Anyone speak Norwegian ?

The 30-somethingth annual Fryerstown Antique and Collectibles Fair is on again this coming Australia Day weekend, and a fair percentage of the stallholders are already open for a bit of 'Early Bird' action.
There is the usual mix of the genuine and the not-so-genuine, the overpriced tat and the occasional genuine bargain - all covered with a fine, fine layer of Fryerstown dust.

As usual, I set my budget [ and then added an extra $20 'running-away-from-home-money in the back pocket 'just in case' ]
As usual, I ended up spending every last cent of it.

It is entirely possible that there may have been a few purchases of 'not at all antique' blue-and-white china that just happened to match some already in my kitchen cupboards
but that was just bye the bye.
It is also entirely possible that there may have been a couple of things that were vaguely cat shaped.
Also completely bye the bye.

What I was really hunting for, and signally failing to find, were vintage Christmas postcards [ couldn't seem to find vintage postcards of any sort really ]
until
I was almost ready to admit defeat and haul my hot, sunburned and weary carcass back to the car
and then there they were
on the penultimate stall - and under cover, with a handy chair and a fan - four shoe boxes of old postcards.
Most were only a dollar or two, and joy of joys:
a vast number of seasonal ones, mostly American, and none of them ones that I recognised ... Woo! and, may I add, Hoo!


Somewhat predictably there followed about an hour of me sitting, and sorting, and culling, and counting, and calculating, and checking the contents of my purse to see if the amount of money left had somehow magically increased in the last ten minutes
... at the end of which my formerly quite modest collection of Christmas postcards had increased about threefold.

and yes there are a couple of ring-ins at the bottom

I shall have to come up with a new method of display for next Christmas.
Oh dear, now won't THAT be a hardship?

All of which brings us to the explanation for the title of this post


This card is Norwegian and, thanks to the wonder that is Google, I know that the first bit says " Happy New Year"

... anyone able to enlighten me about the rest : Med Frid Och Hop !

and the moral of this tale ?
It is NEVER too early to be thinking about Christmas !

Finally! - as promised part deux

Back in early November, I posted about the first of a pair of goth inspired gauntlets that I was designing/making for Nadie's workplace Christmas 'do' which was to be held at Witches In Britches Theatre Restaurant
I didn't ever post a photo of the finished pair - and of course there were several pointed requests to see Nadie all 'gothed up', so here she is:
Can you believe that she used to get teased at primary school about her luscious Angelina Joli lips ? Bet those mean little coots are all eating their words now !!

and the knitty stuff for those who care about such things:
Because the gauntlets are constructed lengthwise, working out the matching increase/decrease for the point attached to the finger loop - while simultaneously maintaining the eyelet pattern - was an interesting exercise.
The increase side was easy enough - the YO to make the lace pattern was done without a corresponding K2tog - but the decrease side was a totally different matter. Now I can't remember whether I solved it by doing a YO,K3tog or whether it was k2tog, YO, k2tog. I'm inclined to think the latter and I'll know for sure if I get a chance to have another look at the finished article up close and personal.

Jackson Pollock eat your heart out

I decided that Dave needed to spend a little less time in front of the tv today
and I had a long, thin pre-primed canvas that I had no immediate plans for.
So
I undercoated it in pale blue/grey and then turned David loose with the paints.
The colour choices were mine and I limited his palette to teal, white and copper.
I think he was humoring me as much as anything, but he obliged with a few swipes at the canvas and then got the giggles when I showed him how to make spatters by tapping the brush.
If we'd had a painting session on paper the result would probably be stuck on the fridge, or used as wrapping paper for the next outgoing birthday gift
but instead it is hanging in his bedroom and I think it looks pretty damn good

Isn't it interesting how working on a proper stretched canvas immediately imparts ... something ... a weight ... a validity ... to the result ?

Pumpkin Scones anyone?

Last Saturday I felt compelled to make pumpkin scones for afternoon tea ... albeit very heavily modified ones.
Due to the food sensitivities and outright allergies of a certain visitor, we left out the sugar ... and the egg ... and used dairy free margarine and gluten-free flour.

I'm not sure that Lady Bjelke-Peterson would approve ... but, if nothing else, they proved once again, the adaptability of the humble pumpkin scone. Even if they were a bit flat.

Anyway, as that certain visitor wasn't up this weekend, David and I made a batch this afternoon that was a little more in the spirit of the original.


Although I still left out the sugar - pumpkin is sweet enough for me - and there may have been a few herbs ... and just a touch of garlic ... and it was still the dairy-free margarine.
... and I'm not sure what Lady Flo would've thought of the fresh goats cheese that was piled onto the piping hot results

but

despite the liberties that I took with an Aussie icon, the result was totally soft and moist and completely yummo

and with a nice cup of Lady Grey


What more could one ask for on a Saturday afternoon ?

Aussie Pumpkin Scones

1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup sugar [ i generally omit this ]
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 beaten egg
1 cup cold mashed cooked pumpkin [ Jap or Kent for preference ]
2 cups self-raising flour

Beat butter, sugar and salt. Add egg and pumpkin.
Stir in flour by hand
press or roll and cut into rounds.
Place on greased tray in a very hot oven [ 230C] for 15-20 minutes

serve hot or cold, split with butter

I sometimes add a little grated tasty cheese to the mix, but omitted it this time in favour of spreading them with fresh creamy goat cheese

Stash busting of the fabric persuasion

Six years or so ago, or about the time that the drawer of seasonal prints exploded, spawning an additional large box of bits and pieces, the detritus of 20 odd years of making Christmas 'stuff', I had the bright idea of cutting the smaller bits into random width strips about 6" long.

The aim was to make enough to join them together into a nice simple strippy Chinese-Coins style Christmas quilt, quickly done with the brain more-or-less in neutral.
Then I moved house and they got 'misplaced' ... only to surface just before Christmas '08, when I made a few more, and got as far as pinning them up on the design wall.
... and there they sat until that Christmas was over.

If I'd gone ahead and finished it at that point, it would've been somewhere between a cot[crib] quilt and a lap sized one.

Of course, if I'd done that, you would have already seen it, so the fact that I'm bringing it up now kinda confirms that I didn't give it another thought. At least, not until a couple of weeks ago when I yanked the tub out again.

and promptly decided to discard quite a few of the ones that I'd already done.

Fast forward through intermittent bouts of mindless cutting and sewing:
the' cot quilt' is now a large queen size


and I decided to do a pieced back as well

rather than go out to buy another 8 metres of fabric

At the moment it's just a top - no quilting yet - but it still looks pretty good spread out on the spare bed

It has been CAT scanned and deemed worthy



and y'know what? I didn't buy so much as a fat quarter of new fabric for this piece and that blasted Christmas fabric drawer is still full.

... and I haven't worked out whether I'm really, really late with this quilt ... or doing spectacularly well for Christmas 2010

Anyone care to guess ?

... what the heck this is?



Perhaps it will help if I tell you that these photos were taken [ by Nadie ] immediately before the Christmas just behind us, and represent all of the constituent parts of a little guy who would've really enjoyed hanging out with all the 'cool kids' in my kitchen

[ some of whom are just visible behind that chair ]


were it not for the fact that I then proceeded to completely ignore the pleas for completion issuing from the knitting basket under the coffee table until TODAY ... when it took me all of half an hour to sew the poor benighted little mite together


just in time for him to join his snowy brethren in storage till next Christmas

The last thing that I heard as I shut the door on the shed, was a small voice threatening to report me to the RSPCS [ Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Snomes ]
Should I be worried ?

pattern:
Snomes by Alan Dart from Simply Knitting [UK] #8
yarn:
Sirdar Snowflake Chunky
plus scraps of DK yarns for the nose, hat and scarf
needles:
4.5mm KP Options

Today also involved reading, gardening, quilting and a modicum of tv, and the absolute minimum of anything that could actually be deemed either cleaning or catering.

What's On In Castlemaine

My friend Sylvia Reeve and I spent this morning hanging a few of our pieces in the Phee Broadway Theatre / Castlemaine Library foyer

It was quite possibly the easiest 'hanging' I've ever been a party to.
No recalcitrant quilt stands that wait until you get a whole row organised and then collapse.
No hanging system designed by the Spanish Inquisition.
Just nice sensible gallery tracking that does what it says on the box, and an equally nice, shiny, new District Arts Officer who was prepared to stay and help us. Granted, part of his willingness to stay was because he'd never hung a show using this system and so was curious to try it out, but hey... I don't question a guy's motives.
He was willing to help AND more importantly, he had a much longer reach than either of us AND didn't need to be asked to move the ladder!


you can probably see that tracking over Sylvia's head. Each length of clear nylon - think 'fishing line' but much thicker - has a little metal jigger at one end that fits neatly into the track and those little silver things [ with hanging hook attached ] that you can see just above the quilts move up or down the line and then are screw tightened into place. Just brilliant.
I know a couple of people who have invested in similar systems for hanging their art / quilts in their homes and if I ever won the lottery I think I'd join their number
... but as I never buy Lotto tickets ... well ...'t'aint gonna happen anytime soon :]

Anyway, we hung three quilts each - none of them new - and these three quilts are my contributions

Winter's Song:
hand dyed, painted, printed and stencilled fabric, machine pieced and quilted

Floating World:

shibori dyed fabric, machine pieced, hand applique, hand and machine quilted

and

Peace:
[ so called because that's what the Japanese kanji symbol is ]


machine pieced, hand applique, reverse applique, shibori and hand dyed fabric, hand quilted


the final result:

If you happen to be in Castlemaine between now and Feb 10, you can see them in the flesh so to speak
and don't forget to stick your head in the door of the Library and check out the wonderful [ huge ] bookshelf quilt made a few years ago by the Friends Of The Castlemaine Library [ F.O.C.A.L. ] under the enthusiastic guidance of the inimitable Jappa

okay, so I ... and then ... but ...

Well m'dears, the computer is back in action [ et moi aussi ] albeit temporarily until Doctor Chris, aka The Boy, all round computer genius and future son-in-law, has the time to build me a you-beaut-whiz-bang new one.

'd'ya miss me ?

because I have spent the last couple of weeks feeling as though my right arm was missing

anyway the upshot of being unable to blog since Christmas is that there's been far too much H2O under the bridge to even contemplate catching you up properly

the precis version:

Christmas was good
New Years pretty much didn't exist
I never DID get most of my cards written [ and the strike caused the PO to run out of stamps anyway ]
there has been a lot of crocheting - mostly snowflakes for next Christmas - and I've designed a new one which will be a freebie once I write it out properly
I finished a quilt at 1/4 to midnight on NYE
there have been visitors
there has been the ritual post-Christmas cleanup and concomitant annual rethink of the decorating [ ongoing ]
I've read 9 books since NYE
the aircon/heating is in and mostly working, but they need to come back because of a faulty fan and a half-arsed installation job
yesterday was 43 point something degreesC [ 109 and a bit ]
today much the same
the garden is just hanging on by its roots
the goats seem unaffected so long as they're adequately fed and watered and seem to be spending most of their time sunbathing . Silly bloody animals.
I had an echidna visit the garden last night but 't'was too dark for photography so here's one I prepared earlier
... and here's your bit of Aussie Zoology 101 for today: Echidnas are monotremes, related to platypus, in that they are both egg-laying mammals, and have no relationship whatsoever to porcupines. They eat white ants [ termites ] and although one doesn't often see them - being mainly nocturnal and also very shy - it's quite evident that they've been visiting judging by the funnel shaped holes left where they've been poking aroung looking for supper.

so that's about it

'catastrophic fire danger' warnings have been issued for most of Victoria, meanwhile a fair bit of the northern half of the east coast [ Queensland and northern NSW ] is trying to recover from equally catastrophic flooding and the northern hemisphere continues to shudder through one of the coldest winters in living memory

Out of action, and gratuitous cat photos

Hi all, Nadie here.

Just a quick note to let you know mum's computer is out of action for the foreseeable future. The monitor decided to die while we were up there for Christmas and we had to bring the whole set up down to Melbourne to ascertain whether it was the 'puter itself or the monitor. On the plus side at least it did happen while we where there, which will cut down on the time it takes to get it all back up and running!

In the meantime here are some unimpressed decorated animals for your amusement. Don't worry, they were not forced to endure this humiliation longer than it took to take the photos, and they all know by now that this is the natural consequence of staying still more than 5 minutes in chez catsmum at this time of year.





My girls, once prised out from under assorted beds to travel there and back, settled in well. Sumi has declared that next time she wants alternative travel arrangements.



Hope you had a great Christmas!
x Nadie

'T'was the night before Christmas ...

I have accepted - albeit without much in the way of good grace - that there was little point to putting up the usual complement of Christmas trees - so I am making do with the small one already in my bedroom and the wooden Balinese one in the rumpus room ...
but that doesn't mean that I am admitting defeat in the decorating stakes.

This morning The Boy [ DD's fiance ] helped me drag the last 'kitchen' box and the three 'rumpus room' boxes down from the shed and within an hour or so, that end of the house was transformed:

a sackful of santas [ or would that be a 'Ho-Ho-Ho' of santas ? ]


a hug of bears


a flock of sheep [ with one caprine ring-in and a stray reindeer]


a patchwork table runner [ designed as an end-of-year project for a class some years ago ]


can you spot the kookaburra-with- santa-hat ?
and it may be a bit hard to see because of the angle, but there's a matching echidna just to the left of the angel plate - and that stitchery at the back? it says ' even our cats believe in Santa '

but 't'is late and Santa's on his way, so, in the words of the classic poem, may I wish you ...
A Merry Christmas to all
and to all a good night

Better Late than Never

Yesterday was forecast to be as hot as Hades. Today was going to be hotter than Hades,
So when did the A/C guys turn up to spend two days climbing around inside my roof? Yes, 8.30 yesterday morning !
Bear was thrilled: so many people to bark at hysterically


The temperature inside the tin roof was probably around 50C for much of the day [ 120 something F ] - well it would have to have been because it got to over 40C outside today and I guess we all know what tin roofs are like - but the installers had procrastinated so many times that they had run out of options, and someone higher up the chain of command had decreed that it was going to be done by Christmas, come hell or high water.

Of course all this work entailed the power [ and therefore the fans which, ineffective though they might be, are normally marginally better than nothing ] being shut off for most of yesterday.
It was 'orrible
and last night offered little in the way of relief because the house had heated up to the point where it just wasn't going to cool down
and did I care ?
well ... honestly ... yes,
but not as much as I would have normally
because today would see the end of days like that

Nadie and Chris and the Grandkittens arrived for the holidays at about 1.30

by 2.30pm the guys were getting ready to go and the coooooooooooooooool was on!

umm mostly

they will need to come back because one of the fan units was faulty [ which they know about ] and also - and a totally separate issue - the airflow to 2 of the bedrooms is minimal [ which they don't know about, but will fix if they expect to get paid ]

Barring some major tinkering with time-and-space [ where's The Doctor when you need him? ] it would be a physical impossibility to do 10 days worth of seasonal decorating in the one day left before Christmas
but I gave it a seriously good try:
Let the celebrating commence!

no they're not here yet

the A/C guys didn't turn up again, even though I was assured at 9 am that it was happening today - embarrassed phone call from the poor harassed girl in the office at 1 pm to confirm what I'd already managed to work out: They weren't coming.
What a surprise.
Ahh well, I guess , in the grand scheme of things, my undecorated-for-Christmas house is not the end of the world [ but it certainly doesn't feel very much like Christmas ]

Yesterday, being grandson's third berfday, David and I spent what seemed like half the day in the car, driving down to Melbourne, picking up MIL, and then out to Berwick.[ almost a three hour trip each way once you factor in picking up Grandma ]
The 'Not-going-to much-trouble-because pregnant-DIL is-so-exhausted-so-just-grandparents-Dave-and-Nadie' had morphed into 'everyone we ever knew and their kids'

net result: one totally over-stimulated little man who wouldn't come near me or his carefully thought out presents


So basically a very long day - and especially so for Bear who spent it shut in La Casa Caprine, aka the goat shed ... without goats ... which was infinitely preferable to him being inside for 8 hours without a loo break but not much fun

Edited to add:
late breaking news!!
Dateline: Tuesday December 22, 8.30 am - they're here, they're here !!!!!

Fabulous Friday [ Christmas ] Fotos

Well, I did finally get that celebratory coffee - except it wasn't a coffee at all, but rather a Dragon [ chilli-flavoured ] Chai - when I met Marcie and Jeanette at the Coffee Bean this morning, and a nice time was had by all. Strangely enough, given that all three of us are quilters, I don't recall there being any quilty conversation, other than a mention of the quilt group's Christmas GTG last weekeend, that both Jeanette and I missed. I know we talked about blogging and family and Christmas and my birthday or lack thereof, and yes, okay, I will admit to a certain amount of cursing the A/C installers who theoretically are arriving at 8am Monday

... anyway, moving on to today's visual component: some more images of the decos in my bedroom, seeing it's the only bit properly decorated.


Saint Nick with his patchwork cloak which you totally can't see so you have to take my word for it that he's wearing an outfit pieced together from many different cream fabrics,


and assorted cream angels - heavy on the lace and vintage buttons


now this particular angel, with the fine embroidery on satin, I didn't make. She was a gift from my friend Peggy, and all the more precious because Peg passed away some years ago


you can also see the vintage/antique ivory stiletto and the tiny quilt stencil that I bought in Paducah, KY, in 1996. I also have an even tinier version of it ... somewhere ... which is only about an inch high and therefore very easily misplaced

... old knitting gauges, mercury glass, pewter angels, and a garland made of vintage-style buttons

AND finally:
this wonderful icicle which is all of ten inches long

my Christmas present from Jeanette. For now it's hanging from the light fitting in my room but I suspect it will move into the Big Room next year.

an emotionally charged day

Ask almost anyone with a birthday that falls in December, and they'll probably have a few words to say about the general unfairness of birthdays near Christmas - overlooked, barely acknowledged, or missed entirely
[ Marc's most famous effort was to completely forget my 30th birthday - which meant that the kids did too - and he was only reminded that evening when we went to a Christmas party and someone wished me many happy returns ! ]
In my case it gets a little more complicated because my beloved of 25 years passed away on my natal day in 1999

... which means that people are often unsure how to handle the day, and to be perfectly honest, I'm unsure how to handle the day a lot of the time. Most years I do manage to still feel as though it's my birthday but it's never completely without some shadows, and self-evidently, I do still feel a compelling need to mention it.

and that was yesterday

it was - for the most part - not a particularly good day this year. Usually I can count on a friend or two to meet me for a coffee, or lunch or some such but everyone was working [ and yes, Marcie, I know I should've rung you ]
There were no early morning phone calls
... and it was bloody HOT: 40C / 104F [ feel free to insert rude thoughts about those A/C guys here ]


What kept me going was
a] some retail therapy in the form of a floaty purple sundress
and
b] the prospect of a Christmas BBQ pool party for dinner - and a good sing - with the other members of the Peace Choir. I'd promised that Dave and I would be there, so that was where we went.
and somewhat predictably
It was just what was needed:
truly fabulous and eclectic house set on a heavily treed and very private bush block within 3 minutes of the town centre
great company [ Albert under the hat, Jacinta, Robyn and Marlene ]
good food
good music[ Jane and James ]

and we only managed to prise David out of the pool with the promise of chargrilled bits of cow!