Glorious

This is what I spent most of my weekend either looking at or doing.



This is my teeny balcony. I'm standing right at one end, where the door is. That green wooden thing is the barrier between the neighbour's balcony and mine. At the start of the weekend, the only things on there were the front table and its contents. Cherry tomatoes and a sad little basil plant, and some Italian parsley (I hate the crinkly kind).




On Saturday, I went with my dad to Bunnings, and we bought two punnets of tomatoes (one Roma, one 99c, I have no idea what it actually is, a dwarf something, I think?) some Basil, a chilli plant, and a tonne of dirt. OK, 50 litres of dirt, but for a country girl, buying dirt just seems unnatural, you know?

Anyway, the plan was to use a couplethree containers that my dad has at home for pots, but after we did all that running around (and it was hot on Saturday) we visited my Grandma, and she showed us a bit out the back where my aunt has stashed a whoooooole bunch of pots, and she said that we could have any of the plastic ones we wanted - I was restrained, but she kept trying to get rid of more, so I have a couple of backups, just in case.

She also bequeathed to me two of those wire chairs you see there, which are in surprisingly good condition for having had three generations of sit upons sit upon them for countless summers. Of course, they used to have that white plastic stuff covering the wire, but that's all been picked off by three generations of fingers...

So I filled the pots, planted the plants, watered them - voila! A garden. (I had to ask three people how to spell Voila. Just so you know the lengths I will go to for the professionalism of this blog - mwahahaahhaha, I crack me up)

Again, being a country girl, this was astoundingly easy. It required no digging, no picking out of rocks, no creating new garden beds out of wood or, as my father was doing last time I visited home, brick.

However, it did require a little good old Australian know how (I always think of Tom Lehrer when someone uses that phrase - 'Good old American know how, as provided by Good Old Americans like Werner Von Braun...') otherwise known as being scabby.

I live in a huge block of apartments, and this week I took, from the hard-rubbish dumping area, a round table that is now my dining table (more later), a small black table that you can see in the top picture, just, and a bed head, which I propped up between said black table and a plastic container. If I leave the pots on the ground, they're too low down to get much sunlight. And also, it's nicer like this. On Sunday, I spent most of the afternoon sitting outside, like this:





Because on a 35 degree, muggy day, what you really want to do is put a whole lot of yarn on your lap. But it cooled down in the afternoon, and even though the dropping pressure gave me a whopping headache, it was quite pleasant. Except for this dude:






Who was quite cross that I was sitting on his balcony, and almost flew into my face a couple times, which was quite alarming.

I was reading this post today, and I was thinking how, even though I love that there was so little work involved in my mini garden, it's almost an anti-climax. Where are the aching muscles and the sense of satisfaction? Apparently you don't get one without the other.


Before that, I did this:


FO! Because, again, on said 35 degree, muggy day, the best thing to do is to get the various pieces of a Worsted weight jacket, put them on you lap, and seam them. But it's good to have it finished! Sorry about the crappy light, but the whole day was weird and overcast and I didn't want to wait for better light, because I wanted to do this:



And then this:




I know you think I'm crazy early, but really. There's only 63 knitting days left until Christmas! And last week, one night when I couldn't sleep, I lay awake plotting to knit socks for way too many people. I think I have a problem. This is the same problem that convinces me that it's a good idea to take on knitting a blanket, rug, or, my latest bright idea, a towel.

A towel. I mean, I ask you.

However, having finished my sister's wrap jacket, and being almost up to the armholes on Cobblestone - this one is going so quick! All that stocking stitch in the round, I get an inch done every time I pick it up, feels like. And the yarn is yummy. Then I think I might have to knit a pair of socks for my dad, and I have a few other crafty presents up my sleeve which don't involve knitting and might not come to fruition. We'll see.







All in all I am feeling very crafty. The more so because, on Thursday, there was a very nice round dining table in said hard rubbish spot. So I rolled it to my flat. Am I a scab? Maybe. But after years of using op shop furniture, I am pretty picky. If it's not decent, it doesn't matter how cheap (or free) it is, I don't want it in my house. But there is a definite pleasure in making do, and saving things from being thrown away when they are perfectly good.


The point is that I moved the rectangular table that had been my dining table into my room, and now my sewing machine is sitting on it, easily accessible, along with tins of notions, etc. Then the drawers that were in my room had their contents emptied into the extremely spacious wardrobe (which also got a good reorganising - yes, I am the type of person who can spend a half an hour thinking about which shelf her shirts belong on. I also enjoy defragmenting my computer) and the drawers are in the living room, full of craft stuff. A drawer for embroidery, a drawer for paper and related craftiness, a drawer for my yarn stash (it doesn't count if it all fits in one receptacle, right? Except I just got more in the mail today and now it's not all going to fit) and the top drawer for whatever's on the go atm.





This meant I went through all my stuff, categorised it, judged how likely I was to finish and/or use it, and had a mini-purge. I've been pretty good since I moved at not accumulating too much crap, but my craft supplies are definitely my weak point. And some of the stuff I’ve had sitting around for yonks went, which was fantastic.

It just feels so good, not only to be organised, but to have everything available and accessible.
And to add to my nestiness, we also took a trip to IKEA, where I got a lamp for $7 for my sewing set up, and a couple of picture frames. I've got these two maps of Europe that I've wanted to hang up for ages. I love maps. I have this

(I know, dreadful picture, I'm sorry)

Up on my wall, and there's an area-correct map up above my bed. But I had nowhere to hang these two. They're from the period of the Enlightenment and the period just before the French Revolution, respectively, and they're pretty and interesting. So I framed the, but they're a little too small for the frames, so I cut some wrapping paper to size and put it behind them.

Then I pintacked them to a piece of ribbon, sewed another, smaller ribbon to the first ribbon, tied the smaller ribbon in a double-knotted bow, and hung it on the wall.

I think it looks fabu.

I'm just so crafty.