orange swap tease

All I can do at the moment, until my swap partner, who is interstate, receives her parcel is post a 'tease photo'...
And thank my friend Leonie for raiding her fabric stash, the colour was perfect...

This was on the niddy noddy...

And these are in there too...

Watch this space for more photos! Soon, very soon!

Orange swap, I'm spoiled!

For a couple of months I've been mentioning orange. I'm in the Australian Swappers Group on Ravelry and participating in the Rainbow Swap and we are doing the Orange Swap now. This is what I have had on my spinning wheel. My orange parcel is all finished and in the Post Office system somewhere as I write. I can only hope my swapper likes it.

But on Thursday a parcel came for me....

from a lady called Jen who lives in Sydney and this is what I have been spoiled with:

The skein of yarn and the scarf and the Fuzzymitten cat are ALL Malabrigo, one of the most desirable yarns in the world, and unheard of by me before I joined Ravelry. I have spun my own yarn for the past 26 years, and for quite a bit of that time yarn shops were extremely few and far between, so I am really not up on the ultimate in commercial yarns. However, so many people have wished for Malabrigo (it is sooooo soft and knits up divinely so I can definitely see why) that I feel so totally spoiled to have so much in my swap.

And Jen made me a scarf in a pattern I was wishing for, this gorgeous cat with a removable vest, added soya yarn for me to try, choccies, hot choc, buttons, stitchmarkers (I've never had them before either) mini stationery items and fabric and a cute pincushion. How spoiled is that! This is 'a hard act to follow', I just don't know if my spoilee will like my parcel nearly as much as I love this one from Jen.

Penny's birthday

Dan had to go back to work, but Penny, Georgie and James got to stay and play a little longer as Georgie starts school this year so Kindy had finished for her.

It was Penny's birthday so we had a visit from Maree and Jacqui and a little birthday cake (gluten and dairy free at the moment worst luck!) enjoyed by all especially James.

Every day the magpie family visits the back verandah. It started with the mother coming to the new hanging basket liner to find pieces to make her nest and then because the peacocks race for the bread I put it in the hanging basket when the pansies died, and every afternoon they come and look for it. I think I took this photo through the dusty window.

Swimming at Bright

While the family was visiting over the holidays we went to Bright several times on hot days as the little pool was just the right size and full of other kids.

James liked to climb in and out best of all.

Blow up toys were a necessity and made you more friends!

And some lucky ducks got pushed around by their Dad. How is that for the ultimate in pool transport?

And then there is always the ice cream on the way home to look forward to while you are lolling in the pool.

Ravelry Group meet up

Our Ravelry NE Yarn and Fibre Lovers Group meet up was a great day and we have photos in a Flickr album for those who would like quality in their pics! Sorry that it is lacking here, but I've put in the couple of photos I had time to take and I apologise for the quality.

We had a rainbow dyeing activity in the shed and here it is in progress:






My girl hard at work on yarn for her girl.

Some knitted/spun while the dyepots boiled.

We have talked about our rainbow swap, and on the red picnic rug you can see a lovely orange tote bag which contains the orange swap goodies that Penny gave to her spoilee Mooska who was at the meet-up. We were all able to share the excitement of the opening of the swap items.

It was a great day and we all look forward to the next meet-up in March.

How long can you go and now you can get in the door....

Penny discovered Ravelry on the internet last year and immediately we joined and so did Maree. We wondered how we had missed it until then. It is so big and SOOOOOO us! But often things come just at the right time for reasons you never figure out.

Ravelry is a forum for the knit and crochet community. It has groups of people with similar interests. We joined the NE Fibre and Yarn Lovers Group and have found lovely new friends from our area. Maree and I spent a short time at the second get-together the group had at Yarrawonga in November and I offered our place with shed and dyeing activity organised by Maree for the next get-together which was in January while Penny and Dan, Georgie and James were visiting.

Our Spinning Group shed has been very much in need of a clean and tidy up so that we could actually get in to it. (You know what happens, in a hurry and open the door and shove stuff in to organise later, then later you can't get in the door so it all gets worse.) We wanted to get the dye equipment out so we had to clean the shed.....

Yarn cones from Bendigo kept Georgie amused for several afternoons. She joined them together and this was soooooo long we couldn't even pick it up with 4 of us.

Dyepots and plastic came out to be used and I finally found the bag of Wendy Dennis' beautiful white fleece that has been missing for about 5 years (the shed has been tidied in that time but the label has rubbed a-l-m-o-s-t right off the bag.

There is actually a little bit of space to access things now. And the blue hydrangea was really this colour although now, several weeks later it is almost blue again.

The cone snake was extended even longer! Who said kids can't have fun without toys!

Kids Town

Bet you haven't seen a BatCow before! It's the next best thing to the Batmobile!

Mummy and Granma decided that this girl looked more their type! Georgie and James had such fun playing it was hard to get a photo of them that didn't need to be taken in sports mode.

Holidays

It's holiday time but one of the classes Georgie has been taking at Kindy is computer. And her apprentice James is very keen to keep up with technology as well. He is very practised at slipping his little hand up to play with the buttons of the printer while keeping his eyes glued to the computer screen!

This is the plant that I got for Georgie for a Christmas present. It has the most amazing stem of flowers which are opening up day by day, so pretty and the most gorgeous pink colour.

Georgie is a Christmas cracker fanatic and is more than happy to wear her hat to prove that you can have a party anywhere, especially when you have paints and paper!

Feeding the Ducks

The family are visiting so we went to the Lake one afternoon so the kids could feed the ducks.



It was a lovely sunny afternoon and very pleasant at the lake, it is so nice to be able to walk around the lake and not be depressed by the lack of water as we have been for the last few years. We've been very fortunate to have enough spring rain to top it up as it is such a lovely and popular spot.

These ducks are very well fed, but who can refuse another tasty morsel held out so temptingly.

And then a little quiet chaos as they all regrouped in the water. And the reason?

It couldn't possibly be this big bread-nicking substitute for a duck, now could it?

I wouldn't win collector of the year, but....

I love tins and lots of things made from tin, especially tin santas, and I like themes; so my decorations for the Christmas season feature the Santa theme--the Essence of love, kindness, generosity, humility and giving of joy as told in the Christmas Bible Story, but actually able to be carried out by everyone regardless of their faith (or despite their lack of it) per favour of the legend of St Nick morphed into our new millennium Santa Claus. I have wondered if Santa could change the world for the better, but unfortunately his change seems to be so heavily saturated with commercialism that it is amazing that his sleigh actually gets clearance from the tower to take off.

Despite the commercialism, I love tin Santas and have collected a Clan who live happily at Silver Creek now, gracing us with their presence for most of December each year. I know it is January now and they have gone into hibernation but they are still uppermost in my mind and it has taken until the last day of December to get them to stand still and have their photo taken!

As you can see in the photo above, they all moved from their reserved positions on the wood heater to gather for a Clan outing next to the Christmas tree while the weather was really cold early in December.

But it wasn't long and they were gathered back in their alloted spots on the wood heater for the warmer weather. There was some talk of them having another meeting at the Christmas tree, however this was avoided by deploying blankets and rugs and jackets.

This happy chappy is a favourite with his cheerful and very up-to-the-minute fashion colours.

And this is the piece-de-resistance, a bouncing tin Santa that stands as tall as a toddler.