I live...

As usual time has gotten a bit away from me. I'm still very wrapped up in my own head at the moment. This has led to much badness in terms of keeping up with correspondence, in that I sit down to start replying to someone and walk off a dozen times and then feel awful for being about a week late and probably making people wonder if I'm mad at them or don't like them or something. Meh. I need to get my act together.

In the midst of this here's what we've been up to:

• The kitchen is back to normal after the tree crashing through it and is now a nice sunny yellow instead of the dark green it was previously
  
  
• We've spent some time restructuring two raised veggie beds out back, making them six slightly lower beds and spent time planting out some of my little seedlings.
  
• After getting up the large (10 bay, each bay being 1.2m wide x 2 m deep) aviary for the chooks, we're now working on the fencing for it a bit each weekend as funds permit.
  
  
• We also went to the Melbourne Royal the other day to watch the Australian Shepherds. It was lovely to catch up with people but I'm afraid I rather put a damper on the day for Nic and La as I wasn't much in a festive mood. I did learn that a breed that had been on my wish list some years back, the Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen, IS actually in Australia and spent awhile patting one though.
• La's lobby for a hermit crab won and we brought home "Crawlit" the crab the other week

• We've also welcomed ChaCha the chook, also named by La. She appears to be an brown layer cross of some variety and came from a neighbor as she was getting bullied by the hens there. She's rooming with Tiger, one of my friendly little SilkieXs.
  
  
• With the house repaired I've finally been able to test my incubator! I have a dozen std Australorp eggs in it as well as a few Partridge Wyandotte eggs to give it a trial run! 20 days to go!
  
• The lambs are growing well, except for poor Luna who came up with a bum leg last week. She either pestered one of the other ewes or it's polyarthritis but either way she gets an injection every day for 5 days to help. A few of the lambs and ewes may be looking for new homes in the future, though I'm not 100% final on my decisions yet.
  
• La has been veerrryyy excited about his birthday coming up in October. He's singing himself (a very off key) happy birthday song every day, has decided on his theme (it's going to be a brachiosaurus party... not just any old dino, a brachiosaurus specifically), planned his cake (it's got to be 'berries, mango, strawberry and mandarin dino cake that's green') and would like 'a lot of kids, his Hopie and a lot of people and Ana' there. Ana is a local Aussie breeder for anyone not in the breed and La has a wee crush going on. LOL
  
• In keeping with his party, Lily has an actual dress. You may now all die of shock - the child owns something overtly GIRLY and I even think it's cute. LOL We also got her lovely amber teething necklace in the post the other day.

I've also done a few projects which I've forgotten to post pictures of so here they are...

this scarf was actually completed ages ago but I never posted it as I was trying to find yarn for a fringe and haven't found any so.. eh... it's being called completed.

this one is a ribbed neckwarmer in handspun overdyed coloured corriedale thick-n-thin paired with a vintage French button... for when you need a scarf but don't want to be dealing with the wind blowing it up in your face or a baby grabbing it.

And for my KAL group, the September "ABC" dishcloth. I use them for burp rags for Lily and they are the most fantastic burp rags as they absorb heaps without looking gross like face washers do!