When is a meme not a meme?

When it's not actually about me?
Unfortunately I fell for this one from here.

Unfortunately holly takes anywhere from eight to ten years to blossom.
Unfortunately Holly is neither naughty nor nice.
Unfortunately, Holly is in a lot of pain.
Unfortunately, Holly ended up in the dud category.
Unfortunately Holly and I had to run off right as they were moving the giant skillet...
Unfortunately Holly's website address was printed incorrectly.
Unfortunately, Holly didn't much care for the Brown Bread Ice Cream.
Unfortunately, Holly was an extremist feisty person.
Unfortunately, Holly cannot be present.

The last one is my favourite - I do have trouble being present sometimes, it's something I'm working on.

What is it? Google Unfortunately, your name and see what comes up.

Yummy things

I can't wait to eat the yummy pumpkins coming up in our garden. Every day I check for new ones and we have five coming up at the moment.




This was lunch today for Rohan and I - double yum.

And a yum of a different kind - gifts! Divine hand-printed fabric that my lovely cousin Ruth bought for me at the stitches and craft show and a very cool vintage tray my mum bought for me at the Tyabb packing house (never been myself - desperate to go).

Learning

I am trying to learn to crochet, as was the plan for March, but I am finding it as difficult as it was learning how to knit without being instructed by a knowledgeable person.

My grandmother taught me to knit when I was quite young (about 7 I imagine) and I knitted little scarves for my teddies because that was about all the attention span I could muster and so I never developed my skills any further. I wasn't terribly interested again until I was about 33 and saw on several blogs how to reclaim yarn from a knitted jumper which inspired me. So I went out and bought some needles and yarn (and an old jumper) from a thrift shop and set about refreshing my memory of how to knit over the internet.

It went rather well and I quickly knitted a lovely scarf until I ran out of yarn and decided that next I wanted to try the "other" stitch, purl. Purl was OK too but going from purl to plain and back again was leaving me very perplexed until a real live knitter showed me what I was doing wrong.

Anyway, I am finding that crochet is equally difficult to learn without a teacher that has a pulse if you have no experience of it whatsoever. I mastered the chain thing pretty quickly and I am starting to get the hang of the single crochet I think but confidence feels a long way off right now. Of all the online advice I found this site was the best.

What I'm reading

It's fair to say I have eclectic reading taste but who doesn't? We all have varied interests and most of us can traverse between them consecutively if not concurrently. So my three most recent reads are/have been:

The Alchemist by Paul Coelho image

This is a book I have always meant to read so I eagerly borrowed it from a friend recently (swapping it for Eleven Minutes incidentally, which I loved). Not on the same planet obviously and I knew that before I started but as much as I wanted to adore The Alchemist I had to persist with it against my will. I found the tone condescending in its parable-like simplicity and the plot was not enough to distract me, until the climax in the last 20 pages or so which I did enjoy. I finished the book satisfied with the 'message' and it's final delivery but overall I was disappointed.




Next I embarked upon Other People's Diaries by Kathy Webb image

I didn't have high expectations of this novel, it was a gift from my mum by an unknown (to me) author (or authors as it turns out), and is packaged in a large (read pulp fiction) format familiar from the best sellers shelves in Target. I enjoyed it as a pick-up-put-down-20-minutes-at-bedtime-read but as I anticipated I didn't enjoy the writing; it was too plot driven and the plot was too exposed by the lack of good writing. I am inclined to think it suffered from being a (long distance) collaborative work - too much focus on the characters' stories and not enough on the words.




Right now I am reading (or trying to read) Murray Bail's Homesickness image

I adored Eucalyptus and on the strength of that I bought The Pages for myself for Christmas and enjoyed the writing immensely. So I was thrilled to find Homesickness in a thrift shop recently and eagerly paid $1 for it. The first 16 pages were a confusing blur but then it calmed down to boring and dense. It's certainly not a bedtime read and I am still in the first 60 pages so I will try to persist in daylight but the jury is out on this one.

Suck it up

My new red shoes gave me blisters...
...and that reminded me of a badge I once saw on etsy:

When life hands you lemons
Shut up and eat your damn lemons

Love it!
I put on a plaster and wore them again.

Welcome Autumn

photo credit

What a perfectly gorgeous day - the sky is blue and the temperature is mild with a beautiful cool breeze. I've opened up the house and the sweet smell of Autumn floats in. My washing drying on the line; I've tidied and organised my craft supplies so that the space is clear and inviting, in fact it is beckoning me; I'm wearing new red shoes (a bargain - even better); the boys are snoozing and soon it will be time to wake them and take them to music.

I had forgotten how much I adore autumn.

Applique fail

It's supposed to be a bat's wing right?

Right?

He Couldn't Care Less But I Love It

Yep, Definitely Hooked

Buoyed by my recent success on my first applique attempt (yes, I did rate it as a success) I was keen to try some more adventurous projects. I started with a mending job which I was quite pleased with - patching the knees of a pair of pants for Angus.


Next I moved onto a t-shirt potentially for a gift and liked the little giraffe so much I did one for Angus too. I'm still not sure how I managed to get it to face the other way though (well I guess I know how I must have done it, just didn't realise I had at the time).

Just need to add a tail to the little guys now.


















And then I made my favourite so far, a little grey elephant on a t-shirt for Angus. The shirt is an old one of Rohan's and the grey fabric is from a thrifted linen shirt. I'm particularly pleased with the ear which I satin stitched with the machine. Next time I think I'll try using a walking foot on the machine, I think I read that somewhere.

Shame I haven't managed my February challenge to make my own pasta but I have at least tried a new thing and I'm enjoying it a lot!

Applique

OK it may not be on my list but I've tried a new thing...


...this is my first ever attempt at applique. Yes, it is a bit wonky. Yes, the stitching is a bit average and the cotton is the wrong colour but the applique was on and I was too impassioned to wait until I had the right colour cotton. Yes, I did choose a square for the most simple sewing because I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to sew around the shape with any kind of accuracy at all.

Verdict: I think I'm hooked - I love it!