Well nothing happened today apart from the apricots moving one day closer to being ripe. Some vague progress on the scarf to match the tam (I am repeatedly unpicking the motif - I think I got it right this time!), and a few walks with the dog. I must have worn myself out with that post!

Well my excuse is I have been busy - what can I say? Sorry.

I promised photos and photos you shall have - at least it will show you how busy I have been!

Here is the very big crane they were using on the railway - and still hard at work (well, not really, they have made a huge mess, wandered off and left us to deal with the large potholes on the crossing. I expect they will finish some time soon).

Consider that this is a large two storey barn, about 100 metres this side of the crossing, the crossing itself is several metres lower than the base of the barn, and I am at the bottom of a slope! It was HUGE!

 This is the rose I have been raiding at Vera's garden - it is a rambler, no idea of the variety, and is now finished for the year as far as I can tell. I am keeping an eye out for some lattice at the tip so I can fasten it back to the wall of the shed.

 I made up various mixtures involving rhubarb leaves, copper and iron mordants, vinegar, ammonia and water and so forth and popped them in jars to sit in the sun. The sun promptly disappeared for several days an I became impatient so they were then subjected to microwaving.

 And this is the range of colours you can derive from one rose colour! Amazing isn't it. The grey is probably more iron than rose, but the rest are quite lovely. And the grey works well as a complementary colour with these tones.

 That being done, I had to knit them up and so created this tam adapting an 8 ply pattern to the 5 ply of the Bluebell and adding the patterns from a completely different book.

This is the underside of the tam.
















I also finished the vest I was knitting which has turned our rather well I think. There is a lot of yarn left over (apart from the main colour of course) so I have just spun up some additional main colour and have started a tam to match the vest. The vest actually fits too - which was a nice surprise!




































Speaking of the things you find at the tip, I picked up this rather nice regency striped fabric in the shape of a discarded curtain. There is a certain subtle pressure once you start spinning, and live in a town prone to the odd heritage festival, to wear period costume. I have stubbornly resisted this as I hate making a spectacle of myself, and also because fabric is so damned expensive. But this was too good to pass up.

Washing it provided a timely reminder that there is a reason they say curtains are dry-clean only, but it was simply a pinkish wash over the cream, so no harm done.














A trip to the Bargain Centre provided this to form the basis of the pattern which, together with the dress making form and swathes of calico allowed me to produce this:

 I was pleased to find that, despite having to match stripes, I was able to obtain all relevant pieces for the gown - including sleeves which are not yet inserted. They will be modified to a more period-appropriate shape. But it's all a bit too immodest at present, so I am making a high-collared (but loosish for comfort) false underblouse .

 As you can see, the collar is in place, the piece of broderie is to be pintucked and adorned with the broderie strip that is loosely laid over it. This has been dyed a pale green and threaded with a deep pink ribbon and will also adorn the false sleeves that will poke out of the gown sleeves.

And there I have ground to a halt because I have nowhere to set up the machine that also gives me access to the form and the iron. I took the pattern and fabric down to the recreation shed to cut it out, but rather draw the line at carting the whole workshop down there!

 So I paused for a bit to admire the garden which is both thriving and providing a fine habitat for the local frog population - amazing what having water on tap can do for your gardening efforts.

The apricot is just ripening now so I expect I will have yet another interruption to jam/bottle/chutney and stew fruit for a while. And the neighbour's flowering gum is looking quite splendid despite their efforts to kill it by plowing too close to the trunk.

But while I was musing on the garden an item popped up on a buy sell FB page which has solved the sewing challenge (albeit with deferred gratification as I have just broken the drive band).



This thing of beauty came complete with even more attachments than my old 1954 Singer had - zigzag, pleating, roll hem, button hole, you name it, and it even has its manual still. The drive band was held together with  a paper glider, and broke the instant I tried pedalling too fast, but there is a local saddler who I am sure can provide a substitute. So I will amuse myself cleaning it and de-greasing/repacking the various moving parts while I wait to sort out a solution.

Hope you all had a good Christmas and Happy New Year - I broke a tooth on the New Year break (another one!!) so am now the proud if poor possessor of Extra's cover as the 'free' dental service requires you to turn up on the offchance they might fit you in. Which since it involves a trip to Hobart to sit and wait did not seem a terribly sound solution. Choosi found me one that waived the waiting period so I will use it to deal with both teeth, and a new pair of glasses and see how I am coping with the payments.

I will give you some photos tomorrow. Meanwhile I have had my stitches out (after waiting over an hour in Clinic I was steered out for nurse to deal with them) and cleaned the bank and had my last trip into Oatlands for the weekend. I gather the work will be continuing through the night, though presumably won't involve the very big crane they are using.

The detour adds 10 minutes to the trip but goes through some lovely country so was worth the inconvenience. It is only one car wide, so I watched out for approaching plumes of dust and parked up off the road to let them by. You can only do this on one side of the road, however as the farmer seems to be gradually encroaching on the road reserve with his fences.

I have been admiring Vera's roses lately - they are blooming as they have never bloomed before. So this morning I wandered up the road with my trug and started dead-heading them, to collect petals for dyeing. Realising my every movement would undoubtedly be reported to Vera, I carefully picked a large bouquet which has subsequently been delivered to her at the nursing home. We had a nice chat and I now have permission to enter at will and pick what I want. So I went back and finished deadheading, with the result I have more petals than I know what to do with. So I am experimenting.

100g has been added to 50g of chopped rhubarb leaves, water added and 100g of yarn added (this is Patons Azalea in a pale cream colour which I have by the hundreds of grams). I will solar dye this lot. I gather rhubarb leaves give a mordant that does not distort the colour. Another 200g of petals is steeping in water for 36 hours following which I will add 100g of yarn and boil it for 40 minutes to see what happens. Then 50g will be added to some yarn soaked in copper mordant and solar dyed, some more will be dried to see if they retain their colour.

I will ferment some more of them in a 1-2 ratio of ammonia and water to see what colour happens.

The petals are being chopped (bruised) with the pizza wheel to release the colour faster.

I will doubtless continue this process tomorrow (winding off 25 gram balls of yarn into skeins is tedious and takes a lot out of your arms).

So after fasting from midnight the night before, I was finally wheeled into Theatre at 4 in the afternoon. All went well, but clearly the surgeon was in a hurry as his approach to dressings would not have won him a badge in Brownies. A great unevenly distributed glob of gauze pasted to the skin using some sort of surgical gladwrap made for an uncomfortable few days, and did untold harm to the skin of my chest. But after a trip to the local doctor for permission to rip it off, it is now replaced with nice flat dressings of the more acceptable variety. Stitches out on Friday. I was supposed to go to Hobart for this five minute procedure, but the local doctor has endorsed my decision to avoid Hobart in the Christmas rush, and get it done locally.

Meanwhile the vege patch is thriving - a regular 15 minute watering as I take Seb for his 'short' walk of the morning is more than sufficient, and so far the neighbour's chooks have remained on their side of the fence.

I have not got much more to report I am afraid, as I have been taking it easy this week, and doing vast quantities of knitting rather than anything more demanding, and Billy the Limpet has been ensuring I remain out of contact with the wider world by glueing himself to me. I have had to lock him in the bathroom to get to the laptop!

Well, another 39 mm to finish off the deluge - the ground is lapping it up, most of the standing water is long gone and Seb can resume extending the holes he has dug in the oval. He was most disconcerted to find water in them the other day.

The Apricot tree suffered a disaster and lost a branch - suspiciously close to the hostile boundary, but it could simply have been a misfortune. Luckily the tear did not extend to the trunk so I have sawn it off and neatened it up back to the 'healing' ring on the trunk. On closer examination it seems most of the branches have a fairly tenuous grip on the main trunk, some showing signs of sap bleeding. No idea what to do about that, so will check at a nursery while I am in town.

The dog knows something is up and is following me around like a shadow, so packing for my two nights away is challenging, and in the mean time Telstra has disconnected my email as I forgot to pay the bill for retaining the address. I will sort that out when they open their billing service.

And I have had to make a list to make sure I do everything I need to do while I am away, or en route, or whatever. So many things to consider!

I haven't been washed away, but it was a near thing. The roof remained waterproof and if it can survive that it will be good for a few more days.

The gauge held 47.5 mm this morning and has well and truly exceeded another inch today. Half an hour after checking the gauge the tanks overflowed - woohoo! and the rain has been soaking in - not much run-off at all so the trees will be good for a while, as will the new vege patch.

We didn't get the snow they had on the highlands, but there was certainly sleet about most of the morning. I have searched the house and found some dry off-cuts which have been added to rather more soggy bits of scrap timber and are feeding the fire to keep things cosy - the firewood situation is non-existent at present and won't be replenished till the woodshed has moved up from the orchard (after Christmas) as there is nowhere to put wood that will not be in the way of a large container-capable forklift.

And the lake is full.

You will be relieved to know i was not eaten by the CAT scan machine, nor did I fail my pre-op medical this week - I am in fact a major disappointment to them all in that I have good blood oxygen, text book blood pressure, a picture-perfect EEG and all the other things they tested me for. They told me this appoint would take up to four hours so I took my knitting with me, but they threw me out in less than an hour for lack of things to examine. Always a good thing.

I will be going under the knife on Wednesday so will be incommunicado for Tuesday and Wednesday as apparently day cases are admitted at 7 in the bloody morning!

The heat has been horrible - 30 degrees yesterday and humid to boot - we have had some spectacular storms too - almost Queensland quality. But tomorrow will be 13 degrees which will make a nice change.

The hot weather, combined with this cool spell (which is accompanied by rain) has inspired me to plant up a garden of veges - ingredients for Gazpacho as well as a few additional herbs and so forth, so not too adventurous. Having a tap handy to the garden bed makes it easy to keep the water up to them - I can turn it on as I head out to walk the dog in the morning, and turn it off on the way home. Fingers crossed I have enough water to do the job. Also the apricot has fruit on it! lots of fruit. So I must slash a path to the tree so I can maintain its water supply as the fruit grows and ripens. Barring major wind events, these puppies might just see harvest! How exciting. It's been a long 8 years waiting for this to happen.

Knitting wise I am working on the new vest - it has different colours this time, much more my colours too. And between my round and flat needles I seem to have managed to achieve the right tension this time. I don't have size 3 circulars and neither does anyone locally, so I reverted to flat needles and am making rapid progress.

A trip into town this morning resulted in an invitation back to get a fleece - spotted that the Suffolk farmer was shearing (I asked for a fleece last time i saw him) and he has become muddled in his thinking. As a result I may not get a suffolk fleece, but may get a coloured one. I will find out this afternoon. Not too sure how well they will be cut as it looks like the shearer is learning on the job (judging by the amount of blood on the sheep in the paddock) so I will accept it graciously and sort it out when I get it home.