I really should be writing that essay ...

I bought miles and miles of this dark green wool fabric at the op shop a few months ago. Once I lined it, it made a lovely warm winter skirt, perfect for these chilly mornings, with woolly tights and long boots underneath. It was a tad dull though, so one night this week I embroidered some red circles onto it. What an improvement.

(About five minutes after I took this photo I leaned over the log basket to throw another log onto the fire and caught the embroidery on a stray stick. It took a good ten minutes and several bad words to flatten it all out again. Sigh ...)



My spinning continues, and continues to improve. The husband of one of the women in my spinning group made me this lazy kate in return for a six pack of beer.



See how he used recycled metal knitting needles for the spokes? Excellent.

This weekend brings lentil and barley soup, the return of the 15 year old from his TWO AND A HALF WEEK long camp (I ache to hug him - after he's had a shower that is), a looooong drive followed by a funeral followed by a looooooong drive, and a marathon essay writing session.

breaking through

It's been a week of shock, sadness and challenges. I don't have many words and it's not my story to tell anyway so I will be content to post some pictures for a while.



The mists of autumn have returned to our hills. This is the view that greets me as I turn out of our driveway in the mornings to take the children to school. The sun does its best to shine through the fog, its slanting rays turning cobwebs into strings of diamonds and dew drops into pearls. Choosing joy and light.



There's a life lesson in that, right?

In a similar vein, tonight I went to see My Year Without Sex (and as I typed that title I now understand why I just garnered my first porn follower on Twitter. Blocked quick smart!). There is an awful moment at the end when (*spoiler*) you think it's going to end badly but thankfully the end shines, just shines through.

And can I also say, how wonderful to see a film set in Altona, featuring a real family complete with slack tooth fairy, clothes airer permanently in the lounge room, nits and all.

What did you do with your wild and precious weekend?

Apologies to Mary Oliver.

The Friday night random has become a tradition

I've been sewing again. For those of you who come here for the craft (you poor disappointed sods).

For those of you who come for literary reasons, I have just finished reading Tales from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry. Almost as good as his A Fine Balance. God he's good isn't he? I'm listening to The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory and am quite enthralled.

And for the rest of you who come for the minestrone, (thank you to Jane for that term) I offer a completely unGoogled* list of my imaginary love interests, in chronological order:

* unGoogled so I don't have the correct names

Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout

Jason Donovan's mum [Sue Someone] on Adventure Island (I wrote her a fan letter when I was five) (she wrote back too) Sue McIntosh! Thank you!

Jimmy from HR PufnStuf (although the program itself made me deeply anxious)

Great Uncle Bulgaria

Major Nelson

Mr Ed

Hazel in Watership Down

Monsieur Hulot

Juliet Stevenson's character in Truly Madly Deeply

Jackson Brodie

the Japanese translator in Bel Canto

that woman from The Forsyte Saga. Also her final husband. Irene, thank you!

Mr Darcy and Mr Knightley both

Lizzie Bennet too

Alan Rickman's character in Love Actually

Cary Grant's characters in just about everything he's done

Henry in The Time Traveller's Wife

Hugh Laurie in Blackadder

Queenie in Blackadder

I'm sure there are more but I'd need another beer to dredge them up. Besides, I have 200 more stitches of my shawl to unpick before I can go to bed.

Don't ask.

Dreaming of another craft weekend because August is too far away. Maybe June?

I just wrote a grumpy whiny boring post about headaches and Lincraft (closing down) and tinned soup and cancelled spinning group.



And then, luckily for you, I deleted it and uploaded some photos instead. We will focus on the shiny happy we will.



Soccer season has begun again (wait, is that good?) and the younger two and the husband are all playing on Saturdays and Sundays, leaving the fifteen year old and I to our own devices. This weekend that included his violin concert which went brilliantly and he was the absolute star of the show. I even managed to not cry which was a first. There are two 3 minute videos of his performance over on facebook, but flickr wouldn't let me upload them there (so therefore also not here). He's tinny and flat-sounding anyway on the video (which he most certainly was not in real life) so it's probably good that most of you can't hear them. I mused about uploading them to YouTube but he put his foot down. His friends might see them you know, and Bach's violin concerto in A minor (1st movement) would spoil his rock n roll image. On facebook, only mum's middle aged friends can see. Heh.



On another note, some of you might have noticed over there on my sidebar a Red Bubble banner. I've uploaded a few of my photos there and they are available for purchase as greeting cards. I am ridiculously excited about this, although I have no idea whether anyone will buy them. Apart from me, that is. And I will certainly be making a couple of 2010 calendars for sale later in the year - some private family ones, one of a selection of my better photographs for public consumption, and maybeperhapspossibly a collaborative one with a couple of fellow bloggers. Exciting.



Also in the exciting department, only one week on, I am 70% done on my shawl. Unbelievable. This is about the stage when I usually abandon a project so stand by ...



ps. If anyone has a favourite photo here on the blog or on my flickr stream that they would like to see offered as a card, please let me know and I can include it in the Red Bubble collection.

camp style

Some photos from the Easter camping trip

embracing the wonk

That's the new mantra ... Embrace the wonk. Embrace the wonk.



Craft weekend last weekend had its fair share of wonk and the like, what with tops and pants made that don't fit, a cardigan with holes, the cutting out of a very simple wrap around pattern and then noticing that one of the panels had the wrong edge along the selvedge so the grain is totally skew whiff (cue banging of head on sewing table), a broken toe (but she managed to not spill a drop of wine. Priorities, people) and the small matter of an overdue essay ... There were a few mutterings heard about being cursed with a collective case of the EITTTSs and yet it was, as per usual, a weekend of hilarity, productivity, creativity and adrenalin. Except for the final hour when I flagged in a major way and just wanted to be home, now, before twilight, before I got weepy, and to prepare for a huge work day ahead. Note to self: know your limits.

I spent a good deal of time on the Saturday at the dining room table writing an essay which nearly killed me, knowing everyone else was over in the studio madly sewing and knitting and singing (apparently) and laughing. However by late afternoon I weakened and the conclusion to the paper was written under the influence of a glass of chardonnay. Suddenly everything went swimmingly, Janet managed to finish her quilt at the same time as I knocked over the essay, she came in to show it off (chanting embrace the wonk, embrace the wonk) and we did the happy dance around the dining room, to the accompanying fragrance of Sue's chicken risotto (also produced under the influence of a glass of chardonnay).

Also happily, I managed to score the Princess Room this time, the most sought after bedroom at Sewjourn. Such a luxury.



Beautiful, no?



So serene.



As for the actual craft side of craft weekend, I managed to finish a hat for Son #2 using an op shop light grey and some red chunky yarn from my recent dyeing session. No pattern this time, just a generic knit-in-the-round kind of hat with a few garter rows thrown in for interest. This one is a success with the sartorially fussy child, unlike the previous hat which he ever so kindly donated to his father after one wear.



I also cut out a wrap around skirt (and banged my head at my stupidity), some little linen bird ornaments as a whimsical essay-completion celebration, learned how to do a short row heel (messily) and cast on for a shawl with some olive 8ply yarn from the aforementioned dye session.



How I love me a bit of mindless garter stitch. With no wonk in sight.