This is a rather messy blog ... much like my old website, which also is permanently "under construction" and has very long periods where nothing actually happens ...
Yes ... I just found out that Yahoo are closing down Geocities, and deleting all the Geocities websites (well the ones that don't move to PAID web hosting and get the URL re-directed), in late October ...
Which is a bit dissapointing seeing I HAVE a Geocites website! ... not that I used it any more - LOL but ... it IS the first website I ever had, so it sort of has a bit of sentimental value ...
... which is why I was happy to see that, because Yahoo were good/clever enough to tell them, the nice people at the Wayback Machine are busily archiving as much of geocites as they can before it goes offline, and I am also pleased to notice that they have already (as part of their normal crawling around the www over the last several years) archived a couple of older versions of my geocites home page, and some of the stuff on it (the photos don't work, nor do half the links ... but that is not surprising - some of the links and photos don't work anymore on my geocities site itself). What they have archived for my site can be found at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/9279/ (well it could 10 minutes ago, but now they seem to be having "technical dificulties" ... hopefully that is just temporary ... hopefully it could be because they are adding to it already - I just submitted my URL for archiving again - the nice folks at yahoo geocites provided the link to a page on the wayback machine site where we can do that ;-)
The only bit if my geocities site that I really wanted to keep, and have it at it's original URL, was this - http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/9279/sigscquiltpic.jpg ... because the URL, and my name, was mentioned in an article in a magazine! (in Down Under Quilts magazine ... who now have digital copies of their magazine online ... but not the one my URL was mentioned in - that was 5 or 10 years ago!)
hmmm ... I guess I should just print out all the pages on my website and stick them in a folder to probably never get around to looking at in my old age ... because I don't think anybody else will really care/be interested in looking at what I had there ... LOL but ... just in case I am wrong/you are curious (and happen to be reading this before those yahooligans delete it) the URL for my Geocities page is http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/9279/ ... or http://www.geocities.com/aykayem/ (they came up with those shorter URLs later on, so those of us with the original longer ones ended up with 2)
btw ... I do also have a few crochet patterns on my geocites site ... but I already had plans to move them to my blog (either this one or one of the others, with a link in the side bar of this one) anyway ... once I have printed them out, crocheted them again so I can find/correct all the mistakes (I know there are at least a few mistakes in there, and will probably find more) and maybe tidied them up a bit so they look/work ok when they are printed ... (of course, me being me, and considering the fact that I have been meaning to do that ever since I started this blog - it may take me a few weeks/months/years to actually get around to DOING it ...)
Hmmm ... This post doesn't have any photos, and nor did the last one I wrote (which is now not the last one I posted - lol) - I wonder if I can find photos, of the things I wrote patterns for, on the computer?
... er ... maybe not quickly ... but I found a few photos of some other stuff I have crocheted, from way back in 2002 (which was about when I wrote those crochet square patterns that I have on geocities).
In fact I found a heap of other stuff, and I put a whole pile of photos in here ... and it made the post rather long, and disjointed (seeing it was about 2 different things - lol) - so I have just decided to cut and paste all the other stuff into a different post - and post that one before this one ... so it still appears on my blog with this bit on top of the page, and then all the weird photos under it ... - so if you want to pretend that I left them all in here as one big long blog post, then you should be able to just scroll down a bit, skip the short paragraph that explains what they are (for anyone who just finds the post by itself somewhere/somehow without reading this first) and keep reading ... or just look ... or whatever ...
ok ... the photos are now in their own post ... and DH is waiting for me to finish this so we can go and get fish and chips for tea - LOL
I found all these while I was typing a blog post about how Geocities was closing down - which will now be posted shortly AFTER this one (so that for those who want to keep reading it like it was one post can just keep reading down the page to this one - lol) - most of them didn't really relate to the first part of that post, so I decided to put them in their own post instead - LOL
Anyway ...
... snip snip ... where is the glue? ... oh there ...
here are all those photos I just found:
I am not sure what this is ... ... or why I crocheted it.
This one is a discloth (or could be used as a face washer or doily or whatever) I crocheted it for a swap/exchange I was doing on the Australiacrochet yahoogroup. (and I made the design up as I went, so there is no pattern for this one anywhere ... yet ...)
This is one of a pile of little bears I crocheted ... ... I am not sure if this was one I swapped, or just one of the many I made because I was having fun making them at the time ... lol (I got the idea from a bear pattern that a friend wrote, but I changed just about everything in the pattern so it isn't the same pattern any more ... but I have never actually written the "pattern" down ... I might do that one year ... )
This is a milk jug cover I made the tassel is because I ended up with a different number of stitches around the outside than I needed for the pattern of the edging (last 2 rows) to work out evenly - so I did my usual and fudged something - which I actually like - lol (hmmm, I think I used someone's else's pattern for this, or at least for the middle bit, but I can't remember what pattern it was or where I got it ... somewhere on the www I think ... not really helpful eh?)
This is a small bowl I made ... ... and beside it is the rest of the roll of the garden string that I crocheted it with! (if something can be tied in a knot - I will have a go at crocheting with it!) I think I used a coaster pattern as the basic idea, but changed it so it doesn't lie flat like the coaster did.
This is not crochet it is a tiny quilt I made for a friend, for her birthday. I think it was also my first bit of "stipple quilting" ... but not my last ... (I can't remember where I got that foundation peiced cat block design from - I probably got given a copy of it at a craft group I used to go to about 15 years ago, but I have seen it a lot of times, in a lot of places (books, websites, quilts, etc) since then).
here is a bookmark I crocheted I think I made that one up as I went.
but I used a pattern for these 2 drink coasters but again ... not sure offhand what pattern I used (one I found free on the www, probably when I did a google search for "free crochet coaster patterns" or somesuch)
This is a Christmas quilt I made ... using quilt blocks that other people made - I went in a swap that we had on a quilty yahoogroup I am on ... I have actually been in several swaps on that group, but I think this is the only one where I have actually made a quilt out of the blocks ... in fact this was the blocks from 3 Christmas swaps, from 3 different years! (an angel block swap, and 2 different Christmas star/tree block swaps)
I tend not to go in many swaps now ... well not block swaps ... but I did just join in and do an "inchie" swap on an art quilt list ... if I have not done so sooner, I will try to remember to post about the "inchies" when we get up to the letter I again for that ABC Wednesday thing ... if we do another round that is (we are up to Z this week, not sure if it is starting at A again or not)
Ah ... found a couple of what I was looking for - those crochet squares that I wrote patterns for, and posted on my geocities page
This one is "Within"
and this one is "from big things, little things grow" (I think, when I named this one, I was feeling inspired by a song with that same title - lol)
and these are a pile of other squares I crocheted around the same time as I designed those 2 the last 2 are the ones I designed, the rest are all from patterns found on the www and the URLs posted to the Australiacrochet yahoogroup - we were doing a weekly mystery square at the time ... and, at the time, I was the person who was finding the URLs and posting them ... so I have a huge collection of granny square URLs ... somewhere ... lol ... if anyone reading this (IS anyone reading this?! lol) actually wants the URL for the pattern for any of these - leave a comment telling me which one (they all have numbers on them in the photo) and provided the pattern is still up at the same place it was back in 2002 (some of them are not), I can look up the URL for it in the list I have.
er ... I probably should stop looking for photos now - seeing this post has got rather long - LOL
but first ... a quick peek in the other couple of folders of photos from that year, to see if any other names jump out at me (I am just browsing the file names as I upload them, rather than opening up any photo software - because doing that seems to be what this poor old computer doesn't like ... and it also takes longer to find photos if I do that because I always get lost/side-tracked in there doing other stuff - lol)
hmmm ... a log cabin quilt block I made I am not sure if this is the one I made into a pin cushion for a swap, or if this is the other one, that I still have not made into anything (I made 2 blocks almost the same, using the same fabrics - the idea was so i could make 2 pincushions - one for the swap and one for me ... the swap one got finished at the last minute so I could swap it ... and the other one didn't ... lol)
and ... probably a good photo to end with - 2 more crochet squares - another "pattern" that I made up ... I gave it a name, but I am not sure if I ever wrote this one out as a pattern. (I probably should one day - because I like it ... lol)
one day I went to go there (there used to be something else there I think) and I saw it was vacant and so I took the opportunity and signed up for it!
Y?
Y not?! LOL
so ... Y am I still UP at this late hour of night?
well ... because when DH went to bed I was wide awake (probably due to having been up even later last night ... er ... as in getting fairly close to sunrise this morning actually ... so I slept in until lunch time today) and then I kind of got side-tracked in here ... and joined twitter ... which I had been kind of meaning to do for ages ... but hadn't got around to because I couldn't decide on a good user name - I wanted to use aykayem (which is a name I invented for myself way back in about 1978 ... before cyberspace had even been invented!) - but ... after years and years of signing up for all sorts of stuff/junk/whatever online, and it always being available ... I tried to use it for twitter and it was TAKEN ... aaaahhhrrrggghhhh! (I wonder if he/she knows that he/she isn't the only "aykayem" hanging around in cyberspace? lol
Y is also for Yellow ... which is the colour of the lid on a jar of Vegemite ... and with both Vegemite and yellow - "a little goes a long way" ... LOL (I briefly thought about making the text in this post a nice bright yellow, but thought the better of it and spared you - it probably would have been almost totally unreadable anyway - but yellow IS a very useful colour to put just a little bit of in a quilt that needs a little something to give it a bit of a lift/some oomph/whatever - lol)
"Yellow" is also the title of a song I rather like ... but I am not going to add music to this blog ... it has enough stuff to load as it is ... (I do have a music thingy on this blog and that song is actually already ON there! ... I think it is about half way down the list ... I just went and looked to see if it was there and still working ok (it was), but I closed it again because this poor old computer is acting up, which it has been doing a lot lately, and if I had left that window open while it was doing what it was doing, it probaly would have resulted in a blue screen of death or something ... and it doesn't want me to re-start it right now - I tried to do that a little while ago but it told me to try again later because the automatic virus scan is still going! ... besides ... very shortly I am going to hit the post button on this and go to bed - LOL (I just need to do couple things first - like add labels, and put the current date and time on there - because I actually started typing this post a couple of days ago so it has that date/time on there until I change it)
btw ... I didn't get around to doing an X post last week ... but I probably more than covered it all last time we were up to the letter X - with all my Xanthorreas and other X words ... LOL (oddly enough, because I happened to be at the botanic gardens and saw some nice ones, I did take several more photos of Xanthorreas a couple of weeks ago!)
Actually - I just looked at that X post and realised that it was also my FIRST post for ABC Wednesday! LOL (but ... it wasn't my first post about the letter X/X words! - but I won't bore you with the details of that here - it is all explained in the Wednesday ABC one if you are really that interested - lol)
hmmm ... if I hadn't missed most of the letters in the middle of the alphabet I would have been a full circle ... so maybe we HAVE to do it again so I can have another go and see if I can at least fill in the gaps and do the letters I didn't do this time - LOL
anyway ... it is now even later than it was when I changed the time on this post (it is now 10 past 2 rather than 10 to 2 ... lol) so I had better post this before I fall asleep on the keyboard or something (or before this poor old computer decides that the one thing I am still doing on here is still too much for it, and totally crashes on me ... )
btw ... the name I decided to use on Twitter? - UTLAU ... which is what someone started calling me when a group of us used to chat on ICQ a few years back - UTLAU stands for Up Too Late As Usual ... and as you can see by the title of this blog - I liked it - LOL
... and as you can see from the times on most of my blog posts ... it still kind of suits me! (although back then I was up in the wee small hours of the morning more often than not, and on any night of the week ... these days I am only up this late sometimes, and usually only when I don't have to get up for work or something the next day ... )
btw ... I could also say that it stands for Up Too Late . au - because I am up too late, in Australia - lol (which is kind of another reason why I decided I like it, and decided to use it for Twitter)
W is for Weird, and for Wednesday ABC and also for Wrong ... very wrong - which is what describes what I am listening to at the moment ... which just happened to be some sound file I found on the WWW (more W s) ... I was actually finding and adding some songs to that playlist thing on the bottom of one of my other blogs
(I kind of got side-tracked while trying to work out why it wasn't playing "Poles Apart" any more) ... and I have just found some weird Star Trek parody thingy that happened to be about Kirk and Spock doing ... er ... well ... being gay together ... (so - NO - I DIDN'T add that!) but I did find a few different versions of "Stairway to Heaven" and a few theme songs, and some other stuff I like, and that wonderfully weird "Star Trekkin'" song by The Firm ... yes - my tastes in music are rather weird too! The stuff on that particular blog is rather weird too ... which is probably why I put it there - I think I actually called that blog "Huh?" before I put anything on there - I created that blog to test out the new google version of blogger back when google first took over blogger and we didn't have to move our blogs from the old blogger yet ... then later on I decided to actually USE if for something ... so the "something" is a collection of photos of/posts about the kind of things that when one sees them, the first thought that comes to mind is "huh?"
The other weird thing is that DD (teenage Dear Daughter) came in here and is now "helping" me ... so - the really weird part - on her "orders" we are now listening to "Star Trekkin'" for the 3rd time in a row ... lol
W is also for washing ... which DD also Wants me to do some of (actually I have washed what needs to be washed - her Work uniform - but it is still sitting in the Washing basket Waiting until I get around to hanging it out!)
yes - w is also for Whenever ... Which seems to be the time a lot of things get done around here ...
W is also for water ... which reminds me ... I Was going to go get a drink (and some dinner!) a While ago but got lot on the WWW instead ... Water is also What lakes and rivers and oceans are made of ... and what one can swim in and float boats on ... and in the case of the sea - what has Waves to surf on ... I like messing about in/on/near the sea ... or even any other nice body of water (so Why do I live so far from the beach?!)
W is also for Work ... and DH is just about to finish work (he Works Weird hours) and if I don't hurry up with this he Will find me still here When he gets home ... lol
hmmm - my thoughts got Way laid ... I Was talking about Weird still ...
Weird also describes a lot of the quilty and crochet stuff I make ... some of which is on this blog, and some more of which will (might?) eventually get put on here When I get around to it ...
Sometimes I also blog about other weird stuff I do, and weird stuff I see, and weird stuff I find on the Weird, Wild and Wonderful World Wide Web ...
W is also for Words ... which there seem to be rather a lot of in this post ... and no pictures ...
I Wonder What I can find ...
somewhere I have some photos of Worms - but because I can't be bothered looking for those right now I will spare you those ...
hmmm some weird song comes to mind ... something I used to sing at school, and mum used to sing at school ... and probably her mum too ... but I am not sure I remember the exact words ... or if it even has EXACT words - most of those things have a few different versions ...
"nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I will go and eat worms
big fat slimy ones, little short skinny ones, see how the squiggles and squirms
nobody knows how well you can live on worms 3 times a day"
ahh ... found a Weird photo ... a good "What is this?" one:
yes ... Weird, but rather pretty ... Which is often the case With some of the odd things I have at Work ... Which is Where this is.
so .. what is it?
- a pile of glass rods, lying (drying) on a couple of cleaning cloths (the sort made from recycled rag/threads of some sort) after I washed the messy globs of Wax off them (which had been put on there by students as part of the science practical lesson they were using them for).
anyway ... time to do some house Work ... the Washing Won't hang itself up ... sigh ...
... the title of this post is a quote from some movie I saw once ... quite a weird movie, but also one I liked, if I remember rightly ... I think it was called "Field Of Dreams" ... anyway ... it seemed like a good title for this blog post, which isn't about the movie, or what the movie was about, or anything to do with the movie ... except for the bit where someone says "Build it, and they will come". (actually I just looked it up here and it says the quote is "If you build it, he will come" ... but I am sure I have heard it quoted (and/or mis-quoted) all sorts of ways, for all sorts of things).
What ... I am typing a blog post?! ...
shock! horror! - yes - I am actually POSTING something on my blog!!! - LOL
A few weeks ago I went to the National Gallery to have a look at an exhibition (called Soft Sculpture) ... and to "suss out" the poles to see where my bit of crocheting (if I finish it in time) is going to be hung - yes - I am going to have something on exhibit at the National Gallery ... but not IN the gallery - it will be ON the gallery! - as part of this installation that is happening in ... eek! - a couple weeks time. (hmmm - I had better get a wiggle on and finish my weird bit of crochet)
Anyway ... I took this photo:
no the ball shaped thingy isn't a UFO floating by ... it is actually a metal sculpture, and it is hanging from several wires between a couple of buildings, high up, right over the middle of a road.
I think it has been there for years, but I was taking photos and thought this would be an interesting one ... then I noticed something IN the ball - which made an even more interesting photo:
yes - a bird's nest! ... probably a magpie, from the size and messy appearance it has. What a great "penthouse appartment" for a bird - high up, almost impossible to get to if you don't have wings, 360 degree views, stable place to build the nest on with a protective screen around the outside - perfect! LOL
Yes ... I am one of those weird people who like Star Trek ...
... which is probably why I end up doing strange things like this - lol
It is the result of me messing around with an already strange photo (of me with all my hair standing on end, because I had my hands on a Van de Graaff generator at the time) and noticing that when I did whatever it was I did to the photo it made me look a bit like a Klingon ... so I did a few more things to make the photo look even more like one - lol
this (below) was the original one ... doesn't look much better, does it? LOL
anyway ... where was I?
oh yes ... I was here typing a blog post actually ... lol
but, a few minutes ago (actually about 10 days ago now - I kind of copied something else to the "clipboard" before I pasted the comment in here so I had to wait until it appeard on the site, and then wait even longer until I remembered to go and look for it and copy it again and come back and finish this blog post - lol)
and ... me being me ... I just had to leave a comment - LOL
This is what I said:
here we go again ... everyone arguing around in circles about UFOs and aliens and cover ups etc etc etc ... yes, there are a lot of fake/out of context bits of "evidence" ... and there are also a few things that are not fake/etc but nobody can explain ... yet ... - I guess we will eventually find out one way or the other then the crackpots and the devout skeptics will have to find something else to argue with each other about. hmmm ... if there are any aliens out there watching, and if said aliens are anything like us - I can just imagine the arguments as they email/twitter/whatever each other over the subspace communication network (or whatever) ... "yes they are intelligent" "no they are too primative lets hunt them for food" "maybe they are intelligent but they could be a threat to us, lets wipe them out now" "no - everything has a right to live, lets leave them alone" "but if we do that the bipeds will blow up the whole planet and all the other species will die out and/or we won't be able to use what is left" etc ... I hope that either they don't exist, or that if they do - then let's hope they are a lot more intelligent than us ... then again ... if they don't spend ages arguing about it they might just decide we are worthless vermin/too ratty/argumentative to be worth even making contact with and wipe us all out without even bothering to talk to us ... [aykayem ducks, and runs for cover]
btw ... this computer is searching for aliens too (running SETI when it isn't doing other stuff ... although some of the other stuff is actually other stuff like SETI - things like protien folding and other "projects" than one can donate computer time to ... not sure which ones are running right now - the ones we have running are whatever takes DH's fancy at the time - LOL) ... I wonder if SETI will actually find anything? I wonder if I will actually post something a bit less weird/silly here sometime soon?
... in fact I have been back for about 5 weeks - LOL But I kind of hit the ground running ... went back to work, went to a heap of meetings, did a pile of stuff, and did a fair bit of doing nothing much in front of the TV with DH as well (but I did do some sewing and crocheting while I did that).
Basically I have been doing just about anything and everything except blogging!
Anyway ... I guess I really should mention the thing that the title of this post refers to ...
which is, sort of, this:
and this is the other side of it:
... with the hook I used to crochet it ... the "yarn" I used was actually cut up loops of plastic shopping bags.
Believe it or not, I actually paid money to take my own "yarn"/etc and sit and crochet that thing! (but we did get to drink lots of coffe and eat a rather yummy afternoon tea ;-)
A group of us went to a workshop that was part of it - in fact I notice there is a sort of short blog post about it too - http://sydneyreef.blogspot.com/2009/05/anca-hyperbolic-bloom.html (I possibly in that top photo ... just ... I think ... although I can't see/zoom in enough to be sure if it isn't someone else who was beside me ... all you can see is a bit of the side of ?my head and shoulder in the distance behind someone else in the other group in the foreground - LOL)
... hmmm ... not forgetting that somewhere in there I have about 2 weeks to decide what to enter in the Canberra Quilters exhibition and submit my entry forms (including photo of finished or at least partly completed items! ... which could be a bit hard if I have not actually even started them!) ... and then I have to finish entered items in time to deliver them a week or 2 before the exhibition (in August) ... and then ... after these crochet things have happened, thank goodness - I will probably only have a few weeks to decide what to make and enter in the ACTTAA exhibition which happens at bit later in the year ... And I also have a few other odd things to make - like a few sets of green "inchies" for a swap on a yahoogroup I am on, and a baby gift or 2 ... and who knows what else I have forgotten about right now ...
I wonder when I will find time to sort out my sewing/etc room?
... ıs not very easy when you are not Turkısh, don´t speak Turkısh, don´t lıve here, and have never been here before - lol
yes - İ had to do ıt - The hotel İ am stayıng in tonıght has free internet (well it is free for those of us on the tour İ am on ...) so İ just had to see what ıt was lıke to post stuff to my blog from Turkey - LOL
btw - İ am in Canakkale, not far from Gelibolu (a town near Anzac Cove)... half an hour on a ferry and then half an hour down the road - but a whole contınent away - LOL (Anzac Cove etc, ıs on one sıde of the Dardanelles, and ıs part of Europe, but Canakkale ... and most of Turkey ... is on the other sıde of that bit of water, in Asıa... whıch ıs the name of a town near Anzac Cove)
I am stıll tryıng to work out whıch letter I İ should use ... there are TWO on the keyboard! ... and the one ın the rıght place (the one I just used here) ıs actually not the one that works ın e-addys even though ıt looks more lıke an I when İ use a capıtal i ... at least ıt does at thıs end ... LOL Some of the other keys are in dıfferent places too ... and there ıs an extra key that works lıke the shıft key but for some thıngs the shıft key doesn´t ... lıke the @ - it took me a whıle to fınd that one when İ was ın here sendıng a couple of e-maıls earlier in the evening - lol The , (comma) key ıs over on the sıde ... under the backspace key ... there seems to be a ö and a ç down where İ went lookıng for the comma ... and the ~ ıs one of those thıngs lıke the @ - where u need the Alt Gr key ... İ was goıng to put that key name ın quotatıon marks - but İ can,t FIND them! LOL
btw, Mum and İ are having a wonderful tıme ... I have taken LOTS of photos, both here ın Turkey (thıs ıs our 2nd day here) and ın Dubaı (and a couple other parts of the Unıted Arab Emırates that we went to one day) ... but at thıs hour of nıght İ wasn,t goıng to dıg around ın my suıtcase and fınd my card reader thıngy and try and work out ıf I could put photos from there onto here - I only came ın here at thıs late hour of nıght - ıt ıs after 11pm here ... (and ıt ıs last nıght, for those of you ın Australıa stıll - lol) - I dıdn,t have tıme to mess around wıth my blog when İ was ın here sendıng e-maıl earlıer because ıt was a few mınutes to tea tıme, and there were also a whole heap of people wantıng to get on here and send theır e-maıls too ... but most of them are probably sound asleep and snorıng by now (Mum ıs ... asleep ... and snorıng - that ıs why İ came down here - LOL)
Anyway - I had better go back to the room and get some sleep - before İ fall asleep on thıs keyboard and make ıt look even more weırd - LOL
J is for journey ... I head off in a few days for my big Journey - I fly up to Qld to Mum and Dad's place, then later that same day Mum and I fly overseas on our big adventure ... LOL
Actually - I have already left! ... I am up at Mum and Dads place in Qeensland (I flew up this morning) and we head off to the airport late this evening, ready to fly off at "stupid 0'clock" (in the middle of the night ... you know - that time when I am often still UP posting to my blog - lol) ... although by the time you read this (if scheduling the post for 2 days time actually works), I will be in Dubai ... lol
if I have got organised, I will have posts for the letters k, l, m, n, and o, for ABC Wednesday, scheduled to post themselves for the weeks I am away ... or I may run out of time and not get there (or I may stuff it up and they won't post themselves at the right times or something - lol) ... but I probably won't be near a computer/the internet to check if they work, or add them to the "Mr Linky" page ...
(I ran out if time, but I might see what I can do now while I have use of this computer at the community centre, while Mum and Dad are at a meeting there ;-) ... on second thoughts - no - I won't schedule any more after this one - because I just went and looked at what I had saved as drafts and I have not put any photos in any of them, and they make for pretty boring reading without any photos - lol ... so they might all get posted in a bunch when I get back ... or saved for next year if we keep doing ABC Wednesday again ;-)
J is also for Junk ... DH thinks most of my sewing/crafty/etc stuff is junk ... some probably is, even to me - lol
- I tend to collect "stuff" ... and a lot if it is junk, but I intend to use at least some of it eventually ... just not sure which part I will use, so I don't want to chuck it all out quite yet ... sigh ... but I have thrown some junk out ... and I will do more sorting out/chucking stuff this year - after I get back from the big Journey - lol
[b4 and after photos of pergola that now looks like a pergola again?]
er ... sorry - you miss out for now - I didn't put them in here while I was still at home - LOL (so this post can be an example of how boring a blog post is when I don't have the photos to go with it - lol)
... oh hang on - the airline that had that slogan doesn't exist any more ... but the one I flew up here to Queensland on does.
I had to get up before sunrise to catch my early morning flight from Canberra (where I live) ...
yes ... this is me I am talking about and I did mention sunRISE - lol - usually I see (and take lots of photos of ;-) sunSET ... so this is a bit different for me ... my sense of direction got all confused seeing the red glow of the sun behind the top of the hills and told me I was looking West when I was looking East - LOL
It was worth only having (er dare I say it ... yes why not ... Mum never reads my blog anyway - about 2 hours sleep) to get to fly over the clouds and see views like this:
and this:
and this:
and
and
and this:
and these:
hmmm - the colour of those clouds, and the sea ... is there such a colour as "steely indigo"?
Anyway ... why am I posting to my blog right now ... well ... Mum and Dad live at one of those places that has a community centre with a pool and a bowling green and and a bar/etc and also a library with a computer that is connected to the www (which is where I am right now) ... and tonight is darts night ... but I am not really into darts ... lol ... so I decided to test drive photobucket and upload the 35 pictures I took on the flight up here, and post this blog post - lol
After the darts finish, we go back to Mum and Dads place for an hour or so, then we have to leave to go down to Brisbane airport so Dad can drop Mum and I off to catch our "stupid 0'clock" (as in it leaves just before 3am!) flight to Dubai ... and my blog will probably go very very quiet for a few weeks - lol (well, apart from this week's ABC Wednesday post that should post itself just after Midnight on Wednesday, because I set it up to do that when I was in here earlier this afternoon while Mum and Dad were at some social club comittee meeting ;-)
ok ... pile of photos are there ... photobucket seems to be a good way to add them actually ... but Darts is almost finished and they will want to lock up ...
Time to go back to Mum and Dad's unit (well it is called a unit but it is bigger than their last house was!), and get ready to fly off on our big adventure ...
... as some kid in the seat behind me said when the plane took off - wheeeee!
It was Inevitable that I was going to post my ABC Wednesday post late again ... LOL
now what should I post about? ... international? invisible? ... ink? Insect?
I could stay Invisible ... but I am still Inching along with Wednesday ABC ...
btw, I am trying to get organised a couple of weeks early and starting a whole pile of posts and saving them as drafts, so that when I am off on my International travels - I can set them to ... hopefully ... post themselves. I might not be anywhere near a computer with www access though - so the links might not be added to the thingy until I get home) ... or I might not even find time to finish writing the posts before I go ... LOL
I is also for Individual ... and anyone who has been reading my blog will probably realise that I am one of those ... lol
I is also for Ink hmmm - maybe I should have taken a photo of all the Ink splots some Idiotic student splattered all over the door of one of the science labs at the school I work at ... the pattern they made was quite Interesting - lol ... I probably did draw some stuff with Ink once, but will I remember to find it and take a photo? ... probably not - lol I also "doodle" with pens while I am talking on the phone/listening to talks/lectures/etc - if it turns out I don't need to take a lot of notes, then I use the pen and paper to draw stuff instead. What do I draw? ... all sorts of weird stuff that probably comes from my Imagination ... lol
I also is for Insect ... there are lots of Insect photos on my blog already ... including photos of Inchworms - which are not worms, but they are Insects ... lol
This Inchworm is in my Index finger. er - my finger looks a bit Icky - LOL (probably mostly dirt from the garden/etc, and dry skin)
I also found a photo of an Insect Invasion:
If you click on that photo (which takes you to the full size version) you will probably be able to see that there are rather a lot of Insects (little brown beetles actually) all flying In to the yard on a sunny spring day (sometime in November - which sort of explains the Santa hat DD is wearing!) ... they were settling on those white flowered bushes (tea trees - an Australian native plant)
... and what were they doing? ... what a lot of things do in spring - I think they were meeting there for another I word ... looks like they were meeting there to make more beetles:
I actually found these 2 on DD's back, but they seemed quite happy to continue doing what they were doing on my finger!
I is also for Inchies.
"What are Inchies?" you ask? ... well ... they are one inch square bits of art ... in this case textile art (I think people do them in paper/etc too) ... they are a bit like artists trading cards - one makes a pile and swaps them with other people (often in sets of 9, or whatever). I am on an Art quilt related yahoogroup and we have had a few inchie swaps on there. There are pictures of some inchies here and here and (a different swap) here ... these were all before the swaps I went in (they were links given to us to go and look at to find out what inchies were - lol) ... a Google search for "inchies" also turned up a lot of stuff about them too ... there is even a Flickr group ...
Anyway ... here are some photos of some of my inchies I made for the swaps we had on the Aus_NZartquilters yahoogroup (hmmm ... how many photos will depend on how many I find while I am digging around in my many folders of photos ... but if you look at all my posts that have the label "inchies" on them you might find some more that I have posted about - I know I have posted about my "plastic" ones) We each made 7 sets of 9 - swapped 6 sets and kept one for ourselves, and we had a few different swaps, that each had a different theme.
These are my set of "Metallic" inchies:
I mounted mine on bits of black card, and the extra one at the bottom is one that I made into a dingly dangly (to hang on the Christmas tree maybe? lol) and popped it in the envelope with my inchies - a little present for the poor person who had to do all the swapping and send them all back.
Here are some more - The theme for this lot was "blue"
There are 2 sets in theis photo because these were the set I kept, and another spare set that I made for Mum ... not sure if I still have these in my sewing room or if I gave them to her ... (I might have to have a look for them and if I find them I can take them up with me and give them to her before we fly off on our trip)
Talking about flying - I is also for ... ... in flight food!
this was when the kids and I flew to Adelaide back in December 2007 (to visit a pile of relatives i have there, and also to see Mum and Dad, who were also over there visiting the same pile of relatives, while their new house was being built)
that airline food tasted ok actually (especially that little bottle of Gin - lol) ... somehow I don't think I will get a meal (or any free drinks) on the Virgin flight up to Qld, but hopefully we will be fed on the Emirates Flight to Dubai ... if not - then I guess I will be eating the chocolate bar I will be taking in my cabin baggage, and/or one or 2 of the muesli bars Mum said she will be bringing with her - LOL
Anyway ... this may or may not be the last post here for a few weeks ... depends if I get organised and finish writing ABC Wednesday posts for the next few weeks, and if they actually do automatically get posted to my blog like they should do if I set things up right ... lol (but even if my posts "happen" ok, they probably won't get added to "mr linky" and I probably won't be online to see and reply to any comments until I get back at the end of April).
I is also for Idiot ... some people probably think I am one - especially when I stay up until "stupid O'clock" posting silly stuff like this on my blog - LOL (it is actually after 1:30am now - the time I put on this post is about what it was when I came in here to start checking my e-mail and log in to type the rest of this blog post, which I actually started writing a week or 2 ago when I was thinking of things I could post for a few different letters of the alphabet - lol)
Here I am, late for ABC Wednesday yet again - How unusual (not - LOL)
now what can I think of to post for the letter "Huh" ...
ah Ha! - there is an idea - I can link to my Huh blog! - where I am also posting a photo of a rather interesting "How to" article I found in a pile of old encyclopaedias a friend threw out (I decided to "rescue" them from the "throw it in the bin" pile and take them to the op shop, just in case someone actualy wants them (I Hate the idea of throwing books in the rubbish!)
Talking about "How to" - there are rather a lot of really weird (and interesting) "how to" type websites out there! (like the couple I mentioned in that post on my other blog ... lol)
H ... is also for hotel ... I will be staying in quite a few of those in the next couple of months - LOL
Also, for a few years my family used to run a Hotel ... I still Have an old T shirt, that was one of a pile that that they found in the back of a store room - it Has a picture (line drawing) of the Hotel on it and says "Doug and Freida's Muswellbrook Hotel" on it ... I wonder if I can find it ... probably not ... (besides - it is in the bedroom where DH is asleep and I want to post this tonight ... not that it is "tonight" any more ... it is now just past Midnight!)
[at which time I decided to go to bed and post this later! ... so it is now Friday night instead of Thursday night ... sigh ... DH is not asleep, yet, but I still am not going to bother finding and taking a phot of that t shirt - lol]
H is also for Hermit crab ... one of the teachers at the school I worked at decided that she would buy some as pets for the science area ... but she was only there for a term (temporary replacement for someone on leave) ... so I kind of "inherited" them for the Christmas Holidays ... poor things - they don't breed in captivity, and don't always live that long either (the lot from work sure didn't ... sigh) - not what I would consider a good thing to try and keep as a pet - why not just leave them at the beach where they belong? ... ... like this one we found at the beach when we were in Adelaide just over a year ago:
cute isn't it?
I am sure there are Heaps more H things I could post about ... but I want to actually POST this and go to bed - LOL
Although I was going to post something about making baskets/etc out of Hay ... I could have posted it in G, for grass, too (except that I did it after I posted my G post - lol) ... but I guess it will have to be another post, if I get time I might do it before I go away ... otherwise you will have to wait until I remember about it ... if I ever do - LOL
Oops ... late again ... here I am posting my ABC Wednesday post on a Saturday - LOL (actually ... it is the wee small hours of Sunday now ... I logged in, to quickly finish this and post it, in the wee small hours of Saturday then realised I needed to add all the photos, and I was tired - so I decided I would just do it later instead ... but I was out for most of today and I kind of didn't get around to getting in here and doing it during the evening ... so I am here doing it now ... even though it is late and I am tired again ... AND I have to get up and go places in the morning ... lol
I actually had couple of ideas that I typed into a draft post a while back ... I have done that for a few letters if I have thought of ideas for them already ...
so I guess I had better post something about
G ... grasslands, grasshopper, greeblies?
I live near the Dunlop grasslands, which are actually a couple of grassy paddocks left in between the houses that have now been built all around them ... the Government manage the weed problem by allowing a farmer to Graze his sheep in there every now and then ... and the mob of sheep are protected by a pair of Gaurd Alpacca ... and they do a Great job too (it was rather funny the day our Golden retriever snuck off ahead of us and jumped through the Gap in the Gate and Got about 1/3 of the way to the dam, which he likes to sneak in to for a swim, before he noticed the alpacca that was standing between him and the dam ... the dog stopped and looked, the alpacca stamped his feet ... and the dog never Got his swim that day - lol)
grasshoppers
I have a few photos of those ... somewhere ... here is one on my finger!
I may have posted that on here already ... or maybe I put it in the "animals on fingers" flickr group or something ... I wonder why I used that one instead of this one?
cute, isn't it?
oh oh - where is it? ah - over here on the Grass ...
hmmm ... some of our lawn was actually still Green back then ... it isn't now ...
Talking about grass ... lol
Grass ... i grew some grass at work ... photo in same folder as above! well I guess that makes it easy to find again now - lol
A teacher wanted me to Germinate some wheat seeds, for their science class to look at ... they asked for a lot but only used a few - lol so I Grabbed the leftovers and threw them in a (Green - lol) ice cream container with some potting mix and let them Grow ...
G is also for Greening Australia ... who organise community tree planting days, which I sometimes Go to ... this one was in a place with a Great view:
goldfish ... 2007Dec3 ... swimming in circles ... post video (should be in there) too?
actually - I decided that video clip belongs on my Huh? blog - so I just put it there in a post called "Something fishy"
... but I will put a photo of the Goldfish in here:
weird, isn't it? LOL
link to greebly looking greenish merangues on Huh? yes why not - that post (which I think I only put up there last week) is here I probably could post some other Gross and/or Grotty Greebly pictures on here ... but it is Getting (has Got?!) rather late (after 3am - oops), and there are already lots of Greeblies in some of my other posts ... including eyeballs and stuff - lol
G is also for Getting excited ... and worried about what I still need/want to get organised - it is only 2 weeks until Mum and I head off on our Great adventure to Dubai, Turkey and Egypt ... and I have Got a lot of stuff I need to Get done first ... both at work and at home ...
Gee ... it is getting really late ... I had better Go to bed ... Goodnight ...
The fur says "touch me" but the prickles say "don't" ...
... kind of an interesting contrast isn't it?
It is Funny how things seem to work out like that sometimes.
Friends and Family can be like that (both soft and prickly) too ... (and I know I can)
btw - that photo is a close up of part of an Echidna ... the same echidna (but different photo) that DH and I saw the other day, and I posted about in my ABC Wednesday E post later that evening ... turns out it was just Fine For my F post too!
... mind you ... I could have just made do with dog and cat Fur if I had to ... lol
(there are also more furry animal photos on Spot, The Blog)
or Fancy some Fireworks? (if so you will have to search the www or something - I want to get this post Finished, so I can't be bothered spending Forever hunting around in Folders trying to Find some decent photos of them ... most of the ones I take turn out a but dodgy)
... or a Friend on my Fingers:
well ... it wasn't on my finger, but it was sort of walking that way ... except I don't think it was walking ... and it seemed to want to walk UP my arm when it did walk! I found it while I was pulling some weeds out of the garden yesterday, so I moved it to a different bit of garden, where I wasn't going to accidently Flatten it or something unFortunate like that ...
or Fish in a bucket ... and the dog Finding them and Fishing For them with his Feet.
F is also for Finally - the Finish of this post?
(or the Fact that I have Finally posted it?! ... although it isn't quite as late as the E post was ...)
btw - Luckily For those who don't like yucky stuff - I Forgot to take a photo of Fungus, or some Flies ... (or something Festy or Festering or Foetid)
Why eek? ... because it is ... Eek! - my blog is going to look boring if EVERY post starts with a letter of the alpahbet! It would be ok if I actually got around to posting some other stuff in between the ABC Wednesday stuff ... but I don't seem to get around to that lately ... but at least I am posting something ... that was half the idea behind me signing up for/joining in with yet another "silly blog thing" - it was meant to mean that I would post something to my blog Every week ... Except I am already Ending up being a bit late ... but I guess it is not too bad as long as I post each letter Eventually?
Actually it is quite handy that I am not getting around to my E post until today yesterday - because now I can include the Echidna I saw today yesterday:
DH and I went for a "Sunday drive" out to Yass and Bowning (about an hour down the road) and this fellow had just crossed the road we were driving along ... good to see that it made it across safely - often they don't (some drivers don't bother to notice them/avoid them, so quite a lot of wildlife ends up as a kind of 2 dimensional splodge on the bitumen ... Ex wildlife ... with Extruded Entrails ... Etc ... "mmm - roadkill" ... and to think that some people actually Eat it?!)
I probably could have included an Echidna here anyway ... I do have another photo of one ... but I am not sure I would have thought of it if I had not seen another one today yesterday - lol
The funny thing is - this Echidna photo was taken a couple of years ago - but only a few Kilometres from where we saw the other one today yesterday! (it is possible it was the same one - but not very likely - there are probably a lot of Echidnas living in the area, and for it to have been the same one it would have had to cross a few roads including the rather busy Hume Highway)
E is also for Elephant - I don't have a real one handy, so this pretend one will have to do:
It was marketed as "hand carved" , but it is made of some kind of plastic type stuff ... possibly hand made though ... looks cute anyway ... which is why I bought it as a present for someone ... but it is another few weeks until I see them to give it to them (they probably won't see it here though - they don't usually get around to remembering to read/look at my blog unless I e-mail them copies of the posts - LOL)
E is also for Egg ... I was thinking of posting some pictures of eggs in birds nests in the back yard, but A: I can't be bothered going hunting around in my photos for them, B: I could probably do a whole post all about bird's nests with (and without) eggs in our back yard, and C: I already have enough photos in this post.
E is also for Egypt ... I am going there in a few weeks time :-) (the same holiday I mentioned in my D post, because I am also going to Dubai first) I am getting Excited ... I can't wait to see all (or at least some of) the interesting places I have been reading about here! (hmmmm ... her blog still says she lives in Cairo ... but she is back here in Canberra now! ... and yes - I have the pleasure of knowing her in person - we met because we are both quilters, and both in the same online quilting group ... she was actually living in Jerusalem when I joined that online group ... she didn't have a blog then but she used to send some interesting e-mails to the group ... but they were also mostly rather scary ... not a safe place to liveBe sometimes ... then again ... after the recent stuff in the news I am also a bit Edgy about Egypt ... I guess we will just have to be Extra careful (and follow the Excellent advice they offer here) ... I am sure we will still Enjoy ourselves - lol
E is also for Exoskeleton ... in other words - a skeleton on the outside - like spiders and insects and shrimp and stuff have ... for Example - "Emily" the spider:
- the spider that my Daughter, Erin, decided to name "Emily" ... lol
This photo was taken about a Month later, so it may or may not be Emily ... but the moth also has an Exoskeleton ... and it was probably also very tasty ... lol
I guess it is basic Ecology - predators Eat prey ... that is how they Eke out their Existence ... or something like that ... I had better stop before i start getting too Existential or something ...
E is also for Extricating the "Extra student" we had in the science lab (at the high school I work at) the other day ... it Exited the lab in a cardboard box (it was hiding in the fume cupboard, and is Extremely quiet - has been living in the science area for a while I think, and quite used to being near people, so it was Easy to catch) ... we let it go in the patch of gum (Eucalyptus ;-) trees just outside the science area ... and it "Escaped" up the nearest tree. (which was Exactly where we intended it to go).
It didn't look to impressed with being "thrown" out in the bright sunlight ... it was not very Energetic ... possums tend to be nocturnal ... up all night and sleep all day. (but it couldn't stay living in the lab ... the students get too Excited when they realise they are sharing the room with cute furry wildlife, and it is not nice doing science Experiments with possum Excretement all over the lab benches!). We shut the windows where we think it had got in (dodgy louvre things that are hard to close properly) so hopefully it won't be able to Enter as Easily ...
btw - I was going to post this blog post yesterday, but I went and did some other things and then didn't get around to putting the photos onto the computer and adding them ... although for some odd reason it "posted" itself, while I was out of the room but still logged in, (lucky I came in here to log out of blogger, and noticed it!) and so I had to change the date to UN post it and save it as a draft again ... so if you came here yesterday evening and saw this post on here half finished (and/or saw it and then it wasn't there again later) - that is why - LOL
E is also for Evening ... which it isn't again ... Midnight just came and went while I was still finishing typing this ... oops? ... lol
E is also for the End of this long and rambling blog post ... ... which brings me back to the start - Eek - I hope it is not the End of the Earth ... or Even the End of the Earth as we know it ... Everything changes ... but it is usually Eventually not "overnight" like wars/disasters/global warming/etc seem to be happening ...
Evidently, I don't know when to stop ...
no - I won't keep raving on for Ever (although I have been known to stay messing around at the computer until my Eyes are almost hanging down all over the keyboard ... lol)
and I am Definitely Disorganised - why else am I only just posting my D post (for ABC Wednesday) now, when I am already a few days late for E?! LOL
D is also for Disaster and Devastation ... and I am sure there are a few D posts that mention that, after the bushfires in Victoria (I saw one D/disaster post, about the bushfires, on a blog I found listed as one of the "blogs of note" when I logged in to blogger ... I thought that blog name sounded familiar - lol) I live in Canberra, where we had some bad bushfires in 2003 ... so a lot of people here have been offering help and suggestions of what sort of help will be needed and when, because they know from having been there themselves ... this time the fires were not near here though ... but the sky has been very hazy, and the sunsets have been very orange and smokey looking, for the last few days (yes - there are still fires burning down there in Victoria ... and floods in Queensland and Bourke (in Northern NSW) ... so D is also for Deluge (but hopefully not for anyone Drowning in it) ... we sure have had some weird weather lately - record high temperatures in one part of Australia and record rainfall in another ... a years worth of rain all in one day - right in the middle of a Drought ...
Anyway ... enough of all that ... except to mention that D is also for Donate/Donations ... there are Bushfire appeals and flood appeals to donate money and/or stuff to ... both for the people affected, and for the animals/wildlife/etc ... but I don't think I need to try and list them all here because those who want to Donate have probably already Done that, or Doing that ... or at least have the info from all the media coverage/etc ...
so ... time to Delve into the other D things I was going to post about (but kind of ran out of spare Days in the week to get around to actually Doing it)
D is for:
Dunlop ... is the suburb I live in ... I think it is probably named after Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop but I could be wrong ... if you want to have a look at my suburb - do a search for Dunlop, ACT, Australia ... or somesuch ... there is probably lots of stuff about it on the www ... and on Google Earth as well (I was just looking at our house on there a little while ago - lol) ... or you might find it by using location tags on one of those photo websites that has those.
D is also for Dog ... and Diesel - the name of our dog - lol
way back in the "Dim Dark past" (well ... about 16 years ago anyway) we used to have a Dog called Digger ... but I Don't have any Digital photos of him ... and I Don't think I could even find the right album of "real" photos that might have one of him in it, even if I Decided I wanted to Dig around in them and Do that at this hour of night ... I also grew up (for the first 8 years of my life) with a dog called Dobie ... even shared a bone with him once, according to my Mum - lol - I think she said I was about 2, and she looked out the kitchen window and there were the dog and I, out in the back yard, taking turns at having a chew on some Disgusting old bone ... and the dog was happily letting me take it from him and have my turn - LOL
I actually spent part of today helping out at a friend's Dog grooming salon - and spent most of the day there Drying dogs ... so Diesel was very interested in all the Doggy smells on my clothing/etc when I got home.
hmmm Diesel must have "heard" me type his name ... he just came in here and looked at me and wandered out again when nothing exciting was happening ... lol
Here is a (Dopey looking?) photo of Diesel:
That was in the back yard a few weeks ago ... and he is sitting on the Dirt ... but at least he is not Digging in it (although he Does Do that in one spot on the lawn sometimes ... I think he digs himself a cool spot to lie in, because where he digs is under a couple of bushes that hang over the lawn)
and ... the friend who owns the Dog grooming salon I was helping out at today just happens to have a puppy called Dawkins ... he also has another dog too and one or both of them often go to work with him and spend the day lying around in the salon ... I was helping out there one other day recently ... I think it may have been the same day as the bushfires in Victoria ... no (just checked date of photo) it was a week or so earler - but it was stinking hot that day too ... and I took a few photos of Dawkins Doing what Dawkins Does ... lying around looking Dopey - lol
he also doesn't seem to care where he lies and what he lies in ... yes he is somewhere in amongst this pile of hair that tends to collect under the table they use to brush and/or clip the dogs.
I guess some people would say that looks Disgusting? ... but Dawkins Didn't think so - he was quite comfortable thank you very much ... lol
btw ... as with the cat photos - there are more Dog photos on this other blog of mine (the one where I sometimes post a whole pile of dog and cat photos, but usually don't get around to posting anything to very often at all)
D is also for Dubai ... which is one of the United Arab Emirates ... there are lots of other countries and cites in the world that start with D ... but Dubai is one that, unless something Disasterous happens, I will actually be visiting in just over 4 weeks time! (I am taking some long service leave and going on a holiday, to Dubai and a couple of other places, with my Mum ... because Mum and I both have the travel bug ... but Dad and my DH (Dear Husband) don't ... so they can stay home and "mind the fort" while we go and see the world ... or a little bit of it anyway ... )
D is also for "Dingly Danglies" ... something else I like and DH Doesn't ... especially if they have bells or smells ... he even thinks ear rings are a waste of time/money ... and absolutely hates tinkly jingly stuff hanging from key rings or from anything he has to touch/use ...
and I know I have already mentioned that D is for Disorganised ... but ... in my usually Disorganised way of Doing things ... here is another (Disjointed - lol) bit on the subject (one that I actually got organised enough to paste in here back before it was time to post my D post, when I was here typing my C post and also started jotting some "D" ideas Down and then saved it as a Draft) While I was typing my C post (the Day after I should have been posting this D post!) I was also reading a couple of blogs that I like to visit ... and I left a coment on a recent post on this blog
Her post was all about how she had been tidying up/organising her sewing room ... and this is part of the (rather long) comment I left on the post ... or I thought I left it there - it doesn't seem to be there so it probably didn't actually work (or maybe it was "moderated" off there because it was too long - lol - either way, it is probably better in here rather than taking up space in someone else's blog comments) anyway ... this is the bit that I did type in there and then copied and pasted here before I hit the button to (not?) add the comment:
btw - wanna come and sort my sewing room when you are done there? LOL
(I have been "in the middle of" sorting it out for a year or 3 ... or 5 ... now ... sigh ... am also currently moving a pile of boxes of fabric and boxes of other sewing/crafty bits/junk/stuff/whatever from under the pergola into the garage ... the original idea was to put them under the pergola for a few weeks until I sorted out the sewing room, then I could sort out/tidy up there as well, while I was at it ... but that kind of didn't happen anywhere near as fast as it was originally meant to and is still not going to happen that fast now (something to do with me always having some other stuff I want/need to sew and doing that instead, and the fact that I am going overseas for a month in about 5 weeks time ...) so now the boxes of fabric/craft stuff are going in a pile in the garage (where I might actually be able to sort some out during this winter) and the boxes of really weird crud are going to get sorted out (at least into 2 piles - "get rid of now" and "sort out later" - lol) and then the pergola might actually sort of look like a pergola and not a junk shed with the walls missing ... sigh - I really DO need a house with a granny flat or somesuch - so I can have a decent "studio" or something, rather than a sewing room that is actually an end of an open space that has windows on 2 sides, one wall, and open to the living area on the other side ...)
btw ... part of the reason I didn't get around to posting this post any sooner was because for the few evenings in the last week or 2 that I wasn't busy doing other things and might have spent catching up here, I just chekced/answered e-mail and then left my blogging until "later" because I was busy sorting out the pergola ... which is now a lot tidier and actually looks like a pergola again ...
... talking about the pergola ... I also usually hang the washing out under there (has a roof over it so it means I don't have to worry if it rains before I bring the washing in off the line - quite handy when everyone goes out to work or school or something and I often do the washing and hang it out in the evening and then take it off the line when I get home from work/etc the next afternoon/evening) ... and I have a load of washing to hang out now ... and it is now after Midnight and I have to get up fairly early in the morning.
oh ... just remembered one more thing b4 I go ... D is also for Doesn't work ... which on some peoples computers that will apply to that upside down thingy I had in my C post ... I thought it would work on most computers, but after looking at my blog on the one I was using at work the other day - maybe not - because it didn't work on that one ... it just came out as a jumbled mess - LOL
C is for ... a whole Collection of things (er ... so what's new? lol) ... Yes - it is ABC Wednesday time again, and we are up to the letter C
er ... actually - we were up to the letter C last week ... which is when I started typing this post ... but I didn't add the photos yet because this C0mputer Crashed and I decided to wait a Couple of days until it was up and running, with the image editing software that I like to use back on it ... but then I kind of got busy and didn't get around to logging in and adding the photos until now ... which is actually a day AFTER I should be posting my D post! oops? (yes ... I am Definitely going to include Disorganised in my D post)
I have thought of lots of C things but I Can't decide which ones to post about ... so I am probably going to Cover most of them to a Certain extent ... because I Can ... and I am Contrary ...
My original/first idea was to do a post all about Crochet ... but I have a few things I have finished over the last who knows how long and have not posted about yet, so I Could probably do 2 or 3 other blog posts about them ... but Could isn't the same as "I will do that this week" ... so it will just have to be "eventually" ...
I probably Could find a Crochet photo or 2 to stick in here anyway, but not sure if I Can find them ... because I am actually doing this on the other computer (which has a back up copy of my photos on it, but not the software that I use to play with them) and Currently I Can't do it on the main Computer (the one I usually use for photos/e-mail/posting to my blog/etc) because it got Cranky and Crashed (DH is in the middle of fixing it ... photos and documents were all backed up, but not my Crazy Collection of e-mail folders ... but he has got it working enough to back those up before he fiddles around to see what Crashed it ... probably just that it is a bit old and has been well used by 4 people who have put all sorts of C**p on it ...
C is for Computer ... well I think I have just kind of mostly Covered that one ... although I Could add that we have a few Computers in the house (a couple of very old almost dead laptops, and a couple of old computers that got replaced by better ones but they still work fine for what they now get used for ... in the Case of this one - for me to stick Copies of my photos on and fiddle with stuff here if someone is using the main one, and another one is Connected to the TV so we can watch a few odd things DH downloads ... motorbike racing stuff that doesn't Come over here to be broadcast in Australia and stuff like that) ... and yes - they are all Connected to the internet/each other (wireless networks are Cool). I Could also mention that I use Computers at work for a few things but I don't actually have one on my desk ... grrr ... means I have to Commandeer somebody elses when I want to look up stuff about Chemicals and stuff ...
that reminds me - C is also for Chemicals ... I get to use a few of those at work ... especially when I have to get out stuff for the students to do Chemistry lessons. I could list all the ones that start with C too, but I won't ... but I Could list a Couple ... like Caustic soda and Calcium Carbonate ...
C is also for Cat ... we have one of those (used to have 2 until a Couple of years ago) - and there are already a few Cat photos on this blog, and more on http://spot-theblog.blogspot.com/ (hmmm I just Copied that URL there - lol) ... I am sure the Cat is a bit Crazy ... and so is the dog - who also fits here because he is a Canine (Canis familiaris actually - lol) ... but he will get mentioned again next week when we are up to D because he is a Dog and his name is Diesel - lol.
... talking about the Cat and dog - C is also for Chunder ... which is what the Cat sometimes does after she eats a few too many "Crunchies" (a nick name for dry cat/dog food) ... she just happend to do that on the floor beside me while I was typing the first bit of this post (thank goodness it was in here on the tiled floor, not the carpet where the computer I normally use for blog posting is) ... so I grabbed the Camera (which, Conveniently, was on the desk beside me) and got a photo of the dog doing what he normally does if the Cat Chunders on the floor ... mmmmm recycled/second hand Cat food - LOL
er ... maybe it is also Convenient that you Can't really see what he is eating in the photo ... LOL
If you have a good look at that other blog, you will also find a couple of photos of the dog eating Crunchies, and moving his bowl across the floor and leaving it there ... and the other Crazy thing he does with his Crunchies is to decide he is a bit hungry when DH and I go to bed, or when we are in some other room of the house, so he will grab a mouthful of them and then come down to the bedroom/wherever we are so he is nearer to DH and I ... but he will get half way there and finish them and turn around and go back for more ... or drop a few on the way and go back to eat them ... and the other thing he will do is grab a mouthful of Crunchies and then notice that whoever is in the kitchen has some "people food" so he will drop the crunchies on the floor, eat whatever it is we give him, then eat the dropped crunchies off the floor ... he also prefers Cat food to dog food ... (probably because it IS the cat's food - lol)
Now ... what else was I going to post about? ... I am sure there are more things I Currently Can't think of ... but will Come to me later ...
I live in Canberra ... but I don't need to put a whole pile of stuff about that here because there is lots of stuff about Canberra on the internet - especially seeing it is the Capital City of Australia ...
... because I am a quilter and I live in Canberra, I am a member of Canberra Quilters, of Course.
I could mention Catching up - but I never seem to Catch up with all the sewing/crochet/etc I want to finish, or with all the stuff I want to post to my blog, or a lot of other things too ...
I Could also mention Crazy Quilting - because I have also done some of that ... even posted about it on this blog ... a Couple of years ago probably ...
One thing I do have to mention is that I have a huge Collection of all sorts of fabric/yarn/lace/beads/etc sewing and crochet stuff ... I Collect all sorts of junk ... and it drives DH a bit Crazy, and he gets Cranky ...
Oh and one more photo I found before I gave up trying to look for them on here - Christmas Cake ... slightly squashed, after somebody I know SAT on it at a Canberra Quilters meeting!
er ... would it be a Catastrophe or a Calamity if this post was a day or 2 late? ... it is bed time and the other computer is still in the process of being fixed and I have not put the photos in here yet - I just put [photo of ___ goes here] or whatever in a couple of places ready to add the photos later when I find them/upload them to the computer ... and I am not sure I will get to do that tomorrow after work because I have a Canberra Quilters meeting tomorrow night ...
... and I have not mentioned Creatures or Coffee or Cars yet either ...
(although I have used tags for those 3 things, so you should be able to use those to find my preveious posts that mention those things, just look for them in the list of "labels" in the side bar ... well - that is the ones I remembered to tag/label anyway - lol)
btw, I will spare you all and not put any pictures up of cankers, cold sores or casualty (not that I have any photos of those anyway) ... ditto with a few other things like Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and Colonoscopy and Cancer and other horrid stuff (guess who has just been watching the TV show "House"? LOL)
Ok ... that was where I got up to before this got "forgotten" for a week or so ... lol
Sometime during that week I took this photo of the Cat on the "Clam shell"
... the Clam shell (one half of a thing they sell as a kids sandpit/paddle pool/toy storage/whatever you want to use it for), and the ice cream containers in a row beside it (and a Collection of buckets not in the photo, because they were in a pile on the Concrete under the pergola) are what we use to Collect rain water off the edge of the pergola roof when it rains - then I water the garden with it a few days later - doing my bit to Conserve water ...
I also took a photo of the Chewed ball that the dog left on the lawn this week ...
C is also for Cactus ... we have a humungous ginormous one out in the back yard, that I seem to take a lot of photos of ... actually I think it is an Aloe of some sort ... but it is a succulent and has prickles so it fits into the sort of thing I grew up calling a cactus even if it technically isn't one ... Now all I have to do is FIND one of the photos I took of the thing ... Ah - here is a Cardboard Chewing Canine beside the Cactus:
er ... he looks pointy! - like he is trying to imitate the Cactus or something - LOL ... but I think it was just a fluke that he was in the middle of barking and happened to have his tail pointing straight behind him in the middle of a wag ...
While looking for a Cactus photo I also found something else I had forgotten about ... C is also for Chip - as in fish and Chips (in Australia, Chips are what some of you probably call french fries) ... or Chicken and Chips ... which I think this Crinkle Cut one was from:
yes it really did have those brown spots that look like eyes - so I took it to work and hung it on the bookshelf (with a Cleverly Concealed pin) so that it looked like a mutant Caterpillar Climbing up there ...
btw ... I found this Crazy thing on someone's blog ... don't know how they did it, but it seems to copy and paste ok ...
So much fun ...
(: ʎɐp ǝɥʇ uı sɹnoɥ ʍǝɟ os ...
... probably some odd special characters or somesuch because it wasn't done with html code ... I was hoping it was - because then I could write whatever I wanted upside down - lol Actually ... I just looked at the comments ... and found out how - you can do it at this website - http://www.revfad.com/flip.html
And yes, as I suspected - it is done by replacing letters with other ones that look like upside down versions of the right way up ones, and with the various special characters in Unicode ... like y is replaced with the upside down y (lambda) that is used in maths/science formulas and some of the others are weird symbols for various sounds used when they show the phonetic sounds in dictionaries/etc ...
and ... even weirder - I just found a site that "translates" whole websites into "upside down"!
- try typing my, or your, blog URL into here -http://flip.sytes.org/and see what you get! LOL
hmmm ... evil thoughts here - LOL - I had an idea how to freak someone out totally ... like someone you share a computer with, or the person at the next desk if you work in a "cubicle farm" - wait until they leave the computer for a moment and go there and type in the google URL (or something else you know they go to a lot) and see what their reaction is when they come back and try to read the text on the screen ...
btw, I left the google page, backwards, on the screen about and hour before DH got home form work, and went to do some other stuff (I wanted to move some boxes of fabric and stuff into the garage before DH came home and parked his motorbike next to where the boxes were going) ... when he got home he came in here and said that the browser was messing up ... something in that site that it didn't like ... he said that those sorts of websites often have a virus in them, or it could just be that the web browser didn't like being left open on that sort of website (it probably uses some sort of dodgy java script to do the "translating" or something I guess, and I know that dodgy java script is good at crashing web browsers/computers) ... so if you go there it might be a point to first make sure your antivirus software is up to date and/or go there, "translate" whatever page into backwards, look at it and laugh ... then leave/close the browser rather than leave it up on the screen while you go tidy the sewing room/sort out the garage/make coffee/walk the dog/make a quilt/have tea/whatever ...
The next letter, which I should have posted something about last night, will hopefully be up here shortly ... (I intend to do that tomorrow evening/night ... but then I intended to do this C post last week ... so I guess it will happen when it happens ... ditto with the promised "crochet" blog post I think I mentioned earlier ... lol ... )
B is for ... Behind ... or should that be Belated? ... well it is only a Bit late for ABC Wednesday ... lol - I was Busy last night ... or maybe just feeling ... er this is a NICE website so I won't use that other word that a lot of Aussies use ... so I will just say Bushed ... maybe because I am now Back at work after the Christmas Break.
But now I am here to ?Bore you with ?Boundless Beastly and/or Beautiful ... or are they just Bothersome? ... B words/etc ...
Yesterday I wasn't actually at my usual (Boring?) workplace ... I was off at a course for high school science assistants (which is what I am) and the course was called "Bending glass" ... not sure how useful it was, but it was interesting, and fun ... except that I touched the wrong Bit of glass (the hot one I had just put down - oops) and Burnt my finger and gave myself a Blister ... lol
(I know that hot glass looks the same as cold glass, but I forgot that I had just put that bit down a minute earlier - lol)
Unfortunately the Bunsen Burners were not hot enough to do any glass Blowing, but we learnt how to do some glass Bending and joining and made some interesting curly whirly thingys ... But I forgot to take a photo of the ones I took in to work today ... and now they are there and I am here ... B#%^#%& ...
The ones I took to work were a couple bits of leftover coloured glass that I was going to play with on the bunsen burner there (one lunch time or something) and a pretty green coloured twisty curly thingy that I made from a bit of glass rod ... but one end fell off so I was going to melt the sharp bit where it fell off from, and make the end into a bead (seeing it was a loopy bit with a hole in it) ... but the clear bits of bent/etc tubing are still here at home ...
So I just took a photo of those:
the top 2 are some leftover Bits I had not finished doing anything with, the next couple are flared out at one end and sealed at the other ... like if I wanted to make a test tube or something ... (as if I would actually have time to do that at work - lol) ... then there is a Big curly thing in the middle - had to Be Bent a little Bit at a time because the Bunsen flame only heated up a bit at a time ... and because it wouldn't work trying to bend it all at once anyway ... the next one has a loop bent into it and then one end is twisted then folded over into a kind of flat loop (so I can hang it up if I want to - lol) ... and the Bottom one has a flange at one end and a twist in the middle and a twisty point at the other ... I was mucking around to see what I ended up with ... I quite like that Bottom one, so of course that is the one that Broke.
Actually it is amazing that more of them didn't Break - seeing I went there and back on a motorBike, and I had to put my stuff in the Bag on the Back! (Better than if I had been on a Bicycle though ... and a Bus would have been just as Bad ... or worse ... )
The Bloke who was teaching us about glass has a studio in a nearby town, called Binalong ... lol (he also handed out Buisness cards, with the link to his website - here - which I am going to go and have a look at sometime when I am not Busy trying to write a Blog post)
btw, he also teaches Bead making ... I do not need another hobby, I do not need another hobby, I do ... er ... actually I probably can't afford it anyway ... sigh ... lol
(I already use quite a lot of Beads in my textile/etc stuff, and tend to buy them here and there when I find them at the right price or I reall like them - lol)
I also took a photo of this crochet Bag that I made in the car on the way to/from Melbourne the other week (we went down for a BBQ at DH's Brother's place ... )
hmmm ... more B words (I am finding Bazillions of them - lol) - the Bag is Brown and a Blueish/greenish colour ... (the zip is green)
Today at work I got to spend most of the day By myself ... all the teachers were off doing some course or something and only one of them came Back to work after it finished ... so no Boss looking over my shoulder - lol (not that the head science teacher is officially my boss anyway - but the person who is my official supervisor has her office in another building and does not have a lot to do with what I do ... so the person I get my "orders" from (who tells me what to do and what not to do and when) is actually the head science teacher ... and we don't actually have one at the moment - he just moved to another school and they have not had time to replace him)
Anyway ... I got to catch up on a few things, and unpack some Boxes of stuff I had ordered from a Big supplier in Queensland ... there are a lot of jokes going around about how Queensland is not just an hour different in time (which it is in Summer because they don't have daylight saving) it is 20 years behind the rest of Australia - LOL ... well - I think today I have found proof! - one of the things I unpacked from the Box was wrapped in a page of newspaper ... and have a look at the date!
(for those who can't read it/don't want to click on it and go to the full size image - it says "August 27th 1992! ... that was Before my teenage daughter was Born ...)
and yes ... that is an article about tractor sales figures - lol (country Bumpkins?)
also - no - those glass things are vacuum flasks, not Bongs!
I really should put that last photo on my Huh? Blog! (seeing that is where all those silly sorts of things go ... eventually, when I get around to putting them there ... lol)
talking about silly Billy stuff ... maybe I should type in bold ?
I think this post is already long enough, so I don't have to go hunting for a photo of a Bee ... (I have a few of those) ... and I am sure somebody else will have mentioned Beer ... and if you want something Bizarre then most of my textile art stuff, and most of my blog posts, probably qualify for that one ... LOL
But I do want to mention something called BOINC ... which I think stands for something odd like Berkely Open INfrastructure Computing ... it is where you can set up you computer(s) so that when it is not busy it can do number crunching/etc type work on various projects that are on there ... and one of those projects is SETI@home (Search for Extra Terrestrial Inteligence - where your computer helps them process the data for their search for Aliens - lol) ... which has actually been around for longer than boinc has (and has Been in the media/on movies/etc quite a bit over the years) ... DH has various BOINC stuff running on all the computers in the house (and seeing DH is into computers, we have a few).
Now, I started typing this blog post early in the evening, but I went and did other things for an hour or 3 and then came back, so now it is rather late ... so I really should go to Bed ...
but first - the "wildlife" photo I took today, while sorting out junk/boxes of fabric/whatever that I have stored under the pergola ... (yes - boring way to spend Australia Day ... but DH was at work, and I wasn't one of the 50% of Canberra people who nick off down to the coast for the weekend, or one of the other almost 50% who either have a BBQ or go to one, and drink beer/etc while they enjoy their public holiday (actually neither of those % figures are that correct - there are probably quite a few people who don't do anything special for Australia Day - some because they are at work and others because they have stuff to do at home and/or just don't happen to be doing anything/going anywhere that day ... er ... like me ... LOL)
... anyway ... here is one of our wonderful Aussie creatures:
I took the photo after DD came out and saw it sitting there at the top of the kitchen window frame ... that is where it ended up after I found it an hour or so earlier - when it crawled out from under one of the flaps of a cardboard box of my fabric! And here is an Aussie sunset:
actually the sunset is off to the left ... almost behind me ... in this photo - this is looking NorthEast (roughly) over the Dunlop Grasslands - and the dog is in the bottom left corner (he wasn't in the origianl photo but the left hand side was just some boring house/etc beside the path so I cropped the photo) This was taken a week or 2 ago...
... and this was taken a few minutes later:
yes - the sky really WAS that colour!
... it also really was this odd greyish green colour a few days later:
This was a few days ago when we had some big thunderstorms - this was when the biggest one that we had here in Dunlop was coming - the sideways rain and wild wind gusts hit about 2 minutes after I took this photo - this was the same day that a few houses in Canberra lost their roof! ... and the next day, I noticed that my pile of boxes of dried plants, collected for making baskets/etc, had also lost it's "roof" - the sheet of plywood that I had over the top of it (the pile of boxes/etc was against the wall at the side of the house next to the fence where nobody goes except the dog and I, and I had made a sort of "lean to" to keep the rain off) the "roof" ended up a few feet away in the bush in the front yard - I am glad the bush was there to stop it - else it may have ended up in someone's front yard across the street!) ... the pile of plants were a bit wet, but the ones I still wanted dried out ok in the sun ... I have now sorted the pile out and thrown some of it out, and now the rest is in a couple of boxes under the pergola ... next to the boxes of fabric - lol
btw, I was going to do a separate blog post about the storm ... but once I decided to put those first 2 sunset photos in, and went looking for more photos of different colourd sky, I realised it kind of fits in here now - lol
So ... here is another photo of the storm coming
This was actually taken about 4 minutes before the one above - ominous green clouds above the pointy brown hills ...
... and this one was taken 1 minute before it (ie 3 minutes later)
Oh Oh! - where have the hills gone?! - LOL about 2 minutes after this is when the rain squall hit - yes - of course I was standing out IN it! lol (very handy thing this waterproof camera ;-)
- well - I had to stand out in it to watch the lightning and take photos/video of the storm clouds ... ... hmmm - seems the dog was watching the storm coming too:
... or maybe he was just looking to see what I was looking at - lol
There is a laneway beside the house on the left in that photo - when the rain and wind hit I suddenly realised that there might be hailstones or something and maybe I had better get a bit closer to some shelter in case the dog and I needed to dive under someones verandah or something ... so we ran down the laneway ... taking a video at the same time - lol - but it was a bit bumpy and blurry so I won't put that one here - I took another one as the dog and I walked down the street (we live several houses down from that laneway) ... as you can see - he didn't seem to care if it was raining sideways ... lol
This photo was taken 10 minutes after that first storm photo (the camera puts some kind of time "stamp" in the image files so the software I use to look at/edit my photos knows what time they were taken ... it actually seemed longer than 10 minutes at the time - lol)
and yes - the sky really was that odd olive green colour.
It was also this colour about 24 minutes later:
- yes - after walking around in the storm I got changed into dry clothing and took the dog for the rest of his walk - LOL and took even more sunset/cloud/etc photos
(this one was about 10 minutes after the last one)
The next evening the dog and I went for another walk - and I took photos of this storm:
There is a bit of a hill where I walk the dog - has a great view of clouds/storms/whatever over the city!
In fact this one (same storm a few minutes later, with camera zoomed in) looks like it was right over the city
- the "hill" in the foreground is Black Mountain - and the tower on top of it is a prominent landmark that can be seen from a lot of places in and around Canberra.
Last but not least (well it was going to be the last one until I found another one while waiting for the video to not upload!) - sometimes we get sunsets like this!
this was tonight's sunset - with a rather smokey sky (the smoke has blown over from some bushfires down near the coast - which shows up really well on this satellite image ... if you want to have a look at what other images/etc you can get on that handy website, the home page is here ... the image I linked to is one of the "near real time subsets" (scroll about half way down the page and you should see that) ... but if that sounds like too much digging around then have a look at the "gallery" (the link is on the top of the page) - that is where they put the interesting looking ones. btw ... downloading too many of those images is probably not recomended for those on dial up internet ... then again ... neither is looking at blogs with lots of photos and videos on them - lol
... talking about video ... I decided to try out the video uploading thingy on blogger (instead of using youtube/etc and linking, like I have done for the other videos I have put in blog posts - in fact I think the first one of 2 videos I posted - that was the only way to do it at the time) hmmm ... the first one worked fine ... but the second one took half an hour ... er make that an hour ... and it took all that time to do ... nothing ... lol but I found this while I was waiting, and decided to see if trying to upload it would kick start the video thingy ... photo uploaded fine ... video upload seems to be dead ... grrr ...
yes - another thunderstorm photo - taken in Feb. 2007 - I managed to catch some lightning lighting up the clouds (the yellowish colour on the clouds in the foreground is probably light reflected from the streetlights/city/whatever), and you can also see the southern cross (a constellation of stars that you can see from here in Australia, but not from the Northern Hemisphere) in the sky above the clouds! ... I was probably going to try and remember to post this photo for Australia Day last year, but I didn't ... LOL
hmmm ... if the video thingy still hasn't worked by the time I have gone and got a drink and come back (er ... it looks dead and I have not gone yet - think I might kill it now and then get my drink on the way to bed) - this blog post can get posted without it and I will try and add the video to it when I get up in the morning ... or should I say later in the morning, or even afternoon - seeing it IS morning ... in fact if I stay here much longer I could wander out to where I took those storm/sunset photos and get a photo of the sunRISE - LOL
[later edit, the next evening (was going to be earlier but someone else was using the computer at the time) ... re the video uploading problem last night (well early hours of this morning actually) methinks I will blame microstuffed windoze/internet exploder ... it turns out the video had uploaded, but some of the other stuff that was supposed to then happen in this post editor thingy didn't happen at this end, then the web browser totally froze when I hit the "publish post" button ... but thanks to blogger saving all this stuff as I write it so it is all there at that end anyway, it did publish the post ok ... minus the second video ... and when I just came in here expecting to have to upload it again I noticed it had put in the enclosure link up the top, but not the bit of html code it should have put where the video is in the post - so I had a fiddle around with the html and copy and pasted some stuff and now the video shows up where it should be ... (which is how I have learnt to do most of the little bit of html stuff I know - have a look at how it seems to work and fiddle with it to make something do what I want - lol) anyway ... now this is fixed, off to do the other stuff I was going to do on the computer while the video uploaded ... like look up a map of where I am supposed to go for the work course I am doing tomorrow, so I know where I am going and can find the place, and read/answer e-mails and stuff ... and try not to get too "lost in cyberspace" while I am doing it ... lol]
- I WAS going to do one Journal Quilt for each month this year - we even had a list of themes and techniques that was posted to the Art quilt yahoogroup I am on ( the Aus_NZartquilters yahoogroup) I knew I would probably be too busy to do many/any of them in the first half - 2/3 of the year (too busy doing stuff for the quilt exhibition and the textile art exhibition) but I was hoping I would maybe get 2 or 3 done and then have plenty of time do the others in the last few months of the year - er ... the first one I made was my September Journal quilt! ... but I did have it finished in the first week of October ... then I kind of came to a standstill again ... sigh ... but I did manage to finish 4 more in time to deliver my 5 to the person who was collecting them - so they can be part of our travelling exhibition - about 26 of us have sent in 5 journal quilts each, and a sheet of "blurbs" about them - they go to the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne (at the end of February) and then to all the other craft/quilt shows that the same mob of people organise ... and possibly to a few other quilt shows/etc if people want to have them there ...
Anyway ... I already posted about the September one here ... but I might include it again in this post anyway - lol
So ... here are photos of the 5 journal quilts, and what I wrote for the "blurbs" about them (btw - they WERE sort of supposed to be for particular months, but they don't really have to be ... and because I made the last 4 all around the same time and they were all sort of about stuff that happened throughout the year but not nescessarily in any particular month, I decided to number them 2, 3, 4 and 5 (in sort of the order I started making them and finished them ... and the order they seemed to want to be in).
1. “Of Black Holes And Froot Loops” - In September, CERN turned on their Large Hadron Collider, despite the fact that some “froot loops” tried to take legal action to stop them from “creating black holes and destroying the Earth”. The “beads” are bits of drinking straw, cut up and ironed flat.
2. “Going Green” - The green background was a “clean up rag” from a fabric painting session, stamped with leftover paint. Machine and hand quilted in spirals (“what goes around comes around”) and decorated with beads and stitching (using mostly recycled/second hand thread).
3. “Into The Blue” - Machine quilted from the back (with silver thread in bobbin) and embellished with leftover strips from trimming quilt fabric (some, including edges of quilt, were rolled up and couched on) and other threads, beads, etc.
4. “The Odd Eyes Of The Artist” - Background cut from an old Marilyn Manson T-shirt (from one of my “heavy metal mad” teenagers). Machine quilted with a tattoo like design that “fell out of the needle” (I made it up as I sewed it ;-) and then hand stitched with crochet yarn/thread.
5. “Mad Dogs And Englishmen (Go Out In The Midday Sun, To Have Tea And Play On The Lawn)” - tea bags, paper towel, jute fibres, fluffy yarn and dog hair, needle felted onto green painted fabric. Edges were folded to make border and sewn to backing. Hand quilted with used tea bag strings.
btw, there is actually more meaning in some of these than I wrote in the "blurb" - we were limited to 4 lines each so it all fitted on the A4 page that hangs up beside them ... but if we had more room to write more I am not sure if I could really have described much more about the meaning behind them and made any sense anyway - lol (although I possibly could have explained a bit more about the materials and techiques I used to make them - especially with that last one, where the title I gave it was so long I had trouble fitting in any sort of understandable explanation of what it was made of and how! ... I guess I could have given it a shorter name - but that is the name it wanted to have! ;-)
I guess it isn't that hard to see how I made them - mostly stuff sewn on/quilting/whatever like the "blurb" says ... and the name sort of explains what the quilt decided it meant/was about - lol ... the bits of "leftover" fabric in "into the blue" were bits I trimmed off when I was cutting out the fabrics for the mystery quilt ... the one a group of us did last year and I still have not sewn my blocks together yet - LOL (mind you - I have other mystery quilts from the same yahoogroup, that we did several years ago - and some of those are not sewn together yet either ... and some are together but not quilted ... although there are a few that I did finish) ... "The Odd Eyes Of The Artist" just kind of happened when I decided to see what I could do with the old dead t-shirt ... I did the machine sewing and then thought I might have to do a lot more sewing to kind of hide the face outline/etc ... but then a couple of people saw it and said it looked great ... so I decided to leave it mostly like it was and just add the hand stitching. I think my very short description of the last one kind of makes sense?
... better late than never? ... I started typing this early ... but finished it late ...
A ...
... is for ... me! LOL
Ahhhh - what a great oportunity to introduce myself to those who come here and find me via the ABC Wednesday thing ( Here and Here ... I am only listed on the second one though) and to anyone who tripped and fell over my blog/found it some other way - lol
A is for Aykayem, and Also for Andrea - my real name!
... although Aykayem is sort of a real name too - it is a pen name that I invented when I was about 15 years old, and then used for my online name when I discovered the internet/www - I think the first online thing I used it for was my yahoo ID ... and since then I have used it for a heap of other things too - because it is made up, it usually isn't already used when I sign up for something ... so I don't have to be "Andrea30057" or "anotherAndreaDownunder" or "XxX-Andrea62-XxX" or whatever - I can just be "Aykayem" - LOL (btw - none of those other names are me, just in case anyone goes looking and someone is actually using them ... although I did manage to get in early enough with one free web-based email and get my own name! ... which reminds me - I really should log in and check it one day - in case someone has actually sent me something important - LOL)
So how did I come up with the name "Aykayem" ... well - back then (before I got married) my initials were A.K.M. ... so if one says the letters - Ay Kay eM ... one comes up with AyKayeM ... it was easy to say, and sounded a bit exotic ... and I liked it - LOL
A is also for Awful and/or Awesome ... not sure which one I am though ;-) ... funny how aweSOME means totally great, yet awFULL is actually worse ... maybe it is better to only have some of whatever it is? ... but how come full of awe is what those looking at something awsome are ... and is totally different to awfull ... maybe the e makes a difference? (the english language is weird!)
A is also for: Alpabet and ABC Wednesday ... such a fun game to play - LOL
Amazing ... er ... I probably have heaps of photos that someone would say that about ... but not that many that everyone would say it about - LOL
And ... now that this is so late - I can also mention the Amazing thunderstorm we had here this Afternoon ... but I will put some photos/etc in Another post ...
Antelope ... er ... yes ... I have a pink knitted antelope ... actually I think it was probably a horse, but when I was at uni, someone "invented" something called "Antelope day" ... the first year all that happened was a few posters went up saying that some particular date was "antelope day" ... the next year they actually had an "antelope day" party ... I think I won the prize for "the biggest antlers" - some that I made using a couple of peacock feathers ... the next year I kind of just added to them and made them bigger - and won the prize for "least original antlers" - LOL ... and the pink knitted "antelope" ... which was probably a horse but had sticks for antlers ... was my prize for one of those ... I can't remember which one now ... it was back in the early 80s ... longer ago than yesterday - LOL (I would have put a photo in here, but I kept forgetting to go and FIND the thing and take one)
hmmmm what else? ...
Advetising (that google stuff down the side doesn't seem to have made me any money yet - lol)
Attic (one of those would be handy to store junk in, but I don't have one)
Alopeccia (no thanks - I want to keep my hair on ... although I would probably shave my head if someone paid me, or paid enough money to that cancer charity that does that head shaving fundraiser thingy )
Algernon Pithington Watson (some ficticious name that someone put on his name tag at a scout leader's course that my dad went to once)
Alpacca - there are 2 of those that sometimes live in the local patch of grassland - they are there when the mob of sheep are in there - yes - they are gaurd alpacca! ... and they do a good job at it too. I wonder if there is something about them on the www still? ... drats - couldn't find it.
Although ... there is Also an Ant in this photo of a flower from the Asteraceae family ... er ... then again ... maybe pig face isn't a daisy (didn't think it quite looked right, but not having the actual flower to poke around at I couldnt tell, so I just looked it up on the www) ... Ah ha - it is actually in the Aizoaceae family ... well - they say "you learn something new every day" ...
There are a few more pictures, of Australian Aizoaceae here. (it looks like it is actually part of an instect website ... I might have to go and have another look there sometime ;-)
Abacus ... I have one of those ... somewhere ... only a miniature one, think it may have been some souvenir from somewhere ... I think it is in the wooden trunk that we use as a coffee table and I can't be bothered moving all the junk off the top.
hmmmm ... maybe I can find an A plant or 3? and/or an A insect/etc (maybe one of the spiders I have taken photos of is a genus/species that starts with a?) ... ... Actually, I won't bother looking for any more photos now - because I have so much other A stuff in here now - LOL
Android - this one is kind of cute - if he were real (rather than a character played by an actor) I would love to meet him.
and ... Astronomy ... can't forget that one, seeing 2009 IS the International Year of Astronomy
It is also the year of natural fibres or something too ... ... which is why I have the ?Astronomical task of trying to work out what to make, for a textile exhibiton, that fits the theme of "Heaven and Earth" - LOL (actually I think the problem will be my usual one - too many ideas and not enough time to do them! ... sigh)
And ... one more A thing that one of my kids just happened to mention to me today (the kid who didn't know I did silly posts about letters of the Alphabet on my blog) - both my kids know different members of a new band called Ashton Skies ... and my son told me I should go and listen to them on their myspace page and tell everyone about them ... Actually they don't sound too bad - LOL (a lot better than some of the other stuff they listen to - lol - although oddly enough, there is some music that everyone in the family likes ... and some that the kids and I both like ... and there is also some stuff that I like and nobody else does - lol)
oh drats - it got the better of me - I can't do an A post without at least one Arachnid in it!
... I cheated with this photo, and rather than uploading another one (which tends to mess up all the formatting of whatever text I already have in here) I used one I had already uploaded when I posted it to Spot, The Blog - which is Actually a good place to go if you want to see lots of photos of the Animals I share this house with, and a few other odd ones too. (yes Data, the Android, has a cat called spot - and I have a blog called Spot ... I know - I am weird - but my weird mind just had to see if I could have a spot blog on blog spot ... or something like that ... )
Anyway ... I can still think of more A words ... but I am sure nobody really wants to see too much Anatomy or some of the others I thought of (I will Abstain from posting anything too Awkward or Awful - lol) ... and there are plenty of pictures of Apples and Avocados and stuff on the www ... so I had better post this before it is time for B ...
(hmmmm time for B? ... or time for A BEER? LOL ... I could drink one of those now ... if I wasn't about to go get some sleep - lol ... and I could have put a photo of it here too - seeing it is referred to as Amber Ale - LOL)
Ok ... ABC Wednesday time again ... what do I write about/take photos of for Z?
zzzzzzzzzz? - because I usually post stuff here when I should be sleeping.
Zany? ... because that word does describe me rather well sometimes.
I wanted to post about Zoonoses, because that word is actually in my blogger profile - but I don't have any of my own photos of ringworm or scabies, or any other diseases one can catch from animals ... and I already cheated and posted a screen shot of my blog with the word zoonoses in the profile back when I was doing the "Scatterday" thing ... (hmmmm - I just noticed something - my FIRST Scatterday post was my Z one! ... we didn't do the letters in order - we got a random one each week and usually had 3 things that we had to take photos of ... but we were allowed to do what we liked for Z becuase the person running it thought that Z might be too hard if we had to do it the usual way - lol)
... so I did a google search for "Z" (and didn't find a lot) ... and then one for "Z words" ... and I found a few lists of unusual z words (a good one was here - I think that might be where I found a few good X words for that scatterday x post I did), and I also found a pile of odd things to use to help win scrabble games, and an education website that has a thingy where you can create a word search ... so - I chose a whole pile of Z words and created ...
Aykayem's Zany Z Word Search
so - if you are game/mad enough to try it - see if you can find each of the following words: (note - they go forwards backwards, up and down, diagonal ... every which way they can, as long as it is a straight line, ... just to make it a real challenge - lol and - you can click on it to get a bigger version of the bit you find the words in ... I probably should have put the words as part of the image, so you could print it out and have it all together ... oops?)
ZOETROPE ZAP ZYGOCACTUS ZONE ZEBRA ZERO ZOOPHYTE ZITHER ZOO ZODIAC ZAFTIG ZABAGLIONI ZEBU ZOOTOXIN ZYMOSIS ZIGZAG ZINNIA ZYGOMA ZIP ZOOCEPHALIC ZYGODACTYLIC ZEALOT ZINC ZOONOSES ZOOLOGY
Oh OK - it got the better of me - I just went back to my original screen shot of the word search web page and made another image (hopefully a reasonably printable one) with the list of words beside it ... click on this one and you should get a bigger version ... which you can print as is, or make it landscape and fit to paper or whatever ...)
You might even find some extra (not z) words that found their way in there by chance (I saw "bat" in there somewhere) ... and I have found at least 6 extra "Zoo"s in there too - something to do with all those z's and o's it seems to have put in there, I guess ... (and I didn't count the ones that are part of words like zoology)
Here are the answers:
... if you want it to actually be big enough to see - click on it for the full size version ;-) (I didn' want you to see the answers unless you actually WANTED to)
btw - there are lots of websites where you can create word searches/crosswords/sodoku/etc puzzles with your choice of words (the teachers at the school I work at use them a lot) ... I found the one I used to make this word search at http://www.edhelper.com/wordfind_free.htm
Your other challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to go find a dictionary (online or a real one) and look up the meanings of all those words ... LOL (or if we go around the alphabet again I might have to do that for my z post next time - lol)
btw, I was wondering what the plant I got given a couple of weeks ago was ... yes - it is a Zygocactus! ... but I have not taken a photo of it and it isn't in flower or anything so I can't be bothered taking one right now ... lol
anyway ... I was going to set this to publish at 1 minute past midnight (because I typed most of it during the afternoon), but I didn't get around to coming back in here and doing that ... and when I did come back in here - it was already midnight - LOL
actually - Y is for Yesterday ... which is when I should have posted my "Y" post for ABC Wednesday
(I could cheat and back date this post, but I am not going to ...)
hmmm I now have a particular song going around in my head ... The Beatles song -"Yesterday" - LOL ... and, talking about Beatles songs - I notice someone actually FOUND a yellow submarine ... lol
Now ... I wonder what photos I can put in here for Y?
[andrea goes and rummages around in her folders of photos]
I found something Yellow, but I have already posted about it here
I know I have a pile of photos of things that are Yucky ...
ah - this one is perfect - how about a Yucky Yellow dog:
yes - he is all wet and Yucky, and he has been rolling in and shredding something Yucky - a dead sheep! ... he is also a golden retriver, so his fur colour is sometimes refered to as Yellow.
[Andrea gets called away from computer and does a pile of other stuff]
a few hours later:
I was going to go find some more yucky stuff - like photos of sheep and cow poo and mouldy things, and half disected eyeballs and bones etc, and something the dog rolled in one night on a walk, and a probably a few other horrible things like that ...
but I got interrupted by DS (Dear Son) - who is 18 Years old today ... and, for his birthday present, he just did his motorcycle learners course yesterday and got his learners permit today (he already has his car licence) ... and so of course he wanted to take my new bike for a lap (or 5) around the block ...
... and I noticed that gives me a few more Y words to put in this blog post ... LOL
I said Yes ... he didn't say, but probably thought something along the lines of, "Yippee!" or "Yaaaaaaay" ... and I thought Yikes! ... this is my son ... who I am sure was still a Young kid just Yesterday, now old enough to go out and legally drink alcohol, and riding off (not quite "into the sunset" - lol) on a motorcycle ...
... where have the last few Years gone??!!!
[another few hours pass, while I watch a couple of TV shows with DH, then fiddle around with a photo, etc]
so Y was I fiddling with photos in the middle of typing up a blog post?
well ... because I was busy fiddling with this particular photo:
(this is the copy which I have rotated and re-sized to put it here, but not done anything else to yet)
The one that is the result of an hour or 2 worth of fiddling is now my blog background (until I have another fiddle/find a better one/whatever and change it - LOL - in which case you will have to go and find it here ... on the blog post (on one of my other blogs) that I just spent another hour or 2 typing/etc! LOL)[later edit: this is a "how to" post for this background - which Lindi just asked me to do ... I probably should have mentioned that the "other post" I had been typing IS a "how to" one, when I wrote this post - but I forgot - LOL]
Yes ... it is now "tomorrow" ... I started typing this blog post YesterdaY ... which is why I am Yawning - LOL (I have not spent the whole time doing this though - there were all those interruptions where I left the computer for an hour or 5 and did other things, and me doing a lot of fiddling with html/etc and putting the background onto a couple of blogs, and also getting up and down to let the dog in/out, put on another load of washing, etc) I have left the time on this post as it was - the time I started it - but it is now almost 5am the next day!!!
Y do I always seem to get lost in here for so long?!? LOL
Good thing I don't have to get up early in the morning ... (but the one after I do ... sigh ... but it is because we will be driving down to Melbourne to visit DHs family ;-)
I just did some silly online quiz and at the bottom, after what sort of person it said I was, it said "0% of the 40956 people who have taken this quiz are like you."
yes - I know that! LOL
The quiz was supposed to tell me what kind of person I am - said I was a "romantic reinventing builder" ... whatever that is ... maybe I am supposed to buy the book? ( the quiz is here - http://www.43things.com/ - the idea of the website is to make your list of goals and share them with the world ... interesting idea actually ... but I have joined enough weird online things in the last few days - I don't need another one! lol)
Talking about joining things ... I just found Where The Blog Are You? ... and left my comment/URL there and put the button on my blog ... it seemed like a good idea at the time - lol
... and I have told the Yearquilt list I am on what ideas I have for a yearquilt this year ... but I will have to run with a fairly small idea because I think I am going to be too busy to do anything too ambitious there ... maybe I should just stick to the re-run of TAST (that Take A Stitch Tuesday that I did a while ago, and called that my "year quilt" for that year) the re-run of it is now happening over on http://stitchinfingers.ning.com/group/TAST ... might be a good chance to re-visit the stitches I wanted to do more of than I had time to ... and re-learn the ones that I did not already know, did once, and promptly forgot again ... LOL
(if you want to read my blog posts about TAST and see the photos of my stitching just look for the "TakeAStitchTuesday" label in the list in my side-bar and click on it)
now ... I really should do what I was going to do when I first came in here (to the computer) about 6 hours ago (I have been in and out a few times during the evening ... but spent more time IN here than out - I tend to get "lost in cyberspace" rather easily - lol) ... and that is to finish something I started doing at "stupid o'clock" last night (and am now finishing at about the same time tonight!)
ok ... my blog should now (unless you are reading this post a day or 200 after I posted it and I have changed things again) have the full size version of this
as a static background image behind all the rest of it ...
... and you should be able to see my blog sitting neatly in the grey bit in the middle ...
(if not - oops - feel free to tell me - it looks fine at this end! ... but I have not tested it in a variety of different browsers/on other computers/etc, and I don't really know what I am doing with all this stuff - I just see things I like, and work out how to do them, if I can - so sometimes anything could happen!)
so ... you want one too? ... I guess if you really want to have your blog looking like mine, with the same background then I don't mind ... LOL
Someone has already asked how I did it, (sort of, when she saw my first failed attempt, with the wrong sized image, on http://messing-around-with-stuff.blogspot.com/ ) ... so maybe the other person who reads my blog (well - there might be someone else who reads it - lol) may want to know too ...
I fell over a blog that had a background that came from here - http://www.backgroundfairy.com/search/label/About%20The%20Backgrounds ... but I didn't want to use someone else's background - so I decided to do things the hard way and work out how to do my own! ... so I read the instructions for how to put the backgrounds from her site onto a blog, and did a google search for some more instructions about making backgrounds on blogger blogs ... and kind of put 2 and 2 together (and got 22? ... LOL) and worked out roughly what I would have to do ... then I sort of half followed some instructions, for creating background images for blogs, on a digital scrapbooking site ( http://www.thecutestblogontheblock.com/secret.php?id=2 ) ... in the hope that if I did what they said for the image size etc it would be the right size (it actually was ok ... once I had reduced it to 50% - LOL ... which is actually not that bad seeing I was using a totally different bit of image editing software and my own photo instead of whatever scrapbooking "elements" they were using)
I fiddled around and put the code into my blog, and worked out that it didn't work if I tried to have the image saved in a post on blogger (that worked fine for the pictures on my blog titles and a few other places ... just didn't work for the background image for some odd reason) ... so I created an account on photobucket (where the scrapbooking page suggested, and had instructions for how to do it so it works) and put the image there ... then created the smaller one and put that there when I realised the big one was too big and re-sizing it on the photobucket site didn't work if I wanted to use it as a background (because it changes some size setting that needs to not be changed for it to work on my blog) ... then I decided that seeing the html code it needs has to live in a widget on my side bar, then I could also include some text and even a link in there ... so I figured I may as well share it with all one of the people who read my blog(s) ... lol
Anyway ... I have just written some instructions here ... I was going to add them in here on this post, but I decided that seeing I am putting a link to those instructions on my sidebar in whatever blogs I am using the background on (where the code that adds the background actually lives) and I am also putting the same link in the HTML code that I am giving them to put on their blog, then it might be a bit neater if it is all in it's own blog post somewhere, rather than in the middle of this long rambly mess ... and my "messing around with stuff" blog seemed like a good place to put stuff like that, because that is what that blog is all about ... (I actually created it so I did have a blog I could mess around with and try stuff out on without messing this one up ... but I decided to post about some of it, and a few other odd things, on there too).
er ... I started typing this blog post several hours ago (but I have got up and done a few other things in the middle of it and then come back again later - lol) but it is now well and truly the next day ... and I still have to go edit that other post to put it's own URL in the html code I have put on there, and put that URL in the background thingy on my blogs so that they link there too ... which I couldn't do until I had actually posted the post and got a URL for it - LOL
... and the dog still has not had the walk I promised to take him for before I went to bed ... I guess it will be a short one ... at least it is safe enough around here to walk the dog in the middle of the night ... besides - what mugger/axe murderer is still going to be up and about, and expecting to find any victims walking around the streets, after midnight?! LOL
(and what will they get if they mug me? - maybe a dog lead? ... and I will even give them my sandals that have holes in the soles ... )
It didn't have a big list of rules ... just join in if you want, and she highlighted the ones she had done, but I got fancy and did colours and added comments
- done, have not done,not sure/depends how you interpret it,and my comments (if any) that I added to it ... makes it a bit harder to copy it and join in - but you can always go where I got if from and copy it from there - LOL
1. Started your own blog. several, but this is the main one ... and this and the other blogger ones are the only ones I post much to (the others were just ones I created to see if I liked how they worked/what they looked like - and I didn't - lol) 2. Slept under the stars. lots of times. 3. Played in a band.does a pretend one count? - I was in the school musical the year we did "76Trombones" and I was in the chorus - we were all meant to be the members of a marching band or somesuch ... 4. Visited The Great Barrier Reef. 5. Stood under the stars in the outback, the real outback – think Uluru.stood, walked, slept ... even worked up there as a Jillaroo for a while ... and I stood on top of Uluru and watched the sun set once too ... 6. Given more than you can afford to charity. 7. Been to the Gold Coast’s theme parks – anyone, you take your pick.went to one, once ... 8. Climbed a mountain. (not the high snowy sort you need a Sherpa for ... but some of the hills I have walked up have names and are officially mountains (not hard for a hill to be high enough to be a mountain when the whole area is already fairly high above sea level ;-) 9. Held a praying mantis. (I have even let them walk around ON my face - lol) I even had a baby one in my hand once, while it caught and ate the half dead stick insect that I put on my hand with it - lol (the mantis came from the garden (I often find them out there), and the stick insect was one of the ones I was keeping as pets - but it had got stuck while moulting and wasn't going to live more than a few hours more anyway) 10. Sung a solo. does singing in the shower count? (if I sing where anyone can hear me I get told to stop!) 11. Bungee jumped, jumped out of plane, been paragliding or hang-gliding, hot air ballooning – you get the idea, you’ve been hundreds of metres about earth in a seemingly flimsy contraption. (been ballooning, and I want to go skydiving, hang gliding, paragliding, fly ultra-lights, etc ... bungee jumping sounds a bit painful - that can't be good for one's back ... but I might do it if someone pays me to - lol) 12. Visited Melbourne. I lived there for a few years - got married there, had a child there ... them moved up here ... 13. Watched a lightning storm at sea. (the storm was at sea, but I wasn't ...) 14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.most of the quilty/crafty things I do are self taught (read stuff on the net, talk to others who do it, etc ... there are also some things I have been "taught" by other members of craft groups I was in at the time) 15. Had a child. Raised a child. Worked with children.(I have 2 teenage kids and work at a high school - LOL) 16. Had food poisoning.(I thought I did once, but it only lasted an hour or so, then the same thing happened a week later when I ate the same thing from the same place, and DH ate it both times and was ok - so it must have been an allergy to something in whatever it was ... some weird spice or something maybe - I never did work out what it was) 17. Been to the Snowy Mountains. even went camping in them. 18. Grown your own vegetables. have tomato plants just outside the front door at the moment! ... have also grown radishes and pumpkins and parsley and stuff ... and the spuds (potatos) just keep popping up all over the veggetable garden every year becasue I never find them all from the one before ... 19. Visited the Brett Whitely studio in Surry Hills, Sydney. 20. Slept on an overnight train or bus. and it wasn't a sleeper berth on the train either! (I think they make the seats uncomfortable on purpose, so you will pay for a sleeper next time - lol) 21. Had a pillow fight. 22. Been backpacking. the overnight bushwalking sort, not the around the world sort ... yet ... lol 23. Taken a mental health day. 24. Been buried in sand with just your head and toes sticking out.there may have been a few other bits poking out too - it was the kids, when they were little - burying "Mummy" while she is lying on the beach is fun - lol 25. Held a possum, kangaroo or koala – or any other native Australian animal. all of those, and various lizards, birds, etc and a wombat too I think ... 26. Gone skinny dipping. 27. Been in a fun run. 28. Been on the Blue Mountain cableway. 29. Seen a total eclipse. (in South Australia back in the 70's) 30. Watched a sunrise or sunset. I have sat and watched a few ... ones over the sea are good (seen sunrise and sunset over the sea) and I often walk the dog while the sun is setting - and if it is a pretty one I take lots of photos - lol ... I have seen more sunsets than sun rises ... something to do with the fact that I usually stay up late and don't get up that early very often - lol 31. Played, or watched, summer cricket. does watching it on TV count? (although I think I may have watched a bit of a match my brother was playing in once) 32. Sailed, kayaked or canoed our beautiful waterways.Had a catamaran and sailed in a few lakes and stuff, was even a member of a yacht club for a while. I have kayaked and canoed on a few rivers lakes/etc too ... and I actually learnt to sail a catamaran in the sea (at the beach not offshore) ... all a few years ago now - time I did some more of that sort of stuff! - although I did paddle a couple of canoes/kayaks/surf skis etc around in Sydney Harbour with a group of Scouts about this time last year ... 33. Seen the Daintree. 34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors. (yes if you count my parents - I was born in the same city as they were ... but have not been back to where my more distant ones originally came from) 35. Visited an Aboriginal settlement or mission. 36. Learned a new language.Is morse code a "language"? - if it is - then my answer is yes!I also did a year or 2 of German at High School ... but then had to drop it to do another subject I needed ... and have learnt a few words/etc of a few other languages ... but have never learnt enough of one to actually understand people talking it/etc 37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied. only when I was a little kid and a dollar was a lot of money - lol 8. Toured the Sydney Opera House.I have been there, but can't remember if I ever did a tour of it. 39. Tried rock climbing (indoor or outdoor), abseiling or just simple bush walking. I have even been abseiling IN a cave - lol 40. Visit Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art. 41. Been to the Tamworth Country Music Festival.been to Tamworth a few times, just not while the festival was on. 42. Sunbakedat Bondi. been to Bondi, but have not sunbaked there - I prefer to swim or walk or build sand castles rather than just lie and do nothing while I get sunburnt! 43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant. 44. Visited Broome. 45. Walked on a beach by moonlight. and by starlight/the glow of the atmosphere - it was a moonless night but the sky was bright and full of a zillion stars! 46. Been transported in an ambulance. I have been in one but I wasn't the patient, my son was (he broke his arm) and I went to the hospital with him. 47. Had your portrait painted.I think someone did a pencil sketch of me once ... 48. Gone fishing. DH and I even did that for our honeymoon! (it was what we both wanted to do ... well - our first choice out of the list of the stuff we COULD afford - lol) 49. Seen Tasmania’s old growth forests. if there are any near the road from Hobart to Port Arthur I may have seen them from the bus as it went past ... lol 50. Been to the top of Q1, on the Gold Coast. 51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling. too long ago ... sigh 52. Kissed in the rain. 53. Played in the mud. did that lots as a kid ... and a few times since ... the dog and I play in the mud when it rains - I throw rocks into puddles and he fetches them! ... or if they are too big to pick up he drags them out with his feet! 54. Gone to a drive-in theatre. when I was a teenager that was the ONLY sort of movie theater in town! (the nearest cinema was an hour down the road in the next town) 55. Been in a movie. ... unless a "home movie" counts - lol 56. Driven the Great Ocean Road. can't remember if I was ever actually the one doing the driving there, but I have been along it as a passenger lots of times. 57. Started a business. 58. Taken a martial arts class. did Aikido for a couple of years, and a class or 2 of a few other ones here and there. 59. Visited Norfolk Island.only in cyberspace (via someone's blog - lol) 60. Served at a soup kitchen. 61. Sold Girl Guide biscuits. 2. Gone whale watching.have never gone to the coast/beach specifically to do that, but I have seen whales from the shore a few times when I have been at the beach/coast anyway. 63. Got flowers for no reason. DD used to pick flowers and then give them to me when she was a kid - but there was always a reason - because she wanted to pick them, but then got sick of carrying them! 64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma. 65. Gone jet boating.I did go on one of those "James Bond boats" - kind of like a canoe with an outboard motor, with the propeller on the big long pole, when I was in Thailand a long time ago. 66. Visited Port Arthur. I stayed there for 3 weeks and did some volunteer archeaological stuff, back in the early 80's 67. Bounced a cheque. not intentionally but I think one that DH and I wrote did bounce once, when the bank made a mistake (didn't transfer money they should have or somesuch) 68. Flown in a helicopter. 69. Saved a favourite childhood toy.I tried to once, but Mum wouldn't let me (it was a dirty falling apart teddy bear and Mum decided that it was getting chucked out no matter what and I was too little to have any say in the matter) 70. Visited the Australian War Memorial. 71. Eaten Caviar.it was called caviar but I am not sure if it was the real stuff or just some other sort of fish roe ... it all tastes yummy though 72. Pieced a quilt. several - loland quilted some and designed a few too ... even the dog has one 73. Stood in Federation Square.which one? (there is one here in Canberra - has a few crafty/touristy shops around it ... ) 74. Been on the Murray River. been IN it too ... and over it on a bridge and "punt" (what they call the ferries that take cars across it in a few places in South Australia) 75. Been fired from a job.got a better one a day or 5 later ... lol 76. Travelled,or climbed,over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. been over it in cars/etc and have walked across it too, but have not done the bridge climb tour. 77. Broken a bone.(my nose, and I only knew it was broken because I had an x-ray ... was just a hairline crack so nothing needed to be done to fix it) 78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.breaking the speed limit? - I think DH might have done that once or twice while I was on the back - he generally doesn't do that. Going fast - lots of times on the back with DH ... and did 100km/hour myself the other day when I picked up MY new one from the shop! (yes - I have just got my motorcycle learners permit) 79. Seen the Three Sisters at Echo Point, Katoomba. I think I saw those once - I vaguely remember going for a drive up there with someone once years ago 80. Published a book.I have published a lot of blog posts - probably enough for a book - lol ... andwhen I was off at uni I wrote a 25 page letter to Mum once or twice! (I didn't write a short one every week like normal people - I kept adding bits to the same one and never getting around to finishing it and posting it until I had been adding bits for a few weeks!) 81. Visited St Mary’s Cathedral, in Sydney. 82. Bought a brand new car. 83. Been to Hermannsburg. the one near Alice Springs, not the one overseas ... 84. Had your picture in the newspaper. Years ago, on the back page of the Adelaide Sunday paper, holding an albatross! ... and recently I was in the social pages of the Sunday Canberra Times - wearing a weird crochet outfit I made and modelled at a textile exhibition ... 85. Read the entire Bible.read quite a few bits of it but not the whole thing 86. Visited Parliament House. 87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating. 88. Had chickenpox. yes ... when I was 31! LOL 89. Saved someone’s life.not that I know about - butsometimes a seemingly small action/word/etc can save a life without the person who said/did it ever knowing that it did ... and who knows how many lives are saved by people sticking to OH&S rules at work/road rules/etc and preventing what could have been a nasty accident? 90. Sat on a jury. 91. Met someone famous. 92. Joined a book club. 93. Lost a loved one. grandparents and in laws ... 94. Saved a pet. does catching an escaped stick instect and putting it back in the box where it's food (gum leaves) and water are count? ... or taking the cat to the vet when she has an abscess/etc that might have killed her if not treated? 95. Been to the site of the Eureka Stockade.We went to Ballarat a few times when I was a kid, so we probably went there ... but I don't remember for sure ... 96. Swum in The Whitsundays. 97. Been involved in a lawsuit. 98. Owned a mobile phone. 99. Been stung by a bee. a few as a kid, and even got stung by a dead one once! (I was swishing water around in a paddle pool and there was a dead bee floating in there and I brushed my finger against it before I saw it - and must have touched the "pointy end" - because I felt the sting prick me but it didn't stay stuck in and only itched a little bit rather than the usual very itchy for a few days thing) 100. Read an entire book in one day. lots of times - that is how I prefer to read books - all at once!
hmmmm - that was a fun trip down memory lane! ... a few things there I have not done and want to do, a few I don't want to do (those are pretty obvious - the hobbible ones like getting food poisoning etc) and quite a few i have done and want to do again!
oops - I was going to walk the dog during sunset this evening - but I think the sun might have set already! ... I had better go while it is still a bit light and not too cold (not that the dog cares about either, or I really mind if it is dark - but if I don't go now I won't get back in time to go get DD from work ... )
(the time on my posts is usually the time I start them, unless I change it - I just changed this one to the time it is now)
I should be eXiting stuff like this and Xing things off my "to do" list ... not joining in more stuff ... but when I found This I couldn't resist joining in (how could I resist something like "Wednesday ABC? lol) ... even if I only keep it up for a while until I get busy or whatever ...
hmmmm ... If I understand how this thing works, we should be posting something about the letter X ... er ... I picked an easy week to join didn't I?
Actually ... X is not that hard ... not when you know that you have photos of an Australian plant that just happens to be called a Xanthorrea ;-)
(not that the picture is that great or anything, but it does prove they exist and I am not making the name up!)
Now ... where did I put those photos? ... or ... more importantly - because my photos are sorted out according to when they were taken - when did I take take those photos? LOL
I don't know when I took the photos I was thinking of ...
- they were some that I know I have taken at several different times, mostly in the bush around this area - in the hills near here and in some areas a bit further away while on Land Rover Club trips/etc - and I have even put some of them on my blog a year or 2 ago - here
... and yes - it was for a similar reason I am posting X things here now! so ... to save repeating myself here - if Xanthorreas are not enough X stuff - then go to that post and see some more X things ... none are X-rated, but there are pictures of Xylem, Xylol, an XS650, Xanthorreas, "chemical X", X-rays AND an X-ray machine! ... no picture of xanthan gum, but there is a link to my Xanga blog (that I never post to) and a picture of some xylophagous xylophiles ... and a few other odd things ... lol
... but, when I went looking for those Xanthorrea photos, I found these photos instead - I had forgotten about these!
I took these photos in April 2007, up in some hills near Mum and Dad's place on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland ...
The Xanthorreas are the spiky things - the trees in the background are gum trees (Eucalyptus)
here are some more - this time showing the trunks that some of the species have: ... now you can see why they are also known as "grass trees" - lol
and here is a scribbly gum ("the scribbles" on the bark are actually caused by an insect that attacks this particular species of gum tree) and some more Xanthorreas: and no - the tall spikes are not garden stakes or poles - they are the Xanthorrea's flower spikes!
... these ones have finished flowering - the spikes will probably all end up falling over/get broken off/etc before the next flowering season - each time they flower they grow a tall spike which is covered in buds which open up into white flowers as the spike finishes growing (and if the spike is in the middle of growing and there is a really hot day they can wilt and end up bent over or even all twisted/curly instead of straight - I used to like finding the weird shaped ones in the scrub when I was a kid!
Talking about finding photos ... (and this also kind of fits in with X - and it being an "unknown")
... while getting lost in cyberspace, and finding out about this ABC thingy, I looked at a few other blogs of people who are doing it and found this blog post (about what the cat dragged in - lol)
and I left a comment on it ... and I also spent half an hour searching for the photos of a particular B%&%^ grasshopper we get around here, so I could stick one of them on to my previous blog post and link to it ... but do you think I could find it? - no - so now here I am looking for something else and what do I find instead ... yes - the grasshopper!
problem was ... I remembered taking these photos, and I remembered seeing these grasshoppers while on a nature walk (with a group of people) in the local grasslands ... trouble is ... turns out I actually took these photos in the back yard on a different day than the one the nature walk was on! LOL
The amazing thing is ... I think the grasshopper on that blog was in Italy ... the link that said what someone had identified it as showed a similar one that is found in America and this one here is similar too (in fact this one looks more like the Italian one than the American one does ... but looks can be decieving) ... of all the thousands (millions?) of grasshopper species around the world ... or even just how many there are in each country - and there end up being some that are so darn similar but are at opposite ends of the Earth!
anyway ... X is also what one does against a WRONG answer when marking a test/etc ... or to cross out a mistake ... and I think deciding to go blog surfing last night was a mistake - because I am still here - and it is not last night any more! (it is after 5am and the sun is coming up!) oops?
There are 2, soon to be 3, reasons why the roads around here have just become a more scary place to be ...
1. DD got her "learner's" licence (to drive a car) today! (she has not actually got behind the wheel yet though - she got it just before she started work so she has not had time to have a driving lesson yet).
2. Last week I did the motorcycle "pre - learners" course (we have to do the course before we get the learners permit) and then I got my motorcycle learners licence (I have had a car licence for about 30 years) ... and today I rode this home from the shop DH and I bought it from:
mmmmm shiny new (well new to me - it is actually second hand but only a year old) bike ... and no I am not going to go and get a pile of weird piercings and some "tatts" (not that there is anything wrong with that ... except that DH, and my parents, would probablydefinitely freak out if I did - lol ... DD may or may not mind and DS would probably think it was weird but cool - with DD and DS - it is probably a case of "piercings/tattoos are great" - but on Mum?! - not so sure there - lol)
3. DS, who has had his drivers licence for a year now, decided that he wants his motorcycle licence - so his Christmas present was that we paid for him to do the pre - learners course (which is not cheap, but one has to do it before one can get their motorcycle learners permit here - it is a 9 hour course (1 day or 2 x 1/2 day) where, in a group, you get taught the basics of how to ride a motorcycle and how to do it safely ... and you ride their bikes so you can do the course before you buy one of your own) ... he does his course in just over a week's time - and if he passes it (most likely, unless he is stupid and doesn't do what they say or something) he can then get his motorcycle learners permit and then he will probably get to borrow my bike to practice on because at the moment he can't afford his own ... in fact I am not sure if he has the money to buy himself a helmet that fits him (the law, and common sense, says you need one), and some gloves and a bike jacket, (they don't call people who ride in shorts and t shirts "squids" for nothing - that is what they look like after they fall off - lol) and possibly some boots (unless he already has some that are ok or he fits an old pair of DH's or something) ... he had a helmet and jacket (for when he went on the back of DH's bike) but he has grown a lot taller/etc in the last couple of years and they don't fit him any more (but they do fit me ;-)
so ... at any given time in the next year - there could be one or 2 (or even 3 if DS finds a mate who lets him ride their motorbike) of us out on the road in/on vehicles with with "L" plates on ... but at least one of them (DD) will have someone sitting beside her to tell her what to do ... lol)
yikes! - both kids old enough to be driving?! - when did that happen? - I am sure they were still playing in the sandpit and learning to read and write, and needed an adult to take them across the road safely, just a couple of years ago ...
I am not sure anyone can ever know what actually IS inside my mind ... but here is a vaugue representation, in the form of an art quilt, of what one might find in there:
hmmm - I should have made that bottom border a lot narrower, I think it would have looked better that way ... to late now though - it is done and delivered ... It was my entry in the Unique Stitching Art Quilt Challenge, and I delivered it (it is handy living in the next suburb to the person who runs it - lol) a couple of weeks ago. The theme was "portrait/self expression" - so, me being the contrary person I am, I decided to do my 'portrait' from the inside out - and do an expression of what is inside my mind. Once we paid our entry fee (which went to a cancer charity ... I forget which one) we were given a bit of fabric which we had to use some/all of in the quilt (and at least some had to be visible on the front) ... the yellow bit is what I got ... and it was a "me" type of fabric - one I like - and it was tempting to only use a tiny bit in the quilt ... but then I would have had to find another background fabric for my "thoughts", and this bit was perfect for it ... so the whole bit got used ... maybe I should ask if she has any more? ... then again ... I need MORE fabric like I need a hole in the head! ... I already have more than I can use in this lifetime ... but it is amazing how often I still can't find a suitable bit for some particular project or a bit that "looks good with these other 2 fabrics" that is the right size for using in a mystery quilt ... and when I look at how much of it is "normal" quilting fabric (reasonable quality 100% cotton) there isn't a lot of that - just huge piles of all the other stuff that I have managed to accumulate over the last few years (from garage sales, op shops, freebies when people bring scraps to quilt meetings/etc, it is amazing where one can acquire fabric sometimes - lol)
anyway ... I have been doing other things at the same time as this blog post, and now it is time to go get DD from work ... (she works at a fast food place and she has been working a lot lately because quite a few of the regulars have gone away for Christmas) ... so the silly dog photo, or whatever else I may have thrown in here while I was at it, will have to wait for another post ... LOL
I still have not blogged about the other 3 quilts I had in the Canberra Quilters Exhibition back in August ... so it is about time I did!
The quilt I did blog about was the Bookworms one that I blogged about here.
I also entered this:
Which is actually a re-arranged/added to version of the quilt that I Entered in the Tasda (now called ACTTAA) exhibition a couple years earlier - and blogged about here [note to self - add link]
... later, when I found this saved as a draft and actually posted it: er ... actually I don't think I did blog about that!
so ... I went and found a photo:
hmmm - I didn't realise how much better the new version looks! (although it was only meant to be, and look, temporary ... and the quilt show version was hung a bit better too ... and I have also decided that it is not temporary any more - I plan to leave it as it is and hang it up on a wall somewhere in the house - lol) btw, it still has the same name as it originally did - "Exhibiting Myself" (and it wasn't meant to sound rude ... really ... why don't you belive me? - LOL)
For the "Tiny Treasures" (miniature quilts) I entered this:
... which I actually made back in 200something - when it was the "International Year Of Rice" ... the idea for it came to me when i was wondering how on Earth one would make a quilt with that for a theme ... and the idea came to me when my mind was wandering while I was walking around the supermarket, so I just had to make it! The background fabric was a bit that I dyed at the Scquilters "Fringe Retreat" a few years ago, I drew the rice plants after spending some time "googling" pictures of rice plants, and I used stitches that look like rice grains (I think it is called seed stitch?) to quilt the bits of the quilt that didn't have the rice plants or the ripples to hold the layers together.
Yes - I sometimes have fun thinking up interesting names for my quilts/etc - lol
The other quilt I entered was another one I made a couple years ago - it was actually done as a mystery quilt on the mq yahoogroup ... this one was MQ9 which we made one day in the middle of 2003 (sewing instructions posted to the list bit by bit - every hour or 2 - during the day) ... it was probably a month or 10 later before I actually finished the quilt - lol
(probably about March 2005 - because that is when I took a photo of it finished ... it is also when I took photos of the fabric I chose/used for MQ10 - and I vaguely remeber deciding to get MQ9 finished before we started doing MQ10 - lol)
This is it hanging in the quilt show - and as you can probably tell - it is the one I need a better photo of - this one is a bit blurry (which is why I made it a small size)
I did take a few other photos of it (including those I took in March 2004) ... but they are all either just as blurry/etc
... or the quilt is underneath the dog!
[where IS that photo?!!!]
... 2 1/2 months pass by ...
(I must have had other things to do besides hunting around for a photo ... or spent too long getting distracted while looking for it ... so I had saved this blog post and then forgot about it ... I was originally doing it back at the start of OCTOBER ... and Christmas got here before I got around to posting it - LOL)
anyway ... this time it only took me a couple of minutes to actually find the photo I was thinking of!
well ... now I have at least made a start on catching up with one of the heaps of things I intended to post to my blog a lot sooner than this but still have not posted yet ... maybe I will get around to posting a few more things sometime in the near future ... or maybe not ... life is still a bit busy ... and I still have a couple of journal quilts I should have finished a week ago, and one more of them that isn't even started yet! (so of course I came in here and did this tonight, instead of going out to my sewing room and doing that - LOL)
Talking about "tonight" - it no longer is ... is is now well and truly morning (3:30am actually) so I probably should go to bed and try not to sleep in all day tomorrow - LOL
hmmm ... it has been quite a while since I posted anything here ... oops?
(maybe they should move Christmas to a more quiet time of the year? :-)
btw, if you don't like the card - there might be a different one on one or more of my other (even more neglected) blogs ... depends how many more cards I get around to creating and how many of my other blogs I get around to posting to this evening - lol
(there are links to some of my blogs in the side-bar of some ... and they should all come up in the list you get if you look at my profile ;-)
What did I do on Halloween? (I didn't post this to my blog - lol - even though I originally intended to - oops?) ... I did nothing much at all actually - it has never really been a big thing in Australia, and we never made a big thing of it in our family when I was a kid, and we don't make a big thing of it now - I told the kids that some people here celebrate it but it is not really an Australian thing and DH and I never celebrated it, but if they wanted to go out "trick or treating" with a group of their friends we let them do it, and if I remembered I would try and have some lollies just in case a neighbour's kid or one of the kids friends or someone came and knocked (some years they do, some years we don't get anyone). I have noticed that celebrating it is becoming more popular here now - kids will happily do something that involves having fun and getting free lollies - and the people who sell costumes and lollies are happy to sell more stuff ...
anyway ... 6 years ago we decided to get a Golden Retriever puppy ... which should have had nothing to do with Halloween - except that once we chose him (he was the one who sat up and looked at DH and barked, when we first went to see the breeder and look at them) and we went to pick him up, and I asked what date his birthday was ... and got the answer - 31st of October ... aaaahhrrrggghhhh! - LOL
so ... on the evening of the 31st of October - I took Diesel for a nice long walk for his 6th birthday - LOL
... and I took this photo ... which kind of does look a bit ghoulish and scary with the green shining from his eyes! (although to me he still looks like his usual lovable self - lol)
he was actually running towards me, because I got the camera ready and then called him ... and got the photo just before he noticed something way more interesting (to him anyway) beside me and changed directions and went to sniff whatever it was ...
btw - he ended up with the name Diesel because that is what happens when you don't tell the kids you are getting a puppy until you go and pick him up - and then find out that one of the kids doesn't like his pedigree name and 4 people sitting in a car have to find another name they all agree on ... the kids had recently seen the movie "Snow Dogs" and there was a Diesel in that ... lol
unfortunately we don't know what date Spook (the cat) was born ... although I don't think she really cares ... lol (we got her from the RSPCA when she was approximately 8 months old - she had turned up somewhere as a stray and was not claimed by anyone ... their loss our gain ;-)
I took this photo a couple of days ago, before I realised that it was almost 11/11 ...
this image is actually cropped from a bigger photo - it is the middle of a (rather scruffy) poppy ...
Why a poppy? and what is the 11/11 got to do with anything? - if you don't know - you can go to this website and find out - lol
I am not sure if this one was a "Flanders Poppy" or not - but it does look a bit like the ones in the picture on that website, and on a couple of other websites with pictures of Flanders poppies ... (there is a pile of links at the bottom of that page - one goes to "Red poppies") ... it could, however, be a similar species ... there are a few others that are fairly similar.
whatever species it is - it is a weird looking flower ... but - I happen to LIKE "weird"! - LOL
... yes, you guessed correctly - I am disorganised.
(I am also happily married with 2 kids, a cat and a dog ...)
I also rave on about all sorts of stuff in my blogs (and in real life too) ...
everything from Art quilts to Zoonoses ... (yes that IS a word - if u don't believe me find a dictionary ... or search google for it!)
... if it doesn't work on your browswer/looks like it probably shouldn't be doing whatever it is doing on your screen/you can't see it ... or something worse - please feel free to tell me - it looks fine at this end!
Something that sort of maybe looks a little bit like me ...
Bored with reading?
Just want to look at more of my pictures?
This lot are stuff I crocheted (except for the tartan rug that Mum made ;-) but there are other photos on my Flickr site as well ...
This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called Crochet. Make your own badge here.
... if there isn't a funny looking thing with photos popping up on it here - then either you don't have flash installed or the thingy has died ... again ... lol
Want to help save the planet?
I think I am supposed to list 5 things I intend to do/change ... hopefully stuff I am already doing counts? ... we already have energy saving shower heads and light globes, I try to walk places instead of driving if I can (but unfortunately most places I go are too far for that), and the sprinklers in the garden have not been turned on for at least a couple of years (at the times when the water restrictions have been eased to allow sprinklers, there has been enough rain that we didn't actually need to use them - because the garden is mostly native plants, and the bit of watering I have done has been with a hose from the washing machine ;-)
Our new washing machine is one of those fancy front loaders that uses hardly any water, and DH (dear husband) and I seem to be forever turning lights off after the kids have left them on (I also tend to turn lights off at my friend's place too ... too bad if it drives her and her partner nuts or anything - they really don't need to have every light on in the house!). I have also planted quite a few trees when I have gone to help on projects with Landcare/Greening Australia/etc.
oh - and I also recycle/re-use stuff if I can ... especially yarn and fabric - LOL (yes I am into textile art/quilting/crochet/etc - and I like the whole idea of "patchwork" being about using recycled/scrap fabric to create something useful and/or artistic)
... but I do need to try and not spend quite so long in the shower ...
(and I probably should remember to take that bucket down to the bathroom, so I can collect the water while I wait for it to get hot enough to get in, and use it on the front garden or whatever)
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... not that I seem to be making any money out of it or anything, but one day someone might click on something and make me a few cents - I will try not to spend it all at once - LOL
Oops - the thingy I had here died ...
(the one below still seems to work though, but I don't think either of them have actually made me any money yet ...)
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