Busy!

I am trying to learn the ropes at my new job - spending a lot of time talking to people which is lovely but tiring. And very little else is happening ... we had a social weekend with friends round for dinner on Saturday and then lunch with other friends on Sunday. I dead headed the roses and pruned back some very shaggy things, but otherwise no exercise. Saturday I went up to the new Spotlight in Gungahlin which is the new suburbs right to the north - I go there about once every five years and remember why I don't bother. Outer flat suburbs with not much going on and lots of sky. Didn't stop me buying a heap of material though :)

I have done a bit of weaving, including with this I dyed myself. It is a lot more yellow than I thought it would be, but quite pretty. Note unfinished crossword in the background, a sure sign I am busy at work and need a holiday.

Once in forty year rain event

 Turns out all that was needed for our garden to look good was the wettest spring since 1976! In hindsight, when we moved into the house 15 odd years ago we should have put in rainwater tanks and a watering system ... but we were so determined not to after the water-guzzling horror of our previous (gorgeous) gardens. If it lived it lived, and if it died it died - which is all well and good but perhaps a medium path of gentle watering might have worked better. 

Even the pretty white climbing rose my husband planted 13 years ago which has never really done much is clambering up the elderly prunus and flowering. 

It is mostly valerian, geraniums, lavender, alyssum and other things that are VERY hard to kill. Pigface of course, and various grasses. 

There's rosemary in there too, and lots and lots of euphorbia. Actually I think they are taking over a bit, so will be harshly dealt with in winter. 

And a king parrot, for some red colour in all the pink. 

Weaving with the Ice Yarns

I've been very happily using the Ice Yarns in every possible combination, and with random things from the cupboard. Scarves are great - they take enough time to get a feeling of accomplishment, but not so long I get bored. And then on to the next one! I will no doubt get sick of it soon but not yet. 

Here's the random few balls on the sewing table. I wind the bobbins up in my sewing room and it is getting covered in fluff and bits of wool. The orange and the green at the bottom of the picture are the same wool in different colours, so I put them together in a straight houndstooth.

The grey is a similar weight but has bobbly bits hanging off it, which gives an interesting texture. I put that with the orange in a log cabin style (yay! quilting term!) that is more subtle than I thought it would be but still quite nice.

The green on the top is a lovely fluffy wool / cotton blend and the colour seems to go with everything. I used the 'zucchini' colours that I dyed ages ago on the warp, with the fluffy green on the weft, and it turned out really pretty. It is super soft as well.

I wanted to keep using the fluffy green so I put a very random collection on the warp of bits of left over green. It is different but I still like it, and of course nice and fluffy. What is the point of a scarf that isn't snuggly?

We had a great weekend once I'd recovered from the week and had some naps. Lovely, lovely naps. I did the 16 km walk again (anti-clockwise this time! quite a different experience) which was easier than the first time. We went out for a fancy lunch with friends and I even managed an hour or so of gardening before it got too hot. 

Such a busy week

 Parliament is back sitting and this week has been busy ... interesting, but busy. And raining still! The garden looks unbelievably lush, this photo is from a week ago and it is already different. The roses are out for starters. 

I did end up getting the new job here I applied for, so I finished up with my current team this week and today I'm wheeling the trolley full of unecessary stationery to my new digs. My new, less salubrious digs ... but I am still next to a window so can't complain. Natural light is a very unusual thing in today's battery hen public sector cubicle farm. 

We are going to do a weekend away with a bushwalk later in the year so I went for a 16 km trial walk to see if I could do it. I could ... just. My little legs were very weary at the end. Here is a completely lucky photo of a sulphur-crested cockatoo on the wing - I startled him as I walked up.

Another cooking fail

We had a work afternoon tea on Tuesday to watch the Melbourne Cup. Normally there's an organisational party but not this year, so our little team sat in the tea room with some snacks and watched the race. Very strange not to have the crowds at the course, and most of us hadn't put any money on it. I thought I would make a lemon drizzle cake ... and it failed.

I forgot to put baking powder in - it needed self-raising flour and I used ordinary flour. Which of course I didn't discover until it had been baking for 45 minutes and I went to check it and found this lumpy rubbery disaster. And I'd made the drizzle too. It was completely unsalvageable so I binned it and made a chocolate brownie instead. The worst thing was I was just about to put the brownie in the oven and thought 'the texture of this is a bit strange' and I'd forgotten to put the eggs in. I think I was a bit tired. 

It has been a tiring week - lots of work on and the US election of course, and even though you know it's not your country it's hard not to watch. The thought of another Trump presidency was deeply depressing - even though it looks like that's not going to happen there will probably be a fair amount of bullshit to go through before he goes away. What a nasty piece of work that man is. 

Wet weekend

 We have had the wettest October in Canberra since 1976, which is very welcome but not much fun. The weekend was predicted to be 100% rain but I went to the beach anyway. Saturday just bucketed and bucketed but Sunday was only showers. 

I didn't swim at all - and the easterlies had brought in the bluebottles. They had to move the nippers on Sunday morning round to the sheltered beach, luckily the winds had made enough waves to do a bit of rescue practice. The parents were huddled in jackets and coats but eight year olds are pretty unstoppable. 

I made a shirt and didn't do much else productive, except buy a vacuum cleaner and a new iron. I had lifted my existing iron from my dad's cupboard (thanks Dad) where it was still in its box and un-used  but it had given up the temperature control ghost and started randomly melting things. The only problem is I deliberately bought an auto-off iron in case I forget about it - turns itself off after 30 minutes. I have one at home and it's great, but the new one doesn't just turn itself off it beeps angrily until you turn it off or use it. What is the point of that? I just want an iron that will quietly go to sleep, not something else in the house that complains at me. In all other ways it is an excellent iron though, so I'll keep it, but nowhere on the box does it say that it has the most annoying beep of any appliance I've heard, and we have a very irritable fridge.