real work

of course i dont mean that rounding up sheep is the only real work in the world, and of course im not doing it for a living (although i would drop everything right now to be a proper sheep farmer, drought, flies and all) but it always brings me back to earth to go hang out in a hot and dusty paddock workin' sheep with me dawg :)

here are some pix of the weekend.

day one: possum goes crazy and kylie has to 'get after her':


everyone watches kylie get after her:


thats chance and chloe the dogs, with georgina and will on the ground, john, robert (mr-instructor-australian-champion-we're-not-worthy), nathan and michelle on the fence and pete with matty. i suspect they are very busy dissecting what im doing wrong. thanks guys.

day two: things are a little calmer and possum and kylie discuss tactics for dealing with this mob.




in the background are the other people working with jenny in the ring - possum and i have progressed to the paddock where everything you dont know is amplified six hundred percent.

here is possum contemplating her sheep:


and here is possum going toe to toe.


i wonder if this is the sheep who took off later and bashed into me with his devilish cloven hoof. i have a huge bruise over my ribs. possum also ripped open her shoulder while scrambling out of the water trough which she insists on jumping in for a drink even tho its too deep for her and she just about drowns. so we are the walking wounded, but very pleased. even tho things didnt run as smooth as they did last time at michelago, it was good because i managed to work through her craziness and get her to work real nice and soft for me on sunday. im getting more confident and learning to watch the sheep more, and we're still aiming for a trialling debut in march, so alls good.

had a bbq at jo-the-vets place sat night and watched michelle drink too many jim beams and do some bootscooting and tell us how when she was born she fell head first in the toilet. explains a lot. but we love her really.

great fun. exhausting. i do have some knitting to report on but will save that for tomorrow.

k xx

water falling from the sky

i think they call it rain. this is what it looks like over the backyard:



i also tried to get a slowmo of the icey stuff that fell out of the sky earlier.



suffice it to say its been raining on and off for a few days and its lovely but still nowhere near enough. i love the fact that its november and today its as cold as winter - snow at thredbo and the winds coming straight from there. brrrr. we have turned the gas off so i had to drag the oil heater out of the garage.

meanwhile i am staying warm by ploughing through this pile of articles i have to read and make notes on for some research assistant work im doing:


thankfully its all to do with gramsci (italian communist) who i am using in my thesis so its worthwhile reading. princess possum is keeping warm on the lounge behind me. her inner-devil-dog is revealed!



should a dog who will need to work for me this weekend really be lounging around inside? my instructor would have a cardiac event if he saw this. yes i am off herding again this weekend so no SnB again, and probly not another free weekend the rest of the year. god i cant believe its gone so fast.

speaking of wool, i am still working on finding a lace pattern i like, this is the current attempt "falling leaves" from the debbie bliss book.



i think i need to do it on smaller needles but i want to make a rug and im not doing a rug on 3mm needles. anyone got any suggestions for a lace that will look ok worked bigger?

fingers crossed for more water from the sky.

k.

bloomin' marvellous

firstly apologies for the lengthy silence. had a very busy week last week with a chapter deadline which i technically-speaking met, i just need to tidy up the conclusion today. and then a two day trip to wollongong for a workshop and meetings. i was so absent minded after that that i forgot that i had made arrangements to go to taphs and pick up an old spinning wheel she doesnt want and is giving to me for free. a free wheel and i forget all about it. not a good sign. let alone the rudeness of just not showing up at the agreed time. now that i am closer to 40 than to 35, i can not seem to remember anything if its not written down. my sincerest apologies to taph, grovel grovel grovel.

anyway here are some pix of the amazing rose garden after the little rain shower we had this morning:



and some pretty close ups - firstly the big pink nice smelly one:


and the rare orange one that doesnt flower a lot:


and the prettiest one:


whatever was bothering the roses before when they firt started has mostly passed, perhaps it was too hot, or maybe they just needed a bit of water from the smidge of rain we've had lately.

and here is the wild vegie garden with overgrown rocket and coriander:


the lettuces are doing great, the tomato plants are growing well but the leaves are quite dark and brittle so maybe they are missing some nutrient or too much water?

meanwhile i finished my lace practice square. i like the effect of it, but you cant see it clearly in this pic:

this is the chocolate wool that margie gave me and it is just too coarse to actually wear as a garment. i dont think it holds the lace pattern well either, looks too bulky. i might try a simpler lace and make a big lap rug out of it or something for those cold days at herding.

speaking of which, we are off to sydney to do more of that next weekend, and i just found out that my instructor robert yesterday won the australian yard dog championship down in victoria, so im lucky to be learning from the best!

hope all are well. and that, as they say, is your bloomin' lot.

k :)

i think its called knitting

it was a dark and stormy night when margie (who will be sorely missed)walked into starbucks dragging a large garbage bag. anyone want some yarn she asks innocently, as if she doesnt know whats about to happen. kylie is sitting there minding her own business flicking through taphs collections of b/g knit patterns, thinking about what she might knit for herself one day if the urge ever takes her again. she hasnt even bought the socks-shes-not-working-on, because she has no intention of working on them. she has bought things for the swaps, red loopy for taph, hand dyed angora for spider (kylie liked the idea of the angora which she bought from the nundle wool mill, but when she tries to knit it little wafts of white and pink hair float up her nose and make her sneeze).

she doesnt think she wants any of this yarn that margies giving away but someone says something about 10 balls of chocolate coloured wool, right about at the same time that shes holding a pattern for a lace cardigan, and its free, and then its in her hands, and in her basket, and well what are you supposed to do?

no one knows what sort of wool it is or what ply even so taph, evil woman, says, again innocently, why dont you knit a tension square. kylie never does these, so the thought hadnt occurred to her, and no sooner does she say oh thats a good idea, than taph has handed her back a pair of garish green plastic needles she had donated for swaps and a tension square of something that feels like handspun chocolate coloured wool is being knit.

meanwhile kylie got attacked by a lamb. naughty lulu. lucky possum wasnt around.

today at home there has been a blackout and i (that is, kylie) could do no washing or vacuuming or writing, so was forced to pick up said tension square, unravel it and start trying to work out how to knit lace. i have a debbie bliss book that has lace patterns, found a nice one that is a 6 row repeat and not too hard, so have tried that a couple of times. i foresee the usual problems with this, my inability to read a pattern correctly (hence knitting row 5 instead of row 3) and my inability to keep track of what row im on (hence knitting row 6 twice).

but its been fun, this thing called knitting. (i have no photos of it to prove it because my camera has run out of batteries). next week i promise.

now the power's back on and i must go do housework.

k :)

todays harvest

just thought you might like to see all the roses i picked this morning. sorry pix are a bit blurry:

close up:


they smell noice
k :)

lunch ladies

went to wollongong yesterday and met up with 'the ladies' (you have to pronounce that like 'the ladies' from little britain!) for post-birthday celebratory lunch - it was also karens birthday last friday and rochelles tomorrow so it was a multiple celebration. we went to diggies down at north beach - this was the view from our table:



here are 'the ladies' - me (wearing lovely hand made beads from darwin which were a bday present from deb), deb herself, karen, genevieve, annie, rochelle and erin. claire was there too but she had to leave early so missed the photo op:

this is deborah, karen and genevieve:

this is annie, rochelle and erin:

this is me with lovely little olive maisie rose, genevieve and annie's brand new daughter. awww cute .... apparently she had had only one boob for lunch (im quoting annie there) so she was chewing on my finger and was grumpy till she got the other boob. well you would be wouldnt you?

we had cake made just for us, a chocolate flourless cake. it was awesome and was quickly demolished:



it was lovely to see everyone, to be by the beach, to eat swordfish and chocolate cake for lunch.

now i must finish another chapter.

k :)