Oh No It's December

Oh no it's December! Well that year has gone so fast, a blink of an eye. Christmas is on its way. I know that because the days are getting longer and warmer, if not darn hot. I often wonder what it would be like to have a 'cold' winter. You in the north of  the equator know about cold winters, with the snow and ice and all the warm food that goes with the colder weather. BUT then I think again.......I think that I will stick with the warm summer Christmases as everyone knows in the summer there is so much more to do. BBQ's in the twilight, swimming, long walks after dinner, the smell of insect repellent and or mosquito coils with their little wisps of smoke ascending skyward or any which way if there is a breeze if one is lucky enough to get a breeze, sitting outside with the night air looking at the stars with the mosquito's biting into the nice tender juicy skin that is exposed on an arm or leg or anywhere else the mozzies decided to feed, and the best part is that one in the south does not have to rug up against frost bite.




I decided that I would do something nice this year. Don't know what but I do know that I will think of something soon.

Last week I was walking through Big W and saw all the Christmas trees that they had on display and thought ‘that’s what I need a new Christmas tree.’ so I bought one. Then I went to the Kmart and bought some new decorations. It felt good, but I was a bit sorry for the old Christmas tree that we had  and served us for at least 15 years. So the old Christmas tree was pensioned off and today I took the 'old Christmas tree' with all its own decorations to the Sallies they were very excited to accept it. I know that someone will love the tree the same as we did.

They tree is up and decorated and it is looking lovely too even if I do say so.
The Presents are bought.
The present are wrapped.
Some of the food has been bought.
Some of the food has been made.
Now to give some thought to the menus for Christmas Day.
I''ll keep you all posted.

Jessica and Julia playing

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Originally uploaded by ashbea

My Socks

A little about me knitting socks, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. BUT I am getting better. The main thing is that they all fit...atleast someone in the family.

Hand Knitted Socks

Knitted Socks

By

ASHBEA

Twelve months ago I started knitting socks. My daughter asked me to, so in a moment of weakness I said "yes". In the past twelve months I have knitted 16 pairs of socks. Plain socks, Ribbed Socks, and a (one only) Firestarter Sock. The reason why only 'one' sock, I can not buy any more wool for the other sock but it was a learning curve, so all was not wasted.

Once I had read the pattern (several times), I found the pattern very easy to follow. I am not usually good a following knitted patterns. I love this pattern especially the gusset and the heel which I found to have fitted me perfectly. Some of the other socks that have knitted from the top down have not fitted me very well. I don't know why, just can not at the moment work it out.

The only thing wrong I found was that the top when knitting from the toe up it a tad tight, but I have fixed that by changing the size of the needles for the last two rows and then casting off. If anyone has any suggestions about casting off at the top please let me know what you think.

Firestarters sock. The pattern for the firestarter socks can be found at
http://www.yarnissima.com/

Matching socks for me and my Sandi doll

These are the first socks that I have knitted. I think that they look very good.

AND these are the 2nd pair I knitted. I am getting better at this knitting.

These socks are just ordinary socks, but I got the stripes correct. It took a bit of doing but it worked out ok.

Jessica is learning to knit and she is very enthusiastic. I hope that she stays that way.

Julia is leaning to knit too and she is just as enthusiastic. I also hope that she stays that way too.

I also knitted this lovely yellow cardigan for my Sandi doll.

This has nothing to do with kitting but I just love this little doll. I made this doll some years ago.

A Day at the Zoo

There is nothing like free tickets to make you do something, anything.

Today we have free tickets to go to the Zoo – Taronga Park Zoo on the shores of the most beautiful harbour in the world Sydney Harbour.

After a leisurely 2 hour drive we arrived a the Zoo

All Tracy wanted to do was see a Giraffe and she did and she

saw Kangaroos  too just lazing around.

She saw seals preforming.

She saw elephants

She saw Apes

She saw zebra

And she saw some snakes.

When the day was done we drove all the way home again.

Wednesday 30th September 2009

A dry, sunny day with a slight wind just to keep the temps down.

Cleaned the caravan for the next holdiay. It took 4 hours to clean a van 16' x 7' it was covered in red dust from the centre of Australia.

I will be most happy when the drought breaks.

In saying that there is rain predicted for the weekend.