Just a quick note...

...because I am serious about blogging again and it's been more than a week.
The thing is, I'm currently in Melbourne. We booked on Tuesday and flew down on Wednesday. The main purpose of our visit is that my little sister was in the final of a singer/songwriter contest here on Wednesday night. Graeme came just for 24 hours or so, but Lily and I are here until Sunday.
So, if you're in Melbourne or know it well and have any recommendations for what we must see, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, I'll let you know what we've been up to when we're back in Sydney.

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Six Months have passed...

So much has happened, so much to talk about...

And yet, I don't want to spend so much time dwelling on what's been and trying to catch up that I don't get a chance to do and be in the now. Was that too profound for my first post back? Or too muddle-headed because I am feeling a bit daunted about attempting to launch back into blogging regularly?

Either way, I've been seriously thinking for the last few weeks that I need to get back into this whole blogging thing, both in writing for myself and interacting with other blogs. Then, this morning, I found myself leaving comments on some blogs (also the first time in ages) and felt a little embarrassed putting my website down when it was so outdated, so here I am.

So, what's been happening? I'm going to limit myself to 5 bulletpoints with no more than 2 sentences each...

• We're living with my parents while we build a house in a new suburb in south-west Sydney. Luckily, 3 years in London means we are used to not having enough space for all the things we wish we could do...
• I've recently realised why knitting was such a great hobby in London - it is the one (and possibly only) thing for which the British weather is perfect. Also, the knitting projects you should take on here are very different, especially if you want to get any actual use out of them.
• Lily is great. She's 17 months old now and is able to throw tantrums and make ridiculous demands with the best of them, but 95% of the time she is funny and cute and friendly and helpful and smart and clearly turns me into one of those people who gush about how amazing their kid is.
• My social life already seems to revolve around my kid's activities, which isn't such a terrible thing, except the fact that she was born overseas and therefore, I don't belong to a 'mothers group', since they seem to be formed around a group of newborns and consequently, I'm finding it hard to 'fit in'. It doesn't help that I'm not raising my kid according to mainstream society's 'rules'.
• As if I need more crafty pursuits, I've taken up quilting. Of course, I haven't actually finished one yet, but this one will eventually be Lily's:

If you haven't heard from me again a week from now, feel free to leave a comment and tell me to get my butt in gear.

-Kate

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big sigh

Our house is almost empty.
This morning, two men came and packed most of our belongings into boxes and took them away.
In order for them to be able to do that, we have spent a good part of the last 3 weeks going through all our stuff and deciding whether we wanted to keep it and, if we did, whether we needed to take it with us or could live without it for 3 months.
I am quite happy to say that we took 5 big garbage bags full of clothes and linens to a charity shop and that we have a massive pile of stuff that friends are going to take and use.

I have a bunch of things I want to do before we leave the UK next week, but right now, all I want to do is sit on the couch, listen to some music and knit. And that's just what I'll do.

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Uh, yeah

Sorry about that. I didn't mean to only post once in the whole of April. But, unless this blog is your only point of contact with me, you will know that life is very busy here, what with planning our big move back to Australia and all (so not ready for the movers to turn up in 3 weeks - they'll pack for us, but we have to have the place sorted enough that we can point out what to pack and what to leave). Anyway, because I am supposed to be sorting, packing, getting rid of stuff that's not coming, etc, I have, of course, spent the day doing things like writing blog posts and updating ravelry... oh, and playing with, feeding, changing, encouraging naptime to, a little being that seems to have suddenly turned into a toddler.

OK, more ravelry updating to do and then I should be back to show you some of the stuff I've been working on...

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Sunday Update

Oops, didn't mean to go a full 4 weeks without updating... Although, we haven't actually been at home on a Sunday since I last posted - last week we were in Switzerland, the week before in Belgium and the week before that we spent the whole day with friends who are headed back to the USA very soon.

And, there's plenty going on here, but lots of it I can't/won't write about on a publicly viewable website. In fact, I'm struggling to decide what I should say right now. Probably shouldn't have left this so late in the day to write. Here are some highlights of the last few weeks:

- Lily and I went along to a craft show and helped out on the Learn to Knit stand. OK, I helped teach some people to knit, Lily just acted all cute and drew in the crowd :) It was a great day and definitely something I would volunteer to do again. The rest of the craft show wasn't too exciting, although I did manage to spend a bit of money on some bits and pieces, including 10 skeins of Mirasol Hacho wool that was too big a bargain to pass up, even if it did break my rule of only buying yarn if I know what I am going to knit from it.

- Spring has sprung and we've been spending more time outdoors. Lily loves the swings at the local park. She also chats back at nature when the birds are singing or the wind is blowing. I've taken lots of photos of her surrounded by spring plants, especially daffodils - I love daffodils.

- As I said, we spent literally a full day with friends a few weeks ago. We met up at Church in the morning, grabbed some lunch to go, made our way to Kew Gardens where we picnicked then had a wander around, caught an over-crowded bus (there was rail trackwork, so replacement buses, and traffic jams) to Chiswick and had dinner all together. They go back to the USA soon, victims of this 'credit crunch' thing whose placement in the UK has been deemed too expensive.

- Lily has discovered the wonders of animals. She patted a dog in the park last week and today we took her to Kew where they have a petting farm over the Easter holidays. Photos will (should) be on her website soon.

- There's a massive post over at our website about our trip to Switzerland last weekend. If you really need more to read, go there.

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sunday update

This week was all about the babies. OK, so most every day for me is all about the baby, but we spent a lot of time with other babies (and toddlers) as well.

Tuesday and Thursday both saw us checking out a local playgroup - well, I would call it a playgroup, but here they seem to use that term for what I would call pre-school... Anyway, this place is basically an open-house in a church basement for parents/carers and their under-5s, although there didn't seem to be many kids over 3 - probably because they send them off to school at that age here. They have a cafe, a bunch of play equipment, a separate area for the non-walkers to play in without getting trampled, plus a second-hand shop. Apparently there are also other activities in some of the separated rooms, but I wasn't able to get clear information on them. The best way to sum up my experience of it so far is that it's one of those things that's a really great idea, but doesn't quite live up to potential. But hey, Lily had heaps of fun playing with the other babies and some different toys and I got to chat to some other mums, so it's a perfectly worthwhile way to spend one morning a week (we went twice this week because I was told that there was different stuff on on the different days - either that was misinformation, or [more likely] there just wasn't any indication of what different stuff was happening).

Afterwards on Tuesday, we went to Westfield to have lunch and do some shopping. I don't think I've mentioned how excited I was when Westfield opened. It's not even about the shopping. It's all about the familiarity of not just the Westfield brand, but the big open layout, the decent toilet/babychange facilities, the presence of a food court - it's like the shopping centres I'm used to back home, which is not at all common here. On Tuesday, we probably spent about 3 hours there and all I bought was lunch, though I did make some notes about possible gifts for Lily's first birthday...

On Friday, after our usual library visit and snack with friends, we went to one of the posher local high streets, to seek out something in the art supply shops and also to scour the charity shops - if you're going to look in second-hand shops, I always recommend the most affluent bit of town, because that's where you find the quality stuff, although I didn't get anything this time. We did buy some cheap books from the discount bookstore though and I was thrilled when we got home and Lily just wanted to play with and look at her new books and not eat them.

Yesterday, Lily got her first pair of proper shoes, as in shoes that have soles suitable for walking on (but soft ones, since her little feet are still working out their place in the world). Unsurprisingly, they were fairly huge for her age and we had to go up half a size in length in order to get ones that were wide enough for her giant wide, pudgy feet - as in, the H width still wasn't quite wide enough in size 4, so we went up to a 4.5H. There are no cheap shoes in Lily's foreseeable future, since they just don't make them wide enough. Again, this doesn't really come as a surprise - my feet are still too long and wide to buy many brands of shoes. Or, more accurately, non-brands... it's the brand-name ones that tend to actually come in suitable sizes and therefore cost the money. Oh well, 'quality over quantity' seems to be becoming a stronger mantra for me every day.

Today, we had a small insight into why we are so tired - not only have we all had a cold, which makes breathing and therefore sleeping quite tricky for the smallest member of our family, in turn making sleeping a luxury for us, but we discovered this afternoon that she's broken another tooth.

On the crafty front, I am almost finished a knitted dress for Lily, am about a third of the way through a crocheted pram blanket (for which I bought the yarn before she was even born, but which I kept starting a pattern and then changing my mind) and am completely stalled on my February Lady sweater (a cardigan for me) because I have got to the end of the yoke and am somehow a stitch short and can't decide where or how I want to fix it (especially since I can't work out where or how it happened). The biggest problem is that no matter how many great toys Lily has, as soon as I pull something out to work on, that becomes the most interesting thing in the room (books, computers and tv remotes included) so I am finding it very difficult to accomplish much of anything.

Seems Lily has woken up for a feed and it won't be Sunday much longer... so, how was your week?

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Sunday (came and went) Update

Gee, what did I even do last week???

Actually, not a lot.

Friday we went to the library as usual. Lily was determined to be centre stage and steal everyone's attention by bouncing, chatting and giggling - the fact that she's already adorable anyway and had her hair in pigtails probably explains the number of compliments she got. I had a very strange conversation with a woman who seemed convinced that I would never be able to wean Lily because I didn't stop breastfeeding her as soon as she was 6 months old... politely disagreed with her, but couldn't convince her that it would be ok... had a good laugh about it later, once I got over the initial 'what the?'.
We then went and hung out at one of our friend's houses and ended up staying there all day, joined later by Graeme for dinner. It was a really great day but definitely highlighted for me one of the problems with this whole 'move overseas for a few years' thing - when we left Australia, it was hard to say goodbye to our family and friends, even though we knew we'd be back - how hard then will it be to say goodbye when we leave here, without plans to ever return? I guess I've always had that fear at the back of my mind and it might be why we haven't been as social as we usually are... I don't really know where I'm going with this train of thought, but I'm going to leave it out there.

Saturday we went to Kew and had a picnic lunch. The spring flowers are starting to bloom and it's really nice - we'll definitely be making the most of our membership over the next couple months.



Really, that's about all we got up to. I've actually done more already this week but I'll save that for my next update, since I have other things I need to do right now, in that precious time between Lily's bedtime and my own.

Question (prompted by the weird conversation I mentioned): If you breastfed (especially past 6 months) how did you respond to people who thought you were weird? Is it too rude to tell them I think they're the weird ones?

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Baby Surprise Jacket

This is one of those famous knitting projects that has been made and blogged about thousands of times. It's a little jacket that is knit all in one piece. When you first finish, it looks like this:

Then you fold it once...

...and fold it again...

... sew two seams (and weave in the ends - my least favourite part) and you have an adorable little jacket, which is even more adorable when modelled by Lily.

This was a pretty easy knit once you get into it and I love that the pattern has you knit in some butt ease, so it fits nicely over Lily's cloth nappies.
Ravelry details here

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