We Love Zoos!

We really do! I think our FOTZ membership has been the best idea we had in a long time. Last weekend we packed a picnic lunch and some snacks and headed over to Weribee Open Range Zoo. The weather was gorgeous, the animals were wonderful and we had a fantastic day!

Hippos! Cute and deadly!

Well these ones were just cute.

I find giraffes quite facinating. They are so delightfully odd looking. Can we really be sure they're from this planet??

We saw meerkats,

and big cats,

and chickens.

Yup, chickens.

Jen

Our Trip To The Museum (Warning - Contains Snakes)

We had been looking forward to today's trip to the Melbourne Museum all week. We got ourselves ready reasonable early, for a Sunday, and set off. As we drove towards the city the sun was shining, it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. Then as we drove through the park we spotted the sign for the Melbourne Zoo. We joked a little about it being a beautiful day and how we could go to the zoo instead of the museum, and before we knew it we were through the gates, proud owners of a Friends of the Zoo membership!

We wandered straight into the the Reptile House.


Warning! ~ Next photo is a snake...



That's the only snake, I promise.

This guy is the king of the castle.

So our trip to the museum ended up being a trip to the zoo! And a wonderful trip to the zoo it was! We might get to the museum in a couple of weeks.

Jen

I'm Pretty Sure He's the Most Beautiful Boy in The World...

And as his mother I am totally unbiased in this opinion!

Jen

A Bit of a Re-Shuffle

For a while I have been toying with the idea of setting up a separate blog for myself, for all my stuff. The stuff I make, the stuff I want to make and the stuff I say I'll make and never get around to actually making! In September I plan on taking part in Self Stitched September and rather than having to rummage through all the sewing stuff to get to the family bits I've moved my online studio. So if you'd like know what I'm doing in my real studio come on over to Huff Makes Stuff!

Jen

Success and Failure

The Plan goes well. To recap, at the start of the year I planned not to buy any new clothes, anything that entered my wardrobe must be made by my own two hands or purchased second hand from a charitable op shop. With the first six months just about complete I have been reflecting on my successes and my coughfailurecough.

Lets start with that failure, which is really just a lapse and a life saver at that! In May my baby brother Tim tied the knot with his wonderful Beck. I had grand plans of making a dress from two separate patterns to go with a purple satin coat I bought for the occasion last year. As the time grew closer, I wasn't happy with my muslin, it was starting to stress me out and, most importantly, I wasn't enjoying the process. In this state of despair, I happened upon a wonderful, simple dress that fitted and felt great, and I fell in love with it. So I bought it. And let me tell you it was lucky I did! The couple of weeks leading up to the wedding (when I would have been making the dress) Coen was very ill with a high fever of unknown viral origin that knocked him about for a whole week and then turned into a nasty case of tonsillitis. The time that I would have been sewing my butt off was spent making daily trips to the doctor, midnight runs to the hospital and spending sleepless nights worrying about our boy. There is no way any dress could have been made in that time, and it was a big relief not to have to think about it!

On the other hand I am quite proud of my success in this little venture. I have had the thrift shopping gods smile upon me on many occasions! I have scored a pair of great jeans, a couple of comfy skirts and some tops that got a lot of wear in summer. A really cute jacket with a pixie hood, coloured tights still in their packs and my black waist coat. That waist coat has become a staple of my wardrobe, if you've seen me more than once in the last six months, chances are you've seen the waist coat! The best thing is that none of these items cost more than $7, and every purchase was a charitable contribution.

I have had some fun adventures sewing my own clothes too. Like the time I found a huge pile of underwear elastic in loads of colours at one of the local op shops and thought I'd have a go at making my own undies. I cut up one of Darron's work issue undershirts (that he never wears) and using a Knitwit type pattern from the 70's whipped up a couple of pairs of undies. It was intended as a bit of a laugh, so I could say 'Yup, I've even made my own undies.' As it turns out, they are the most comfortable undies in the whole world, and I have since made made several pairs from t shirts and other fabric from the stash! Here's the pair that started it all off:

Then there was the time I decided on a Thursday afternoon that I would really love a new dress to wear to Beck's hen's party that Saturday night. I already had the fabric and the pattern (Burda Mag 1/2010, 109 for those playing at home) so I spent 2 afternoons frantically sewing (in between the laser skirmish and go karting) and sewed the buttons on as the rest of the girls were doing their hair, and went out for dinner and salsa dancing in a brand new frock!


And the time I was procrastinating in a big way, repair basket overflowing, several items needing to be made by deadlines. Perfect time to make yourself a couple of pairs of bloomers to wear under skirts in summer. Yes, it is the middle of winter, my style of procrastination involves forward planning!

Speaking of skirts, this one is from a 1960s pattern, Vogue 7450, lots of fun. The fabric is from my stash, I bought the bolt, it was a bargain, now I have a skirt that matches my shopping bags... and the cushions on my couch. That's the waist coat I mentioned earlier, goes with everything, I love it!

There have been some hand knits in the mix as well. I've made a couple of cardigans, the green tweed yarn cam from the op shop, $5 for the lot!



A headband in my own handspun, in a lovely iPhone shot from when we had no proper internets.

A triangle shawl in hand dyed sock yarn from Mayhem & Chaos. The colour is Little Green Bag, the pattern is called Onerva, and together they make me very happy!

I also knitted some hotpants. But that's a whole other story...

Jen

Proper Internets!

After a failed attempt using mobile broadband for the home computer and a little while without any internet except what we could view on our tiny phone screens, we have full, proper home internet back on! That means I can get back to this here blog! See, I wasn't just being slack, I had a perfectly reasonable excuse for this neglect.

Insubordiknit Art Yarn Workshop

Also known as the most fun I've had learning in a really long time! See... this is me... having fun!


As a fairly new spinner I love to watch how other people spin, and a couple of weeks ago I got the chance to watch a whole lot of people spin at the Melbourne Insubordiknit Workshop! The workshop weekend was organised by the wonderful Mandie from Ewe Give Me The Knits and her lovely friend Janet. The teacher travelled all the way from the US to share her spinning skills with us! Jacey (Insubordiknit) is a wonderful teacher, a fantastic story teller and a joy to be near!

The range of people at the worskshop was amazing, people from the other side of the country, people of all ages! This is Jacey with the youngest and oldest workshoppers, George and Frances!

I really enjoyed spending time with everyone at the workshop, there were people I already knew, like the lovely NEVYL girls; people who supply my latest addiction (beautiful fibre!), Mandy and Charly (Ixchel); as well as a whole swag of people I'm acquainted with online but had never met in person before this weekend. It was amazing to share the experience with so many people who love the same stuff I do!

And the end of the weekend, I had a handful of funky, slightly wonky and somewhat overspun yarns, as well as a whole swag of new skills to practice
!

His Own Sense of Style

It's not the greatest quality photo (taken with the web cam) but it's clear enough to see the sort of outfit this boy can put together! I like his style!

I'm a Ravthlete!

Let's face it, it's the only kind of athlete I'll ever be...

In August 2008 I was fairly new to the world of Ravelry and all it contained and in an effort to immerse myself I joined in the Ravelympics. A clever concept that involved knitting events during the duration of the Beijing Olympic Games. A great way to challenge yourself to knit more/faster/harder!

This year as the Winter Olympics rolled around I found myself co-captaining a contingent of brave souls preparing to knit ourselves stupid in the Winter Ravelympics! We called ourselves Team Doing A Bradbury in honour of Australia's first Winter Gold Medallist and even had some encouragement from the man himself! I set out with grand plans at the opening ceremony and ended the closing ceremony with a touch of RSI.

I competed in the Aerial Unwind (another great thing about the Ravelympics: to medal, all you have to do is finish!) which involved frogging a top I made for last winter and then proceded not to wear all winter so it was really just an interesting way to store my yarn. So this:


Became this:

My next event was the Sweaterboard Cross, in which I received a medal for my waistcoat, which I modified from a 1970s pattern. It also got me a medal for the Lace Luge.


Then the time came to tackle my WIPs in the WIP Dancing.

I finished off a shrug that had been languishing in the basket since our holiday to Tasmania in October.


A scarf that I started at the same time as the shrug,


And I finally finished knitting my tree. To be more precise I finished knitting the roots of my tree and sewing in a gazillion ends.


Check out my medal haul!
At the end of it all my co-captains Ali and Jane and I got to do a random draw for a whole swag of prizes donated by our super team mates! It was really interesting to see what people can do in a limited amount of time with an imaginary deadline looming over their heads, the Bradburies produced some magnificent efforts!

Coen's first Fishing Trip

While on our Gippsland holiday Coen and I went on a fishing trip with Granddad and Uncle Tim to Port Welshpool.

Here's Coen all set for his big day out in the boat.

His first fish was a nice 30+cm long flatty. Closely followed by.........

A Shark!

A nice little Gummy. (We wont mention that it took him 30 years less than his dad to catch a shark.) A little undersize so back in he went.

On the way back in we saw this little "Tugboat" coming into Port carrying sheep from somewhere down Tassy way over here to the mainland to be loaded onto a Cattle truck. Delicious, delicious sheep.

Was a great day fishing in pretty good conditions. Fairly calm water with an overcast sky and temperature in mid to high 20's. A good haul of fish of about 3.5kg of flatty fillets.

Coen got to watch Granddad and Tim filliting the fish on the jetty and was fascinated by the MASSIVE Ray swimming directly below us.