Argh! I'm an idiot.

:(

I try and keep my unused yarn in plastic tubs with lids, of course, but I have been careless about my unfinished objects, because, well, I guess I planned on finishing them sooner rather than later and it didn't happen.

Today I pulled out a pair of shorties for Alastair that I'd started working on LAST summer, and here's what I found:

From Surprisingly Domestic

From Surprisingly Domestic

Waaaah. I threw it in the bin because it wasn't that much work and the wool was eaten in quite a few places.

Lesson learned. I'm going to check my other UFOs & try to keep them safe.

In better news, the capris just need the crotch grafted and the ends woven in.

A productive day

Have I ever mentioned that I like crime fiction?

Our bookshelves are overflowing, so when I saw an offer on Freecycle for one in our suburb that would actually fit in our car, I snapped it up. (I love Freecycle, but given that we have a smallish car with no towbar, it's not actually feasible to collect many things from it!) Then I moved a lot of books around.

It fits about half my crime fiction collection:



The rest of our fiction collection is here (I'd say about 80% of it is mine!):



In contrast, here are the books poor Garry has to read (they're all computer books):



Evelyn's capris/shorties (I think they'll be capri length now and shorties in summer) are coming along nicely too:

Nectarine tree:

From Surprisingly Domestic

From Surprisingly Domestic

Custard apple:

From Surprisingly Domestic

Yum yum.

Food. Yum.

I've been rocking dinnertime this week, if I do say so myself.

Monday we had sausages & heaps of roast vegetables (potato, sweet potato, pumpkin & beetroot), with broccoli and cauliflower. Home-made chocolate ice cream and raspberries for dessert (the raspberries were frozen, of course, I *wish* we could get fresh here). Tuesday I put the leftover roast vegies on a pizza (Garry also took some with pasta for lunch, and then I had leftover pizza for lunch today, so it was pretty good value), with crusty garlic bread & more vegies. Fruit salad with vanilla & cinnamon whipped cream for dessert. Tonight we had hoi sin mince & vegies with Chinese cabbage and egg noodles. Ran out of yummy desserts, though :(

Last Friday Emma and I planted some seeds (carrots in the garden, and parsley in a large pot). I'm hoping they germinate soon :)

The fruit trees are doing quite well. The orange and plum trees out the front (established before we bought the place) have flowered nicely, so I just need to keep the fruit fly off. The young ones out the back - well, the nectarine one is doing great. It had a whole heap of young fruit - and then Alastair and a little friend decided to pick a handful each *sigh* at least they didn't try to eat them. There are still about 20 on the tree, hopefully the bugs stay away. The peacharine (cross between peach and nectarine) only has a couple of stunted fruit that don't look like they'll grow, but that's because half of the tree was dead and I didn't prune it until the beginning of spring. Since I pruned away the dead part the rest looks a lot healthier, so hopefully next year. The other plum tree has 6 or 7 young fruit. The mandarin tree only has one bud. The grapefruit is flowering, and I think I killed the lemon tree, lol.

This one is not really my crafty endeavour at all - well, only a tiny part.

I scored a new Beetlebums all-in-two nappy at last week's stocking (which, believe me, is hard to do), and Mel was kind enough to include a small offcut of the fabric so that I could make a matching shirt. I was just going to do a white singlet or shirt, but happened to have a shirt that's exactly the right shade of blue. Obviously it was meant to be ;)

From 20081006

From 20081006

Yeh, the applique's only half done; Alastair woke up too early from his nap. Such is life.

Yay!

From Surprisingly Domestic

I am nervous about whether the recipient will like it, because she's a fantastic seamstress. I do like this carrier, but it has imperfections. It has:

- darts in the body so the child fits in better
- curved shoulder straps that'll stay on the shoulders better than straight
- a hood
- the padding just right, I think.

Two new projects

This one isn't for me:

From Surprisingly Domestic

(Need to get this one finished soon, the recipient is waiting!)

And some shorties/capris (not sure how far the yarn will stretch) for Evelyn, because she's nearly outgrown the newborn longies I knitted her!

From Surprisingly Domestic

It's just cheap wool from K-mart, but it knits up really nicely (one of her newborn pairs is in the same yarn), and holds up pretty well to friction - Alastair has a pair in the same wool, different colourway, and although it pills a little, it has generally held up to his rampaging toddler-ness very well. So she can wear them through to autumn when she will be moving/crawling.