Playing 'Dress-ups'...

I know that some of you have been waiting for 'the photos' from that 60s Night...and the wait is over! 😄

We 'tossed around' lots of ideas beforehand. DH thought he'd dress up as a Beatle or a Beatles's fan. He would need a wig. So off we went to the Reject Shop and selected a wig each. The plan was that I would wear the long wig and DH would wear the short, curly one. But...the short haired wig didn't fit DH...so we swapped. 

I joked that we could go as Sonny and Cher...with me drawing on a moustashe...lol! 

Minds got changed a few times, about what we would wear. During one of our forays into local op shops, I noticed some of those 'beauty cases' from the 1960s. They were so trendy/cool in the mid 60s and I 'lusted after' one. My godmother bought me one...a cream one, and I was in seventh heaven! Mine is long gone but we have the one that used to belong to DH's mother, in a cupboard. My MiL used to keep old family documents in her beauty case and DH became the keeper after she died. 

So we emptied the family documents out of the case and on the Saturday evening, I put my iPad and some old 60s memorabilia in it instead. 

But a wig and a beauty case don't up add to much of a costume do they? 😉 DD1 brought over a few items for me...some sunglasses, a crocheted scarf and a big pink floppy felt hat. Visiting a local op shop looking for something I could wear, I found this...

Looking at old photos of myself from the 1960s, I noticed that I had rather favoured skivvies back then.( close fitting roll collar jersey). In my teens, I had envied friends who had those stretch black pants( I think they were called ski pants) ...my mum wouldn't entertain the thought of buying me a pair. So instead of wearing jeans to the 60s night, I decided to wear some jeggings with a dark skivvy and that sheepskin vest. My earrings are actually from the 1960s. They're so big, I hardly ever wear them...but they were perfect for the night.

And here I am!

( I couldn't fit the big hat on over the wig!) 

And DH?

You probably won't believe this, but a lot of people at this event didn't recognise him...wink wink! Lol. So off we set for a night of fun...

And met some friends as we walked in...

The placemats were very novel!

We all lined up to get our photos taken in the old 'Kombi'...

DH and our friend Dave worked hard on the 3 Sixties Quizzes; one lot of questions were about songs, another set was on TV shows and the third was about 60s events. My goodness we all struggled with those questions! Lol

As I wrote in an earlier post, we may not have done well in the quizzes, but we won the scavenger hunt.

Just for a laugh, also in that beauty case I took along some items that I still have that date back to the 1960s...from my teens specifically. 

My diary from the year I was in Grade 12...

( if you're wondering what I wrote about in that little diary, it was boring. I'm ashamed to say the main topics of discussion were school, boys, sewing, boys, school 😆) 

My Cliff Richard scrapbook...

I started the scrapbook in about Grade 9 and had kept adding to it as I found pictures. I had a little laugh when I saw the last page of the scrapbook...

No there was never a Volume 2! Lol

PS. Some people thought that I had dressed up as Cher, but I had decided that if asked, I would say I was Cleo Laine! Lol

If you can remember...

That quote that has 'floated around' for years, 'If you can remember the sixties, you really weren't there', has always puzzled me. There is conjecture about who actually said it first, let alone what it really means. But it came back to me recently when DH and I were talking to DD1 about what we could wear to the 60s night. Like a lot of younger people, DD1 has strong ideas of what was around in the 60s...but many of her concepts of the era aren't what we remember. And we were definitely there!! 

A decade can be a long time in terms of fashion for example...especially if you start the decade as a child and end the decade at the end of your teens. ( no adulthood at 18 in those days...it was 21!)

Come and travel through my time in the Sixties via some old photos...

Then my early teens...

In Grade 8 at High School, I did Domestic Science but hated sewing...but I had grown up watching my mum sew, so she showed me how to use her machine and at home, right throughout my teens and year beyond, I happily sewed outfits.  ( eventually sewing for my mum as well)

Much to DD1's amazement, I had never been a hippie or 'flower child' in the 60s. 😃

The Sixties...

A few posts ago, I mentioned that DH and I were going to a 60s Themed Fundraiser on August 20. Part of the night was a Scavenger Hunt...we had been given a list of items to find and these had to brought in on the night. 

Gradually I found myself becoming more and more obsessed with finding as many items as we could. I contacted DD1 to see what I could borrow from her ( she loves The Sixties), asked my neighbour who has kept a lot of 'stuff', prowled Op Shops clutching our List, asked Facebook friends...and so it went on! 

It became quite a combined effort....a disco ball from our neighbour, a lava lamp from DD1, Peace Medallion from another neighbour and Ken and Barbie dolls from a workmate of DD1.

Then we had a newspaper cutting from the 1960s. This one was about DH's big brother Keith and his then fiancée buying her wedding shoes. She paid with a champagne bottle full of silver coins...a Danish tradition apparently. ( don't think it would work paying for shoes with 5 cent coins these days! Lol) this article was in an old scrapbook of cuttings that I had made in my teens.

The James Bond book was borrowed from the Library and the Phantom comic was borrowed from my brother. 

On the list were various records and we had them because DH kept a lot of his old vinyls! The cassette tape was accepted by the judge even though I know it was later than the 1960s. 

The squash racquet came from the Asthma Op Shop in Mitchelton, the fabrics from my stash ( not really 1960s so I haven't hoarded them that long!) and the macrame plant hanger came from Bargain City. The tie dyed fabric was a surprise find...on a shelf in a spare bedroom...probably from when I did a Sea themed Unit with my Year 2 class. 

Something we didn't have in the 1960s turned out to be so helpful in finding items...yep, the computer.

We also had to find examples of advertisements of the 1960s... Copper tone was one suggestion on the list and boy there was a lot to choose from! I chose this one with Annette...

But they weren't the only items that the computer and Google helped with. One of the items in the Svavenger Hunt was a model of the USS Enterprise...Star Trek. Well I quickly discovered that those people in my 'circle' we're not Trekkies...no, they were Star Wars aficionados! Not to be beaten as I suspected that having the model could be worth a lot of points....I found a cut out of the Enterprise on the Net.

It looked a bit challenging but my neighbour's lovely grandson, offered to put it all together...and I hadn't even dropped any hints either! 😃

It was a very fiddly operation...

Because I'd just printed on paper, not card, Jay devised some structures to help the model stand up...

Nothing in the checklist said we couldn't have a paper model and, as we had the only Starship Enterprise, we got a heap of bonus points. And we also were the only ones to have a Ken doll, so we did rather well and won the Scavenger Hunt! 

And we gave Jay the prize, so the family can enjoy a chocolate fondue dessert! 

And the bowl that the fondue pot, burner, forks, chocolate buttons and marshmallows are in, was made from an old record. One of the night's organisers made a whole lot of these for serving bowls...

It was a great night...lots and lots of laughs! Don't know if it raised much money for the parish, but it sure raised everyone's spirits. 

You will have to wait for a post about what we wore...it's coming soon!!! 

Wool on Sunday...

I thought I'd write about a particular blanket that I made recently out of donated squares. My part in the story of this knee rug starts quite a few months ago when a friend messaged me from an Op Shop that she was visiting. There was a bag of small crocheted squares for sale and she wondered if they could be useful for K4BN.

The squares were about 5 inches square and were probably 8 ply yarn (wool) crocheted with a 3 or 3.5 hook.

M bought the bag of squares and we organised to meet up; I would give her some brightly coloured bed sheets which had been 'victims' in my latest linen cupboard 'purge' and she would give me the bag of squares. ( M uses the fabric to line children's play capes which she makes for a charity)

Some of the squares had been joined so I decided not to try crocheting around each square to make it bigger. Instead I joined most of them into a 6x6 square. I don't have much in the browns/oranges in my yarn stash but I found enough to sew the rest of the squares up. Then I crocheted around that big square; the first few rounds, getting the tension right, ready for the rest of the rounds. 

The deep cream band is actually a big ball of lemon baby yarn mixed with a few balls of white 3 ply baby yarn. The outer border is a few balls of a fluffy yarn I bought on EBay ages ago. When I first opened that parcel of yarn, the yellow looked different to the EBay photos...to me in 'real life' it looked like what you might see in a baby's nappy! But I tried it out on this knee rug and it actually looked alright! 

And then...while I was recuperating, I found sorting through cupboards and storage boxes rather therapeutic, And the bonus was, finding 'stuff'. One thing I came across was a big ball of orange wool. So....

Another border! And this was the final version that got handed over to K4BN last week. I'm chuffed, because no money was spent...everything came from oddments in the stash. ( and of course the $10 that my friend spent on the squares put money into a local op shop charity)
I'm linking with Janine's Wool on Sunday once again. This week, Janine writes about those 'ends' as she finishes off her beautiful blanket.

Friday Night Sew In...

I've missed a few of these virtual get togethers in recent months, but I was ready for this one!

It's a secret project and one that I have had traced out ready to sew for a good few weeks now, but just hadn't felt like picking up the needle and thread and actually sewing. But there is a deadline looming and we all know how that can get us moving! 😉

A bit of masking there to disguise the project...

But there is no disguising the lovely Cottage Garden threads that I'm using. It's #603 and is Pansy. I haven't used it before, but I love it!!

Thank you to Wendy for organising Friday Night Sew In. There were 26 of us signed up on Wendy's blog...so all that creative 'stuff' going on sounds exciting!

Wool on Sunday...

Following on from last week's Wool on Sunday...

Yes! All those 'ends' have been dealt with, and those blankets are ready to hand over at the next K4BN   Knit and Natter. ( this Wednesday) 

So then it was time for a photo. This time I draped them over the chairs on the veranda...

When I turned away to put the iPad on the table after taking some photos, 'someone' came out to investigate...

Once again very few of the squares were crocheted by me. Many were crocheted by DD1 and lots were made by another member of K4BN. It's great to be able to work together to help others who are less fortunate.
Linking this post with Wool on Sunday over at the Rainbow Hare blog.

An unscheduled rest...

In one of my recent posts, I wrote about our busy July. A number of readers commented that I'd need a rest after all that busyness! And out of the blue 'things' happened right at the end of July, and I did indeed get to rest. 

While showering that morning, I was hit with an incredible pain in my right chest and shoulder. And DH bundled me off to Emergency at a nearby hospital. Heaps of tests showed it wasn't a heart attack. 

But chest X-rays showed I had a spot of pneumonia in my left lung. I was absolutely gobsmacked with that diagnosis as I hadn't even had a cold. I'd been very tired but put it down to being busy. 

Also while in Emergency the doctor ordered a CT scan. This showed that my hiatus hernia repair had come a bit 'undone'! ( grrrr) 

So I started 2 courses of strong antibiotic and was ordered to rest. I didn't feel like doing anything but sleep for the first few days but eventually I was getting back my energy. And now I'm 'top of the world'.  The hernia is being treated with medication for the next 2 months to see how it settles. 

But that wasn't my only visit to that hospital in July...

After 3 really heavy nosebleeds in one week, I decided to seek help. After a rather ouchy cauterisation procedure, all was fixed. 

About the same time as my pneumonia was diagnosed, a friend of mine got test results back showing she not only had pneumonia, but she also had Influenza A. J was hospitalised of course but is back home now. 

Here we all were having lunch way back at the beginning of July...little knowing what was in store for us. 

Wool on Sunday...

It was a while ago now that I joined a number of donated crocheted squares into blankets of varying sizes. I left the neatening of ends and crocheting around the edges to 'another day' and went on to other projects.

A few days ago I decided that the needy will be wanting those blankets, so it was time to get that finishing done. So now the 'pile' of blankets all have some sort of edging.

But neatening of all the ends still awaits me 🙄. But a couple of sessions will see 8 blankets ready to hand over to Knitting for Brisbane's Needy. 

Most of the 8 blankets in the photo were made by joining crocheted squares with black yarn donated by Susan...many thanks Susan! 

But there's a bit of a story about the yarn that I used for the edgings. Three weeks  ago I noticed on EBay a lot of 590 g of black acrylic yarn being auctioned. The starting bid was $3. After a couple of days I decided to put in a bid and then forgot all about it. Then I got an email from EBay saying I'd won...$3. I took the photo after I'd used one of the big 200g balls for the edgings. In a little twist, despite the description of the yarn being acrylic, it was actually wool. 

( I sent the vendor a bit more money via PayPal as the costs involved with selling on EBay would mean she would have made very little) 

My next project for K4BN will be turning 3 bags of knitted squares into blankets.

Linking this post to the Rainbow Hare blog. This week Janine has posted photos of her lacy crocheted squares blanket, all laid out and looking beautiful. 

July...

Today is August 4, so July is well and truly over for another year! The way things worked out, this last July was a busy one for us in terms of celebrations! 

First up was the weekend of my annual high school reunion...our numbers were small this year but what we lacked in numbers, we more than made up for in enthusiasm.  😉

Then 6 of us met on the Sunday for lunch...

The next weekend was the annual Art and Craft Show in our parish...

We didn't buy a painting this year as none took our fancy...so I gave a donation instead to help with the fundraising.

On Bastile Day, I put on my 'Paris' scarf and DH and I lunched at a local cafe called French an Mor...

Next up was my brother's 60th...we had a lovely family gathering at his place...with pizzas from Tomato Brothers. 😉

Later in the month my brother's youngest had his 18th...the family celebration was held at an Italian restaurant...I just had to put a couple of photos of Rowan as a little boy in the collage! 😉

Also in July we welcomed DsD3 home from Canada with some family dinners...one at DsD2's place

And one at our place!

I think that August will be a little less hectic...although DH reminded me just before that we have a '60s night' in a few weeks. What on earth are we going to wear I wonder??? Lol