Yarnivorous

G'day all! One thing about grey days - today I sat down and put in a decent chunk of time on my work.  Admittedly, I spent double the hours fixing things up that I expected I would take, but some of the stuff I was fixing is not exactly cooperative, or at least the program I'm using isn't.  Plus I'm using an older version of the program and it doesn't work the same way that the current one does and the fixes that worked on the newer version don't work as well on the old version. All very mysterious.  It will be fixed eventually, just not as soon as I would like it to be. Capitol Hill got a bit of sun late in the day So today was grey.  Gray, as can be expected when the sad and tattered remnants of a cyclone pass by.  Winds were negligible, but the rain sure hung around for long enough (and we got 14 mm) and the grey for longer.   The clouds were moving along at a good pace though and we started to see a bit of blue sky by the end of the day. In...

G'day all! Oh what a brain dead day I had yesterday. eg walk a block over to a friend's house to pick up my keys and the car.  Get said keys, chat a bit then decide to go out the front door cos it is closer.  Walk out the door with the keys in my hand, down the front stairs and then realise that I came around to pick up the car as well so I could go shopping. And the car is around the back, in the alley. And that wasn't the only brain in neutral moment. Get to the supermarket, do the shopping, joke at the register, "And now is when I realise I left my wallet on the couch." Umm, yes, I had taken it out and put it on the sofa. Sigh. Rain since yesterday at about 11am. And there were more than those two moments! I will blame the rain, the three hour time difference, a gluten hangover with concomitant lack of desire to eat food whilst my guts still hurt and several days of going flat chat. At least we saw some sun today!  More on that la...

And fly away. .. G'day all! This morning it was rainy and miserable. And it seems I cannot insert pics in blogger on the phone... sigh., at least not in the typing interface. It is rainy and humid where we are now.  We were lucky to avoid two downpours. We have a pretty good view too. Where am I? Anon!

G'day all! Move ahead!  It's not too late!  To whip it, whip it good...  Sorry, just a little diversion there, an indication of how my mind works.  The US goes onto daylight savings tonight I believe.  Oddly enough, my favourite corner of Ravelry has not erupted in a screaming hissy fit yet. Meteorological Spring has sprung here, though the US does seasons by the equinoxes and solstices.  I always think this is odd because winter certainly doesn't start on the 21st of December - around here it starts in November with the first of the winter storms (nb what this part of the world calls storms, my part calls cold fronts and intense low pressure systems).  Spring is already getting underway - the cherry plums are blooming, the daffodils are flowering, the crocuses are nearly done, the forsythias are in full flourish and some of the local deciduous street trees are starting to leaf out (between Wednesday and Thursday, to be precise) - though in the U...

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 gu...

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 th...

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 a...

G'day all! In mysterious happenings recently, I seem to have adopted a chicken. Yes, Boldie now comes running to me when I walk outside (if she is out of the chicken slammer). If she is locked in and sees me, she makes a dreadful noise, the same noise that she makes when she is lost (which is to say when her unsisters are not with her - she doesn't like being alone, unlike Isolde). It took pretty much six months for her to decide that I am the Provider of Goodness (aka food) and that if she follows me around for long enough I'll go and get her some grain. Where she goes, Goldie goes too, about a metre or so behind. Hmm, just remembered I took a video a little while back that I wanted to share with you. Chickens dust bathe and mine are no exception. I just didn't expect them to all squish up together and writhe around. Goldie is obvious, I hope, Boldie is in the middle with the wattles and big comb and Isolde is the suspicious one on the right. She has a very diffe...

G'day all! It is nearly the end of breast cancer awareness month. Yep, you read it, MONTH. Not day, not week. I guess that is how rampant this disease is. It needs a whole month. Of course we should also have a month for cardiovascular disease because that is still the greatest killer or certainly in the top three for people in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and America (I'm guessing Canada is right up there too and parts of Europe as well, but I don't know about anywhere else). I've read a few other blogs written by people with breast cancer. Some are angry with their boobs for being so naughty and trying to kill them. On reflection, I am not angry with mine. It has put me through hell this year but I can't be angry with the poor thing. It is now scarred, has a chunk out of it between 9 and 11pm, parts of it are numb, and topping it off, it has a ripper sunburn, or so it would look. How can I be angry with it? Now I am a little cranky with myself for not ...

G'day all! As a born and bred Melburnian, I reserve the right to: whine about the weather happily (or not depending on my team 's winning status) discuss footy whine about the weather have the weather be the major topic of conversation lust after things I can't get in Melbourne (though it is a city of about 4 million people, we don't get the things that Americans take for granted and of course we want, ignoring our own local versions of said things) moan about the weather I think you get the picture! Earlier in the week, it was lovely and warm, if a little windy. On Wednesday storms pushed through. Yesterday was windy but not too bad (as long as having things blowing away in the wind is ok). Today? It has not stopped raining all day. We've *only* had nearly an inch since 9am but OMG! Over it already! Tanks are full, rain rain go away, come again some other day! (Haha, since I wrote this, it has stopped raining. The sun of course went down an hour ago.) I...

G'day all! What an exciting afternoon it turned out to be! It came over all dark and stormy and then windy and it poured rain, totally heaved down. I was thinking we just had a nice bit of rain from a thunderstorm, a very needed bit of rain cos it is a couple of weeks since we had any and the garden is really starting to suffer. I had been watching the weather radar and then decided to look at the weather warnings. After all, it isn't often that we see the radar image displaying black (actually dark brown) spots, the most intense precipitation possible on its scale. When you go to the BoM site and find a warning like this: you think things might be exciting! (If you are me, you also think that maybe they need a better picture editing program?) Not just one but two supercells approaching! So I trawl the web to find all sorts of mayhem has broken out across the city! Trams up to the top of their steps in water (I note we aren't seeing pics of the newer, very low load...

When merry lads are playing Tralala, tralala-lalalalala, lalala-la-la-lala! Each with his bonny lass Upon the greeny grass Tralala etc etc. (I thought you might like a musical interlude from my misspent uni years, when I used to sing with a madrigal group. We were all into the SCA and frocking up (including the chaps in some instances ;-) and signing and dancing and eating and avoiding the politicking. We had lots of fun :-) So it is four years since my father died. It is funny cos whilst I miss the person he had been, I don't miss the poor old thing that died. My father had moved on years earlier, leaving only a shell. I guess dementia does that to a person. I have been working on pulling out of my funk - thanks for the kind words and offers! I should take some of those up. It would be fun to see people more often and do stuff more often, not that I am unbusy here. The hardest part is living in an apartment where there basically is no guest parking - every unit has one par...

G'day all! After all my fussing about getting out on the bike yesterday, what happens? Every time I'm ready to go, a shower of rain falls! So I sit down for another hour and guess what? Another sprinkle! Now you might think sprinkles of rain are fine but I wear glasses. I do not have windscreen wipers for my glasses and I cannot just blink to clear them (though wouldn't it be cool if I could?). If it rains I can't see. If I take my glasses off I can't see. Given this is the Land of the Car, not being able to see crazy drivers is detrimental to my survival. OK, I could get in the car and drive but where's the fun in that? Cycling is much more fun! And it is good for me. Driving is not particularly good for me. So I walked to get the shopping yesterday. That is No Fun At All cos I then had to carry a bag back and wheel my trolley lolly lo back and it was HEAVY! Today? Where do you think the ONE rain cloud within 50 miles on the radar is sitting? Ah y...

G'day all! There's a reason why I haven't taken any photos of the current WIP. So far February has been a very satisfactory month for ducks. We've had just over 6" of rain, or in my terms 150mm. That is a lot of rain. We had a couple of bright days late last week - SUN! - but I had barely started my latest opus then and it was not worth photographing. Now it is. But instead you get to see (a "wet" brocauliflower leaf. The flower itself was very yummy - different flavour to those bought in the supermarket.) and (almost sunset two weeks ago - this is more light than we've had recently.) I would like to say there is light at the end of the tunnel but the best the forecast can do is "partly cloudy." It might be good enough though for some pics before or as I divide the fronts and back for the sleeves. Most mysterious! I've been doing lots of walking in spite/because of the rain. I hate riding my bike in rain - the roads are slippery a...

G'day all! I've been in a flurry of finishing again. Socks were knitted for DH. They are done and dusted and given to him for Valentine's Day. Do not ask what I was given - DH does not have a romantic bone, ahem, in his body. Instead he said he felt unwell. I had asked that I not have to cook, so what happened? * Made myself pancakes for breakfast * Cooked risotto for lunch, and * Cooked lamb stew for dinner! Can I just say I did an excellent job too! Alas, the kitchen is still feral cos Nathan has the job of emptying the dishwasher, which he tends to forget to do. If the dishwasher is full of clean dishes then I can't stick the dirty ones in and things snowball. I could put the dishes away but I hurt my right shoulder and anything at or above shoulder height = hurties and wobbliness, and guess what height the crockery lives at and in which corner of the kitchen? So Valentine's Day was a write-off. Not unusual. Just as well that I have friends like the love...