Friday 11 January 2008

A New Year

Things have quietened down somewhat here. Tess and the boys only stayed a week, they went home last night. Tess and I spoiled ourselves yesterday morning and spent a hour or two at our local Spotlight store (a material/ craft/homewares store) on our own – no boys! Tess makes cushion sets, notice boards etc and sells at craft fairs, so we had a lot of fun, although she only got a couple of pieces of fabric that were on sale. I also got crystal beads that had been really marked down and some yarn.

I made a couple of necklaces and earing sets for presents this year, here are a couple that I remembered to photograph.







The top left is the one I made for my mother's 80th birthday on December 21, the pink one top right is one I made for Moira to go in me stocking, and the starfish one is another pic of one I made very early in the year. I also made a crochet wire set with multi coloured aventurine, which I forgot to photograph before I sent that off. So beading is playing a big part in my creativity at the moment.

We have had a week of really hot weather culminating with the last two days being 40+C/100+F. I really do not handle hot weather these days. Thankfully we have not had any major fires so far.

Mum goes into hospital on Tuesday for bilateral knee replacements. She will probably be in hospital/rehab for about 3 weeks.

My reading material at the moment is the 6 O'Malley Chronicles by Fr Andrew Greeley. I thing they are a fabulous story of a Catholic Irish Americain family from Chicago. I have also just finished his "The Making of the Pope" - the election of Pope Benedict XVI and what it means for Catholics today.

Derek and Moira will probably go back to Queensland at the end of next week to pack up her house and depending on whether they can get through the floods that are happening up north, bring her furniture etc back here or if they can’t get through put it into storage up there.

Two weeks into the New Year and things are starting to get busy again!

A New Year, a time to think of new things, new beginnings, new thoughts, new starts. We don’t have to wait for the beginning of another year to make new starts, change our lives, we can do that each day, each moment ….. but do we?


Spread your Wings and Soar

Judy

http://jsheppwings.blogspot.com
http://www.geocities.com/geelonghandweaversandspinners



Wednesday 2 January 2008

Christmas

I know it has been ages since I sat down to write a proper post, I am sorry, things have gotten rather hectic here.

Moira has come home to live. One extra person (plus 2 extra dogs and 2 extra cats) does tend to put a strain on things, but so far things seem to be settling down well enough.

The next “happening” is that Derek and Moira will drive back to her place in Brisbane, Queensland, and pack up her house (Derek begins his holidays on Friday) Then the fun begins! We will either have to build a couple of storage sheds (which we had been planning on doing this year) or put her furniture etc into a storage unit.

Originally she was just coming for a month, and we put most of my “stuff” from my studio into the garage, and moved our bed and most clothes into my studio. So now the plan is to build a new garage onto our house, it will have access from inside the house, once that is done I think we will move everything (with the exception of my loom), including our bed and selves into the new garage and then re-do my studio. Wow! just think a large (19.5’/5.9mtx 20’/6mt) empty room to play with. It has to have new wood flooring, some new benches and cupboards – under bench cupboards and floor to ceiling cupboards along one wall, and replace the existing external double door/window. This nice empty room was originally the attached garage, which we finished off and carpeted soon after we moved in, now I can redesign to my hearts content gggg Hopefully this will house most of my “stuff”/stash/supplies/equipment/etc and still leave some room for more!!!! I’m not totally sure what to do with all this space. Any suggestions would be most welcome.gggggg

After my studio is finished and we have moved out of the garage, Moira will then move into the garage and live in that until we get a unit built for her attached to the other end of the new garage. Luckily we have the land for this.

At the moment we are experiencing very hot weather, which I am not coping well with. New Years Eve was the 3rd hottest since 1855! And we have plenty more to come!

We had a very nice Christmas. The weather wasn’t too bad the temp was only about 23C/73.5F Moira and I went to Midnight Mass, which was nice to have her with me for a change. Moira planned most of the food – roast chicken, which she stuffed and put garlic butter under the skin, roast potatoes, and parsnips roasted in maple syrup, unfortunately they got somewhat scorched. We then had a potato salad and also a green salad. These were both yummy with their dressings. For dessert Moira made her favorite Chocolate mousse as well as strawberries in white wine, unfortunately the berries weren’t the nicest. We also had (this much later ggg) plum pudding which I finally got around to making the Sat before. We had a late lunch/early dinner as Derek had to go to work that night. New Years was very quiet, Moira went up to Tess’ (Derek’s youngest sister). Tess and her 3 boys will be coming down sometime soon for most of the month!

I have been playing on: http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/index.html
Mainly looking for weaving “stuff” but also found quite a lot of antique books and articles on lace for those of you who are interested in lace making.

Time I was on my way.

Cheers
Judy
Southern Victoria, Australia
http://jsheppwings.blogspot.com
http://www.geocities.com/geelonghandweaversandspinners