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... going to Sydney for the weekend and spending time with people I love on the beach ...
... going to my old knitting group and catching up with a few of the ssk-ers ...
... picnics on Australia Day in trakky daks and no make up! 
David and I thought we'd try the new Canberra Dendy el posho movie experience last night, with the bigass seats and the nifty table for beer and food, brought to you by a nice man in a black outfit while you're watching the movie. Mmm... yay!
Overall, it got a huge thumbs up from me, though there were a few downers.
Good points:
Comfiest lounges in the woooooorld! - a little button to lie them back, and foot rests, and even though we were in the first row it was still comfortable and didn't hurt my neck, cos you just lay your seat back and off you go.
Seriously delish food - Let's hope this stays as it is - the food was magnificent and came out piping hot. The sort of stuff you'd expect from a very good quality cafe.
Waiting room - instead of waiting around in the foyer or sitting in your seat watching ads, there's a bar area, with little tables and chairs, like a tiny Melbourne club.
Not so good points:
Clean up in between movies - if we're paying big bucks for movie tickets, it'd be nice if the seats were cleaned properly (didn't really want the last person's crumbs sticking to my legs thank you) and the previous patrons' plates were picked up from between my chair and the wall. We just added to the pile, but it was somewhat unexpected. Clean up please!
Ceramic plates - all of the dips and things came out in little ceramic dishes placed on ceramic serving plates, which was lovely (no one likes plastic), but the problem was that if you're in a semi-quiet movie, as we were, and there's only about 40 people in the cinema, it's noisy. So you spend half your time veeeeeeerrrrrrrrrry carefully dipping your bread so that you don't go *clink clink clink* all the way through the movie, and you try to ignore the person behind you doing the same. I'd suggest those cool little rubbery mats they use on aircraft serving plates to stop the constant clink of ceramic on ceramic.
And the movie? We saw The Queen. Again, a huge thumbs up. I quite enjoyed it, and marveled at the odd situation that is democracy + monarchy. I had to giggle at the concept of the Queen worrying that one in four of her British subjects were in favour of abolishing the monarchy after Diana's death - if Australia can't vote yes for a republic, why on earth would the players on the home turf do it?
I started knitting it 2 days ago and it's looking very strange right now. Let's hope sewing it together helps. This is the first piece:
A little leftover from the holiday in Tassie.
This is a golden possum, it's a mutation in colour, and doesn't usually occur in the wild, because that lovely gold fur makes them a prime target for predators.
And for squeaks with itchy spinning fingers.
Mmmm... blend with a deep gold merino *sigh*
Stay still, little possum! These clippers wont hurt a bit!!!
To all and sundry,
I am a cheapskate. I'm not buying credit on my mobile until I have to make a call. Which will probably be some days, or even a week.
So if you've left voicemail, I can't pick it up until I buy more credit. And... I'm not going to yet.
If you sms me, I can read it for free *smiles winningly* and then if I need to, I'll call ya back from the home phone.
:D:D:D
OK, there's hot weather and there's ridiculous weather.
On days like yesterday, there is the strong temptation to try to rescue what's left of your crispy-fried garden by watering it. But there is nothing that you can actually do to save it in this sort of heat, so there is really no point. The water wouldn't have helped anyway.
Yesterday I picked a pale pink, unripe, soft, revolting, cooked strawberry from my poor strawberry plant. As well as the one that only need one more day to ripen, which was also soggy, disgusting and gently cooked by the sun and the searing wind.
*sigh* At least the plants survived - strawbs are tough little buggers. But my chilli plant gave up, and is a shrivelled mess, its tiny malformed fruit surrounded by pathetic ruined leaves. It's days like this I hate Canberra with a vengeance. Yesterday it 26 degrees in Sydney; it was 40 here with a wind that felt like it had bushfires behind it.
I think I'm gonna liberate some old umbrellas from somewhere (aren't they always lying around in the tip?) and make myself some plant shades. Hm... not a bad idea that. I'm not going to let this crappy outback town masquerading as a capital city beat me. *growls menacingly*
...I just listed a heap of wool on ebay.
And it sold. So quickly, that it's freaky.
Yay!
Anyway, I was just about to type something about my latest colourway, and before I could even post they were gone. Woot!
So my latest colourway is called Gwabegar, and it's bush inspired. I'm starting to do a few more earthy colours, more "blokey" colours, inspired by David Reidy's little blurb on What Men Want and Why The Hell Can't Yarn Designers Make Nicer Blokey Colours. I made Blue Steel (woot Zoolander) and it looks really yummy knitted up, and then I decided to go with some mossy green, bush greens and greys, and came up with Gwabegar. So these are the two new blokey colourways, both of which have already (sorry guys) been sold.
I made my dad's Christmas scarf out of Blue Steel and he loves it. He's been wearing the same old dirty red scarf on his motorbike since I lived at home as a child, so I thought with a sexy red Ninja he really ought to be wearing something a little more stylish. *grin*
So, men, and knitters for men, and anyone else out there with an opinion on the hot topic of men's colours... whaddya think?
I've finally set up a sales blog, so that I can take direct orders as well as selling via ebay.
Go over to http://monnsqueak.typepad.com/colour_revolution/ and have a look. I've made the colour of the blog itself very plain so that it doesn't interfere with looking at the coloured skeins. Any suggestions for promotion of the site? :-)
Finally, photos of Christmas snow!
I'd never seen snow before... ever... so of course there was a major loss of plot on my part. Very exciting, very special, very cold.
There's this thing that puts me off blogging, now that I've been doing it for a while. And that's... well, it's the whole publicness of it. Heh. Which is pretty silly, I know, considering that the internet is the internet, and everyone can look at it. I update my LJ a bit more often these days, but the thing is this. I, like most people, can be a bit of a bitch sometimes, and I can't just carry on like a maniac the way I used to when I first started blogging. The story I tell about the person at uni who's been driving me crazy, or the person who said the most idiotic thing to me, etc etc, has to be left for coffee conversation, because I'm too worried about that person reading the blog and coming to wreak their terrible vengeance on me. Maybe even with a lawyer in tow. Hehe.
There are plenty of blogs which rely on genuine humour and real issues, but I've never been so good at that. Well, I've done it plenty of times before, but it takes time, energy and effort. And I've just been too damn lazy to get off my arse and get on with it.
So, I'm going to try to just do this a bit more often. And if I offend my uni friends, my family, my partner's family... I suppose we'll all get over it. Eventually.
