I Love My Grandma And My Mum

Daughter No. 1 made a picture for my Grandma, which I have copied. I love how she considers that Grandma was doing her best for them! Funny!

These curtains are so much fun to do. Note the calendar bits with Mum and Grandma's birthdays highlighted. Mum, Grandma and I used to do the sewing thing together. We were always comparing notes... so it was only a matter of time before Mum got intot he curtains. And there's an old hanky from my childhood. The daisy fabric is 100% Pure Nylon (Grandma loved it) but I bought it recently. It's the real deal... old and all that. I've saved the top bit of the Moo-moo to make myself something. Too beautiful!

I had the grand kiddies on Saturday (and Friday night). Amazing how well behaved they are for Grandma. Baby goes to bed and doesn't get up through the night. Daughter shakes her head and casts them a sideways glance... but it was ever thus. I took Sadie and sat her on my knee in my sewing room and told her that it was OUR sewing room. She's only 1 but I think she knew what I meant.

Little boy was a bit sick and fluey, so I printed out some of pilllpat (agence eureka)'s fantastic diorama's and gave him the sticky tape and some scissors.

Hint: If you send the Flickr picture to yourself, you can then save it to documents and print it from there. Otherwise it won't work. I've just linked it to her Flickr account because if you look at them all you'll be missing out.

Sea Urchins

Gathered from Kirk Point, all but that amazingly pointy one and the large pale one. The cactus is in our collection, just one of many and pretty enough to share.

Something Very Funny

Last night my darling sent me a sexy text pertaining to a certain activity he thought might be fun for the evening's entertainment. He wrote it a bit specific (very) so I'd understand the intention correctly and was just scrolling down the menu on his phone, thinking to himself how you need to be careful about sending it to the right person and not be blithe... when SENT MESSAGE appeared on the screen!!! His horror was obvious as he relayed the story to me! And I laffed and laffed and laffed!!!!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

He, and then I looked in the Outbox, but there was nothing there. Did this mean that his dodgy phone didn't send it after all? Or that it simply did not record the occurence? I noted the time and date in my diary so we can check it against the bill, when it comes.

He said I was a good sport and we agreed that we hoped the recipient was too.

Very Funny! But not, depending.

Finally!!

I'd been putting off oiling the last of the boxes (aka bookshelf), but it's done now! Thought I'd show your before they're loaded down and less visible. I should really have waited a week before I brought them in to put the books away (fumes and all that) but I can't. Besides, I'm back to work tomorrow so there you go.

After that's done, it's back to the curtains, which are much more fun than other really fun things.

Note: Nice couple seeking Sugar Daddy. Will compromise residual morals for financial support. It's for the greater good, ie. a need to have time to make things and go places. Art and that. Will negotiate terms and conditions.

Two for the price of one! Get in quick!

''

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P.S. I got busted and someone forced me to take the boxes outside, which was hard to do because I was half blind and very dizzy and had no idea where the door was.

The New VAN

...Is in fact, the back of the ute. The boy has a penchance for boxes and will, with any excuse and for varying (otherwise unheard of) situations, make them with gusto and precision. I laugh affectionately. I have made calico (fitted) sheets and pillowcases (lovely!) and we took enough for a week and spent two days and one night at Point Kirk, mostly alone. We slept gazing out the back of the Ute looking at the sea and twinkling lights across the bay.

My crippling, worrying backache has all but vanished, due to extensive kayaking and a good, old-fashioned (reasonably) hard bed.

This is another spot we found on Google Earth! I can't get over the amazingness of that! And it's the shelliest beach I've ever seen in my whole life, with thousands of sea-urching shells... truly thousands. The little bubbsie waves go shhh shhh as they push tiny, tiny shells up and down against the shale.

I caught the flathead. Note the knife at the side (ie. a reference for size).

Grandma Curtains Progress Report

Somewhere to put useless but cute old cross-stitches and old pyjama's.

Doona Cover Needs Repairing

I Watched 'Elizabeth, The Golden Years'...

I love Cate, of course. Our Cate. I might almost have noticed nothing except her beauty and the costumes!!!!... the fabric and the lace and the amazing designs that would leave Star Wars trying for a new idea in fashion and failing. Designs so extrordinary and beautiful that you could be tempted to doubt their historical accuracy. Go Bessie!

BUT, it is the most appaling movie I have ever seen, apart from every other block-buster from Underbelly to Who Knows What Else. Why is it that the film makers think we can't concentrate without a love interest that overwhelmes what is (in this instance) one of the most interesting moments in western history? Banal script, unworthy of both actors and historical characters alike.

And who is that man? Clive Owen. He was brilliant in Sin City, where his wooden acting was needed and appropriate, but here he was only ever 'reading lines' and badly. The music was in constant crescendo... like trying to whip up an orgasm when you really want to watch the tele and never quite get there... or if you do, it's distracted and you've numbed the edges by too much application... It becomes very tiring very quickly.

There was one Monty Python bit that made us laugh out loud... some poor bugger who's been severly hurt on some ship, just begging God for mercy and BOOF! Another cannon ball takes him out.

10 out of 10 for cossies. Worth a geek just for that. And it might make you want to check out the real history.

Native Funk & Flash 1974 When Hippies Were Hippies

By Alexander Jacopetti, Scrimshaw Press 1974.

ISBN 0-912020-37-7. It has also ISBN 0-912020-38-5 (pbk.)
There are a couple here on Amazon...

I Thought I'd Already Shown You These But...

Hampton, everyone's favourite picnic spot by the sea.

My great-grandmother Lucy Ellen Dickinson (nee Wakeham 1880-1966) is the woman with the hat (yes you guessed right... milliner by trade), my darling Grandma is the baby to her right a bit at the back on some guy's knee (Uncle Dave Gardener, who died Christmas Eve on the way home from work. Grandma said he was a mean poultry farmer. They'd stayed there and for 6 weeks he gave the children nothing but chicken broth. Grandma's little sister Tiny said 'If only we could have some meat, if only just a sausage!).

My great-grandfather George is bottom right. He took the next photo and you can see people responding to him in it.

The woman directly left to my Nanna (Lucy) is Aunty Mary Wakeham (her sister and my Grandma's favourite Aunt). Mary taught my Grandma to crochet at age 5 with regular sewing cotton and a fine hook. She died in a lift accident. She had pressed the button for a lift, the story as I remember it is that she was meeting her sister Lucy, and George . The lift arrived but she was distracted by someone and didn't go in immediately. When she did moments later... she opened the first gate (if you will remember how it was) and stepped in but the lift had gone up to meet Lucy & George, and she fell to her death down the lift well. I have a couple of things she made. I'll show you...

The baby on the bottom right, Tommy, died of a snake bite when he was 15. His dad there died from an asthma attack.

I know you probably don't care but I have to put it here...

A Brilliant, Brilliant Day At Avalon

Again.

The water was wet and cool, the sun sparkley and shiny and the niceness was well over the top nice. Too nice. My shoulder muscles are growing more able, my legs are tree trunks as I peddle and paddle against the wind and the tides in my awful, awful shorts and happy bare feet. There is a time coming when my Bingo Arms will vanish, I can feel it in my bones! It's only moments away.

The You Yangs in the distance there, and some of the best architecture I've seen.

It's Not Funny

I just smashed the f'ing headlight on the f'ing car. F'ing reverse gear doesn't always quite engage and I was parked on a steep sloping park out front of the supermarket and as soon as I engaged the clutch a little bit BANG! Smashed into the railing there. FFFF!!!!

Now I have to be my one true's personal slave for a WEEK!

Hope at least some of it's fun.

Grandma Curtain's Again

Finished!! Yay!!

I just have to make the insert (I'll post the pattern incase anyone is interested). Next I'm gonna have a go with the idea in a 'pine-cone' type fashion. BETTER QUALITY felt (why did I use crappy felt???), with the sections getting smaller and smaller. S'pose I'd make them in a line, then sew them... er... ah... easing it into an un-noticable gather to bring it in.... just thinking out loud.
I know why I used the crappy felt, because I could buy a piece on the way to work. Then I was committed.

For The Grandma Curtains

I found this letter that my Dah (grandfather) had written Grandma when they were courting... in which he complains affectionately about her constant needlework. If he somehow thought that this would change, he was sorely mistaken.

20/12/1926 (Grandma was 18).

From a birthday card.

Rhonda's Wedding

My friend got married at the old Treasury building in William Street and had a reception/picnic at the Flagstaff Gardens afterwards. Maybe 1979? That's my Mum with the jaunty red scarf. The bloke in the foreground (with the hat) is a homeless guy who melded seamlessly into the group, having, as one did in those days, a suit and tie. Old school homeless. Proper dress sense.

This Is My Great Grandfather

The horizontal gentleman on the right.

So serious.

I Would Have Bought These From The Local Primary School Fair...

...But the girl wouldn't take any money. So tiny I can't believe that someone actually knitted them.

Tissue Box

Don't know how I missed showing you our tissue box for all this time. Made with reclaimed, discarded fox fur. All of my kids have an order in for Christmas, as do some of the friends... Easy!

Avalon

We found this wreck on Google Earth and today paddled out to find it. How weird is that? We tried to follow a map we'd drawn of some dirt tracks that get you close but they were all signed with nasty trespassers will be prosecuted type signs. Great day, although naughtliy I am sunburnt.

My thyroid is under acting at the moment due to too many meds, and I've decided that that means I don't really need much food. My weight is increasing in spite of my minimal intake. That means I need even less food by my logic. So I'm going to be cheap maintenance from now on. Tomorrow the doc might disabuse me of the notion but I'm trying the best that I can. They say that some peope deliberately ditch the meds so their body will produce too much thyroid hormone and they'll lose weight... maybe when I was young I might have considered it... (joking).

Lovliest weekend in ages. Family, did a lot around the house, got out on the water... all good and tomorrow off! Yay!

The Curtain Is Up!!

Not the best photo, but the room is in the dark part of the house.

I'm thinking of couchng some knot-work onto it though, it doesn't fee finished. Perhaps border the ship bit and do some kind of fisherman's loopiness underneath??? Waddya reckon??? Hmmm?

Tanya

Yackandandah again, out the back of Granny's pub. My other Grandma did up this doll and it was donated to the Yack Mardi-Gras. I remember the day... brass band... big parade through the town... I was just or nearly five. The doll had a sash like a real 'Miss Somewhere'. Miss Yackandandah. I don't remember the details, but Granny must have had a raffle which I WON!!! So, we took Tanya home and she was relegated to the top of the cupboard in the spare room, because she was special. Ear-marked 'for later on'.

Not long after, we had a house fire in the spare room, from an electrical fault. Tanya bit the big one. I clearly remember my dream (nightmare) of her going up in flames and I woke screaming and calling her name.

Ross wonders if that's where it all began.

My first death. Now I see this photo, she looks to be shrouded and I was amazed to see that she isn't the elegant, beautiful, mature woman of a doll that I remembered, but an ordinary girl. I love her just the same.

I got very sick after that and was given a new doll when I got out of hossie, I named her Danielle and thought of her as Tanya's daughter.

Here's The Whole Story

Apparently I wasn't allowed to climb on my grandfather's pile of bricks, as you would expect. My Dad caught it all on film. I bet I got away with it too... it always worked in the future (the smile), no reason to think it didn't work then.