let me'splain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up ...

Yes, know I sort of promised an update on the weekend ... mea culpa ... but I'm sure you'll all forgive me [ she says, smiling winsomely ]

Basically the last several days have involved:

migraine

weird flickering visual disturbance which was initially put down to migraine-related aura but is now on Day 5, so I'm off to the Doc tomorrow, always provided I can sort out some care arrangement for young David who has been throwing up everything in sight except Gastrolyte since Saturday, and is obviously not going to be well enough to be sent to his Day Placement.

To his credit, Dave has mostly managed to make it to the bathroom, but so far I'm on the third set of sheets/quilt/pillowcases, and have lost count of how many times I've had to scrub the walls in the loo.

The joys of motherhood

So it's currently very quiet round here, what with The Boy spending most of his time in bed.

Good knitting-and-spinning time
equally good quilting time [ and I'll show you all of that in the next post because this is already running on a bit and I'm not finished yet. Not by a long shot. ]

A quiet week - for whatever reason - has a lot of appeal, because the totally yarny insanity of the Wool & Sheep Show [ as already documented ], was followed a week later by the even more insane Quilt & Craft Show at Jeff's Shed.

summing up:
drove down in Tara's new vehicle - berry noice! [Tara seen here in a moment of yarn-fondling]

As planned, we met up with my DD [ seen here with my quilting /knitty friend Luz ]

and knitting friends [ Jackie, Sam with Tara ]

It goes without saying - in the middle of winter - that lots of layers are de rigeur for this sort of outing ... and shawls. Shawls are a must.
Jackie's is Travelling Woman,[ free rav download ] Tara's is an Icarus in baby alpaca, and I was wearing the latest iteration of the Forest Canopy

Of course Nadie and I spent quite some time admiring the Vic Quilter's Annual Quilt Show
[ usually the only reason for attending, because I am not good with large unruly mobs and really hate -with-a-passion the whole business of fighting the crowds around the craft show side of it ]

While Nadie voyaged off in search of wedding related bead supplies, and notwithstanding my crowd-induced discomfort, I girded up my loins, and checked out all the sewing machine vendors, before plonking down a deposit on a Husquvarna Emerald for Nadie
[ and the three Pfaff staffers earn a huge razzie for totally ignoring me for 10 full minutes while they mostly socialised with the booth next door. I was NOT quiet about the reason for my displeasure as I - and my money - left ]

Fast forward to the end of our time at the Show: apart from The Girl's sewing machine, I'd only bought one skein of Collinette and two FQs of Japanese fabric ... umm ... well ... that is, until I saw a Christmas-goodies stand on the way out, and blew the rest of my budget.
Nadie's comment was " I thought you were pretty restrained actually. You could've bought half that stand! "

Train out to Nadie's for tea, and modelling of the newly presented scarf and beanie in Melbourne Storm colours, which she wore to the match that night. [ they won ]I was supposed to be going back into town and the Opera [ Handel. Julius Caesar] when the kids headed off to the footy, but was so tired I opted to just go home

big mistake
BIGBIGBIG mistake
Vline, had cancelled a bunch of country trains due to track work, replacing them with a partial Coach service and then train from Sunbury. I won't bore you with the details of the trip, other than to say that what should have been less than a 2 hour train journey became over 4 hours, much of it spent waiting in freezing conditions in a cavernous bus terminal

the week since has been spent
knitting Nadie some gauntlets to match the beanie & scarf combo
matching Storm Beanie for The Boy [ Nadie's Boy that is ]
knitting myself a warmer shawl-for-waiting-in-bus-terminals
pedicuring four very unco-operative goats
wrestling with rocks and recycled fence posts and several barrow loads of dirt to create a new garden bed, sited to take advantage of the overflow pipe from the roof


Reasonably gratuitous Bear included for scale

and I've just realised tomorrow is my 4th Blogiversary