Happy Australia Day

We made our way to Southbank parklands today to take in the Australia Day atmosphere. The Man and I claimed our favourite spot on Southbank beach with our Australian flag towel and settled back with the newspaper and the Boy ensconced himself in the water, where he happily played for the next 4 hours. The weather was almost perfect - warm enough for the Boy to be comfortable swimming all morning, not too hot for the land-lubbers and the occasionally threatening clouds only dropped a few sprinkles!





Tomorrow is a big day in households all over Queensland and this one is no exception. Our little boy is not quite so little anymore and he will be starting school tomorrow. First day of school, wow. The Man and I are very much more nervous than the Boy, and we have taken the day off work to be there when he goes into the classroom and when he comes out. Hopefully the latter will not be immediately after the former! Photos of the little munchkin in his all-maroon uniform tomorrow!

On the knitting front, I was hoping to have my short-sleeved cardigan finished for the big event tomorrow, but the constant errors (all my own fault, unfortunately) and design-alteration decisions have meant that there's still one row of knitting, an awful lot of seaming, and 80cm of i-cord to go. Not going to happen. Oh well.

I don't really like the way this cardi turned out but I've fallen seriously in love with the Rowan Cashsoft DK I used for the edgings and I'm wondering how I can justify spending the money it will cost to buy enough of it to knit a whole jumper. Hmmmm. Maybe I can call it "helping out a friend"..... My friend D's hubby is the local rep for Rowan yarns. Yep, that's it, I'm not spending $155 plus shipping on a jumper, I'm helping out a friend. Sounds much better that way, right?

Good luck to everyone who's starting school and everyone who has a little person in their household starting school this week. We're happy and sad and excited and nervous and encouraging and concerned all at the same time. Hope it works out well for all of us. Somehow I think the kids are having an easier time than us grown-ups!

What do you mean, it's January already?

I remember my Mum and Dad telling me that when I got older, the years would go really quickly. Well, I think I must be getting older. So many people around me have been saying this that it's become a bit of a cliche, but I really can't believe it's January already.

The Boy starts school in a couple of weeks time. We have his cute little maroon uniform (just thinking about anyone being dressed head to toe in maroon is giving me hives but I guess I have to get used to being a Queenslander some time) and we know his teacher's name and it's all happening whether we like it or not. We got very excited yesterday about the fact that we have been allocated all 5 days before and after school care, as we'd previously been told that Tuesdays might be booked out. It's not ideal to have him in care every morning and afternoon but we just couldn't manage it any other way with our full time work.

So we're on the school bandwagon well and truly. We like the cheaper fees and the fact that the school is just around the corner and the Boy should meet some local kids to play with and the fact that he's growing up and soaking up all kinds of amazing knowledge is pretty cool too. We don't like the cost of the uniform (have you seen the price of decent school shoes lately?), the idea of having to deal with school holidays and paying higher rates when we do go away. Still, you do what you have to do!

The Man got me three of the Stephanie Pearl-McPhee knitting books for Christmas and I finished the last one last night. Great fun and I'll be re-reading them. One has some patterns in it that I'd like to try so I'll be back to that one.

I keep meaning to get back onto Ravelry and update my projects and put up some photos. Maybe soon. I've nearly finished the Jo Sharp A-Line Jacket I've been making but I realised that the edging stitches I did in Cleckheaton Bamboo were a little tight and were exacerbating the rolling of the stocking stitch so I'm pulling them all out and redoing them with slightly larger needles. Then just the blocking and stitching together. I started a Booga Bag for my friend D on Sunday and I have another planned for another friend from work. I'll post photos when I get my knitting in the vicinity of a camera.

More big news, I've decided (again) that I'll get my drivers licence this year. Lulu (my car) has a new battery and is rearing to go, and I have lessons with a driving instructor booked for both Saturday and Sunday the weekend after next. P-plates here we come!.

Take me back to you, it's been a long time.....

If there's one thing that Jon Stevens does well, it's scream. If the Noiseworks concert a couple of weeks ago is anything to go by, Brisbanites the right side of thirty* are pretty good at screaming right back at him.

A couple of months ago, while listening to some old music late one night, The Man mentioned that he'd like to see some of the old bands live. I commented that at least one of them had to still be playing somewhere.... We happened to be listening to a Noiseworks song at the time so they were the first band I checked....Lo and behold, they were playing at the Tivoli on the 7th of November.

So we sent the Boy off to Grandma and Grandad's for the evening and toddled off to the Valley for a night out.

We installed ourselves about 10m from the stage and stayed put right through the opening acts - Move Trees, (who I quite liked - go to their MySpace page and listen to 'I found you') and Taxiride (who were okay - but the only songs I enjoyed were the ones they'd originally released as singles, the others were totally forgettable, and they seemed a little too self-interested to really be taken seriously).

And then the lights dimmed and the dulcet tones of "Touch" filled the hall. I have to admit I was doing a fair amount of the afore-mentioned screaming. Not the "aaah aaaaaaaaah Jon Stevens is soo sexy I want to have his babies aaaaaaah aaaaaaaaaah" type of screaming that seemed to be coming from all around us, emanating from women who really were old enough to know better, but the yelling out all the lyrics I could remember at the top of my lungs type of screaming.

We had a ball, right up until the strange jumpy woman to my left realised that she really couldn't do a proper job of groping her boyfriend with the one hand she had free and rectified this situation by flinging the empty beer bottle that was occupying her other hand onto my left foot.

A short walk, (or hobble) and the purchase of a Move Trees EP later we were in a taxi on the way..... home (we're getting too old for staying out that late) to drift off to sleep with No Lies playing over and over in our heads. Aah.

All together now... No lies, no lies, do it again.....

* the high side. Of course.

Wake me up when September ends

Okay - it's obviously not an entirely accurate metaphor, as September ended quite some time ago, but in the immortal words of Green Day .....

as my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
wake me up when september ends

Four years on, this week still hit me like a freight train. Like all things, I know it will pass.

Still, it's a good time to take a moment to take stock. I am grateful for what I've learned, I am grateful that I got to spend part of my life with a person as amazing as Doug. I am grateful for my family and my friends. I am grateful for a workplace that (mostly) understands that I'm a bit of a crazy person this week. I am grateful for the wonderful man and beautiful, incredible (and occasionally exasperating) little boy I now have the opportunity to share my life with. I am reminded that out of tragedy has come new friends, new experiences and new love.

But wake me up next Tuesday, will you?

Is that the ABC news theme? Excuse me while I do an interpretive dance....

On Tuesday night we went with our friends Adam and Son and some friends of theirs to see hilarious British comedian Bill Bailey. Right from the very beginning when the friendly voiceover told us to turn off our electronic devices (including microscopes and large hadron colliders) because they would interfere with the venue's navigation system, through to the end, where Bill was derisive of my artfully hand-crafted tinselly worm (more on wormy later), then sang Love Song, it was a treat.

My favourite bits? Well, mostly everything..... but here are a few samples - a dissection of Australian TV news themes which involved dancing with rhythmic gymnastics ribbons; discussion about the Large Hadron Collider and the implications of a black hole under Switzerland; an entreaty to go into the nearest branch of UBS and chat about Nazi Gold; a nice happy song about an emo who works in a coffee shop and self-harms using broken plastic spoons; a jazz version of God Save the Queen and the Imperial March from Star Wars; a wry musical comment on the "variation" of tone achievable with a didgeridoo.... (The Man's wondering here if I'm outlining my favourite bits or the whole show.....)

But back to the poor derided worm. Influenced by the gifts left on the stage for Ross Noble when I saw him earlier in the year, I decided that a comedy show entitled Tinselworm deserved a hand-knitted Tinselworm.


I flung wormy onto the stage at the end of the show and when Bill saw it he picked it up and said "Is this the best you can do, Brisbane?" before showing us the "worm" someone in Canberra had given him.
The Canberra contribution was clearly a completely substandard "worm", being as it was obviously a neon-pink store-bought snake wrapped in a sad strand of blue Christmas tinsel. Adam assures me that Bill would have gotten backstage and realised that my worm was clearly superior, and appreciate it in all its hand-knitted glory. In my opinion derision is so much funnier than appreciation, so I'm pretty happy. I just wish we'd broken the "no electronic devices" rule and gotten footage of the worm incident on a mobile phone.... I'll have to keep an eye out on youtube!

Fiji here we come

Yay. The holiday is finally here. We fly to Fiji tomorrow morning. Off for one whole week of ....well, as close to nothing as we can possibly manage. (Although we seem to have packed quite a lot of stuff for doing nothing - mostly my fault). Photos when we get back!

Nobody here but us chickens

I'm home alone this week. The Man is in the States for an important work meeting and the Boy is staying with Grandma and Grandpa. It's been quite nice to have my own space for a couple of days but it is a bit lonely here, especially at night. And boy does that bed get cold when you're used to having another body there to warm it up!

Only two sleeps to go, as I told the Boy on the phone this evening!

Oh - and Kempsey Mum, if you're reading, I've tried to email you but it keeps bouncing, telling me that your email address doesn't exist on your server. I don't know what's wrong there!