Zzz ... ? ... Zen and the art of stitching?

[Note: this sounded like a great post - in my head - while I was out walking the dog an hour or so ago! ... I wonder how much of it I can remember now that I am actually IN here typing it all up?]

[Another Note: the dog walk was actually a day or so ago now ... but I came in here and started typing this about an hour after walking the dog ... spent an hour or 2 typing it, then went and took photos, came back in here and typed a bit more, and did a pile of editing, and somehow I seem to be still up at "stupid o'clock" again.
btw - I can type quite fast, but it usually takes me a while to think up what I actually want to type]

Zzzzzzz ... oops?! ... I slept in? LOL
... actually no ... well ... er ... yes - not having to go to work at the moment (I work at a School - so am officially on leave for most of January) means that I have been staying up until "stupid o'clock" in the morning and sleeping in until lunch time most days ... but that is not why I am almost probably definitely too late for a Z post for ABC Wednesday (because the linky thingy is closed ... sigh ...)
I kind of didn't have any fantastic ideas for Z ... and then what few I could think of kind of paled into insignificance and didn't seem worth me raving on about, in light of what has been going on with all the floods (and some bushfires, just for variety) here in Australia (and in a few other places for that matter).

so ... this post sat here as a draft with this small list of ideas in it and nothing else:

Zed (as opposed to Zee)
Zonked?
stuff with Z genus/spp names?

The were a few things that I thought of while I was logged in doing my X post, or maybe it was while I was typing up the other thing I posted on Tuesday?
hmmm 3 short lines doth not an interesting blog post make - LOL
Zed is how we say the letter Z here in Australia ... well - except for way too many kids who have been watching a bit too much American TV and say Zee instead of Zed ... sigh ...
Zonked is probably what I should be instead of being up too late getting lost in blogger/doing my e-mail/playing with Gimp/on Facebook/surfing on Youtube or some other weird website I found/whatever.
And I could have found any number of Zoological or botanical/etc things to post about ... like spider species/genera with names starting with a Z ... or Zooplankton ... or Zygospores, Zygomycota, Zygotes ... etc etc etc ... I could have even posted about Zooxanthellae (except I only just found out what those are a few minutes ago - while getting side tracked on a website where I was originally looking at stuff about spiders - lol - well - a link to a sea slug forum sounded too weird NOT to go and have a quick peek at ;-)
(btw ... the first 2 links go to some random Amazon.com search results ... the third one goes to the Australian Museum website - where I was looking at spiders, and the sea slug forum - lol)

But ... doing another rambly nonsense post, for no other reason than to ramble on about some Z stuff, just didn't seem right ... so I went back to getting lost checking the e-mail in the yahoogroups I am on, and checking Facebook - because I know people on both those who have been flooded out, or nearly were, or have family who were, or who live in areas near the flooding but I wasn't sure exactly where they were until they posted to say they were ok.

In between times - I spent some time doing some of the sorting out I was hoping to get finished during these school holidays, but probably won't again (sigh) and a lot of time watching the varous 24 hour news channels on TV, and watching a few other odd TV shows that DH (Dear Husband) and I watched together because he is a shift worker and was on days off ...

Then a day or 2 ago I did start to think of half an idea of posting something about Zentangles ... which seem to be all the rage among some of my e-mail and Facebook friends (and yes - that link is to the blog where I kind of accidentally WON a Zentangle drawing by being the 100th person to subscribe to her blog! - I posted about it here but it had not arrived in the mail yet so I didn't post a photo of it) ... I have not got into Zentangling as such myself - but I have been doing the odd similar sort of doodly thing ever since I can remember ... at least as long ago as when I was in high school ... so maybe I can do Zendoodles instead of Zentangles? (especially seeing Zentangles is a name that the "inventor" of that name has copyrighted).

Seeing everyones Zentangles on the WWW has actually inspered me to do a few doodly drawings lately - mostly during a couple of interesting public lectures where I realised that I did not need to spend the whole time taking copious pages of notes that I never get around to reading again anyway - so in the spaces between the bit of note taking I did do - I doodled ...

This is one I did in the front page of my "visual diary" ... which I started drawing/writing/pasting/etc  stuff in aproximately a year or so ago (very aproximately - for some odd reason I didn't write in the date I started it, or write a date on the first few things I put in it ... except for "2009" on an envelope of leaves I collected in 2009 but had in a plastic sleeve with something else for at least a couple of months after I collected them, and a date in March 2010 printed on a bit of paper that I then wrote/drew something else on and stuck in the book)



The book was actually some old one I found in a drawer in one of the science labs at work - in fact I think there were 2 of them and both had a page or 5 in the front that were used and they were going to be thrown out - but the rest of the books were still nice and clean looking and the rest of the pages were still blank - so I tore out the used pages and kept them (I think my original idea might have been to write out some poems in them or something, because I did already have a visual diary with blank pages, but I had used it for a bit and then kind of stopped).  I also drew a quick doodle on the front ... actually I think I remember doing that in about Febuary and that it was just after I started putting stuff in there ... but the cover of the book is some sort of shiny stuff and I used an overhead projector pen, so even though it was a permanent marker it has almost all rubbed off again ...
Here are a couple of more recent doodles, done during 2 or 3 different public lectures I went to late last year:



I didn't glue these into the book yet because I was thinking of scanning them ... I might still do that sometime later - then I will have a lot clearer/better image of each of them to play with in GIMP  ;-)
Anyway ... when I was thinking the other night (probably one of the nights when I took the dog for a walk at "stupid o'clock" in the morning, which is why I sort of half forgot about it again until I was out walking the dog at a more normal hour this evening ;-)  I started thinking about maybe I should do a post about what I had been sewing and maybe not worry if I did a Z post or not ... and then I got to thinking about what I might say about my sewing, and about the floods that I was watching stuff about on TV while sewing some of it ... and I got to thinking about how that sort of sewing is possibly a kind of stress realease type thing ... and I reaslised it is kind of rather ... Zen ... ! LOL   ... so - I guess I was doing some Zen stitching ...

[Yet Another Note: this is where I finally got to the point of this post, and the title actually might make some sense to anyone mad enough to still be reading this]

It started out as a bit of calico fabric (an off white coloured cotton fabric known as muslin in the USA) because I wanted to do something for the "Summer Challenge" for the textile art group I am in - ACTTAA and the only rule is that is has to be some kind of cover for a diary/notebook/visual art diary/etc and it has to start off as/with a bit of calico.
so - I went and found a bit of painted calico that I had - it was one I had from an art quilt group activity day, where we played with painting on fusible webbing (stuff like Vleisofix/Wonder Under/Mistyfuse/etc) with acrylic paint and ironing it onto fabric ... and I used this particluar bit as my clean up rag - if I do fabric painting (or dying), I always find/take a bit of scrap fabric to use as a clean up rag - and I find as much interesting stuff to clean up as I can - so that I end up with a very painty (or dyed) bit of interesting looking fabric to play with later on ... this one just happened to be a sort of greyish greenish blue, because those were the colours I (and probably the person next to me ;-) had been using.
Once I had dug out and ironed that bit of painted calico, I then grabbed something as a batting/backing material (needed something a bit stiff but not too stiff, and soft enough to give the stitches some texture but not too thick ... and I found a couple of weird cleaning rags (unused ones - I "borrowed" a couple from work because nobody liked them anyway, and gave them something else instead) that were just perfect. (even more so seeing the front was a "cleaning rag" too ;-)
Then I machine stitched some swirly lines all over it, and then spent ages doing hand stitching all over it using various threads (mostly, but not all, cotton sewing thread - because I had that in the colours I wanted).
This is what I ended up with:




and this is the back - showing the weird cleaning cloth I used underneath:



I drew that black line around my 2011 diary - which is what this is the cover for - before I did the stitching (and I allowed about 1mm for the shrinkage that happens when you stitch on something like this) and then did a line of straight machine stitching on that line so I could see where to stop when I was hand stitching on the front.

Oddly enough - the colours were not inspired by the floods (but I am kind of happy that the colours kind of suggest that they might have been, if that makes any sense) ... the worst of the floods had not happened yet when I chose that particular bit of fabric, and the threads I used on it. I was originally thinking of using blue and green thread and maybe some purple and some gold metallic stuff I have ... but then DH (Dear Husband) and I took DS (Dear Son) and his girlfriend out to tea at an Indian Resteraunt that they like, and I saw this hanging on the wall:



yes - it just happened to be almost the same colours as my bit of partly stitched fabric (so far I had only done a little bit of green and blue stitching on it) and I realised that I liked the greenish blue and silver better than the original idea with the gold in it - and I also have some nice metallic silver threads - so I used those ...

hmmm - it isn't easy to see unless you do the "click on it to get the original size image" thing - but I didn't realise just how much gold was also in that Indian quilt! LOL
Anyway ... here is what it looks like sewn up into the diary cover:



one side ...

... and the other side





both sides with the diary open upside down:




diary open so you can see there actually IS one in there - lol



- of course I had to be "me" and put a matching tassel thingy on the end of the bit of ribbon in the diary.

btw ... that one is actually my second thingy I have made for that challenge - I made this one late last year:



... but this first one was never meant to be the only one - it was something I did fairly quickly (a couple of weeks after we were given the challnge, which isn't due to be finished until the Febuary meeting) when a couple of left over bits I had been using to make ATCs (Artists Trading Cards) jumped out of a pile of sewing stuff I was digging around in (looking for something else I probably never did find) and told me to use them - I didn't have a new diary for 2011 at that time, and was not sure what size I was going to buy, but I had seen some small ones for $1.50 at the newsagent ... not sure why I didn't find an old one the same size (I have a few - I keep my diary each year, just in case I need to go back and look when I did something) ... I probably wasn't sure I wanted a diary that small anyway (not much room to write in all the things I sometimes do) ... so I grabbed a small notebook (one of those ones that is just a pile of sticky notes with something odd printed on them ... the sort that get handed out as advertising/etc) and decided to make a cover that would fit something about that size (which was also a good size to make a calico cover with those ATC things on each side) and if the diary didn't fit I would use it for that, or make a notebook/art book/etc that did fit. Next time I went to that newsagent (the next day on my way home from work ;-) I bought the diary ... it did just fit (if I took the plastic cover off) but a day later I found a bigger diary (the one I now have inside the Zen stitched greenish blue and silver cover ;-) at a different shop, for the same price as the small one ... so I gave the small one to DD (Dear Daughter)'s boyfriend because he said he needed one when he saw me fiddling with it the day I bought it. I might make some sort of arty farty mixed media art book thingy to go in that cover ... and/or I might use it as a cover for my business cards, if I ever get around to designing and printing any hmmm - kind of not a lot of point having a business card if I don't have a business ... LOL ... but I do sell one or 2 odd things in the shop they have at the yearly textile art exhibition and guess I could also use a business card, with my name, e-addy, and blog URL, as a label for the items I put in there to sell ... (or at least try and sell - not everything gets bought - if I don't want to keep it why would anyone else? ;-)

hmmm - this post wasn't meant to be yet another ratty "all over the place" one ... but it sure looks like it is! ... not really very Zen at all? ... sigh ...

It is also Zzzz time again ... and I have not put any of the photos in yet ... probably because I have not put them on the computer yet ... I was going to do that while I typed this, but I kind of never got around to doing that ... and I realised I still needed to TAKE some of the photos ... which I have just been doing for the last half an hour (I got busy digging around finding a few other things I needed/wanted photos of, that were also in the same pile of stuff, or nearby ... oh ... and I took a photo of the 1 Chritmas card (out of about half a dozen I got sent and about the same number I got given at work) that actually got hung up this year (oops?) and then I took a few weird photos of spider webs amongst the stuff on the top of some shelves that I realy should dust a bit more often than every 2 or 3 years!)
so ... I might add the photos, and anything else I need to write about them (depending which ones I actually put in here) and then hit the "publish" button sometime tomorrow.

Yes I DID find/take a few more photos to add in here ...

- a pile of bits I will be making something with soon, but after the other thing I have to do first, the art quilt group I am in (part of Canberra Quilters) did a Christmas swap - where we swapped envelopes of bits, with the idea that we will make something with the bits and bring it to the March meeting.



The other thing I have to do is for the same group - but due at the Febuary meeting ... so of course I have not started mine yet ... but I will do that in the next few days.

a spare postcard, and an extra not quite big enough one I also did the same thing to, from the Spring postcard swap we had on an Art quilt yahoogroup:
(I sent 4 but I think I forgot to take a photo of them before I sent them - but they were the same design as these 2)



... and above them is a brooch I made a year or 2 ago, because I don't think I had ever taken a photo of it and it was hanging around with all this other stuff (the brooche is some fabric - probably more leftovers from ATCs or something, with dog hair and shells stitched on to it)

These are the 4 wonderful postcards that I got back from the swap:



(they are from Ann, Marg, Diana and Buffy)

And this is an ATC ... but not mine ... it is one I got from Linda who offered to swap a couple with other bloggers - I sent her one and she sent me this one (except it was the other way around because she had already made hers and I was a bit slack and took a while to make one to swap back ;-)



maybe it would have looked better NOT sitting on its envelope/card/etc?
... but the card/etc were nice too ;-)
(the ATC is made from selvedges - clever eh?)

This is something else I made late last year:


in fact I was in the middle of making it when I found out about that diary/journal/notebook cover challenge and maybe could have got away with using this ... except the background fabric is not calico (but the backing is ;-)  Actually I don't have any particular use in mind for this yet ... I needed something to take somewhere and sew, and threw togethe this fabric with some batting and backing and Zoomed up and down it with some wiggly lines of machine stitching and then did all the hand sewing ... I might use it as the top of a box or folder or something, or I might just hang it on the wall as it is ...
(btw ... the hand stitching on there is done with crochet yarn, crochet thead, some beads, linnen thread, some yarn I finger spun out of hair from my dog (with a bit of the cat mixed in on one end of one bit), and a little circle of my hair as well)

And ... because I just couldn't do a Z post without at least one weird Zooological type photo - here is a snail:



He/She (snails are actually both at the same time ;-) was on the path when I was walking the dog the other night ... looks like this one was being a typical Canberra driver - keeping one eye on where it was going ... while the other one (er - 3 in this case?) was on whatever else it was doing instead of just driving ... lol

btw ... I did think about saving this last photo for my A post, but seeing I have something else in mind for that - here is a photo of the Illuminated A Zentangle thing that Jane sent to me:



it is rather Amazing!
(it is approximately A5 size, which is half the size of A4 paper usually used for letters, or bills. I didn't realise just how incredibly fine the detail is in her work until I saw this one in person, rather than on a computer monitor ;-)

and now ... I seem to have run out of evening again, and seeing that I have to get up in the morning - and go to a sewing morning with Canberra Quilters and then have lunch and a vitit to the art exhibition at the cafe and visitors centre at the Australian National Botanic Gardens with a group of people from the Textile art group I am in, and it is now almost "stupid o'clock" again - I had better go get some Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

er ... have I really been doing this for 6 years?!

It seems a few bloggers i know have been having their "Bloggerveraries" in the last few days ...

Chloe's Place  started blogging on Jan 7th 2005 ... and   http://www.pintangle.com/ on Jan 9 2004
so ... that got me curious enouth to look how long I have been blogging - so I went and had a look when my first post was  - hmmm - Jan 11 2005 ... !??!!! - turns out I started my first blog 6 years ago today! (well - it is "tomorrow" when I wrote the first half if this, but it is now "today" when I am about to post this ... just figured I would write most of it now/then (er this is getting got confusing) so it is done ... but the "most" turned out to be less than half because I kept raving on about all sorts of stran stuff, as usual  ;-)

6 years?! - how the heck can it be that long ago? ... where has the time gone?!  (probably into that black hole that swallows most of my time when I sit in front of the computer screen - lol)

so ... as I just said on a comment on one of those 2 blogs - I guess that means I should post something here - lol

This is what else I said in that comment ... and half way through the last bit I realised "why am I writting this here and not on my OWN blog?"  lol

I tend to be a bit slack and sometimes go a month or more between posts if life gets in the way, but I like blogging because it is somewhere to write a diary of sorts ... oddly enough, I have never been the sort to keep a diary in a book, but I love having a blog to put things on when I feel the need to record them ... just a pity that half the things I have wanted to record in my blog were such wonderful sounding blog posts ... in my head - lol - I often think of things to blog while I am out and about (often when walking the dog and have time to think ;-) but then I don't seem to get time to actually post them (or sometimes I write part of the post, but have not yet put the photos onto the computer so I kind of don't get back to finish them later - lol)


er ... I should be writing all this on MY blog - LOL

so - here I am writing this ... (with a couple hours break in the middle while I watched a TV show with DH [Dear Husband] and then cooked my tea ... didn't need to cook him anything - he has gone to work and wasn't hungry before he left ... and if he had been hungry - he probably would have cooked, as usual ;-)

Oddly enough - I think I am still blogging for the same reasons I was when I started - a blog seemed like a good place to put stuff I felt like writing (and/or already was writing in e-mails and comments on other blogs) and it seemed like a good place to post a few other things I had in mind (some of which I STILL have not got around to posting here, or anywhere else - oops?) and ... well ... quite frankly - I will talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime ... and it doesn't nescessarily stop me if nobody is actually listening ... LOL
Funny thing is ... at least one or 2 people actually ARE reading my blog ... I am not sure why you are reading this one when there are so many others out there - but I am glad I am providing you some entertainment ;-)

I suppose I had better link to my first post on here ... seems I have not changed in the last 6 years - still as weird now as I was back then ... LOL
I think I also should do something momentous or something to celebrate - trouble is ... what sort of momentous thing AM I meant to do for a "blogiversary"?

(if anyone has any great ideas - I might have to think about it for my 300th post or something? lol)

hmmmm, seeing I missed posting at 1 year, 2 years etc ... and even 5 years ... and also missed the other things some blogs celebrate - my 100th post and 200th post and 250th post  - maybe just actually POSTING something here more often than once every week or 10 is enough?

maybe not ...

Something warm and fuzzy?



well ... it IS fuzzy, and it probably was warm seeing it was on a cement path on a sunny day ;-)

Ok ... I went away and did stuff, and came back and got side-tracked uploading videos to youtube - so far none to go here - because they are for a possible future post ... maybe a D post for ABC Wednesday ... which seems to be what most of my blog posts have been for in the last couple of years ... although I may have posted about most of those things anyway - the ABC Wednesday thing is just a good excuse to post about a few odd things at the same time, and it was meant to be a good excuse for me to try and do at least 1 blog post/week ... but it only sort of half worked sometimes - LOL

btw ... a few things have changed since I started blogging ... uploading pictures, and videos, is way easier ... first time I put a photo in I had to put it somewhere on the www and link to it ... then the "somewhere" died and I had to go back and edit about 10 posts to put the pictures back in! ... now I can just upload photos here ... and videos ... or I can put videos on youtube and get to them from in here and add them with a couple of mouse clicks ;-)
oh - and there is a button to do this not sure how long it has been there ... this is the first time I have used it - I worked out how to do it with html a few years ago and have been doing it that way ever since ... LOL
(even though I have noticed the button there before - the last couple of times I did it I forgot there was a button until after I had put the html tags in myself - lol)

anyway ... now it is after Midnight ... so now it IS the 11th - so it IS my "bloggerversary" or whatever you like to call it ... and sometime in the next hour or 2 (at "stupid o'clock in the morning) is probably a good time to post this because that is when most of my blog posts happen, and probably was about the time of night I signed up to blogger and posted the first post ... yes - it says I posted it at 1:34am - lol (although the post times worked a bit differently then, and they usually were the time I started typing the post, rather than the time I hit the "publish" button an hour or 5 later - LOL)

Hmmm ... just went digging around among my blog posts ... trying to find a URL ... which I didn't find there (either I didn't actually post that one or I didn't find it) ... but I eventually remembered enough about the website to find it with google ... it was this website ... I am having a look to see if I can see the floodwaters in Qld in the "near real time" images ... bit cloudy but yes - I think I can ... amazing just what sattelites can see ;-)
Those images are not quite "I can see your house from here" ... u have to go to google maps for that - lol ... but they are quite intresting to look at. (The image gallery has some amazing pictures, and if you are more adventurous/feel like fiddling around leaning how to do stuff the real time imagery and the near real time subsets are fun to play with ;-)

I guess I should actually mention the other thing I was going  say about digging around in my blog posts, instead of just the side-track about why I was doing it - LOL
- I noticed that I since have changed backgrounds here and there - there are some pages where the text looked ok when I posted it on a dark background that I had on here at the time ... but now it is kind of almost impossible to read (unless one cheats and highlights it with the mouse ;-)  so I guess I have to go back and do something about that sometime ... (of course anyone who has subscribed to this blog as a feed or by e-mail won't even see the backgound I have on here ... but you will if you want to go hunting for my old posts - lol)

Er ... I am not sure if I can think of anything really momentous ... the huge quantities of rainfall and the resulting floods in Qld/etc are kind of upstaging me anyway ... been busy reading about it on Facebook and other places online ... am really glad I live on a hill ... and hoping the flattish ground my parents live on up there is far enough away from the major rivers etc, and that their home is high enough up that they are not flooded out ... last I heard they were not that worried, but their lawn was rather soggy ... but that was before this last lot of rainfall ...

btw ... it might be 6 years I have been blogging ... but it is nearly 20 years since DH and I got our first computer, and roughly 15 years since I first started surfing the internet here and there (I didn't do it that often, because when I did - for some reason I would "loose" about 8 hours! lol) it is now 13 years since I started using e-mail and then very quickly ended up on a quilting yahoogroup and it was probably not long after that when I saw someone's geocities web page, clicked on a link to see what one had to do to make one and a couple hours later had one of my own ... and so on ... LOL

eek ... it is now well and truly "stupid o'clock" ... time to post this mess and "hit the sack" ...


goodnight ...

Yucky?

Yes ... time for a letter Y post for ABC Wednesday ... Yes - this might actually be sort of on time (if I finish it today, that is).
I was tossing up wondering what I should post about ... noticed I had already done one called "Yikes ..." kind of want to do something with spiders in it (kind of related to some fun I have been having on faceobook - putting spiders in my profile picture, and posting status updates with links to spider websites ;-)   and the profile picture I have up there at the moment is a golden orb spider, which has a Yellow web - so maybe I could do one about Yellow stuff? ... [Andrea starts rummaging around in my photos looking for more orb spiders and other yellow stuff] ... hmm found a few Yellow flowers and I have a Yellow dog ... but there are already photos of those on my blog ... but I found a few Yucky things I have taken photos of - I know ... seeing most people don't like spiders, or some of the other stuff I like taking photos of - how about I do a "Yucky" post - and put a whole pile of gross stuff all in the one post and get it out of my system? lol

so ... in no particular order ... here we go ... a bunch of Yucky photos I took last Year:

A Huntsman of some sort::



I think it was on the wall outside the back door (can't remember offhand, but the background looks like the outside wall of our house)

A garden orb weaver that I found while walking the dog one evening:


actually I think I nearly walked IN to that web while taking a photo of the tree!
I also have photos of these in the back yard ... again - nearly walked into one of them when it built its web on the hills hoist (clothes line)


A soggy wet worm:



on the path somewhere during one of the lots of rain we have had recently.

A soggy wet dog - having a good old time, in the water that was running down the floodway in the rain:



he was actually playing one of his favourite games - fetching rocks/stones we threw INTO the water!

A spider on my hairy arm:



I found this when tidying up on/under my desk at work, picked it up and then realised it wasn't a daddy long legs ... so I looked for it on a spider website I found last night, and discovered it is a spitting spider!
fascinating spiders those - http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/australian/Scytodidae/Scytodidae.htm

Dried up cow poo in a paddock:



taken while walking the dog a couple weeks ago.


Dead things in spiders web:


taken in the same paddock as the cow poo.

Spiky spider in a spiky weed:


this was the owner of the dead dragonfly in the previous photo ;-)
I am not sure what it is - went looking on that spider website ( http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/australian/Spidaus.html ) and found that it is probably some species of orb or wheel weaving spider ... and ended up LOL @ a newly described genus called ... Backobourkia (I wonder if that is where they found it? - "Back o' Bourke" is an Australian expression for any place that is way out in the middle of nowhere ;-)


Soggy wet mud where i had just spent the night camping:


yes - that blue tarp was where I had just been sleeping - I woke up, carefully climbed out of my swag, packed it, and my pillow/quilt/etc up on the table with my other gear, and took this photo - and the only thing that got wet was my feet, the water bottle and flip flops (thongs/jandals/whatever else you call those things) beside it, and that blue tarp! - I had managed (not sure how after half a dozen beers ;-) to find the ONE spot in the tend that was about 1mm higher ground than the rest of the ground in there! ... but if I had woken up about 10 minutes later I probably would have got wet because the water kept running in. This was the Sunday morning of the big 4WD show out at Queanbeyan in about Febuary last year - it kind of got rained out ... this was one of the things I was going to post about for the letter F ... but kind of didn't get time.

half disected hearts in a science class at the school I work at:


one of the less mangled ones, where you can actually see the valve and stuff like they were supposed to - some of the students mucked around (as usual) and kind of ended up with diced mush ...
Another spider ...
with a packed lunch?


and I didn't notice until I was looking at the photo deciding if I wanted to put it here - the spiders bundle of food looks like it has maggots crawling out of it! - so of course I had to put it here in my YUCKY post!
Most people go to the beach and look at waves and shells etc - I take photos of spider webs on the rocks!


this was in the middl of the year when DH and I went to Tasmania. (I also took photos of the water and the sand and shells and stuff)

Also taken on the Tasmania holiday - my bowl of miso soup going all curldy and weird looking:



Miso soup seems to do that ... actually made some quite interesting patterns at times. When I first tasted it I thought it was a bit Yucky ... kind of tasteless and weird ... so, I figured I might see if putting some wasabi in it made it taste better - it sure did - YUM!  (Miso soup is now one of my favourite foods ... but only if I have some wasabi to put in it ;-)

again ... go to the beach and take photos of ... Yucky old seaweed and slimy foam?!


well ... I liked what it looked like!
(that was some beach in Tasmania too - it was evening and DH sat in the hotel room reading a book or something and I went for a walk on the beach in the dark ... slopping around in the wet sand/etc as the tide went out ;-)


er - I only got through about half of my "2010" folder of photos - but I think that might be enough for one blog post!

... and I only used SOME of the photos of spiders and caterpillars and mud and stuff that I have - I found so many spider photos that I may have to do Arachnids for my A post! ... and I could do one for Insects and Mud and Prickles and Caterpillars ... but I might have to start doing some nice ones too - like Art and Crochet and Beads ... and I guess You are all wishing I had done Yarn for my Y post! (I might have if I had actually thought of that before now - LOL)

if you want more "yucky" stuff - go to that spider website ...
or maybe visit the what not to crochet website - lots of yucky stuff there! (ditto whith a few of those other "what not to ..." type websites)

hmmmm ... just did a search on amazon - and there are a LOT of books about Yucky stuff! - In fact there are a whole pile of them: Search Amazon.com for yucky or ... Search Amazon.com for spiders 


ok - time to post this before I have to do my usual and say "I WAS going to post this Yesterday but ..." (and then still not post it until it is a week, or even a year, later - lol)

X marks the spot ...

... where ABC Wednesday has moved to - LOL

now ... eXactly what should I post about for X ?

maybe the fact that I am usually eXtremely late with my ABC Wednesday posts? (my V/W one, which isn't about a "VW", is still sitting as a half written draft ... might just re-cycle that into a normal post ... or I can probably think of an eXcuse to make it fit another letter ;-)

surely there must be a few words that actually START with an X?

[Andrea googles "X"]

hmmmm ... I think I did that one other time around - lol - if you want to know what comes up then I guess you can go google it yourself ... and get to see what odd thing they have instead of their logo (or if they just have "google" there) ... today it is something with Roman numerals in it ... one of which is X  - lol

X is usually used as a variable in algebra/other maths stuff ... but if you want to see how eXciting maths can be - there are other ways to approach it than just crunching numbers ... I recently "lost" an hour or 2 here at this interesting website - LOL (I also lost a few hours at a few other websites too, including B#$%^%&^ Facebook - lol )

talking about X being an unknown ... I actually DO know this bloke - (I might see him tonight actually - seeing I will be at the friend's place where I know him from, and he might turn up for a visit ... or he might not - one never knows with him) - http://www.mikixdues.com/main/page_musicvideos_music.html ... and he gave me a copy of his CD a while back ... and what I heard when I hit the play button (which is what comes up first when you hit play on the page that this link goes to) was not quite what I was eXpecting ... (I wasn't expecting that me - a middle aged mum - would nescessarily  like the stuff on a CD that, from the stuff on the cover, looks like it belongs to one of my teenage kids - but it is quite different - and I like it! LOL)

hmmm ... I won't post any X rated things, but I could bore you all and rave on and on about X chromasomes and X - rays and stuff ... or I could actually POST this before it is too late to add it to the linky thingy ;-)

but I might chuck a photo in here first ... because I can ... lol

If you abbreviate Christmas to Xmas it starts with an x ... and I just dug around and found a photo that was one of many I took with the vauge weird idea of making them into Xmas cards to e-mail/blog/etc ... so I am just firing up GIMP (an eXtremely useful program ... not sure why anyone pays for those other image editing programs when one can download this one for free!!!) ... so I can "draw" a star on it so you can "borrow" it and have a Xmas card for next year (or an eXtremely late one for this year ;-)




Anyway ... maybe I should have made a New Year photo/card instead? LOL

Ok ... I did ... LOL



If the above image isn't doing anything and doesn't have any "fireworks" - you will have to click on it (for some odd reason, and it might only be in the preview I can see before I post this and be ok once this is posted, it works when you just go to the direct link for the image, but not in the actual post)

and now ... I should stop messing around trying to teach myself to do transparent animated .gif images in GIMP (I learnt lots - like not to use white words when you are putting a picture with a transparent background in a place where, anywhere but this actual post, it will end up being displayed on a white page! lol) 
... and I should go do something useful ... like get ready and wander over to where I have been invited to celebrate the New Year - LOL


oh ... one other thing ... I can't do a post about X marking the spot without mentioning going fishing in the boat with Dad - where, if we actually caught any fish, he would always joke about putting an x on the side of the boat so we knew where to come back to next time ...

Merry Happy Whatever

... it is you are celebrating (or not) today ...

I just won something!

... when I was least expecting it - LOL

no - not the lottery/lots of money or a car/house/etc  (I wish) ... seems I have won a "Zentangle" drawing ...

... oddly enough ... I was not trying to win this one (I didn't even know it was up for grabs) - I was trying to win a different one - this one ... and in the process of doing what had to be done to enter that, I had to become a follower of her blog (which I wanted to do anyway ;-) 
So I dived over there, and hit the "follow" button ... and went and walked the dog ... and came back to find a comment on Facebook to say that I was her 100th follower and had therefore won a Zentangle, just for being her 100th follower!

a what?

a Zentangle ... a kind of drawing/doodle thingy ... her blog explains it ... they seem to be the latest craze ... well actually they have been around for a while now I think ... oddly enough - the "doodles" I have been doing on and off ever since I remember (at least back in High School) look a bit similar ... seems I had already invented my own version? LOL

I should do some more doodles/drawings sometime ... actually ... I have done a couple recently (I kind of got inspired after seeing Zentangles on peoples blogs ;-)
... but I have not taken photos of them or scanned them yet.

hmmm ... I have not had a giveaway on my blog yet ... kind of missed/never got around to it at 100 posts ... and missed 200 and 250 ... maybe when I get to 300?  or maybe I should work out when I started blogging (er ... just looked at the date on my first post - oops - missed the 5 year aniversary too - lol)  ... and if I did have a giveaway - I am not sure what to give ... I might have to make something ... won't be anything huge or expensive though ... unless people start paying me 1000's of dollars for stuff I make or something ... which is about as likely as me finding out I really did have a rich cousin of a great uncle or somesuch, who I didn't know about, who has decided to leave his money to me, rather than anyone who is more closely related to him ...

pity I still have not got around to checking the crochet granny square patterns I used to have on my Geocities page (I know that some of them had a mistake or 5 in them) - I could put them up as a Celebration that I have been blogging for 5 years and 1 1/2 months ... gee ... it is THAT long?! LOL
(and - yes - feel free to ROTFLOL @ the fact that I have only posted about 260 posts ... plus a dozen or so on my other blogger blogs, and 4 or 5 on a few other blogging sites I tested out here and there).

"... I am a teapot, I am a teapot ..."

Actually, this isn't a post about Teapots ... but it will do for my ABC Wednesday letter T post, which I am almost Too late for ... I was Thinking about posting something else (about Torrential rain, among other Things) but The I found This (the mostly written post that is below this bit I am typing in pink)... and figured if I quickly add this bit and Throw it up There - Then it will be done ... and the other stuff I want to post about can be posted for my U Thing ... (Unless I just do that as an ordinary post and Use something else for U).

So ... here is a Totally strange example of how Time and I just don't seem to get on Together ... That, or it is just another example of a Terrible blog post ...

I have had this post saved as a draft since January ... but there was nothing In it until about September [when I wrote some of it] ... and I can't remember what the heck I was originally going to post about ... but It will do for a title for an ABC Wednesday post for the letter I ... which Is the letter we are WERE up to a few weeks ago ... although I am still wondering where the last several weeks have gone - last time I had time to post an ABC Wednesday post [the last time before I wrote this bit] we were only up to the letter C ... and I didn't have time to post what I really wanted to post about anyway (it involved too much time fiddling around with photos - some of which I had not even taken yet, let alone put onto the computer - lol). I did type some of an F post ... but I never Found time to Finish it ... (pity - I now have about 3 ideas for stuff I can post about for the letter F and I keep missing it!)

Anyway ... I had better get on to what this post is meant to be about - seeing it is something that actually does fit the title!

The main thing that has HAD been keeping me busy for the last few weeks, is WAS finishing all the weird stuff I was making for the ACT Textile Arts Association's "Garden Tea Party" exhibition - which is what fits in with the teapot title ... that and the fact that I think that once people have seen some of the weird stuff I have made, I will have now proved to all and sundry that I am totally and utterly insane ... I must be - at the moment it is 4am ... and a few days before the exibition ... I came in here to send an e-mail and check if I had any e-mail I needed to know about/do something about - after having stayed up way too late finishing off a few things for the exhibition, because I have to deliver them tomorrow, in my lunch break ... yes I am still up after 4am and I have to go to work in the morning!!!   ... for some odd reason (maybe because I am too tired to realise that "just having a look to see what letter we are up to" was probably NOT a good thing to do right now?) I ended up looking at what the last thing I posted was, and what posts I had saved as drafts, and hunting for one that might fit the next letter we are up to ... which at the moment will be I ... now lets see IF I actually get around to posting this in the next few days before it is too late for It to be my I post ... lol

nope, I didn't - LOL

[Andrea goes and sleeps and comes back to this a day WEEK or 5 later]

I totally forgot I had started writing this, and started another post, and then changed the name of it and finished it, and posted it just In time to sneak in for the letter I ... but ... It was about the Garden Tea Party exhibition ;-)
I also did a J post, then got busy/went away and totally missed K, but I snuck in a Late L post Last night ... and I found this while I was looking to see if I had already started a post I could/should use for N, Next week (I didn't need an M idea - I have already started doing a new M post last night - we will be up to that letter tomorrow) ...

I Notice that this one is Not an N post ... Or an O post or even a P Post ... but can/will I remember about it when it it Time for the letter T?!

Or should I cheat and schedule it to post itself when it is The right Time?
(Trouble with That is - I still have to remember To go and add the link To the linky Thingy ... so There is probably no point in even Trying to do that sort of Thing)

hmmm I Think I actually AM posting this when I said I would - at "T Time" ... but probably not the same T Time I was Talking about ... I Think I missed it That Time and now it is the next Time around ... (seeing That Two alphabets usually fit into a year and I started this in January and it is now December).

I probably should Throw in a couple of photos ... must be something T related That I can quickly find in my photos ...

How about a Tree?

... with pretty marks where The rain has been Trickling down the Trunk.

And - a "secret santa" present, wrapped in "Tin foil"

(Actually aluminium foil, but that doesn't start with a T)

anyway ... Time to go ...

beofre I get Totally silly ;-)

(but first, I should add the Tags That I almost forgot to add)

Still Life?

I took this photo on my desk at work today:

well ... they say that "Life is a bowl of cherries" ... well Someone did (can't remember who ... maybe I should "google" it and see if I can find out? ... So - I just did that - aparently everyone and his dog said it, or Something Similar, and Some have even Sung Songs about it) ...

... and this bowl of cherries is not moving anywhere.

- so it is Still, and it is life, so does that make it a "still life"?  ... or am I supposed to actually draw or paint it before it is a "still life"?

Actually ... I can do an approximation of that with the "Art effects" in the photo editing software - LOL

not sure I am that fussed with that "work of art" I am sure I could do better, if I tried harder (funny - my school report cards used to say that ;-) ... but I didn't want to Spend too long Stuffing around with photos because it is almost "Stupid O'clock" and I probably Should go get Some Sleep Soon.

but ... Somehow I couldn't Stop myself - I had to have another fiddle:

That is a bit better ... but I Should Start with a photo that doesn't have a Strange looking Shadow that Stuffs things up.
(it would have been a bit hard to avoid the Shadow actually - I used the flash in this photo - the photo I took without it was blurry - and there is almost always a Shadow with the flash ... especially with close up - because the flash is to the Side of the lens ... So the angles are Slightly different - so the lens can See the Shadow to one Side ... or Something like that)

I guess I could do Something really Silly:

(and I Solved the "Strange bit where Shadow was" problem by cropping it out ;-)

hmmm - I think that last bowl of cherries could be MY life?

btw ... I did start typing a Q post for ABC Wednesday, but it kind of never got posted ... nor did an R post (which I think I started adding to the end of my Q post so it was going to be both) ... and my S post was going to be Something else, but I won't have time to organise the photos in time (in fact I just noticed that this is too late for an S post too - the linky list has closed already - hardly Surpising Seeing it is now Tuesday evening and Therefore Time to do a T post - Tut Tut Tut ... "Tempus Fugit" and all That ;-) ... so I might post this Shortly anyway (if I get around to putting the photo onto the computer once I have walked the dog and done all the other Stuff I have to do this evening) ... or maybe post it Tomorrow ... and just add it in the comments, and I will either just post about that other thing, that was originally planned as my S post, later/not for ABC Wednesday, or I might Save it for Some other letter I can make it Suitable for ...

Oh - btw - I am Still alive ... just been busy doing other things besides organising myself enough to get around to getting my photos on to the computer and blogging ... Sigh ...

[a bit later]
ok ... dog is walked, camera memory card is in the computer and camera software is having a look what is on there (it Seems to do that rather Slowly Sometimes) ready for me to transfer the photos to the computer, which I will do Shortly, and keep typing Some more of this post while that happens ... 
(It might be a Strange way to do things, but my posts don't get typed in the order they get read, which you might have noticed if you have been brave (mad?) enough to read Some of the posts where I have changed colours every time I have come back in later and added more stuff - I start typing then add bits in later at the top, bottom, middle, etc as I think of bits to add there ... so they sort of makes sense to read, but what you read first is not always what I typed first ... in this one I typed a bit at the top, and the bit about P and Q posts, then came back and typed the bit just above what you are reading now ... then I added the photos below here and typed the stuff to go with them ... then went back and added 2 more cherry photos and wrote some more Stuff to go with them ... then came back to this bit and am typing this ... and now I might add a few words/fix a few typos if I see them and then post this ... once I have gone and Said Something about Sunsets that I just remembered I was going to Say at the end of this post. ... are you confused yet? ... I think I am ;-)

This WAS going to be a post without all the usual Silly Stuff and Stupidity that I Seem to have been posting lately ... but ... Somehow I ended up with Some Silly Stuff to Say ... (and I took Some more photos, and then when I went Searching for those and the cherry one I found Several more photos - which is Several more than I thought I would be Sticking in this post - oops?)

... it Started when I realised that by the time I got out the door with the dog, it had Started to rain again ... So it was a rather Soggy walk, involving Several S words, like Slosh and Slippery and Sliding in the mud and Stuff ... although even if it had not Started to rain again - the ground/grass/etc was So wet the doggy would have been Soggy anyway ... Same with my Shoes ... actually I wore my Slippers (really a pair of moccasins, that I Sometimes use as Slippers, and that Sort of need a wash anyway so I wasn't bothered about them getting wet and Soggy) I wore them because I didn't want to get my Shoes that I usually wear to walk the dog even more Soggy and Saturated than they were, because I might want to wear them tomorrow (er ... make that "today" now that it is after Mindnight - lol). They were Still Slightly Soggy from when I took the dog for a rather long walk last night - it wasn't raining but it had been all day - and besides the fact that all the grass/etc was wet, I also stepped in what I thought was just some shallow water/a very wet patch of path - but it turned out it was a puddle to rival the one that poor "Dr Foster" Stepped in when he "... went to Glouscester, in a Shower of rain" ... Seems he "fell in a puddle, right up to his middle, and never was seen again." poor Sod ... lol
(hmmm I wonder who wrote that poem? [andrea "googles" it]  hmmm - it seems nobody knows who wrote it ... but the version on Wikipedia ends differently than the way I learnt it as a kid ... I think I like "my" version better ;-)

Anyway ... here is the Soggy doggy:

he was licking his feet dry, while I was busy messing around with the camera ...

... I was taking a photo of Something on my Slippers:

a Slug?  No ...

when I looked closer I noticed it was ...

- a fuzzy caterpillar, that decided to hitch a ride inside ...
(I guess it is lucky it Stayed on my Slipper, because if it fell off I may have Stood on it)

here is another photo, of the caterpillar curled into a circle in my hand, just before I put it outside (in a plant pot under the front porch).

This one might be worth clicking to see the big photo - its fuzz looks quite pretty because it has tiny droplets of water in it ... glistening like jewels - I guess the caterpillar was dressed up in its finery ready to go out for the evening?
(probably going out for dinner ... without realising that IT was probably the main item on the menu?)

... talking about Strange Slimy things like Slugs and Such - all sorts of things come crawling out in the wet weather - look what DD found on the bathroom window the other night:

 
ok ... the bottle is full of dog shampoo, but what are those things on the outside of the window?

- a Snail,

 and a slug

actually there was more than one Slug, the others did not show up in the photo (or they crawled onto the other window/the wall/etc before I took the photos - which I took from the inside)

Slugs and Snails like the rain (I have to look where I walk if I go outside - so I don't get Slimy Sticky Squishy Slug/Snail Slime on my Shoes or, if I am barefoot - which I often am, Squished on the Soles of my feet - ugh!)

This Snail was climbing the bush in the garden a day or 3 before I took the photos of the bathroom window.

(you might have to click to get the full size photo to see the snail ... although I can see where it is - but that is because I know where to look ;-)

There is one other S word that I don't think I will mention here - because I don't want to Start getting Scads of Spam comments ... and I don't want the Sort that I would be more likely to get if I mention THAT word on here ... So ... I will just have to describe this as Some beetles ... making more beetles:

and ... talking about ensuring the Survival of your genes ... I think that is what these 2 butterflies might have been trying to do:

They were down the bottom of Black Mountain somewhere - I have been walking there a few more times lately - I walk from work in to the middle of the city (which is just the other side of the mountain) and go to whatever I have decided to walk into town for, the DH meets me in there and we go out to tea ...
which kind of defeats the purpose of the excercise of walking in there - LOL
Yes I did say THEY - there are 2 of them - the Second one is below and to the left of the other one (about half way between it and the bottom left corner of the photo) - it has its wings folded up so you can't see the bright orange - it blends in with the Sticks rather well! There were actually Several (dozens even?) butterflies flying around chasing each other ... often in pairs, but sometimes there would be 3 ... 2 males chasing the same female maybe ...

Talking about bugglies and Stuff, and other Small items of wildlife ... the other day, I Saw Something in the bottom of the washing basket when I went outside to get it (to put more wet washing in to hang up):

hmmm ... there is definitely Something IN there ...

yes - did you really think I could write an "S" post without at least one Spider?!!!!

it Seems this Spider had Sorted out Some lunch ...
(and, i fI remember rightly, I even managed to tip the Spider out into the garden without it loosing its lunch)

Speaking of things that catch and eat flies and other Small insects ... I found (on the memory card of photos I have just put on the computer) Some more photos of whatever Species of Sundew (Drosera sp.)  this is:

this one has lots of Shiny droplets of whatever that Sticky Stuff is (the stuff that the insects get Stuck in) - this is another photo that looks really pretty if you click on it and look at the full size version. (well - I think it does ;-)

and talking about pretty things - one last, but not least, S thing:

Spook - curled up on the bed - with the Sole of one of her feet Showing - LOL
(one can also See a round black Spot too - she is a rather Spotty, Splotchy looking cat ;-)

wow ... an S post and no Sunset/Sky/Sundogs and Such ... there were a few Sunset and Sky photos on that memory card ... but nothing that really Stood out above anything else ... and I have lots of Sunsets and Skies in other posts so I figured I Should Stop Searching for Stuff  ... it is now well and truly "Stupid O'clock" ... time for me to Sneak in to the Shower and then Slide in to bed ... I guess one advantage of me being up So late - I Should be tired enough to go to Sleep quickly - which means less chance of being kept awake if DH Starts to Snore ...
(if he Starts Snoring when I am Sleeping, I Stay asleep ... but if I am awake ... it keeps me awake until he Stops for long enough for me to go to Sleep)

btw ... don't hold your breath, but - if I get time in the next few days, I might post most of that P/Q post, which doesn't have the photos in it yet (that is why it didn't get posted when we were up to P and/or Q and/or R) but I won't put the photos in that one - because I have only written some of what goes in between the photos, and I can put that, and the photos in another post ... if I have Time to find the photos and put them in there it can even be my T post (T for Textile art, rather than Q for Quilts and the other Stuff I was going to use for R but then decided to do for S, but Still didn't get it organised in Time)
Trouble is - I really Should be posting my T post Today (as in Wednesday ... which it now is, even though it was Tuesday when I came in here and Started Typing this post, and there was still a bit of Tuesday left when I came back and put some photos onto the computer and Typed the rest of this Strange Stuff) ... but I am not sure if That T post will happen or not - Some of the photos I want to use are not on the computer yet, and Some of them might not have even been Taken - Sigh ...

If I don't get Time to do a T post, then I will just have to find another letter to make it fit ... we should be up to W when things get a bit less busy for me - so I can post about "What I have been making all year" to cover all the quilts and crochet and other textile art stuff I have done and been meaning to blog about but not got around to it ...

btw ... I just took a couple of Stupid photos of the dog ... DD got up for a P and called out to me to turn around and look behind me - and there was the dog Sleeping in one of his favrouite Strange positions - Streatched out on his back, legs in the air Showing the whole world that he is a reall HE (he has not been "Snipped" So to Speak ;-)
No - I am not Sticking the memory card back in the computer and putting that photo here ... I do need to get Some Sleep!
(I have been having early nights for the last few days, but these days it only takes one Stupidly late one and I am Stuffed for the next couple of days ... Sigh ...)

goodnight ...

(I have read through most of this once, but still keep finding typos ... but if there are any more - then too bad - they can Stay ... LOL)