Blue moon.......

.......you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart,
Without a love of my own........

Blue moon tonight, the second full moon this month!  Probably a good idea to keep an eye on the neighbours for any craziness, you never know what the moon might bring out in otherwise dull people.

Reporting a finish, two pair of jammies.

They aren't quite the same - one set has black pants with a mostly blue top, the other has blue pants with a mostly black top.  Finished, but not pressed.......they are, after all, jammies for wearing to bed, not haute couture.  Fabric is all from my stash.

On our recent holiday we visited the wood gallery at Bungendore, a short drive east of Canberra, and a sweet little wombat jumped into my hand.  What else could I do but bring it home?  It's made of recycled river red gum, a gorgeous Australian tree.  This pic shows the lovely colour and grain of the timber.

While at the gallery we were gobsmacked by the Hannah Cabinet, it's amazing.  It's not something that would fit in our home either in size or decorative style but the workmanship is incredible, and in any case we didn't have the $1.5 million dollars that was being asked. Several years ago we were lucky enough to see another cabinet by the same craftsman, the Yarralumla Cabinet, which is part of the Australiana collection in the official residence of the Australian Governor-General, and although it's not quite as large or elaborate as the Hannah Cabinet I think it liked it better.  On this video you can hear his answer to the question "are there any more hidden drawers?"

Work on the new jumper is progressing like you wouldn't believe, the back, front and one sleeve are finished, while the second sleeve is coming along nicely.  Looks like it will be done to take to Canada after all!  Only 60 days to go.........

Recently we have been watching a program about social changes brought about in England by the coming of railways - sounds dull, but is very interesting!  Trains were an invention which changed the face of several countries and brought about many changes in how people lived as well as how they travelled.  The first murder on a train in England happened in 1864 and was mentioned in the program, the author of a book about the case was interviewed, and I thought to myself, I thought "that sounds like an interesting read" I thought, so reserved it at the library.  A few days ago I started reading it and have just come to the end of the section set in England, the detective is now on the high seas in pursuit of the alleged murderer who had fled to America, and although I know the ending - it's set out in history, as here - I am enjoying reading about the investigation of the case.  Mystery stories are probably my favourite genre, and true mysteries can be intriguing.  The book is called "Mr Briggs' hat: a sensational account of Britain's first railway murder" and was written by Kate Colquhoun.

We have a radio playing all the time on a classical music station and recently there have been problems with the reception; turns out to be damage caused by ice and snow on the transmitter tower a couple of hours north-west of here.  Repairs are supposed to be finished today, let's hope so.  Kevin and I have a deal - he can watch all the sport he likes on TV so long as I don't have to listen to it.  Football is definitely improved by classical music, and cricket is almost possibly just about bearable.

"As culture is the first requirement of good society, so self-improvement should be the aim of each and all of its members.  Manners will improve with the cultivation of the mind, until the pleasure and harmony of social intercourse are no longer marred by the introduction of discordant elements, and they only will be excluded from the best society whose lack of education and whose rude manners will totally unfit them for its enjoyments and appreciation.  Good manners are even more essential to harmony in society than a good education, and may be considered as valuable an acquisition as knowledge in any form."

That's what I think, too.

Enjoy your days!

Hopefully.......

........the resized photos will work.

First, the little guy:

 As you can see, he's growing.  From the nose down he looks very much like his mum, but from the nose up (including the shape of his head) he is the image of his dad at the same age.  It's like looking at my first-born all over again......not sure I would want to repeat some of the intervening years, though.  Grandpa Kevin is providing a comforting arm, because Euan was still a little wobbly when it came to sitting unsupported.

One of the visitors who kept us entertained in the campground in Canberra, on a rare sunny day.

 The weather wasn't always that nice, you know.

On both trips we spent a night in a camp ground at Cowra where Phil the owner has a great shed, a previous owner decorated it with railway memorabilia - the platform seats and station signs you can see are just part of the collection.  Each evening Phil lit a fire in the big pit to boil the billy (for the non-Aussies, a metal can is called a billy and a drink made from adding tea leaves to boiling water in said billy is known as billy tea, we even have a commercial brand of tea called Billy Tea) and campers all converged for Happy Hour.

 It looks a bit daggy, but was a really fun place!

On the trip south Phil played old records from the 1950s and 60s, but on the way home guess who was the entertainment......just plinking away in the background while people talked and became acquainted, I didn't sing because I didn't want to interrupt.  However everyone said how much they enjoyed it, and all admired my tenor uke - as well they should, it's a beautiful example of the luthier's art.

We enjoyed our time in Canberra, highlights were spending time with family (of course!), and we visited the National Library of Australia to see the Rothschild Prayer Book - what an exquisite thing that is.  Made between 1505 and 1510 and illustrated with glowing colours and rich gold, it has been so well preserved that it could have been made yesterday.  We quite spent some time marveling at the workmanship.  It was quite a busy week and no doubt you will hear more in due course.  The shopping list had all items ticked off, black walking shoes for the trip to Canada (for which we take off in 67 days, woo hoo!), beads for knitting, and of course the new camera.

One day we went for a Nice Sunday Drive - from memory it was on a Friday but I could be wrong, it was a busy week - and called in at a lovely place out in the country where we found out that it is possible to have lunch made entirely of chocolate.  Should you ever find yourself in Canberra I can recommend a visit to Robyn.

Now back to normality.......

"Do not lack politeness.
Never hesitate in acts of politeness for fear they will not be recognized or returned.  One cannot be too polite so long as he conforms to rules, while it is easy to lack politeness by neglect to them.  Besides, if courtesy is met by neglect and rebuff, it is not for the courteous person to feel mortification, but the boorish one; and so all lookers-on will regard the matter."

We endeavoured to be polite to all we met, and hope we succeeded.  Politeness and courtesy go a long way to making one's stay in a camp ground enjoyable.

Enjoy your days!

Back......eventually

We're home, we had a good holiday, the family is well, the grandkid is growing, and my new camera takes good photos which are a huge file size and I have to work out how to resize them so they can be uploaded for the world to see.

I can't be as beautiful as I am and have a technical brain as well.

To my Canadian family and friends......

 .......Best wishes for Canada Day!

Nothing lasts forever these days

A couple of days ago I was taking pictures outside when the screen of my camera went pink......not a good sign according to my online research, people in camera forums were muttering things about sensors and replacement costs and not worth it and forget about it and just buy a new camera instead......much as we like living here in the Small Smoke there are a few drawbacks, one of which is the lack of a dedicated fair dinkum ridgey-didge camera shop.  There are several places where one can buy a proper camera (as distinct from a phone with a camera in it) but they are all shops which sell many other things, and I prefer to buy from a proper camera shop and talk to people who know whereof they speak.  So......an online visit to the shop where my camera was purchased some years ago, a phone chat to a nice bloke in one of their shops in Canberra, and a camera has been put aside for me to look at next week.

I shall miss my little Pentax, but at least it had the good sense to die at a convenient time when it could be easily replaced......and here are the last-ever shots taken with it:

 Recently we have noticed white eucalyptus blossoms on the ground outside our back fence, and looking upwards we saw the culprits were sulphur-crested cockatoos who were biting off the flowers and dropping them.  It seemed a shame to leave them, so I collected a few and put them in the pretty crystal bowl I won last year.  Here's a close-up for you - they have a light sweet smell, bees love them because they make delicious honey.  They look like little eyes, don't they?

 The very last pic from the dying camera - this kangaroo eventually came to within 20 feet outside our back fence, I was watching it hop around eating grass while I was sitting at my sewing machine.  Yes, they do come that close, but that was after the camera died so you will have to take my word for it!  You can also see the fallen white blossoms on the grass.

Work on the new jammies is proceeding slowly because by the time everything else gets done that needs to be done it is mid to late afternoon before I set foot in the sewing room, and sewing black thread on black fabric in fading light is not kind to ageing eyes......but it is proceeding.

A couple of days ago Kevin had his minor surgical 'procedure' and the cyst on his back is no longer there, so next Wednesday we will be hitching up the caravan and heading off to Canberra a week later than originally planned.  It's a long enough trip to need an overnight stop but we aren't trying to break any speed records, and as days are now fairly short - it's almost dark at 5pm - we will make three shorter days of driving with two overnight stops, and arrive more relaxed.  I am taking a shopping list with me......a new camera, black walking shoes, a few other things.......and of course we will spend time with out son, his wife and our grandkid, Euan the Wonder Kid, who is now six months old and growing some hair like his dad did at the same age.  He's not such a baldy bub now.

We lucky enough here in the Small Smoke to have visiting musicians from time to time, and last week Slava and Leonard Grigoryan came to town to present a concert.  We had seats in the third row from the front so I could see their magic fingers dance on their guitar strings.......oh wow......don't know whether I should practice harder or set fire to my guitars and ukes and be done with it.......and the guitars they were playing were instruments of great beauty and sounded so wonderful......sigh......

Last night we were entertained by The Admiral's Own Big Band formed from musicians who play with the Royal Australian Navy band, and great fun it was too.  Big band music is great to listen to and must have been so good to dance to, back in the days when it was 'the' music of the day - you only have to look at old films to see that, or to watch modern-day jitterbuggers!

"The music.
Four musicians are enough for a "dance".  When the dancing room is small, the flageolet is preferable to the horn, as it is less noisy and marks the time as well.  The piano and violin form the mainstay of the band; but when the rooms are large enough a larger band may be employed."

I wonder how the good folk of 1885 would have enjoyed jitterbugging to a big band?  Last night's band had 15 or 16 musicians, no violins or flageolets......but they did have a piano.

Enjoy your days!

Computer has been unwell lately

Fortunately it has been fixed and is now powering along again.  We don't realise how much we need our computers until they don't work, do we?

Last weekend the uke group played for a musical afternoon put on by a local women's service organisation, and as it was a charity fundraiser there were raffle tickets for sale.  Performers didn't have to pay admission but I bought several tickets......and won a prize!

 A gorgeous white cyclamen, isn't it pretty?  It is now sitting in its new deep blue pot next to my other cyclamen, a bright cerise one.  Did you know that in the language of flowers, giving someone a cyclamen is a gracious way of saying goodbye?

Our nerine is also blooming right now, I see by the date that this picture was taken on 1st June 2011 - but the flowers are just the same.

There have been nerines blooming further down the street for some weeks now, deep pink and white ones, so perhaps ours are slightly backward.......or perhaps they don't get as much sun because they're in the shade of the garage, while further down the street they are in dappled sunlight.  Nerines apparently stand for vulnerability, and for the freedom to be ourselves.

Sometimes a member of the Thursday night choir will bring along a treat for our caffeine break, and last week's was Chocolate Milk Fruit Cake.  Now we all know that a fruit cake made from just three ingredients - mixed dried fruit, chocolate milk, and flour - should be all wrong, don't we?  But it isn't.  The pantry contained opened packets of sultanas and Fruit Medley (an Aussie dried fruit mix), and unopened packets of dried blueberries and craisins (gussied-up dried cranberries) all of which added up to 500g so a 375g packet of mixed dried fruit was purchased, and some chopped dates and a handful of pecan pieces made up the required 1 kilo of fruit.

It's one of those "don't scoff until you have tried it" things.  Like bacon jam.  Plenty of recipes out there should you wish to try making your own, some with metric measurements and some imperial.  I used 1kg of mixed dried fruit, 600mls chocolate milk, 2 cups S.R. flour, cooked at 180 deg C in a lined 23cm (9in) square tin for 90 minutes, then left in the tin to cool.  Next time I may lower the cooking temperature a little.

Our trip to Canberra has had to be postponed by a week because a benign cyst which has been on Kevin's back since before I met him in 1971 needs to be removed, it's now discharging (I'll spare you the gruesome details) so has to be dealt with, there's no choice, but we chose our dates a couple of months ago to fit around various activities in our lives and now I will have to miss the first uke lesson next term, and miss a quilt group meeting, and miss a sewing guild meeting, because of the changed dates.  I'm sure our son and his family will be pleased to see us - they'd better be - but I can't help feeling disappointed because these are all things I enjoy doing.  I am this close (holds thumb and forefinger so close they are nearly touching) to saying "I really don't care whether I go or not".  Because now I don't.

Ah well.  Deep sigh.

The list of fabric requirements for the workshop in August has arrived and I am somewhat underwhelmed, but no doubt when I start gathering fabrics together I may get more excited.  My first thought was to use my small stash of reproduction fabrics but I have since changed my mind; there is some black and white spot in my stash left from a quilt made a few years ago which will do well for the background, and bright floral and tonal fabrics.  The original pattern uses wide ric-rac braid round the edges of some details but I don't care for that look, I'll make my own bias.

Two pair of jammies have been cut out and will be started soon - might need warm jammies in Canada in fall!  The back of my purple passion alpaca jumper is done and the front is well under way too.  I've been told that alpaca stretches and drops when knitted, it doesn't bounce back like wool, but I'll worry about that if and when it happens.  If it ends up huge you can all get into it with me and we'll keep each other warm.

Over the past couple of days we have had some very welcome rain, so much so that some local roads were closed although most are now open again.  Gardeners are happy, farmers and even happier.  Let's hope it fell in the right areas to top up dams and rivers, or we will still be in drought!  Many sporting fields are still waterlogged to be used but may be opened again by Saturday for weekend sports which are very popular here.

"Unlike the social customs of most of the nations of the old world, it is the habit in Australian homes to encourage young people to take pleasure in each other's society, as the best possible training in both the great moral code which is the guide of life, and in those minor morals of kindly courtesy which give to social intercourse all its charm."

That's good to know.

Enjoy your days!

Done!

The green top is finished!  It's a much prettier colour than this - green can be difficult to photograph well.

I wonder why this should be?  Greens in nature are easy to photograph, leaves, grasses, trees all look good - but for some reason, green fabrics look flat and dull.  This is somewhere between lime and olive.

The purple/blue passion jumper is coming on well, so far over 31cm - about 12 inches - of the back has been done.  The alpaca yarn is not bad to work with but the working edge curls like nothing I have ever experienced before, that could be because it's being knitted on a circular needle.  Ever since I discovered circulars over 20 years ago I don't knit with straight needles, circulars are so much easier on one's wrists and hands because the weight of the knitting is supported on one's lap rather on the wrists.

Winter has hit with a vengeance!  Mornings are now frosty and cold, water in the bird baths is so frozen that even a Pied Currawong missed out on its breakfast drink this morning, and the fire is burning day and night.  Frosty gardens make for a very pretty picture, but I'm not going outside in my jammies at 7 am to take a photo.

This morning I had an appointment way over on the southern edge of town - we live on the northern edge so it meant Crossing The River, something many locals seem to fear for some reason that escapes us - my knitting came along in case I had to wait, and I found out that the trip from here to there is long enough to knit two rows each way.  Another row or two while waiting made it a very productive trip!  Must get into the habit of taking the knitting every time we go somewhere.

Our trip to Canberra in a few weeks will mean even more knitting time because I can knit in the car.  I can also crochet without getting nauseous but can't sew or read; some folks can, but not me.

The uke group has another gig coming up in ten days for the women's organisation we played for recently.  We will part of a Musical Afternoon, doesn't that sound genteel?  There will be a men's choir from one of the local churches, a women's choir (the local chapter of an Australia-wide organisation), and us.  Perhaps we will be the comic relief.

In a couple of months the quilting group is having its annual weekend workshop with a visiting tutor, and this time I will be joining in.  She is making things difficult for us as she doesn't answer emails and her web page contacts don't include a phone number.  We would like to know fabric requirements in advance, I know most of us plan to use fabric from stash but in case there are any gaps we don't want to be forced into a last-minute spend.  Between now and our Canberra trip I will pull out fabrics I plan to use, any gaps can be filled from the shops there.  There are a few stash fabrics that I have in mind.......

"In receiving morning calls, it is unnecessary for a lady to lay aside any employment, not of an absorbing nature upon which she may happen to be engaged.  Embroidery, crocheting or light needle-work are perfectly in harmony with the requirements of the hour, and the lady looks much better employed than in absolute idleness."

My thoughts exactly.

Enjoy your days!