Mum and I arrived in Hobart late on the evening of the 27th, from leaving Brisbane at 8am on Christmas Day till today we have encountered/done/etc
2111km of driving
a 10.5hr boat trip
a night in Dubbo
a night in Sunbury on the outskirts of Melbourne
a visit to the radio telescope at Parkes, which you may know from the great Australian movie, The Dish
countless miles of farm land
a dominance of Coles Petrol stations in rural NSW when we had Woolies dockets
The greeness of the rice paddies
near empty roads heading south on the 25th and 26th
lots and lots of Victorians (Mexicans) heading north on the same two days.
Wathing the super-maxi Wild Oats XI cross the line and break the record in the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race
Holding the said Cup and having my photo taken with one of the crew members.
Swaying in the wind and rain on the Tahune Air Walk
Enjoying a Tasmanian BBQ with my cousins and their friends etc
Taking in the historical/touristy ambience of Richmond
I think that covers most of the things that have happened in the last couple of days.
My little collection of Christmas presents. Benni Hemm Hemm Cd from Karl – Can’t decide what I love more the artwork in the CD or the songs – modern Icelandic Folk with some Led Zep/Guns N’ Roses influence.
It was a very nice night 🙂 and now I am in the final stages of switching over emails etc, before in a couple of minutes Mum and I head off onto the open road on day 1 of our 3 day trip to reach Tasmania. See you sometime 🙂
Hope everyone has a nice and enjoyable Christmas with heaps of fextive cheer 🙂
Pabbi is currently speaking to Karl, Mum is mashing the spuds, Matthew is helping with something and I am hear, sorting things out for when we leave in the morning.
We are about to sit down to Christmas Eve Dinner with all the traditional Icelandic trimmings, then after the washing up is done, we will gather round the tree to exchange the presents. 🙂
This Christmas Card is one we recieved from friends of Mum’s but I just love it so it shall be my card to you all 🙂
Such a tragic story this tale is, one I tell with hint of sadness in my voice of a time when the light danced freely on the back of this ornament.
It started a bit more than a moon ago, when I was sitting at my desk painting glass baubles for Christmas, that I had the sudden idea to fill one with beads, it would look so pretty I reasoned, especially with the lights twinkling around it. I pulled out the bead box and some glue. I started on my quest coating the inside of the bauble with glue and then pouring assorted beads into the bauble and rolling it round to distribute the beads.
However in all my grand visions, the beads and glue didn’t agree with me as I had wished them to, the beads didn’t want to stay where I wanted them to, the glue took many passes of the sun before it dried and even though the entire inside was not coated with beads, it did look very pretty with a mass of beads in the bottom and then drifts of beads on the slides, with the glue dried to the glass in sections with no beads looking like Jack Frost had visited the glass after a cold night.
I thought she was so much stronger than she actually was, a knock against my camera when I was lugging stuff out to photograph her one afternoon sent her shattering to the ground, I remember that moment like it was yesterday in a drawn out slow motion scene in my mind. I yelled for Mum, she rushed out thinking I had done something to my camera but alas not it just the sound of a girl who had accidentally murdered her most beautiful handmade ornament. Reminding myself of the times long before us when some of the only photographs people had taken of them was once they were dead, I decided to give her the same treatment.
So I present you the most gorgeous ornament that was robbed of the chance to live her purpose in life, to adorn our tree.
Well Christmas is fast approaching and in exaclty one weeks time, Mum and I will be drawing close to Dubbo on our 2 day drive to Melbourne.
These are three styles of ornaments I have made so far, little plum puddings (which I need to find some tiny holly to add to the top), Christmas Trees and Stars inspired by Jenny at All Sorts.
You can click on the image to see the ornaments larger. The Christmas Tree is by far the easiest to make, just 2 roughly cut triangles for the tree and a thin folded strip of felt for the trunk. The tree which is shown here I have done little bullion stitches, which Mum says look like little gold grubs :), on another one I have done quite primitive cross stitches. The Plum Pudding probably takes the longest time due to the cutting and stitching on of the icing. I did not like cutting out the stars but they do look so cute especially as I reduced the pattern that Jenny provides so some of them measuere 2″ across instead of the usual 4″, so cute 🙂
That is ornament installment part 1, I have a couple more styles that I am working on currently and most of my present shopping is done 🙂
A week? or who knows how long ago, I had a super fun day with Andrea, where we spent next to nothing on great finds and spent a lot of time laughing, the shower cap on Gertrude to the left is one such find. I am the coolest kid in town because without a doubt I do have the coolest shower cap 🙂
I could bitch and moan about how life is at the moment but I am not going to do that, because we all know we hear enough of that in real life, so why carry it on here? So I’ll have a moan about Christmas instead.
My family all know that I normally full of the Christmas spirit, begging that we get the tree a day earlier this year, when can we start eating all the extra-special Christmas biscuits (coming soon to a blog near you), pouring over the yearly family updates we get from far-flung family and friends, thinking up the perfect presents, going nuttso over *Fine European* ornaments.
This year it hasn’t started happening yet, feeling bit scroogish here, so in an attempt to banish that evil spirit, I am making all sorts of cute yet primitive ornaments (also coming to a blog near your) to adorn the tree when we get it next week. I am going to haul myself down to the shops tomorrow to absorb some cheer and find those presents.
Christmas is in less than ten days.
Eleven days till Mum and I hit the road.
So much to do before then.
ohh and I almost forgot the best thing 🙂
Mum and I went into give blood the other day and I wanted to get the whole 470ml of blood out of me this time unlike the two times before so, you know I drank 4L of water between getting up at 4:25am for work and the appointment at 2:15pm. Well the blood was gushing out of me so fast I almost burst the little holding bag that that get the first dregs in. Seven and a bit minutes later, I had donated the whole 470ml! Go Helen! We won’t go into details about what happened afterwards but to say, Helen gets a bit faint headed after offering herself to the vampire… And GO MUM for having her 50th whole blood donation that day as well!
As I have said before I hate giving blood, the copious amounts of water, the faint-headedness bits and all the rest but just knowing that slight discomfort it gives me is less than that of the up to three other people who need my B+ blood.
That almost puts the Christmas hat on me, so with ten days till Christmas, I challenge no ask you to take a couple of hours out of your time and give the gift of blood to some strangers this season.
