Today I had to go to Balook for work and I took the camera with me.  The air is choked with smoke and it has been like this (on and off) for days.  Sunday was the worst.  It got to 42degC (107F) and the smoke was low and heavy all day.  The colours are weird too, every thing has a yellow hue, especially in the morning and evening.

We have a lot of air traffic happening at the moment, one aircraft, only an hour or two ago, was so loud overhead I felt that it was going to land on our roof for sure.  Riscy went outside and saw it was a big fire fighting helicopter.  We live about 5km from the airfield, so I guess it was heading there to refuel or something.

The fires are enormous and I can't imagine what it is like to try and fight such a thing or to be out defending your home and animals.

Unfortunately the people of Scamander in North East Tasmania lost many homes earlier on in the week. 

It seems weird to have such major bushfires so early in the year.  Summer has barely started.

Above is a little prototype quilt which was a bit dull, so I cut it up and stitched it back together.  I might stitch it some more then call it done. 

I'm all dressed up ready to go to Riscy's staff Christmas party.  His company doesn't hold back, it is a huge event, a enormous seafood buffet affair, all you can drink alcohol and a cover band.

Today was the big deadline at work.   A cumination of a year of work.  Everything was squared away by lunchtime so I took the afternoon off and went shopping.  I spent a fortune on two outfits, shoes and jewelery and I'm refusing to let the guilt in.  I've been recycling my party outfits for years, so I suppose it was time to update.

Tommorow, we have my staff social club christmas party.  A much more modest affair, but it should be fun.

The plan is that I will resist overindulging in alcohol.  ahem.

For those wondering.  The bushfire issues here are very serious.  I don't think the Latrobe Valley is in threat, but a huge area of East Gippsland and North East Victoria is affected.  It now all depends on the weather and the wind.  Thankfully the smoke has not come our way for the last couple of days.

I wish I had something better to show you:

Unfortunately, not.  This is a computer collage of some rather crappy painting I have done recently.  Although I do like the bottom right hand side with the greens and the white and the scribbles. I've had a lingering obsession with John Wolseley ever since I saw his work at the State Library of Victoria a year ago.  I like the way he uses the white of his paper and his scratchy lines... although his lines say something... unlike my scribbles.  I am not as fond of his more realistic and detailed bird stuff, but as soon as it starts getting abstract it rings my bells.

I had thought the cure for my creative doledrums was to get in and start quilting the pieces I have piled up... but I think it is more than that.  I've stopped feeding my creativity.  Stopped sketching, stopped photographing and observing, for some reason it all seems too hard.  It could be related work pressures, I try not to let work affect my private life, but sometimes it is unavoidable and lately moreso.  I don't think I'm too far gone, but I have to be watchful as no job is worth loosing my will to create and observe.  No way.

I have ten straight days at home over Christmas.  I'm thinking of devising a series of excursions for photographing and drawing and generally working on my stuff.  If I don't plan, I know that I'll spend all the break knitting and watching cricket on the telly... a pretty good way to spend a break and relax, but where would it get me?

This is the colourway I have been spinning up for the show.  It is dyed by Treetops Colours out of Western Australia and the fibre is so soft and fine.  I had purchsed the wool to used for felting, but with the show looming, I grabbed it and started spinning.  Although this stuff doesn't need it, I have been predrafing this fibre in an attempt to get a really even yarn.

Last night we played our third game of touch footy for the season.  I made a try... my first try for two seasons.   This is my third season of touch footy, and it is the first team sport I've ever competed in, so I suppose I'm not programmed to read play and anticipate where I should go to maximise my chances of getting the ball at the right moment.  I sort of see myself as being good at wing defence, I understand what I have to do and I do it well.  I love it when the other team thinks they can target me out on the edge, but they can't get by me (most times) :-)

Last year I was so enthusiastic about entering my spinning and knitting into the local agricultural show, I even spent many weeks at Spinners and Handweavers trying to convince them all to enter as well. 

This week I was shamed to realise that I have nothing to enter this year and the show is next weekend.  So on Friday, in a weird fit of optimism, I trotted down to the showground and filled in the entry form for knited garment made from handspun wool and a skein a handspun wool.   They have to be delivered at the showground by Wednesday night.

I suppose it was not only optimistic, but foolhardy, since I had a thought of entering a knitted beanie, and I had a thought that it would be a colour work beanie, and I have never knitted with two colours before, and I didn't have a pattern so I had to design the beanie as well.I determined on Friday Night that I am capable of dealing with two strands of yarn at a time, a comforting thought given my aim. And I discovered that designing the colourwork pattern in excel is a billion times faster and better than doing it on graph paper.  I used the Bea Ellis hats and Hello Yarn's Pirate Hat as inspiration, but pretty much nutted it out for my self.  I especially like the striped top.

Saturday was taken up with Kayaking, but today, with the help of the Cricket on the telly, I sat on my bum and knitted.  I knitted until my ribs hurt (I think I hunch over or something), I knit until my hands hurt and I knit until I finished!!

The hat is sized for a small baby ... well I think it is... the last small baby I held was my sister and she is about to turn 14.  So the size thing is a guess.  If it is too small, I'll call it a doll hat and be done with it.  I dyed the orange yarn and spun both yarns.  The white yarn is from the skein that one the prize at last year's show :-) 

The next two evenings will be taken up with spinning.  I want a new skein to enter as well. 

Oh yeah.  Our first paddle of the summer :-)  As you can see from the photo it was glassy calm, which isn't totally fun, but given that we haven't outfitted ourselves with spray decks yet and one of our paddles was very cruddy (borrowed), I couldn't have asked for better.

We paddled up one side of Raymond Island near Paynesville.  There were hundreds of black swans floating all over the place.  They take flight very easily and we set them off a couple of times.  The sound of hundreds of enormous birds trying to take off is bloody amazing - like a deep thwacking applause.  Their wings are actually generously tipped with white.  There were a couple of pelicans soaring ahead and we caught sight jumping fish on occasion.  In other words it was a great start to our Summer of Paddling.  

We are now pretty good at getting the kayak on and off the x-trail.  A great relief since I am no where near tall enough to lift it off normally, but with the help of a wheel step I've got it covered.

Over the next couple of weeks we should be organised and outfitted enough to go away for some overnight trips.  I am thinking that Snake Island should be our first trip.

I've probably lost most of my spinning readers since I have been largely silent on the spinning front for well over 6 months now.  A combination of 1) I haven't been spinning much and 2)  when I have been spinning it has been plain old white yarn for my jumper.

So.  On Wednesday I borrowed a drum carder from my spinners and handweavers club.  I had visions of me being able to process huge quantities of fleece in one night so I can just concentrate on spinning spinning spinning!  Well I don't know if it is just me, my technique, the wool or the carder, but I really hate the batts I have produced.  They take ages to produce and then end up on the slubby side anyway.

Compared to my lovely hand carded rolags this is a real let down.  I also think I can card my fleece faster using hand cards too. 

Anyway, I thought I try out some blending on the drum carder and grabbed some old merino tops and mohair clumps and roughly carded a batt up. I put it trough twice, so it wasn't really blended.  The above little skein is the result.  It actually looks better in the photo than real life.  I quite like the colours, I'm sort of bummed that I have run out of the greeny merino and this is all I will ever produce of this 'colourway'.  There is only 45m of yarn here, so it is pretty much unusable.

I've wound up the endless white yarn into balls so I'm now ready to embark on the sleeves of my jumper.   Now I've just got to find my copy of Knitting without tears so I can workout how to knit them!

Number 1:  I found the missing quilt tops in my box of handspun yarn.  So I'm happy now :-)

Number 2:  Dijanne reminded me to mind my values.  Yes the fundamentals.  And yes I had neglected them.  So even though I had decided to ditch the purple fabric already, the choosing of the new background was a bit more focussed than it would otherwise have been. Thanks Dijanne.

Below is a progress shot of the laying out of the quilt.  I was trying to get things square at this point! 

Number 3: Today we picked up the drawing by Ilse van Garderen which I purchased recently.  It is now hanging in our lounge/dining room.  We are thinking it needs to have a spotlight.... The house stuff never ends.

Number 4: I have three quilts ready to ... quilt.  How exciting!!  How scary.   Quilting used to be my favourite, most prideful quilting thing.  But now I have adoped these spare applique quilts to explore, I am petrified about how to proceed.  I used to love encrusting my work in stitching ... layers of stitching.  But I can't do it to these quilts.  This is the real struggle for me.

Number 5:  It is raining.  A wondrous miracle... even for us here in Gippsland. It has been a very dry spring.

Number 6:  I ripped up the painting I had been working on, I'm going to continue to draw and paint onto the ripped up paper then sew it into a book... eventually :-)  I had taped around the edges of the paper with masking tape, I cut it away today then collaged it into my journal:

Number 7:  We mulched half the garden this weekend.

Number 8:  The next couple of weeks are going to be crazy at work, an unfortunate, but unavoidable fact.

Number 9:  Riscy is finally getting us geared up for a summer of kayaking :-)  Hopefully there we will be practicing our capsizing rescues this week on the Hazelwood pondage.

Number 10:  I have been knitting up a lace shawl:  Peacock Feathers Shawl, a pattern by Fiddlesticks Knitting  It is quite absorbing until I make a mistake and need to unpick.  I'm ignoring the fact that I need unpick a row or two now, before I can proceed. 

Number 11:  I have also washed, carded and I'm currently spinning some yarn to finish up the Elizabeth Zimmerman Yoke Jumper I started earlier this year.  I want to finish it so I can start another spinning/knitting project.