Done

Well... Corinbank has been, and gone. And it was AMAZING!!! Only those who were there can truly understand the amazing vibe, the wonderful hidden surprises in each little nook and each wilderness campground. At the end of the festival, there was not a scrap of rubbish to been on site - a pretty amazing testament to the waste crew volunteers and the environmentally conscious punters!!
The Chai tent was a huge success, and I was pleased to be able to contribute my own little part of the festival (as well as being on a huge high that people actually liked my chai, and the chill out space I had envisioned!)





That's my sister, and that's Darren Hanlon playing an acoustic gig under the trees!!! Festival highlight for sure!!!
And that's Xavier Rudd!!! Playing at Corin Forest!!!! OMG!

Now my life is my own again, and will slowly get back to normal. Today I had my first lunch break where I didn't have to do corin stuff in about 2 months. So I did some spinning. What glorious relaxation therapy!! Woohoo!! Lots of WIPs coming soon! :)

The months zoom by...

Wow... I can't believe that my last post was a month ago! Life is crazy and consumed with organising this festival. I can't wait to get my life (and my fiancee) back - in one and a half (!) weeks time!
Anyway, I wont go into detail about how exhausted and over it I am. Because there's also a lot of excitement... things are looking absolutely amazing for the festival... the program has just been released, and even those of us who've been working on this thing for over a year are blown away by just how much is on!! (definitely check it out!) And preparation for the chai tent (my little bit of the festival) is going really well.

The yoga retreat was amazing... relaxing, centering... just brilliant. I discovered when I got back though that it's really hard to hold on to that relaxed state when you spend your days with 20 toddlers... your lunch hours and weeknights and all weekend helping to organise a festival, and absolutely no time with yourself or the person you're supposed to be getting married to! (oh yeah, but I wasn't going to go into detail about being OVER IT!!) Anyway, I'll definitely be going back to the ashram. soon!

Anyway... that gives you an idea of why blogging has fallen by the wayside. (and knitting too incidentally!). But that's all going to change in a week and half hopefully!! :)

See you at Corinbank!! This is what the sky looks like up there... (sometimes) (well OK, only once... but you might be lucky!)

Catch you on the flip side!

Il pleut!

Lovely lovely rain is falling. And I've been sitting inside relaxing with H. I've been passing on the art of the heel, passed on to me by Ms Spider. Like we did in Spidey's sock workshop, I got H to just knit the heel part of the sock on it's own, so that when she gets up to that bit in her actual sock, she knows how it goes and it's not so scary. Then I passed on my very limited carding knowledge for some lovely brown alpaca fleece she's inherited. Then we did ear-candling! Weird, but relaxing!

Went to the ANU Food Co-op today for the first time ever. (I'm so embarassed that I've never been there before!) All this wasted time!!! What a great place to shop. They have an amazing range of natural foods, yes, but it's just a pretty cool place to shop, atmosphere-wise. You feel like you're back in a pioneer-days general store! What a contrast to woolies with it's excessive packaging and stuff we don't need and screaming children and grumpy check-out chicks! I'm sure the stuff is more expensive (not sure just how much though, need to compare that)... but is it worth it for the pleasurable shopping experience, and the lack of packaging?? (you take your own bags and jars from home to put stuff in).

Sorry... still no photos. Have to pack for my yoga retreat now, I'm leaving first thing in the morning.

See you in a week... hopefully all chilled out!

Thoughts

My beautiful friend H lent me a book last weekend. It's called Laurel's Kitchen, and was written in the seventies. It's all about nutritious, healthy eating and lifestyles, and vegetarianism. Unlike other books on the same subject from the same era that I've read, it's not at all preachy. The main author has a beautiful 'voice', and is very down to earth and honest.
Anyway... this book feels life changing for me, but I think that's mainly because it's come at a time when so many factors have been converging for me. The more I learn about and practise yoga, buddhism, meditation... the more they all resonate with me and agree with and support each other. And I spose I've always felt like ecologically, being vegetarian - or close to it - really makes more sense... but I've always loved meat too much to follow through with it! But now, with all these things coming together I feel like being vegetarian is just part of a whole way of life which makes sense. OK... I'm potentially not making sense... but this is a big thing for me at the moment, so I thought I would try to express it. Thankyou H for sharing the book with me. You're a lot more like Laurel than you think.

Next week I'm going on a yoga retreat at an ashram just north of Sydney. I'm really excited just to have that intense, reflective time (at least that's what I'm hoping it will be!). I'm not really sure what to expect... I've never been on anything like this before. But with all the work for the festival, and my life being very much focussed on supporting someone else's endeavour at the moment, to have this time for me will be a real gift. Apparently as well as getting up early in the morning and doing yoga, and listening to talks and stuff, we do gardening and baking bread and stuff and contributing to the general ashram life. It all sounds pretty good... kind of a pampering for the soul rather than for the body!

Neglect

Poor neglected bloggy (there are some flowers to assuage my guilt!). I've taken blogging without obligation to a new level... I call it 'Not Blogging with absolutely no Obligation whatsoever!!' :)
Life continues to be crazy. Being part of organising a festival... and being engaged to the head organiser apparently takes up a lot of your life!

Combine that with long work hours where I'm nowhere near a computer and come home as wrecked as spending the day with 20 two year olds is likely to leave you, and my blog has fallen by the wayside a bit.
Anyway... I'm still here. Still knitting... in between sleeping and working bees up at Corin every weekend!
I'm enjoying the socks I'm making with my hand dyed wool... they're going slowly though, because I think I was getting a bit bored and in need of a new challenge. So I've started a cardigan which hopefully I can finish sometime before the end of next winter. It's with a really pretty wool... but no pics today because the camera's not here. I'll also have some pics soon of the gorgeous purple merino all spun up.
Instead I'll share some pics from my Christmas break.

After Chrissy, I had a lovely week AT HOME (miraculous). I got to catch up on a lot of stuff I wasn't getting done, which had been hanging over my head for ages. I also got to do some yummy baking, which I had been having withdrawl from, having not cooked anything exciting for many months. Here were the results:

Ginger Caramel Crunch cookies out of a Womens Weekly. Sooo yummy! (those are whole Werthers caramels melted on top!!)

Blueberry, Ricotta and Almond Cupcakes from the Cupcake Bakeshop blog. Also incredibly yummy. But mostly, pink and cute! :)


This is where we spent a good part of New Years Day after New Years Eve up at Corin. Cooling- off in the pool at the top of Gibraltar Falls. It was a sweltering hot day here, so the cold water of the falls was a beautiful relief! And not a bad view either!!

Sorry for my absence from SnB, lack of commenting etc... miss you guys and will hopefully catch up soon!!!

So much to tell you!

WARNING: Very long and overdue post follows...

Well... I'm still alive, and have been up to lots of stuff... but just a bit behind in posting about it!

Since I last wrote, I've had a birthday. My first birthday present was D & E having their bub on my birthday!! (thanx guys, that was sweet). She is a beautiful, perfect little bundle of joy! And I think she likes her new bunny 'Herm', who I can now finally post photos of. Yay!!
He was crocheted from a pattern in the US magazine Knit Simple.

In other finished items news, I made Mr Purl a stubby holder! My first colour work... (It says 'Nancy' which is his Rat Patrol name...)

And, speaking of Mr Purl, the wonderful man got me a spindle for my birthday!!!! (and he hasn't seen me much since!!) He got it made by Pete Filmer at the OBD Markets... not sure at this stage what type of wood it's made of, as Mr Purl didn't retain that information... but I will find out. It's absolutely gorgeous!!

And that purple roving I got from Helen now looks like this:

Two little balls of plied yarn, and one ball of singles yet-to-be-plied. You can certainly tell what order I spun them in... I'm getting less uneven (although some people say that unevenness is a desirable feature). I'm a little over half way through the 50g of roving... and thoroughly enjoying the process! (so much so that I've done very little knitting since I got the spindle!!) I also really like how the slightly different hues of purple are all showing up when it's spun :)

And in other birthday goodness, my beautiful friends were very generous... including a gift voucher for Stitch 'n Time in Mawson, and some homemade goodies! Pol made me this gorgeous bag... which happens to be just the right size for my spindle and roving!

H. made me this stunning knitting needle roll. She's a talented lady!! (and sweet too).

I got great enjoyment out of deciding where to slot in each pair of needles!!

I've also been playing with some alpaca fleece which some of mum and dad's mates generously gave me (thanks also goes to the alpacas Monty and Ruben!). On my way down to mum and dad's last time I stopped in at Ashford and dropped a substantial amount of money on some stuff... including carders (which, incidentally were way more expensive than I expected).
Carding takes a long time. And is dirty. But still kind of fun. I did quite a bit of it in the evenings at mum and dad's, sitting in front of the telly.

And I spun up one little ball of Monty's fleece just to see what it looked like:

Other things I've been up to include my first picot edge - performed on the sock I'm making out of my first ball of home dyed wool :) (oh, and in other dyeing news... the mulberries are out... soon to be made into a dye bath!)

And this... (no, not me, but a dear friend who got hitched on the weekend).

Right... that's all. As you were.

Roll you sweet rain

On my lovely long weekend with my folks, mum and I attended a sculpture course near Cobargo. Gorgeous setting, gorgeous company and gorgeous rain!


Mum hacking into her limestone block.

This is the soapstone block that I was originally making my sculpture out of. See that big crack down the middle of it? Yeah.

Mum's finished 'reclining goddess'

My finished sculpture. Namaste.

On the main street in Cobargo.

On the way there I stopped a Ashford in Cooma and bought some carders (amongst other things) to card the Alpaca fleece that mum had acquired for me. Carding is hard work!! But strangely therapeutic! After 1 1/2 evenings, I ended up with about 35 grams of rolags ready to spin. *sigh* this jumper is going to take a long time!!! :)

The kids were wild today. It's not a full moon is it? Or perhaps they found some magic mushrooms in the garden. It's funny how all 20 of them manage to have collective moods.