ups and downs

shortly after i posted about my reading material etc on thursday, things went a little pear shaped. firstly i decided to make a yarn cake out of my jade sapphire so i could get started on the victorian ruby scarf. only thing is, it was either very bladly skeined or i am a yarn cake making retard (the latter is entirely possible). every few circles of the swift, and the yarn got stuck. i couldnt for the life of me find a way to unstick it, it was as though it was coming from the middle of the skein and needed to be unthreaded. so i took it off the ball winder and did it by hand:

it was frustrating, and i had to leave it half way to go drop a rental car off, grab a taxi across town, and pick up our subaru from the smash repairers, because a couple of weeks ago someone bumped us in the back and the bumper bar needed replacing. not a bad one, but annoying.

so then on friday i get up early and go off to do my grocery shopping, and i had to go to the big mall down at manly that i hate, but its the only medicare office around here and i needed to claim back my therapy (trent thinks its funny that im paying someone $160 an hour to tell me to breath. it is funny. but im very thankful that the govt covers 12 of these trips per calendar year, with a small gap. if you didnt know about that, and need to see someone, get thee to a dr and have a mental health plan done).

anyway, so i spend too long buying food and have fresh fish for dinner in the car and am driving home watching some kid on his mobile phone behind me, when i stop and he doesnt. he hit me very hard in the back, and he had to be towed. luckily i could drive but only just. the whole floor of the boot had been pushed up and into the car, and there is a major kink in the rear door and the frame of the back of the car:

the insurance company were great and got it towed from home, and i was a bit shaky and sore. i am a bit tentative in the car, and now all i see is young men on mobiles driving around, and my message is pretty clearly, dont text or drive or you're going to have some mad woman shouting at you.

that was a down. an up was when i got home there was some mail. in it was a present from caffeine fairie who had missed my bday party because she was too busy swanning around the halls of cambridge and the british musem to bother, but she compensated by bringing something special back for me:

100g of louisa harding silk/wool in the most gorgeous deep reddy pink (fetchings anyone?!) and these gorgeous magnets from the brit:

i love these to bits! it made me feel a lot better on a very bad day.

another up was yesterday getting my hands dirty in our new garden. you may have noticed we have a huge place here and we do intend to do the whole vegie garden with chooks thing, but its a little overwhelming, let alone expensive. so we decided to start small. first the worm farms wer inherited needed work - we were left two in styrofoam boxes


we merged them into a new home and moved them into the abandoned shade house (which is going to get unabandoned shortly):

we need to buy another proper box but they arent cheap either. then it was onto the gardening proper, but because i dont have a very green thumb, something manageable and close to the house seems a good idea for now. so i ordered a tonne of good dirt and went to the nursery:

trent helped me empty out these old pots:

and i refilled them, plus some others, with new dirt, warm casting and this amazingSeasol gel stuff (my Product of the Week), and put in tomatoes (roma, cherry and a specially for pots one), a chilli plant, coriander, mint, chives, parsley, strawberries, lettuces, rocket and bee attracting flowers. i also meant to do basil but forgot to buy some, and the rosemary plant was already there. i left it cos its doing well at the moment. this is what it looks like now:


then it rained all evening, and trent devised a snail catching device, and we went into darlinghurst to visit a friend in hospital and thenr dinner at our favourite thai (s thada) (hmmm gai yang).

more ups than downs, i think.

k xx