On the Farm

Posted on October 5, 2006 | 4 comments

I’ve been feeling kind of… isolated?… displaced?… bereft?… something, these last weeks. It’s due to a combination of things, not least the increased difficulty of getting out and about with two kiddos. But I’ve come to realise that I’m really missing where we used to live. We’ve been here ten days shy of a year, and I’ve never quite found my groove – probably because I’ve been either pregnant and exhausted, or sleep-deprived and exhausted, that entire time.

It’s not like this is an unpleasant place to live, it really isn’t. But I miss the wonderful local shops where the staff knew our faces, if not our names, the kid-friendly cafes where we could while away a sunny morning or lazy afternoon, the wonderful bookshop…

Anyway. This place just doesn’t have quite the same atmosphere and energy about it. But it is not without benefits. Yesterday, we took off to a community/educational farm not far from here and spent a few hours puttering about.

We found a shady place for our lunch…
Farm01

Met some of the residents…
Farm02

Explored the community vegie patches (which put great shame to ours 😳 )…
Farm04

Did some of this…
Farm03

And some of this…
Farm05

It was very peaceful (at least until the splinter incident, which was traumatic for all involved, but Finn most of all). A very nice way to spend the first 30 degree day of the season.

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Posted in Family, The Kids

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The ‘Aha’ Moment

Posted on October 4, 2006 | 3 comments

(This is where I prove myself a liar, because I have actually been doing something crafty amidst all the clutter!)

Once upon a while ago (or ‘Back the days a bit’, as Finn likes to say), I taught myself to crochet. I think it was back when there were a lot of people joining in the 63-Square Crochet-along on The Wagon. I figured it couldn’t be as difficult as all that, right? Wrong! I just didn’t get it. I was splitting the yarn with the hook, and losing stitches with every row, and couldn’t figure out where. Being left-handed, it is always that bit more fun trying to interpret diagrams. (I know, I know – mirror-image the diagrams, then print them out – I just seem to like doing things the difficult way!)

Anyway, more recently, I have got my mum hooked (ha!) on amigurumi – crocheted stuffed toys. She gave me a lesson in crochet-ing in the round, and bought me some plastic hooks. And I was pootling along, crocheting in the round, and the plastic hooks made it so much easier to avoid splitting the yarn (though I did break a 4mm one on the way)… and, suddenly, I got it! I figured out where I had been losing stitches in flat crochet, and suddenly it all made sense. In about half an hour, I was happily single, double, half-double, triple, and twisted-double crochet-ing away. Whoo!

SweeneyScarf
So I made Sweeney (Niamh’s Very Special Bear) a scarf (teddies are great for small projects). Not the most amazing ‘crocheted thing’ in the world, but a good start! Maybe now I’ll get back to the amigurumi-ing, and make myself a teddy cupcake, or… um… one of these (what the…?!) :giggle: !

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Posted in Other Craft, Yarncraft

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My Playlist

Posted on October 3, 2006 | 2 comments

Day three of my October challenge, and I’m already resorting to memes! Ha, not really, but Erin tagged me, so who am I to refuse her?!

Today’s meme:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether or not they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Like Erin, I haven’t been listening to much music of my own recently. My taste is pretty eclectic, and I love our CD collection, but it just hasn’t been getting a workout lately. We do watch Australian Idol, and cringe as they murder good songs, and I always have the radio on in the car, but in general, it’s Finn who picks the music during the day.

I don’t know how many of you have three and four year olds, or how far back you can remember, but if you do or once did, perhaps you’ll remember the soundtrack to your life at that point? For some it’s endless Wiggles’ songs, for me it’s endless Play School songs. Play School is the best kids television in Australia, as far as I’m concerned, and in celebration of their 40th birthday this year, Finn and I went out and bought him a double CD pack of fun songs. Plus, we also bought Justine Clarke’s album ‘I like to Sing’ (Justine is a Play School presenter – the hot one, if you ask the dads of Australia :giggle: ). So Finn has his own little collection, he knows how to work the a/v equipment better than me, and thus we have endless repetitions of these three CDs. But honestly, I do enjoy them. There are some great fun songs, and we have a lot of fun singing them together. So here are seven of our favourites, and a sampling of the lyrics for your amusement:

Ch.. Ch.. Ch.. The Toothbrush Song
“When you wake up in the morning; At a quarter to one; And you can’t go back to sleep; And you want to have some fun; You brush your teeth…”

Shake My Sillies Out
“I gotta shake, shake, shake my sillies out… And wiggle my waggles away”

Upsy Down Town
“In upsy down town; The sky is in the sea; The sea is where the sky should be…”

New Shoe Laces
“I’m going places in my new shoe laces; Put me through my paces in my new shoe laces…”

On the Ning Nang Nong
“On the ning nang nong; Where the cows go bong; And the monkeys all say boo…”

Bump-a-Deedle Dance
“Everybody says sit down, sit down… Well I can’t sit down no I can’t sit down; ‘Cause my feet are all full of dance around”

And our number one favourite, because it’s what I do all day (and just why are 3-year-olds so fascinated with babies nappies, anyway?)…

Yucky Mucky Nappy
“Baby isn’t happy with a yucky mucky nappy, yucky mucky nappy on the baby-o… Put another nappy on the baby-o…”

So there you have it! Now don’t expect me to go tagging people for this, that just seems too much like work! (Besides, also like Erin, I’m also not sure I still have 7 readers left – I think you all ran away because I got too boring!) How about, if you’re reading this now, and haven’t done this meme, you consider yourself tagged. Or not. As you like.

Hope everyone’s having a happy Tuesday – it’s glorious, here… I love Spring 🙂

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Posted in Memes

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October’s Challenge

Posted on October 2, 2006 | 1 comment

So. I decided to set myself a challenge. To blog every day in October. Yeah – I kind of missed the 1st. Oops 😳 I’m planning to cheat, and blog the 1st retrospectively. Since I’m setting the rules of this challenge, I figure I can get away with that! Check back later!

Actually, there’s a super good reason I didn’t blog yesterday – I was stitching. Hooray! I made a really good start on Claire’s UFO. I’m participating in the current UFO round robin – my first round robin, and I have to say, this is a completely fantastic idea – Noah’s Journey is my UFO, which has been sent on, uh, a journey(!) around the world to be stitched on by some wonderful BB friends, to return to me some time next year in a much ‘furthered’ state, hopefully to then be finished and framed for Finn’s room.

I saw this design (see whole thing here) as a stitched model in my mum’s LNS a few years ago, and she bought the chart for me. I started this when Finn was one, meaning it to be a kind of commemorative birth piece. I should have remembered how much I loathe Dimensions charts.

Noahs-Journey-Pre-UFORR

Needless to say, it has lingered in its unfinished state for far too long – Finn will be four in December! I figured I wasn’t ever going to finish this without help, so here we are. I hope everyone in my group doesn’t hate me after they’ve had to stitch from this disastrous chart :giggle:

Clickety to see what it looked like before I sent it off to Tracey. (Finn’s name is actually all there, just edited for privacy).

Tomorrow: I will get to that meme Erin, haven’t forgotten 🙂

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Posted in Counted Stitchwork, In Progress

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The Missing Post…

Posted on October 1, 2006 | 2 comments

… is missing no more. (If you’re thinking ‘what the heck…?’, see tomorrow’s post 🙂 )

This is a ‘what I did on the weekend’ sorta post. What I did this weekend was… I wondered when we became ‘those people’. You know who I’m talking about. Those people who spend their weekend shopping for furniture, and who drop into Bunnings for two things and come out with a trolleyfull (for those in the US, I think Bunnings = Home Depot); those people who spend their weekend tiling the kitchen and planting the vegetable garden. I tell you what, weekends got a whole lot more expensive and a whole lot less relaxing since we became a SITKOM family! (Single Income, Two Kids, Oppressive Mortgage).

The absolute worst piece of evidence that we have become those people? The one that I’m ashamed to even admit to?

Yesterday, we had lunch at McDonalds.

Mortifying! :giggle:

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Posted in Family, General Ramblings

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Brain Clutter

Posted on September 28, 2006 | 2 comments

Since the arrival of Child #2, I’ve finally come to understand that “cluttered house = cluttered mind” thing. Up to this point in my life, I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder. Add to that my less than perfect housekeeping skills, throw in the trails of abandoned toys, books and other miscellany that follow your average 4-year-old around, and finally stir in a generous helping of baby paraphernalia, and you can picture the disaster zone that is our house these days. Sigh.

Even if I was a better housekeeper I doubt I’d be keeping on top of it all. I honestly did not realise that with a second child, in terms of workload, one plus one suddenly equals three. I’m sure it will improve as Niamh gets older and they start to occupy one another, but for now, the equation just isn’t favourable.

At night, after the small people are in bed, I desperately want to be being creative. I want to be stitching. I want to be sewing. I want to be crafting funky little things. I want to get back to dyeing, and I want to be working on some web stuff. But all those things I should be doing (dishes, laundry, clearing up…….), they’re still there! And I feel guilty doing fun stuff while the work’s still waiting. So I have this never-ending ‘to do’ list occupying every space in my brain, and I just feel completely and utterly overwhelmed by it all, and of course, nothing’s getting done, fun or otherwise!

So. Enough of the problem. I’m working on a solution.

I do love this comment I found on finslippy’s blog :

There are 24 hours in the day, which is plenty to get things done. If that doesn’t seem enough for some reason, you can cut back on sleep, which will give you an additional 6-8 hours. Plenty of time.

Yep, that should work!

What I’m doing (or beginning to try to do, at least), is working on my packrattiness. I’m starting to declutter. Less stuff, less to clean up, right? There is so much in our house that we just don’t need to have, and I’m finally starting to do something about that.

I’ve unpacked boxes of books labelled (I kid you not) “Packed in 2002”! We’ve been through those and other books and set aside two boxes for secondhand sale. We’ve set aside a box of kitchen gear to donate to the op shop. I’ve been through my accumulated craft miscellany and ditched a boxload of that (some went to Finn’s pre-school). I’ve set aside a variety of stuff (craft, stitching, baby gear) for ebaying. I’m feeling good about the start I’ve made, though I know there’s so, so much more to be done, and it’s still really hard for me to do. It will make a difference – our house will be more useable, and hopefully it will start clearing the way for me to get to the fun-stuff more often.

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Posted in General Ramblings

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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow.

Posted on September 26, 2006 | 3 comments

Damn, I’m sorry. That was a really bad, punny title. Can’t help it, I’m cranky. Post-partum hair loss is the pits. The absolute pits. About three months after Finn was born, my hair started falling out – I still recall the horror I felt the first time I put my hand to my hair, and came away with a handful. It sinks my stomach just thinking about it. It was so utterly, utterly depressing, having a rapidly receding hairline. I really quite like my hair, you know. (And I can’t say that about many parts of me.) I was thrilled when it finally stopped, at about 7 months, and I started growing little wispy bits of fringe.

Anyway, almost since I first discovered I was pregnant again, I have been steeling myself for the advent of the next fallout. Three months came and went, and no hair loss. I found myself daring to think maybe this time would be different. Nup. It has begun. Crap. Crap. Crap.

Spare a thought for my poor vacuum cleaner in the coming months. I should probably cut my (remaining) hair a bit shorter now, to save the plumbing, too.

The good news? (Because I’m trying really hard to see a brighter side!) I read recently that worms apparently really like to eat hair (kind of ick, I know). So I’m collecting what I lose to put into our super-groovy new compost bin, and hopefully this will lure the worms in, and we’ll have some lush, rich compost in a few months time. It gives me a bit of a warm cycle-of-life kind of feeling, to be returning something to the Earth, despite how depressed it makes me in the meanwhile.

Bah. Forgive my self-indulgent moaning. I’ll get over it. It will grow back. I’m off to find all my cool stretchy headwraps now 🙂

3 Comments

Posted in Family

Tagged

A Story in 8 Pictures

Posted on September 21, 2006 | 4 comments

(a.k.a ‘Gratuitous baby shots’ 🙂 Enjoy!)

Niamh-story

PS. There may have been some editorial license taken regarding the order of the pictures. Maybe :giggle:

4 Comments

Posted in Family, The Kids

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Arse O’Clock

Posted on September 18, 2006 | 2 comments

Like many babes of her age, Niamh often goes through a period of crankiness sometime in the late afternoon/ early evening. If I manage her day-time sleeps just right, we can avoid it. (There must be exactly three naps, and the last nap must end later than 3pm. Who knew you needed to be a project manager for this gig?!) Anyway, if we do hit ‘arse-o’clock’, as it is affectionately known in our house, there are a few options. There is the option of me feeding her to sleep for a (brief) fourth nap. That can take a little bit of time though, and be somewhat inconvenient unless OtherHalf is home early to provide Finn with some distraction. I can stick both kids in the car and drive around for awhile. This has many shortcomings – usually it results in Finn falling asleep, and not Niamh, and what with the cost of fuel just about requiring a second mortgage these days, it’s not my preferred option. I can stick Niamh in the pram and trundle down to the nearby playground with Finn, but again, the pram doesn’t seem to put her to sleep very efficiently, and this option has the added frustration of Finn complaining about his tired legs as soon as we get, oh, about 50m from the house!

Anyway, yesterday – having been out much of the day, and unable to keep to Niamh’s sleeping requirements, we hit arse-o’clock with a vengeance. But lo! I had a bit of a brainwave. I popped her in the sling, and jumped on the stationary bike – voila, multitasking! Not only did I get a spot of (seriously needed) exercise, but the motion of my body lulled her off to sleep nice and quickly (it took 5 minutes and 48 seconds, according to the readout on my bike!) I even managed to catch up on some news, as the bike fits into an alcove-y thing near our television. Ahem… I only managed another five minutes of cycling though, before I staggered off… told you I was in serious need of exercise! (On a somewhat related note, I keep forgetting to mention that I got the all clear on diabetes at my six week follow up test 🙂 )

Postscript: I’m posting this retroactively – I started writing it last Wednesday, finished writing it on Thursday, then got interrupted and never quite managed to post it. See how slowly things get done at Casa de Million Stitches lately?! After last night, I’m hoping that may change soon… of course I can’t tell you what happened, because that would be incurring the curse of the jinx, wouldn’t it?!

2 Comments

Posted in Family, General Ramblings, The Kids

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I’m Loving…

Posted on September 7, 2006 | 4 comments

Being addicted to Flickr :giggle:

Inspiring01

Originals here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9!

I’ve been avidly reading a number of craft blogs for a while now. It’s interesting to observe that while the stitchers as a group are largely blogging on Blogger and hosting their images on Webshots or similar, many of the crafty girls (and boys?) are hanging out with Typepad and Flickr. Are they a more progressive bunch?

Anyway, the crafty blogs have been making me itch to do something more than stitching for quite some time. Because, you know, I just need a new hobby, I have waaaay too much spare time on my hands :giggle: So lately I’ve been hanging out on Flickr too. I’m loving the Pools and Groups over there, it’s an ever-inspiring place to be. The above is a little put-together of just some of the wonderful things that have grabbed my attention lately.

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Posted in General Ramblings, Other Craft

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