The Longest Time

Posted on December 11, 2006 | 5 comments

Q. What does an dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac do?
A. Lies awake at night wondering if there really is a dog.

Heh. I felt the need for an icebreaker – you know, it’s been so long and all, we probably need to get to know one another all over again. That’s been one of my favourite (clean) jokes ever since I learned what all those big words meant!

For those who have asked after my wellbeing, rest assured, I’m fine, just tired, and for the last while, not inclined to blog. There are only so many times I can write “Niamh still not sleeping, Mel still a complete zombie, oh woe is me”, and only so many times you want to read about it! But hey… just for good measure, here’s one more 🙂 …

It has got to the point where I am only hearing two things from friends/family/complete strangers about babies and sleeping – either their babies slept through from about the 6-8 week mark (that used to be me), or, they didn’t sleep through until about two. No inbetween – why is there no damn inbetween!!! Where are all the babies who sleep through from about six months? (Which, incidentally, Niamh turned, just a short week ago.) The cumulative effect of six months of this on my psyche is not great 😥 I’m completely unsurprised by studies showing links between infant sleep issues and post-partum depression. And I feel completely ashamed of the smugness I once felt as a new mother of a baby who slept. How lucky I was!

To give Niamh some credit… there was a week, not so long ago, that she had only one wake a night (around 3-4 am) per night on five out of seven nights. That was awesome! True to form though, she backtracked. She does that.

Aside from the sleep issues, things have been super busy. November on the calendar was even more cram-packed than December, which is unusual. The weekend away I spoke of in my last post was bliss. The sheer silence of being away in the country with no electronic buzz (not even a television) is wonderful.

We were away again the following weekend (it was a much noisier, much more chaotic weekend), and then the weekend after that there was a state election to go vote in, a family 21st birthday party to attend, and a lovely Sunday brunch with friends for me. Then… oh jeez, I can’t even remember, everything seems so long ago. There have been a couple of trips to the zoo – once was for the FOTZ (Friends Of The Zoo) Christmas party, which was lots of fun; and a trip to the Werribee open-range zoo. There’ve been some great days to swim, and others to stay inside away from the blazing sun. And yet another (November 15) which was so ridiculously cold it snowed in some areas of the state – in November – in Australia! Most unfortunately for us, that day was also Finn’s pre-school excursion day. We rugged up and went to spend some time on the farm, but by heck we were cold!

(Sadly, those same areas which received snow not a month ago, are currently ablaze in a scary start to the bushfire season.)

Gosh, this got kind of rambly, didn’t it? Anyway, the point was, I just wanted to let you know I’m here, and even, despite all of the above, managing to do a few stitchy things and crafty things, even some dyeing (though my Pay-it-forward-ees will probably have to wait until after Christmas to receive their goodies.) I’ve actually enjoyed my unplanned, unannounced hiatus from blogging, but hopefully I’ll be back a bit sooner next time, and possibly even with some pics.

Oh, oh, oh, and btw… here are those all important ‘milestone’-y things – Niamh popped out a couple of teeth on November 16, and she is also… wait for it… crawling 😮 A full month before Finn did!

(Maybe that’s why she doesn’t sleep… too busy being active.)

5 Comments

Posted in Family, General Ramblings, The Kids

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More Strawberry Trials

Posted on November 9, 2006 | 9 comments

Lone Strawberry
Looks lonely, doesn’t it? Following ‘the bird incident‘, we netted our strawberries… only to then come face to ugly face with an infestation of slaters. Who apparently lurve strawberries almost as much as Finn. Grrrr. I’m beginning to feel the same way about organic gardening as I do about natural birth. It’s all good in theory, but when it comes down to the crunch, gimme the drugs! It’s a struggle, and I’m not sure I have the energy to keep it up this year. Birds are eating or destroying seeds and seedlings almost as fast as we can get them in, and when the birds can’t get them, you can be sure something else can.

Very occasionally, we get to profit from our efforts. If I’m quick, I get to eat some fresh peas before Finn gobbles the lot. Or a strawberry (I had to place this one safely out of reach to get a photograph for you 🙂 ).

This time tomorrow (or slightly earlier, in fact), I hope to be kicking back in a spa bath with a glass of champagne (just the one, mind you… still breastfeeding)! We’re going away for the weekend to celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary. It’s not quite as romantic as it sounds though, since we’re taking the kids, and we’re just going to my mum’s ‘spare house’ (it’s kind of their holiday house, but it’s only 15 minutes away from their actual home!) Regardless, it should be fun, and most importantly, there’s no internet access, no land-line, and not even any mobile coverage (for our particular carrier anyway). Bliss!

So I’ll see you on the other side of the weekend. Have a wonderful one 🙂

9 Comments

Posted in Family, From The Garden, The Kids

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Paying It Forward

Posted on November 4, 2006 | 6 comments

In the absence of much advice from you, dear readers, I had to make up my own mind on what to spend my recent earnings. I decided in the end to add to my dyeing stash rather than my stitching stash (is it actually possible I’m approaching SABLE with my stitching stash?) So I bought some more white fabrics (including opalescents), and have some new dyes coming to me from Kraftkolour. I’m excited about the prospect of returning to some dyeing, and I have some ideas brewing.

Which leads to my next item of business. I’ve spotted this ‘paying it forward’ concept on a couple of blogs lately, and tonight I decided to join in, on Christine’s blog. So here goes:

I will create some ‘piece of art’ for the first five people to respond to this post in the comments below. I’m interpreting ‘art’ fairly loosely here. Given my recent purchases (see above), you can probably guess along the lines of what I would like to create. So if you’re interested, comment away. Next, drop an email to me, letting me know your postal address, and I’ll be in touch 🙂

The catch? You need to blog this too, and ‘pay it forward’ in your own way. Go on… it’ll be fun!

6 Comments

Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Dyeworks, General Ramblings

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Snippets and an SBQ

Posted on November 2, 2006 | 1 comment

I finally finished the last of my marking yesterday. I think I had just about got into the swing of it, but still, I don’t harbour any desire to do it again.

I spent much of yesterday trying to decide whether to sign up for NaBloPoMo after all. In the end, I went to bed early instead, thus missing the signup deadline, and I’m probably glad of that. Also glad of the extra couple of hours of sleep, as Niamh woke up three times again.

In a case of “don’t count your chickens” (re. the camera purchase), my tax return arrived today, and somebody at the ATO has monumentally stuffed up, doing me out of a very substantial amount of family tax benefit. I spent an hour and a half on the phone and down at Medicare today trying to sort it out. We will get the money, but it may take another month. Grrr.

I’ve signed up for another exchange even when I told myself I wouldn’t. Hardanger. Scary.

Christmas is how close? 😮 And I’ve realised that I have to make Niamh a Santa Sack. Like this one of Finn’s. It’s an Ellen Maurer Stroh free design – I think I’ll use the reindeer design for Niamh.

SBQ from today:

How did you decide on the title of your stitching blog? Was it random, or does it have a special meaning to you or about you?

Erm… I think I was kind of trying to be clever. Or something. Something about “The journey of a million stitches begins with a single cross”. Let’s call it random, anyway. I’ve been considering renaming to “Stitched By Mel” to match the url, but I’m still not sure about that. I feel like this blog is less and less about stitching at the moment, so I’m not sure either the name or the address are particularly appropriate. I have therefore also considered moving the whole blog to a new subdomain and renaming it Blogged.byMel. But I’m somewhat loathe to change the address. I suspect everything will just stay the same… I’m a great procrastinator :giggle:

Edit: Clearly, this entry was written back when the name of the blog was ‘Million Stitches’, and clearly, I eventually moved and renamed the blog 🙂

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Posted in Blog Blather, Counted Stitchwork, Memes

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Happy 31st October

Posted on October 31, 2006 | 2 comments

Happy Halloween, to the Northern-hemisphericans dropping by 🙂 Happy Beltane to those downunder who celebrate the old ways. And… um… Happy Tuesday to the rest of you?

In this household, it seems more like Christmas. Our tax return is through (well, half of it anyway). Usually this time of year means paying off debts – last year we paid off our car and a hefty credit card debt. Thanks in part to the baby bonus and in part to some gruelling overtime hours put in by OtherHalf, we’re reasonably okay on the debt front this year. Apart from the house, that is.

So today, we welcomed this new baby into the house. Isn’t she beautiful? Mmmm… digital SLR goodness. This is a purchase we’ve been planning to make for some time – my (film) SLR camera gave up the ghost recently, and we’ve been meaning to replace our (compact) digital camera with something better, so this is the ‘something better’ we came up with. We (OtherHalf) found a wonderful deal on the body plus two (two!) lenses and a 1GB SD memory card. Part of the attraction of the Nikon is that the remaining film SLR camera in the household is also a Nikon, and the telephoto lens we got with the D50 is fully compatible with both Nikons. Yay! Expect more beautiful photos in my future.

And with that… ‘Blogtober’ is over! I now return you to your regularly scheduled spasmodic blogging. Just kidding. I’m hoping that with my marking commitments behind me, and with Niamh starting to sleep a little better (okay, that’s wishful thinking, I admit) I’ll be stitching and crafting (and photographing finished products) a bit more frequently, so I’ll try and be here a little more as well.

2 Comments

Posted in Blog Blather, General Ramblings

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Remember These?

Posted on October 30, 2006 | 6 comments

Friendship braceletWhen I was in primary school (or was it early secondary school?), these friendship bracelets were all the rage for a while. I built my first (small) DMC stash making these. Some time after, hair-wraps became the in-thing, and I used my floss stash for those as well. So DMC and me, we go way back!

I made this one today for Finn, as a replacement for a peyote stitched wristband I made for him a while ago. The beaded wristband has broken twice, and I figure this will be more durable for a small boy. I only realised how ‘Halloween’-y the colours were when I started tying the knots. Looks pretty cool, don’t you think?

6 Comments

Posted in Kid Crafts, Other Craft

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NaBloPoMo

Posted on October 29, 2006 | 1 comment

Just when I’m drawing close to the end of my self imposed ‘Blogtober‘ challenge, I’ve stumbled across NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month, which is the bloggers’ alternative to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. Dreamed up by this blogger, the idea is simply to post on your blog every single day of November. There are prizes and all! There are also rules about not cheating by altering timestamps, so you know I’d do badly :giggle: Anyway, I’m 100% certain I wouldn’t manage another month of writing every day, so I won’t be signing up. But there are loads of interesting bloggers participating (scroll down this page), so it might be fun to follow along. Let me know if any of you decide to join in 🙂

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Posted in Blog Blather

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One Year On…

Posted on October 28, 2006 | Comments Off on One Year On…

I missed a semi-important anniversary eleven days ago. On the 17th, it was one year since we became home-owners 🙂 I can’t say that we marked the occasion with any celebration though.

It’s a nice thing, to have our own place. It’s still in need of a good deal of work – in a year we haven’t done a great deal to it at all. Partly due to lack of funds, and partly due to lack of energy. The most important thing we have done is tear down the wall between kitchen and lounge, creating one big open-living space. That makes a huge difference to the feel of the place, even though it’s still a bit lacking, cosmetically speaking. The kitchen was rebuilt using the same cabinetry in a different configuration, but with new benchtops, a new sink and tapware, oven, cooktop and rangehood. We finally installed the new tiles a couple of weeks back, and we’ll be repainting the cabinets and attaching new door and drawer handles sometime soon (ish, I hope 😳 ). Then the entire lounge/kitchen/dining area needs painting and the floorboards will be polished sometime in ’07. We move pretty slowly at this stuff (the next door neighbour is putting us to shame), but I truly hope that this time next year I can report much greater progress.

Still. We’ve weathered our first year of mortgage repayments (with two interest rate rises to boot), survived our first taste of actual renovation, and we still like the place. Can’t ask for much more than that.

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Posted in General Ramblings

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Meet Kaitlin

Posted on October 27, 2006 | 3 comments

Kaitlin
I finally sat down this morning to finish off Miss Kaitlin (while giving Finn some lessons in addition, using poker chips – something about that seems not quite right somehow!) As I backstitched the white design on her dress, I realised why I didn’t finish this off before. That is the most finicky little bit of backstitching I’ve ever done – two strands on 32-count (I think), lots of odd little stitches in an area where there’s already a lot of stitching (and I stitched this in the days when I did ¾ stitches instead of half stitches, so there’s added bulk). Ick. Anyway, she’s done now. I ripped out the ‘Kaitlin’ beneath her. I’ll either stitch ‘Niamh’ later, or nothing at all, depending on what she ends up as.

3 Comments

Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Finished

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SBQ 25/10

Posted on October 26, 2006 | 1 comment

SBQ: The Halloween edition

If you were to come across a sampler chart that caught your eye and appealed to you, would you or would you not stitch it if it had a morbid or “creepy” saying on it? If not, why?

This question immediately brought to mind the Monsterbubbles design Lizzie Borden. Not a sampler, but definitely morbid! I remember a bit of a hoo-hah on the BBs when this came out – is it or is it not in ‘poor taste’? Personally, I find it kind of amusing. The Monsterbubbles designs don’t really appeal to me, but I appreciate their whimsy. Anyway, to answer the question… I’m not really in the habit of stitching samplers or anything with ‘sayings’ on. But if I did, I seriously doubt creepiness or morbidity would be offputting to me at all :giggle:

And, because I feel like answering another, this, from way back in April:

Do you do obligation or deadline-based stitching? Why or why not? If you do, do you tend to get in over your head and why?

I have done a handful of exchanges, yes. And of course there’s the UFO round robin I’m in now. I don’t really look upon these as ‘obligation’ stitching in a negative light though. Part of the reason I join these things is to motivate myself to stitch (and more importantly, to finish!). Also, I enjoy the community aspect of them. I don’t tend to get in over my head, I usually choose only one or two at a time to join.

While we’re on the topic, I recently relinquished my membership to the stitching bloggers’ exchange board. Amongst other reasons, I felt that I couldn’t really guarantee the required amount of participation while Niamh is small. There was a waiting list of people wanting membership to the board, so I hope whoever got my place enjoys it. So to all the SBEBB stitchers reading, thanks for making my stay there a good one, and… goodbye, I guess 🙂 I plan instead to take part in a few exchanges on the Rotation BB as I find the time.

1 Comment

Posted in Counted Stitchwork, Memes

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