Surprised

A month ago Gorgeous Man and Gorgeous Girl went back to PNG without me. I’m very grateful to generous family members who have let me stay with them and for friends who have been keeping me busy and out of trouble,  but I’ve been missing them a great deal. Gorgeous Girl also racked up quite a few firsts while we’ve been apart. First day at a new school, first missing teeth, first music lesson (drums) first individual swimming lesson, and so on and so forth.

Anyway, a friend asked me to go out with her and some of her friends. When we got to the place we were supposed to be eating (Eat Street Markets – well worth a visit) she suddenly stopped and started fussing with her bag and phone and then pointed behind me and said “Who’s that?” I turned and got the shock of my life when a certain Gorgeous Girl came running through the crowd.

Gorgeous Man and Gorgeous Girl had flown down for a few days.  I was a touch overwhelmed and tears were shed. Gorgeous Man wins Valentine’s day this year.

They flew home today and I’m still in Australia waiting for visas to be sorted out. But I’ll be home in another few weeks and all will be right with my world.

In other news, there has been knitting.

This is a child-sized hat. It’s going to a friend of mine in the north-east USA. She is a registered foster parent and is part of a network of foster parents in her area. The idea is to give her a stack of hand-knit hats, scarves, mittens and baby blankets to keep on hand for foster children that come into care. The knitted items will be one less thing that foster parents need to provide and in addition to keeping the children warm it is something they can take with them when the leave that foster family. A few of my Ravelry friend have joined me in this project and we are going to see how many we can make. Sadly there is a large demand in the county my friend lives in.

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Things to celebrate

Last week we had two reasons to celebrate.

Firstly, this little baby

Turned 4.

Birthday cake made by Gorgeous Man, candle placement by the Gorgeous Girl.

She’s growing up very quickly.

This was taken for Spring Festival at her school.

The other celebration in the house was the news that Gorgeous Man is now officially Dr Gorgeous Man! All paper work pertaining to his PhD thesis has been completed and the degree conferred. We are hoping to get to Australia for the graduation ceremony in June next year. So I can take pictures of him with in a funny hat and gown.

I may have had a birthday as well, but we don’t need to talk about that.

Coming soon in a post for you, finished sewing and knitting objects, because this is still a craft blog…

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A birthday and a finish

Recently a certain Gorgeous Man had a big birthday (starts with a 4 and ends with a 0).

We took the opportunity to head away for the weekend. We stayed in accommodation with some interesting recycled decor.

There was no electricity, so at night we used these lamps and solar powered lanterns. I don’t know how people did handwork at night back then.

We saw some wonderful scenery.

And Gorgeous Girl had her first experience with sparklers.

A little while ago I finished a shawl from some of this handspun.

It was my first, but not my last time, adding beads to my knitting.

 

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He came bearing gifts

Gorgeous Man is back in the country. He arrived very late Monday night. This week has been about getting life back in order and playing with my new spinning wheel.

It came in a big box, that was opened for inspection at the airport by SARS.

That would be the South African Revenue Service. There was an import duty charged, but it was minimal (much less than we were expecting having heard the horror stories…).

Here she is.

Each Ladybug comes with her own ladybug stuck on somewhere.

Mine is at the front where I can see her. Gorgeous Girl is most taken with this feature, and looks at the “Lady beetle” several times a day.

There has been completed yarn from the new wheel.

Gorgeous Man also brought some stunning natural Blue Faced Leicester and some beautiful bamboo and merino, and merino and tussah silk top for me to to spin.

Gorgeous Girl asked to knit this week. So here she is with her first knitting ‘lesson’.

I’m hoping to have my charity cardigan finished this weekend (don’t have to work, and some travelling time in the car).

I’ve also been doing the Socktober mystery sock KAL on Ravelry. That has been great fun. I need to get a move on with that too, I’m a bit behind.

Since I can’t quilt when I’m tired, and I don’t sleep when Gorgeous Man is away, there has been no quilting for the last two weeks, slowly catching up on sleep…

Hope things are well with all of you. I’m also slowly catching up on my blog reading.

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Is it wrong…

Big news first: I’ve ordered a Schact Ladybug spinning wheel. Gorgeous Man will be bringing it home from the USA at the end of October. The universe wanted me to have this wheel – the dealer is walking distance from his hotel.  He assures me he is able to get it home. Is it wrong that I am so excited about getting this wheel that I want to print off a picture and show it off to unsuspecting strangers?

Other big news, my worm farm produced it’s first juice, which I diluted and poured on my parsley, roses and pansies with great relish. We had a fine day on Friday and so Gorgeous Man and I put some seeds in the garden, he also put in a few more on Sunday. The weather has deteriorated back to cold, driving rain and howling wind, but at least the rain is good for my little seeds.

I decided that it had been a while since I’d had a charity project on the needles, so I dug into the charity stash (yarn that was given to me for the express purpose of knitting it up for charity) and cast on for this little cardigan.

The colour is much richer in real life. I think the yarn is Koigu – it’s fabulous to knit with. Details of the pattern on my project page in Ravelry.

I managed to get one scrapbooking page done recently. Still working through my pile of Australian photos.

These pages are mostly for Kerin’s benefit, so she can see the scrapping progress.

One of the interesting things about living in a foreign country is that holidays are sometimes different. Father’s Day in South Africa occurs in June. However, since we were in Australia, Gorgeous Man missed out. So we decided to celebrate Australian Father’s Day instead.

Gorgeous Girl made a card. I provided the pre-folded card, crayons and stickers and she did the rest .

Just to show that I do still sew. I managed to sneak some time on my fish quilt while Gorgeous Girl was sleeping yesterday.

If I was to do this again, I would make all the blue a single fabric, but it’s coming along nicely. I also managed to find some time to cut some more setting triangles for my leaders and enders project.

The logcabin blocks are 4 inches finished. The centre square is 1/2 an inch (one inch cut). I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them once I’ve set them all square in a square, will lay them out and consider my options when I get to that point I guess. That is very unusual for me. I usually quilt to a plan.

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A drive in the country

The Western Cape of South Africa is a stunningly beautiful place. Where we live there are high mountains that meet the sea. I can see both mountains and oceans from my window while I’m working. However, there are also large flat areas that in spring have marvellous displays of wildflowers.

We recently took a drive to see what we coud find. We were a bit early in the season, but there was still some nice stuff around.

The first place we stopped was a small nature reserve. They had added the board walk since we were there last. Gorgeous Girl loved running on it.

I’m hoping that she will have her eyes open in the picture Gorgeous Man took, but I love this picture for the sheer joy it shows.

We then went to this flower reserve on a hill.

The view.

Gorgeous Girl loved the daisies –

and the bugs on them.

They were kind of cool.

I had my weigh in at the gym today. Weight loss is less than a kilo, so not worth mentioning, but I did make it onto the Curves “Wall of Fame” this month: 2 cms off waist, 2cms of thighs and 4cms off hips = 10 cms total loss. Now to get there more consistently next month and keep heading in the right direction.

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Breaking Radio Silence

Thanks for the welcome back comments. I’ve been too tired and exhausted to reply to you all, unfortunately. I have to admit that I felt very, very low when we first arrived back in South Africa. The jetlag, combined with a bad cold and really not wanting to leave Australia all contributed.

I’m feeling much better now, both physically and emotionally. I really do have the best husband in the world.  For most of last week he would come home for lunch and then send me to bed to rest for an hour or so.

I didn’t realise how much I missed just being in Australia until we arrived.  I got teary watching the galahs feeding in the gum trees. There is so much that Gorgeous Man and I take for granted that Gorgeous Girl is missing out on. Not to mention the fact that she is growing up removed from our friends and her grandparents and cousins.

Speaking of which, I’m not sure how the family would feel about being plastered all over my blog, so I’ve chosen some photos which show our experience without violating their privacy 🙂

Gorgeous Girl travelled really well. She had to sit on Gorgeous Man’s lap the entire way from Cape Town to Johannesberg.

She was so good that we were complimented on her behaviour by our (male) seat companion.

The plane from Johannesberg to Perth was the emptiest I’ve every been on. Every single person in economy class had at least one spare seat next to them. We had 4 seats between the three of us. Gorgeous Girl slept for about 4 – 4.5 hours of the 9 hour flight. The flight crew on this trip were great.

It rained the entire week we were in Perth, except for one day. We took advantage of that day to visit the wildlife park where my brother works. Gorgeous Girl got to feed kangaroos and pat a koala. (I made the jumper/sweater she is wearing).

Gorgeous Girl also had her first ever train ride in Perth (trains here aren’t really safe for travel). She was very taken with the train.

We also spent a night with Kerin. It was great to see her. She made us some beautiful scrapbooking pages for Gorgeous Girl, but they deserve their own post. It was also really good to sit with her and watch her work on scrapbooking pages because I’ve been interested in it for a while but haven’t quite known what to do. There may have been purchasing of supplies at a store that had 50% off everything in the store, but I’m not admitting to anything…

After Perth, we flew to Brisbane (we will not discuss this flight with an overtired child who only fell asleep on landing). We then drove to Grafton on the north coast of New South Wales to see Gorgeous Man’s father.

Gorgeous Girl had an awesome time.

She fed the wallaby.

This little female is wild, but comes up to the house twice a day for some bread. She is the second (at least) generation to do this. Her mother brought her when she was just a joey. She had a juvenile with her and a baby in her pouch. This is not normal in Australia, Gorgeous Man’s father and his wife live on quite a large rural property.

Gorgeous Girl also got to feed the chooks (chickens).

Pick mandarins off the tree and ride in the billy cart that Grandpa made.

Are you bored yet?

After Grafton, we headed back to Brisbane to spend some time with Gorgeous Man’s sister and her family and to see our friends. It was great catching up with everybody, but a lot of running around.

One last picture from the trip home.

Making use of the free eye mask 🙂

We nearly missed our connecting flight from Johannesberg to Cape Town due to some of our luggage not appearing and Gorgeous Man having to hunt it down. We literally had to run for the plane and were the last people to board. Not a situation I like being in…

Since this is still a craft blog I’m going to leave you with some pictures of some finished objects. First is a scarf made from the first three ply I spun. I gifted this to my step-mother-in-law. I had trouble photographing this.

This is another three-ply that I spun before we left but didn’t wash and set until I got back. This is in the pre-washed form.

So no yardage or wraps per inch yet.

I’ve gotten back in to card making and so will have some of them and some scapbooking pages to show in the next post.

We are also very excited because we’ve found a company that we can purchase a box of locally grown, seasonal organic food from. You order the box and get what they put in it. We get our first one tomorrow.

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New habits

I hate buying clothes. I loathe it with a passion. I can never tell if something looks good, or if it’s going to match the rest of my wardrobe. So what usually happens, is that every once in a while Gorgeous Man comments that I have nothing to wear and heads into a clothing store while we are out shopping together.

This happened last week.

I took the size that I usually wear off the rack (this is a size larger than when we arrived in South Africa) and started trying on clothes. They didn’t fit.

I stood in the changing room and had a revelation. I could spend several thousand Rand buying new clothes in larger sizes that I wouldn’t like or feel good about. Or I could spend half of that and get healthier  and fit into clothes that I already own and like.

So I  have joined a woman’s gym. It’s half an hour a day with a set programme. They will weigh and measure me once a month and help me keep track of my progress.

So far I’ve made it to the gym 4 times last week (I’m aiming for 4 days a week) and I have actually enjoyed it. Which is really something because I have never liked exercise. I am a woman on a mission, hopefully the motivation will maintain high.

Because of the gym, there has been less crafting than I’d like, but I figure health has to come first for a while.

There is binding on the snake quilt partially sewn down, but we’ve had a temperature spike here (not as bad as the one in Australia, but still HOT), so no sitting under a quilt to sew binding this week. I have my Free Radicals quilt group meeting on Monday, so will take that along to do. I like sewing down the binding, it means that I’m nearly finished, but I’m very slow at it.

I’ve been spinning a little. I am for at least 10 minutes every day, with Tuesday’s dedicated to spinning.

This is 72 grams, 133 metres (2.54 ounces/145 yards) Navajo plied.

I’m alternating projects on the spinning wheel. This is some of the green fleece that we used to soak up the excess dye.

There’s a hint of blue in places, which I just love.

I belong to the Spinners’ Study group on Ravelry and they are spinning alpaca this month. Since this was a fibre that I actually had in my stash (most of the stuff they spin I can’t source locally and exchange rates prohibit international purchases at present) I thought I’d jump in. I’m spinning white alpaca as fine as I can. I have 100 grams and want to try and get a shawl or at least a scarf out of it.

There has been knitting too, but I keep forgetting to take pictures of the WIP.

Hope all is well in your part of the world. I hope that my Australian blogging friends are out of the way of any fires and are managing to keep cool.

Thanks for stopping by.

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New Things

I hope everyone had a Happy New Year’s Day.

I don’t have any resolutions for 2009 other than to move more and to spend some time being creative every day.

I Thought I’d show you some new things today, what with it being a new year and all.

Gorgeous Girl has a new pair of pants. I hope they fit…

She’s asleep right now, so I can’t try them on her. I picked up the fabric and the pattern at Joanne’s on my trip to San Francisco last year.

I had my first attempt at plying. Here is my very first yarn spun on a spindle.

Behold, yarn barf.

This is the second spindle spun. I can see improvement…

This was spun in the grease.

Here is my first ever wheel spun. The brown is Jacob and the white is mohair.

There are parts of this that I’m quite proud of 🙂

I also made 3 new scrapbook pages yesterday. I find I sticking bits of paper on a page while Gorgeous Girl is awake, much easier than spinning (little hands like to touch the wheel and stop the spindle) and knitting (where I have to count the pattern).

I sorted fabric for a new quilt yesterday as well. It’s kind of complicated, there’s templates and labels and stuff has to be sorted into bags for separate rows. To be honest I’m kind of intimidated and have been avoiding cutting. Today is the day though! It’s going to be a truly international quilt. There’s fabric in it from my trip to the USA, Gorgeous Man’s trip to Canada, and scraps from friends in Finland, and two friends in the UK, as well as South African Fabric.

We are taking Gorgeous Girl to visit a butterfly farm/zoo today. Hopefully she’ll enjoy it and there’ll be some good photo opportunities.

Ok, off to put rotary cutter to fabric -wish me luck.

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Should I be worried…

…that Gorgeous Girl has twowords: ‘Daddy’ and ‘Gone’, but still won’t say ‘Mummy’?

The Gone is said in relation to food and bottle more often than it is in relation to Daddy, but even so…

It’s been a hectic week. We’ve had some changes in the care for Gorgeous Girl. The girl that has been coming to watch Gorgeous Girl didn’t turn up for work Monday and Tuesday (which made working from home with no childcare interesting) and then on Tuesday night she resigned. I’m happy for her. She has a new full-time job for one of the major supermarkets here, so financially and career-wise she’s better off, so it’s good for her.

While I was in the USA we had two people looking after Gorgeous Girl during the day, so I asked D if she’d be interested in taking over. She was,  and Wednesday and Thursday were great. D has a little boy about 10 months older than Gorgeous Girl and she had great fun chasing him around the house giggling hysterically. Then Friday she came to tell me that she needs to study for two weeks. So I am once again without a carer for Gorgeous Girl (for the next two weeks). It’s only 3 hours a day, 4 days a week, but it’s such a huge help, especially since housework gets done while Gorgeous Girl naps…

So D is bringing a friend over on Sunday to see if she can take over for the 2 weeks while she’s on study leave. Of course, all this would happen while Gorgeous Man is away 🙂

There’s been a bit of knitting going on, and I’m hoping to have a FO to photograph by the time the camera comes back from its travels with Gorgeous Man. I’m also hoping to get a bit of sewing done this weekend. I picked up a very cute pattern for pants, and some fabulous lime green fabric with red embroidered ladybugs while I was in the USA.

Our little breakaway from the guild group had it’s first meeting this week (with *gasp* an agenda!!!). We had a great time. We’ve decided to call ourselves the Free Radicals. Interestingly, with the exception of F we are all foreign. There are five of us so far, and we are thinking that a group of about 10 would work well. The other names that were floated were mostly foreign as well. Given the recent guild dramas, we are being very selective about who we invite. We just want people who are nice, and who want to sew without powerplays etc. We have some exciting plans, and I think it’s going to be fun, and Gorgeous Girl is more than welcome.

Well Gorgeous Girl is sleeping and there’s a pattern waiting to be traced off and cut out. This post was longer, but my internet died and I can’t remember what witty things I wrote…

Enjoy your crafting, and for those of my friends in the USA – happy voting!

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