fiveandtwo

Banner

Oh, the frustration. I am trying to make a custom banner for my blog. Correction. I have made one, I just can't upload/insert the damn thing. Man, it's doing my head in I tell you!

I've put it all aside for now, to deal with next week...mutter,swear, mutter, swear.

The Battle of the Banner has meant no crafting or other interesting pursuits. Have a look at my bathroom medicine cabinet instead. Finally installed in the bathroom! Came from a garage sale years ago, and fixed up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I read/heard somewhere that greyhounds are cuddly pets. They don't look as if they would be but here is some evidence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clare having a snooze with Suska. That's cuddly.

With the cold weather upon us out comes the winter kitchen window covering. Put on at sundown to keep the cold out and the warmth in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In other news: I've been having a go at patternmaking. I have a (long term) plan to open an online shop, probably Etsy. Selling little kid's clothes, toys, felt purses, cards and bags. Or maybe just the clothes and toys. Either way I need to make patterns from my sketches. Nothing like a new challenge - but it's nowhere near as frustrating as that banner thing! Of course, it's a slow process...meaning: don't expect grand shop openings anytime soon.

Those of you with Etsy shops, I'd appreciate any ideas/feedback.

I'm off tomorrow afternoon for an overnight stay at Lakes Entrance - tea out Saturday night and a sleep-in on Sunday...ah. This little interlude has been in the pipeline for a good eighteen months! My two buddies and I have found it hard to score a weekend when all three of us don't have other commitments!

Fish o' The Decade

Definitely a once-a-decade phenomenon. My husband catching an eating size fish, that is (not through lack of effort, though).

A 1kg trout, what a beauty.

It's been a scattered week. Well, more so than usual.

I got my large, luxurious sheepskin off lay-by. I haven't sat on it yet, but doesn't it look sooo comfortable.

A random room shot from where I was sitting on the couch to photograph the "sheepy".

The room through the doorway is Linsey's bedroom. It's really interesting to go and look at the ever-changing pictures, photos and artworks on her walls.

I was tagged for the "Seven Weird Things" meme by Janet. I should be able to come up with loads of weird things to tell since I've been considered weird for most of my life! The label did lessen somewhat upon finishing high school. Then I pretty much embraced the tag.

I'll come up with the seven in due course.

My Favourite Season

Ah, Autumn...such splendid weather, long shadows in the afternoon, crisp mornings. I'm all invigorated.

Much gardening going on. For the next five minutes it's pretty much in order. I've planted a full-size tangelo. I have one in a half barrel, but...I want more! Tangelos and lemons are my favourite citrus. I also planted a dwarf Washington Navel orange in a large pot against a side fence. I lost my other orange tree when we built the deck at the front.

Speaking of which, it seems the pergola above the deck may be painted completely soon (oh please). One more coat and it's done.

It's taken two years to reach this stage.

Note Suska wolfing down her tea, and recently reupholstered chair seats. Red vinyl from Spotlight. Very pleased with the result. How I like my staple gun!

The vegie garden is all tidied. All the languishing half-dead summer crops have been heaved out. Except for Clare's late planted corn - she's determined to have a cob from it.

I planted seeds of lettuce, spinach, silverbeet, beetroot and sugar snap peas. Clare planted rocket. All are up, but I need to plant more peas, blackbirds have scratched some up.

Leaves are falling.

I need to pick all of these - they ripen off the vine.

When I look at them I'm always reminded of something Jackie French wrote about a visitor to her garden. An elderly Oriental lady who laughed quietly when she saw the kiwifruit. Jackie probed. Apparently, back home in China the fruit were nicknamed "golden hairy goat testicles"!

Gratuitous nasturtium picture. They are so perky now the hot weather has abated. Such a relaible plant (once you've reefed out those that grow where you don't want them to). They just grow themselves, don't they.

Just some Autumn light photos now.

I have another sick child. Goodnight.

Greetings From The Furnace

In my old age (yes, I turned a year older yesterday - forty three!) I tolerate hot, hot days less and less. I mean, I spent the first twenty or so years of my life in the tropics and then lived for a while in Alice Springs, the heat didn't bother me. Hot was good, it was cold weather I couldn't handle.

Having a thick layer of body insulation doesn't help with heat tolerance.

We hole up inside until the afternoon and then Clare, Ally and I go to the outdoor swimming pool for some cool water therapy. Sometimes we go further afield to one of the not-too-deep swimming spots along the Tambo River.

Windows are shut and covered (kitchen featured here - it has the most interesting curtain). Ceiling fans whirl furiously. Hint for very pleasant evaporative cooling: put bathers on, hop under the shower and get all wet, stand under a ceiling fan turned on full. Lovely. Once upon a time I did it naked (very effective cooling) but but these days I'm reluctant to horrify the teenagers!

If you're a hot dog, you dig yourself a nice, cool hole in a strategic spot. This is just outside our back door, the air coming from under the house is pleasantly cool. To get full benefit you must stick your paws under.

Yes our weatherboards are disintegrating. Major project for this year: re-clad the house. I've almost saved enough. It has to be DIY though. Daunting to think about, but it'll be OK once under way...

If you're a cat you choose the coolest room in the house with a ceiling fan circulating the air just so, then you spend the rest of the day sleeping. I suspect our other cat is enjoying a sleep under the house.

Lemon  tree leaves silhouetted in the bathroom window. Before I shut that door to keep the morning heat from the rest of the house.

Please let tomorrow be cooler. I need to make plum sauce before the fruit is all scorched on the tree and the picked ones rotted. I am done with apricots - dried, jammed, chutneyed and scoffed fresh from the tree. That's a post in itself.

Flies, Be Gone!

Time to fix the wire on the flyscreen door.

A Patch of Sunlight

Clare putting on her shoes this morning.

Cats and Sunlight

Ally has been making cats.

I have been photographing patches of sunlight.

And in the mail today I got a photo from Janet. First spotted on this post, it was love at first sight. Janet has generously sent me my very own copy. Yay!

I'm also stitching away on a felt animal order.

Two giraffes and three mare & foal sets - nearly finished.

Procrastinating (and a Visit to the Big Smoke)

Leah and I took the train to Melbourne at the crack of dawn yesterday. A trip I really enjoy - three or so hours of reading time there and again coming home. I read Peter Goldsworthy's Three Dog Night which I am still digesting. Not because it was indigestible, because I'm still thinking about parts of it. The disturbing "love triangle", Western Desert imagery, the way Walpiri language bird names echo the call of the bird, the ushering in of memories: living in Alice Springs many years ago, the astonishing and beautiful landscape, sadness at the hideous limbo that's snared so many of the aboriginal people.

I enjoyed Goldsworthy's book Maestro which caused me to buy the other at the op-shop.

Unfortunately I finished the book before reaching Sale. Had an hour to try and be meditative with Leah sleeping on my shoulder. It was lovely to have that closeness with her, to have her to myself for a day. She really suffered when the twins were born, I think sometimes she's been scarred by the experience. It was a pleasure to indulge her yesterday. We spent time at her "Mecca", the shop Supre, and a number of other shops, where she got loads of bargains. Leah is pretty much fully grown now, and so petite. Imagine buying extra small!

The other purpose of the visit, however, was to catch up with my sister, who'd flown down for a long weekend to see Phantom of the Opera. Cathy is a big fan of musicals, and Anthony Warlow who I believe plays the lead. She lives in Singleton (NSW), and rather than wait until it opens in Sydney she decided to lash out and see it in Melbourne. And why not: she's single! While we've never really had lots in common, we get along quite well these days. I noted that we're looking very alike now. I'm not sure what to think about this because Cathy was always "the good and pretty one". Perhaps I've become more good and she's become less pretty! Who knows (and who cares). Well, just by having mentioned it reveals that I do care, even if it's marginal now, obviously it's been an issue in the dim, dark past. I do admit I was a bit thingy, but yeah, it's been a long while since I went there. And basically, now, I'm too happy with my life to bother.

And now some more wattle:

Dwarf fringed wattle, acacia fimbriata.

I've two, on the other side of the fence. Not from here, but very hardy here all the same.                               

Sewing, no. Procrastinating, yes. So much so, I've even taken up the brush.

After more than a year.

Fiddling with something from about three years ago

   

A dud from about four years ago. A landscape that I wasn't happy with, obviously, since I did all that white painting out. One day, on a dog walk,  I had an idea of what to do. the start of it is in the lower right hand corner. It's a start. With many sewing and craft projects cut out or partially finished  it's crazy to embark on this. Crazy. Definitely .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

I Put Things Away.

Monumental tidy up and put away in the room upstairs (bedroom and craft/sewing room). It's rather spacious now. This is where I keep my fabric. All colour coded - I'm so anal. But, really, if I'm doing something and I think, hmmm, yeah, I need some orange for this. Well, I go to the orange drawer and peruse the selection. For me it is easier. Particularly since I have rather a lot of fabric.

Here it is, says Samantha the cat.

Samantha doesn't want to show you the other place.

She pretends to show my mother-of-pearl buttons etc, but she really wants to go into the ceiling space and chill out for a while. In what is known as the black hole. During my big tidy up I transported a whole trunkful of dyed wool in there. The trunk was languishing outside=in my bedroom. Banished! If I need some woollen stuff I will go into the black hole and get it (aka roof space). I'll do that when I start on the bags again.

Meanwhile, I've started cutting out purses for my brief sojourn up north. Next week I'm going up to Mooloolaba for a week. My parents live in a retirement village in Buderim - just up the mountain from Mooloolaba (talking Qld here). They are very decrepit, travel of any kind is out of the question. I aim to travel up there once a year. This year it is Linsey, Clare, Ally and I. This is "Plan E". Plan A was Roger and I, Clare and Ally fly up for two weeks. Plan B - I fly up with Clare and Ally for two weeks. Plan C - Roger and I, Clare and Ally fly up for one week. Plan D - Linsey, Clare, Ally and I fly up for two weeks. Result: See plan E above. I wasn't comfortable leaving "Princess Leah", Giles and Linsey for two weeks alone. Then I wasn't comfortable leaving them for one week alone. This is after the second request from Princess Leah to sleep over at her boyfriend's house. Leah is twelve years old. No, you can't. No, not under any circumstances. NO. So, she's not been speaking to me, on and off, for some weeks. But I don't care. She IS too young for that. Man, I wouldn't let Linsey (nearly 17) do that. Well, I might, (at seventeen) if it was a fellow who'd spent a fair bit of time at our place. If I'd had a conversations, if he'd had tea on and off. Spent time at our place (you know, If I'd got to know him). And then maybe not after all (if my gut feeling was all wrong, for example). It's rather difficult to be a parent, I  think saying NO is  tricky..

Enough of the heavy parent stuff.

Cutting out felt, working out designs, monopolising the kitchen table. Guilty for the teas taken in other places. At least they're fed.

Regards from fiveandtwo

A Number of Different Things

This what I happened upon in the back yard yesterday.

With Coe's Golden Drop (European plum) leafless in the foreground. The rainbow was a complete arc, but I didn't go in search of pots of gold. I went and fed the chooks instead.

Then, inside I found this:

Loungers! Having a marathon "Scrubs" session. Linsey got Series 2 and 3 in Melbourne last week when she went with school to see the Dalai Lama. Very funny - I hadn't seen it until Linsey got Series 1 a while ago. Apparently it used to be on at 11.30pm. Hmmm, don't know what the dog thinks...

Other marathon DVD sessions have included "The Young Ones", "Monty Python", "Doctor Who" (new and old), "Black Books" (love it) and "The Mighty Boosh". Usually I watch in snatches as I'm in and out of the room, so over a stretch of time most episodes are seen.

Yesterday was also op-shop day. Creature of habit I am! I got the rest of that tablecloth trim - lucky, lucky me. I walk in to the shop and: "Ahh, Sue, I just tried to ring you. Now I don't have to keep trying! Here it is, that stuff you had your name down for". I would guess someone has had a big sewing room clean-out because I also came home with these goodies.

Same shop as last week's vintage haberdashery haul. However, I'm now feeling ambivalent about buying these items for the interesting packaging only. I occasionally use snaps (press studs), rarely use hooks and eyes, doubt if I'll use the darning thread. I do darn, but don't have any woollies in those colours (and the threads are actually for hosiery anyway). The lace, trim and needles - yes, I'll use them. I think I need to apply the "separate wants and needs" to my op-shopping as well. Our house is not big, and feels crammed with people sometimes, as well as stuff.  Probably...eventually... I'll have a big sort out and post stuff for interested parties to claim.

Having spouted all that, faffed on big time. I came home with this as well.

You know, I found the same set about two years ago and all that's left is two glasses. The kids aren't the most gentle of dish washers/dryers. I was very pleased to find it and pay $3 for it. May it last longer than two years!

New, unrelated topic. Problems with twins. There's been a change in their dynamic. Their relationship with each other and all others. One very angry girl and one all superior and bossy (at the moment!) Much conflict at home, but not as much at school (info. from their teachers - they are in the same class, but have 2 teachers who've other areas to cover). I am agonising over separating them for Semester 2, will it improve - or not. Opinions vary. Ally is dependent on Clare? At home I see that they're interested in different things, play differently and dress differently. Is Ally being compared to Clare? (a person who's easy-going at this time) Is school working for Clare at this time but less for Ally?. Right now Clare is more "able"  academically than Ally. But any of us with kids know that progress isn't a smooth curve, but lurches along in fits and starts. Much like life itself. Gah, I've done the internet thing = more confusion. I give myself the next week to try and gel the thoughts and exterior input. Husband says split them up, but...I'm not so sure. Of course it relies upon there being a spot in the other class for another student. Only 2 year one classes.

And now I must finish. Shaft of sunlight as a finale. Shadow of washing drying included. Heh, not so arty now!