Optimism before the fall

How exciting Friday afternoons are! I love the possibilities of the weekend more than actually doing those things. While in Sydney I bought some fabric and now have a whole heap of possibilities ahead of me. I am thinking of having another go at making the shirred dress I tried a little while ago. It ended up turning into a pile of crape that left little bits of ant sized crape everywhere. Despite this, I am feeling very optimistic about it all and have three lots of fabric to massacre. I am sure out of 6m of fabric I can make one little 'ol dress...

Dogs, budgies and pansies

I am back after having a week in Sydney and now know what happens when you do in a week what you normally do in two. You rush about, fail to comprehend small simple instructions (such as don't forget your jumper), and fall asleep at inconvenient moments (such as at the dinner table- how lucky no one served us soup! There was lots of cheese around, which is mercifully bouncy).

I did get a moment to envy the southern gardens with plants I can't grow up here. I cant wait to move somewhere where I can grow pansies, lavender, jonquils, pot plants that aren't hurled around the veranda by cranky cockatoos looking for shredded wheat biscuits... Although most of the excitement happened at home.
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Little Jack got into something that gave him that warm happy smiley feeling some sort of drug gives. I am not sure what he ate, but he ended up so spaced out that I thought he had a head injury and took him to the vet babbling about possible senility and the hope he wouldn't become incontinent in the unit with my white rug...

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Of course Jack wasn't finished, before I picked him up he got into a fight with another dog and ended up back at the vet. He doesn't seem bothered by it and appears to be slightly proud of his new scabs that give him something to chew on. As if the chocolate-chip biscuits aren't enough!
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Now I have to go and walk the dog before it rains and hope the budgies emerge from their travel cage before I am forced to shake them out...

Percy the Pigeon

I was handed this stunned pigeon yesterday and it was quickly named Percy. The poor birdy had flown into a wall or something and was knocked silly. I did the right thing and took it to the vet to get looked after properly, even though I wanted to take it home and feed it shredded wheat biscuits. As it turned out Percy wasn't a pigeon but a dove. In all likelihood Percy is probably a Petunia (I'm not sure what the female derivative is- Percina perhaps), after all I have a male budgie called Penny and learnt to ride on a mare called Albert...

The lion, the giraffe and the sheep

After surprising myself yesterday with how little I had actually done on the cross stitch, I sat down with an audio book and finished off the train engine. I am really happy with it, and I am sure it will look even better once I get around to doing the back stitch on it. For the moment all the cross stitches are done and I am now onto the caboose. It is oddly filled with a sheep and a cow that are both the same size and are happily travelling along next to a lion. Its vaguely biblical in a way.

A giraffe without a nose

I was slightly disappointed by my efforts at the water bottle holder after it stretched out of shape and became some sort of medieval torture implement. I also want to find something that isn't basically a granny square, and found Crochet Pattern Central. I got all excited at the possibilities of all those patterns, I ended up slightly dizzy and had to go and have a lie down. I am still going through them and when I finally decide on one I will be sure to post something about it.

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I also had a half hearted attempt at the cross stitch sampler and was fairly pleased by almost finishing off the previously headless giraffe and half a duck. Actually, now I look at it, I haven't really done all that much more to it. The giraffe still hasn't got a nose. I guess this is what happens when you watch a movie while cross stitching...

Cocky wanna bikit?

What do you do with shredded wheat biscuits? Feed them to the local wildlife! These two showed up this afternoon and had a great time munching on a couple of biscuits.. and pecking each other. The one closest to the camera even stepped on the other one to get to the biscuit. I guess a shredded wheat is like a tim tam to a bird. I was going to get them a cup of water to dunk the biscuits in, but then thought that was going a little too far.

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Jack got jealous and had some biscuits too... and of course the budgies, Luke and myself. I think Jack and the cockys liked them the most out of all of us.

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They flew off a little closer to the ground as well.

Stretchy bottle holder

After a couple of weeks of crocheting a an enormous granny square that only got to about 30cm square I got bored and ended up on Ravelry. I found this crochet bottle holder and thought it was a great idea, so I made one.

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I learnt a very important fact about crochet. It is really very stretchy. The handle is now twice as long as it was intended and bangs me in the knees when I walk.