Figures!

I'm without the 'puter for the better part of two weeks and naturally that whole period is jam packed with stuff that would normally get blogged about and a whole slew of fabulous photo opportunities [ like this one of Bear trying to hide from the Weasleys ***]


and now too much time has passed and there's just too too much of it to chronicle in any great detail, so rather than risk being responsible for mass brain implosions, I've had to make the choice to just hit you with the edited version ... which is plenty big enough even in its pared back state:

Two weekends ago there was a flying trip to Melbourne for Victorian Opera's production of Xerxes [ brilliant], DIL's big berfday and a side order of grandson cuddling [ and I think I might hit you with that set of photos in the next post ] followed by quite possibly the most appalling drive back that I have ever experienced weatherwise.

Then Friday a week ago, Nadie came up from Melbourne to keep David company on Saturday, while I was otherwise engaged teaching a group of lovely ladies how to make fabric-origami happy coats [ like kimono but shorter ] over at their B & B in Daylesford:


Before that happened though, we [ Nadie and I ] indulged ourselves with some baby goat snuzzling when Pete-and-Brenda popped by on their way to have the newest crop of babies de-horned.
This is my gorgeous daughter with Ms Evie, the smallest of the girls

and a box full of bucks -

that's Mitchell on the left and Cameron. These triplets have the same daddy as my Ruby and Rowan. Val and Olivia you've already met, and they looked much the same as here, just a wee bit more robust

ETA: since I wrote this post Pete-and-Brenda have delivered a set of quads - goats not humans - and though they sadly lost the only girl who was incredibly tiny, the three little bucks survived [ James, Lachie and Nathan, named for the grandsons as are Cam and Mitchell ]

On the creative front, Nadie and I both made use of my lino cutting tools ... and proving that my DD is just as tuned into Japanese iconography as her Mama ...


she didn't get to see the results immediately, but on Thursday this week I did a print run using the fabulous orange-and-gold offering paper from Lisette ...
and this was mine:


The only drawback of using this stuff is that the printing ink is so very dense and tacky that it peels the gold leaf surface right of the paper in unpredictable ways. Still there were enough sucessful tries to make it worthwhile.
Thankyou Lisette m'dear - you send the BEST stuff!

There was also a silk paper kimono class at Bendy - this is one of a pair made by Jodi Abel

In addition to all of the above there has been crocheting, the celebration of a friend's 70th berfday at quilting, another flying visit from Nadie, and now Chris-and-Maz are up for 4 days, having been not-up-here since flipping January 2008!!!!!!!

and
of course, we're heading into Spring so there'll be a garden update sometime soon



*** who used to be Fred-and-George but when they went missing for the better part of 8 months, I 'recycled' Fred's name onto Ethel's deceased beloved, the other Fred. So Fred-and-Gearge, so named for Fred and George Weasley in the HP books, will now and henceforth be simply known as The Weasleys