Why u should not buy coffee from vending machines on railway platforms

... I can think of many reasons (costs too much, tastes horrid, don't always get both coffee and a cup!) - but then I DON'T buy coffee from any vending machines! (if I ever do buy coffee, it has to be the proper stuff - either an iced coffee (preferably with a shot of real coffee not syrup), or a "long black" made from coffee ground from beans, and done with a proper espresso coffee machine in a cafe' or similar ... although I also do buy coffee made in a drip filter thingy in that fast food place that starts with an "M" ...


Anyway ... while I was up in Sydney the other week, with that group of Scouts (one of whom was my DD), we had to wait a few minutes for a train, and some of the Scouts saw a vending machine and decided that they could do with a nice hot cup of coffee ... so the first one put her money into the slot and selected what she wanted ... but for some odd reason the others all decided not to have one after all ...



I guess a "cappuchino with little brown ants" just isn't that appertising!

(yes - they ARE ants - click on the photo if u want a closer look)

Am I famous now?

A year and a half ago, I posted a picture of this journal quilt in this blog post.

A photo of it is in the February 2008 issue of Down Under Quilts - one of Australia's best known quilting magazines!
The photo is one of several photos (with short descriptions) of people's journal quilts, that are part of an article about how a group of us made them, and then each chose 5 to send in to someone who organised for them to travel all over Australia and be exhibited at quilt shows/etc ...

They even mention the article on the front cover!

(I drew a green oval around that bit)

This is the page with the photo of my quilt on it:

(both those photos link to bigger ones if you want a closer look)

so ... does that mean I am famous yet?

(actually - I think it just means I know the right people and/or got involved in the right thing at the right time - lol)

btw, I have been on TV at least a couple of times ... twice on some South Australian current affairs show, back in the early 80s ... once was when they filmed some article at the university I went to - and there was a shot of me in lab coat and safety glasses, wandering around trying to think of something to do that looked like I knew what I was doing. The other time was part of an article about some project for unemployed youth - where we learnt to scuba dive and then did a clean up of the sea floor under a local jetty - so the group of us were interviewed - dressed in daggy (hired) wetsuits with salty hair! LOL
I also had my photo in South Australia's Sunday paper around that time too! - I think it was on the back cover, and I was holding an Albatross!


Ohhh ... with this web browser the editor thingy has a spell check ... trouble is - it keeps telling me that there is something wrong with words like "thingy" and "LOL" and "btw" - LOL
I got sick of the web browser crashing - it did it 2 or 3 times while I was writing the last blog post and again while I was fixing up some things in a couple of old posts (mainly a few photos were all weird - because I still had a couple of posts where the photos were actually hot linked from my "geoshitties" page, so I did away with linking them and just found the photos again, on the computer, and uploaded them directly into the blog posts, like I have been doing for all my more recent posts) ... anyway ... after "Internet Exploder" crashed yet again, while I was checking for any more things that needed fixing ... I decided to use Firefox instead ... and it seems to work much better for doing stuff with my blog ... and I think it is probably a good thing that it has the spell checker thing (which I had totally forgotten about since the last time I used Firefox to post to my blog) - because when I went back and edited that old journal quilt post (I added a little note about the quilt being in a magazine ;-) I found, and fixed, about a dozen typos/spelling mistakes!!!

one thing has got me wondering though - I know how to spell the word "browser", but how come every time I typed it in this post (except that one ;-) I accidentally typed "browswer" instead?!! LOL

Australia Day

Hi All ... I figured I had better post something "Aussie" seeing today is Australia Day

[Andrea digs around in her photos]

hmmm

I guess Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge are fairly recognisable as "Aussie" ...

(probably not so recognisable in the photo though - you can probably see the bridge on the right but the opera house is kind of hiding on the horizon, in between that and the city buildings on the left)
This was a couple of weeks ago, while I was up there on the Scout camp - we had a wonderful veiw of a sunset from the Manly Ferry - lol

... now what else can I find?


(maybe something here in Canberra?)

Ah - here is one of Canberra's more prominent landmarks

but this day (sometime last year) it was sort of hiding! ... which makes a way more interesting photo than one on a normal sunny day, when it just looks like an odd shaped tower thing sticking up from the top of the hill.
It is actually visible from a lot of places in/around Canberra, and when we used to go on car trips interstate when the kids were little, they could see it in the distance, before we got back in to Canberra, and they would suddenly cheer up (from being so bored and grizzly from travelling) when they saw it because they knew we were almost home again.


now surely I must be able to find at least one photo of a kangaroo or something ...?


Ahh yes - I took a few photos of a kangaroo last Febuary - I was staying down at the coast (doing some volunteer stuff with Greening Australia actually) and I was walking back along the path from the beach (where I had been taking a pile of other photos ;-) when I spotted this 'roo beside me ...

it looks like he was trying to decide if he should cross the road ...

... but he decided to cross the path (in front of me) instead

... and he walked (they don't always hop, sometimes they kind of "walk" slowly on all fours) through the fence as if it wasn't there, hopped up the path for a bit, then stood in the paddock ... posing for my photo?



I also took some video of him ... including this one - when he decided he had finished "posing" for my photos, and walked/hopped away - straight through an electric fence! LOL



(actually the fence was probably just there to keep the cows in ... keeping 'roos in/out requires a much more serious effort of fence building!)


Ok ... is that enough Aussie stuff for now?

no?

then I guess you will just have to go search on google or something - I have other stuff to go and do ... lol
(like hang up the B$^%&^% washing and put yet another load in the machine ... and take what is on the line off, because that lot is dry and I need room for the next 2 or 3 loads! ... DS cleaned his room - the usual result of that is about 3 or 4 loads of washing just magically "appear" in the laundry! ... sigh)

Silly thing ...

I found this thingy on doodleblog.kaliane.com ... I don't often/usually put these things on my blog ... but this one actually sort of half/mostly fits me! LOL (especially that first bit) ... then again - if I read any of the other times of day I could have been (and I could have easily been some other time instead - seeing half of my answers were a case of randomly pick one out of 2 or 3 that were equally correct, or were equally not the answer I would have said if it had been there to chose), they probably also sort of half/mostly fit me as well - I am sure they write them like that so people will go there and use them - LOL

(a bit like reading someone their "stars" from yesterday's/last week's paper and them saying "oh yes - that DID happen to me ... then you reveal that you were actually reading out what it said for some other star sign, rather than theirs ... LOL)

You Are Midnight

You are more than a little eccentric, and you're apt to keep very unusual habits. Whether you're a nightowl, living in a commune, or taking a vow of silence - you like to experiment with your lifestyle. Expressing your individuality is important to you, and you often lie awake in bed thinking about the world and your place in it. You enjoy staying home, but that doesn't mean you're a hermit. You also appreciate quality time with family and close friends.

What Time Of Day Are You?

pity I had to fix up their crappy HTML code (the supposedly "fixed for blogger" version) after I pasted it in here! lol

anyway ... the first and 3rd paragraph are definitely ME ... and the other 2 sort of fit

... but neither of them mention the fact that I have a wonderful DH who has just brought me the bottle of cream and a toasted something he made in the new toasted sandwich maker we got the other day (the old one died).

[andrea digs spoon in to see what it is]

... mmm - apple! ... I gotta go eat this! (before the dog steals it) LOL

(DH just came back in - told me it was one of the recipes that came in the instruction book, and then he stole a bit and gave it to the dog! ... so I had better eat the rest before I loose any more of it!)

Sticky Bananas and other stuff ...

... makes a wonderful desert!

(It was actually rather yummy, so I decided to be nice, and share it with you ;-)

Yes - I have eaten some rather odd things on Scout camps ... and even though the Scouts do the cooking and sometimes produce some rather odd food - the weirdest things I have eaten are those I made myself! LOL

TAST stitches

Hi People
(I am amazed - there are actually at least a couple of you actually reading my blog! ... even my Mum doesn't do that! ... but she will if I e-mail her the posts - she just never goes looking for it on the www)

anyway ...

I have had this post, with just the pictures in it and no text, sitting in blogger, as a draft, for over 3 weeks now ... and I have been home (from my 2 weeks away followed by another week away) for a few days now - so it is about time I wrote some stuff in here and posted it!

... so why have I just spent about 3 hours getting lost in cyberspace reading other people's blogs? LOL

(er ... that reminds me I have another thing on my to do list there too - I still need to add links to all the blogs I like/read onto the side of my blog)


anyway ...



Time to work out where I was up to and what was what with the TAST stitches ...


ok ... last one I posted was ... er ... [andrea goes and looks to see what one it was, and also mentally adds "Take the Christmas decoratoins off my blog" to the "to do" list ] ... week 37

Here is the bit of felt that was the last picture on that post ( here ).



... it now has rather a lot more stuff on it than it did ... [andrea goes and looks up what all of them were] ...

I didn't get around to any more of the rice stitch/square boss stitch (week 37) - there a quite a few stitches that I never did finish playing with and would like to go back to. There are also a few I liked but because I only did them once (to do my bit of stitching for that week) I have already forgotten how to do them - lol - so I am glad I have been printing them all off ... now I just have to find where I put the first few and put them all into a folder so I can look them up while I am sitting sewing - that way I might actually get around to using them on some of the other things I will be doing this year/whenever.

Week 38 was Knotted buttonhole band ... er - that is the one I did in red on the bottom of the bit of felt in the next picture ... on this bit is my experiment with stacking it up, also in red, which ended up looking like a teepee.

Week 39 was Reversed buttonhole bar - I think that is the yellow bit at the bottom of this bit of felt.

Week 40 was linked double chain - that is the yellow bit down the left hand side.

Week 41 ... is on another bit of felt (a red bit) ... the other stuff on this one is ... a weird circular motif I made up from messing around with some of the previous stitches, some cable chain stitch (week 36) in white and yellow, and a pile of "bones" made from Twisted satin stitch ... which was week 42 (and a few odd white knots that I felt like doing at the time :-)



This next bit of felt is more of my mucking around with a few of the stitches, like running stitch, and a weird idea I came up with for doing circles with one side of the stitch used for reversed buttonhole bar (week 39), and a buttonhole wheel snail that I had already done and posted a picture of ... and the bit of red knotted buttonhole band that I have already mentioned ...




the black stitching on this bit might look familiar ...


... because was already there (that was week 14/etc) ... but it looked like it needed more, so I added some yellow knots and the red flower sometime, and I also used red and white to do some more twisted satin stitch (week 42) ... that stitch it didn't really inspire me a lot at first, but then I noticed I could make it look like little bones so now I like it ;-)



The bit of red felt on the left of this picture has some more circles of reversed buttonhole bar, and some other stitches I felt like adding to it ...

... and the bit on the right has another circle, and my bit of Lace border stitch (week 41) done in yellow ... with white knots added to it and something else done on top in black [andrea scratches head and wonders what it was, then looks at bigger sized picture - which you can also do by clicking on them] ... ah - more of that reversed buttonhole bar stitch that I was doing those circles with. The bit of stitching on the bottom is another variation that came from doing those circles.

btw ... note to self: red felt isn't so good to work on when trying to scan images of it to post to my blog ... LOL




This bit has Week 43 - Drizzle stitch (the lumpy stuff on the bottom) and a couple of bits where I did a double version (with 2 threads looped over the needle alternatelay so it is wider with 2 sides) ...



... and 3 sticks/branches (well that is what they look like to me) of Week 43 - Zig Zag Spanish Knotted stitch. ... and an odd little bit of buttonhole stitch and a knotty thing, because it needed something on that side ...




This bit has Week 45 - Pekinese stitch - in white over yellow thread ... and a whole pile of variations done over one line of thread insead of 2, and a variation of that done back to back (the other yellow and white one) and also the second row was looped into the first one. I also added a couple of circles of chain stitch, etc to fill in the spaces and make it look interesting.




Week 46 was chain braid stitch ... which I wasn't sure if I liked the look of but then had fun playing with (that seems to happen with some of them - they don't inspire me ... sort of not a "me" stitch ... but then I find a way to make them into something I like and end up liking them ;-)



I did the odd thing at the top first, then decided I had better do a "normal" bit of it too ... so it became the "snow" for my Thorn stitch (week 47) Christmas tree.



Thorn stitch was fun ... lol





there is more on here too (hmmmm - looks like a feathery tail on a chain braid creature ... I might have to have a play and design some birds using that idea).
On the top of that bit of felt is Week 48 - Knotted cable chain.
(another stitch of the too many that I didn't actually DO much of and should go back to and do more).

I think that was another bit of my weird variations of Pekinese stitch on the bottom.

This bit of felt ...

... was the rather interesting result of me patting someone's (moulting) goat and ending up with a handful of hair! - yes it is blanket/buttonhole stitch and knots done over goat hair.

This was my messing around with some more couching (week ... something ... ages ago :-)

It now has more stuff on it, and I also have the last 4 weeks stitches that I have not shown you pictures of yet ... probably because I have not taken any/scanned them yet!
(I will have to do that shortly ... after I have been to the shop for bread and milk ... sigh ... )

but I did take a picture of this ...

it is a crochet drink cooler thingy I made before I went away ... (made the right size to fit nicely around the glass that is in it :-)

I think I also have about 2 too many pictures in this post ... because when I got down to writing about/around them, it started messing up ... (it might have also been why the browser crashed about then too - meaning that I had to log in again ... gee I am glad blogger automatically saves what I am doing in here every minute or so! ... I still remember more than one ocaision some time "way back when" , where I was doing stuff to my Geocities page (yes it is still there, just not been updated for several years!) and I typed a whole pile of stuff in there and then lost it all when the internet connection dropped out ... those were the days (and I am glad to see the end of them!)

anyway ... this might have to be the end of this blog post ... hopefully there will be a few more in the next week or so ... when I have uploaded more photos onto the computer (so I can blog about my 2 different back to back holidays - LOL), and scanned the last few TAST stitches/etc so I can blog those ...

of course what I want to get done and what I do get done might be 2 different things - I also still have a sewing room to finish re-organising, the rest of the house and garage to tidy up, and a couple of small quilts that I have to have finished very soon ... one is 12" quilt for a challenge, it is half done and I have to deliver it to someone by about Feb. 8th and the other one, which is not even started actually has to be finished sooner - and that is an A3 sized quilt for another challenge and I have to post it in time for it to get to Tasmania by the end of this month! ... so I really should be doing that right now!

... then there is also the Take it further challenge and the chooseday challenge and the A4 journal quilt challenge (on another yahoogroup I am in - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aus_NZartquilters/ )

... methinks I have plenty of sewing stuff to do this year ... especially seeing I also want to do stuff for the Canberra Quilters exhibition and the Act Textile Arts (previously known as TASDA) exhibition ... and a few other things I want to make anyway ...

but right now - time I went to the shop for bread and milk ... then when I get back I can make myself some toasties for tea ... (our old toastie toaster thingy died so DH went out and bought a new one ... but even a new one won't make toasties if there is no bread!)

hi from Sydney

I am sitting typing this on a computer at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney ... just thought u might like to know that ...

anyway - I have better things to do than sit here trying to type on a keyboard that has been so abused by zillions of grotty little fingers that half the keys don't work too well ... so ... off to go look at stuff, and see what weird things the Scouts (who I am here helping supervise/etc) are getting up to now ...

btw, I would put a photo or 2 on here, but there isn't a USB port anywhere I can get to on here to plug in my card reader thingy.

bye ...

Here, there and (not quite) everywhere

... I have been a bit too busy to post that TAST stuff ... and - more to the point - I have not been here to use the computer ...

What have I been busy doing?

- Flew to Adelaide!
(the 2 kids and I flew there on Christmas Day - DH stayed home/went to work)


I got to go to a beach I had not been to for 21 years
(had not been to Adelaide for 21 years either - and I was born there!)

... caught up with a few relatives

(no these are not my relatives, they are cows waiting to be milked at the dairy on my great uncle's farm)

Did the usual New Year's Eve stuff ...

visited a few more relatives,

and went to the beach a few more times

Visited even more relatives and did some touristy stuff on the way ...

saw some dam wall ;-)

(actually it is the "Whispering Wall" in the Adelaide Hills somewhere.)

It was hot in Adelaide so we went to the beach a lot

and I took a lot of weird photos

come on in - the water is nice!

trouble is - we had to fly home again ...

got home yesterday evening ... spent today unpacking, washing and packing - DD (Dear Daughter) and I are going to Sydney tomorrow - for a scout camp.

it is not very likely that I will find a computer to use up there (didn't get onto one to post stuff here or whatever while I was in Adelaide - some of my relatives have computers, but they only have dial up internet) ... the chances of there being an internet connected computer in some Scout hall that we are staying in are about zilch! ... so my post about the last several TAST stitches etc (which I have already uploaded the photos/scans for) will have to wait until I get back - it took long enough to throw these few pictures up here and write the little bit of nonsense about them ... so it will take way too long to write all the stuff I want to write about the TAST stitches. (it is now after 1am and I still have a few things to organise and a dog to take for a walk!)

btw, I still have not even started the other arty/quilty stuff - sort of did something small and silly for December's chooseday challenge (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/choosedaychallenge/), but I did not even find out what the theme for January was until today ... have not done a January journal quilt or anything for the Take it Further challenge (only just saw the theme for that today too) ... and I have 2 other small quilts to finish by the end of January too ... looks like I will be busy for a few days when I get back! ... just realised i also have to "un-decorate" my blog too, and there are also a few comments that I have only glanced at (will read them again later) ... nice to see someone is enjoying all this junk I post here! LOL

Anyway ... time to go do that other stuff - before I "loose" a couple more hours and it is time to get up again or something!