My day turned out completely different to plans!  It was meant to be a wool shop outing with Ruby, Margie and Shirley, however Ruby remembered in the nick of time that her God-Daughters were coming over to celebrate an early birthday for her as they are away on the big day. So it was just Shirley and I frolicking about the wool shop making the most of a 30% sale.
We dropped in to Ruby to deliver a dessert that Shirley had made and accidentally crashed the party!!! I told Margie we weren’t staying (after-all, Ruby sees me all the time) and her face fell about a mile! So, being that both Shirley and I are not bound to schedules, we didn’t rush off! I am glad we stayed – lovely to meet more people from Ruby’s life and the stories were so funny and interesting
AND I DIDN’T HAVE MY CAMERA!! Sigh.
Anyway – onto today’s post!
I keep seeing facebooks ‘timehop’ or whatever they call it photos coming up and was surprised to see our plum trees much more advanced in the blossom department than what they are now. So I thought it might be interesting so see how everything was comparing.
AUGUST 2015
The Plum Trees
This was the 2nd August 2015 – to me looking the same as what I took photos of a few days agoSee that clear blue sky??? Not like this August!
The photo below was taken exactly one year ago – the weather seems similar, but the blossoms are way ahead!
The Garden
Actually I think the vegie patch was in worse condition last year!!Tomato AND lettuce in the last month of winter!
I got keen early and put in snow pea seeds and tomato seeds (failure as usual on growing tomatoes from seed…)
Snow peas!Planting tomato slices! This worked fine – most germinated – then I killed them somehowThe beginnings of my current carpet of broccoli!!!!I even had a cabbage!
As you know -the strawberry patch has changed a ‘little bit’
This was right at the end of August, but I keenly planted EVERYTHING!!
Weather?Â
The usual – rain, hail and shine!
Familiar sightQuite the hailstorm!Frozen GeraniumSeeking Sole-Mate
Knitting
As you know right now I am obsessing with shawls, but here is what I was making a year ago
These went to Jeff’s hospital for his kid patients
Cozy Cuffs with the new stitchThe face-washers that take forever to finish!!I thought the kid bootee’s looked great – so I made a grown up pairThe green ones were slightly too small for my great hoof, so I made another pair. Perfect size – and Oh So Stylish!! Snicker.
I spent a delightful day yesterday slothing in front of the fire with my crochet. Very pleased to have quite quickly finish off the shawl for Ruby’s birthday. I know she will growl at me, because there is a ‘no presents’ rule, but I did manage to get her to agree to a ‘home made’ loop-hole! 🙂 I will still probably get into a little bit of trouble! 😀
I need to write a list. We have all the family arriving at various times at the start of next month so we are all here to party on at Ruby’s 100th birthday gathering! It was with a bit of horror that I realised we are halfway through August!! How did that happen?? I clearly have not been paying attention!
Since the weather continued on its abysmal track, (Dark, rain, wind, rain, sun, rainbow, rain, wind) we decided to clear out the library, as it needed to fit two mattresses in. (I say library, as that’s what we want to properly kit it out to being, but its more the room where you browse-for-a-book-or-put-stuff-in-here-that-doesn’t-have-a-real-home-yet room.)
SighLook! Floor space!
We very much want to get in and completely cover this room in floor to ceiling bookshelves… we are probably a little scared to start such a big project, but I am getting increasingly sad that a lot of our books are still in boxes, or not well set out.
I also took time today to start a new batch of rocks tumbling. This entails grabbing one of the many buckets of previously collected rocks…
Its an addiction…
Then a container of water with a towel, so you can dunk the stones in to see potentially how they will look when polished. The dry rocks are very uninspiring really –
But after a quick dip, the colours come up startlingly different!
Hard to believe they are the same rocks!
My sister, Michelle, said my nephew, Riley was VERY keen to go collect rocks for me to polish for him!! Apparently he reckons he will be taking the final product home with him. He may be a tad disappointed to find out its a 4 week process!! 😀
Can’t wait for all the family to arrive! It will be like one giant slumber party!!
Having a week of no rain kept me outside a lot more – consequently happily ignoring housework!
The floor was getting a bit manky – having a wood fire will dust up the place and the floor gets woodchips all over it pretty quickly!
Oh – and I was totally living on the edge today!! THREE loads of laundry and it didn’t start spitting rain until 2.30pm!! Clothes finished off drying easily by the fire – with me happily in front of the fire as well adding a few more rows to Ruby’s shawl.
Lots of other things got ticked off the mundane list too. Yay me.
Hope your Monday was painless!!
Cheers
I really have lost my Nanna-Knee-Rug! (Right now he is totally buried in it)
We ended up with a gorgeous sunny day today and it was so nice to soak it up a bit. The day before was filthy – so I spared you a blog of me sitting about in the gloom feeding the fire and crocheting stuff!
I know its supposed to be Ruby Tuesday – and I am falling down on my Ruby-Gathering stories the last couple of weeks!
We did have a meeting yesterday afternoon with a couple of ladies from the church guild, who are organising food for the big party!!
Its hard to believe that in little over a month Ruby turns 100 years old!! So amazing!
So we were working out a few loose ends about food, times and things that needed to be done.
If any of you who follow Ruby’s stories would like to send birthday greetings – please feel free to do so. I may get a chance to read a couple out at her party  – I am sure there will be a number of messages from people who can’t make it.  If you do write, please let us know where you hale from and even a bit about your garden etc.  I promise I will sit Ruby down one afternoon over a cuppa and read them out to her. I know she will get a kick out of that! She likes to know that more people are learning about her beloved Tasmania!
I went on a wool hunting mission today – I picked up some nice blue wool which I think may make a nice shawl for Ruby – she loves blue. We are not allowed to give her birthday presents apparently. I pouted a bit and asked “What about making something??” Well… that’s ok. 🙂 So now I am in the middle of three shawls again, having made a little start today on the new blue one!
Jeff and I went out Star Trekking tonight!! The movie was great fun! Then we got home to clear skies and wow – stars!!! We stood out in the cold for ages watching the skies, spotting shooting stars and marvelling at how clear the milky way is tonight.
I got a couple of photos, but I really have to do some googling about settings to get it right. Still… you can get the basic idea –
We ‘painted’ the house and trees briefly with a torch right at the end of the exposure – which was about 20 seconds. Amazing how much the stars move in a short time.
Hope you all have had a lovely day!
Cheers
Another shot of my two cheerful Daffodils! I now have them inside in a vase!
I convinced Jeff that we needed to not be in the house and a stroll along Sisters Beach would be good for us.
The small creek that runs into the sea, cut a new more direct path to the ocean. Usually it winds its way down.
The tide was on its way out and the wet sand was giving up some nice reflections in the sun
The landscape of the beach had changed a bit, just like we saw at Anniversary Bay – sand eroded back, exposing new rocks and burying others
lumps of beach rock
I usually photograph this rock as its colours are interesting… but today almost none of it is visible!A lot more seaweed thrown up and the tussocky grass has been well batteredWe don’t normally notice this little stream
Always on the lookout for interesting rocks
It was so refreshing to get outside again! We took the back road off the beach back to the car – just to be different
Which was rather nice as we could admire some of the wattle that was starting to show its cheerful yellow fluffy flowers!
How was everyone else’s weekend? Hope it was great!
I got a bit excited about trying out the other new yarn I picked up a few days back … so have been enjoying seeing these graduated colours appear in this new shawl project.
I had to reluctantly leave my new love alone and get back to finish the original one. So I popped over to see Ruby and asked Margie to teach me how to do an edge.
Ruby kept the naughty Macca out of the way as he was on an attention-seeking high this afternoon!
Small treats from Ruby!
Ruby had a good night with her foot and is hopeful it might finally be turning the corner. She ruefully admits it has done a fine job for nearly 100 years and she ‘hasn’t treated them kindly’
Anyway – was great to hear some positives today!
After I sorted how to do my edge, I spent some time teaching Margie the basics of the shawl
A grand start!
If anyone out there is keen to give this one a go, here is the link to “Viral Shawl” A lady does a very clear video tutorial. And you only need to be at a basic level of crochet to tackle this one!
And – tonight I finished my first one! Pretty excited about it, although I am less excited about the quality of the photo, which doesn’t have the best light/colour. Will try another snap in daylight tomorrow!
Ta Daa!
On a side note – I also managed to get back outside and finish stacking that wood!! A round of applause and a hot bath please! 🙂
It was a typical changeable day – this was a nice bit! 🙂
We figured we should go down into the back paddock and collect some more pine cones and other decent bits of kindling for the fire.
Heading to the pines
The fellow who runs the cows down here doesn’t mind us tramping though his paddocks to pick up kindling, which is great.
This field will be blooming with wild daffodils soon. Wonder if the farmer will mind if I pick and sell them?? hee hee
Of course we had a small audience!
Stickybeak cowsPlenty of pine cones and kindling – just had to avoid the ones coated in cow poo
Back up to the house
We walked back up to our back fence and slung our bags over the fence, then decided to go back down the paddock to check out the creek
A little more help for the fire
The small creek has widened its horizons!
Slightly further up, the creek had made its own cool little waterways in and out and around the trees!
Gumboots are the ONLY option around our place these days
Of course, during our walk we got rained on and shined on intermittently – and then the inevitable rainbow!
And inevitable cows again
Actually as we walked back up to the gate we caused this hilarious stampede of Mini Cows – they were racing up to us, jumping in the air and everything!
Its hard to see, but the cow behind the leader got some good air time! lol
Then I got licked!
I have to go spend more time with the cows – they crack me up!
Today I went out to deliver eggs and grab 3 things at the supermarket
Three hours later I was home.
By the time I had shopped, chatted, dropped eggs off, chatted, dropped more eggs off, chatted along with ‘shawl-show-and-tell’ then got to Ruby & Margies to drop off final eggs, I thought, whatever – I give up on getting home at a reasonable hour – lets put the kettle on! 😀 (ooooo – and Margies scrummy cake! I turn up at the BEST times!)
When I got home, happily there was a bit of the fire still going and Jeff not awake yet – so I stoked it up and got started on dinner.
Aaaand out goes the power! At 6pm – a time when you hear a collective scream of all local mothers trying to get the evening-time routine sorted!
This time I have a contingency plan!! I was very cool – no panicking!! Â Really – its like a black hole when the power goes out. We have no way of knowing whether it will be 5 minutes or 5 hours. No mobile phone to ring and check – our internet and phone is electricity dependent.
So… I figure I can cook my hamburgers on the fire – I thawed some pre-made breadcrumbs to make said hamburgers and cut up all garlic and onion by lamplight. No worries.
This was totally going to work!
Jeff made a survival cup of coffee…
Water boiled pretty quickly!!
I must admit I felt a little cheated when the power came back on before I had made my survival hamburgers! I started them on the fire just to see if I could, then finished them on the stove.
I was taking the last bite of dinner and snap – out go the lights again!
So we sat in the dim light of the fire, nice and snug and I did some more crochet by balancing the lamp on my shoulder!
I thought it was lovely and quiet and relaxing – Jeff wasn’t as impressed as he was trying to wake up properly so he could go to work!
Sadly, all power is back on – so no excuses to ignore the dishes!
We did get down to see Ruby today, but it was pretty late. So no grand stories or photos!!
Her foot is not being kind to her – rather swollen. She does admit that it has done a lot of work in its nearly 100 years of her ‘not being very kind to them’ 🙂
We chatted about knitting and crochet as I took my latest project along for her to check out – A shawl
Not a bikini bottom in case you were wondering
Someone put a pattern on facebook and I found link to a youtube video that was so clear at explaining this!
It will eventually be a shawl
Ruby was impressed with my efforts 🙂 Yay!
We chatted a while & my nurse checked out her foot and has made some suggestions. We don’t like to see Ruby slowed up!!
