Autumn

As usual, every year, I am amazed and delighted by the leaves changing colour. I went for a walk on Sunday morning and it was still warm, but the trees are turning red and there is a very slight nip in the air. This is the manchurian pear in our neighbour's yard next to our driveway that is just starting to go. There will be a sodden mass of leaves stopping us backing our cars up the driveway at full rev before you know it. 

The weekend was good and mostly quiet. We went to number two's musical production closing night - it was FANTASTIC. High energy and such talented singers and dancers. The choreography was excellent, and they even had number two (who is not a trained dancer) moving his stuff in the ensemble in a highly professional fashion. He loved doing it despite the long hours - we saw him briefly after the show before he disappeared off to the after party. And got home at 9 am (he wasn't originally going to sleepover but I'm not surprised, I think it would have taken until 4 am before the adrenaline had worn off). 

Sunday I went back to the Lifeline book fair - not that I've read the pile from last time yet - and happily bought two more grocery bags of books I am sure I will enjoy. On the way to the bookfair I donated four boxes of books (they sensibly had their warehouse open down the road for people who needed to make space i.e. me) so really, I reduced my books this weekend! Yay for decluttering!!

And here we have the dog who was groomed yesterday and is very fluffy and clean. Although she seems smaller; I think they reduced her hair load by a LOT. Which is awesome, less gathering in giant tumble-furs down my hallway.

A boring black suit

I have to wear a black suit at work when I'm in the chamber - which is every day at the moment so I need more black suits ... so I went shopping to try and buy a specific thing which is always a mistake. I am at that awkward size between normal clothing and plus size clothing - I can often fit into either which should mean that I have more choice but it just doesn't. 

Particularly if I want something tailored that has to fit at various parts of me - if the suit jackets do up they are too short through the body, and plus size just does not do tailoring. It is more the baggy and shapeless end of clothing. So after an afternoon of trying on poorly made and fitted polyester I thought - I can do poorly made and fitted polyester myself and save several hundred dollars - so I did.

This is not a beautiful or flattering suit. It is a lovely fabric though - a soft twill with just a slight amount of stretch - but it is a bit of a sack and don't look closely at the hems. Not lined either. But I wear it and it's fine - at my desk I tend to take the jacket off and in the chamber it's covered by the gown anyway - so there you go. It certainly showed up my lack of sewing skills; even though it's an extremely basic style I still struggled to get the lapels looking decent and the skirt is elastic waisted. Which is awesome to wear, but not glamorous. 

And so hard to photograph! It's like the black cat we had when I was a teen, never could get a decent picture even though she was a very pretty cat. 

Lots of rain

The east coast of Australia has been awash this past week - it's cleared up today but the rivers are still flooding, with peak water yet to hit some towns. This always startled me as a NZer - back there it rains, the rivers rise, it goes out to sea, the rivers go down - but in Australia it can take days or even weeks for the floodwaters to hit. Not so much with this flooding because it's near the coast but I still find it strange. Anyway dry old Canberra has had what I would call two days of nice solid rain and the weather people here call an unprecedented rain event ... but our roof didn't leak so we are very happy. And of course it's good for the garden.

Here are the pittosporums that I was worried my husband had killed - clearly not dead and in fact looking very perky. Not yet the hedge we want, but getting there. The weekend was very quiet other than a lunch with friends at a restaurant out at Bungendore in an old inn with an open fire which suited the raininess perfectly. Number one is busy with uni and number two is very busy indeed with end of term assessments and his big musical which opens tomorrow night. Hours upon hours of rehearsal on top of school - he will be very happy when the holidays finally hit. 

Nicest nurse in the kid's ward

Which is how number two described my new shirt that I sewed. Apparently v-necks read as medical - fair enough - but brightly coloured happy medical that would cheer children up. I take his point, but I still like it and am happy to wear it.

It was McCalls 7359, in another brightly coloured rayon. I did the longer one - view B - but didn't do the neck bands - just hemmed it -which meant the neck is a lot wider than it should be. More comfortable, which is what I wanted, but perhaps more skin showing than is normal for me. Not that it matters for such a casual top. The following photo shows the sleeve arrangement but I look like a lunatic.

Yarn day

Saturday was hot - 31 and sunny and humid - then the cold change came through and Sunday morning was this. 

Nasty! But a friend had promised to pick me up and take me to the Capital Yarn Regional Showcase so off we went ... It was at a working farm / school camp on the edge of town and I was a bit worried that the weather would mean that nobody would come, but I was WRONG. So very very wrong. Yarn-starved Canberrans flocked there (boom, boom) and covid restrictions meant that the buildings had capacity limits, so queues of middle-aged and elderly women waited in the rain and wind for a chance to buy some beautiful local yarn and general wool-related happiness. 

It was all very lovely and I was quite restrained given that I'm not weaving at the moment (having gone back to quilting) but a couple of the fine alpaca blends called to me. It's not always easy finding nice 2 ply or laceweight and it's not going to go off.... it can just sit in the drawer until I need it. 

Pinning up quilts

My tulip blocks turned into a full size quilt and I pinned it up, along with a solids one that I had nearly finished before I abandoned quilting for weaving last year. It only needed a border so I whacked that on and pinned them both up in a fit of activity. I think I am getting too old to kneel on the hard floor and pin quilts up - I have to take a little break every fifteen minutes to stretch myself. In my next house I will have a large table just for quilt pinning. The dog was absolutely no help at all, and her paws are filthy.  

Not much else to say so here's another photo from the vault. This is my husband and I at friends' wedding in January 1998 at the National Gallery. We were a very respectable 27 and 33 years old in that photo but I feel like I'm looking at teenagers.

We were living in Papua New Guinea at the time so came down to Canberra for this wedding, flew over to NZ for my brother's wedding the following weekend, then back to Brisbane for another week to plan our own wedding for the following October before going back up to Port Moresby. So much weddingness. So much flying. So much international border crossing! Hard to imagine at the moment.

Enlighten

On Saturday night after dark we went and looked at the lit-up buildings for Canberra's enlighten festival. It was a beautiful late summer night - warm but not hot - and lots of people strolling about with kids and dogs. This is Parliament House with its reflection in the pond out the front.

There was a music/food/beer area down by the lake but because of COVID they had limited numbers and we couldn't get in. So it felt a bit like we were watching the cool kids have fun, but that's OK. Number one had a physics test to do by 10pm so it was never going to be a late night ... uni is proving interesting but having to get the brain functioning again after a year off is a bit of a learning curve! And the maths is apparently very hard ... poor baby gets no help from me with maths. This is Old Parliament House which was very cleverly done.

And a terrible selfie to prove that we do actually go out sometimes. 

It has been a good week but a bit tiring after such a fabulous holiday. Yesterday we did something very grown up and went and saw a financial planner (for the first time ever) to see if we can actually afford to retire sometime in the next decade. It was very interesting and very encouraging - we were lucky in the time we started working and are in a very good government superannuation scheme. We have always put the maximum in, and stuck with our dull government jobs over the years, and will have decent pensions, which is lovely. Boring, but lovely. 

A week away

I took a week off and went down the beach - reward for working through January (mostly) and having a stressful couple of weeks ... not that I need a reason! Being at the beach is reason enough. Although I did feel a bit guilty for leaving my husband to do all the parenting for a week (and guilty for taking one of the cars, which makes it more difficult) but he thinks he will do the same to me next month. 

It was a wonderful week. Sunny and warm but with a coolness in the air that lets you know it's March not January. The water temperature was beautiful but the waves were just mediocre until the last day (of course!). I swam a lot, and sewed a lot, and read a lot, and didn't do much exercise. I got in the car once to go and get some milk. I made a beef and mushroom casserole in the slow cooker and ate it for three days. 

There was absolutely no-one around, compared to high summer. The retirees and toddlers swim in the morning, then in the late afternoon it's the schoolkids and the tradies. Two old ladies would set up and fish from the beach in the middle of the afternoon (not very successfully) and Friday afternoon a decent number of surfers turned up .... helped by the 'dangerous swell' warning that the whole coast was under. Dangerous swell for the rest of the state turns into 'nice waves' at our beach.

I also turned out the main bedroom which hadn't been done since we moved in. Moved all the furniture, wiped down the paintwork, dealt to the carpet, dusted the furniture. There was a LOT of dust and it was very satisfying. All in all it was a gloriously circuit-breaking and relaxing week and I am very grateful to have had it! I could have easily done another week (or month, or year......)