Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Couple more knitted items finished

Finished a nice little knitted blanket for Veronica, mother to my daughter's partner, Rick

Veronica has not
been well - she had bad bronchitis at Christmas so with winter coming, and Toowoomba being a very cold place, I thought a little cuddly blanket might be a good idea.

It is a modification of the pattern By the Sea Shell and Wave Afghan
by Katherine Power Johnson

Here's the link - it's a free pattern!
http://www.freepatterns.com/content/content.html?content_cat_id=4&type_id=N&year=2008&month=2
If this doesn't work, it is in Creative Knitting, February 2008 - a free pattern! Or email me!



I made it in Red Heart Super Saver in Watercolour Multi and Lavender Solid - I changed the pattern by substituting 5 ridges of garter stitch between the bands of shell and wave stitch. I crocheted a simple scalloped edge all around, .
using a double treble (triple treble for my American friends).

Made another Baby Albert and beanie in Villawool Saturn 7 ply - that is the last of this very nice yarn - 37% wool with 27% mohair and 35% acrylic . Very soft and such a pretty colour and a joy to knit with on 3.75 mm needles. Last of my blue train buttons too!








And another Baby Albert! Used up some left over anonymous yarn in blues and made a little hat to match this one too. Teddy Bear buttons from Dave in Florida.


I have been busy unravelling half knitted donated items in order to re-use the yarn for other garments - I still have a big box full of these to unravel and wash. I started a Wavy Doubles crocheted baby blanket yesterday in yellow, pink, white and grey - all pale colours I might add - it should look good - but as the original sweater was knitted in short stripes, I have a lot of ends to work in as I crochet!

So I shall be posting pics of this in the next few days.

My 63rd on Friday 28th - how did I get to be this old??

Montville Again!!




I visited Montville with my friend Edna when she was staying here recently. If you are not too sick of it, here are some more pictures of this fascinating little place!

This lovely spidery looking white flower is a native lily.

This mysterious looking plant we think is a type of flowering ginger - the red part is bracts, the actual flower is the yellow protuberance - if you look carefully you can see a couple of dead yellow blossoms further down.


















This wonderfully exotic yellow and red flower is a heliconia, a relation of both the banana plant and the Bird of Paradise, or strelitzia.


The plant with bright yellow 'puff ball' flowers is one of my favourite shrubs, xanthostemon chrythansus



On the right is the Clock House - you enter it by a little bridge over a lily pond full of red carp.

Inside it is like fairyland, walls of clocks, freestanding clocks, cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, antiques, futuristic, even a grandfather clock with a glass front showing every cog and wheel of its interior workings!

I filmed one whole wall of little cuckoo clocks, all the pendulums moving - fascinating! Some of the cuckoo clocks are hand carved masterpieces from Germany, Holland and Switzerland. And they have the cutest little Weather Houses from Germany and Music Boxes to die for , highly polished and inlaid, and with the most beautiful painted designs on them.



On the same side of the road as the Clock House there is a restaurant, The Montville Rose, which has a Water Mill on its outside wall - fascinating tourist attraction.











And then you have a wonderful Candy Shop across the road, which sells Crystallised hard candy - what we would have called rock or boiled sweets! The shop is divine - the candy is expensive but so pretty to look at - they have candy with lettering all the way through - saying, "Thank You", "I Love You" and even "Bugger!"

The shop is pretty too, clean as a whistle, and very attractively set out!

And as a bonus for tourists, they have daily demonstrations of how they make the candy - including pulling taffy!




such a beautifully old fashioned looking little shop!

And everywhere you look is colour - this is a tibouchina, one of the many flowering trees and shrubs that line the village street. There are even old fashioned roses and David Austin Roses growing outside the various shops and sidewalk cafes.


And this little travelogue wouldn't be complete without a bird picture - here is a very interested Kookaburra watching us - he stole a sausage right off our barbecue in the picnic park a few minutes after this picture was taken!

Monday, March 17, 2008

Dave's Absolutely Gorgeous, Beautiful Buttons!!









Some of you may know that I have been getting my Buttons on ebay from Dave Rundell in Florida - well Dave wrote to tell me he is no longer selling on ebay - BUT - he IS still selling buttons.




































He can be contacted by email on Daverundell@cs.com - he is selling packages of gorgeous buttons, like these pictured, for 75 cents a package, plus relevant postage. And his postage charges are very reasonable, believe me! I live in Australia, and it is still worth my while to buy from Dave in USA!! So for details of how many to a package, and postage, please get in touch with Dave direct.

I must emphasize that I have no affiliation with Dave Rundell, but I am very happy customer, and am sorry he is not selling on ebay any more.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Cheeky little bird!


Oy, you! You with the camera!!!

Yeah, that's right, you!

Can't you see I am hungry?




Honestly - I thought you'd never offer - hmmm... fresh bread ....yum!

Got any more?


Ok - I'll just help myself then, shall I???








What about me? I'm a butcher bird, can't eat bread - against union rules!





Two Cat Ladies......


This is Queenie - our Burmilla - she is a very old lady now - 14 years old.

She likes to sit next to me when I am knitting - but she doesn't like any of my junk up there with her - so she pushes it all on the floor!
Grrrrr!

See how she is flexing her front paws, kneading, in and out? That is one happy pussycat!



She has the most remarkable green eyes - almost a chartreuse colour.










Of course, this is where she would rather sit - on my cushion, with me not there!



This is our other lady cat - little Nipper. We found her lost and starving in the shopping centre car park and of course took her home. She is a trifle crosseyed but very sweet. And very helpful too. Just see all the things she helps us with!



She supervises our gardening.











Helps put away the vegetables.








Demonstrates the most relaxing way to take a nap on the deck, or on a ladder when repairing the light fitting.




















And of course - giving Dad your back to support his foot on when he is alighting from said ladder.





And of course it is very important to show us how to fold that clean laundry - just right!

A visit to Montville and Mapleton Falls


Visited Montville on the Sunshine Coast recently. This is what used to be the old Post Office, now the Misty Morn Restaurant - in 1975 I was offered the house next door, which was the post mistress's old house, for the princely sum of $20,000 AUD! It was on a 1/2 acre block, came with several cats and a goat, and an English oak in the garden. I dithered around and didn't buy it. Now it is worth about 1.5 million...............................

Montville has become a tourist centre, with boutiques, galleries, craft shops and hotels etc. Back then there was the post office, a pottery and that was it. It is on the ridge of the Blackall range and has wonderful scenery, mountains, waterfalls, bush walks and rain forest.

This is a view from the top of the range, looking out to sea.

It is a great farming area - everything grows here! Sugar cane, macadamias, avocados, bananas, ginger (both edible and flowering) pineapples, and it is wonderful grazing land too. It gets very cold up here in the mountains, much colder than Brisbane and it has a very high rainfall - no drought here, and no water restrictions!


The local school, pictured here (right opposite the house I didn't buy) is very old. It is very progressive and is totally "nut free" no nut products allowed for any of the children to eat, even peanut butter - because of allergies and connections to learning difficulties.















It has a very old school bell
originally used on a cane farm in the 1800s to call the Kanakas ( black sugar cane workers) in from work at the end of the day. It was donated to the school in 1897




The bell was restored and a new bell tower erected in 1983.






The children get to take turns to ring the bell after classes and for breaks - this little boy was obviously having a ball!




This is the little chair they stand on to be able to reach the bell rope!
















This is the Sunshine Coast Crafts Shop - run by a local co-operative of artists and craftsmen, and I am very lucky to have some of my baby knitwear on sale here!





This is right in the main street of Montville - such a pretty little village - all along the street which is beautifully paved, there are plaques set in the paving pointing out things of interest.

Lots and lots of magnificent trees some are giants!

















The trees carry lots of epiphytes; wild orchids, staghorns, mosses. If you are planning on visiting Queensland in the near future - this little village on the Sunshine Coast is beautiful - it has an English pub, restaurants, sidewalk cafes, many jewellery, antiques, and clothes boutiques - a shop where you can watch candy being made (especially pulled taffy) and a shop to die for that sells pure alpaca yarn (plus knitted alpaca items)

Further along the range is another little village called Mapleton - and Mapleton Falls. I have uploaded a video of the view from the lookout platform - it is pretty high up - the palm trees you can see at the bottom that look so small, are being viewed from several hundred feet up in the air - they are really full sized palms! There are two falls in the video, one looks like smoke it is such a fine spray! They are quite little falls, but the scenery is spectacular!


















The above pic probably gives you a better idea of the height ! And as someone who doesn't like heights - AT ALL - and who was standing on a flimsy (to me) little viewing platform, trying to photograph straight down by bending over the railing of said platform....................*shudder* oooh I think I've frightened myself!

This is a most beautiful flowering ginger plant - these grow like weeds in this area!












Lovely spooky rainforest too!



And a pretty little woodland path......... this place is paradise on earth - guess who is sorry she didn't buy that house all those years ago??????