good to be back home!

edited to add photos

Between last Friday and Tuesday, we (WM, mum and I) notched up over 2,000 kilometres (1250 miles) by driving out to Bathurst to collect my nephew from university then to drive to Tamworth, where my sister lives. Saturday was the wedding of my sister’s older daughter – the wedding itself was held in Quirindi (the town where my niece lives) and the reception in the village of Duri. After the wedding we returned to Tamworth where were staying in a motel; DD and SIL had the room next door – it was lovely to spend some time with them.

the bride and her maternal grandmother

 On Sunday, we drove the 153km (approx 95 miles) to the town of Bingara, where my parents retired twenty-nine years ago. We spent a couple of days going through mum’s extensive wardrobe and her personal possessions and WM did an amazing job of cramming as much in his small sedan as was possible. It took him more than four hours and I never thought the unloading would finish when we arrived home at 8pm on Tuesday (after stopping for lunch at my sister’s in Tamworth).

goodbye to mum's newly-roofed house

Most of Wednesday was spend unpacking and finding homes for all this paraphernalia! It won’t all fit in mum’s bedroom so it’s going to have to be culled again when we finally find a room for her in an aged care facility. Right now, we are waiting for my sister to get an appointment with Centrelink (the Australian government’s Department of Human Services); we can proceed no further without their approval and assistance. Today my sister is seeing a solicitor and the only real estate agent in Bingara to get some guidance in how we proceed from here.

The property market in major towns and cities in Australia is booming; houses are selling in less than a month of being on the market. But in small country towns like Bingara, where there are no jobs and no prospects, the population is mostly elderly and more and more properties keep coming on to the market as they move into aged care facilities or die. The last home mum and dad owned in Bingara took several years to sell; and it was less than ten years old. Mum’s current home is nearly 100 years old, in need of TLC (it will probably be a knock-down-and-rebuild) so we are under no illusions that this home will sell in an over-saturated market. We are considering renting it rather than having it stand empty; but that means clearing out the accumulation of fifty-plus years of marriage – and both my parents were hoarders in different ways! Much of dad’s stuff is gone but there is still a lot of stuff to be sorted!

Today WM has gone back to work and mum and I are having a quiet day at home – just three loads of washing (laundry) separate me from my sewing machine! Mum is not happy in new or strange environments so it’s good to have a day where she can completely relax!

How’s your week shaping up?

37 years ago

And now we're more in love than ever – thank you, WM, you light up my life!

35 years ago today

Happy anniversary, WM – I love you very much and appreciate all you do for me!

Shoes Day

I said here that I may wear DD's shoes on her Big Day. But, as advised by some readers, wearing too small shoes is not a good idea, especially when one is going to be on one's feet a lot.

So I bought these.


The shiny heel was not too high but high enough to look dressy and the black leather sandal was strappy enough for the heat of DD's Wedding Day.

I like them!


This is how they look from my eyes! Ignore the white skin,I had bronzing powder on my legs and my skirt was very long. Admire, instead, that cute manicure!

to talk of many things...

• Yesterday was DD's kitchen tea/bridal shower. It was a small gathering - just nine people. WM bought batteries for my camera but I forgot to use it!! The maid-of-honour convinced us to play one game [we tried hard to avoid it] - we had to dress a bride using only a roll of toilet paper [over their clothes of course]! The two bridesmaids were the brides, The Bride was the judge [lucky her] and the other six of us were divided into two teams to dress the brides. Both teams won - in different categories! One for beach wear, one for more formal attire [I was on the latter team]. The prize was a choice of Freddo Frogs, a chocolate frog made by Cadburys. Mine was crunchie flavour, meaning it had pieces of honeycomb in the chocolate. DD had a strawberry frog, the other choice was plain. DD took some video footage but she's not here and I don't know how to download stills from her camera so, unfortunately, no photos.
  
  Most of the gifts were kitchen-ware [what a surprise]; mine was The Myrtle Leaf Shawl. It got lots of oohs and aahs and some nice comments so I guess the pain was worth it! I still intend to reblock it and I found another loose thread while I was wrapping it - it's attached so I hope it blocks out this time!



• One day last week I began a pair of adult-sized fingerless mitts; I started them while Chris Guccione [the last Australian male in the tournament at the time] was playing so I have called them the "Gucc Mitts" [pronounced Gooch]. I knitted them in red because he has red hair. I realised that I probably wasn't going to have enough yarn to finish two so I added the black.
  
  They remind me of football jerseys. There are no teams in the National Rugby League with those colours. Red and black are the colours of the North Sydney Bears - the team my dad played for as a junior - now sadly long departed from the competition. So I looked up the team colours for the Australian Football League - another popular code of football, especially in Victoria where Chris Guccione comes from. Essendon have red and black uniforms and, interestingly, Chris Guccione comes from the Melbourne suburb of Greenvale which is relatively close to Essendon. Even more interestingly, he has said that if he wasn't playing tennis he would have liked to have played "Aussie Rules". I didn't know any of this when I started knitting; I just can't help doing a little research - academia is in my blood! LOL
  
  So, here are the Gucc Mitts which will be given to Australian Interior Ministries to keep the hands of a first Australian warm.



• On Friday night I cast on a beanie. It's blue because Roger Federer [my favourite non-Australian player] wears a blue shirt and this beanie is, naturally enough, called the Federer Beanie. It is not what I planned when I started out - it was going to have stranded colour crosses above the ribbing [he's from Switzerland, they have a white cross on the flag], but I got too engrosed in the game to fiddle with stranding! I made the beanie according to a pattern [some readers would know I rarely follow patterns] because I was knitting my first beanie in 8ply [DK] weight yarn. I obviously have much looser gauge than was intended - the beanie is way too big for either myself or WM. I'm not concerned though - I'm sure it will fit someone's head. It, too, will go to Australian Interior Ministries.
  
  
  
• I'm trying to knit only adult sized items for charity this year - every one knits for babies and children because the items are small and quickly finished but I want to help the adults too.



• I am attempting to touch type this post - it's a skill I taught myself for uni in 2003 as part of a work-based project. I make lots of mistakes especially with my right hand [I'm left-handed] and it's incredibly slow; practice makes perfect, I guess! I just want to look at the keys and get on with the typing!



• Speaking of tennis [as we were], fickle fan that I am, I stopped watching the tennis because Roger Federer was losing [two sets to love against Tomas Berdych] but I've just checked the score and Federer won the third set and is leading slightly in the fourth. I'd better get back to it [if I can stand the excitement - I'm feeling really blue! It won't help if Roger loses!!]



• Please think of me as we countdown the last week to DD's wedding. I'm very emotional and teary and too busy dealing with my own grief to notice WM's. I expect that's normal, especially for mothers of only daughters with whom they enjoy a close relationship. I just hope I can hold it together when farewells are made at the end of the reception. ;-(
  

New Year, New old project

The lace stole continued apace on New Year's Day - I manged to complete four pattern repeats [total 48 rows]. I could see this project being finished on time.

Yesterday brought a whole new slant on the story. On New Year's Day I'd gotten cocky* - I waited 24 rows before inserting a lifeline. I knitted another six rows and whamo! I can't even remember now what happened, but I had to rip back to that lifeline! And guess what I discovered - lifelines don't always hold the stitches the way I knitted them - some of the K@ tog. had become two stitches. And when I tried to fix them [had to take the lifeline out to do so because it was understandably twisted in the stitches, I dropped some more stitches. I had to rip back to the previous lifeline 24 rows below [that's two pattern repeats folks!]

I heard that collective sigh but wait - there's more! Last night, having finally made up all the rows I'd lost, I looked down and, to my horror, found a huge hole just three inches from the start! At first, I thought the yarn must have broken but no, it was intact. It seems that sometimes have trouble with K2 tog. and one stitch doesn't get knit properly. Eventually, it drops and unravels - rows and rows! I was sitting looking at this enormous hole through tears, wondering if I could gather the errant stitches [now six from a secession of K2 tog.] with a crochet hook, re-knit them and secure them with a small sewn stitch when something caught my eyes - another gaping hole, another dropped K2 tog.!

Well, dear blogging friends, I tell you, I couldn't see any other way out - if it happened to those two stitches it could happen to any K2 tog. stitch and there are lots of them. It's for my daughter's wedding and I don't want a patched up mess! so, I did the only thing possible people - take a deep breath - I frogged the lot!!!

DD tried to talk me out of it - but I said I would do it and I've never been defeated a by knitting project yet! And I'm not about to start!!

Last night, at 10.30 I cast on a new old project - I am now six rows into the Myrtle Leaf shawl which I need to have completed and blocked in four weeks! I'm off to knit - if you don't hear from me for a while, I'm sure you know why!!

Happy "Long Lacy Summer" to everyone who's participating. See you in February!

*overly self-confident or self-assertive from Princeton Word Net Search