Hanging Patchwork

I showed you this 'dappled shade' patchwork before, when I first made it as a picnic blanket.   I originally thought of it as a present for my brother Paul and his fiancee Millicent, who are getting married this Saturday down in the cool ranges of northern New South Wales.  Like ours was, their wedding will be a full-weekend affair - the best for family weddings I reckon - but unlike ours it sounds like theirs will double as a mini music festival.  I can't wait!

My inspiration for the patchwork was a backyard picnic we had at their place when we visited last July.  We got the family together with a bottle of champagne to toast Paul's brand new self-designed-self-built chook house.  Paul was pretty chuffed with his new structure and he hoped to enter it into an architectural competition as a small free-standing building.  He is not shy of big ideas, my brother.

After that, I wanted to contribute something to their future backyard entertaining and I thought a new picnic blanket would do the trick.  I wanted to recreate the setting -  their cosy, wooden, plant-filled house in Dutton Park.  Sort of old and dark and pleasantly connected with the leafy close surrounding trees, with back stairs down to a classic inner-city Brisbane backyard - long and grassy and stretching away downhill.   I wanted to include a little of the muck of the chook house and the view we had from the backyard up into the earthy, undeveloped space under their house (Brisbane folk know what I'm talking about).  There are brighter greens there too, mainly for Millicent who I think is going to add a dash of dramatic style to our family.

But do you know where you DON'T need a patch of dappled shade?  Sitting in your shady back yard under a beautiful tree.  That first bunch of photos I took told me that.  Where you most want to be reminded of dappled shade is in your bright white lounge room in the middle of a Townsville summer.   Our window faces east, and on the hottest mornings through the hottest months it lets in the most disgustingly harsh bright light, and heat that sets our place to bake for the rest of the day.  A while ago I covered it with the 'dappled shade' blanket, and it does the trick completely.  (Yes, perhaps wooden shutters outside would also work well, but so far our landlord is saying No to that.)  Now the blanket's a fixture and I can't imagine taking it down before the weather turns nice again in April.  Sorry guys.  

But don't worry, we did get you another wedding present.

Looking Nothing At All Like Christmas

You know, hot Christmas is beginning to be a problem.  And I think it's getting worse.

Each year I add more crafty blogs to my link list, and each year I get new ideas from them for Christmas preparation - the cooking, gifts you make rather than buy, and of course the decorations for your home.  I love all that stuff and I come away feeling full of inspiration, but I find that I have nowhere to direct it.  These Christmas-crafty people seem mostly to live in the northern hemisphere, where they make hearty meals and big fruit cakes, cosy soft decorations and generally create warmth and bright to banish the cold and dark outside.

We in Townsville get more than enough warmth and bright from the sun each day, and what we need most of all is to not manufacture any more of it.  This causes a problem with the Christmas decorations.   Our shops, of course, go nuts with the tinsel and the songs about sleigh bells, and there's enough of an ick factor there - hot and flustered car parking, shops overrun with bogans and really too many bodgy tattoos on display - to put me off entirely.  (The other day I had to get Hayden to drive us home from the pool a different way, avoiding the Christmas Carols in the park, because I couldn't look at another insufficiently-dressed inked-up person - man or woman - climbing down from the family 4WD.)  When I get home, I need to be cool and calm.  Instantly.

I did manage a bit of Christmas crafting in the end.  I really liked this idea from Posy Gets Cosy for a quilted table runner ~ quilted, of course, to hold groaning platters of hot roasted meats and big casserole dishes of vegetables.  But instead of using warm Christmassy red and green, I stuck to coolish blues and pistachio.  And I quilted it only very lightly - more to stop condensation rings than scorch marks on the table.  

So, OK, it doesn't look very Christmassy.  Don't think of hot roast turkey.  Think of the cool and delicious glass of golden sauvignon blanc I'm enjoying right now because my Christmas decorating is done.  

Hair Disaster

I'm so irritated right now.

I was at the hairdresser's, right, which is in the middle of one of those disgustingly large shopping malls.  I'd just sat down in front of the mirror and was leafing through an old copy of Australian Hair, they hadn't put the black cape around me or anything, when an alarm starts going off and we're instructed to evacuate the building.  Hmph.  The hairdressers promptly close their front door and usher all us customers out through the back into the carpark.  The comical part was how they kept cutting hair all the while, and finished off a couple of cuts while we were standing around waiting in the sun.  The less funny part was how everyone - the hairdressers naturally, all the other customers and Christmas shoppers and staff of other shops, everyone except me - all lit up a cigarette at exactly the same time.  I'm sure even the children were smoking while we were all standing there squinting and sweating.  It was disgusting. 

 

I really wanted my hair cut, and I really didn't want to hike back to my car which was of course parked on the other side of the mall.  But how long could I put up with that second hand smoke?  No-one was offering to do my hair out there, but I waited and waited until finally the chief hairdresser told all the other hairdressers that they could go home.  As we were standing in their staff carpark, they all just hopped into their tiny cars and sped off out of there.  Ugh.  I was left to begin my circumnavigation of the enormous building, and I got crankier and crankier with each hot step.  I could feel my skin burning in the sun.  I tried to take a short-cut through the covered part of the carpark but I was told by an official that that was forbidden.  It was a bomb threat, and it had to be taken seriously.

I'm home now, but I'm still cranky.  If I ever find out who phoned in that bomb threat, well, I'm going to ...well, I don't know.  But I'll think of something.

Rise and Shine

Ahh today I'm feeling fresher and better.  Yesterday, Wednesday, was hard and hot and slow.  The day started badly because I wanted to sleep in but I knew I had to get up.  Wednesday is the day the yard guy comes to cut the grass, and though he seems a nice friendly fellow, and though he does an excellent job with our yard, he doesn't have the common courtesy to pretend he can't see us through the window while he's out there working and we're standing in the kitchen in our skimpy summer jammies.  So Wednesdays, whatever else happens, I'm up and dressed by 6:30am or embarrassment ensues.  (The worst is when I think I've got time to skip out to the washing line to collect some clothes to wear ... but I meet him coming in through our front gate on my way back inside.  He always wants to stop and chat.  Either he can't sense my embarrassment or he maliciously enjoys prolonging it.)

Last week at aquarobics I heard about a Townsville court case from a couple of years ago, in which a man was arrested for indecent exposure while inside his own home.  His nakedness was espied through the window by a passing pedestrian.  If I was that pedestrian, I would be careful about what kind of feud I started.  It might come back and bite me on the arse.

Love Friday: The Rain

The humidity has broken.  I do not know if that is the correct term for it, but last night the rain thundered down for hours and this morning the world is wet and dripping.

The fat glossy drops hang on the end of the bottle-brush's leaves, just outside our kitchen window.  I'm standing at the sink, looking out into the grey and green and feeling quite cosy inside.   My Ella Jenkins CD is on.

But what to do next?  I noticed the other day that Lindcraft has opened up a shop in Townsville.  Maybe today's the day I go and check it out?

Bright and Breezy

Ah! Can you feel that cool breeze coming off the water? It was lovely to feel it this morning after a weekend so hot and humid I thought I would be pickled.   

On Saturday night we went to Hayden's work Christmas party.  The theme was 'Tropical Paradise', and they definitely got the tropical part right.  It was an extremely sultry night, and you'd sweat just standing still holding a drink.  But very fun indeed - definitely the best one we've been to so far.  At past work functions we've been sat in tables of ten through a groaning three-course meal before being dragged onto the dancefloor.  (I hate being asked to dance by Hayden's work colleagues.  Especially on a full stomach.  So awkward.)  

But this time it was a real grown-ups party with waiters and drinks trays, a wild range of hors d'oeuvres and a serve-yourself oyster bar.  There were live bands, fire-twirlers and a mini casino where I won quite a bit of money playing poker.  It was fake money of course.  But still.   

Love the Couch

It's sweltering.   And we're feeling it.  Especially those of us with fluffy tummies.  Couch season has begun.

I'm looking forward to the weekend, but I can only see two reasons to get up off the couch:  Saturday night it's Hayden's work Christmas party (I know, already), and Sunday morning I'm going to be out on the river in a kayak, counting triathletes as they go round the swim course.  That should be refreshing.

I'm wishing you a cool breeze this weekend, 

whatever you're doing.

River Swim

We got to the river after a confusing and slightly nauseating drive through same-same-same-same 80s-brick suburbia.  Some teenagers were already there, splashing around in the water until a cellphone rang from where it was wedged in the fork of a tree and they soon wandered off in a dripping bunch.  They were nice - not sullen, not self-consciously brash like I was at that age.  I always cringe hard when I see teenagers acting out.  The last guy waited for us to get down to the water's edge, then threw the rope up to me before he climbed out up the exposed tree roots.

Then it was my turn to swing out on the rope and splash.  Hayden swung in after me and we headed out across to the other side.  And then back.  Hayden did another lap - this time much more seriously - while I got out and waited for him on the bank.    I watched him come back across the water towards me.  I felt like I'll always be doing that.  There's nothing so wholesome as a freshwater swim.

Love Friday: Clean and Fresh

Today I am preparing for the oncoming summer:  I have cleaned out our fridge, removing all these mystery bottles and jars of things out of date.  Sadly included are some delicious beers, including our favourite, Little Creatures Bright Ale.  So sad to see it go.    However, I've made stacks of space in there for summer fruits, summer salads and of course bread.  In summer in Townsville, it just doesn't last if you leave it on the kitchen bench.

I've also been to my first aqua-aerobics class.  It's my third summer returning. I don't know if I'll be quite so dedicated this year - last year I went every chance I got after I bought that wedding dress off the rack that fitted me so perfectly.  Make a note: aqua-aerobics is the exercise to do when you want to stay exactly the same size and shape.  After class I always feel wonderful; my skin warm and refreshed from the sun and the water, my muscles aching pleasantly like they do when they've been used.

Thanks so much BigCat for hosting Love Fridays.

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PS:  After I cleaned out the fridge, I cleaned out the pantry.  I found a couple of items in it that were out of date in October 2005.  That was before we came to Townsville!  We transported things all the way from Melbourne that were already out of date.  And then we stored them in our kitchen for three years. Hm.

February Waiting

February in Townsville is hot and hard and slow. There, I’ve said it. I think I’ve said that very sentence twice before. I didn’t want to have to say it this time, but I can't escape it. It’s true.

This year, like the last two years, I’ve been a bit underemployed during February while I wait for the year to get started. It seems like I’m waiting for so many things …

We WERE waiting for news about the job in Singapore, but it turned out that Hayden didn’t get that one. We’re still waiting to hear about a couple of other jobs he's applied for. I won’t say what they are (in case nothing comes of them) but now that Hayden’s decided that it’s time for him to move, I think he'll keep applying for jobs until he finds the right one. You may place a bet, if you like, as to which of these 79 locations that right job turns out to be in. I think Singapore’s still in with a chance, myself.

In the meantime, we’re waiting for it to be time to get married. Preparations for that big day are still ticking along, although nearly everything’s organised now. Recently we booked a photographer (check out her work – very arty and nice, I think) and as part of that we’ll go up to her place in Port Douglas to have an ‘engagement portrait’ shot. I might or might not show you that when it's done. I still haven’t found my second pair of shoes.

And finally, we’re waiting for this cat, our neighbour’s, to have her kittens. Our front balcony is a lovely breezy spot in the afternoons, so this little white cat with the enormous bulging belly quite often joins me there for an afternoon sit. Earlier today, she was resting on my lap and I could actually see the little kittens moving around inside her, underneath her skin. That was pretty cool.