reunion

On Friday afternoon the pirate and I were hanging out at home discussing the pros and cons of having a brother. He would like one - a twin one. He misses the first mate desperately. It occurred to me that we didn't have anything particularly important planned for the weekend and 20 minutes later we were in the car and on the way back to the blue mountains to reunite these boys who love each other so much.

In fact, I overheard a magical conversation between them last weekend. They were discussing the options around marriage and how they felt about it. The first mate declared he did not want to marry a girl - No, agreed the pirate. The first mate reasoned that if you married a girl you had to have babies and they didn't want babies. No, agreed the pirate again - babies were awful. Who will you marry? I asked, and of course each other was the answer.

Being in the mountains, with its common misty cool weather, provides the perfect setting for settling in for an afternoon of knitting. I have been very frustrated with a particular pattern I want to knit from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls book. I have made many attempts at getting pattern working - and it has just not been lining up. I put it away several times and tried again later. On the weekend I was determined to work it out. It is my first attempt at laceweight knitting and I thought it was me being inept. But guess what. The pattern is wrong. WRONG!.

So now that I have finally worked that out and worked out how to get it right I am off.....

It was Rhododenron Festival weekend in Blackheath - but I was much more excited about this Waratah I found on my morning walk.

Creative Space Thursday

This week I cannot blog about the handicraft type things I am creating. I wish I could. But they must stay a big big secret.....for now.

I can talk about another very creative project I have been working on this week. I did post on it way back in the planning phase. Now that it is coming to fruition it is very, very exciting.

The pirate's school is the first Canberra school to get a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden grant. As the resident landscape architect parent I am getting involved in a few school projects and designing this garden has been a wonderful experience. I have met some fantastic new friends with similar philosophies about gardens, sustainability and community. See how good we are?- almost all of us arrived by bike, even with tools!

This week I got to lay out the great curving planter beds along an old driveway, making sure they were just so - but was beaten to it by over-enthusiastic blokes when it came to applying the power tools!

I am quite chuffed with them, I must say.

For more creative spaces head this way.

keeping mum

I can't say much at the moment - I am making swap and present thingys and I really really want to show them off. But I can't.

There are other things afoot in the house of sprout. The pirate is having his big 6 birthday party tomorrow. It is way too exciting. Think of me after school with 8 little kindy boys being sugared up and destroying the house.

I will leave you with a photo my almost 6 boy took of us today. I have given him an old camera and suddenly he is no longer camera shy. Why didn't I try that 3 years ago when he stopped consenting to be photographed? He does need some tips on composition, focus, closeups and using a flash...... then we may even get a shot in focus. And I do need to get him to take photos of something other than cartoons on tv.

Isn't he lovely?

creative space poolside

One of the many charms of knitting is that you can take it anywhere.


Poolside at Thursday swimming lessons, for instance, finishing off the Hedera Socks.

for more creative spaces pop over here

pfing

I love my new Pfaff.

Love it. Love it. Love it.

After seeing them at the Sydney Stitches and Craft Fair I ordered a bag pattern from Nicole Mallalieu Design.

My Pfaff and I made one for a friend.

She liked it.

it's a Canberra thing

One of my favourite events of the Canberra calendar is the twice yearly Australian Native Plant Society (ANPSA) plant sale. It is one of those events which I don't think could happen anywhere else - it is so quintessentially Canberra. And it is great fun and a little eccentric.

Canberra is full of retired public servants, professionals, academics and people who love a system. The ANPSA is these people. They take their efficiency very, very seriously.

Conscientious Canberrans arrive early. Lots of them. They queue up from the entrance gate back along the road for a couple of hundred metres. I have a better trick - but I won't be giving that away here.

The people that come have usually planned ahead, studied the list of plants, worked out a strategy and brought crates, bags, trolleys, boxes and other assorted systems for collecting plants.

The crowd surges forward and race each other, in a rather polite way, up the hill to where the plants are all laid out alphabetically. There is a frenzy to find the plants you most desire. Families separate, each with a list of target species, people rush this way and that. Trays and crates are filled. The experienced amongst us know which plants usually go first and head that way before going to find the ones we aren't so desperate to get.

Then we head off to pay for them. Now this is also part of the fun.

Paying for the plants is a 4 stage system. 4.

First someone takes them out your bag and puts them into trays according to size. DO NOT try to help. They get snappy. That person slide the tray along to someone who counts them and fills in a specially printed tally form. They then slide it along further to someone who checks the tally and takes the payment. Then that person slides it along to someone who takes them out of the tray and helps you put them back in your box/bag/crate etc. 4 steps.

I heard one woman this morning congratulating her girls ( 7 & 9 ish) for their marvelous skill in the quest. She joked, or maybe she wasn't joking, that they had spent the night before drilling the plant names.

I did quite well out of it.

And it inspired another wonderful spring afternoon in the garden.

what a weekend

My lordy I had a busy and productive weekend.

We had the first mate and family here and lots of pirate action. The pirate was in character almost all weekend practicing his Jack Sparrow mannerisms except when we went to the markets when the pirate and first mate were star wars characters in their capes. I wish this dressing up would never end. It is magnificent.

We had the kind of weather that just makes you want to be outside in the garden. I finally built a vegie garden.

I mowed the knee deep back lawn, extended the chicken run, weeded weeded and weeded.

I got to play with my new toy - and yes I was all a quiver!

The clothkit dress for my niece. Cute isn't it?

A couple of little sacks - one for the lovely woman who sold me the machine. The other for ???

And on top of that I knitted, cooked a dinner party for 8 adults and 7 children, did all my washing, collected straw and chook food from the produce store, cleaned eggs, socialised, and, and..... I am way to tired to go to work today!