odds and sods...

Last Thursday my friends David and Majella came over for breakfast. They brought me some roses from their garden. David is very proud of his roses and with good reason. His daughter clones roses from old varieties and as a result David's roses all have the most glorious fragrance unlike the more modern varieties of roses. My dining room has been filled with the lovely scent of roses since Thursday and even though the blossoms have opened right out, the petals haven't fallen yet...too beautiful.

On Saturday night DH and I joined other family members and family friends at a dinner to celebrate my nephew Ion's 18th birthday. As I've  written previously, I was reunited with my long lost brother in 1999. I met my 2 younger nephews a few days later; Rowan who was 18months old and Ion who was 6. I pretty much fell in love with them straight away and I'm so proud of them. Ion is now an adult, quite a bit taller than me...and has stubble lol. He started university this year but deferred after one semester. He's working while he works out exactly what he wants to do.

Today DH's DD1 came over for a while and then suggested we all go to the movies; which we did. We saw George Clooney's 'Ides of March'; a very apt name if you remember Julius Caesar, except these were metaphorical knives not real ones. For the life of me, try as I might, even after reading for information etc...I still can't understand the US electoral system...these 'primary whatsits' etc.  Being involved in running federal elections for over 25 years DH adored the movie...I just ogled George  Clooney even if his character was a bit flawed. :-)



They say you learn something new every day...

Yesterday I was chatting electronically with my niece. I asked her if I could give her an IOU for her birthday which would entitle her to a hand knitted throw in a design she had admired. She very politely declined the offer as she pointed out that her house was full of throws which she has been mainly acquiring from 'op shops'. She said if I really wanted to make something for her, could I make her a tutu apron? Now I'd never even heard of such an item...I know what a tutu is and what an apron is...but a juxtaposition of both? not a clue! lol
So I did what we all do these days, I googled it. These are some of the examples I found. And they are varied... these were all examples of 'tutu aprons'.

Even a Christmas one with a layer of tulle underneath

I also found another one for sale with masses of tulle and bows which had the following warning. 'For baking only. Do not wear when using hotplates'. But I think I've got an idea of what my niece would like.

Don't go near the hotplates while wearing this one

 I saw my niece at a family dinner tonight ( my nephew's 18th at an Italian restaurant) and gave her and her husband a bag of gifts for Christmas and one for her birthday. I knitted a scarf for her today as a little 'extra' and popped that in with her other gift. So we've left them that bag of gifts to take home tomorrow.

I didn't put an IOU in the birthday card but I found a pattern that I bought a while ago on Ebay that might just do... Next step is to look through my considerable fabric stash.

I knew it would come in handy one day!

On my mind...some vintage eighties 'stuff'...

It's Friday! So, as usual I'm joining in the feature on Rhonda-Jean's blog, 'On my mind'. yesterday DH and I had some friends, a neighbour and 1 DD join us for a breakfast. It's lovely having the new veranda area as the rain didn't force us inside into the cramped dining area. But as the morning wore on, the bleak, wet weather did make some of our guests feel a bit cold. DH brought out 'his blankie' (which I knitted for him in 2002) for one of our friends to wrap herself in. But then another friend also requested something to keep the cold out.

'Leave it with me,' I said cheerfully going back into the house, but inwardly panicking because I give all those knitted throws away.... Then I remembered a vacuum storage pack which I had filled with items that we didn't use very often...and which I then promptly forgot about and hadn't opened for years. I pulled out 3 rugs and took them back to our guests. I decided to take a photo of these vintage knits...they date back to the 1980s! Winter is a while away for us now, but I'll put these rugs out over the chairs etc next winter so that people can wrap up in them if they need some warmth.

Shadow box design; useful for using up oddments of yarn

Lost and found (see below); another design using oddments of yarn

I haven't done these designs/patterns for years but it might be time to reprise them I think. The striped design was in a book (it was for a child's vest but I just took the knitting design and used it for a rug) that I threw away when I moved houses. I regretted that decision but found the same book in a garage sale at our church just on 2 years ago :-), which I thought was extremely fortuitous. A little bit of trivia here, these rugs were knitted on long length old No 7 needles; I hadn't realised how good circular needles were for straight knitting back then!

A lovely gift...

Today was the Christmas party and get together for the Sisters of Stitch. One of my friends there gave me a lovely surprise gift...a Sand art brownie jar. All the dry ingredients have been layered in a large jar (like the old sand art) and then a pretty fabric circle was placed over the lid. All I have to do is add 3 eggs, some vegetable oil and some vanilla; stir together, turn into a tin and cook for a batch of 16 brownies. How good is that!!!

I knew I'd seen something similar in my blog reading in the last week or so. Sure enough, a quick check revealed that Linni at Home had helped her daughter make up a sand art jar of 'Cowgirl Cookies' for a gift.
I LOVE this idea; it encompasses all my ideas of the Christmas season.

Dec 6: When Harry met Maria...

Last Wednesday my brother and his partner came over to our place for a Celebratory dinner. This is the 12^th year that we have met up on December 6. It all started in 1999...

‘It was just after 7pm when the phone rang and DD2 answered it. The call was for me and there was a quietly spoken male voice at the end of the phone.  He said his name and that he was doing some family research. I resisted the temptation to make some glib comment that I didn’t know much about my family as my parents had seemed to isolate themselves from family, especially my mother.

He went on to mention some familiar names on my mother’s side of the family. He stated that he had been in contact with a Liz R, whom he described as my aunt. I corrected him, saying that she was my cousin. He then went on to drop the biggest bombshell...’I am your brother’! Talk about surprise...the baby my mother had said was stillborn was actually alive! He went on to say that he was adopted by a family when he was 10 days old and had had a good life.

He had started looking for his birth mother when law changes here in Queensland meant that he could access his original birth certificate. It showed no father but gave an address as well as our mother’s maiden name and birth place. The address was no good as my mother had moved from the old family home in with me in 1979. I guess he didn’t think to knock on a few other doors in the street because there were people who knew where my mother was. Eventually he had embarked on a trip to the state of Victoria to my mother’s birth place; a small town near Warnambool.  Apparently he found lots of relatives still living in those areas and eventually was given a lead that the family moved to Corowa in NSW when my mum was 12 or 13. In Corowa he went to the historical society where he saw a copy of my maternal grandpa’s death certificate. A signature on this was my Aunt’s late husband. The woman at the museum was able to give my aunt’s contact details to my long-lost brother but he was unable to see her as he had to head home...so he wrote a letter. By this time it was October 1999. Then on Monday, Dec 6, my cousin Liz rang his number and gave him the final piece of the puzzle...my address. Apparently my aunt was a bit suspicious and wouldn’t give out the information. My cousin had convinced her mother to give him a chance to be reconciled with his mother. Interestingly my aunt didn’t contact my mum about all this either, even though she knew the address of the nursing home where mum now lived...maybe she didn’t want to upset her.

When my mum finally met her son on Dec 7, she was in seventh heaven! They were able to spend a lot of time together in the next 18 months, but the next 6months after that weren’t so good with her failing health. It was as though, all the ‘ends were tied off’, she’d found her son, he didn’t resent her for adopting him out and she’d found that he considered he’d had a good life, so she could go to meet her maker. She was tired, she was ready to go to a better place. In 2001, on a Friday in May, she slipped into unconsciousness and died peacefully the next morning. I never really knew my mother and the secret she kept to herself all those years and the emotional pain she must have endured.’

Not Dec 6, but Christmas Eve 2009...my second husband is great mates with my brother unlike #1

Harry and his partner of the last 3 years.

But it wasn’t only me whose life started to change on Dec 6, 1999, (my husband’s behaviour became so erratic and violent when my brother found me and I left the family home 10 months later) in an amazing co-incidence DH’s life also underwent a big change on that date... a sad and shockingly distressing time for him...it was the date that his wife left, taking the children. DH and I may have gone through the disruption and distress of family breakdown but we got through it and came out the other side, to find each other!

The twelve days of christmas...

I received an email yesterday with some interesting facts about the popular Christmas song, 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'.

Sorry about how dark this is..St James our family parish church

"From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

-The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

-Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.

-Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.-

-The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.

-The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

-The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

-Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit--Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.

-The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

-Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit--Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

-The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.

-The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

-The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed."

St John's another one of the churches in our parish; decorated for Advent

Father Jack checking the microphone before the service

 When I read that first bit about Catholics in Britain not being able to openly practise their religion right up to 1829, I thought 'what rubbish!' But it's true! I looked it up and Catholics couldn't vote, enter certain professions or sit in parliament until the laws were changed in 1829. So there you have it...a bit of trivia about an old song.

Another lovely Saturday...

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Secret Santa Sew in at a local patchwork shop called 'The Patchwork Tree'. Regular readers may remember that was where I went to a  'Christmas in July' afternoon. Even though I thought I was reasonably early yesterday, the shop was overflowing with ladies when I got there. But Alison (the owner) and her helpers had set up chairs in every nook and cranny so I easily found a seat but not at the big work table. That just meant that my stitching items and my cuppa and plate of goodies had to sit on the floor.

I met a whole lot of different ladies this time and one of these ladies was related to the wife of a prac teacher I had in 1969 at Mitchelton SS!!! Leon (Taefe) was studying law part time in those days and eventually became a barrister and well and truly left teaching behind! Sadly he has since passed away but as I told Mrs Taefe's cousin yesterday, I credit Leon with inspiring me to continue with my final year at college, as nothing else that year inspired me :-(. She's going to tell his widow I said that. So small world and all that...

Some of the ladies indulging in some retail therapy. Alison, the owner' is wearing the antlers

We also have Secret Santa at the sew in and I took along a jar of lovely homemade strawberry jam from the craft markets, wrapped up in 3 fat quarters of Christmas fabrics, with a decoration pinned to the fabric. All gifts are placed in some big baskets and then the helpers walk around distributing the gifts...I was handed my own gift but using sign language I indicated it was mine so I was able to get another gift. And this is what I got...lovely Christmas dish and pretty nice looking chocolates too!

This was the secret santa gift that I took along

This is the secret santa gift I received!

As we arrived and paid for the afternoon, we could choose a little stitchery kit...there was one with a scene with a cute house but I don't like doing backstitch that much (well I reckon my backstitch looks awfully uneven) so I chose another one which ended up being the same one I did at Christmas in July!

Also when we arrived we each got a raffle ticket for the lucky draws during the afternoon. On the 3rd draw the number 95 was drawn out...that was mine!! My prize was a beautiful Christmas panel...so that was an extra bonus after a lovely afternoon meeting lots of people, chatting, eating and sewing...what could be better!!! lol