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!

Progress

Remember the little swatch of knitting from 12 Aug, that was showing the colour of the yarn from 02 August? Well here's the update... after a hefty interruption courtesy of the windstorm, I got to play with it today at the ASCV herding trial and finished up all the seperate pieces!

You'll have to use your imagination a bit as nothing is seamed together yet so I just sort of laid the pieces approximately where they'll go. I also have to weave in the ends, pick up stitches along the cast-off edges to create the shawl collar and ribbing going down the front edges still, add buttons and block it. When it's done, it will look more like THIS. I'm still rather excited though! :D

I lufs my new car!

I got my beautiful new car today and to celebrate the freedom of having my own car (without having to either hike 9 km to the bus stop or get the kids up at 5:30 to drop Nic off at the train station in order to have our other car) we went to take a ride to a fibre and bunny demo. I was a bit naughty and bought this, 150g of Navaho Churro and Bunny tops... but really it's so divine can you blame me???

And this is a peek at the beautiful way the Hawthorne Cottage BFL/Corriedale is knitting up! The colours are more vibrant than the picture shows, they just glow!

An overdose of cuteness

We're in the middle of a lamb explosion at the moment... as predicted, Boo wasn't far off dropping her lamb. I spotted her off from the group this morning and we watched through the window as her lamb arrived over breakfast.

After Astra was born I'd written Cadbury's breeder as I suspected he was throwing the black and white babies and if so, the 'black' and white babies might actually be moorit (chocolate) and white, which would be fabulous for me because I LOVE choccie sheep! That'd also mean Star was black carrying moorit for Astra to be moorit. Raylene kindly confirmed my suspicions as moorit babies can be nearly black looking when born and the fleece lightens up as they grow into dark chocolate, then milk chocolate, carmel and finally a pale cafe au lait colour.

Boo had her lovely little girl this morning and double-confirmed everything though... her baby, Andromeda, is a stunning JET black. (And as an aside - GO CADDY... all these little ewe lambs!)

Here is little 'Rommie taking her first steps with her mum Boo snuffling her. Boo is a black ewe but the outside of the fleece gets quite brown from the sun. The sheep behind the wire are young moorits.

If you look close, you can see the umbilical cord, freshly severed.

Aw... too cute!

And here is where you can really see the difference! Rommie on the left is black, Astra on the right is definitely NOT... she's self patterned moorit. :)

And just because they're cute... Astra 2 days old

Luna and Stella, 3 days old

Now we're just waiting to see what the other two English Leicester girls do. :D

As far as my knitting, I'm finding I really like the challenge of something new or different. It's a bit odd for someone who spent the better part of a year too intimidated to figure out some of the very basics but there you have it. So for my next few projects I've chosen things that, for my experience, are going to be a challenge. For my sockyarn, I chose this - the "Spring Forward sock". It is more difficult and fiddly than anything I've attempted before. My Ixchel Laceweight is going to become the Cashmere Merino Energy Wave Shawl. As it's my first time with true laceweight yarn, I wanted something I could take back easily if I flubbed. (I still suck at fixing my mistakes.) I've been looking at cast ons for that and I think I might use the one which is like a normal cast on except there is a crocheted chain between each stitch. Sounds weird but it looked nice and stretched well when I test knitted one on fatter yarn today.

And completely unrelated... I went and looked at what I'm hoping will be my new car today! I'm waiting on the RACV inspection but pending that I'll have wheels of my own again! *excited squeak*

First lace project

It's only been about 5 months since I was a one hit wonder (garter stitch baby scarfs/dish/wash cloths anyone?) but lace has been on my list of things that I want to do but found somewhat (totally, completely and utterly) intimidating.

I've been slowly expanding my list of skills. I really want to do the beautiful projects on my mile long project pattern queue. But lace? Eep! Okay, so that's what I thought about casting on and off. And scarfs. And hats. And knitting in the round. And socks. All easy-peasie once I got past how tricky I thought they would be and did them.

So I went as simple as it gets, for a scarf for Lily. The yarn is handspun corriedale/merino/silk I'd bought awhile ago and dyed. It's not perfect, it came out a bit chunky as the yarn was spun thick-n-thin, from lace to almost-but-not-quite DK.

I finally got to blocking it tonight, I'm not sure I did that right but here it is drying... will add fringe and get good photos tomorrow! Oh and for the record, I think I'm going to love lace! I've got a shawl in the IxChel laceweight yarn I'm going to cast on tonight!

our day out

It's been a very long, really rather craptastic week here for various reasons and I was feeling rather sorry for myself. Totally aside, I had to include this pic of La in a happy moment - I'm told that this is a "Very Tall Dinosarus Rexus!"

At any rate, this weekend instead of staying here and doing what I ought to be doing (cleaning, repairing, pruning, sorting out the gate between our property and the neighbors etc) I decided we really needed to get out, blow it off and forget it all for awhile.

A few weeks back at Ravelry, I'd stumbled across a Gippsland group of knitters and spinners and among this I'd found a link to a woman who'd had a stall of lovely yarns at the Gembrook market when we first moved in and I'd not been able to find since as I didn't recall her name. As it turns out she now has a stall at the Melbourne Art Market which I'd not been to in awhile so it was a perfect excuse - especially as we didn't get to go to the Bendigo show as Nic had 'found' a kangaroo the hard way with my car the day before!

So we went and enjoyed the market and a nice day, aside from La having a meltdown tantrum because Nic insisted we didn't need to bring the pram for him to ride in and then was annoyed when La wanted to touch things and grabbed his hand. Of course any excuse for pictures is a good one, so...

Lily wanted a feed we sat down and watched the little water birds drying their wings after diving in.

And I spoiled myself a bit...
(bottom) 200g 8 ply Hawthorne Cottage English Leicester/Corriedale in lovely flame colours which will make a nice pair of pants for Miss Lily
(middle) 100 g 4 ply Ixchel Bunny sock yarn hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester and Angora with natural dyes for socks for myself
(top) 55g Ixchel Bunny lace weight hand dyed australian Cashmere/Merino lace weight for a lacey wrap for myself
I also got a nice contact for spinning classes and hopefully can make it to one of the nights where they sell second hand spinning wheels, so I can try a few out and decide which I want before I buy.

After we stopped in Fed Square and split a smoothie. La was most impressed with the later, being a rather rare treat and was so engrossed in it he wouldn't even look up for a picture. I also spent most of the day thanking heavens for slings because Lily was able to snooze, people watch and feed in it without trouble or having to stop.

We'd initially planned on training it in which La was very excited about but took the car as we'd gotten a late start on the day. So we ended up taking one of the city circle trams to China Town and having some nibblies instead. La was ever so slightly thrilled and even Lily was quite amused with the lattice and lights on the ceiling of the trams.



Unrelated to this I've joined a KAL for cloths which is fun. I've churned out two independent of it - this one of a duck in green for La and a white one with a bunny I've not been able to get a good picture of yet, as well as plans for this breastfeeding logo one. They're quick, easy, practical knits to turn out while feeding Lily and watching tv in the evenings. :)

Another brief photo post

I love the light we've got at the moment... the sun is out less often since it's winter but it's gorgeous when it does show itself. I snapped this from our back porch while I was feeding all the birds.

Next is the calorimetry headband. I finished it yesterday morning but didn't get a chance to get the ends wove in till now to photograph it.

Laid flat - preblocking obviously.

And on the head. :)

Last but not least is the newest addition - another little white muzzie girl, come to us courtesy of Flogs! So now we have Matilda, Magnolia and Mazie.

The view from here...

... is miles and miles of smiles!

I started a calorimetry pattern, a sort of headband type thing to keep my hair out of my face. Yarn is Moda Vera Picchio, silk and wool, in emerald greens and blues. Ignore the red threads on the needles - those are just my cheapskate placemarkers. ~_~;

Today was not a day I looked forward to - the car needed servicing.

Yeah, I hear you - big honking deal. Except that servicing the car here entails waking up the 3.5 year old and 2 month old at 5:30AM, hauling them out into the cold to drop Nic off to the train and then deal with settling two cranky, overtired children once we get home before later waking them up early enough to drop off to the mechanics, whereupon I'm stranded for the day with two small children, one cranky with a cold and the nearest bus stop a 2.5 kg walk, for a 45 minute ride to the nearest train station. Sound like anyones idea of fun yet??? What? No takers? I'm shocked!

At any rate, today was not as terrible as it could be although it wasn't fun. It started upon arrival where we found they had penciled us in for Wednesday instead of Thursday as asked for and were cross with us having been 'no shows' from incorrectly penciling us in. So we walked into town, we stopped at the pizza joint, we had excellent nosh and headed toward the playground to wait for the bus. When we got there some local youths had smeared excrement all over everything, up and down the slides, on the rocking critters etc - try explaining that to a 3 year old! So we walked back into town - or rather I walked carrying Lily while La whinged and tantrumed in true unreasonable and ill 3.5 year old style. We watched the birds for awhile

and poked around the shops... one of which sells some local handspun/dyed yarn and when I saw this I just had to pick it up! It's $9 for aprox 90g but the neat part is the fiber content: it's dyed sheep and white samoyd - yes, SAMOYD... as in the big white fluffy DOG.

After this we caught the bus, with La claiming to have an owwie back and was sick on the bus, progressing into screaming, wailing and hysterics. He is still feeling miserable as anything and sacked out with a fever.

At any rate, we made it home and I went to let the dogs out when I noticed a goose in the yard...

This is not MY goose. Well... it is now I suppose but I digress. The day before we'd had a woman pull up claiming she'd found a goose walking down the road (as you do...), it had laid an egg, her dog was going to eat it and was it mine. It goes without saying this happened just as I was trying to get the fire going and succeeding after 20 minutes of babying it along, the dishes were stacked everywhere for washing, pile of unsorted laundry was waiting for folding on the couch, La was whinging about breakfast and Lily was just feeling disgruntled over being set down so I could start a fire and warm the place to something above subzero, let alone had a chance to put a brush through my hair or make-up on. Mine were secure in their yard so I suggested maybe it belonged to a neighbor who has geese but if it wasn't, she was welcome to leave the bird with me. I didn't hear from her so I assumed it must've been the neighbors but I'm guessing that having found it in my yard today, it must not have been! So now I've got another goose.

And this is just one for me. I completed the scarf bit awhile ago and decided to start felting a little black tri Aussie on it for La who wants a "dog like Hopie". I've roughed in most of the body shape but still have to do the head and bear in mind it's still very rough and will be more refined by the time I'm done. :) This is done with tufts of wool rovings (picture a cotton ball if you tore it apart) placed on the scarf into the desired shape and needled down. The felting needle on the left tangles the fibers together until they mat into felt and attach to the scarf. Good fun!

So the other day I decided to try my hand at dyeing... hey, I'm going to have sheep and I want to spin their wool (hey, dog hair too!) and I try to knit (even if I'm not so good at it atm) so I figured dyeing was really pretty logical extension and Sif said it was easy after all. I pondered over what colours I wanted, looked at pictures for inspiration and then looked at the dyes I HAD and revised my plans. We're not broke but we do have to be careful and not invest a lot of money in something I might not want to do again. So I promised myself I'd do this IF I could do it with materials I already had. I also do cake decorating on a hobby level so that meant Wilton icing dyes.

I decided to go with one that was firey, one that was more subdued autumn leaf colours and one that was muted moss colours like the dappled growth under the canopy because knitting and wool always reminds me of the autumn. I wanted to go real blendy so the colours would softly segue into the next instead of clear colourways. Here's the results!

Hank 1: 8 Ply 100% Merino (NZ) This is my sunset one - shades of pink, orange and yellow-gold. It came out less intense than I wanted and have seen Wilton dyes turn out nicer on the web but since it was the first one I didn't know how much to use to get intense colour.

Skein 2: Handspun Merino Silk blend. Dyed with Tea and mixes of Wilton in reds, coppery oranges and hints of soft yellow with golden-brown overtones. Ohhhhh this turned out pretty! This is the autumn leaves one!

Skein 3: 8 Ply 100% Merino (NZ) Dyed with Tea and mixes of Wilton. My forest floor one, various shades of green, yellow, blue-green and brown.

Now I've got to figure out something to make with them! Probably I'll go with something simple for myself.

Having success in this, I also decided to try working on the "problem" I'd had with knitting. Last year I really wanted to have a go at making stuff for La because I liked the idea making stuff that was sweet (vs. the "boys must only wear blue things with trucks or other macho crap on it" variety) and I really loved the idea of him "wearing" the love and thoughts I've put into making it wherever he went. That said I'm not very good and got stuck. Every few months, I'd pick it back up, reread the book attempting to figure where I was going wrong, get frusterated and put it back down.

I *knew* it was something SO super simple I'd kick myself once I figured it but darn it I was doing everything my Very Expensive Pattern Book (Debbie Bliss) said step by step, word for word and it just didn't WORK. So at any rate, I finally figured it out and yeah... it's so SIMPLE and OBVIOUS! Der! I'd gotten the individual steps correct but put them together as every other STITCH instead of every other ROW. To be fair, my darn book didn't actually specify that - just that the steps were alternating. *SIGH*

So. Onto pics! I have heaps!

Comfy critters... you don't think they like each other or anything, do you?

Hugs all around!

Riding out...

... and rounding 'em up! ("I got 'em boss!" says Hope!) La's steed is Bijou, who incidentally used to belong to his daddy when he was knee high.

We're pretending the bread basket is a car. "Brrooooooooommmmm!!!"

Why co-sleeping is the best... waking up to a happy giggling bubba, playing hide and seek!

More pics coming tomorrow. We're also down to our final day or two where we have to decide to leave the offer on the table for the Tremont house or not. My biggest concern at this point is the cost... we got $620,000 for this house, of which $20,000 went to the agents/lawyers/advertizing, leaving us with $600,000. Now $10,000 of that needed to go back to La's school investment fund because we'd borrowed out of it to fix this house up to sell. Then we needed to have money for the house and some left over to invest for ourselves and buy some furniture because what we have, aside from a few nice pieces Nic and I have got together, is very old (30 yrs+) and not terribly sturdy stuff we've inherited from his grandfather and mom. Doing the math on this house...

$510,000.00 for the house

$ 26,260.00 stamp duty

$ 3,756.00 electric

$ 50,000.00 fixing up, fencing etc.

$ 20,000.00 for add'l bedroom

--------------------------------------

$610,016.00

So we're over what we have available without even being able to put the money back into La's account, invest some for ourselves or get any furniture to put in the house. Now granted we don't NEED the 3rd bedroom straight away - not for another year or two but it's still money that would go to that instead of to investments for school or such. Both Nic and I want to go back to school, want La to be able to go to a good school and want to be able to occasionally afford to take trips to see family in France etc. Nic has sort of gone, "Yeah, yeah..." and figured I'm exadgerating and worrying over money excessively, surly it's not that bad and I'm exadgerating when I say we won't have ANY left over etc. But figures don't lie really. And even without the 3rd bedroom right away that's still $590,016.00 which means the only thing of the rest of our plans would be to pay back La's account.

OTOH it's one of the only houses with land on the market, Nic likes it (which I have to give weight considering he's even willing to move out this far at all), it's close enough for La's schools etc. and there's the question of how much we'll spend renting before we find another place and IF we can even find a place to rent. I need a crystal ball to see the future!