"Here is one I prepared earlier" ?

This may or may not work ... (if you see nothing but a half a page of text, then it did not work ... at least not for you anyway)


I typed that bit of text and added the link that embeds the story in to this post, and previewed the post - and it seems to have worked ok, at least at this end ;-)
- I went to a website I had found out about (when someone else used it and tweeted their results) called Storify  and clicked on the "create story" button at the top and had a fiddle - it let me search for all my tweets (I could have also searched for any other peoples tweets or various topics, or Facebook posts, or some other stuff, but I only wanted some of my recent tweets for this one ;-) and it let me drag the ones I wanted into the thingy (complete with any photos I had tweeted) and add whatever words I wanted ... kind of fun - and a cheats way to turn a few days of tweeting stuff into a blog post all about it - LOL

Methinks I will be using that site again ;-)


Anyway ... here is the story, the "one I prepared earlier":



Gee ... that was just a bit TOO long eh? ... next time I will just do shorter ones i think ... might go back there now and whip one up for Spot, the Blog ... then if any of the 2 or 3 people reading this blog actually go and look at the "other stories by ..." link then they might find something - LOL

btw - because those photos are in something else that is embedded in this blog post (kind of same thing as when one puts youtube videos in blog posts/etc) the photos don't do the same as on my other posts - but you can still see them bigger if you want - just click on them and you end up at the photo on Twitter, and click on it again and it should give you the nice big version ...
(so - if you click on the photo of the yarn - you should get to see a bigger version of the Twitter picture I am talking about the yarn matching ... unless I have changed my profile picture or something - LOL)

Wishing you a Merry Christmas, Where have I been? Where am I going, and other Weird stuff.

"We Wish you a merry Christmas, We Wish you a merry Christmas ... " etc ... I don't have time to go digging in my photos and make up a Christmas card right now, and I didn't do it earlier because I seem to have been rather busy doing all that other stuff people do when not sitting in front of the computer (and a bit too much getting lost on Twitter when I have been at the computer ;-)  ... not sure if I will get to do it later either - because I am going away ... DH is working night shifts over Christmas, so he is staying home (which is handy because else who would look after the cat and the dog ... DD maybe - seeing she will probably working Christmas Eve and Boxing Day) so ... I am hopping on a plane tomorrow, and flying to Queensland - to visit my parents for a week or 2 ... and they don't have huge piles of download to use each month like I do here at home, or GIMP on their computer  ... lol

But ... because I have not posted for a little While ... and it may be a Week or more before I post again (depending What I might find in the Way of free WiFi/other Internet access ... and/or Weather I feel like going off and finding some McWiFi - lol) I have decided to Whip up a quick post With a few Weird photos of Weird stuff for the Wonderful ABC Wednesday's W Week ;-)

Wow! - I just realised - now that it is after Midnight - I am actually posting this on a ... Wednesday! LOL
(but the linky thingy isn't there yet - I will have to remember to try and find a spare 5 minutes to log in to Blogger While I am at Work tomorrow and add my link then ;-)

now ... What Weird and Wonderful stuff can I find photos of in a hurry? (I still need to organise a few things because I have to be packed and ready tonight, because I leave pretty much straight after Work tomorrow) and I still have not taken the dog for the Walk I promised him (he doesn't care What time of day/night he goes - lol)

OK ... found some ... and they uploaded quite fast and Worked ok - Wonderful!

These few Were all taken with my phone ...
(might be why they loaded fast - smaller photos than my camera is set up to take ... but the couple of camera photos I put in here also loaded fast ;-)

Some Weird Wet person (me ;-) at the #CSIROTweetup:

the same Weird person (me) Wearing a Wig With antennae on it - at the #CSIROTweetup - next to a model of one of the Mars rovers ;-)

Weird animals ... Waiting for a scratch?

 ditto:

Cat's Whiskers: (white ones ;-)

Weird sky

Weird sky again - the clouds really Were that colour!

What is this? and Why is it on my desk at Work?!

yes - it IS a live possum - I work at a high school, and Mr E's class Went into their sceince lab one Monday morning (about a week or 2 ago) - and there, in the corner, was a possum! (it had been living in the roof, and fallen through the ceiling tiles ... they are fairly sleepy during the day so it was easy to just grab a box, stick it over the possum and shove it's backside into the box, shut the flaps and carry it out of the room ;-)

 (btw - that last photo was not my from my phone - I also took a photo with my camera ;-)

oh - and the possum was released into some trees. later in the day.

This is also a camera photo, not a phone photo
... and this one was yellow because it was taken with the flash off (I took one with the flash on too, but I like this one better ;-)
The colour could be said to be a hint as to what I was doing at the time - I just happened to have the camera in my pocket When I Went to ... do What I Was doing in there ;-)  and the dog Was Waiting for me to finish. (he doesn't like it if you shut the door, and if you don't actually close it properly he just pushes the door open and comes in anyway - lol

... and this is some birds Walking around.

I was walking around too - with the iPad - which is what I used to take that photo ... and yes it is a boring one - I only put it in here to see what would happen ... because I probably had the ipad upside down when I took the photo - the thumbnail was upside down ... but (because the ipad knows which way up it is?) the photo comes out the right way up when it is opened ... I got curious to see if it was upside down in here ... no - that just seems to happen at random when there is a glitch - lol (had that happen once ... rotated a photo that I had taken sideways, and it looked fine, as a thumbnail and open, on the computer - but it came out sideways in here! - weird?)

Anyway ... time to finish messing around, and post this - While I still have some night left to Walk the dog, organise the other few things I have to pack/etc, and also squeeze in a good night's sleep before I have to get up for Work in the morning (oops? ... that adds up to a bit more than the approximately 7 hours that it is going to have to fit into!

"but Wait - there's more"

I almost forgot to add the first photo I found - was not going to put it first - figured it might gross a few people out a bit much being right at the top - more Weird stuff at Work:

Yes - that IS a plastic bag of EYEBALLS ;-)

better in the plastic bag than here!

 ... high up on the Wall!

... it was a particularly rowdy class that disected eyballs the day this happened ;-)
(usually the leftover chopped up greebly bits come back in the trays or whatever, and I just have to scrape them out and bin them, and wash all the trays/scalpels/forceps/probes/etc, rather than having to find a long stick to remove greeblies from the wall, and go find a mop and clean the ceiling!  ... "and what did you do at work today?" "well, I scraped an eybeall off the wall, and mopped the ceiling ... "  I guess it keeps the job interesting - LOL)

and ... if it Works (it said there was an error, but now it says it is uploading ... I guess I will have to "hurry up and Wait" for a While to see if it worked, and try again if it didn't)
here is will possibly be a link to a video of some Wonderfully Wild and Wooly Weather:

(it wasn't uploading on blogger, said "rejected by server" or somesuch - so I decided to try putting it on Photobucket instead ;-)


hmmm ... maybe it wasn't such a good idea to start uploading a video at 1:30am, and then noticing that it is 298MB in size! ... dog is now walked, other bits I had to do are done (unless I have forgotten something) it is now almost 4am ... and 25% of it has uploaded ... I wonder if there is a size limit? LOL
I will post this, and add the video later, if it uploads, (and if I can log in to photobucket and blogger some time/place and do what I will need to do, and if I remember ;-)

[the next day] OK - here it is (it took half the night, but seems it did upload ok ;-)


The video was taken at around Midnight one night late in November ... it was rather stormy most of the night, but for over half an hour it was like this - constant flashes and booms - amazing!
(kind of made me imagine weird things - like maybe it was elephants who had become angels and they were having a disco in the sky ;-)

Crochet stuff and a few other things that start with C

I have been meaning to post some photos of some stuff I have Crocheted for ages ... so ... needing something for a C post for ABC Wednesday seems like a good excuse to actually to do it ;-)

... now I just have to find the photos I have taken ... and see what I don't have photos of, and actually FIND the items I don't yet have photos of so I can take some ... no wonder I drive myself Crazy!

ok ... I found some crochet photos, and some other C stuff ... now I just have to put them in here ... hopefully it won't take long - I spent too long finding and editing photos (some needed cropping and stuff) ... and I WAS going to be in bed by this time of night ...er ... morning ... because I have to get up for work in a few hours ...

I will start with the crochet ones ...
... and first - some shawls I actually made a couple of years ago, but didn't take photos of until late last year:

A green (wool) and black (who knows what sort of yarn it was) one:



with a rather cluttered background ... must take a better photo sometime ... or (even better but harder to organise) get someone to take a photo of me wearing the thing ...

A pinky purple/black/silver one:


done in a couple different fancy yarns.
And another one I actually made even earlier ... this thing is HUGE:



That is the top edge of the shawl stretched out down the passage - the but under the cat's tummy is the bit that goes on the back of my neck ... the bit that hangs down the back is actually draped over the dog's paws and he has his head on it - LOL
btw - the last few rows on this ended up so long that not only did it drive me mad, but each row took TWO balls of yarn!
(and it still drags on the ground after I wrap it around myself ... but it is nice and warm so I could probably use it as a snuggle rug or something ... or as my costume next time I am invited to a fancy dress party and want to go as a wookie ;-)

This is my "rainbow shawl" that I finised a year or 2 ago:


It is made from some fine wool I was given, and when I finished crocheting it this is what it looked like:


and yes that is asphalt under it - I spread it out beside my car, in the mostly empty car park at wiork, to take the photo.
This is what it looked like after I soaked it in some vinegar for a few minutes and then arranged it in the bottom of a large ice cream tub, attacked it with various colours of food dye, and zapped it in the microwave for a few minutes (until it was hot, so the dye would set):


hmmm - if you click on this to see it bigger you might see how clean the kitchen floor probably isn't - lol

This is something weird I crocheted last year:


it was for the Summer challenge for the textile art group I am in - we had to do a hand of some sort, on a stick - they were then displayed at the exhibition later last year. I crocheted a hand with long pointy fingers ... then I was mucking around and tied knots in the fingers ... and decided I liked it that way.

Some crochet vines I made for the textile art exhibition last year:


The light green one is some weird green wool I had in my yarn stash, and could be worn as a scarf if I want to. The darker one is some even stranger fuzzy yarn I got from the op shop, with flowers made from some fuzzy yarn (same sort as in that huge shawl) and the pods are made from felted dog hair - so maybe it is a dogwood vine? (hmmm I wonder what dogwood actually IS ... something I have seen mentioned in books I have read, but it isn't native to Australia ... I might have to "google" it sometime ;-)

This is a green cotton shawl I made last year ... in September/October - mostly in the car on the way to/from Queensland (and some of it in front of the tv/etc at Mum and Dad's place, and the last bit at a friend's place here in Canberra just after the trip to Qld.) ... so I call it my "travel shawl"



the danby bits were fun to make ;-)
this is the back of the same shawl:



I also made another (smaller) one in cream coloured cotton, but I have not taken a photo of it yet (I think i took these photos while I was still crocheting that one) I started the second one while i was part way through the green one, because I wanted something smaller (without such long rows as I was up to with the green one) to test out if the pattern I had in mind for the last few rows would work ok, and to work out how many stitches I needed to have in the row when I started the pattern bit ... so once I worked out the pattern and how many stitches in each repeat/etc - I had a miniature shawl - so I kept adding to it until I ran out of that particular yarn (in fact I did run out of yarn part of the way around the edging but I had something else that was similar enough to use for the last bit of the edging and not show up as different ;-)

These are some quilted fabric Coffee Cup Coasters I made in December:


I used 6 of them as part of the Christmas gifts I gave to the science teachers I work with (we seem to have a tradition where everyone puts a little something on each other's desks at the end of the school year ;-)
The other 3 are on our coffee table, but I am not sure they get used ... or even noticed ... lol
This is a beetle ... it wasn't in the B post, and it IS in this C post, because I took the photo during the Canberra Quilters meeting last week - I found it on the floor near my feet during the raffle draw (after which everyone gets up and stomps around packing the Chairs up) so I picked it up to save it from getting Crushed underfoot - and it Crawled around on my fingers and on my lap, making Chirping noises!


...  much to the amusement of the few people sitting Closest to me ...
(not a very Clear photo - it wouldn't stay still! ... so I Clicked about 8 photos then Chucked it out the door)

I found some Cloud photos too:


I often take photos of Clouds .. I think these are Cumulus, probably in the process of becoming Cumulo nimbus (those big tall thunderstorm clouds) Because we had a Crashing big thunderstorm not long after I took this photo last week.
This one was taken from very Close to the same place as the other one (a Couple of metres away probably)
but it was a Couple of days later ... and there was an even bigger storm even sooner afterwards ... with Crazy purple streaks of lightning and rain so heavy it was hard to see where I was driving ...



During the storm I just happened to be picking a friend up from work and driving us both to her place ... I live thunderstorms and she ... doesn't  ... so every big flash of purple lighting I would say "wow" and she would say "s..t" (or worse ;-)
And last (beCause I have well and truly enough photos in here already) 3 videos of a spider - Argiope sp. (not sure which one - but this is the genus the Saint Andrew's Cross spider is in) ... although it could be a Nephila sp. (which is another genus in the same family - the Golden Orb Weaver is in this genus) .
btw - yes I guess it is a long stretch for a C thing - but it was Creeping and Crawling around it's web, next to my Compost heap:











I know - too Creepy? lol

... and too late ... to make the Cut off for adding to the linky thingy, for the letter C posts, before it Closed ... oh well - I will just have to put the link in a Comment ...

hmmm - a C post and only one photo with the Cat in it (and she had to share that one with the dog!) but I am sure she will Cope ok with that.

Some Australian Wildlife and Sunsets and Storms ...

... well - sunsets and storms mainly - lol

but first - the "wildlife" photo I took today, while sorting out junk/boxes of fabric/whatever that I have stored under the pergola ...
(yes - boring way to spend Australia Day ... but DH was at work, and I wasn't one of the 50% of Canberra people who nick off down to the coast for the weekend, or one of the other almost 50% who either have a BBQ or go to one, and drink beer/etc while they enjoy their public holiday (actually neither of those % figures are that correct - there are probably quite a few people who don't do anything special for Australia Day - some because they are at work and others because they have stuff to do at home and/or just don't happen to be doing anything/going anywhere that day ... er ... like me ... LOL)

... anyway ... here is one of our wonderful Aussie creatures:



I took the photo after DD came out and saw it sitting there at the top of the kitchen window frame ... that is where it ended up after I found it an hour or so earlier - when it crawled out from under one of the flaps of a cardboard box of my fabric! And here is an Aussie sunset:



actually the sunset is off to the left ... almost behind me ... in this photo - this is looking NorthEast (roughly) over the Dunlop Grasslands - and the dog is in the bottom left corner (he wasn't in the origianl photo but the left hand side was just some boring house/etc beside the path so I cropped the photo) This was taken a week or 2 ago...

... and this was taken a few minutes later:



yes - the sky really WAS that colour!

... it also really was this odd greyish green colour a few days later:



This was a few days ago when we had some big thunderstorms - this was when the biggest one that we had here in Dunlop was coming - the sideways rain and wild wind gusts hit about 2 minutes after I took this photo - this was the same day that a few houses in Canberra lost their roof!
... and the next day, I noticed that my pile of boxes of dried plants, collected for making baskets/etc, had also lost it's "roof" - the sheet of plywood that I had over the top of it (the pile of boxes/etc was against the wall at the side of the house next to the fence where nobody goes except the dog and I, and I had made a sort of "lean to" to keep the rain off) the "roof" ended up a few feet away in the bush in the front yard - I am glad the bush was there to stop it - else it may have ended up in someone's front yard across the street!) ... the pile of plants were a bit wet, but the ones I still wanted dried out ok in the sun ... I have now sorted the pile out and thrown some of it out, and now the rest is in a couple of boxes under the pergola ... next to the boxes of fabric - lol

btw, I was going to do a separate blog post about the storm ... but once I decided to put those first 2 sunset photos in, and went looking for more photos of different colourd sky, I realised it kind of fits in here now - lol

So ... here is another photo of the storm coming



This was actually taken about 4 minutes before the one above - ominous green clouds above the pointy brown hills ...

... and this one was taken 1 minute before it (ie 3 minutes later)



Oh Oh! - where have the hills gone?! - LOL
about 2 minutes after this is when the rain squall hit - yes - of course I was standing out IN it! lol
(very handy thing this waterproof camera ;-)

- well - I had to stand out in it to watch the lightning and take photos/video of the storm clouds ... ... hmmm - seems the dog was watching the storm coming too:



... or maybe he was just looking to see what I was looking at - lol

There is a laneway beside the house on the left in that photo - when the rain and wind hit I suddenly realised that there might be hailstones or something and maybe I had better get a bit closer to some shelter in case the dog and I needed to dive under someones verandah or something ... so we ran down the laneway ... taking a video at the same time - lol - but it was a bit bumpy and blurry so I won't put that one here - I took another one as the dog and I walked down the street (we live several houses down from that laneway) ... as you can see - he didn't seem to care if it was raining sideways ... lol



This photo was taken 10 minutes after that first storm photo
(the camera puts some kind of time "stamp" in the image files so the software I use to look at/edit my photos knows what time they were taken ... it actually seemed longer than 10 minutes at the time - lol)



and yes - the sky really was that odd olive green colour.

It was also this colour about 24 minutes later:



- yes - after walking around in the storm I got changed into dry clothing and took the dog for the rest of his walk - LOL and took even more sunset/cloud/etc photos



(this one was about 10 minutes after the last one)

The next evening the dog and I went for another walk - and I took photos of this storm:



There is a bit of a hill where I walk the dog - has a great view of clouds/storms/whatever over the city!

In fact this one (same storm a few minutes later, with camera zoomed in) looks like it was right over the city



- the "hill" in the foreground is Black Mountain - and the tower on top of it is a prominent landmark that can be seen from a lot of places in and around Canberra.

Last but not least (well it was going to be the last one until I found another one while waiting for the video to not upload!) - sometimes we get sunsets like this!



this was tonight's sunset - with a rather smokey sky (the smoke has blown over from some bushfires down near the coast - which shows up really well on this satellite image ... if you want to have a look at what other images/etc you can get on that handy website, the home page is here ... the image I linked to is one of the "near real time subsets" (scroll about half way down the page and you should see that) ... but if that sounds like too much digging around then have a look at the "gallery" (the link is on the top of the page) - that is where they put the interesting looking ones.
btw ... downloading too many of those images is probably not recomended for those on dial up internet ... then again ... neither is looking at blogs with lots of photos and videos on them - lol

... talking about video ... I decided to try out the video uploading thingy on blogger (instead of using youtube/etc and linking, like I have done for the other videos I have put in blog posts - in fact I think the first one of 2 videos I posted - that was the only way to do it at the time)
hmmm ... the first one worked fine ... but the second one took half an hour ... er make that an hour ... and it took all that time to do ... nothing ... lol
but I found this while I was waiting, and decided to see if trying to upload it would kick start the video thingy ... photo uploaded fine ... video upload seems to be dead ... grrr ...



yes - another thunderstorm photo - taken in Feb. 2007 - I managed to catch some lightning lighting up the clouds (the yellowish colour on the clouds in the foreground is probably light reflected from the streetlights/city/whatever), and you can also see the southern cross (a constellation of stars that you can see from here in Australia, but not from the Northern Hemisphere) in the sky above the clouds! ... I was probably going to try and remember to post this photo for Australia Day last year, but I didn't ... LOL

hmmm ... if the video thingy still hasn't worked by the time I have gone and got a drink and come back (er ... it looks dead and I have not gone yet - think I might kill it now and then get my drink on the way to bed) - this blog post can get posted without it and I will try and add the video to it when I get up in the morning ... or should I say later in the morning, or even afternoon - seeing it IS morning ... in fact if I stay here much longer I could wander out to where I took those storm/sunset photos and get a photo of the sunRISE - LOL

[later edit, the next evening (was going to be earlier but someone else was using the computer at the time) ... re the video uploading problem last night (well early hours of this morning actually) methinks I will blame microstuffed windoze/internet exploder ... it turns out the video had uploaded, but some of the other stuff that was supposed to then happen in this post editor thingy didn't happen at this end, then the web browser totally froze when I hit the "publish post" button ... but thanks to blogger saving all this stuff as I write it so it is all there at that end anyway, it did publish the post ok ... minus the second video ... and when I just came in here expecting to have to upload it again I noticed it had put in the enclosure link up the top, but not the bit of html code it should have put where the video is in the post - so I had a fiddle around with the html and copy and pasted some stuff and now the video shows up where it should be ... (which is how I have learnt to do most of the little bit of html stuff I know - have a look at how it seems to work and fiddle with it to make something do what I want - lol)
anyway ... now this is fixed, off to do the other stuff I was going to do on the computer while the video uploaded ... like look up a map of where I am supposed to go for the work course I am doing tomorrow, so I know where I am going and can find the place, and read/answer e-mails and stuff ... and try not to get too "lost in cyberspace" while I am doing it ... lol]