Left-hand-Turn

Sunday, October 3, 2010
Down the track
Well its a bit further down the track since I first started this blog then abandoned, but life as I often say seems to just carry you away and in my case this is how it has been.

Its funny how life can take a sudden twist whether for the worst or better and I'm not sure in my case which one that is. Certainly I'm living in a much better place than I ever imagined but the journey itself was very interesting to say the least.

Lets go back a bit, the last post from me I was living in Cockatoo, a little town about an hour and a half from Melbourne, Australia. The house we had was a pleasant little house but it was a little too small for us and we had quite a few possessions stored in our front room that we couldn't find room for.

Now I haven't discussed my family history here and its a bit like that proverbial skeleton in the closet some dark secrets that the family never discuss but here am I broadcasting to - well the world but I figure if I talk about it here I may help someone else who is dealing with the same type of problems and help them understand what the hell is going on....(and maybe get some idea's on how to handle my dilemma's that crop up)

My parents divorced when I was five and as lots of divorces go it was messy and as a result the family which consisted of myself, my sister and father and mother ended up in different places I was with my mother and my sister was with my father (my sister eventually ran away from my father at the age of 12 and came to live with us). Both parents commenced getting on with their lives which meant in their case remarrying and having more children. My mother had two more children both boys and my father married a lady who had two children already and then had a further two children a boy and a girl.

After my sister ran away and came to live with us all communication between father and us his daughters ceased and whilst we knew where they lived we did not try to contact them preferring to begin anew...

Advance 30 years and I am a 30+ woman seeking answers and wondering what the father I never knew was like so I began the search of finding him, I find him ,visit, meet my half brother and sister and from then a regular contact by phone began...

Forward another 10 or so years and I'm caring for my sister who is dying of terminal cancer and I persuade my dad to come down and visit and say the last goodbyes as she won't ever see him again and he leaves to go back home...

Another five year passes and whilst sporadic contact is kept by phone I continue on with my style of life and he grows older and lives alone...he gets sick, is taken in by my half sister and he seems content. Then came a series of phone calls to me where it was obvious something was wrong but he didn't know what it was - he was unhappy and seemed confused. Finally one day he said he would like to come for a holiday and it was agreed that I would come and pick him up - then silence....

At the time it didn't worry me to much dad hadn't been a great communicator and I assumed he had forgotten what he wanted to do and something more important had come along but his confusion worried me a bit so a week or two later I rang to check on him...the phone had been disconnected - this set off alarm bells with me as he hadn't mentioned having problems with the phone and he had promised to get back to me so I rang the police station in his area and asked them to do a welfare check on him.

Police went out and found him ok and rang me to let me know..apparently he had forgotten to pay bill (no big deal) he promised to pay bill and contact me so I waited... Finally he rang and when I questioned him about bill he said no something was wrong with phone but it was all ok now and when did I want to pick him up for a visit?

Arrangements were made and I finally went to pick him up. I found him living in the backyard of my half-sisters ex-husbands house in 3 little workman portable type units and when I walked into his lounge/bedroom part of the unit I was assailed by a stench of a combination of mould, urine and cat feces he proudly showed me around we walked outside to another portable and he showed me his separate little kitchen with inch thick grease coating the benches and out of date food and old unwashed dishes piled high in kitchen sink and went to show me his other little portable toilet and shower from what I had seen it was enough...I grabbed his bag and his cat and took him to the car.

Ok I think I really have told you enough for today, even this post is a bit like war and peace but still I just needed to write it down whether you read the lot is your option I make no excuses

A New Year and a New Beginning

I have been rather remiss in my blogging, and I have decided that this year I am going to try and at least write in the blog once a week (yes I know I'm already behind) so with that in mind Ive changed the blogs colors and am hoping this will be an incentive for me to blog a little bit more often...we will have to see how it goes....

Tomorrow I'm off to Torquay Hubs has managed to snag himself a ewe beaut Ute and we are off to pick it up tomorrow I hope to get some pics of the wonderful town of Torquay. Anyway enough blather will hopefully be back tomorrow with some lovely pics of Torquay!

Simple solutions

Ive been having a problem with my plying...not the plying itself but the yarn being fed to the wheel, my little upright lazy kate tended to spin a little too freely allowing my yarn to gather around the spoke and causing the yarn to snag and snarl, then a comment by someone recently talking about lazy kates made me stop and think........

By turning the lazy kate on its side I stopped the freewheeling bobbins....such a simple solution and works brilliantly!

Hello again!
Im back after an extremely looooong abscence in which much has happened. Now where to start is the tricky bit but we'll start with the Internet which is now adsl, after about 3 months of the internet being slow, dropping out and tying up the phone we had had enough and decided to get adsl cable internet and I haven't looked back.

Next on the list is my car. Yay! after months of sitting in the yard and looking like a dumped vehicle it has been mechanically checked, had all its bits that needed renewing renewed and has even done a long drive away to Bendigo to check out the local Sheep and Wool show(more about this later)

Now for some rather *cough* big news in my time away from the blog I got married! Yep I know my blog says Im already married but that wasn't "official" and so my partner Andy and I formalized this by getting a celebrant and a very small gathering of people to officially witness the occasion nothing big as Andy and I are not the "big event" type of people. It was a lovely day and both Andy and I are extremely happy how it all turned out.

Now Im not sure if I mentioned this but if you remember way way back when I first started posting I had got myself a wheel given to me by Mr 50 Acres which I swapped for a little Sheridan Wheel (Sherry as she is known) Sherry and I have had a happy partnership and have gotten to know each other very well. Now Sherry's former owner contacted me a couple of months ago she unfortunately had a bad hip and was unable to spin anymore and was wondering if I wanted the wheel back, I said yes and got the country spinner back.

I didn't really have a use for the country spinner and I mentioned this wheel to Mandie of Ewe give Me the Knits she offered to swap the country spinner with a ashford double drive which I jumped at the chance of (I had the ashie in mind for another freind of mine Neekie but unfortunately she didn't have the space) but anyways in due course the Ashford has arrived and has taken up residence in my Craft Room. Her name is Brandy and she is a wonderful quiet spinner and Im proud to be her new owner.

The last new member of the household is my carder. Calvin Bruce Carder the First, with spinning rapidly taking over as my preferred choice Calvin has become one of my beloved making some beautiful batts and giving order to my fibres which seem to have been hoarded and crammed into every avail spot I can find..... No pix today as Im being lazy and I've got some carding I want to be doing (housework? Whats that?)Back later............

Random Act of Kindness

I have been the lucky recipient of a random act of kindness (RAK) this is a lovely gift I received last week from a member of a group I joined on Ravelry last week. Isn't it gorgeous? Pictured is two lovely skeins of lace weight yarn and some of my favorite munchies roll ups and some yummy chocolate, there was more but unfortunately I couldn't resist and the chocolate was eaten very quickly as I prepared the gifts for their photo shoot. The idea of the group was to gift items that people wanted and send anonymously (or not) and to give the recipients a lovely surprise in the mail -something totally different from the usual bills that usually come in the mail, and I was happy to open my mail last week and find these gifts. So to my lovely Rak'r I'd like to say thanks for my gift, I will use the yarn to make a shawl/stole and every time I wear it will think of the wonderful person whose heart is so generous that she is able to share such lovely yarn with me.

In other news, hubcap has finally decided to sell his car, although this car is old, it has duel fuel and its quite obvious from the amount of enquires about it that this is one of its main selling points with the price of gas nowdays people are looking for an alternative way of cutting fuel costs. Hubcap is sad to see the girl go (I for one am not, for the last 6 months this car has quite a bit of money for parts and such forth) and I am looking forward to my own car getting back on the road - after almost a year being housebound it will be lovely to be able to get out and about and not rely on hubcap to do jobs that I normally do. I do understand what hubs is going through the car has been very reliable over the years but the time has come, and it will nice to finally have a car on the road that we can both use.

Dial-up is a PITA

I have been ignoring my blog, not because I haven't had anything to write but because I am on dial-up and dial up is an extreme PITA. I can be online and suddenly dial up will cut out, as a result my phone bill has been rocketing up in charges, which delays my return to ADSL grrr.

Still I have managed to keep busy, my father who lives in an area where sheep farming is prominent, managed to get hold of some yummy 22 micron fleece for me and it sits in my laundry awaiting a time when I can clean it and prepare it for spinning. This fleece unlike the fleece I received several weeks ago, is fairly clean, with no sheep dags attached and Im looking forward to spinning it, I have made a rule to myself to not touch this fleece though until I have finished processing Cyril (sheeps name) Cyril obviously enjoyed rolling in his own poo going by the condition of his fleece and some of it has rather licorice looking bits attached and is NOT enjoyable at all to clean. Cyril though is giving me the opportunity of practising my spinning without the fear of totally stuffing it up and I hope by the time I have finished spinning the fibre I will be able to spin laceweight then I will be able to spin some of the fibre I have also got from EGMTK (photo above) I really like the way that EGMTK is so easy to spin, unlike my efforts at carding, where I tend to end up with lumps in my spun up fibre. I suppose my carding equipment leaves much to be desired, I have something similar to a carding brush but its a singular item and using that in conjunction with a very old and tattered dog brush is not doing much for the fibre. On the knitting front I have begun another circular shawl this time in a cream 4ply and am about half-way through, hopefully if I can stay away from ravelry and the OTF chat room I may finish it this month. I have also borrowed Victoria Lace Today from the library and am keen to try some of the beautiful stoles and wraps that are in the book - good reason to finish my shawl FAST- hehe

My first Circular Shawl

Its been a few days since I last blogged, the reason being the shawl that you see in the pic. I cast on for this on Feb 1 and it has taken me two weeks to finish this project. Its the first circular shawl I have ever done, what has put me off doing circular shawls is the number of stitches you use to cast on - six little stitches joined in a circle -impossible for my fingers but a wise freind Zephyrama gave me an alternative cast on using crochet which worked a treat after that it was plain sailing. The longest part of the shawl was working the border that took me a couple of days to do but it was worth the effort. I am happy with the way it turned out.