I have been at home during the last week, but haven't felt like doing much of anything, including blogging. I have been doing a little bit of knitting, and a fair bit of spinning. But the effort of getting the camera out etc, is just too much LOL It is HOT here today, as it was yesterday, and will be tomorrow. I'm using that as my excuse for my lazyness :-)

I blocked the lace this afternoon and safety pinned the 'arms' up so I could judge its suitablity as a shrug: I am thinking that it will work AND I wont have to knit cuffs since the edges have a lovely picot effect from my shoddy blocking... this deletion also means it would be easier to re-convert it into a scarf at a later date! Geez I'm smart LOL We only had to work a half day today. Well actually, most people didn't work, they were mainly trying to overcome the effects of our boozy work thing last night. I had my last day with the space cadet grad I've had to endure for the last 6 months. I had started to think maybe I'd over-reacted, or misjudged. but no. He proved today that he was a complete moron when I sent him to measure the width of some driveways and he couldn't cope when the sides weren't well defined, he just kept on walking up the shoulder, he was well off up the road before I realised and had to call him back. And he walked out in front of a car. This bloke fell asleep in a (short) meeting on his first day with us, and things never improved. I could rant on all day about his fuckwittery but I think you get the idea. Thank the gods - Its the cocktail hour. I'm enjoying a nice cool glass of New Zealand Savignon Blanc, very welcome, since it is still boiling hot. May indulge in some Bailey's later. I still haven't organised any food for Christmas, I'll go for a mosey down the street tommorow morning. I'm thinking prawns, oysters, salmon and maybe a huge big thick filet steak (I like it rare YUM).

It's bloody hard to get a good photo of your back, and in crappy hallway light to boot!

I could probably make this into a reasonable length scarf with the remaining yarn in this ball and the other (smaller) skein I spun, but the idea of converting this into a shrug is quite intriguing and even a little scary since I don't know what I'm doing. It is only a vaugue idea based on my experince knitting two One Skein Wonders. I'll resolve it soon though, since I'm on a roll. The sky has been fascinating here recently. I wish I could show you ALL the photos I have been taking as the clouds have been mesmerising. Here is one:

I love photographing my roses, here was one I took on the same night as the above cloud photo.

This is much more yellow than a previous photo I posted from this variety. It is faded and nearly blown, but quite beautiful nonetheless. Riscy is now in Tasmania and I'm batching it for a week. When he comes back we will go car shopping. His 1988 Honda Civic is DEAD, he has been nursing it for 3 years since the head gasket blew and now the radiator has cracked right across, a wound that no amount of super putty is going to heal. The good thing is that over the years he has been saving up like crazy and now has enough to buy a virtually new car. It'll probably be a Subaru Forester so we have enough room to pack camping gear, the dog and put a kayak on the roof :-) Talking about kayaks, Riscy and his dad Jeff are taking a Dusky Bay double out tommorow for a spin. We paddled one of these in Fiji for a day and I found it really comfortable and fast, but Riscy found it too cramped in the cockpit for his long legs. I think he is hopeful that modifications can be make it work for him. We will probably get a kevlar one so we can more easily lift it onto the roof of a car. We tossed up for a while between a double or singles, but I like being able to chat away to Riscy through the day and as he is a VERY strong paddler so singles might have been a bit 'inequitable'.

The weather has been so weird this month. Stormy, Windy, Wet and occasionally HOT.

Taken in the fading evening night after another stormy day.

I'm nearly at the end of the ball and a decision needs to be made. To shrug or not to shrug.

I treated myself this year. I bought Angels in Stone from Dijanne Cevaal. Dijanne is a well known textile artist in Australia and I'm very pleased that we have been able to connect through our blogs :-) So here are a few pictures (check out the link to Angels in Stone above, it takes you to Dijanne's post about the work).

Yesterday Riscy and I cleaned the front half of the house and today we will tidy our bedroom. I don't want to spend my precious days off at Christmas feeling crap because the house is untidy and feeling worse because I'm procrastinating about putting the washing away. I picked up my knitting again after taking a nearly 2 month break to concentrate on making art. This was going to be a very open, lacy scarf, but I'm thinking it is going to be too wide so I'm seriously considering turning it into a shrug, perhaps with purple cuffs!!