It's a dog's life

We hosted drop-in drinks on Saturday evening for friends who are going off on posting - a chance for them to say goodbye away from the chaos of a half-packed-up house and long long lists. It was lovely - we have some friends in common but not entirely, so we met some new people which is not to be sneezed at in my boring middle-aged life. My circles are pretty fixed by now.... Anyway the dog LOVED it. She had been groomed, and was clearly feeling super cute, and got plenty of adoration, which she lives for. And then people dropped food! All her christmasses had come at once.



This is her being adored by my  husband. She even smells quite nice after a thorough going-over by Shampooch.



This is her being adored by my son. I was backing the car out to go somewhere as he was taking her for a walk. Speaking of cars, he just has one more competency to be ticked off and then he is a probationary driver! And can go places on his on, in my car. That is soooooo scary both for me and the car, but I know it has to happen, and it will be great to not have to drive him everywhere all the time.

I sewed a skirt

I actually sewed two skirts - from the same pattern - when I was down the beach last month, and one of them had its first outing to work today. It is made from a beautiful wool that was part of the haul I got via a work colleague from an elderly Japanese lady who was moving into care.

Lovely, but not very much of it. It would have been great in a jacket but I really only had enough for a fairly simple A-line skirt.



Sorry, terrible photo, but it is actually a nice skirt and quite a flattering cut. It has a wide yoke on the bias, centre back zipper and a gentle A-line. I used McCalls 7022 (view C) which was super simple to put together, and I didn't make many changes at all; just using lining for the yoke facing because I thought double the wool would be too much, and doing a bias binding hem because I had to cut it slightly too short due to the lack of fabric.

And here is the entire ensemble! Black and wool for the Canberra winter.

Strange dyeing, good weaving

The strange multi-coloured dyeing experiment from a couple of weeks ago (where I added the rust) continued to look odd even after I'd dried it ... but it wove up into something quite lovely! Wool is unbelievably forgiving; no matter how unpromising the colours the finished product looks quirky rather than revolting.



I did two scarves with the dyed wool on the warp - the first one had a fine browny-red fluffy alpaca blend on the weft. You can't really see it because it's so fine, but it's soft and lovely and blends in well with the warp.



The second scarf I used a chunkier bright pink wool blend that makes the whole thing super pink! But in a good way.



Here they are side by side by comparison. Both of the plain wefts calm the warp down, but in different ways. I didn't have quite enough for the second scarf so it is a little narrow ....

Brisbane getaway

And my final getaway was the furthest yet - two days in Brisbane. It was my husband's uncle's 70th birthday party on Sunday and when we got the invite a couple of months ago we thought why the hell not, let's leave the kids overnight, hop a plane, book a nice hotel and have ourselves a mini holiday! The Monday was a public holiday in Canberra but not Brisbane (it was the Queen's Birthday holiday, Brisbane is not to my knowledge a republic, but doesn't feel the need for a public holiday) so we didn't even need to take the day off.

 

We took the first flight up on a very cold and foggy morning, got picked up at the airport and taken straight to the family lunch at Brad's cousin's house. Straight into the glorious Brisbane winter weather - it is so delightful. Warm, clear and pleasant ... there are four months of the year when I could definitely live there. The rest of the time, not so much. I hadn't been to the cousin's house before - this is the pool cabana!!! What an amazing spot for a party. The kids (and a European exchange student) went in the pool but it was a bit chilly for the rest of us.

After a lovely day with lots of food and lots of family we made it back to our hotel, which was very nice and had a beautiful view of the river. And on Monday we headed out to explore ... after a proper cooked breakfast. I love having breakfast out, I think it's my favourite meal to eat in a restaurant. And we sat outside, under a warm blue sky, watching people go to work (hahaha, and mostly wearing coats and scarves! Queenslanders are SOFT) before walking over the new pedestrian bridge to Southbank. 

 

We went to two extraordinary exhibitions at the State Library - one on the south sea islanders that worked in Queensland plantations in the late nineteenth century, and the second one based on a photographic business that took photos of peoples houses in the 1960s and 1970s and the State Library ended up with over sixty thousand of these photos in its collection. It was just incredible to see - ordinary houses but together giving you such a clear idea of what Brisbane must have been like. It totally has its own streetscape and architecture (mostly horrible brick suburbia to be honest) but of course my husband was loving it, because it is just the picture of his childhood. The exhibition included context, and individuals telling their stories, and explanations ... and it was mesmerising. 

After that we went to the Queensland Art Gallery and saw a really good exhibition of Goobalathaldin Dick Roughsey's paintings (which I knew nothing about at all, most ignorant, but now slightly less so) before stopping for a delicious lunch, walking back over the bridge and going to the Museum of Brisbane at City Hall. I hadn't been in the building before but Brad spent a moment reliving the glory of high school speech night. That is the stage where he received his year 11 Excellence in English award ... apparently his academic career has been on a downward slide ever since. 

 

Yes I am getting arty with the photo filters. The Museum of Brisbane had the up and coming designers exhibition which is the usual equal parts amazing, weird, hilarious and plain wrong. But we enjoyed it, and had a bit more nostalgia looking round the Brisbane part of the museum. Then we felt that was more than enough culture so went to some cafe underground for a coffee, poked around the shops, collected our bags and headed back to the airport. The plane was a bit late, so we didn't get home until after ten, but the boys were absolutely fine. I don't think they left the house, just sat around, played computer games, ordered pizza and slept. A lovely weekend for everyone.

A dyeing afternoon

I spent a very happy afternoon in the kitchen of a Fellow Yarn Enthusiast dyeing up some wool. She had a starter pack of Ashford wool dyes, which are different to mine, so we did the techniques they suggest and it was fascinating to see the different results. I think the colours are a bit more saturated - I might give them a go for my next dye order. I am still trying to dye pastels but not really with much success - I keep using too much dye. It always looks inadequate so I add more, more, more .... even though I know I shouldn't. I wanted soft rose tones, with a bit of grey - and got this.



No, no, no. I thought if I added just a tinge of rust then it would give the browny undertones I was after.



No, no, no. Now I have orange with my hot pink and weird police uniform blue. My second dye bath was a bit more successful because I went with very restrained blue and green stripes, but it's still not the pastels I was after. The Fellow Enthusiast had more success with a rainbow blend - and done in the microwave! I had put that to one side after a less than stellar attempt with the food dyes, but I might come back to it. Much quicker than boiling on the stove.

Beach getaway

And then I took myself off to the beach for some quiet time. It seems silly to say it when I've been on holiday for weeks, but I needed some absolutely do-nothing days, and I found them! The beach was so quiet ... it was lovely.



Lots of long walks, especially the first couple of days when the weather was nice. Then a front came through, with heavy rain and whipped the sea up into a huge swell. I went down to Narooma to poke about the shops (there aren't many, it has a population of about 3000 people). I was going to walk out along the breakwater where I took the boys to see the seals a few years ago, but the waves were breaking over the top! I checked it out from the lookout first, and no way, even if it was safe (and it didn't look very safe), I would have got drenched.



And then after the storms our beach was half washed away, as usual. The vegetation is some seaweed but mostly the plants washed off the dunes. Astonishing.



Other than walking and staring at the ocean I sewed two skirts, read three books, picked some lemons (just a few, it's the very start of the crop), admired the neighbour's new puppy, and stopped on my way back through Braidwood at the .... wait for it .... patchwork shop! I bought some quilting fabric for the first time since California in January 2017. I think I can feel the urge coming on again, slowly but surely, to sew some quilts.

Melbourne getaway

My first escape from CAnberra was a two day getaway to Melbourne - an early birthday present, same as a couple of years ago. It was great, but the weather was awful. Cold, rainy, windy and some sweeping rainstorms coming through. I don’t think this picture quite captures it - I took some more from inside the coffee shop I took shelter in (it’s Melbourne, there’s great coffee on every corner, and cake, because it was a birthday event, even though my birthday is in August) but they didn’t work very well. Photos of streaming rain on glass.

Oh bugger, I’m doing this on my iPad and it does a stupid thing where it won’t let me scroll down properly. So I’m going to put all the words up the top and then try and fix the photos later, and if it doesn’t work I’m sorry...... 

So I went to the National Gallery of Victoria where they had the terracotta warriors that I kind of wanted to see ... but obviously not very much because when I got there and saw the queue ( it was half-price pensioner Wednesday) I decided not to, and just wandered around the main exhibitions instead. Which were fabulous! It’s not like I see it every day and have to go to the new and exciting stuff for some entertainment. And it was almost completely empty, so I inspected the random Gainsboroughs and assistants-of-Rembrandts to my hearts content. 

I normally can only do that for about an hour without getting bored, but I turned the corner into some different exhibition and they started putting frocks among the paintings! Genuine couture articles from various time frames .... I came in the wrong door so started with Lacroix, back through YSL, Dior, Chanel, Vionnet...... Unfreaking believable. It was a complete treasure house of gorgeous dresses. The only downside being you’re not allowed to touch them dammit so I couldn’t do what I really wanted to do (pick them up, turn them inside out etc) but it entertained me for another couple of hours easily.

The next day I went up to Queen Victoria Markets where I hadn’t been for easily twenty years, then walked over to a fabric shop on Brunswick street, then discovered that walking up and down Brunswick street is hilarious fun - hipsters, designers, vegan shoe shops, many many cafes and artisanal handmade paper shops.... so I did that for ages, stopped for lunch, walked over to another fabric shop, took a turn down through Fitzroy Gardens before going back to the hotel for my bag and taking a bus to the airport. According to my phone I walked 16.7 kilometres .... so I got off the plane after an hour or two in one position and found that I’d seized in every muscle!! So old, so creaky....I hobbled out and my husband picked me up, which was very kind of him, given I’d been selfishly indulging myself for the last two days! It was lovely.