What? Where? Who???

I know - another week has slid past me and you haven't heard from me.
Sorry.

What happened?

On Saturday we went to the footie to see Gisborne get thrashed by South Bendigo.
This is a shot by The Sweetheart so you can see what sort of football we play in Australia. It is like running two marathons - not a great big interchange bench like in gridiron, and far far more ball contact that soccer. Look at that score - how disappointing for Gissie!!!!

At half time all the little kids - children and grandchildren of players and supporters - get out on the oval and play kick to kick with their little footballs.  Look at this little bloke, he is still in nappies!!!

And then life got interesting with a sort of streaker. Some bloke on a buck's turn in a mankini.

Who says looking like Borat isn't a good look?
That isn't a bad looking arse, is it?
He just did alittle dash out onto the oval and then a u-turn and back over the boundary fence where he was met by all his mates. I don't know that too many people even got to see him.
The Sweetheart grabbed this shot - good job he had the big lens on, we wouldn't have been able to see this if I had used my little camera...







I need some help identifying this plant.

And I thought I planted snake beans in the garden, but instead these things have happened. They came up in a creeepery-vine which fooled me into thinking they were beans.
The leaves are heart shaped and the flowers are tiny little white ones that look like a solanum, there are then berries that rapidly dry to a paper casing with three of four dark triangulate seeds in them.

And the seeds smell a bit yucky. Not a pleasant spice smell, but a bit nasty.

I have the feeling I should be ripping them all out cos I am betting those seeds  will germinate and the whole world will be covered in them by next summer.

Any help with identification would be great - maybe I have something new and exotic that will be useful to the world. I know what bean seeds look like so am pretty sure that is what I planted...

You can get some idea of the scale with the seeds on the crossword. They are little pods, only as big as  my little finger nail.

And then I made a peach chocolate cinnamon cake.

I just made up the recipe, drained tinned peaches on the base of the square cake tin, 2 cups of dark brown sugar thrashed to death with 250 grams of butter, added 4 eggs, and 2 cups SR flour sifted with a few spoonfuls of lovely Dutch cocoa and a tablespoon of cinnamon, along with the juice from the peaches. Cooked for about 35 mins at 350* -  possibly should have been a bit shorter time as it dried out a bit around the edges, but nothing that a slathering of cream couldn't fix.

I think it would be nicer with some ground ginger in with it as well.
Next one...

I am knitting a jumper for The Sweetheart, 2 different cables one with a 12 row repeat, the other 24 rows, and in alpaca and wool variegated.   I did a lot of mumbled countings, and unpicking rows and stitches for the first few days, but now I have done three and a half pattern repeats and am getting the hang of it. Sort of. It is beginning to look like something is happening now.
This is the first time I ever knitted anything for someone bigger than me. And the last time I knitted something for me was 1984 when I was pregnant with S3. Still have it. The good thing of polyester wools -  they NEVER wear out...
Photos to come.

And have re-arranged my bedroom, spray painted some old lamp bases (one wooden candlestick one is now black satin and the other - formerly lolly pink girlie op-shopped china is now glossy Chinese red) and redid shades to make it all look sparky new there. And a really awful op-shopped plastic mirror frame that was brown and tan but is now satin black, and looks like finely carved wood.
Photos to come.

Yesterday my tall fiddling friend Andrew Clermont (or on Myspace, or just google him for all osrts of mentions!) dropped by with two of his musician friends (Parvi and Josh), they had lovely-to-listen-to rehearsals, showers, and an early dinner before heading to Melbourne for a few gigs.
Last night at The Lomond where S3 was co-incidentally working (because of the extra crowds because of the famous performer coming!) and then to stay with S4. A very early morning gig at The Hyatt in Melbourne and another at a school in Melbourne and then back here to play at The Maldon Hotel tonight. It is always delightful to catch up with him,and to spend time checking out the latest photos - he does wonderful slide shows on his iBook. The latest was a fabulous trip through Spain and Portugal in the last few weeks with his darling Bettina who is an extraordinary artist in Berlin. Check out her website to be impressed!!!

Wednesday night my lovely GP phoned to tell me that I failed dismally the Pap Test I had the other day.
Eighteen months ago I had 'low grade abnormalities' and had to see an oncologist-gynaecologist in Melbourne.
I was supposed to have another Pap Test after 12 months but last November was getting to Christmas and was a busy time. And besides they aren't the most fun things I ever do. Another besides, because of my naughty clotting factor I also bleed, and I quite like being menopausal and not bleeding. It hurts on top of all that. All very good excuses for procrastinating.
So back to see that nice o-g woman at the Royal Women's for another colposcopy and cone biopsy. Sigh...

I am a bit depressed about it all, really. A fuck it - am REALLY pissed off actually. And scared and worried. The only positive is that nobody in our family has ever had any sort of girlie cancer.


Better to to town and buy more food.
xxxx

Dad's Clothes...

Bruce Watson is a wonderful singer and songwriter here in Australia. And overseas, too. Sometimes overseas - he and his wife also have Just The Four Boys so they don't do the overseas bit as much as they want - or as much as they will when all the boys leave their nest!
Check out all about him here on his Myspace page.

He has a really great song about sorting through his father's belongings after he passed away. "Dad's Clothes" has been on my mind a lot this week.
On Sunday we went through The Sweetheart's Dad's stuff, and sorted who gets what.

"We sorted through Dad’s clothes today
Working out just who gets what, and what
we’d throw away...
Sifting through
the sifting sands of our family
We cried a little, we laughed a lot
Telling stories of the things we got
Telling
stories of the things we got
We didn’t know just what we’d find
Old fashioned
ties – and ties that bind
We sorted through Dad’s clothes today..."

You can find the whole song on that Myspace link, right hand side of the page and scroll through the songs until you find it and have a listen to it.

Dad had lots of stuff. And only two sons and a daughter to spread it around to...

His family history things that are going to a cousin as she is writing it all up.
Except for his war medals - The Sweetheart as the eldest son got them.

There were some paintings by Granma Inez - a stunning one on ivory of an ancestor painted 'from life in 1912' according to the inscription on the back of the frame.

And some lovely pottery. Dad was a really talented potter - he studied in Japan in the 1970s under some of the great Living Treasure potters, and had a lot of exhibitions over the years. A couple of years ago he told me he had worked out he had made over 40,000 pieces over the years. In which case we have bloody little to show for it all!!!! Only the leftovers that hadn't sold.

Four garbage bags of clothes - Pringle tshirts (silky and shiny and lovely to wear - ask me how I know this); and Ralph Lauren shirts and pants (including a rather loud pair of tartan trews), and a box of silk ties - mostly Italian hand made designer sorts of things, and some still in their wrappings. Jackets - pure wool as soft and tactile as silk and suede, and melton. Hats - a Stetson, and a Panama and a real boater.
And a German wool jacket and hat - the sort of thing you see every Sunday in Bavaria for Sunday Best.

And it all got divided up between the "kids" with some treasures to be divided between their kids.

All very sad really. A whole life relegated to memories. And worse - "where did THIS come from????"...
I have washed all the clothes and taken off his name tags. There is a great mountain of wonderful fine cotton shirts (he was very structured with his wardrobe - they are either variations of blue or of red)  to make into a quilt. There are lovely linen trousers that one of my boys will wear cos for them they don't have the "old man" associations that Pop's clothes have for his grandsons. And I reckon S3 will DIE for that Bavarian coat with it's embroidery and the cute hat.
It looks like THIS and the hat like THIS but of course not a cheap crappy party one but a real one.

I haven't got any photos as I left my camera at home, so you will have to just imagine all the rest. Though not to difficult to imagine Ralph Lauren shirts (though you might do a cat cough cough furball thing on those tartan dacks. They are so awful they are almost worth wearing. Not me - one of those Smellies I reckon).

Going home now, and I am going to STAY there - got far too much to do there really. And spending far too much time doing stuff here...

Funny funny boys!!! And a good site!

This girlie Mandi has a delightful blog about all the creativities she is having fun with in her home.

And funniest are the little side bits where she has notes of things that her little boys say.
Example:
Jamison (making a Christmas card):" Mom, how do you spell Horz?" (sounds just like Whores),
Me: "What??"
" I want to say 'ho' 'ho' ho' but I want to call them ho-ers."
Me:"Um you can't call them that."
Jamison: "Fine. How do you spell 'Merry Christmas, Ho's!' ?"

There are lots of them.
It is a good idea to write down the cute and funny things your kids say cos sure as eggs there will be too many of them for you to remember when they get old and sensible...

And did I mention she does really good stuff with her decor on the cheap? I want one of those little electric sanders she has. And wouldn't a nail gun be really really USEFUL? And then I would have to borrow The Sweetheart's compressor. No big deal.

Oh, oh, oh, isn't it Mother's Day SOON???????????????????

Op Shop Treasures!!!!

I have been op shopping again.

Got to love when you get a table full for $40. Oh, plus another $20 for the analog lawnmower I bought for S2 to whip that new lawn in Albury into shape. 

Could get him this t shirt...

Anyways, here are the treasures I got this week cluttering up the table!

I love the shape of this hand blown glass. Want more please.

A hand blown elegant jug, and a couple more of those 1940's pressed glass dishes with the warts of glass on them.

Some more glasses - champagne? Parfait? Two sizes in pretty smoky colours.

Two silver goblets, heavy and lush, a parfait spoon (woo hoo - now I have TWO) and a silver teaspoon, and a light weight silver plate.

A pretty blue glass for my friend Wendy who has a collection on her bathroom window sill.

More glass, a silver bud vase (specimen vase), a bamboo vase/pot, a heavy REAL steel cake tin with sewing goodies - zippers, bias binding, old lace, and some sparkles for 50 year olds (three packets of them! Happy 50th birthdays Lew and Flossy!!!).

Lots of material - 2 metres each of glorious green raw silk, and  African looking hand blocked red and green cotton, and a bundle of furnishing fabric scraps, couple of metres of each (and the op shop woman said "Bits of left over old material, how about 50 cents the lot?"...)

A stunning book, not (definitely not!) a children's book - In The Kingdom of Mescal  with fabulous illustrations. On the back cover are some brass curtain rings, and a very elegant bottle opener, a silver buckle, and some beads that could be resin or they could be amber...

Some spice jars with tin lids and a very ugly wooden holder, one missing but useful for beads I reckon. A glass cloche (or perhaps it is meant to be up the other way with a candle but I prefer it in cloche fashion), and a really interesting and really ugly PLASTIC mirror that will look fine when it is sprayed a different colour (not black which is all I have ATM). Some patterns to make things perhaps for Moo, and an old 1960's hostess gown frock pattern (with "Mum's" written on it) and only, oddly, the sleeve pattern used...

How good is this lot of stuff? Now to get back to remaking the curtains and Roman blinds my neighbour rescued from A Famous Person's skip a few weeks back - he brought me  a car full ,stuffed around his work gear, and there were ten times as many left to go to the tip. People are so wasteful I reckon. Thankfully...

What happened @ Easter...

On Good Friday we went to Albury and stayed with S2 and his Beloved again. They have done lots of things since we were there last (the weekend before!) including digging out all the weeds from their patch of lawn and reseeding it, planting LOTS of seeds and plants in their vege garden, and getting on with their guitar lessons...

On Saturday we headed north.

We played submarines in Holbrook, and a nice Kiwi woman from Gisborne took our photo at The Dog on the Tuckerbox at Gundagai.

Then on to Bathurst where we met up with TWO Axe Murderers, and staying with one!

Christine is on the LHS of this photo in her studio, and we stayed in her wonderful home.
The most beautiful place we have ever stayed.
There are more photos after this, but just picture a 19th century workmen's brick cottage, semi detached, but instead of a dark passage to access the rooms a wide sunroom with the rooms opening off it with internal windows and glass paned doors. And then filled with flowers, quilts, beautiful old furniture, and wonderful food smells!


And that is Del on the RHS of the photo above. She came around for a moment to see what I looked like and we didn't stop talking for three hours!!!

This is where we went on Sunday, me in the 'truck' as Pit Crew and The Sweetheart getting ready to scare the living daylights out of himself! AS I mentioned in this post we were there to have a lovely fun time on what is The Mountain of Australian Motor Racing. I don't think it is very often used for club racing - mostly it is The Big Boys with all their money and sponsored hot cars that get to run around here. 

The Festival of Sporting Cars was a wonderful event!

This is The Sweetheart in our dear Little Red Car, lined up on the Dummy Grid. He had enormous fun, with a top speed of 200 kph down the straight on his runs. 

He leapt from the car at the end of each run absolutely GLOWING!!! 

This is the hotel where we stayed Sunday and Monday nights. It is right on the track with all the rooms opening onto balconies overlooking the track, the other side of the hotel has all the service rooms. Our room was on the second floor just in front of Armorall.

That cloud of dust is someone giving themselves an almighty scare. Nobody was hurt and only a couple of cars out of the field of 600+ were a bit bent over the entire weekend. A wonderful record!!

The whole event was organised and run by volunteers from all around the country - members of various car clubs. They all did a wonderful job - everything from flag marshalling to timing and just being helpful. This country really would be rooted if it wasn't for volunteers...

We packed up on Tuesday afternoon, getting Little Red onto the trailer just as the rain started, and headed for home.
The very first hill out of Bathurst the trailer started driving the car - it was a very greasy road. I started yelping and essentially didn't stop stressing for 15 hours. We DID stop for a snooze in a truck stop out of Wodonga for 2.5 hours but didn't get home until 5 a.m. I am still a *bit* tired...

However, it was a wonderful weekend, and a great experience. However, NEXT Easter we are going back to the National Folk Festival in Canberra - The Sweetheart can do My Thang!!!

That 10,000th visitor...?

A little while back the 10,000th visitor to here came along and I am offering a prize to that person. But they aren't a bloggie person and therefore don't have any contact details.
Check here if you were in Little Rock on April 1st (not an April Fool's Joke) and let me know for a little surprise!
Otherwise, I shall just wait till the 20,000th person has a squizz...

Easter fun!!!!

This is what The Sweetheart does for fun.

Sometimes scary fun. 

For example, a couple of years ago he set fire to his other Porsche on the race track. 

He didn't mean to, of course. 

An oil line burst onto the engine and suddenly there was smoke all through the cabin and the duco rose up about a foot in a great big bubble and he screeched in to the curb with the firies screaming "Open the bonnet" cos they had forgotten to put their gloves on...

We know this because The Sweetheart had his video camera on board. But he wont put it on Youtube otherwise I would point you to it...he is a bit embarrassed about it actually.

Of course, when the cold foam hit the hot bits of metal there was a scientific experiment.

Yep - the head cracked.

He has still to find a replacement head that isn't also cracked. He bought one from America at great expense to management but it turned out to be also cracked (and the bloke said it wasn't when he had it...?). It is just about ready though. For me.

This weekend, in fact for all of Easter, we are heading to Bathurst to Mt Panorama Racetrack. It is a great race track, very famous for the Bathurst 1000 which is held in October each year.

And this year, The Sweetheart is fanging around the track and I am Pit Crew. We leave tomorrow, and scrutineering is on Sunday morning, we fang around till Tuesday lunch-time. It is just club racing, not for profit, and all the Porsche Clubs around the country will be there, so we will make lots of new friends!

How much fun will this be!!!

And I took that photo of Little Red tip-toeing at Sandown racetrack. I am pretty proud that I managed to get that front tyre for the split second it was in mid-air!

AND THE WINNER IS...

I went through double blind hoops to pick the winner of my quilt,

Firstly, I edited the list of comments, taking out the duplicates and the oops ones etc.
There were 88 entries.






So then I wrote 1 to 88 on a piece of paper, and cut them apart.

Mixed them up and laid them out randomly in rows of 15.

IE, number 1 on this random list is number 2 on the written list, number 2 here is number 41 on the written list, etc.




And I used a Random Number Generator here and tried to take a pic of it to add here but it isn't working. And it looks like I picked a number between 1 and 100 on this clip, but I did use 88!

(This isn't allowing me to post and I suspect it is the RNG pic that I added here so I am removing it and hoping this will then become a blog entry...)

And number 49 on the RNG equates to number 52 on my original list.
Is this double blind enough, d'you reckon?




And that is Cindy from Chilliwack, British Colombia.
Her blog is http://imagine-dream-create.blogspot.com/

I have emailed her to let her know she will be a tad warmer this winter! 


And this is what the quilt is beginning to look like. Still has to have borders, and still to be quilted. That will happen as soon as I get a day that looks a bit like mine and nobody else's...

Testing, testing...1, 2, 3 ...

I am trying to announce the winner, and Bloggy is going Silly.

This is a test.

Ignore it. Except to say that the winner has been picked, and notified, and it wasn't you if you are still looking cos otehrwise you would know by now.
Sorry.

AND A BONUS WINNER!!!

There is a bonus winner here, too.

I just had my 10,000th tourist dropping in for a look! 

So if you are from Little Rock AR and were checking me out last evening your time, and half an hour ago my time (!) please leave a comment with a contact detail and I will send you something yummy.

Probably another quilt...

And don't be naughty and pretend to be from Little Rock cos I will know who you are. Don't forget - I SLEEP with my Internet Provider. I know all the behind the scenes tricks!

And also - thank you so very much for following me, and reading my ramblings, and for all the lovely comments over the last 13 months. I do enjoy sharing little bits of my life this way.

My Blogaversary Give-away is finishing!!!!

I am about to close my Blogaversary Give-away! 

I wrote an entry last night to say it was closing at midnight our time but then something went wrong with my net and I couldn't.
So that is the Quilt Fairies way of telling me to give you all a bit more time, I reckon!

It will close at midnight GMT - another 45 minutes or thereabouts - you can find out the time in London here:
http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/


If you haven't already entered please head on over to:
http://banaghaisge.blogspot.com/2010/03/blogaversary-give-away.html
and you may just be in the running!!