Prickly Brains

We visited the Albany Show a couple of weeks ago, always interesting to see a variety of things.  There was log chopping...

 And cutie pie alpacas...

 And more cutie pie alpacas...

 And impressive huge metal sculpture...

 And bizarre cacti that look like brains...

 And magnificent poultry...

 On the home front there are loads of little birds buzzing around, gathering nesting material and showing off to each other.  This magnificent fellow is regularly outside the kitchen window, a fabulous Splendid Wren.

 The weather is very strange, it still feels like we are in winter with it being wet and hovering around 17 degrees, but suddenly we will be blessed with a sunny, warm morning.  Neo is content to burrow under the blankets until the temperatures rise.

 Steve harvested his fantastic crop of garlic.  They have grown really well this year, the globes are huge and very healthy looking.  They are drying over near the shed now, then we'll strip the browned off foliage from them and store it in a basket in the pantry.

 For our reference, this is the water tank level on November 1st.

 We've been looking through a few more boxes of Barbara and Eric's things.  We came across this interesting sword.  We believe it is a replica of an old Chinese ceremonial sword.  I'd love to decipher the text on it!

Until next time... xx

Repurposing

We are caught up in Grand Final excitement today, come on WC Eagles!

 Neo, on the other hand, is uninterested in muscly, sweaty men chasing a leather ball.

 He does enjoy being warm and gooey atop his bookshelf after the fire has warmed the upper air.

 His buddy Voldemort has awoken from his hibernation and is back basking on the settee.

 Voldemort is rather hungry after his big sleep so he's been stuffing his face on banana.

 The male Splendid wrens are colouring up in readiness for the breeding season.  His girlfriend is not quite as spectacular, but cute nonetheless.

 Brows has taken to perving in the bedroom window waiting for her breakfast.

 And Lucy sits right outside the door.

 Do you remember me telling you about Rabbit (Lucy's last joey) and how she was a new mama?  Well I finally got a photo of her bub, cute.

 Rabbit is on the right, and on the left is one of the boys, his name is Pretty Boy Floyd, or Floyd for short.  He has a beautiful face.

 On the left is Pixie, Growler's joey, and on the right is Chevie, Split's joey.

 There's Split at the back and another boy, Pawlie, at the front.

 I dont know who this one is at the front, he has interesting facial markings.  Still thinking of a name.

 We decided to throw caution to the wind and support the local Albany strawberry grower.  $16 for 4 kilos of magnificent strawberries, with not a needle in sight :-)

 We've eaten them au naturale, with ice cream, with cream, made them into syrup, and I also tried dehydrating them.  I have to say we were a bit underwhelmed with the dehydrated ones but it's good to experiment.

 I have a beautiful teapot that has a broken lid so this week I decided to repurpose it, as I have another teapot anyway.  What do you think?  I potted my African Violet into it, I think it looks fabulous!

 The start of a new crochet project, I've put a couple of other projects aside that I'm not in the mood for.  This is called the I Heart Granny lap blanket, I've chosen a colourway that is totally not me, but the colours just sprang into my head.  It's for me to keep me warm when I watch tv.  It's a little challenging to do but I'm enjoying it very much.

Until next time....xx

For The Love Of Patience

The cat was astounded this morning, astounded.  He kept wandering around, looking at us with a shocked expression, not quite knowing what to do with himself.

 Why?  Because Steve hadn't lit the fire!  It was a tad warmer this morning and we thought we'd leave lighting the fire until later.  No, unacceptable.  The cat was horrified, so Steve lit him, HIM, a fire!  ha ha ha

 Here he is, placated, although you wouldn't know it, as he refused to smile for the camera.

 Speaking of keeping warm, I am so darn proud of myself, having succeeded for the first time ever in making myself something to wear.  It's a bit different when the thing you are making has to be a specific size, unlike blankets that can turn out any old size and will do.

 Ta da!  Here am I modelling my crocheted cardigan, and it fits me, hooray! :-)

 It will suit my needs well, being one that doesn't close at the front.  I dont feel the cold that much and don't like being drowned in warm clothes, so this will be a nice, light woollie to keep me just warm enough. 

 Now, I must share with you some sad news.  Last week we said goodbye to Patience, one of the most lovely wild kangaroos we've had the pleasure to know.  She chose to be our friend which was such a privilege.

 We presume that she must have been hand reared when she was young, as she included us in her life all the time.  Patience would appear on the doorstep like clockwork early each morning, and patiently (hence her name) wait until we woke up and then asked hopefully for a wee bit of breakfast....how could we refuse that beautiful face.

 She brought her babies to meet us, what a privilege when a doe will allow her tiny joey out of the pouch in the presence of humans, such trust.

 She spent most of her time on our property, napping away in her favourite places.

Sadly Patience broke her foreleg, and although we did everything could for her, including persuading her inside our orchard to keep her safe, then getting the wildlife vet to come out and splint her arm, she started looking very unwell and  quietly went to sleep a few nights later.  We think she was quite an old girl, perhaps about 11, and we'd like to think she's had a good life.  Goodbye beautiful Patience xx

Until next time... xx

Bobble Muncher

This is the face of a naughty cat.  He enjoys sleeping on our bed, and more so since I crocheted this blanket for our bed, it's nice and snuggly.  There is quite a bit of textured crochet in the blanket, and for the most part Neo is very respectful of it.  However, there is a section just in front of his rear end that has bobbles on it, and he can't quite resist those.  He stares them down, knowing he is not allowed to be bad to the blanket,  but eventually he can't resist any more, and attacks those bobbles.  They are looking a bit fluffy from their beating.  This morning while we were in bed with a cuppa, I told him off for being a bobble muncher, and to his credit he did stop.  But Neo doesn't like to back down, so instead he decided to lick them.  Neo the bobble licker, he's a dag :-)

 We had company at the front door this morning, Lucy came right up to say hello and ask please can I have some breakfast?  She is a smart cookie is Lucy, we often find her undercover on the verandah when it's raining. 

 Here's this morning's breakfast club, having a munch on some lucerne chaff and wheat.

 Here's the chickens and Spuddles the duck.  They are thoroughly enjoying eating cabbages at present, I cut them in half and leave them in the yard, and they have a lovely time tearing it to pieces.  The yolks of their eggs are so beautifully dark because of their extra diet of cabbage.  Steve has broccolini growing in the vegie patch, and I pull off the lower leaves for the girls, they love those too, any brassica family foliage is much appreciated by the girls.

 These galahs are very cute but they are also a pain in the arse.  My goodness there are so many of them around here, most days we have 40-50 and they make quite a racket.  One thing I will say in their favour though, is that they dethatch our grass magnificently, no need to do any vertimowing on our grass!

 We finally got around to pruning the fruit trees.  This is a very respectable looking almond tree now, it was probably three times the size of this before I got to it with the cutters.  This is an odd tree, it grows rampantly in spring,  the branches grow really long, the foliage is lush and it sets loads of fruit.  But it can't seem to sustain what it has grown, and by the end of summer we find the ends of the branches die back and a lot of the fruit and foliage goes dry and falls off.  It gives the impression of perhaps not having enough water, although all the trees are irrigated and they all get the same amount.  This year we decided to prune it back really hard so it wont have quite so much of itself to maintain, if that makes sense.  If you are wondering why there is a pile of old wood under the tree, we do that to stop the chicken from digging huge holes.  They are very tenacious with their digging, to the point of exposing roots sometimes! 

I toddled off to Bunnings the other day and invested in a not too heavy, not too light  cordless hedge trimmer to make the work of pruning shrubs a little easier.  I have some osteoarthritis in my right hand these days and find using hand pruners rather painful after a while.  So I think this will be good.  I was hoping to play with it yesterday, BUT, the bloody thing wouldn't start!  We suspect there is a fault in the battery or the charger that came with it, as the battery didn't seem to charge, so I will have to take it back and get it swapped.  Oh well, I can look forward to playing with it next week instead.  :-)

 While I was in town, I popped into Spotlight and stashed up.  This particular yarn, Lionbrand Heartland is one of my absolute favourites but it's expensive so I rarely buy it.  Yesterday it was half price...happy dance!  I want to have a try at crocheting myself a cardigan with the blue yarn, I've never made an item of clothing before and would like to give it a go.  I love the colour, which is more turquoisy than the photo shows, so it's something to look forward to.

 I've been gathering up a healthy collection of non-plastic grocery bags.  I already had a few of the green shopping bags from Coles, but I also crocheted a couple and sewed another one.  As I only shop once a week or a fortnight, I need to have quite a few bags stashed up ready for all my groceries. 
I am a person who believes strongly in reusing things and thus was very pleased with my light bulb moment when I realised that I had a pile of about 10 used calico flour bags.  We buy our Lauke bread mix in 10kg bags, and these calico bags come with handles and a drawstring - perfect!  I've been testing them out at Coles the last few weeks, they are longer and skinnier than the standard grocery bags and thus wont fit on the frame thing they use to pack groceries, but I've been happily offering to pack my own groceries and its been fine.  I feel so virtuous reusing the bread mix bags.  :-)  
Now of course, the biggest problem to overcome is to remember the take the bags into Coles with me, and not leave them in the car!  I suspect we will all do this to begin with :-)

 On the embroidery front, I've been making a couple more oven cloths.  My first one, the light one bottom right, is usually very grubby because I don't have enough cloths to wash it regularly, so I cut some denim from my stash of old jeans in the sewing room, and started prettying it up. 

 Denim matches my kitchen tiles really well, so the old jeans are a great, free resource for sewing bits and pieces. Plus it's thick so I don't have to stuff it with too much more weight to avoid burning my hands.

 When I arrived at our embroidery group last Tuesday, I was very taken with this scene looking over the water towards Albany town.  There was a break in the heavy cloud bank, and the sun was shining through directly onto one tiny little cloud low in the sky.  I thought it looked really pretty.

 And then there is this magnificent sunset, looking through towards Denmark, with the red light shining onto the waters of Wilson's Inlet.  Breathtaking.

Until next time....xx