Confession.

I have a small confession to make.
I am addicted to lolcats.
I don't know why I am slightly shamefaced about this, but I am going to try to get over it by posting some of the ones that makes me laugh out loud.

more animals


more animals


more animals


more animals

And finally, my all time favourite so far.......

more animals

Little Slices of Heaven

I love this necklace. It is made of little slices of coloured agate. I have no idea how old it is, or anything about it really- I picked it up on ebay for a song. I love the colours in it, the slipperiness of the stones. And I love that the one pink one is slightly off centre.



The only thing I don't love about it is how hard it is to wear. The best I've been able to come up with is to wear it against plain navy blue, with plain, unobtrusive gold earrings. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Things I Learnt This Week.

1. Adversity can sometimes be useful as a learning tool. I hate admitting that. I'd much rather stamp my feet and complain loudly rather than go all wise and Yoda-like. Doesn't change the fact that omelettes are made of broken eggs. I consider my character to have been significantly improved this week, what with all the challenges and suchlike.

2.If an iron lasts 20 years, it is not worth more than a shrug and a sigh when you drop it and break it.

3.If a rather expensive digital camera that is only 3 months old suddenly ceases to work for no apparent reason, this really is annoying.

4.I'm a better knitter than I thought I was, but I can't show you because my bloody camera is broken.

5. When making mini quiches, put a tray under the muffin tray, so that if you fill them too full and they overflow, you wont have a blackened mess on the bottom of your oven. Sigh.

So, y'know, not a bad week, all up. It wasn't easy, but no-one I love died, and I have quiche for dinner.
That'll do me.

Lucky me.

Recently I was the lucky recipient of some Rav-love from the lovely jennantonnix, and the wonderful lucyvanp. Really, is there anything as exciting as the postman handing you a parcel from Deepest Darkest Elsewhere? Why yes! When the postman hands you two parcels, of course!!!




The first pic has all sorts of exciting foreign snacks, but that sagey-blue goodness you see? It's Knitpicks Gloss. It is destined to be a Prairie House Shawl. Its not so much a shawl, though as an elongated triangular scarf. I'm going to treat myself and start it this afternoon, as a matter of fact.
The second pic was two lovely skeins of Arucania yarn. The left one is Arucania Ranco multy, a fingering weight, and the other is Arucania Magallanes, a lovely thick and thin single ply. Not sure what I'm going to make from those yet.

This was from lucyvanp. Look at the pretty purple! That there's cashmere, don't you know. And whats the point of cashmere if you can't snuggle it, I ask? It will be a neckwarmer of some sort. Those little skeins next to it are Wollmeise- lovely little tastes of gorgeousnes that are being made into crocheted flowers (my current inexplicable and slightly embarrassing fad).

Perfect for my cup of tea!!

And just going back to jennantonnix's lovely gift, you can see in the front of the first pic a necklace. Bless her, knowing that I am a lover and collector of vintage jewelry, she sent me this.

Mmmmm. Turquoisey goodness.
Thankyou both so much for these lovely things.

Cheerful.

TGIF, peoples.
Dunno what time it is in your part of the world, but in mine it's Friday afternoon, and my week has finally finished. It was a tough week, too. Started out crappy, got considerably worse on Tuesday, then improved bit by bit until today was a positive triumph. Nothing bad happened, and a lot of loose ends got tidied. I do like a tidied end, too.

The kid has been dispatched to his father's house, and the weekend stretches before me in all its glory. There will be a good bit of knitting done. Also, some crocheting. Maybe a little therapeutic ebaying. I intend to fit in a nap or two. I finally got some gold coloured cotton so I can re-vamp that linen skirt that's been moldering in my sewing basket for months. If it rains, I shall go stand in it for a while. 'The Collectors' is finally back on the teev, and the rest of tonight is all about British crimies, so the phone's going off the hook and I am putting up my 'the dr is out' sign (Peanuts reference).

The excitement is killing me :-)

Fire.

I am sitting here feeling very lucky. Lucky that I still have a house and contents, lucky that I still have electricity, and lucky that no-one I know (so far) has died in the awful bushfires that ravaged my home state yesterday.

I live about an hour from where the Bunyip fire was (and still rages now). The conditions yesterday were horrific, beyond description. Not just 46 degrees Celsius (that's about 115 deg Farenheit) but gale force winds. The world just seemed to explode. Ten years of drought, along with last week's heat wave of over-40 deg temps for days on end.....it felt like the end of everything. And I say that having survived the Ash Wednesday Bushfires in 1983. I was smack in the middle of those fires, too, and equally lucky. Sadly, many friends and relatives were not so fortunate, then.

About 5pm yesterday the power went out. The winds went crazy, and the only thing I could hear over the seering, howling gale and the crash of trees braking apart, was the lunatic screech of sirens.

But I'm one of the lucky ones. By all accounts the township of Kinglake, on the edge of Melbourne, is all but gone. And I heard a little while ago that there is just one building left standing in Marysville. Victoria is being declared a disaster zone, and I heard that they are bringing in the armed forces to help the brave, but hopelessly overwhelmed emergency services. Even more terrible is knowing that so many of these fires were deliberately started. I heard a fireman on the radio this morning refer to them as 'lighters'. The name made me shudder a little. Somehow it seems more ominous than the official 'arsonist', or the jokey 'firebug'.

The death toll rises every hour. The last news bulletin put it at 30 and rising. People got caught in their cars, trying to get out. Every time I think of it my breath catches in my throat a little. The mortuaries are full and they are talking about bringing in refridgerated containers to house the dead.

I was a horticulturist for many years working in bush regeneration. I have no doubt that the land will come back. But how do people come back from this?

This is a dangerous land to live in.

It's calm here now. The wind has dropped, and the temperature is a comfortable 20 deg C. There's even been a little rain. There have also been some fearsome thunder and lightning, but hey, you can't have everything. I'm going outside for a little while. I need to go and pick up all the dead birds in my front yard and bury them.

Gratuitous Brooch Shot.

I love the colour of this 1950's brooch- caramel swirl. Mmmmmm. And because I have my Flickr page open right now, this is what I will be wearing it with (when the freaking weather calms down a bit)



The cardigan is called Cinxia, from Knitty, 2005.

I was tempted to kiss the postman.......

It's been a crapulous couple of months. And the weather here? Foul. And not getting any better by the looks of things. But hey, where would we be without our friends, right?
Today in the mail I got this, all the way from Canada.



So pretty! Anyone wanting to get their own little skeins of gorgeousness, check out Jodi's website.

OK, I know you want to see some more.




And this is how it knits up


It's fingering weight, so socks are the obvious choice for what to make. But what if there is something else? Something better, prettier, more happy making? obviously an extensive search for every fingering weight pattern in the known universe must be undertaken.
And, whats more, it must be undertaken right now.
I love how knitters, crocheters, etc all have their little yarn quirks. Some people like to wind into cakes, some balls, some knit right off the skein. Some people buy the yarn first and get a pattern to fit it, some the other way round. Some people buy any yarn that appeals to them and horde it away for later.
Me- the minute I buy yarn I want to do something with it. I just can't squirrel it away, or let it sit for a while. Something new has to be started immediately! Immediately, I tell you! But not before every suitable pattern has been pored over, and everyone else's projects have been closely scrutinized.
Heh. My house was so much cleaner before Ravelry.