Best of all - we have our books back!

Early this week a nice young couple drove four hours to our house (all part of the insurance service, they packed up our books and treasures months ago too), carried a heap of boxes from the garage into the house, and unpacked our books and stuff.  The books used to be in order, they aren't now but will be again.  My music books are back......and my quilting and sewing books.......  I am a happy woman.

That is the end of the insurance claim for flood damage, six months to the day.

Sighing a contented sigh here, folks.

After the slow start my knitting is progressing beautifully.

 As you can see below, I do know how to knit fancy patterns.

The centre panel looks familiar, yes?  Because almost all my knitting pattern books were packed in the garage there was limited design choice available for a feature panel on the new jumper; I looked online but there was so much choice it was confusing.  One booklet hadn't been packed because it was in another room at the time, it was bought......oh, 20 years or so ago, probably more......and has instructions for four jumpers.  I loved them all so decided to eventually make each one, and this was first.  Two others were also made and are worn each winter, the fourth was started but was messed up - it's the most complicated of the four, this is the simplest and I love the colour and the design.  I'll make that really fancy jumper one day, though.

During the week I took myself, a uke and a song book along to the U3A uke group......not too sure about it......there were only three attendees besides me, and they are way behind my level.  Not wishing to boast, just stating a fact.  I didn't even play that slow when I was learning.  Apparently the Token Bloke who seemed to be leading the group (by a whisker, I think) prefers to play slowly and the others tag along behind.  The two women asked me how fast I would play, so I played at what I would consider a normal speed, they bravely joined in - and guess what, their fingers didn't fall off and the earth didn't stop spinning on its axis.  I pointed out that if we singing but not playing ukes we wouldn't sing that slowly, and they agreed.  The group co-ordinator hinted that I may end up leading them.  We'll see.

A couple of days ago we had our coldest morning temperature for four years, minus 5.3 deg C, but there was no frost......strange......we have had frosty mornings with milder temps.  It must have been very dry.  Rain showers are forecast for tomorrow, forecasts have been wrong before but we live in hope that this time it will be right.  It's a very dry season.

"Another condition of domestic happiness is intellectual sympathy,  Man requires a woman who can make his home a place of rest for him, and woman requires a man of domestic tastes.  While a woman who seeks to find happiness in a married life will never consent to be wedded to an idler or a pleasure-seeker, so a man of intelligence will wed none but a woman of intelligence and good sense."

A woman of intelligence and good sense......that sounds like me, don't you think?

Enjoy your days!

And finally.......we have furniture!

Our trip to the Big Smoke last weekend was hectic, but we now have our replacement furniture.  Kevin has been having a lovely time putting it together......just one desk left to go.

We don't miss the Big Smoke.  It was lovely to come home to the Small Smoke, where traffic is low and the air is quiet.  After seven years we belong here......not there.

On Friday night we paid a visit to our old music club and it was lovely catching up with folk again!  Not so many familiar faces though, lots of new ones, and much electronic gimcrackery with microphones and backing tracks and such like.  We used to be totally unplugged with just voices and instruments and no amplification because the acoustics in the hall are excellent.

Ah well.  Change happens.  We accept that, but we don't have to like the changes.

The trip down and back was livened up by flowering wattle alongside the highways - isn't it the most glorious colour?

 My knitting came along with me; the front of my newest creation was cast on, and 20 rows of ribbing completed.  The pattern I'm using from a book is plain; this travelling rib design was added to the front because I felt it needed something to give it a little oomph.  On the way home I started the pattern above the rib, knitted one row and realised that my calculations were out by 12 stitches.  We made a pit stop, I sat down with a coffee, pen and paper, and worked it out again.  (I'm better with words than with numbers, you know, it's no surprise there was a miscalculation) That row was un-knitted, and it was started again.

Two-thirds of the way along the third row I realised that I hadn't been following the directions correctly; instead of purling the background stitches I had been knitting them, so the relief pattern didn't stand out the way it should.  Le big sigh......those two and two-thirds rows were once more un-knitted, and it was started again......

......and now it's working out correctly, for which many sighs of relief are being sighed.  It's my current in-front-of-TV project; back and sleeves are already finished.  With luck, it may be ready to wear before winter is done although I am a long way from being the world's fastest knitter, and these days the old arthritic fingers don't like knitting for too long at a time so they need to take several breaks.

Because this is such a busy week not one stitch has been sewn in the sewing room.  Tomorrow is not looking good either......neither is Saturday, and Sunday is booked too......perhaps by the middle of next week there could be hope for a seam, or even two......

This morning I joined the local chapter of U3A!  They have a ukulele class on Wednesdays so I will check it out, because too much music is never enough.  There may even be other activities which appeal.

"Idleness a source of misery.
Perhaps the greatest cause of misery and wretchedness in social life is idleness.  The want of something to do is what makes people wicked and miserable.  It breeds selfishness, mischief-making, envy, jealousy and vice, in all its most dreadful forms."

That's pretty strong stuff, isn't it?  I, for one, am doing my best not to be idle.

Enjoy your days!

Like Goldilocks, it's just right

Recently I was browsing in a local quilt shop and found The Very Thing for the back of the Gumballs quilt.  While it wasn't previously at the top of the "to be quilted" list, the backing fabric was purchased and pieces have been cut to make more blocks so it has now moved up the list.  The Cunning Plan for the back is a wide piece of blue fabric, a narrow strip of orange, a row of pieced blocks, another narrow strip of orange, and the blue fabric to finish, as you can see below.

See why it called to me?  Different tones of blue with orange and gold spots.....the quilt top is pieced blocks in blue, orange and gold......how could I leave this on the shelf?  The orange fabric was also purchased because my stash didn't include a large piece of orange batik, and it will also be used for the binding.

We're well and truly into the depths of winter now.  Winter here is much milder than many parts of the world, and much colder than other parts.  Now that the house is carpeted again it is warm and our new fire is wonderful, so we won't be frozen little icicles by the time spring rolls around again.

Today has seen a buzz of activity in the kitchen.  A half-leg of lamb is roasting away in the slow cooker (using this recipe) for dinner tonight, potatoes and sweet potatoes will be roasted later.  I also made some roast sweet potato soup, it's done but we are yet to try it.  Winter is soup and roast time, isn't it?  Not ice cream weather, that's for sure.

Right now there is a heap of sport on TV and the woman of this house is not much of a sport fan.  The household bloke is enjoying watching the cycle race in France and the tennis in England, while I am fighting off boredom.  The TV is in the warmest room so in the evenings I just hunker down in my beautiful green chair and read......and read......knit a few rows, then read again......say "hmmm" at the appropriate time......I've been reading free mystery books on my tablet for quite a while; I like a bit of blood and gore but I am selective, you know.  The cover picture and blurb help me decide whether I will download and read it; if it has a bloke wearing very little while showing off his bare chest it won't make the cut.  The words "mystery" and "romance" together make me shudder, "cosy mysteries" are often very twee and not quite my taste, neither are books about international espionage/saving the world in five minutes/ancient holy relics suddenly reappearing after centuries/anything with a medical or legal background/anything with more than the merest hint of the supernatural/anything wallowing in teenage angst/serial killers/psychological horror stories......I want to be entertained, not have the bejabbers frightened out of me.  It also has to have at least 200 pages.  The current book is set in England the the main bloke (it would be stretching it to call him the hero) is a fairly depressing man whose aunt and uncle turn up dead leaving him the sole heir.  The story is interesting enough to ignore his continual need for a cigarette and/or a glass of whisky.

Looking at old shows, or shows set in the past, it's hard to believe that people smoked so much, isn't it?  I have never smoked in my life not ever never, not one ciggy has touched my lips, none of the funny stuff either, despite being married to a smoker for five years when I was young and silly.  I can't, and never could, stand the smell.

"Take care of the eyes.
The utmost care should be taken of the eyes.  They should never be strained in an imperfect light, whether that of shrouded daylight, twilight or flickering lamp or candle-light.  Many persons have an idea that an habitually dark room is best for the eyes.  On the contrary, it weakens them and renders them permanently unable to bear the light of the sun.  Our eyes were naturally designed to endure the broad light of day, and the nearer we approach to this in our houses, the stronger will be our eyes and the longer will we retain our sight."

Probably.

Enjoy your days!

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

......best wishes for Canada Day!

We have carpet too!

Carpet is good.....so much better than grey concrete floors, which are cold.......and grey......very grey......the carpet is sort-of-beige, it goes well with the creamy walls and sort-of-beige kitchen and new floor tiles which have sort-of-beige streaks on a paler background.  We are slowly putting the house back together again; furniture is re-appearing where it should be instead of being packed away.

Grey seems to be popular in home decor lately, have you noticed?  We watch renno porn (there are a lot of home renovation programs on TV these days, it's easy to get hooked) and grey is very popular.  Grey kitchens.....grey living rooms......grey bathrooms......even grey bedrooms.  Why would anyone want to sleep in a cold grey bedroom, I wonder?

Bianca approves, because she can now stretch out on the living room floor again.

In a couple of weeks we will be driving to the Big Smoke for a quick in-and-out shopping trip to buy furniture to replace that which had to be chucked after the flood.  We don't have a branch of The Big Swedish Store here (they don't pay me to advertise but I'm sure you know who I mean) so that's where we will be heading.

Today is raining, yay!  Very welcome rain following an extremely dry month so far.  It's a good day to be sewing and that's where I have been, quilting together fabric, lining and thin batting for a new purse.  Mindless feeding of fabric through machine......sometimes that's just what one feels like doing, and watching the kangaroos on the hill who are also enjoying a wet day.

Here is the one block made at the recent workshop.

 The centre is not quite as mismatched as it looks here, but then my standards are pretty low when it comes to points anyway.  So long as it passes the 'ten foot rule' - it looks good when you stand ten feet back - that's all I ask.

The design......I started doodling from the bottom left corner then turned it upside down so the coloured diamonds drip from the top.  It may end up having the red line on the left and the indigo line on the right when it's put together, because my brain sees the long line (regardless of colour) on the left tapering to the short line on the right.  This layout looks......wrong.  Reversed, or something.

 Rainbow solids, although I may end up getting a lighter brighter orange and changing the red too.  The green will stay; it's rather gorgeous, isn't it?

Backgrounds will be black and white prints, as you can see in the finished block.

Last weekend's uke gig went well considering we had only five people; it's winter here, so folk are dropping like flies.  However people said nice things to us and about us, and we had fun.  We have no more gigs lined up, but I have started thinking about a song for next year's Eisteddfod.  I have twelve months to come up with something.....it will need to be fabulously good, I don't want a dreary church choir to be adjudged more entertaining again......

"Mutual trust and confidence are other requisites for happiness in married life.  There can be no true love without trust.  The responsibility of a man's life is in in a woman's keeping from the moment he puts his heart into her hands.  Without mutual trust there can be no real happiness."

I am trusting Kevin to put furniture back where it belongs......does that count?

Enjoy your days!

We have fire too!

Is this not the most beauteous wood stove you have ever seen, all the way from Duncan, B.C., Canada?

 Bianca approves too, although she didn't hang around to be photographed.

We had a choice of side panel colours, and chose ivory because lime green (or any other shade of green) wasn't available.  Burnished copper metallic finish was truly gorgeous but quite expensive, so we passed.

You can see some of the new floor tiles, and the draped creature in my sewing room is my overlocker.  It's covered to keep dust out when not in use.  My sewing room is now back together, and usable.

New carpet will be installed next week.  We hadn't heard from the carpet shop to say ours had arrived so Kevin rang them - and we were told that the arrangement was, we would ring when we were ready to have it installed.  We didn't know that; neither of us could recall being told such words, we were under the impression that we would be contacted when it had arrived and was ready to be laid.  Hopefully all is now sorted, and late next week we will have warm floors again.

Then there will be replacement furniture to be purchased, books and other stuff unpacked and put back in place (we won't be doing that, it will be done for us) and our house will finally be back to where it was before 25th January.

Last Friday night I made my solo debut at the local Eisteddfod and, as I expected, I didn't win.  I had the audience smiling and laughing and singing along with me although none of them had heard the song before, and the applause was very enthusiastic.  The adjudicator was also smiling and singing.  However the winner, based on the adjudicator's decision as "the most entertaining performance" was a church choir who sang two dreary dirge-like songs.  Many people said to me "you should have won", "I had you picked as winner", etc. which was very nice of them.  Even one of the main organisers was surprised as she also complimented me and indicated that she wasn't thrilled by the result.  However we agreed that the adjudicator is always right even when they are wrong, and I shall have another go next year - she said "don't let this put you off".  I don't wish to sound like sour grapes but I think the verdict had a certain amount of charity in it because, quite frankly, the choir just aren't very good; other performers were much better singers/instrumentalists, and were certainly more entertaining.

Ah well.  Onward and upward.  The uke group has a gig next weekend and I am sure we will have fun.

My brain is coming back to normal after a busy weekend.  Our quilt group held a workshop with Jenny Bowker; some of the time was spent designing, and some cutting and sewing.  It was much better than just being handed a pattern and being told to make it.  We explored various ideas for kaleidoscope quilts, made our fabric choices, started cutting and a few blocks were made......I made one whole block.  Just one, but I know where my quilt is going.  I started playing around with coloured pencils and a sheet of paper printed with kaleidoscope blocks and came up with an Art Deco-influenced design but didn't have the right fabrics with me, so drew another design of solid rainbow-coloured dripping diamonds which I started making.  The whole quilt, all 49 blocks of it, will be foundation pieced because that's what Jenny taught........I don't love foundation piecing, it's so tedious.......

Making it will be like eating an elephant, just taken steadily one bite at a time.

"Signature of ladies.
Only the letters of unmarried ladies and widows are addressed with their baptismal names.  The letters of married ladies are addressed with their husbands' names, as "Mrs John Smith".

I don't know when that custom started, but I have never liked it.  My name is "Jennifer Lastname" not Kevin lastname", regardless of whether I am Mrs, Ms or Miss.

We have tiles!!

The truly gorgeous new tiled floor is done.  Finished.  Walk-on-able.  Tiles were laid last week; we moved out for a couple of days while they were being laid.  The builder will be coming back early next week to fix up some doors as the new tiles are thicker than the old ones were, so doors now scrape on the floor.

Bianca spent ten days with Auntie Deb at her cattery, as she would have been really stressed by the noise and dust and loud music.  We haven't seen a lot of her since she came home as she has been spending a lot of time asleep on our bed.  With no carpet in much of the house, and no fire, it's nice and warm under the covers.

So my stuff is being (slowly....) moved back into my sewing room.  It's very dusty.  My lungs don't like it at all.

Next will be the oh-so-flash new fire.  It was to have been installed yesterday but the installation bloke rang to say he was crook (translation:  he wasn't straying too far from a bathroom.....need I say more?) and would come tomorrow.  Which is all well and good, but yesterday and today are the coldest days of the year so far and they are indeed very chilly, today is foggy, damp and miserable, so that fire will be really welcome.  Fortunately we have a gas heater, so we aren't freezing.

Then the new carpet......and the house will nearly be ours again.  We still need to buy replacement furniture and have our (mostly my) books and stuff unpacked.

During this time very few stitches have been taken because my sewing stuff is packed up, but a couple of weeks ago I managed to make one block as it was my turn to provide a BOM for my quilt group.  Those blocks will be turned into a charity quilt, and it was found here.

Slightly fiddly-diddly (lots of tiny squares) but not difficult, and fun to make.  My sewing machine, fabric and I de-camped to a local quilt shop for a few hours to get it made, as sewing while the floor blokes were here was a lost cause.

Those young blokes were polite and respectful, but we weren't happy that they finished last Friday afternoon and didn't come back until Monday to clean up.  We did quite a bit over the weekend ourselves, because we had to live in their mess.  I wasn't happy, either, with the tilers who, the minute they arrived, set up their tradie radio blasting forth loud rock music in our kitchen.....they could have waited until we moved out, which we did very smartly anyway.  Not sure the house has recovered yet, it usually has much gentler music playing.

However, all that is now water under the bridge.

As there is no chance of sewing I have been knitting.  The first sleeve of my jumper is now finished and the second is cast on; the back was finished while we were away.  I'm thinking - hoping - it should be pretty when it's done.

Two uke gigs coming up.  On Friday next week the Mature Age section of the local Eisteddfod will be held and I  am competing on my own.......solo, in public......just me and a uke.  The uke class (which I no longer attend) is also competing; one of the organisers contacted me and specifically asked for them, after last year's performance!  Isn't that nice?  I passed her request on to prod them into entering again because last year I entered the group first, then told them "we're in".  Win or lose, it will be a fun evening.

"One color should predominate in the dress; and if another is adopted, it should be in limited quantity and only be way of contrast or harmony.  Some colors may never, under any circumstances, be worn together, because they produce positive discord to the eye."

The yarn for my jumper is soft blue with a hint of lavender, which is neither contrasting or disharmonious.

Now......my afternoon coffee is finished, my daily uke playing has been done, so I am going to my sewing room to dust and move stuff around.  If I'm not back in a couple of hours, send help - tonight is choir, and that is a fun night so I don't want to miss it.

Enjoy your days!