24: It’s the 4WD anniversary.

…and if it’s not, it should be.

My most excellent husband bought me this piece of awesome over the weekend.

Do you see why I married him?

A Weekend Away.

This weekend just past, Tech Support and I dropped the boys off with friends and hied ourselves north to the Hunter Valley for the wedding of our beautiful niece Stephanie.

It was a gorgeous day, and a good time was had by all.

Steph doesn’t realise it, but the above pic shows exactly how much T.S. adores her. He wouldn’t dance with me at our wedding, but he danced with his niece.

Life Goes On

We are settling in to our new house, getting things upacked and figuring out where they belong, getting used to the new routines that go along with living out of town: for example, the boys have recently discovered that if you dawdle in the mornings, the bus won’t wait for you and then your mother yells at you for the whole 20-minute drive to school. I stilll don’t have a working oven, although we are one step closer: we’ve sourced a used one, we just have to get it installed. I will be very glad when I can bake again. Meanwhile, the boys are very happy – they think that bread from the supermarket is just the greatest thing since… well, since sliced bread, I suppose.

After all the packing and cleaning out of the old house, my hands were in terrible shape (imagine trying to knit while wearing gloves made out of velcro!), but a few days worth of industrial-strength hand cream has worked wonders, and I’m not only back on the knitting horse, but yesterday I got my spinning wheel out for the first time in a couple of months, and the fibre didn’t snag at all. Yay!

While sorting out and packing up, I made a startling discovery – I am down to 3 pairs of handknit socks! I know how to darn, and am not afraid to do it, but there comes a time for every sock when they just can’t be repaired any more, and must be retired. So new socks are the order of the day:

“Brainless” by Marjan Hammink, in STR medium “Jabberwocky”

One casualty of the move is my annual trip to Bendigo. I had been hoping against hope that I could still make it this year, but I have finally pulled up my big-girl pants and accepted the fact that the money is just not there, and wishing won’t make it fall out of the sky. So the Hustler Street girls will just have to make up my share of wool and wine and chocolate and fun. I’m sure they’re up to the task.  😉

Simple pleasures.

The other day, I broke out a new toothbrush. And I’m standing there, brushing my teeth and thinking, “This is ridiculous, something as small as a new toothbrush should not be making me this happy!”. And that got me thinking – why not? Why should I only look for joy in the big stuff? So today I give you a (by no means exhaustive) list of things that make me happy out of all proportion to their size or importance:

1. A new toothbrush.
2. Freshly painted toenails
3. Crisp white cotton sheets
4. Newly sharpened pencils
5. Thick fluffy towels
6. Bread, fresh from the oven
7. The first sip of coffee in the morning
8. The smell of rain on a hot day
9. Cherry tomatoes

So, what have you got to add to this list?

The evil that knitters do…

Every history has its darker chapters, and the history of knitting is no exception.

We recently sold in our eBay store a book of knitting machine patterns from the 1970s.

People actually perpetrated these crimes.

Upon their children.

Like this boy wasn’t disadvantaged enough by his unfortunate resemblance to Damien Thorn.

Some day, he will even the score with the people who did this to him.

It will not be pretty.

Found it.

It was on my desk, which is now tidy.

No, Leonie, I didn’t take a pic of the hideous mess, but I will take a pic of the tidy. Just to prove that it happened once. 😉