange, maybe a little redder than the second pic but brighter than the top of the hat pic.

Since it has cooled down here a bit, I started work on my new hat.

Here's the yarn,

and just to give me a treat, some more 1X1 ribbing! Yay! (I really should do ribbing continental as it is much quicker to move the yarn that way, even though my version of picking is rather quick anyway).

If you look beyond the Anzac Bridge in the background you'll see the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

I love the foreshore. In two directions it is about 5 minutes' walk away. Yesterday at the end of the day I nipped down there for a bit of knitting and a sit in the sun, for like 15 minutes before it set. It sets amazingly early in Sydney - around 5pm and we are a good six weeks from solstice yet.

Without the waterfront, I would be sunk (hahahaha, no pun intended). A little one bedroom flat with no patio is not my cup of tea, but it is survivable because not far away is this beauty.

Bizarre thing of the day. I walked to the local stationers to get some office supplies. I walked along various lanes (must do a Victorian on the move post of the laneways) to get there, then tried some different roads on the way back and ended up on a road I walk every couple of days. There was a 14 or 15yo blonde girl harrassing an African (Sudanese or Somali or Eritrean) looking boy of a similar age. She was trying to extort money out of him. He was telling her he didn't have any to give her (he had an Australian accent/vocab so he wasn't a recent refugee). His friend was standing up with him, her friend was looking a bit nervous and hanging back like she didn't want to be there. I went into the chemist (pharmacy) to see if they had some stuff I wanted. As I was looking at various skin lotions, I heard a commotion outside. It sounded like the girl had ramped up her attack. It sounded like she was a one girl brawling machine. I decided that I was REALLY interested in the skin lotions. I admit I didn't want to go anywhere near the outside of the shop. By the time I had found something that met most of my requirements, the noise had pretty much settled down.

When I went out there, a couple of coppers (at least one female) were manhandling the blonde girl into the back of a paddy wagon. She had a screaming kicking fighting meltdown in there. "I don't wanna be in here!" and must've been hurting herself she was thumping the thing that hard. About 10-15 coppers are there, a van of them has just pulled up, the copper standing by the paddy wagon is looking rather alarmed by the girl's ferocity, and the friend is still looking horribly embarrassed and being asked by a copper, "Is she usually like this?" A woman down the road is being asked questions by a constable who looks not much older than the girl.

I have never seen anyone have a meltdown like it (and I've seen some doozies and probably chucked a couple myself). She was totally out of control. I dunno if she was on drugs or coming off drugs or what. It was like a toddler wanting wanting wanting, only a 14 or 15 year old can do it much better. I'm rather glad she wasn't a bloke. I sorta wonder what will become of her and I really hope her friend decides that she is better off finding someone else to hang out with whilst the blonde girl is sorting her head out.

anon!

Walking

2011-05-03T18:57:00.005+10:00

G'day all!

I've been walking a lot recently. I walked more than 7km on Saturday and Sunday and about 5km yesterday, and only 3.4km today. Today was a work day. Oh, but we will go for a walk soon and it will be about 2.5km or maybe more.

I have decided I am in training for the Mother's Day Classic. I think Australia follows the US date for Mother's Day (second Sunday in May) (yes?). The MDC is a fundraiser for breast cancer research. As you very probably know, breast cancer is a subject very close to my heart (ok, it was the right boob but that is still pretty close). Plus my MiL was treated 10 years ago and my aunt died of breast cancer 20.5 years ago. Treatment for BC, or most cancers for that matter, tends to be a crap shoot - they blast the thing with whatever shotgun treatments they have (chemo, radiotherapy) and hope for the best. There are specific treatments for hormone responsive BC but they follow or are concurrent with the shotgun approach. Some chemo agents are better than others for different types of cancer but they still don't really know which ones work best on what cancer markers. (Cancer markers are like red hair, tongue rolling, attached ear lobes etc, but obviously cancers don't often have hair or tongues or ears as such, and red hair and tongue rolling and ears are not things that need to be treated.) This is why heaps of research is being performed on cancers, and why I enrolled in a study to see what happened to the cancer markers in my body as I underwent chemo.

People can walk or run 4 or 8km. I walked it three or four years in a row before moving to the US. Last year I was too sick to do the walk - walking 1km was becoming beyond me, let alone 4km. And running? Fuhgeddaboudit.

This year I'll be walking in Sydney's Domain but there are events all over Australia. It isn't too late to register - you can even register on the day! Or if you so choose, you can sponsor me :-D (though I don't expect anyone to and those overseas? No tax benefit for you, just warm fuzzies)

I am going to be sporting the most amazing hair for the event, and for some time afterwards too :-) After that I think I'll eventually get my hair coloured back to something more natural and let it grow out a little, though I do rather think I am rocking the pixie cut at the moment. I never would have cut it this short though, so I guess it is a good thing coming out of the BC journey.

I shall not whine or complain about how dull Sydney's weather is at present, I shall just note that the sun was not seen at all today, not much yesterday and some on Sunday. I shall also point out that the average sun hours per day for April and May for Sydney is 5. I wish I had five sunny hours each day! I bought a 150W spotlight and a timer today so that we wake up in the morning - it's been so dull that our body clocks have no idea what time of day it is. I've had to run the lights all day - our flat faces southeast and gets no direct sunlight unless it is clear when the sun rises. And it hasn't been clear in days. (It rained this morning around sunrise I think cos I remember it being vaguely light and rain falling.)

I finished Nathan's lurid, fuzzy, bouncy and very warm orange hat last night. Alas, grey weather and sleeping in (to 9:45am! on a workday! on *any* day!) meant there was no opportunity for modelled shots. I immediately cast on for my own hat, a beret. I think I'll knit one of these. I need a hat - it is getting quite cold here, well cold as far as Oz and Sydney goes.

In some of my walking yesterday, I ventured to Scroatfight at Birkenhead Point. Note - this shop, though only fairly new, is pretty scroaty indeed. It already looks scruffy and service is pretty poor - I don't blame the staff who get overwhelmed with their duties, more the management model. (I got the impression that the boss was out trying to help customers but the boss was a bloke who had NO idea of what his store actually stocks.) The new stores at Auburn and Rock-something are much better - bigger, huge actually, with more stock and the possibility of service. If you are lucky, though the cutting queue at one of them was about 10 people long.

Anyway, they had some really cheap velour curtains on clearance. In a colour that I really like. I hummed and harred about them (hemmed and hawed if you are American) as they are polyester and I am trying to only get stuff that rots (within reason) and grabbed two. They really brighten up our loungeroom :-) And they really are the same colour, it's just the lighting that makes them look different to each other.

I also saw some really awesome red-nippered crabs running around the rocks at Birkenhead Point. Alas I only had my phone with me so the pics could've been better. Trust me, the nippers were really red.

Wish me luck, we might possibly get a little bit of sun tomorrow or Thursday. I'm not used to getting so little sun. I don't think this is typical weather for here, I hope it isn't but I don't really know. Surely it doesn't stay yucky forever?

anon!

Six years

2011-05-01T21:47:00.003+10:00

G'day all!

How time does fly.

Six years ago today, a poor old bloke started his last mayday. He didn't see it out. I miss the person he had been but I don't miss the poor old codger who died - my father had long moved on.

Today Nathan made me a lightweight lymphedema sleeve, rather handily too as my proper one didn't dry after I washed it last night. He finished a pair of running shorts. I did a little shopping, we went for a rather long walk (OK, it only turned out to be 5.8km or 3.6 miles) and generally managed to pass the time of day without doing a whole lot.

Soon I will have a new quilt to show off. I took pics this morning but they are very blue and a bit hard to adjust the colour of. I have nearly finished Nathan's new orange cap - I am on the cast off. Then I can start mine cos some days, well nights, it gets a little chilly here.

Did I gloat about my new little bag? It is a little ripper, seen here with the yarn for Nathan's hat and four Sally Wise books (cost $15, mega-savings as each book by itself costs $18-25 usually).

It is technically a bag for baby bottles. I have no baby stuff, not having a baby, and the pockets on the outside are very handy for stuff that needs to be accessed regularly and it is just big enough to take the necessities and the current knitting WIP. It was $15. There was a bigger bag for the same price but it was gold and yucky pink brocade and the zipper was busted (not that that is an issue as I don't use the zipper on my bag anyway). I am much happier with turquoise-blue and black brocade.

Maybe I should pull my finger out and finish Nathan's hat so I have a knitting FO to show you! You would think I was doing no knitting at all. I've had to slow down due to the lymphedema, or more correctly the sleeve I have to wear as it doesn't allow me to bend my elbow easily. I can bend my arm but if it stays bent, it starts really hurting after 15 minutes or so. There's a thickened band across the top of the crease of my elbow, where it is most painful. It affects everything that I have to bend my arm for. I am learning to type with my arms not so bent but knitting and sewing have to be close as I can't see them otherwise, stupid ageing presbyopic myopic eyeballs, bifocals here I come.... I often take the sleeve off so I can knit. That is bad but not crafting would drive me crazy and that would be worse!

Speaking of lymphedema, I discovered some fantastic sleeves and gloves at Lymphedivas. One of the issues with the sleeve is that it is very dull and boring. It is brown and made out of a tough, cellular knit with lots of elastane to keep it compressing. Dullsville. Well take a look at these babies. I am going to ring my lymphedema clinic and see if they would be suitable for my needs cos holy dooley I want some of them, even if DH does make me a couple of standby sleeves.

Time for beddy byes in preparation for a new working week.

anon!

New toy

2011-04-30T22:19:00.001+10:00

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 arms felt a bit sore by the time we got home and I am not surprised as he must've carried it close to three km.)

He is very pleased with it :-)

(for details freaks, it is a Bernina 700D)

Anon!

Make it stop

2011-04-29T19:36:00.002+10:00

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, which was outright rain). I have no idea what they mean by showers but the same sort of precipitation in Melbourne is called "rain." I am starting to wonder if it is some conspiracy or decree that it doesn't rain in Sydney or they like to pretend that it doesn't rain.

I would show you the crafting I've been doing but see rain (above). I haven't got a good bright space in this flat to take good pics and I can't take stuff out to the line to peg on that to show you (see rain (above)). The orange hat I'm knitting Nathan is a bit bright for the flash, and the white and navy tardis socks too contrasty.

However, I think you will like the pics I took in the Button shop on King St in Newtown. They were fine with me taking pics - it is all good advertising!

anon!

Significantly unimpressed

2011-04-27T12:29:00.003+10:00

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...

Popped out for a bit

2011-04-25T21:32:00.003+10:00

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, 70 km OUT of Sydney mind you) jammed up good and proper. I spent most of an hour crawling at 20kmh and under. (The hire car did the crawling, I just had to mind the gears and the clutch.) And the weather was miserable! Drizzle to full on rain, back to drizzle, visibility was woeful, the sun set when we reached the first traffic jam (though we couldn't tell due to the drizzle).... One traffic jam seemed to be caused by the huge queue of people trying to stop at a petrol station/mcchukkas/rest stop. Another? Because three lanes went to two.

Finally we broke free of the traffic jam. I have no idea where all the cars went but suddenly we were flying along. I was sitting in the leftmost lane most of the time as I was getting a good run in it (remember in Oz, this is the "slow" lane). Oh lovely, joy, joy we will make it to the thai place in time to get some food - after today I wasn't going to be cooking.

Lalalalala, whizzing along the road. I've slowed down a little because something odd is happening in front of me. I can't see what is going on, though the rain has cleared and the road is just a little damp, but something is happening ahead of me.

When suddenly an SUV in the emergency lane decides to pull out in front of me.

Turns out our hire car does NOT have ABS braking. I definitely locked the tyres up. I couldn't go into the lane beside me cos there was a car there. We're sliding but slowing quite rapidly as I'm braced on the horn. We're going to stop barely in time. *phew* At that point I check the rear vision mirror and realise the guy behind me hadn't realised I had to stop. He suddenly realises he is waaaaay too close and dives into the emergency lane to avoid the back end of my car.

The SUV pulling out suddenly decides that it isn't a good idea and waves me past.

We were a second away from death or terrible injury (small front wheel drive meets large SUV, I know who loses!). Plus the guy behind me was so close I couldn't see his headlights. Crunched from either end, someone would've spun out, bingo bango, noone would be getting home for quite some time cos the highway would've been closed with a multi-car pile up.

But we survived. And I didn't even get too much of an adrenaline rush. I got a little wobbly but usually after that sort of thing I need to get out of the car and go for a walk. I'm pretty sure Nathan also thought we were going to die as he told me I did a good job a minute or so later. It was luck, sheer luck.

So today I am glad to be here, telling you this tale.

anon!
PS - things with various friends are fixed up again. Others are still being nongs but well the most important ones are good :-)

Copy cat

2011-04-19T21:37:00.002+10:00

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 like to hear the organ in there thundering away. I am sure it could thunder and make my insides wibble like jelly :-) (That is another thing I miss about Campbell - Nathan was allowed to play their fantastic organ and gosh it could thunder :-)

I must talk about my little trip to Newtown sometime but today I really wanted to talk about a book that I ordered, a book that arrived last week, a book that I am all enthused about.

After seeing Cindy 2paw's now not quite so new book, I had to have one too.

:-)

There's not that many patterns in it, really. There's a skirt, a dress/tunic and a jacket. It is the length and the trimmings that make them different. But I really like the concepts presented in the book and was enthused enough to race out to find material to make a dress/tunic.

I had to remind myself that I want to go subtle. I don't want to be loud and proud, well not until I know I like the style and it looks good on me. I found many fabrics I really liked in Quiltsmith but they were a bit too loud for me yet. But if the pattern works?

Of course after buying some nice material, I realised I need cheap material to make a muslin out of. Muslin is technically a light weight cotton fabric, in Oz it tends to be a fairly open weave, coarser than voile but fairly sheer. (I know it is different in the US.) In this case though, a muslin is the draft version of the dress. If I was at home, I'd have plenty of fabric I would sacrifice to the cause but up here? I think I'll have to pop along to Vinnies and see if they have any suitable sheets.

Anyway, I wandered around and found this material, with a mate and a couple of ring ins from scroatfight, to make the dress/tunic possibly of my dreams, but maybe not.

Yep, I chose batiks. I thought they would be relatively subtle but still distinctive. The ivory and the herringbone go quite well with the others in natural daylight and under fluoro lights.

But I need to get some material for a muslin. I am so itching to start this project. I keep distracting myself from it but argh! Want to make it!

Then I have to see if I brought any of the material up for a 1950s frock, oh and a pattern. I've been thinking of making myself some nice frocks for a while. It's just that I am lazy and cargo pants and a tshirt are easy/relatively effortless. I don't really want to go out and buy a new pattern as they cost at least $10 here, even on special. I did rather go crazy in the US and buy a number of patterns every time they were on special at Joann's.

Finally, I said goodbye to another old friend today.

Yep, I sent the Dyson off. We've had it for 10 years but they are subject to a recall as the handle can split open and expose the live wiring of the controls. Our poor old thing was starting to show its age - it still worked well enough but the powerhead was a bit dodgy. So we will get a new one for cost price. But I am a little sad because I get attached to things, which I know is ridiculous. When things that have given me good and faithful service die or get sent to whatever heaven they have, I feel sad and vaguely like I've betrayed them by not looking after them well enough or just plain getting rid of them.

Oh, a big shout out to our friend Gibbering. Thanks for being there and giving up some precious time when we needed it :-)

anon!

Loot loot loot

2011-04-16T12:29:00.003+10:00

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 loosen up a bit. I need a tight glove on my right hand anyway. (You can get them at the Tie Rack if you are in Oz or even the UK since it appears to be a UK company.) The colours of the leather do actually match, it is just the semi-gloss nature of the leather that makes them look odd.

I like them. I might even get a chance to wear them today - the weather is totally rancid. If I can believe the weather bureau site, we've had 60mm of rain since midnight and it is a bit cooler than it has been. (I didn't bring my raincoat with me - silly me! It rains more in Sydney than in Melbourne, Melbourne just gets it slower that is all.)

I also have Even More Loot - a book arrived a couple of days ago and now I am itching to make stuff out of it. 2paw might be able to guess what book it is if I say it has ruffles in it and I too might need a ruffle making foot! I have material for one of the items in it. But no pics cos the weather is rancid and I have a window of about an hour in the early morning to take pics with natural light - our block faces slightly north of east and if I get pics before 8 or 8:30 in the morning, I get good light at my desk.

I have been knitting and quilting madly but again? No pics cos the weather outside is frightful. We'll be out in it soon as we are going to Balmain to visit a workmate of Nathan's. This colleague has a piano, a real piano and plays violin. So they will make music and I will listen or I can go for a walk.

anon!

I came, I saw, I Ikeaed,

2011-04-11T18:19:00.004+10:00

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 grabbed the box from the pile of them. I am sure I am not the first person to not read all of the labels and then get peeved that they can't have a nice shiny bright light in their dull little flat. I mean duh, yes I should've guessed it would not have lovely breakable bulbs in it - why would it? But argh. So I guess I'll be off to the shops tomorrow to get it some edison screw light bulbs. I should check and see if our light fittings are standard bayonet fittings - these edison screw things are not standard in Australia.

At least the little fabric storage boxes I bought fit into the non-IKEA shelves :-) Of course I liked the kiddie ones - the adult stuff was so dull and boring! White, black or black and white. Blah. Who would not choose red and orange or aqua and green boxes?

I was very tempted by a certain sort of chair - I sat on it and liked it and if it hadn't been in a square box (too hard to strap on to my shopping cart) I would've bought it. For all it was bent wood, it was comfy. And a good price too. And might be able to withstand Nathan. However a friend is bringing over a spare chair - we need a better chair at the desk than the one we have at present. Armchairs are a little low for sitting at a desk at...

I did have a most interesting trip up there. I caught the tram to Pyrmont then took the ferry across to the spot where I thought the Parramatta River ferry went. Ah, no, not until later in the afternoon. Now if I had walked across the bridge to the Darling Harbour terminal of the ferry, I would've caught a ferry that ran a whole HOUR earlier!

But I didn't. So instead I tooled around, taking pictures of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. I shall have to download them and share them on my travel blog. I saw the Manly ferry cutting its way to Circular Quay (anyone apart from Aussies know that reference?). Then I caught the Betty Cuthbert rivercat up to Meadowbank and walked to IKEA. (Note for self, watching one youtube video of the music of my youth leads to watching a whole lot more of them. Use headphones too, the laptop has crap speakers. And maybe I should try to make more noise than the guys in the flat opposite us who are thumping something enthusiastically and providing vocal stylings, and no they are not having sex....)

The trip home was less exciting. Get a train to Strathfield. Change trains to a train that stops at a station that my short trip ticket is valid for. Get back on a train that my weekly pass is valid for. Decide not to change to yet another train to get a train that stops at Newtown - it is nearly 5pm and the shops will be shutting. Instead, wander all around Central Station trying to figure out where to catch the bus that drops me 100m from my door.... Of course the place to catch the bus is at the exact opposite diagonal corner to where I started. Last time I was in that part of Sydney, they were still building the bus terminal area. At least I now know where to go and what on earth all the roadworks were about...

I am rather proud of myself for managing to navigate around, even if I did do dumb things. Live and learn, and heck I've been doing a lot of learning. The weekly ticket helps - it means I don't have to pay out of pocket for screwing up. I can just say it is helping justify the $41 for the ticket 8-)

Work tomorrow. The good thing about working from home is I can work in my PJs. If I need to go for a walk whilst thinking about stuff I can. If I need to go buy some stuff, I can. I just make the time up later. Admittedly I don't get the social interaction I used to but I am getting some good work done.

anon!

So many things

2011-04-10T21:27:00.004+10:00

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 the tram into town and bought headphones for work, went for a walk with DH at his lunchtime, then caught the tram out to one stop further than usual and walked to Quiltsmith (I would link to their website but jeez it is woeful! Much better a visit.) Quiltsmith is having a 20% off sale for all of April. So I came home with some fabric. Ahem!

This means I must've gone to Balmain two Fridays ago. I walked to DH's work, then caught the ferry to Balmain East from Pyrmont, then walked from there all the way up the big long hill - have I said that inner Sydney excels at hills? And that I am getting much more used to walking up hills? - to Calico and Ivy. I bought some lovelies there too 8-)

You might start detecting a theme. We had a very small windfall of unexpected income that means I can buy stuff that will entertain me *and* also stuff that we need.

(The view from the end of our street)

I worked for three days, topped off with an entertaining visit to Melbourne that started off in a very exciting way - my taxi went to the wrong nearby lane, cos some idjit thought having Avon St, Avon Lane and Avona Ave all within 100m of each other would be a great idea. So 20 minutes after I booked the taxi, another one showed up. My driver went like a fury, though not *too* fast and I was in the airport 20 minutes before my plane was scheduled to depart. I then managed to get through security (silly me QUEUED!) and scuttled through the airport with laptop securely clamped under my arm and got to the gate just as they were calling my name the first time. *phew*! Thank heavens for all that walking up hills!

On the way home I had a little extra time and discovered the most fetching pair of leather gloves I've ever seen. A tie shop (as in the thing men wear around their necks) had a lovely bright array of ladies' gloves. I went straight for the turquoise ones, then the fuchsia ones, then I spied the navy blue and pink ones.... and 20% off! Hooray! (still not cheap though! But lovely :-) I only bought the navy blue and pink ones. (2paw, they have GREEN leather gloves! Tie Rack I think it is. Just sayin....)

My phone's camera managed to take some nice shots of sunset and the New Moon.

Friday I would like to say I vegetated but I have the feeling I walked to the shops and bought lots of food (THREE loaves of GF breadstuffs, mmmm! Plus lunchy stuff for me and other things including some glutened fish that was sitting with the GF stuff and I never thought to check until I opened the box...), then slacked by taking the bus back again.

Saturday, oh gosh, Saturday. Full details with pics to follow but I walked about 8km yesterday. By the end of it, my poor footsies were feeling very sore. But I think it was worth it.

I've been knitting and quilting today - being multicraftual. DH was uninspired but I've gotten a fair bit done and now have two quilts ready for their quilt sandwich and quilting and binding. The knitting has a fair way to go though - a jacket I was working on a while ago and a pair of Tardis socks for Nathan that have just gotten past the toe.... So we are keeping very busy and occupied and are really getting into exploring the area. Hope the rain passes so I can go exploring more tomorrow!

anon!

Up at the crack of dawn

2011-04-06T21:42:00.002+10:00

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. There are signs of rising damp here and there - welcome to Sydney!

I have so many pics to share with you but no time to edit them and get them online. This area is very pretty but dull for the crafter. I've discovered that if I go for a little walk down the hill, I can take a bus for two sections ($2 one way) and go to Newtown! Hooray! (If I catch it at the closest stop, it means three sections and that costs more.) Newtown has two yarn shops I believe and is funkier, as one would expect from a recently gentrified area.

I expect to be knackered on Friday. Last time I did something like this, it took me a week to recover. I am fitter than I was then though, although the mildew allergy is giving me some strife. Still, I might make it onto a bus. I also want to find my way to the "local" IKEA. I have this driving urge to go look at their fabric. I've been reliably advised that I don't really want an Expedit shelving unit as they are fiddly to put together and not entirely sturdy. Boo. (DH says that the Billy bookcases are not that great either but heck the things I've got range from 9-15 or so years old and have been loaded with heaps of books over the years and haven't fallen apart yet or even scratched up. Except for the shelves that didn't make it to our house when we moved from the rental to the current place, but that is sorta different 8-)

Whoops, it's after 10pm, I must to bed! I have most of my stuff ready for the morning - I have to take a mountain of food with me as there won't be any I can have on the plane in either direction and we didn't think to put my food reqs in with the training booking. So I have to self cater!

anon!

NO (wo)man's land

2011-04-03T21:16:00.003+10:00

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 computer geeks and knew what on earth they were talking about, to a greater or lesser extent. But for me? Like putting pretty much any of them in the middle of a group of knitters discussing Wollemeise or something. Dull dull dull.

I discovered several things today:

a) I didn't bring the triangular ruler for one of my quilts with me.
b) I left the battery charger at home
c) I am bored and lonely.

I only realised the last when I went looking for something "special" and "nice" for me at the shops. Didn't find it though. It will have to pass a high bar of specialness and niceness and a low bar of affordability.

Glebe is lovely. It has many quaint terrace houses and is on the harbour. It has a number of nice cafes. But it is deadly, dully boring for me. There are no craft shops, no crafty get togethers here. If I go for a 4km walk, I can go visit Newtown, where there are both. But that is 4km there, a walk around Newtown looking at stuff, then 4km back. I could hop on a tram and go into the city and get on a train and go to Newtown but that will probably take me hmm, well over half an hour for the tram and then I'll have to find out which train line and what ticket I need to buy (SYDNEY FOR GODS' SAKES, GET YOURSELF A DECENT TICKETING SYSTEM WITH DAILY TICKETS THAT COST LESS THAN $20 TO BUY IF, HEAVEN HELP YOU, YOU WANT TO USE A BUS AND A TRAIN! And whoever decided the trams should be on a different ticket and run by a different company should be shot, hung, drawn and quartered)... If I walk I can go through Sydney Uni's campus, which has some very excellent buildings and some not so excellent ones... Oh and don't suggest a taxi. That would eat up my small budget. Did anyone realise that we lost 6 weeks of DH's wages? Given that four days of his work equals my entire month's pay and we were well into renovations....

So I have the grumps well and truly. They will blow over, they always do. Maybe I will walk back to Broadway tomorrow and find something special for me to eat for tea. DH is going swimming and won't be home for tea. I think. But that may change.

(Check out my house blog if you want a pic. But it might hurt your eyes! Be warned...)

anon!

Settling in

2011-03-31T22:09:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

Well we are starting to settle in, hooray!

I haven't managed to tidy all the Stuff away yet because umm there is nowhere to tidy it to. The cupboards are a bit musty and I don't want to put my Stuff in there cos it will get musty too!

I've vacuumed and sprayed (tea tree oil) and sprinkled (bicarb) to try to reduce the musty load in the flat. It is better than it was but if I shut the place up for a day, the mustiness increases, so I guess I will have to continue vacuuming, spraying and sprinkling!

This morning I was woken up by a) a baby have a very good, loud, long whinge and b) these.

Currawongs (plus a few rainbow lorikeets) (Scuse the boring view out the kitchen window! That video was shot on the phone so you can imagine how loud the currawongs really were!)

I left behind blue skies and sunshine

(Jerusalem artichokes flowering at last - I waited six months for those flowers and they finally started a week before we left, better than a week after!)

for a most wierd few days of weather. So far in Sydney it has been low 20s (Celsius), high 20s, stormy, humid, rainy and today completely gray for the whole day with the odd bit of drizzle.

I am yet to finish this cardi - I need to find the right size needles for the remaining button band then buy some buttons! I left all my buttons in Melbourne, well except the ones already on my clothes.... Buying buttons might be an issue as I will have to make a Grand Trek to Lincraft in the city (most of an hour's walk away or a $4.40 tram ride and a walk) or go even further to find a Scroatfight.

I am working on a different, wool cardigan. It almost seems appropriate.

There are many things to talk about but I've had a long day and now?

anon!

A new place

2011-03-28T20:29:00.001+11:00

G'day all!

We are in Sydney. The flat is still here and is not as musty as I feared. We have done some food shopping and also bought me a clothes storage thingo so I don't have to live out of a plastic storage tub whilst we are here (was $120, now $86!).

The attached pic is from the phone, as is this post. I shall fire up the laptop soon enough but am busy organising and cooking tea. Doh, rice is boiling over.

Anon!

Nearly done

2011-03-26T23:01:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

Well with all slaving we've done this week, I am pleased to say that we are nearly there! No the house isn't finished by any means but the cornices are on, the toilet (room, yes we have separate rooms for toilets here) is painted a most startling couple of colours (not finished yet), most of the plasterwork is done (not sanded = not primed or painted) and things are looking much better than they did. Hooray!

One more load of washing has to be done. Some stuff is coming to Sydney with us dirty - we don't have a drier. We have to clean up the loungeroom and get all the tools out of it and the kitchen, and then we are done! The car is half loaded up with Stuff - we have a hybrid! I am not so keen on its boot (trunk) arrangement - yes the back seats fold down but ?because it is a hybrid? only one area actually opens to the cabin. Not much point having fold down seats in my book if they don't open to the boot! Plus the side that opens is right behind the driver's seat, where being behind the passenger seat would be more useful as you could fold it flat and put a longer load in. No way you can fold the driver's seat flat to get a longer load in! Anyway, the hybrid is a bit weird because it is so quiet. You have to check the speedo a lot because you can't "feel" what speed your are doing from the engine noise. But that is what cruise control is for, at least when the traffic is flowing. I'm expect it will flow quite well when we get on the open road 8-)

The fridge has a random assortment of stuff in it. Mostly it has cat food in it - I prefer our cats to have raw meat as it is much more like their normal diet. Cats didn't evolve eating crunchies and my opinion is that crunchies are bad for their kidneys. (But they do get crunchies in the morning cos the amount of meat they will eat is amazing!) There's lots of frozen fruit in the freezer, along with a heap of frozen GF pastry (alas I never got to try it out!).

My car is at the PiL's - they need a second car some days and the second car they often use will be here. The plants we bought recently are in the ground, as are two poor struggling fruit trees (one is in a most unsuitable spot but it has a chance of living at least, even if it does shade the greenhouse if it survives and grows...). The grass is cut, the garden a little better weeded than it was (with a rainy season that never ended, rather than our usual summertime drought, the weeds got completely away from me). The pome fruit trees are almost ready to pick, boo hoo cos my golden delicious has about 30 apples on a teensy tree and I've been looking forward to eating them, though I'm happy to leave the nashi pears....

So one final lot of tidying to go (HOO-BLASTED-RAY!) and some washing and the instructions for the house sitters and we are go go go! (We might pick up a tray of eggs at the market on the way out of Melbourne - the eggs in Sydney are vile. Truly horrid - the whites don't sit up and every time we've had them, one or the other of us ends up with a tummy wobble.)

Next time I talk to you, I expect to be in Sydney. Until then,

anon!

Crappers

2011-03-24T10:11:00.002+11:00

argh

I am trying to hire a car for us to drive to Sydney.

hertz had a REALLY good rate.

Too Good To Be True Rate.

Yep.

It was.

I can get that rate as long as I don't rent one way, even though I clearly stated I did not want to return the car to the place I hired it from.

Talk about bait and switch! They should not let me think I can book a car for a certain rate if I can't.

Grump. I never liked renting from Hertz and now I like it even less!

Creeping along

2011-03-22T22:28:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

Well some good news at last. Hooray, the doc says there is nothing unusual with my innards. However, after getting my new sleeve for my slightly puffy arm, I now appear to need a gauntlet (or as knitters and crocheters would call it, a fingerless mitten) for my hand. Either that or the sleeve is a leetle tight for me. My hand puffs up when I put the sleeve on and things get a little tingly in my fingers.

Thank you to those of you putting up with my whining, and offering support (Dr Bones in particular!).

It has been an interesting week so far. On Sunday, we obtained house sitters for a month or two. On Monday night, DH had to do a sleep study. He did it at home. Wiring him up was quite a different thing to do - there were LOTS of wires. Then this morning we think he forgot to take his meds cos gosh, bear with sore head! (But oddly enough I found a copy of the Tao of Pooh this arvo and gave it to him to read and he lapped it up!)

Today I said goodbye to my workmates. I am sad to be leaving them. I will be working from Sydney but it won't be the same. I've gotten used to having people to talk to, having chats, participating in discussions. I am going to be a bit lonely in Sydney. I won't have a car, at least for the first month, and that will make it difficult to get to any meet ups. Whilst we live close to the tram, we aren't close to the train, and the tram and train tickets are totally separate (makes me think our PT system in Melbourne is wonderful - it has two zones but within the zones, you can take bus, train or tram, all on the one ticket). Nathan's work friends are lovely but some of them are young enough to be my kids.

I am getting closer to having the place nice for house sitters, and having all the stuff I need to take to Sydney with me. You would not believe how much paperwork I have to take (but you might believe how much stuff I am getting rid of! How does it build up so fast?). Oh, yeah, plus the stuff I accidentally left in Helmet, the car. Ooops. Umm guess I'd best get out there and get it out of the car!

We are hiring a car to get up there. Helmet is staying here for the nonce until we know if we are settling there. Going up will cost probably $500 all up including food and fuel and a place to stay overnight (cos I really don't want to drive to Sydney in a day). It is about a 9-10 hour drive and I'm just not up for that any more.

I have been managing to get some knitting done. I've almost finished a cute little cardigan - I only have part of the front bands to do and then the buttons. I am working on a new shawl but it will take forever as it is relatively complicated - no great swathes of stocking stitch, just pattern pattern pattern. But it is purl all the way back after each pattern row, not lace on that side too...

I've even finished a small quilt that has been lurking for ages. I won't say it is well finished - the front looks great but the back... well the back is off centre and umm the edges look really rancid as I've created a paralellogram... Hmm. I should just make it a hanging sleeve and pretend the back doesn't exist.

But I have no pictures. I have been taking pics along the way but Oh. My. Word. No time to download and edit them. I did a few the other day but it is all go go go here, and I truly wish it had went went went....

In a week, we will be in Sydney and Nathan will be back at work (major meltdowns excepted). We will see how things go.

anon!

Almost freebies - yarn for scumbling

2011-03-18T11:21:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

I have heaps of yarn in small amounts - stuff I've hand-dyed, stuff I've spun, all sorts of bits and bobs. It would be great for scumbling or crocheting free-form granny squares or any purpose that does not require gauge (heh, my spinning isn't always perfect). It tends to be bright and happy yarn of random gauges (mostly about 8 ply/DK/light worsted but it can vary from 4 ply/fingering up to chunky). Very little of it would be machine washable. Pretty much all of it is wool, some has some silk blended into it, a little has nylon. If you are into magic balls, it would be great for that though some lengths might be a little long!

Is there anyone out there who would like some for the cost of postage?

Within Oz, I can send a satchel with up to 500g of yarn for $6, or express post for $8.40. (Note that I might not be able to get that much yarn into the satchel.) 3kg bags are $10.30 but I quite frankly doubt I can get that much yarn in. I might be able to get a kilo of yarn into one of the big satchels. I squash the yarn into ziplock bags to make sure as much gets in as possible. Also it helps keep the yarn dry.

500g airmail to the US is AUD16 (plus $6 per 250g or part thereof). To the UK is AUD20 (holy cow! That has hiked up a bit!) (plus $7 for each 250g or part thereof over 500g). Note that the amount of yarn you get would be under 500g cos I have to account for the weight of the bag. I use bags not boxes because you would be paying for almost half a pound of box to be mailed to you.

We have just over a week to finish the house and get everything packed up for storage or moving to Sydney. I am a little panic stricken, to be honest. I can't do heavy work until my arm stocking arrives - I officially have lymphodema in my right arm, it isn't bad but it is enough to be diagnosed. With any luck if I back off on the manual work after the next week it won't progress further, especially with the sleeve.

With the argh, omg, so much to do come the panics. Nathan is worried about his job - will he cope, will he be able to do it now. He has calmed down a lot but the last couple of days he's started getting quite anxious (doesn't help that I keep getting not so good news about my health) about his ability to do the job. Plus we have So. Much. To. Do here.

anon!

It never ends

2011-03-16T21:13:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

Why is it the closer we get to the deadline, the further away the finish seems to be?

I have been jointing plasterboard (drywall) for two weeks now. You would not think we have so many joints to be done but they keep on appearing. It takes three days for each joint - two of undercoat, one of top coat then they have to be sanded. I can't find a mask that fits me well so I will end up with silicosis at this rate...

The house renovations are consuming pretty much every spare minute I have. Once in a while I get to knit or sew, like tonight when I decided that I needed to sew whilst DH and his friend tried to play The Swan (slightly beyond the friend's ability to play sweetly at this stage but practice will improve things). I have almost finished a new cardigan, short sleeved of course, just in time for the weather cooling down. Then again, we are moving to Sydney soon and it will probably be warmer there.

Tomorrow I have to go back to the lymphodema clinic cos my operated arm is playing up (no doubt because I've been overdoing things plus I am developing what my online buddies so charmingly call bulletboob).

On Tuesday I have to go back to the breast clinic to find out what they want to do about my thickened endometrium - I knew I had fibroids but now I have another problem.

Man, I. AM. SO. OVER. MY. GIRL. PARTS.

They've never done me much good. Didn't pump out enough hormones to make me want babies. Went and got cancer. The endometrial problem could be precancerous. Had enough of cancer. I would say just take all the bits away but hysterectomies have their own issues.

Had enough of everything at the moment. Totally sick of house renovations. Sick of having a stupid crabby idiotic body that apparently wants to be wrong. I wish it was hormonal but umm, that was last week. I try to treat it well, give it exercise, feed it things it likes and are good for it. It looks reasonable, though we are getting a little wrinkly. Currently, I want a divorce from it! Bring me a new body. One without cancer. One that is not rebellious. One that lets me eat gluten and dairy and everything else that could possibly be yummy and maybe even some stuff that is good for me! One that doesn't object to various allergens. One that is generally cooperative and has no major or chronic illnesses.

I have to destash too but I am running out of time. We are moving to Sydney on the 26th. DH is going back to work. It is all coming waaaaay too fast. I need to get rid of some stuff.

No I am not defeated but y'know I do have to whine. If this is karma, I hate to think of what I did to deserve it. But I don't believe in karma, so I did nothing to deserve it, it is just The Way Things Are.

anon!

Android dreams

2011-03-08T22:36:00.001+11:00

G'day all!

I've just downloaded a new blogger app for my android phone. So far so good- it is a bit easier to use on the small screen than the usual interface. Wonder if pics load into the right place?

Well that little experiment didn't me, so if a random pic of a pic on my laptop's screen loads in a weird spot, you can be sure I didn't intend it to go there...

Many pics to share but no energy to share them with! We got home after 10 last night, and I drove for nearly 11 hours on and off, mostly on.... But soon, soon now!

anon!

Adelaide sky

2011-03-06T18:31:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

Beautiful day here in Adelaide. Peoples are snoozing or reading books and YIKES,I am standing outside getting bitten by ants so I'll make this short...

Wanna see the blue sky?

Can you believe this tiny little post took 15 minutes to write on my phone because of blogger's insistence that pictures always go at the start of the post and there is no obvious way to cut and paste on the phone? Methinks blogger needs a bug fix and the phone needs a better way to move text around.

anon!

In South Australia I was (not) born

2011-03-04T22:42:00.002+11:00

Gday all!

After quite some driving and sight seeing, like ten or more hours, we finally reached South Australia.

We've seen amazing stuff, places we haven't been in years. No pics yet cos I didn't use the phone for pics, just the camera.

I was completely freaked out about an hour after dark. The car's high beam headlights picked up some brightly glowing green eyes on the road. Whatever the critter was, it started running AT the car.

YIKES! it was not a cat or a dog or a possum (oz version not an opossum). It ran in a weird bowlegged fashion and had a really wide stance.

WTF? What sort of hellspawn was coming straight at the car? Like this thing was seriously weird with its funny gait and glowing green eyes.

Just as I slammed on the brakes, cos I was going to hit it, I realised it was a koala! Walking, well running straight at the car as if it was greeting a long lost love! I stopped in such a hurry the everything in the back slid to the front....

No pics as the camera was in my bag, which was hiding under dh's seat....but it was pretty amazing! I thought the koala was going to climb up on the car but some dodo brain had left the high beam on. As soon as I turned them off, it scampered off. Maybe it was giving me a hint?

Anyway it is time for bed.

Anon!

Away away

2011-03-04T09:21:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

Things are better now. Good, eh?

We are away for a few days, but this time we have a house sitter!

Pray for his cat - he wants to bring him around. I doubt Cheshire will like it, Cheshire being the bully and Nut the scared wussy puss.

Our house is starting to look less like a bombsite, though we still have a long way to go. However with some sanding of walls, a little more plasterboard in a couple of places, and some paint and tiles, things should look almost finished! (Except for the issue of the new kitchen cupboards, sink, etc.)

Must go get ready to take off. I've paid the bills that need to be paid, I've cleaned up a fair whack of the Stuff on the couch... dishes are yet to be done but we are getting there. Oh, gotta change the sheets on the bed and deal with my dirty washing (hahahaha). Must hide my good cast iron pan too - don't want him cooking any gluten in it. Ah the paranoia of food issues.

anon!

Escapism and a big whine

2011-03-01T20:45:00.004+11:00

G'day all!

Anyone got any suggestions for some good escapist stuff? I've found I am spending a lot of time online trying to escape from a half renovated house that has stuff everywhere. Yes I should be working on getting more of it done but y'know what?

I'm knackered (aka very tired).

I'm sick of it.

I've had enough.

I've been living with a kitchen that has a chopping board of bench space for 8 months now.

My husband has the idea that I will magically make him yummy and nutritious meals in a kitchen that he "can't stand working in." I have no idea why he thinks it is ok for me to struggle but not him! (When I ask him, he says "Because you are good at that." "Because you cope with things better than I do.")

Plus I feel totally ripped off by our lousy summer. Feb is usually one of our sunniest months, and we got almost 1.5 hours less direct sunshine each day than average. We've just had two whole days of no sun at all (thank heavens we got some sunshine today!). Plus we had half our average yearly rainfall in the first two months of the year.

Grump, whine, moan.

I often look back at our time in the US rather fondly. People said I would miss the place but y'know what I really miss?

No commitments and no responsibilities.

Being able to pack a bag and go away for the weekend "just because."

Not pouring every spare cent into house renovations.

Having most of my Stuff under control.

Now I understand if DH had gotten another job in the States, I would probably be dying by now. His old insurance would've ended and I would not have been eligible under the new plan, most likely. Even if we had paid for Cobra (extension of private health cover after the employee leaves a job that s/he had health insurance under), as far as I can tell, they could boot me off when they decided my treatment was costing too much. So my treatment would probably not gone ahead, or I would've had to come home anyway.

When I am feeling grumpy with the world, I remind myself of the Good Things in life. There are plenty of things I am grateful for.

Friends who have given me a job.

Friends full stop.

Cats (even if they drive me batty with their demands on occasion).

A garden (even if it is overgrown and out of control after a close to record breaking wet summer).

Family.

A roof over my head, bills paid (for the nonce) and food on the table (even if I do have to make it myself). (Takeaway is rarely an option - remember I have Food Issues.)

A heap more things but some days, you just want to run away, far away, go back to a simpler time and stop dealing with all the adult stuff. And I just want to run away.

Which is why it is good timing for a long drive to Adelaide. One of Nathan's cousins is getting married and when I went to book plane tickets, well $300 each one way is a LOT of money... especially when two weeks earlier they were advertising $55 one way fares.... I am rather looking forward to a drive. We haven't been out that way for years (ok, so we were in the US instead) and it should be amazingly green. If we had more time, we could go via the desert national parks (yes, we have desert in Victoria but it is the saltbush type desert not rolling sand dunes) and marvel at their greenery and the salt lakes that haven't had water in them for 20 years (because us humans like to divert all the water to Us! US! We are paramount over the environment. Or so it would seem from the way we behave...)

anon!

Good news, for me

2011-02-22T20:00:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

Thanks for the good wishes.

Blood tests and CT scan came back clear. Hooray!

Next blood test is three months away, then another blood test and CT scan in six months, etc.

Now I can focus on other things.

To our cousins across the Tasman, we are thinking of you, particularly those in and around Christchurch. Christchurch is devastated, many are dead, many more are homeless. We love to pick on Kiwis (just like big brothers and sisters pick on smaller siblings) but we will stand with you when the chips are down.

I am thinking of making up a quick quilt or two with some of the stash I have (then I am allowed to buy more fabric! Hoooray!) to send across to NZ. Never fear, it will take me a good month to get one done. I have some good ideas for some pretty quick things, like this quilt Melody is making. I have some strips of fabric all ready cut and could get a top together easily enough and a back, it is just getting the quilting done that is hard! But such a quilt would be quilted with straight (ok, I will admit it, WONKY) lines and that makes it a little easier to get done. I want to do something to help, though I didn't for the earlier quake and I couldn't do much for the Queensland floods (since DH went potty at the same time, not to the loo for you Americans but barmy, mad, loopy, and I had too little time and too much to do).

Pictures of current makings will follow - it has been a weird few days of much too cold weather for this time of year. We have to expect whackiness more and more often with climate change.

anon!

You might think

2011-02-19T09:20:00.002+11:00

G'day all!

You might think that I am not knitting much at the moment.

Well I am knitting but I am knitting the body of this cardigan and really, progress looks slow (though I did knit a good 6cm of it on Friday whilst awaiting my CT scan). It is boring to show progress pics when the only progress seems to be endless swathes of stocking stitch.

I must say I am mighty impressed so far with the yarn I am using. It can be a little splitty but the yardage is amazing and for $2 a ball (down from $7), I am quite quite happy. It has only taken three balls to do the yoke and the upper body down to the waist. I've just added the fourth ball. I bought 10 or 12 balls and am now thinking I might be able to make a little top too!

I've been busy with work, knitting, quilting, gardening, house renos, the 365project (a picture a day) and DH, and in the last couple of days tests for my six monthly checkup. Yep, we only count from when the operation was, even though I was diagnosed with BC two Christmases ago, because I did chemo first, I am only a six month survivor. The lymphodema tests showed that I have a mild problem (I know the poor boob is not real happy) and one measurement was 1.5cm larger than the previous time (they measure the circumference of set parts of your arm), which seems totally wrong given all the rest with within a mm of last time. I am hoping the blood tests and CT scan show I am fine but I am preparing myself for the worst. I feel ok, a little twitchy but I am much much better than I was six months ago. That is the rotten thing about cancer - you are usually pretty good until it has you well in its clutches.

It would be nice to stop for a while but I like to have things to do, particularly crafting things when I am a bit stressed. The continuing uncertainty of when DH will be fit to go back to work is more annoying than worrying about if I have mets! If I do have mets, we can probably do something to manage them, but I can't manage and should not DH beyond a certain point. The rest is up to him and his doc, and with any luck if we can work out where we'll be, his coach.

I must also whine about the weather. OK, two years ago it was 40+C at the start of Feb (which then triggered the dreadful Black Saturday fires). We struggled up to about 21C today. For Feb, that is awfully cold. It is 13C at the moment. I know that those of you in far northern climes dream of 13C at the moment but BRR! COLD! It is still summer.

(Another reason why it is cold inside - we have a bit of housewrap over the hold at the moment...)

And I'm missing out on Stitches West. Whine.

But most magnificent, we watched a show on the PiLs' telly. It showed the Outback now that it is flooded. It is gobsmackingly beautiful. Absolutely amazing. I'd like to go stickybeak at it but getting there is an issue because the country out there is flat flat flat. And very very very wet. Plus all our money is going into getting the kitchen renovated. (Getting very over the kitchen renovations even though most of the enormous stuff is done - only one window, plasterboard on two point five walls, a floor, lots of tiling, new cupboards and benchtops, a stove and hood, sink, tap, hmmm, anything else to go? Gack.)

Pics today are mostly care of the camera phone, though at least I found the battery charger for the camera batteries (just rechargeable AAs). I keep forgetting to take the camera with me. Just as well I have the phone, eh? And I discovered a pretty picture function on the phone. Can you tell? 8-) It is called cartoon, though I'd call it drawing myself. The magnificent houses and gardens are in Albert Park - we had a quilting day there today and I went for a walk cos I know one whole block of that area, and it just so happens to be this one amazing block.

anon!

Mental note to self #umpteen

2011-02-14T01:05:00.004+11:00

For me, raw beetroot is a strong purgative.

Yikes!

I've had very small amounts of raw beetroot before and thought it was rather nice. So I made a nice raw beetroot and carrot salad as part of tea. It was very enjoyable.

Two hours later, well the troubles started! The most interesting side effect was how wobbly my legs went. That is an issue in itself as one has to move relatively quickly when "the moment" comes along.

It is now 1:30am and I'm hoping I can go to bed soon. Am very tired, rather dehydrated but cannot do more than sip water.

PS. If anyone knows where I put any of our battery chargers, please let me know. We used to have three, I got rid of one cos the batteries didn't seem to charge well in it, and I've seen both of the other two in the last 10 days but can't find them at all now.... The phone takes adequate pics but the camera does much better as one might expect from a one trick pony.

Still no rest for the wicked!

2011-02-11T21:50:00.002+11:00

G'day all!

I'm back. Things are settling down some. It's been a fun couple of weeks but we think we are getting back to a new normal. And it is a good place to be.

I've been flat chat, what with working, doing quiltalongs and stuff with DH. Yes he is still DH - he thinks he went a bit mental a month ago and did some things he now rather regrets. We are currently in Melbourne.

It is a year and a week since the day my chemo started. I am rather pleased to be a year on from it. So far so good, but in another week I have a CT scan and then in two Tuesdays' time I go to the clinic to get my results and see how I am going. I've already done the blood screening - - I am getting all sorts of cancer markers read. It isn't quite the standard thing but I'm also part of a study and my cancer is a high risk one so I guess I get extra care! At least I don't need to have a mammo - the CT scan will probably show more and will show up any mets. I think if you squished the poor affected part at the moment, it would complain quite vociferously (or at least make me squeal like a pig - six months after surgery it is still sore on and off and I'm told it might be sore for a long time yet!). If I think too much about it, I freak cos my cancer is/was a reasonably bad one but freaking won't help me (and may make things worse) so I distract myself away from it.

I started seeing a personal trainer too - my boss likes me going along with her cos then she is forced to go an extra day per week. I thought I was going to fall off the stationary bike on Wednesday I worked so hard! But I didn't and I'm still here to tell the tale.

Knitting is going slowly. I am working on a cardigan that is worked from the top down. The yoke took a good few days to do then getting to the armpits... 322 stitches per row take a long time to knit. I'm down to 200 and something stitches now and running for the waist. I would show you pictures but despite having about 20 sets of rechargeable batteries, I umm lost the charger last week... ooops.

I've done lots of sewing, despite competing with DH for the sewing machine. Quilt tops are relatively quick to make - it is a pity that it then takes me so long to get the rest done!

The garden is going ballistic - we've had so. much. rain. Normally we get not much rain in Feb and March (and not a whole lot in January either) but in the first six weeks of this year, we've had over 160mm (over 6") compared to the usual maybe 60mm if we are lucky.

Thanks, ex Cyclones Anthony and Yasi for dumping the remains of your moisture on us! Anyway, I can't keep up with the weeds and the grass. I whipper snipped (weed whacked/strimmed) some grass in the front yard a week ago and two days ago was already over 4" tall again.

(Mmmm, homegrown corn :-)

Wish me luck in finding the battery charger. It normally lives in one particular power point but I had t0 move it to plug something else in and given how much flux there is around here at present, I'll be lucky to see it for a while...

anon!

Weather nerdery

2011-02-04T23:09:00.004+11:00

G'day all!

What an interesting summer we are having here in Oz. I hope the subject line has told you we are not talking craft today...

Three quarters of Queensland was/is flooded.

Cyclone Anthony had a go at Perth (the only major city on the western coast of Oz).

Cyclone Yasi (category 5, not quite as big as Katrina but jeez she worked on it) hit the parts of Queensland that weren't really affected by the earlier floods.

Now Cyclone Anthony, who has devolved to just being a low pressure system has dumped well over three inches of rain on us this evening after wandering across the southern part of Australia. He's the colourful blur near the bottom of the continent.

(copyright 2011 Commonwealth of Australia, Bureau of Meteorology)
(We live down the bottom part of the Oz mainland, where the blue/green spots are. You might just be able to see a patch in the middle of the blue/green spots. That is aroundabout where Melbourne is.)

Yasi has also been downgraded and will fade away but not before she joins forces with the remains of Anthony and dumps a whole lot more rain on us. You can see her remains in the satellite picture.

We popped up to the PiLs' tonight to have an Urban Burger, not realising the horrors that awaited us. The Bureau had forecast rain and we understand rain, or so we thought. We enjoyed the burgers. About 5 minutes after we got there, it started raining. Nice big fat subtropical rain. Not the wussy temperate stuff that we know.

10 minutes later it was really starting to get a bit wet. (Excuse the crappy mobile phone pics - the light was awful)

And soon was even wetter. (I'm not admitting that Someone stood in that enormous puddle in her almost brand new shoes....)

Since it started pouring again by the time we reached the undercover comfort of the shopping centre (where we had parked our car), I chivalrously offered my PiLs the back seat of my very small car. Unusually, they were grateful to squish in there.

Driving the 600m to the PiLs' from the shopping centre was pretty traumatic. The rain was pouring so hard that the wipers were useless. The roads were a good inch deep in water (and this is on the side of quite a steep hill too) and one corner that I had to navigate (ahem!) was almost totally flooded. Jumping the five metres from the car to the verandah was a soaking experience.

We waited there for a good couple of hours whilst working out whether or not to drive home. The roads were chaotic - DH's brother and his fiancee were out near the city celebrating her dad's birthday. They drove through some pretty deep water and had to take a roundabout way home. We saw a number of cars that had conked out just on the way to the PiLs'. Driving a new(ish) car through deep water looks like a really, really stupid thing to do (not just something pretty dumb) - we saw at least one that had fried their electrics and five minutes later was still draining water out of itself.

Things seemed to have settled down by about 10:15 so we took off on our intrepid, usually 20 minute, journey in brave brave Sir Helmet. Sir Helmet did not bravely run away, or at least he took us with him as he did so. The Monash freeway was blocked off by a cop car and was chockers with cars going nowhere (we assume that the creek about 5km on had overrun its banks). The road, Springvale Road, we usually use to get home was chockers. Wellington Road had a HUGE puddle, so another couple of cop cars were blocking that off. But because we are "locals" and know other routes, we just took a different way home and had absolutely no hassles at all. We were lucky.

Since about 6pm, we've had nearly four inches of rain. Two of that probably fell in an hour as some fairly good storms rolled through. Our little bit of floodplain looks ok for the nonce. I hope others are ok too!

anon!

Well that will teach me!

2011-01-29T00:18:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

I had my car serviced today and got the nasty petrol smell checked out.

One of the fuel lines had perished. And the fuel filter clamps were tied down too tight and were strangling the fuel filter. Hmmm...

So I drove off and filled up the car cos it is cheap petrol Friday (at some point soon the fuel prices will jack up about 10c a litre).

Car felt a less nippy than usual but I thought that was just me being odd.

We drove up to the PiLs' place and had a lovely BBQ there and hung out with Nathan and his brother playing Sky pieces.

Then we managed to get 100m down the road and most of the way through a right hand turn (remember we drive on the left side of the road, not the right, so it is the equivalent of a left hand drive car's left turn) when I realised we had no power. No fuel. Nada. I couldn't even roll to a stop in the most out of the way position as there was a car waiting to pull onto the road there plus we were going uphill... So we had 10 minutes of hazard flashers and cars telling us with quite a great deal of horn blowing that we were a danger parked where we were. Like DUH! Would you deliberately leave your car across 1.5 lanes of an intersection if you had any choice in the matter?

Little Helmet doesn't fly at the moment. Brother in law and the RACV (AA) man confirm no petrol getting to the carbie. Helmet has gone back to the mechanic with a nice note and the key dropped through the letters slot. This will teach me to go spend $250 on getting him all nice and fixed up!

anon!

Interesting times

2011-01-24T18:18:00.003+11:00

G'day all!

Remember that old Confucian "blessing" - "may you live in interesting times?"

Well I am living them. LOL Gotta laugh, cos otherwise you'd do something stupid.

Thanks for all your good wishes. I reckon we are working things out. Distance has certainly not helped.

We'll be back in Melbourne tomorrow, earlier in the day than planned. I am sure the cats will be happy to see us, though they've been in good hands.

I thought I'd give you a montage of some of the sights I've seen in the last week. Next time I am up here with some free time, I'll be hopping on the ferry - had a lovely, if too short, trip yesterday.

I'll be happy to be home, though if Sydney is to be my home for a while well there are compensations to that too!

anon!