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!

Karma Chamilia

About a month ago I went shopping with my good friend D and we each bought a charm bracelet. Mine is a Chamilia brand but it's similar to a number of other brands on the market (Pandora, Biagi, Bacio, Fiera, etc). D and I bought a few beads each and my Sister and her husband gave me another beautiful blue glass one for my birthday. I will get new beads slowly over time on special occasions.... like Wednesdays :) . What do you mean Wednesdays aren't special occasions?!

A rush of blood to the.....wallet. (aka the day I became an art collector)

Long story, but some of you will know about my dog Keg, who has been living with Mum and Dad in Sydney since I moved to Brissie just over two years ago. Keg is a typical 4yo male Staffy and as such is under everyone's feet (including poor old Buddy, Mum and Dad's aging Rottweiler/Kelpie/German Shepherd (?) cross who has bad hips and can ill afford being barrelled by a rapidly moving lump of dog). Everyone loves him but it's probably not the absolute best situation for him to be living in.

Noone ted him to go to the RSPCA, because we couldn't be guaranteed of any home for him let alone a great one, so Dad has been mentioning Keg to everyone he knows in an attempt to find the perfect new Mummy and Daddy for my Keggy.

Well, finally we found one. (note that I'm using we here in the sense that I'm not involved at all) A friend of Dad's found a friend of his who has had Staffies before and wants another one but didn't want to go through the puppy stage again. Phonecalls and arrangements were made and Keg will be flying up with the good people of Virgin Blue on the 18th of August.

Keg's new Mummy is an artist. Her name is Lyn Barnes and she lives in Quilpie with her husband Jack and some horses. You can see some of her art here.

Lyn has an exhibition in Brisbane once a year and it opened on Wednesday. (it's on at the Graydon Gallery on Merthyr St in New Farm. If you're in the area drop in and have a squiz) She invited me along so we could meet each other. I had looked at the artwork on the website and while it's all quite nice, I felt that none of it was really my thing and I would just go, say hi, stay for a little while and then go. As is probably usually the case, the art was all much more impressive in person than it was in the photos. I met Lyn (who's lovely - Keg's on a good wicket there I think) and started to walk through the gallery until I came around a corner and stopped dead. It was a pastel drawing of spoonbills in a tree at Stonehenge (the one in outback Queensland, I don't think the English one has Spoonbills...) and it's gorgeous.


I walked around that gallery about three times, each time hoping as I came around the corner that someone had bought that drawing so that I didn't have to keep arguing with myself about whether I'd buy it. After the third time when there was still no little red dot on the name plaque, I went and called Dad. He convinced me that if I loved it, and could afford it, then I should buy it. Done. Mine.

I'm now an art collector.

I just hope there's enough credit left on my mastercard.

Am I bovvered? Yeah - I think I am a bit.

I just watched the last episode of the fourth season of Doctor Who. On the whole I really enjoyed it, a few plot holes and it was cheesier than a big bag of Dorito's, but it was fun.

However, (and this is going to expose a major turn-around in thought) I was a bit disappointed at the way they left poor Donna. Catherine Tate has grown on me amazingly during this season to the point where I think Donna may have been my favourite Doctor's companion of the new series. I understand that they couldn't just leave her running around the universe in the state she ended up in but I thought leaving her that way was sad. And someone give Bernard Cribbins a Bafta. (or another Bafta if he already has one or more). The man's a brilliant, understated genius.

But with that out of the way, hurry up Christmas.

Is there a collective noun for birthdays?

We have a birthday cluster in my family at the moment. Yesterday was Doug's birthday and the Man's brother's birthday. Today is the birthday of The Man himself. (Yep - The Man and his brother were born two years and one day apart). Also, yesterday, my sister N gave birth to a gorgeous little boy, so we have a fair bit of celebrating to do. Happy birthday everyone!

My nephew was born after what was apparently a fairly long labour for nowadays. Not having actually been through labour myself, I think that any period of time would be fairly long, so my hat's off to Sis. Well done. It's a pretty impressive thing, making a person, so we're proud of her and her hubby. The Nephew is apparently eating well and pooping well and sleeping well and being generally extremely well behaved so that's got to be a good thing. He was 8lbs 10 ounces which sounds like a very healthy weight to me.

Despite the fact that today was not my birthday, I did receive a present of sorts. My wool from Bendigo Woollen Mills arrived. It seems to be lovely, although I am having some trouble with the "Classic" yarn I bought to make a Cleckheaton cabled jacket. Due to the plying and twisting process (I'm not certain of the exact terms), the twist is in the opposite direction from most (all?) other yarn I've ever used. I'm finding that as a result, it is untwisting with the action of my hands as I knit with it which is meaning that it's really splitty on the needles and I have to keep going back and fixing missed stitches where I've worked only a third of the yarn! It looks nice knitted up though so I should have a nice finished product provided I take a little more care in the construction. The colours are beautiful too, and the other yarn I got (Rustic) has the twist in the "correct" direction so I won't have the same problem with it.

I've missed blogging quite a lot of interesting stuff in the last month and a bit so I'll have to catch up soon.