Thank you, dear sister

Although our xmas this year is somewhat subdued, my favourite sister's creativity and generosity continues to astound and please us. Handmade xmas gifts galore!

 

Communicate

As the sun set off the Western Australian coast, we tried to comfort each other in our individual sorrows of losing our loved one.

Communication takes time, sure – maybe a minute or so.  It takes a bit of effort, certainly – one actually has to pick up the phone and talk or punch out a text.  But, truly, just do it.  They might leave without saying goodbye.

1-2 Dressember

A hot start to summer meant light, billowy dresses for the first days of Dressember.

For my first day of Dressember I wore my cotton and silk Cafe dress, bought from Department of the Exterior in Manuka last year.  (Have you been there?  I love it.)

Coincidentally, Sunday's dress was also from the same shop, but several years ago now.  It's Ammo and very, very comfy. It's probably my favourite dress but starting to look a little worse for wear these days.  However, it was an ideal choice for Sunday morning coffee and cake with mates.

Fear not, there will not be daily posts of 'what I wore'.  I'm planning end of week posts and end of weekend posts for the rest of Dressember.  I'm looking forward to the challenge of wearing the same dress to work every day this week.  Yikes!

Just practising

Dressember, anyone? I’m not usually one to participate in the likes of Me Made May or Self Sewn September where every day for a month you wear an item that matches the theme (both of those examples are clearly for self made items of apparel), but I’ve decided to take a related plunge and participate in Dressember – with a twist.


Not having many clothes (no, really, I don’t) and being a fan of limited consumerism, I have long held an admiration for The Brown Dress Project, where Alex Martin of Seattle wore the same little brown dress every day for an entire year, as part of a performance art project and a statement against comsumption.

For the past couple of summers, I’ve tried to do my own Summer of Skirts, with varying degrees of success. But this year, for the month of December I am going to wear a dress every day (there’s 31 of those) but the twist is that I am going to wear the same dress every working day (there’s 15 of those). It’s a simple soft denim shift (Trenery from Material Pleasures) with a lovely exposed brass zip down the back that I can complement with cardies, shoes and belts. And just to practise, yesterday I wore this every-working-day-in-December dress to work.

Other dresses will be weekend dresses, beach dresses (for my couple of days at the beach) and a xmas dress or two. I am going to wear only:

• dresses I already have in my meagre wardrobe (a week ago there were only two of those),
• dresses I buy second hand (I now have five of those – from Vinnies, Material Pleasures and last weekend’s Vintage Frock Fair) and 
• dresses that I make (I have, er, one on the go, but plans for a couple more throughout the month).

 See… plenty of dresses…

 

Can I do it? I think so. But wish me luck, anyway.

My weekend by nettie

For twenty-one long and tiring (but oh so exciting) hours over the weekend at Tharwa Valley Forge, I heated and hammered steel ...

 into the vague shape of a blade....

 heated some more...

 ground and sanded those blades on noisy, fast-moving, spark-producing machines...

 sorted through blocks of wood that would eventually become handles...

 drilled (more loud, fast-moving machinery) and assembled wood with blade ...

 glued and clamped....

 sanded and sanded and sanded....with more loud and dangerous machinery as well as laboriously by hand....

 dipped in oil, polished and finally produced two hand-crafted by me, beautiful and practical kitchen knives.

Definitely not knitting.

Paris - je t'adore

Du pain chocolat et cafe creme pour le petit dejeuner...

 du vin rose any time of day...

I visited La Joconde.  She gazed, bemused, at the noisy crowd around me and gave me a sense of peace again. It's been many, many years since we last met.

I wandered, as royalty once did, through the gardens of le Grand Trianon.

I worked and walked and laughed and ate and drank and wondered at the history and beauty of the place and its people.  I shall return.

Tour spinning

Each year, during le Tour de France hundreds of spinners on Ravelry take up any of a number of spinning (wool, not legs) challenges, whilst enjoying views of the magnificent French countryside and watching the exhibitions of strength and endurance that is le Tour.


My first Tour de Fleece was 2011 when I watched our Cadel do us proud and I practiced and practiced my spinning night after night.    I took up the challenge again in 2012 and, yes, I do know that it is now some weeks since the lovely Bradley Wiggins won le Tour, but I have been somewhat remiss of late in posting my tales of fibre-related progress.  So, here is my parade of Tour de Fleece 2012.  I present them below in the order in which they were spun and, even if I do say so myself, I think that I can see progressive improvement in my spinning.

Merino from Southern Cross Fibre in Wave Rock colourway:

Merino from Southern Cross Fibre in Equinox colourway:

Corriedale from Southern Cross Fibre in Spinnaker colourway:

Corriedale from Southern Cross Fibre in Immortal colourway:

And the winners podium :)

A little heathen fibre did make its way into mon Tour.  It was my first attempt at spinning from a batt, and I have to say that I'm not very happy with my product.  It's a batt of blended merino and milk protein that I bought from Wooldancer at the Bendigo Wool and Sheep show a couple of years ago.  I will persevere with batts, because I can only get better, right?

And now, to knit the stuff!