The Knitting Revolutionary

ooh, masks...

Before I forget... The masks! It took me about an hour to paint them on before the party. Talk about a full-on makeup job.

Plus a few other cool costumey masky things from the party.

sock!

Mmm. Sockage.

I'm loving this new colourway, but haven't thought of a name for it. It's more intense than in this photo, but the colours don't come out true with this camera unless in direct sunlight. So what I'm doing here is testing out how machine washable wool holds dyes. Weird how it's ended up striping. Usually my dyeing is much less regular.

So David gets a pair of socks, and wears them in his vile blokey sneakers on the hottest day imaginable. If his toes turn purple, the wool doesn't hold the dyes.

Diabolically CLEFFER!

wrecked

This weekend we:

• went to a masquerade ball and won a prize for our masks
• took my gorgeous birdy to the birdy-boarding cages at the vet
• attended a wedding where my very courageous partner had to sit with my ex and his friends for the wedding dinner, ewk
• drove to Cessnock in ridiculous heat in a non-airconditioned car
• did a day of wine-tasting (not the best idea in this heat)
• drove another hour out to Beresfield to visit my very sick nan
• drove back to Canberra in even worse heat (armed with a bag of ice and spray bottle this time)
• collapsed exhausted in the air con with a beer.

I will post details and cool photos later. The current knitting project (sockage) is looking amazingly yummy, and someone posted a very cool gift idea to a list I'm on, which I must share. Adopt a sheep - $35 would be a great gift for someone who's got everything. The website is funny, heartwarming and wellmaintained.

http://adoptasheep.blogspot.com/?gclid=CJLUoKW6h4kCFShtTAodUS8LVg

In the interest of spending less money at xmastime

Since I'm fairly certain that neither Andrew or Naomi read my blog, these are the prezzies I have sorted out for them. It's a family gift, since I don't see them so often I'm stumped as to what to get them individually, so this is what I've come up with.

Contents:
A3 presentation book (20 plastic covered pages) - $10.50
20 x A3 pages - $3.00
18 x 125gsm craft paper in bright colours - $5.40
gold and silver glitter bottles (splurged here) - $6.60
Fancy-edged craft scissors - $2.10
Glue stick - $2.50
(still to be bought) One box for keeping the stuff in
The rest was stuff I already had at home in my box of goodies - curling ribbon in various colours, weird metallic pink stuff, strange-shaped confetti sprinkles, small star sparkles, big star sparkles, tiny star-shaped glitter. All in all it cost me about $30 each for two sets. Not bad for a whole family's worth of kidlings. I'm hoping it might be a nice way of getting a year's worth of memories into a scrapbook, things like drawings that the kids do, things they find on holidays, photos, special cards they was kept. Someone said to me yesterday that it isn't the gifts they remember or treasure from their early Christmases, but the memories. So here's hoping this one goes down well!

Christmas, Xmas, Familymas...

Last Christmas was my first in many years.

My family stopped having xmas when I was about 8, when we joined the Christadelphian church (yeah, they're fundy Christians) and for many years there were no xmas carols, cards, lunches or presents. The grandparents rebelled, as they will, and bought us "end of year gifts". Some Christo families got around the issue by celebrating "Yule", though this was a little ridiculous considering Yule is a pagan festival, should be celebrated in June in the southern hemisphere, and the pagan roots of xmas are the main reason that Christos don't go there anyway.

It's been a long time since I was a part of the Christadelphian group (church, ecclesia, cult, whatever you want to call it), but I never did get into the idea of Christmas. I had no nostalgic reason to celebrate it, I didn't get misty-eyed at the thought of pretty trees laden with sparkly stuff, though my inner ferret did always get excited at the shiny sparkly goodness, and I hung tiny mirrorball baubles from my balcony all year round. I felt deliciously smug watching panicked shoppers at xmas time, what a laugh! When I was married, my ex's family only gave presents to the children, and had a big wonderful indulgent lunch instead, no presents exchanged, just family hanging out, eating yummy food, slurping on champagne and watching the sun meander slowly across the bright Christmas sky. So I got away with a semi-xmas, a Familymas if you will. Delightful!

I was happy with this - I'm not religious any more, so xmas certainly isn't about Christ for me. Christmas is becoming a modern, secular celebration of family, and I like it that way. Take the Christ outta Christmas and you get xmas, but I like the idea of Familymas so much more.

However it is (as so many people lament) becoming a revoltingly materialistic experience. My partner's family is English, and it seems that they go for Christmas in a big way. I remember Aunty Marg, an English friend of my mum's, waxing lyrical about xmas in London, the snow, the feasts, the gifts, the all-enveloping feeling of xmas everywhere (Christmas is all around? It seemed so). But going from the non-existent xmas of my childhood to the Familymas-with-no-gifts to a full English-style Christmas was something of a traumatic experience for me last year. His parents apologised profusely for the monetary value of their gift, and their apology embarrassed me hugely - I like it, and it's the gift I still use, having been a gorgeous little stationery set crafted from handmade paper.

So I was enormously relieved when my partner's sister emailed us and point out that money was thin on the ground for most of us, and everyone's house is basically full of stuff, shit and space-eating crapmonsters (my words not hers, lol, she's much nicer than that). Combined presents and small, modest presents are in order this year. Ebay came to the rescue with a few, and a liberal dose of imagination with some others.

The subversive rebel in me rubs her hands with glee. Who knows? Perhaps in the next year or two I might convince them and as many people as possible that Christmas presents are really only appropriate for kids. Hee hee!

The weeds grow, the dirt don't

This is what most Canberra lawns look like at the moment...
Revolting, but just the way it goes here at the moment. Droughts are not fun things to experience, but at least for me it's just my lawn and not my livelihood and farm dwindling before my eyes. I tried to do this thing called weed-n-feed on the yard a while ago, apparently it encourages the grass to grow and kills off the weeds. Well, the weeds went wild anyway, and the grass got very very sunburned, and is now pretty much dead. So I'm dealing with the weeds the old-fashioned way.
This is about 20 minutes worth of yard-weeding, and I got probably about a third of the obvious weeds. I have this fantastic little tool that I got from Bunnings which you slip into the ground and yoink up the weed, roots and all.
I'm really getting into the garden at the moment. My current mission is to drought proof the front garden, which is starting to suffer a bit, by putting wood chip mulch all over it. So today was rose-feeding and woodchippin' day, and while I was on a roll, I filled in the blank corner with a yummy new grevillia. Yurm! I'm only half way through floofing up the front garden, so I'll photograph it when finished. I never had much of a green thumb until now, but David is taking his role of co-gardener rather seriously, and reminds me every second night to water the plants.
The current water restrictions for the ACT can be found here: http://www.actew.com.au/conservation/Stage3Restrictions.aspx and there's a link to download them as a pdf document. Fines start at $200 so do be careful! And as for the odds and evens system, every one talks about it, but I didn't actually know how it works until the ever-informative google came to the rescue. It merely means that if you live in an odd-numbered house you water your plants (can or hose only) on odd numbered dates between 7 and 10, and even numbered or unnumbered houses can water on even numbered days of the month. Simple, and it seems taken for granted that people know what this is. Now you know!