6 sleeps 'till christmas

It's six sleeps until christmas and I've been soooo busy.  I have been working on gifts for the family mainly - I'll post photos and details after christmas so my family doesn't know what they are getting.   

Rory finished school for the year on Wednesday last week, and so on Thursday we went away down to Burleigh on the Gold Coast for a little holiday.   It was good.  We went for swims at the beach and in the lovely pool, looked around Pacific Fair a couple of times, went to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary on Saturday, and went to Christmas carols in the park on Sunday night which Rory thoroughly enjoyed.  Ricky-Lee was the "guest" performer - even though she only sung about 4 songs right at the end before the fireworks.   The performer that sung before her was a surprise.  it was a guy called Christopher Thomas and it wasn't until he actually got up on stage that I realised it was the same Chris Thomas that was a really good friend of my brothers in High School and whose own brother Adam was in my class as well.   I didn't even know that Chris was a singer!   So now I must try to find him on the net and send him a message.  

The trip home on Monday was an adventure.  We left Burleigh at 10:20 am and I did not get home until 6:30 pm.  (for those of you who may not know - Burleigh is really only about one and a half hours drive from my area of Brissy)  To cut a long story short, the water pump and a radiator hose basically stuffed up and Rory &  I spent at least 4 and a half hours by the side of the road on a highway exit in the middle of bloody nowhere with a steaming engine.  We were finally towed to the nearest RACQ mechanics shop where they just put in new radiator hoses and sent me home with the instructions to get a new water pump in within the next couple of days.  NOT the kind of expenses we needed just before christmas, but hey - what can you do?  I need a car.  The water pump was put in yesterday and so now hopefully all is good.  

Last night was the Night Owls Christmas party on Helen's new deck.  OMG did I need that! and no, this time i am not being sarcastic.  I really did need to just get away from the family and chill with my crafty friends - It was so good.  Pam from next door drove herself and me to the party, so I was able to have a few drinks (no not too many!).  We had chinese takeaway for dinner (very good stuff!) and lovely things people brought for desert.    The people were wonderful company (as always!) and the setting was lovely too.  I had a nice relaxing time and so Thank You Helen & Karen!! 

Anyway - got lots to do before christmas.  I'm still working on a present for my mother in law and I really need to finish it before Monday night.  

Love peace and joy! 

some of what i've been doing.

Ok, so here are a couple of other things I have been doing.   I had a pile of acrylic yarn that i needed to either get rid of or use up.  I sold some of it, gave away most of it and saved a few balls for hats. 

 Kylie from spinners was crocheting some great hats and taught me how to do it.  So I grabbed some acrylic and went at it hell for leather.  This one is actually a lovely pink.  I also did a black one, 2 maroon ones, a purple one and a green and beige one.  

The bag is another simple market bag.  I had knitted up a very simple small rectangle bag with these colours (plus a couple extra colours) and really liked the effect.  So I decided a market bag in these colours would be great.  I was right.  I'm pretty happy with this one.  I am now also knitting up another market bag in red and black.  I think it will look really good!  

Another thing that I have been doing lately is processing mohair for a friend who sells fibre.  the mohair is for dolls hair and so needs to be cleaned fully of all vegetative matter before it can be bagged up for sale.  The staples of the mohair also need to be separated, sized and packaged up by size into 20g bags.   My friend washes the mohair (about 5 times) to get rid of dirt and grease, then dyes it the different colours.  she then passes the fleece as it is onto me.  I then go through and pull out the staples, place them in piles of similar length, clean the vegetative matter out of it (keeping the curl as much as possible - no easy task) and finally bag it up ready for sale.    It's fairly repetative work as well as being fiddily and not a job that would suit most people.  But I like it as I can do it whenever I want at home, it is not too taxing and I get to play with lots of lovely mohair. I am also helping a friend and that counts for a lot too. 

Another thing I have been doing the last few weeks is babysitting my nephew two afternoons a week.  That keeps me busy!   Of course, then there is all the normal mummy, wife, friend etc things that one needs to do as well as being addicted to facebook.  I haven't had much time to write on here.    Hope you are all well and will add something on here again once I have something to add onto here!  

Love peace and joy. 

photos of fleece.

Hey all.  said I'd put up some photos..... eventually.  here are a few.  The first one is of the dirty fleece given to me by Pam, my next door neighbour.    

The second photo is of a small amount of it washed and carded.   the third photo is approx 110g of it spun up. 

 There is probably about another 2kg or so to go, but I'm busy doing other things at the moment.  The fleece will have to wait.  

Can't find the camera & addicted to facebook.

I know I've promised you all photos of what I have been doing lately, but I just can't find the darn camera at the moment.  It's a pity really, because I have finished spinning and plying a skein of the fleece that Pam gave me, and it has worked out quite well, although still a bit greasy.  I wanted to show it off.   Ah well, I'm sure once I finally start to tidy the house I'll find it, so you'll just have to wait.  Sorry. 

The other thing that has been taking up my time lately (other than it being school holidays) is FaceBook.  Yes, I think I can safely say that I am officially addicted.   For those of you who may read this blog but don't know too much more about the internet, Facebook is a site (kind of like MySpace but better) that you can have your own webpage.   On your webpage you can have photos; your profile listing, well, almost anything; virtual growing plants, virtual aquariums and gardens and heaps more.  If some of your friends are on facebook too, you can have their photos pictured under your Friends space with links to their pages, and you can send them all kinds of virtual things as well as chat to them.  You can have a virtual pet that you feed and pat, as well as being able to feed and pat your friends pets if they have them.   It is so cool!   I have found friends that are on facebook that I haven't seen for years.  It has been great to catch up with them.  

Anyway, for those of you who are already on facebook and who read this blog (which is most of you), I'll stop rambling about it now, because you already know.   

What have i been doing craft-wise?? Well, I have knitted and felted a small rectangular bag for my niece's birthday, I have started on another French market bag - a smaller one this time, and I have been spinning both the fleece that Pam gave me, as well as some lovely brown stuff I am going to knit into something for my mother for christmas.   Last week I showed my mum around Fibrecraft House (where our group meets) and the emporium.  The only fiber she saw that she said "ooh, that's nice" was the brown stuff. So, I thought "ok, that's what you are getting."  Makes it easy for me.  

Well, that's really it from me today.  Got things to do with the boys back at work and school.  Yeay, some time to myself! 

Love peace and joy

Happy dance time again!

I know I still haven't posted those photos from the last post yet - I've been away all weekend - but I just had to write with the latest news.  I promise they are coming.  

Now, Good news time..... Lachlan has got a proper job!!!! he will start on Oct 2nd.  Whoo hoo!! Lachlan put in for a very lower level job with a land management type company on Monday afternoon last week. It was for just walking along roadsides etc spraying weeds and things, and I personally felt that it was a bit of a waste of his talents, but it would at least get him into a company where he could get his foot into the door of the industry, so to speak.  Anyway, he got a phone call from the company on Tuesday afternoon, asking him to come in for an interview on Thursday morning.  

When Lachlan got there, he saw the person who was doing the interviews for the weeding job.  The first thing the guy said was that he had looked over Lachs' resume, and Lach was way over qualified for that particular job.  He was so impressed with Lachs' application though, that he had arranged for Lach to have an interview while he was there with the head of one of the other departments in the company.   The job he would be going for would be actually going out to sites and working out a pest management plan for the area.  Exactly the type of thing Lachlan has been trained in and really wants to do!! So Lachlan had the interview for that on Thursday morning and on Friday morning as we were packing to go camping for the weekend, he got a call saying he had got the job!   It is an entry level position still, but there looks like there will be opportunities for promotion, so that is fantastic.   

The only downsides of the job is that for the first few months at least he will have to commute down to the Gold Coast (the head office is down there), and that he will be working 10hr days (4 days/week though), starting at 6am.  Which means he will have to leave home before 5am each working day.  Hopefully  in a few months though he will be moved to the Brendale office, which is still a fair way from our home, but nowhere near as far as the Gold Coast office.  

This past weekend we have been at the Neurum Creek Acoustic Music Festival, at Neurum Creek Bush Retreat (NCBR) camping park, between Woodford and Kilcoy in South East QLD.  Man, what a great weekend.  It is a very small music festival (one stage only) and only in its 2nd year, but it will be happening next year, and I fully plan to return.   Because the festival is held at the NCBR it is very nicely contained and they can only really have a certain number of people.  Although the festival can certainly be bigger next year, it cannot get really big.  

The NCBR is also a perfect spot for children - especially of Rorys age.  It is the kind of place that he can just hop on his bike and ride off for a while.  they have a dirt bike path as well as childrens activities, and a great creek runs along the length of the park for them to play in.  He was able to just go off and he knew that he'd be able to find us easily as we would only either be at the camp site or the stage.  So relaxing for Lachlan & I!  We plan to holiday there often, even when the music festival isn't on.   

The festival was on from Friday arvo, until Sunday arvo, so we picked Rory up from school at Lunchtime on Friday and decided to stay until this morning, so he got a day off school today too.  Rory is one very happy boy!  He was so good all weekend too.  We are so proud of him.  We really have managed to get his stress and anxiety levels down so much - They are almost non existent now. well, only as much as is normal for an 8 year old anyway.   Things are going so great for Rory these days, our life is so much easier and we are all so much happier.  Whoo Hoo! 

Slack, aren't I??

I really do leave it too long between blogs......  

Since I last wrote I haven't done all that much on the craft front,  well, nothing of decent size that I've finished anyway.   I have finished one baby jacket and started on another.  I have spun up some brownish, reddish orangeish  fibre but not yet finished spinning it all up - it got into a bit of a mess, but last night I hired a drum carder from the group, so that should help neaten it all up and make it easier to spin.   

For the last two weeks I've been crocheting a number of hats.  They are supposed to be beanies, but most of them have turned out more like berets.  Oh well, they look pretty good anyway, so I'm happy enough.  I don't usually like to work with acrylic, especially when knitting, but when working on small crochet projects, I don't mind it too much, so I dived into my stash to make them.  I've made a few of different colours, so they can go with different outfits.  My favourite is the black one made from Patons Shivago yarn.  Really soft and shiny.  

Having worked with acrylic for a couple of weeks, I was itching to get back to touching real wool.  I have gone a little extreme though.  Usually I like to spin (and touch) only pre washed, Pre carded fleece, but my next door neighbour donated me a bag of fleece straight from the sheep.  (well, it had been sitting in her cupboard for a year or so, so it is not exactly fresh, but it hasn't been touched since it came off the sheep and put into the bag.)  It's very filthy and greasy so I had been putting off doing anything with it until a couple of days ago.  I wasn't sure how good a quality it would be as it is a bit old, but once I washed and flick carded a bit of it I was pleasantly surprised at how soft and fine the fibre is, how long the staples are (fantastic!) and how crinkley they are.  I am now very keen to wash and card the lot and spin it up.  once I have spun it up I plan to dye it all.  not sure what I'll do with it then, but I look forward to the process, so thanks heaps Pam!  

I'll post photos later..... 

On other news..... I turned 30 last week.  OMG!!!  On my birthday day, a friend came over to give me a facial and a makeover as she is a Mary Kay consultant.  It was very nice and I looked and felt quite beautiful.  That evening was Spinners, so I took along some cake and bubbly and had a wonderful time.  Got a bit pissed though.  Very interesting considering Karen (our pres) then reminded me that she was going to teach me how to  balance up the a cash box etc.  Whoops.  I did it, but I think I may have to be taught again.  The actual counting of money wasn't so bad - did that alright.  The spelling on the receipts on the other hand...... Can you believe i actually asked whether the word "nine" had a "gh"? oh dear.   Oh well, with Karens' guiding hand, we did it well and all was good.  I promise I won't be drunk when I do it again Karen!! 

On Saturday night, Libby (my twin sister - for those of you who didn't know I have one) and I held our first joint birthday party since we were 16.    We even got our younger sister Beccy (who is a folk singer - see http://www.rebeccawright.com.au ) to be our live entertainment.  I even got up and sang a song with her.  and no one booed me off!! (kidding.  I'm not as good a singer as Bec, but I can hold a tune occasionally. )  The party was great!! there were fairy lights, and food and friends and photos and fun.  Lots of the good F's.  

Love Peace and Joy

It's me again!

I'm back, and a little confused.  In the time since I last wrote, blogger has changed.  I think it's going to be for the better, but it might take a bit to get used to.    Anyway.......

I got that smallish blanket done as you can see. well, almost anyway.  I need to put another round of edging on it and still have to block it, but it is at a stage where it is useful.   

It is actually a largish knee rug, but as it can fit around me while I watch tv on Sunday nights, it is an ok size for me.  I didn't end up buying any more pink to spin as I found a pile of commercial wool in pink and a couple of balls of purple in my stash.  I decided I would use those instead.  It work out well I think.    

The blanket came together quite quickly actually - once I started, I couldn't stop!  The fact that I was able to do it in bits (one square at a time) helped.  I would sit and knit or crochet a square while watching Rory ride the dirt bike track near our home.  As he usually likes to do that for an hour at a time about 3 times a week, that gave me a lot of time to work on it.  Then when it came time for me to join it all together, Rory got sick with a cold and had to stay home.  So I put on DVD's on the TV in my bedroom and Rory & I watched them together while I sewed up the blanket.  We did that for two days and by the end I was done, except for the edging.  I have been doing that here and there since.  

I am now spinning up some green and black sliver for a present to my mother in law.  It is her birthday on Tuesday and I had hoped I would get it not only spun, but knitted up as well by then.  Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen.  Last weekend we spent the whole long weekend up at Noosa with the in-laws so although that was brilliant, I couldn't do anything while I was up there.   Then since we got back I have been in bed with a really bad cold, so haven't done anything more.  I plan to now just get it spun, put it into balls with my ball winder and give her the yarn.  She can then decide whether she wants me to knit it up for her or if she will knit it herself, but at least I'll be able to give her something for her birthday.  

Lachlan pretty much finished his Diploma this week. YEAY!!!!  I say pretty much because one of his assignments was sent back to him for a bit of adjusting and that is due in on Tuesday.  But as that is really nothing (the teacher said that it is of a really high quality, just needs some formatting work and a couple of things added) we can say he is finished.  

 Now Lachlan has to work on job applications, which lets face it, can be just as hard work as assignments!  The latest job we are really interested in is a Ranger position up at Brisbane Forest Park  at the Gap and at Daisy Hill.  This would be fantastic as we wouldn't have to move and Rory can stay at the same school.  

Will try to write more later, but got to go and have something to eat - I forgot to have breakky this morning.   Whoops.  

Yes, I am slack

Ok, so I know it has been ages since I last posted. I envy Katy (ihatetoast) as she is a fantastic writer and has no shame - therefore her posts are regular, long and usually the funniest things I have read in a very long time (the latest I loved was the "A day of beauty" post - bikini wax goes horribly wrong!) Unfortunately, I can't write that well and even if I could, nothing quite that funny (not so funny for her at the time, but funny later) or unfortunate happens to me. Although.... that might be a good thing! Katy - I love you. Keep up the laughs, you make the "Cliterati" meetings just that extra bit enjoyable and you keep us all healthy by giving us lots to laugh about.

So, anyway - things have been pretty quiet on this home front. Rory is still doing well at school and Lachlan is in his last month or so of his diploma - YEAY! He is up to his ears in assignments at the moment but seems to be still reasonably calm and coping well. I can't wait for him to finish and get a job again though - We need money!

I have been reasonably busy - volunteering (although I'm giving that up for a bit), taking Rory to his psych appointments, bowling (ten pin) on fridays, taking Rory to bowling on Sundays, looking after other peoples children, going to birthday parties and other social outings...... the list never ends. I am supposed to be at bowling this morning, but Rory decided he wasn't going to sleep last night and woke me up (after supposedly having bad and sad dreams) pretty much every hour from about 1:00am till about 5:00am when I just pulled him into bed with me. needless to say, he was too tired to go to school, and I was too tired to go bowling. bugger, I was looking forward to it too.

Craft wise I have been doing more knitted beaded bracelets (as above). I love these. they are so easy to make and I have already sold at least 3. Two are going to be sold as well, but not till a little later when my friends kids have birthdays. The rest I will try to sell at the Spinners Open day later this month.

Also, I am using up stash and crocheting squares that might one day become a smallish blanket (also above). I love spinning fuschia(?) pink, but keep getting slightly different dye lots of fuschia, so I can't knit it all into a jumper or anything - so a crochet blanket is just the ticket. The idea was to just use up the stash I have, but as usual, now that I've got a plan for it, I am going to need to buy more pink wool and silk to spin to make enough squares. That will have to wait though - so once I've completed what I've got, I'll put these squares away, use up my other stash on other projects and when I get a little bit of money again, I'll buy more pink wool.

Ok, so not very interesting stuff, but I am extremely tired (i cleaned the house yesterday too - MY GOD!). I will try to write again soon.

Love peace and joy!

Photos finally

Ok, here I am again - with photos. So, the first photo is of wool and silk I spun at and after Warwick camp. At camp I also spun up some lovely green wool, but buggered if I can find it now....

The second photo is of some wonderful multi-coloured wool I spun just before Warwick camp and a not quite finished scarf I knitted up out of it. Rory has his eye on this one.



The third photo is of my acheivement this week. I have taught myself (no pattern, nothing) to knit beaded bracelets using perle 8 cotton and 4mm seed beads. Aren't they pretty? I am planning to make a few of them and sell them at open day and to my friends for $10 each. Maybe $12. What do you think they would be worth?

I have already got an order from a 12 year old girl at the school for a pink one - but I have to make it a little smaller than the one pictured as of course she has little wrists. Her mother has agreed to the $10 price tag. Whoo hoo.

Not much else has been happening around here lately. Term 1 just finished yesterday and Rory & Lachlan are now on holidays. This term has really been fantastic for Rory. He is really happy most of the time and is even starting to say that he likes school. The cognative behaviour therapy and having such a wonderfull teacher and motivating rewards in place is really working. His anxiety levels have decreased dramatically. YEAY!!!!

Lachlan is now roughly half way through his diploma and is still enjoying it. He also got a job in the last few weeks as a cleaner at the local shopping centre. this has been really good for him. Combined with quitting smoking (FINALLY) he is actually losing weight and is doing great.

I was really sick last week. I obviously picked up another virus and they just knock me around like you wouldn't believe. I thought I was going to have to go to hospital it got that bad a couple of times. But I just worked through it, and rested a lot and thankfully this week I have been much better.

Well, not much else to say really - except:

HAPPY EASTER!!!! (being good friday today)

I'm here!!! - FINALLY

Well, it certainly has been ages since I last wrote. My excuse is that I still hadnt't done much in the way of craft stuff and as this is mainly supposed to be a craft blog, there wasn't that much to write.

For those of you who are following the Rory saga, the only thing to report is that it seems no longer to be a saga. Rory is settling down well and the Cognative Behaviour Therapy seems to be working and school is good.

So - onto craft stuff! I have finally done a fair amount. I would have photos, but we seem to have misplaced the digital camera, so hopefully I will be able to put them up in the next few days.

This past weekend was the Warwick Spinners & Weavers Group camp, held at Leslie Dam outside the town of Warwick in QLD. I went, and unlike last time, i had a very safe and happy time and did not come back with any cracked bones. (for those of you who might not remember; at this camp last year I fell over and cracked 2 ribs - ouch!) What a fantastic weekend I had. All I did was spin, eat, chat and sleep. for about two and a half days. Now that's a good weekend. The other thing was I was out of range on my mobile most of the time, so the only time my family could talk to me was when I called them once a day. Yeay, I escaped!!!

While we were at Warwick camp (there were quite a few of us from the brisbane group and I got a lift with Paula - thanks Paula!) I did heaps of spinning. I spun about 100gms of green wool, 50gms of pink silk, 100gms of pinky purple wool and about 40 grams of Pink & slightly green wool. more spinning in one weekend than in the last about 5 months!

The thing I love about these camps is how they really inspire me and keep me motivated to get more done. I have really been a little unmotivated in the last few months - and being summer in Brisbane doesn't help either! So hopefully, I will get more done and be able to show you all my lovely creations.

Anyway, I promised Rory that I would take him to Hungry Jacks for dinner and he is starting to get restless. As I said, I will try to upload some photos in the next few days.

See ya!

Let's all do a happy dance!

I haven't written for ages again, and once again I haven't done much in the way of craft stuff..... but I am writing today because I am very happy.

Those of you that have been following the Rory saga will be pleased to know that at this stage things are looking up for this year. School starts again on Monday, so today we went up to the school to look at the class lists (Who the teacher is, which children are in the class and where the classroom is). We are very pleased with the result. Rory has the same teacher he had in Grade 1 - who is an absolute brilliant teacher and someone who really understands children with issues like rory's (her own adult child has severe ASD).

Also, a couple of the children who were really bullying and upsetting Rory last year have been moved into the other class - a composite class with older boys who will hopefully pull these children into line fairly quickly. This means that Rory no longer has these particular distractions while in the classroom. YEAY!!!

We also learnt (and here is the biggie) that during the holidays, the WHOLE school (well, all the classrooms) have been airconditioned!!!! so Rory can no longer use the excuse that he is hot and "prickly" to get out of doing work. I saw the principle, and since not many people were around, I said a big thank you to him and then gave him a kiss on the cheek. That man is a fantastic principle. He really looked at what did and didn't work last year and has really worked to sort it out. I think that he has done the best job he could and I am really pleased that he did.

We have all had a wonderfull holiday. Last week we went to Hervey Bay for 6 nights and had a brilliant time. We went snorkelling, fishing, yabbie pumping & swimming, We saw dolphins, turtles, an osprey, coral and fish. We dug pippis for lunch while on a glass bottom boat tour. We went to the Hervey Bay historical museum. We went to Maryborough and went for a ride on a train while there. Really great holiday!

This week Lachlan & I got 2 days to ourselves. Mum & Dad offered to have Rory at their place for a couple of days and one night before he went back to school. Not necessarily to give us a break (although that was a bonus) but because they wanted to spend a decent bit of time with him.

Dad picked Rory up at about 7:30am Tuesday morning. Buy 11:00am, after discussion about what to do with ourselves for two days, decided to go for a long drive - just to see the countryside - staying overnight somewhere. By 11:30am we were on our way. We ended up going down to Casino ( a town in Northern NSW) via Beaudesert, Rathdowney, around Mt Lindsay and Kyogle. Really pretty though at times precarious drive. We had a major stop in kyogle to take photos of a house that a relative of Lachlan's used to live in and check out a town that Lachlan's Parents often talked about. . Then we went on to Casino where we stayed the night and had a massive meal each at the local pub. You 'ought to have seen the size of Lachlans' rump steak!

In the morning we travelled to Lismore (where Lachlans' parents' lived for a couple of years after they were married) and found there a fantasic tourist information centre and childrens playground that Rory would absolutely love. We decided that we will go there for a holiday sometime. We then travelled onto Nimbin (the "pot" capital of australia - but no, we do not do that ourselves) A very pretty little town with very interesting people, but not somewhere we would like to stay. The Nimbin candle factory was great to have a look at though. The people there were very friendly and showed us how they made the candles, including ironing the pyramid ones to smooth them! We then went to Murwillimbah(?) for lunch and then another hour or so drive and we were home. It was a really great trip, gorgeous area and it was good to do it by ourselves. Rory would have been bored silly and we were able to have really good discussions that we would not have been able to have while Rory is around. I'm glad we took the opportunity.

Anyway, I am hearing thunder, so I had better finish up. Will write again when i have something else to write about! Till then, Love peace and Joy as always.