I am replete. Had a belated Christmas Lunch with Barbara and her newly minted Lutheran Minister son + wife and sister. Excellent food as usual and a discovery that the wife has just inherited a Cecil Eyre wheel so I am deeply jealous. I got mine out of the ute and gave her a bit of a run down on adjusting tension, and showed her various fibres she might like to try once she gets going, and discussed knitting also. I am becoming tedious.

It was just the right temperature and the latest rental property is nice if compact. We discussed house-buying options and where to live in the future (Barb is 2 years off retirement but may go sooner), and I have planted a new idea as to destinations which move her closer to, but not too close to the son. It may also prompt the daughter to finally think of moving out, something she has been delaying all too long.

Came home with a bag full of goodies for the animals, walked the dog and am now relaxing in various loose-fitting clothes.

Today has been a case of wake up, eat food, have a nap, repeat. Hope you also have had a great and relaxing day. Best wishes to you all.

The drive to Swansea was uneventful and very enjoyable. The person I was transporting has been a long-time member of the conservation movement and has also lived in Darwin so we discovered we have many mutual friends, some of very long standing. He's an interesting chap, and his life in the Territory means  he also knew some of my friends up there - quelle surprise! So we talked non-stop all the way about a range of topics and people and our lives over the years. He was quite cheerful about his fate, and one of his children will be taking him to lunch on Boxing Day. The other seven will presumably give him a phone call Grrr.

On the way home I called into Campbell Town for something to eat and picked up an apricot danish to top off tomorrow's lunch, as well as some pate, chocolates and crackers. Then on  to Oatlands to brave the Roxy to collect my chicken, the bottle shop to get some beer and the newsagents to pick up my salad (odd I realise, but they are also a cafe as of recent times and do an excellent salad).

Then home to discover that my man had failed to arrive to sort out the grass, so I put the mower, the snipper, cord, pliers, fuel etc back in the shed. I has been quite blustery today so I expect he felt it was too hard.

So I am now in Christmas lockdown - I was going to clean the bank but decided it can wait till Boxing Day. So shoes off, a bit of cold chicken for dinner and a night of Christmas Special repeats.

It seems doomed to be  a less than merry Christmas for me. The neighbour is on the rampage. For the last month or so she has been making snarky remarks about the need to get my grass down. A situation of which I am well aware and have been working on for some time. Unfortunately the recent rain has caused that area which has been slashed to spurt back into growth and the whipper snipper has been less that helpful - taking up to ten minutes to build up speed and then losing torque when faced with the growth.

This morning I got stuck in at 8 which apparently caused offence, so as I worked my way down the side of the house I found a note carefully placed in a position that could not possibly have been achieved without entering the property and positioning it (ie, could you drop two sheets of a4 over a six foot fence on a breezy day and have them arrive with the blank sheet underneath and the wording on the top sheet clearly visible?). It drew my attention to the 'fact' that on Sundays it is illegal to start work before ten. So I stopped. I made the note into a paper plane and returned it pointing out that it was not illegal, albeit a breach of the nuisance regulations, but that entering my property without my permission is indeed illegal.

All good.

Then I went into town to clean the bank, visit a friend and call into the Supermarket. Where Psycho neighbour was queuing at the check out. And launched into me at full voice saying that in fact it was me who was entering her property and leaving cigarette butts lying around. Now in the unlikely event I was trespassing I think we can agree I would not be stupid enough to leave evidence lying around, and there is the small matter that I stopped smoking over  a year ago. A fact I drew to her attention, so still at full voice she said that it was 12 months ago that she found the cigarette butts. Naturally the entire community was there to witness it and to stare and gossip.

I feel ill.

Shortly after I returned home, someone I had bumped into in Oatlands the day before called in to have a look at the house over the road in case she wanted to buy it. Fortunately she isn't going to do that, but we did have a good long talk (OK I dumped on her) and by the time she left I was feeling better. Then them over the road called me over to tell me she had given them an earful too and to warn me she was on the rampage.

So I called the captain of the brigade and pointed out that he would be receiving a call from her soon (complaints to Council now cost $60.00) and talked the problem over with him. We reached an agreement that actually he wasn't all that concerned about my place due to the fact I was clearly making a strong effort, so hopefully I won't receive an Abatement Notice any time soon. And spent the rest of the afternoon chasing blokes to get someone in to solve the problem. I have till the end of the first week of January to sort it out. I will take the whipper snipper with me to Christmas lunch and hope the estranged husband (who is a small engine mechanic) is there. I am pretty sure it is a fuel line problem, so he should be able to sort it out without much fuss.

Tomorrow I am off to Swansea to deliver an elderly chap to the Nursing Home there for respite care which is apparently what families do to their elders in this neck of the woods.

Finally - after tracking down an old cable I have managed to download the images I needed. So here's a bit more to look at:

 This is the vest I did for a commissioned work.

 This is version one of the hat I designed - I dyed some extra yarn to match the colours in the main yarn, and used it to create the stripes on the crown.

 This is one of the earlier versions - the bobble instructions failed to produce the desired bobbles, so it was a start, but no cigar.

 This is the final crown design - I liked the finish better with this one, but had by then run out of the dyed yarns, so skipped the stripes.

 And as you  can see, the bobbles worked better .

 Using a firmer yarn, the stitch definition is much better - this if the final design.

 The swans by the lake have been hatching out babies - mumma and papa brought them up to the toilet block to show them off, but papa swan was very firm about how close you were allowed to get.

 Oh! More beanies - another yarn which does not give such firm stitch definition - lesson learned.

 This was my first attempt at a kep - I got carried away and designed a four-seasons pattern, with the result it is a little long haha.

 A close up of the lower portion of the kep.

 I have participated in an art installation - the images are on tin-type which is the earliest form of photography. Basically the image is trapped in silver on a colloidal base poured onto a metal 'plate'. so you only get one image. It is not a particularly flattering form of photography, so if you are looking at photos of ancestors, they are probably not as old as the image suggests, haha. The exhibition is about those who have looked upon Lake Pedder - the idea being that the light of the image of Pedder is captured by ones eyes, and the light of the photograph captures that light. It will be happening in May or a bit later, so I might invest in a catalogue.

 This is the hideous pug hat - I tweaked the weirder looking stitches before I gave it to her, and it does have a bit more definition than is suggested here.

And this is my latest kep. I got a bit fancy with the crown.

Happy Solstice and merry Christmas in the not too distant future. But I thought I would get it in now since I seem to be having a few technical difficulties.

It's been a busy few months when all is said and done, but unfortunately most of the photos of activities and achievements are trapped on my phone and inaccessible as the laptop has decided not to recognise the USB device. I will try.

Mainly I have been knitting. I designed a hat and knitted it five times before I got it right, then I had to write out the pattern and then knit it from the pattern (a necessary step as I discovered all manner of problems with the way I had expressed myself). I then discovered that I have to work out how many metres of yarn went into the damn thing which means a lot of complicated mathematics that I have yet to gird up my loins to address. Once that is done I will be printing it on pretty paper and selling it via local shop which will also be dyeing yarn suitable for knitting it, and selling it as a kit. The sample hats are currently for sale in another local shop (I know! They are popping up everywhere here).

As well as that hat, I have also been knitting keps (well, two keps - they are a fill-in occupation), and a vest which I sold to a local lad who had commissioned it, and another hat which was (in my opinion) hideous, but the recipient liked it. It had a Pug dog on it. The pattern was hopeless, and the recommended needle sizes too big (the first version rested on my nose) but it was eventually done and she was so pleased she paid me vast sums of money for the work!

I have sent all the photos off the phone to Facebook, so I will see if I can upload them from there ...

 Well, no that didn't work - these are from the other phone, but a good start. This is the vest I knitted - as a work in progress in this shot.

 This is another hat I had forgotten about - I knitted it as a prize for the Parattah Jubilee Hall raffle

 This is the first - failed - pug hat. The dog is done as Intarsia which is not as simple as you expect it to be when you are knitting in the round so I gave up on the head and tail, thinking I would duplicate-stitch them on, but the duplicate stitch on the legs was so ugly I just stopped and put it aside.

This is a little bit of nonsense I am messing around with at present - it was some 5 ply yarn I dyed some time ago but decided not to use for the intended purpose. I am adding beads as I go so it will be quite pretty and utterly useless.

I think I will see if I can get into the blog via the phone and then perhaps I can upload the images from there. Bear with me.

I started the day badly with a 6am conversation on Facebook. I made the following remark in relation to a very pleasing announcement that an all weather bus service to the top of Mt Wellington/kunanyi. My comment was as follows:

'Excellent - all-weather, commercially operated and versatile. Probably a lot more affordable too. Cable car rendered redundant in one fell swoop"

So at six in the morning, on a week day when I had to be out the door in fairly short order to do patient transports, I was attacked by some bloke who attempted to suggest that I had made a completely different statement (to the effect it would improve accessibility and render the entire Cable Car Project redundant and who persisted with his argument despite several attempts on my part to cut it short. So I blocked him till I could find the time to attend to his argument.

Off to work  I head and take a particularly unpleasant individual for his two appointments and had to endure politely his reactionary views. Though when we got onto Sikh taxi drivers I felt constrained to politely deflect him 'why, he looks clean and neatly presented' says me.

Back to the office and had to endure a lecture from the boss who takes his responsibilities very seriously, to the point I asked if he had received any complaints about me. He admitted he had and told me a passenger had reported that i had demanded he sit in the back seat as I had my knitting on the front seat! So I pointed out that I had simply suggested that since he was travelling with his wife I had said this to him. What actually happened was that I had arrived, having put my stuff in the back expecting only one passenger, and when he announced his wife was coming too (not actually all that acceptable), I had transferred my stuff to the front to allow them to travel together. When he went to get into the front I had said, Oh, I just moved my stuff to the front so you can travel together and he meekly got in the back. So hardly a refusal, but the boss persisted with telling me how I represent the government when driving etc etc ad nauseum. I am so annoyed, if I could remember his surname I would email my boss to elaborate and suggest in future he simply ask me what happened, but I can't so it will have to wait till the morning when I have another early pickup.

We have three new mainlanders who have moved into the village who have some excellent ideas - one is opening an art gallery, another a shop selling weaving and some of my knitting, and the third also has some interesting plans, so we might even manage to achieve a critical mass to make some progress.

I have also had a chance to meet my preferred candidate for deputy mayor and am very pleased with the meeting - definitely getting my number one vote. My acquaintance who was asked to remove her sign has been stalking me on FB and trying to engage with me - she's a strange girl, and her behaviour is unnerving but I will grin and bear it.

Meanwhile I have a vest to finish, a beanie to knit as a raffle prize for next month and am struggling to get the back yard wrestled into control before the fire season starts (which will be rather early this year). I also have about 20 native tubestock to plant which I can't do till I get some cardboard to suppress the rampant growth in that location. But I expect it will all work out in the long run.