Is it safe to come out yet ?

After innumerable trips up and down the Highway, and with the help of a few good men ... and women ... Nadie and The Boy, and their goods, chattels and livestock [ aka the grandkittens Sumi and Suki ] are here.

Not quite what you'd call squared away yet.
That's still a work in progress

mainly for my overseas friends: the floods

I'm aware from comments here and on Facebook, just how much coverage overseas has been devoted to the recent & ongoing flood situation, but I also know that my overseas friends don't really have a way of measuring the sheer SCALE of the disaster... or indeed any way of knowing where I am in relation to those scenes of devastation.

so
just so's you know:

Not just Queensland - which copped the worst of it - but also vast areas of New South Wales, Victoria [ which is where I am ] and even Tasmania have experienced flooding.
You look at a map of Australia and we're talking almost the entire eastern third of a country that is not that much smaller than Continental USA [ if you don't count Alaska ]

I'm one of the lucky ones.

Nothing worse than a bit of storm water through the big shed, and the frustrations of trying to get down to Melbourne the other day ... which by the way I succeeded in doing not too long after the last missive.
The creek that forms my neighbours-over-the-road's back boundary rose enough to cut about 100m of the dirt road that leads to the Pyrenees Highway, so I had to detour in and out the 'back way', but get through I did without risking life or limb.

Now, in a water related segue, according to my understanding [ via the Almightly ABC* ] the insurance industry apparently differentiates between 'stormwater' which is what came down the hill and through my shed, and for which I and many others are covered, and 'floodwater' which is what happens when a creek or river overflows its banks, and for which almost everyone is not insured.

Bloody semantics!

Am I alone in thinking that it totally stinks that people who have faithfully paid their premiums year in year out, thinking that they were covered for any and all eventualities, are now finding out that they will be refused their claims ?

and off the soapbox now



* National Television Broadcaster

change of plans

It stopped raining a couple of hours ago.
so I packed Dave, Bear and a load of cleaning products into the car, and set off for Melbourne.

In case you're unaware, Nadie is currently trying to clean and pack for the immanent move up here.
I think we can agree that moving house is stressful at the best of times, but imagine trying to do it with both arms in splints! [ work injury, long story ]
Hence the maternal visitation last weekend to lend a literal helping hand or two at the Pre-Move Garage Sale, and theoretically again today to do a spot of cleaning & bring back the Grandkittens.

That was the plan
but you all know about the best laid plans o' mice, men and Catsmums, don't you ?

things 'gang[ed] aft aglay' in a big way

all ways to & through Castlemaine currently cut by storm water to some degree ...

Police were diverting traffic away from one sheet of water, only to have those cars intercepted a bit further on by another lot of constabulary and sent circling back to the first lot ... and so on ...

I didn't have my usual desire to pull over and take photos, even though some of it was quite spectacular. I've just seen a little too much television coverage this week of people's lives and livelihoods being destroyed.

so here I am back at home
feeling fairly b****y useless

will try to get out to the Calder again later

Sorry if I worried anyone

No funny/witty posts tonight.
It's been a long and mostly negative week

Last weekend was excruciatingly hot.
I got badly sunburned [ sunscreen, hat, shade sail, the whole nine yards, and still I got scorched ]
I lost the stone from my engagement ring.

It took 5 days to get the Christmas stuff down and semi squared away

It's been raining pretty much constantly since Sunday.
The weather [ or possibly all the packing/unpacking ] is playing havoc with the FMS.

Like everyone else in the country I'm sick at heart about the incredible scale of the losses of Queensland floods, and trying not to whinge about the fact that my big shed just got inundated for the third time since September because it seems so paltry stacked up against what those poor people have to endure.

So that's it

Family and friends in Queensland are flooded but okay
Tomorrow - if the roads are passable - I'm going down to Melbourne to collect the Grandkittens.

Expect feline hostilities to commence shortly after my return!

an omission rectified

While she didn't exactly take me to task, my darling girl did express some surprise that I hadn't shared photos of these recent interesting garden visitors:

this moth was about 7.5 cm or 3" long, and presumably asleep clinging to the flyscreen.

I didn't manage to catch him awake but you can still see his beautiful barred wings

and this impressive mantis/stick insect thingy got him/her self trapped in my bug zapper, but managed to escape before I had to do something drastic like dismantle the thing to free it.

He/she was quite happy to hop a ride on my hand to the slightly more salubrious surroundings of a eucalypt and stayed there long enough for a photo session.

and The Girl herself took this last pic of one of my occasional guests ...

this totally weird, spiky, little spider, the Spiny Spider, Austracantha minax.

Despite numerous attempts, I've never quite managed to catch her in focus, even in macro, probably because she's really tiny ... about a centimetre across.

If you're wondering why I'm calling it 'she' with such conviction, the males are even smaller.

Anyway, Nadie had a go at taking the shot from a bit further out and I just cropped in closer.
Success!

booklist 2010 and breaking news

Back in August, Ms Gayle of Mangofeet - based on shared tastes - suggested Lois McMaster Bujold as an author whose work I might enjoy.
She was right
so I'm giving you my completed list for last year and, if you can be bothered wading through it, please feel free to suggest other authors that you think might be a good fit.

I haven't included textile or art titles as I rarely read every word of those so they don't count

January:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JKR
The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown ( disappointing )
Loving Richard Feynman - Penny Tangey ( Young adult - okay except the weak ending )
From Dead to Worse - Charlaine Harris
Living Dead In Dallas - CH
Green Mill Murder - KG
Blood and Circuses - KG
Ruddy Gore - Kerry Greenwood
Urn Burial - KG
Raisins and Almonds - KG book 10
Death Before Wicket - KG
Away With the Fairies - KG
Murder In Montmartre - KG
Queen of the Flowers - KG
Murder In The Dark - KG
The Persian Pickle Club - Sandra Dallas
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul - DA
Cocaine Blues - KG
Forbidden Fruit - KG book 20
Dead Until Dark - CH
Club Dead - CH
Skin Trade - Laurell K Hamilton
Seventh Son - Orson Scott Card
Red Prophet - OSC
Prentice Alvin: OSC
Alvin Journeyman - OSC
Heartfire - OSC

February
Crystal City - Orson Scott Card
The Fire Rose - Mercedes Lackey book 30
Dead to The World - Charlaine Harris
Dead As A Doornail - CH
Definitely Dead - CH
Dead and Gone - CH
Phoenix and Ashes - ML
The Wizard of London - ML
Swallowing Darkness - LKH
Shakespeare’s Landlord - CH
All Together dead - CH
Shakespeare’s Champion - CH book 40
Shakespeare’s Christmas - CH
Shakespeare’s Trollop - CH
Shakespeare’s Counselor - CH

March
Inkspell - Cornelia Funke
InkHeart - Cornelia Funke
The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club - Gil McNeil
The Lover’s Knot - Clare O’Donaghue ( had trouble finishing this one … too contrived )

April
Handfasted - Catherine Helen Spence
A Knight Of The Word - Terry Brooks
Running With the Demon - TB book 50
The Patient’s Eyes - David Pirie
The Night Calls - DP
The Dark Water - DP

May
Jane Bites Back
Jane Austen Ruined My Life ( MEH! )
Turn Coat - Jim Butcher
Dirt Music - Tim Winton ( IRL bookclub )

June/July
The Science of Discworld 1
Last Continent - TP ( reread)
The Jerilderie Letter - Ned Kelly ( IRL bookclub ) book 60
The Magicians - Lev Grossman
The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie - Alan Bradley

August
The Childrens Bach - Helen Garner ( IRL bookclub )
Jingo - Terry Pratchett ( reread )
Grave Surprise - Charlaine Harris
An Ice Cold Grave - CH
Grave Secret - CH

September
Grave Sight - CH
The Curse of Challion - Lois McMaster Bujold
The Paladin of Souls - LMB book 70
The Hallowed Hunt - LMB

October
Love In A Cold Climate - Edith Warton
Twighlight - Stephanie Meyer
New Moon - SM
Eclipse - SM
New Dawn - SM
Beguilement - LMB

November
Dead In The Family - CH
Unseen Academicals - TP
The Science of Discworld II; The Globe - Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen book 80
Legacy - LMB
Passage - LMB
Horizon - LMB

December
Real Murders - CH
A Bone To Pick - CH
Three Bedrooms, One Corpse - CH
The Julius House - CH
A Fool & His Honey - CH
Last Scene Alive - CH
Poppy Done To Death - CH book 90
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
Dead Man’s Chest - Kerry Greenwood
Devil Bones - Kathy Reichs

reading
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

so suggest away!

and now to the breaking [ momentous ] news:

No, nobody's pregnant as far as I know

but

[drum roll please cos this is happy news ]

My son-in-law has snagged a job transfer to Bendigo and so, within the next few weeks, he, Nadie and the Grandkittens will be moving in Chez Catsmum for a period as yet to be determined but not less than 6 months, and possibly considerably longer.

happy dance!

racing towards the finish line

It has been a week of extremes
half the country is under water. Seriously under water.
Not here though.
After all the rain we had in October/November, the dams are still delightfully full, but there's been little evidence of moisture of late.

A week ago we had overnight lows of 4C/39F
... and today?
While it wasn't the hottest New Year's Eve I've experienced up here [ that distinction belongs to ... I think ... 2006, when it reached 48C, and was still over 40 at midnight ]
it did still get to 40.9. That's 105.6F!
4 degrees above freezing to " OMG I'm going to die of heat prostration" in less than a week.
Makes it very difficult to acclimatise
especially for the elderly.
My 90 year old, just-had-a-triple-bypass, darling Godmother came up for the day today, and I just kept thinking
"Thank God for the A/C"

After the visitors left, I was at a bit of a loose end, pottered around a bit, knitted some lace, browsed a couple of books ... your basic dithering
then I decided to make another of those wrap aprons. Ma-in-law liked her Christmas one so much, I promised her another for her natal day in March.
I'm not sure whether this will be it.


It might be.
Or it might be for DIL who said she'd certainly wear one.

At least this way I've got MIL covered :)


anyway
Happy New Year to you and yours, from me and mine
and I'll be back tomorrow with news of some big changes Chez Catsmum

sometimes ...

it all comes together

right place
right time

and with camera in hand:

Last Minute Christmas Sewing

I never do this
never
ever
I don't race around at the last minute trying to finish off gifts ... mainly because that's normally a sure fire recipe for having everything go wrong, right ?
but here's the thing
even though MIL is blind and won't know the difference, I really wasn't happy with the wrap-around apron that I made for her.
It is pretty enough, and would serve the stated purpose, but there were things about the finishing that I wasn't thrilled with: the purchased bias was too narrow and I didn't really like the way I'd zig-zagged in on.
So I've just spent a couple of hours making version 2.0,

and this time I grabbed a hunk of contrast fabric and cut 2" bias strips with my rotary cutter, then fed them through my handy dandy [ seldom used ] Clover 1" bias maker.
Much much better.
and no I'm not showing you the first one.
That was the whole point of remaking it.

one sleep to go!!

Be Warned

Basically, if you put your head through my door between the start of December and January 6th [ Twelfth Night ] you are going to find yourself admiring the Christmas decorations whether you want to or not
and I will grasp at any excuse that will get a few extra people through the door.

... you have a busload of Senior Cits to entertain? Bring 'em over
... require a venue for this year's choir break-up party? No worries!

Need to kill 90 minutes or so with two busloadsof disabled adults from David's thursday social club before pizza-dinner-and-Christmas-Lights-Tour ? *


Bring 'em here for junkfood, a visit from multiple Santas - and an elf - plus presents, candy canes, and a total overload of Christmasness

and someone obviously knows the hostess well:

I scored a really nice Christmas mug stuffed full of Robert Timms coffees, shortbread, & Twinings teas: English & Irish Breakfast, Earl Grey and Prince of Wales.

If you'll pardon me, I'm off to become better acquainted with the Prince of Wales.

* a note for my Northern Hemisphere friends: because we are only a day or so past the Summer Solstice, it doesn't get dark enough to see the Christmas lights until after 9pm. Hence the need to kill some extra time before dinner.

Wee Jake

has had two blood transfusions, has lost a bit of weight, and is being treated for jaundice, but despite all that, is now out of Intensive Care and in the High Dependency Unit. A huge step forward methinks.

... and he's wearing his aunty-made knitteds

A quilt, some goats and a good day out

After His Royal Beariness and I dropped David off in town this morning, we choofed up the Freeway to Bendigo and picked up my newest quilt from Jodi Abel, longarm quilter par excellence.

Ms Jodi has done her usual wonderful job of enhancing my patchwork with her meticulous Japamese inspired machine quilting and I'm thrilled to bits with the result.

Then an already quite good day got even better, as we proceeded out to see PND and Brenda at Emu Creek.
Bear got to visit his extended family, which was why he was along for the ride, and I got to snuzzle - and bottle feed - some of the newest lot[s] of baby goaties:
some beautiful pure-bred Saanans


and some sweet little Nubian cross babies that have the same sire as my Ruby and Rowan.


After a substantial lunch, it was back home [ very carefully ] with a car loaded with wooden pallets, and also my very country Chrissie pressie from PND&B : a spiffy new water gauge to replace my cracked old one, a very fancy goat hoof-pick-and-brush, and last but not least, a box of Ferrero-Rocher chocs.

... and here's the newest quilt in all its oriental splendour ... which could be a pretty good name for it now that I come to think of it. What do you think, hmmm? Oriental Splendour ?
Yes ?
No ?


I still have to put on the binding and hand sew it down but I couldn't resist laying it on the bed,
It'll probably stay like that until after Christmas.

Irony

It is one of the inescapable truths of blogging that the more there is happening in one's life, the less time or inclination there is to blog about it

I would have expected that, because I'm not having the family Christmas dinner here this year, that perhaps the pre-Christmas run-up might be a little calmer than normal

I should have known better

Lunch at Maldon with friends on Thursday [ for my birthday and to stop me from dwelling on the other implications of the date ] was followed by frantic last minute house cleaning before about forty past and present members of our women's acapella choir 'Chat Warblers' descended upon the premises for our annual Christmas knees-up.

So the next few hours yielded
birthday flowers aplenty

copious amounts of delicious edibles,

good friends,
and some really great singing.

Judging on past years, I expected the girls to start heading off at about 9.30 - 10pm, around the time David was dropped back home after a meal at the pub with Carer Graham, but nope. Everyone was still having far too good a time singing to even contemplate leaving.
Not even the ones with an hour drive ahead of them.
The same ones who needed to get up at 6am to get ready for work!

Instead of Dave heading for bed and Graham going home to a well earned rest, the boys both settled into the rumpus room and listened to the carols, etc emanating from the other end of the house in three & four part harmony.

Fast forward to a little past midnight, and was I fast asleep in my virtuous bed ? kitchen clean and shining ?
Aaah ... that would be a no
I think we'd worked our way round to the Banana Boat Song [ Dayo! Da-a-a-y-o! ] and the Happy Wanderer by this stage:


Castlemaine ladies certainly know how to party [ or should that be par-tay ?]
They did eventually all depart, declinig my offer to roll out the sleeping bags

Friday was reserved for doing the dishes,

taking out the rubbish
finding all the hidden champagne flutes,
and making a tally of the things that people had managed to leave behind:

2 tote bags - one with sheet music and one with a large jar of Italian Nougat [ which may not make it back to its owner. Just sayin'!!]
one large salad bowl
one large casserole w lid
one pair of salad tongs
one large serving spoon
one blue cardigan
a marble cheese board
sticky tape
a packet of safety pins

and a bucket of tomato plants


I think they had a good time
I know I certainly did

introducing Jake

my great nephew Jacob was born on November 30, weighing 896 grams or 2 pounds, and 2.5 months early.
This photo was taken on day 14 and already I can see that he definitely favours the Italian side of the family.

I did not make that hat

it's a perfectly nice hat
made no doubt with love and care, to be donated to the NICU


but don't you think he should have a hat made by his great aunt ?
Of course he should!
which is why these will be passed over to his great grandmother tomorrow for delivery asap.



I look at the size of those horrifyingly tiny hats and am just so thankful that Jake is hanging in there.
You know, I've been sending off similar tiny hats for a long, long time, and only rarely have I known the intended recipients. This puts a whole different slant on my NICU knitting which I am struggling to put words to ... and not just mine, of course, but all those other legions of knitters [ and crocheters ] worldwide, churning out tiny garments with just one aim: to keep these fragile little bundles of humanity warmed and comforted.


NOTE: the teeny weeny prem BSJ is an adaptation of the classic EZ Baby Surprise Jacket, as engineered by my friend Yvette
The hats were all just improvised

Victory!

If you'll allow a mountaineering metaphor or three, today we step onto the summit ... the peak ... the pinnacle
After weeks of hard slog and unremitting effort, we have finally reached the other end of the House Tour from whence we started lo, these two weeks ago [ gotta love the opportunity to stick in a 'whence' and a 'lo!']
today we're in the rumpus room ... the domain of Father Christmas ... Saint Nick ... Santa ... aka the fat bloke in the red suit


The room once likened to an explosion at the North Pole


I can never get a truly accurate count, but there's a little over a hundred Santas in here, plus assorted bears and moose in santa suits ... which is probably why I can never get a proper total. Where do I draw the line in defining 'santa-ness'?
Is a bear in a Saint Nicholas robe, complete with luxurious, long, fake santa beard, a santa or not ?
No. I can't decide either.

I try to acquire at least one Father Christmas - bought or made - per year, and usually exceed that quite easily. This year was no exception. Now, okay, this year I didn't make any [ did manage multiple Christmas quilts though !! ] but Nadie bought me three little guys back in July, and I've added another two or three since then from a local gift shop that was changing hands.

There probably won't be time for a post tomorrow - 't'is my natal day, so a lunch out with friends is on the cards, and then a Choral Christmas break-up party here later [ obviously with lots of singing ]
I like to keep busy on the 16th
As well as being my birthday, it's also the day I lost Marc in '99
so mixed emotiions

but I'll be back on Friday

Day 10 : Into Snow Country part 2

and for the crochet challenged amongst my knitterly friends, here's a link to a lovely little KNITTED snowflake:
so you too can have your very own white Christmas

Day 9 - Into Snow Country part 1

I was going to act as your guide through the snowy hinterlands of my kitchen, but the family members who were coming tonight ... and then were probably going to leave it until tomorrow ... are back to coming up tonight
[ and don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled to get more time with them ]
but I'm afraid my brain translated 'probably' into 'we are coming tomorrow morning'
... so now I'm going to have to leave you to your own devices, while I get stuck into the vacuuming that I really knew I should be doing today instead of


reading another Charlaine Harris [ Poppy Done To Death ]


and starting a new Christmas quilt [ triangles ]


and watching Dr Who DVDs.

Christmas House Tour 2010 Day 8

As you can probably tell from the glimpse of vintage postcards in the extreme left of the photo, we've just moved a little further along the wall from yesterday.


This is my 'main' tree, and it's decorated with mercury glass

crystal, and frankly-fake acrylic.
This year I stumbled across some palest pale blue baubles [ $1.50 each !! ] ] so I grabbed all eight that the store had in that colour. If they'd had more, I'd probably have bought at least a dozen - or two :)They are so barely blue that I'm sure most people don't see it, but they tone in with the nativity and the newly finished Arctic Saint Nicholas wallhanging


... or wallhangings, depending on your point of view ... it's three separately quilted and bound pieces, which hang as one, but the two star panels can also function on their own as table runners.
The left panel and the centre one have been hanging for the last two weeks ... and looked just fine ... but ... I wanted all three done and crossed off my list.

As Tara can attest, I was still hemming the third panel last night !

This Stack-N-Whack quilt is folded across the back of one of the couches at the moment, but I opened it out for the photo.
I guess I must've made that one in the late '90s. The colours are actually much deeper and richer than the photo has captured but you'll just have to take my word for that.


The reportage has been pretty quilt-centric of late, but that imbalance is about to be addressed Tomorrow it's the kitchen
Snowflake Central!