I am going to Katherine!!!

I have some really exciting news. I am going to Katherine in August! I have never been to the Northern Territory, so it will be a great experience. It won't be all fun and games though, I will be working. The previous owners of my hospital now have a charitable foundation - the John James Memorial Foundation. They have been doing some great work, they bought some new equipment for the theatres, and have donated money for good causes. One of those was to a program to encourage kids to exercise and eat healthy.

The major project that they are working on is providing much needed surgery to disadvantaged areas of the Northern Territory. There are a number of trips planned for this year, providing Orthopaedic, Obstets and Gynae, ENT and Dental. I am going in August on one of the dental trips, which is funny cos I hate going to the dentist. When I am in a dental theatre I can't look when they are pulling out teeth, and I don't like listening to the drill. I basically pretend that I am not in a dental theatre. Give me gut surgery anyday. The reason I volunteered to go is cos the patients need the surgery, and I like working with the teams that you get in dental - the Dentists and Anaesthetists are all really nice. I always have fun working in dental theatres.

I am not sure how much time will be spent working, but I believe that there will be some free time to see some of the sights. We leave on a Saturday at 6.30am and get back the next Sunday. The only down side? (besides the 6.30 am flight?) I miss the craft show. BOO HOO. I have been every year since 1996, so that will be very difficult. It was mentioned that I may be able to get an earlier flight so I can go to the show on the Sunday, but I am not sure if I will go that option. I might miss seeing something great in the Katherine area. I will miss seeing the quilts, and I won't get to see the new yarns and projects at Yarns Galore and Threads and More - my favourite two stands at the show. My other fave is Punch with Judy, I always go to her stand first and buy the gadgets that I need.

One of the Doctors at work laughed at me last year when I was talking about going to buy gadgets at the show, he thought I meant computer gadgets (apparently the only sort of gadgets that exist) at the computer fair. I tried to explain to him that there are all sorts of gadgets used in crafts, but he was very sceptical. He did concede that the instruments used in surgery are a sort of gadget. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that one of the instruments for arthroscopic shoulder surgery resembled a crochet hook, and I said the only time I have used one was to pick up dropped stitches in knitting. A little while after that they had the equivalent of a dropped stitch inside the shoulder, so Gus asked for the crochet hook! Finally, someone at work appreciated my obsession for crafts.

I had better get going, my sister and her family are coming back from a trip to South Australia in a couple of hours. I have really missed the girls. I can't wait to see them all. We have to ring my Granma (Mum's Mum) in hospital tonight. She went to Flinders in Adelaide yesterday with chest/arm pain, and is having an angiogram on Monday. If they are not able to put in a stent, they will do a bypass on Thursday. I am sure she will be OK, I hope. I am pleased that Granma decided to have the surgery, they told her that if she didn't she would have a heart attack. I will keep my fingers crossed that everything goes ok for her, April is not a good month for our family. Monday will be the 5th anniversary of my Dad's fathers death. Bamp was a great Grandad, and we miss him. I always think of him at Anzac time, not only because it is when he died, but because every year on Anzac Day he would go around Adelaide Oval at the footy in the cars with the other returned servicemen who had played for one of the Adelaide teams. Bamp played for Glenelg, I can't remember if it was before or after the war. He had one of their jumpers on his coffin at the funeral.

Tomorrow if I get to it, I will post with a little unpicking episode I had today. I hate dropped stitches, and really want to know how I can pick up knit stitches and end up with some purls in the mix.

Must watch TV tonight

I have learnt something very important. When you can post to a blog, make sure you do it for the correct blog. I had a big oops moment, and posted this to a sock blog that I can post to! Lucky I looked at the post on the blog. While I am on the subject of socks, I have 3 sock books winging their way to me from Amazon. I would have bought them here, but no shops have them in stock. Worked out quicker getting them from Amazon. When I get them, I can make my first socks (the dodgy ones I made for Niece1 don't really count). On to the original post......


I think I overdosed on hot cross buns yesterday, because my brain turned to mush and I forgot to mention something important. If you get a chance tonight, watch 60 minutes. One of my sisters good mates Marty is going to be on. He is an Associate Professor (or maybe Professor now) at University of Canberra. He is an expert on rivers, salinity and drought. He has gotta be one of the most interesting guys I know. He isn't anything like what you may expect a science guy to be like. Just an average bloke, and very funny - he was the MC at my sisters wedding. Anything that he has to say tonight has gotta be worth listening to. And the other person that is on 60 minutes is Will Smith, one of my favourite funny guys.
I wish I knew who gave me the chocolate bunny yesterday, I have ruled out Helen, with her new hip she might have had a bit of trouble placing it inside the screen door. Maybe her hubby or one of the other neighbours? I had plenty of time to try to work it out last night, the neighbour behind me was playing piano really loudly till after 12.30am. I guess she doesn't realise that her lounge backs onto the bedrooms of me and the people in the unit next to me, and that noise travels really effectively across the courtyards. I will have to let her know. At least the dog was quiet last night, and the piano didn't start again at 7.30 on a Sunday morning as it has in the past... kinda ruins the Sunday sleep-in.
While I was trying to drown out the noise of the piano, but keeping the ears free of ear plugs in case the phone rang, I went through my list of possible things to knit next. The Clapotis with the Noro yarn? A Zhivago jumper or cardy? Maybe the boring FDK cos I got lots of balls for $2 each a couple of years ago? Or I could use the powder puff to make a cardy or jumper. It is too hard to decide. Winter is coming, maybe I should go for some kind of thick jumper to wear so I don't get tempted to turn up the heater. And I could also sew the rows of my quilt-as-you-go yummy quilt together, so I can be sitting in front of Greys Anatomy and stitching. Then in winter I could be really warm under a quilt wearing a daggy jumper and uggboots. No wonder I am still single. I am still hoping that there is a Mr Right out there somewhere. In the meantime, I will find a cat at some point to give me someone to talk to.
When is it going to decide to rain? We were supposed to get showers the last two days, I don't think 2 drops count. Hopefully the sky will deliver today after I bring in the washing - better go hang it out, and while I am doing that I can count how many tomatoes I still have very, very slowly turning red.

Gotta love Easter, until....

you stand on the scales. I don't know which celebration is worse for putting on weight, Easter or Christmas.

One of my favourite foods is hot cross buns. Liz, one of the girls at work has lost count of my favourite foods (and so have I). She thought I was obsessed by chocalate, until she saw me dive on the hot cross buns in the tea room. And I guess she watched me eat two for supper one night at work. They were Bakers Delight ones, definitely not light-weights. I have eaten 4 today, two for morning tea, and another two at my sister's for arvo tea. Yum. I bought a couple of packets for the freezer as well, so they should maybe last me till Anzac Day.

Back to the chocolate obsession, I have discovered that the chocalate machine up past the Maternity ward at my hospital only accepts exact change at the moment. On Wednesday I had the biggest chocolate craving that I have had in a long time. If I was at home, I would just eat a few spoons of milo and I would be right. I figured that the next best option would be to get a Cadbury fix after taking a patient to the ward. I was most unhappy to discover that I would have had to donate $1.60 to the machine in order to get my fix. Instead, I did a few groceries at Woolies on the way home and bought some little Top Deck eggs (delish), and a crate of 20 eggs that I will attempt for about the 6th successive year to only eat one a day.

I also bought a bag of little Cadbury eggs for work. It was only after I had eaten most of them myself that I realised that the bag weighed 475gms. I don't think the padding I will gain from that has helped with the sudden cool change that we got yesterday. Thursday was 29 degrees, yesterday was 14. I have always been a bit of a coldfish, (OK, a lot of a coldfish). I love nothing better in winter than hanging out with my ugg boots on. But the 14 degree change in temp? C'mon. I looked at my thermostat earlier and it was 22 degrees. Maybe I should have put on my uggies, cos it felt like it was cold enough to put on the heater! I didn't though, eating leftover pizza and garlic bread with some red wine did the trick. I can highly recommend the chicken italiano pizza from Dominos. It looked so good when I bought it home last night that I couldn't take a pic of it for my blog - I had to start eating it straight away. I skipped the mushrooms, and had capsicum instead. As you can guess, I don't bother with the no meat on Good Friday. I have such a strong dislike for seafood that I can't even do fish oil supplements, even the anti reflux ones leave a fish taste in my mouth. I have flaxseed oil instead to make up for my not eating fish every week. Don't think it does much to help my skin, or could that be all the chocolate that I eat?

When I put the pizza box out in the bin earlier, I found this on my doorstep. I really found him with my foot, cos I didn't turn on the light. Luckily he bounced.

I don't know who left him there, I have some really great neighbours. Pity about the noisy dog that barks and keeps me awake when I am on-call. Unless you have done shiftwork or been on-call to go in at all hours, you don't appreciate the value of sleep. Otherwise you would not play piano loudly at 7.30 in the morning, and you would tell your dog to stop barking, especially in the middle of the night.

What have I been up to? Yesterday I planted a couple of natives in my front garden. I had bought a correa called Little Cate in Katie's memory. I didn't realise till I got it home that it was spelt wrong. Doesn't matter, it is still a nice plant. I also planted a crowea to replace the two that had died. I have given up on water crystals in the garden. I had followed the instructions on the container, but with disastrous results. Three of the plants that I had put in last year died after heavy rains - they were suffocated by the crystals. I didn't realise how clay the soil was in that garden bed. I need to get some gypsum to break it up. I think maybe 3 tonnes would do the trick, man is that stuff hard to dig! I also put in some pansies, alyssum and some sweet william. I had bought them last weekend, but didn't plant them cos I figured they would die in 30 degree+ heat. They nearly died anyway.

Did I tell you what I won last year? I joined the Yates Garden Club, and entered a competition. I received an email the day after Katie died telling me that I had won. It arrived a couple of weeks ago..


I have to decide where I will put it. Can't wait to use the stinky dynamic lifter. The timing is pretty good, I had run out of seasol. I think I will give away the water crystals that came with it, I really don't like them. Here is what happened to my pumkin when we had about 60mls of rain in a night.




My wrap that I am knitting is slowly progressing. There is about 33cm to knit between the armholes. I am up to approx 27cm. Can't wait to be able to do the decreases. It doesn't look like much spread on the floor like that, but I am hoping it will look nice on. I love the colour. I can't wait till I can start a new project with my knitpicks needles. I can't decide what to knit, I have so much wool, and so many patterns to inspire. Some of my wool is no longer really fashionable, like the velveteen and another called FDK. I thought that I could maybe knit some things for around the house as practice. You never know, they might turn out good enough to wear out.

Well, that is it for the moment. Half of my long weekend is gone. Tomorrow I will be at my sisters watching a bunch of 2 year olds searching for easter eggs, that has got to be hilarious. Then I have to do some housework and get into the readings for my ACLS thing I did a couple of weeks ago. I should have read the book within a few days of the seminar, but it got buried under a pile of other stuff to read. I have about 3 weeks to read it and do the e-learning exam. Here's hoping I am never in a situation that requires me to do advanced cardiac life support. The main thing I can remember at the moment is that every second drug is Adrenaline. I hope my mind lets me remember more than that when I do the theoretical and practical exams and doesn't just go completely blank.

Off to bed, hopefully I will be able to sleep and not lay there trying to work out which of my neighbours gave me the bunny. I will see if I can make him last - Liz if you read this, no laughing!

Life gets away sometimes

(I tried to post this a couple of days ago, but blogger was not working. Luckily it saves your posts)

I have been so busy for the last couple of weeks, it is amazing how little I have managed to achieve. I really enjoyed the Canberra Show, it was great to see my friends work exhibited. I was so proud to see that QuiltingMick and Jacqui had ribbons next to their work. Unfortunately I found out a couple of days ago that a friend had a painting in the art section, I wish I had looked at the names, not just the pics.

I finally found a hat that doesn't look too ridiculous on me when I was at the show, so I bought two, a green and a blue one. I think they look pretty cool. I also managed to buy a chocolate showbag, must confess that didn't last long. Mmmm, Cadbury's.

I am really, really wishing that I hadn't found Ravelry.com. I seem to waste so much time on there, that the house is feeling very unloved. When I finish this post, I will make a batch of pancakes, and get out the horrid green and noisy vaccuum cleaner. Probably not as noisy as the neighbours dog that woke me in the middle of the night, or the loud piano playing at 7.30 this morning. I wish that if people lived in a townhouse with neighbours very close by, and insisted on having a piano, that they would get double glazing and keep the windows shut!! I am doing so much call and late shifts lately that my sleep is becoming very precious. I missed out on Canberra Quilters last night because I was just a bit too tired to enjoy it, so I sat at home and watched some of RPA and Lost instead.

At least all the extra call has allowed me to buy a toy - an MP3 player - to keep me company when I go for a walk (if I can ever be motivated to go for one on the rare occasions that I am not on call). Now I have to figure out how to put music on the computer, convert it to WMA or MP3 files and move it onto the player. I also have to download some podcasts, the main reason for getting my toy. What I really, really want to figure out at the moment, is how to get the Electric Quilt software, EQ5 and EQ6 onto my computer on the general user, not the administrator, without getting horrid error messages. I am very not happy with Vista and its stupid user accounts when it comes to putting my quilt design software on the system.

Better get organised with the cleaning, then I can watch Grey's Anatomy that I taped from last week. I had worked 12 hours Friday, was back 6 hours later for another Caesar Saturday morning, which meant I got to Maccas just before they stopped serving brekky. Love the bacon and egg muffins, and the hashbrowns. Two of each was just the perfect brekky. Sunday I spent the whole day at work learning about Advanced Cardiac Life Support, so as you can guess, I had an early night from brain drain. Watching McDreamy and the rest is my reward for catching up on the housework.

Will post pics of the hats later, and hopefully I can figure out how to add links to the website in the post. Don't know how to do that

Show weekend

This weekend is the Canberra Show weekend. I am going for the first time in 20 years, with my sister, her hubby, 1yr old and 2yr old. Mum and Dad are also going, and are generously giving me a lift. No point taking 3 cars when 2 will do. I can't wait to see the craft with Jacqui's knitting and Quiltingmick's crochet. The other thing I am interested in is the cats. I would like to check out the different breeds, and maybe pick one that I will like at the end of the year when I get a replacement for Katie. I am hoping the donut van will be there as well....mmmm donuts! (one of the essentials in life).

I received my replacement knitpicks on Wednesday, thanks to my great neighbour Pedro who kept an eye out for the postie. He is the best neighbourhood watch that anyone could have. I am very lucky in my little complex, there is usually always someone around. You tend to get that when there are 3 nurses, someone that works for themself and retirees. One of neighbours is selling, so will be interesting to see who moves in. Anyway, back to the subject ofthe knitpicks. I have to say I am very happy with the service of Knitting Inspirations. They send by express post, so that meant that I made my order last Tuesday, and I got the replacement needles by Wednesday. Gotta love Express post, especially when the things are from Perth. Helen did such a fab job, she even put all the needles and cables into the appropriate sections of the binder. I can't wait to finish my wrap so I can start something on the knitpicks, I have done about 12cm of the back, only 21 cm to go and I can start on the other front. Than I just have to choose which kind of decrease to use (on the right side, so needs to be left facing).

I don't know what my next project will be, but it will definitely be from the stash. It should probably be from some of my older yarns and patterns, and practice something a bit techo. Even if it is just something I wear around the house, it will be useful to try new techniques. I really should dig up the jumper I was making a couple of years ago. I think it was almost finished, from memory all I had to do was sew on the sleeves, or maybe I had done that already. It is in the chaos of the sewing room, but I think I know where.

This weekend is supposed to be an 'all about me weekend', one where I do stuff like patchwork and knitting and a bit of housework. I decided a while ago that when I am not on call for a whole weekend to use that time to spoil myself and do crafty stuff. It nearly happened this weekend, but am doing call tonight for one of my mates who has something on. I won't be having much time next fortnight, I think I am on call heaps.

Wasting the weekend away

It is amazing how easy it is to achieve absolutely nothing on your days off. This morning I went to pick up a parcel from the post office. My knitpick needles had arrived. I used the parcel as motivation to get the bathroom and toilet cleaned (except for the shower, that can wait till tomorrow). When I did open the parcel, I was a tad disappointed. The beautiful ring binder is faulty, the rings don't close properly. Pages will either fall out or get caught on the partly open rings. Not very happy. I have put a pic below, but it doesn't show it very well. If the dodgy binder (worth US$20!) is not bad enough, one of the 4mm needle tips is bent! I have heard so many great things about knitpicks needles, but I am very disappointed with their quality control. Am waiting to hear back from the shop I ordered them from, hopefully I will be able to get an exchange at no cost to me. I know if you are in the US and buy direct from Knitpicks they will send you a replacement immediately.

Since my morning disappointment, I have wasted time on the computer (what's new!). I have been trying to decide whether or not to download the latest microsoft updates. I am a bit wary of these, last year one of the updates killed Mum's computer. Apparently it was a common problem. I have already had enough issues with this puter. I removed itunes after I found out that it had changed registry settings and made the computer think that the dvd drive no longer existed. I want itunes so I can easily listen to podcasts, but am not game enough to put it back on the little machine.

While I was busy wasting time, I clicked onto my blog to update it, and found that it looks a bit weird. There is no little bar running across the top of the page with the dasboard or sign in links. There is a little 'info icon' hiding behind the title. Very strange. I think I will clear my cache etc to clean up the computer a little.

On a happier note, my new technique for outwitting the birds has worked. The rotten buggers keep eating my strawberries as soon as they turn ripe enough to pick. I started to rearrange the leaves and the strawberry stems so that the strawberries were hidden under the leaves. It worked, I was able to enjoy a strawberry after hanging out some washing.

The forgotten Cucumber

I have been a little disappointed with my vegie garden. I did have lots of little baby cucumbers growing, but they all died. I have given all the vegies some phostrogen (tomato food) to make them all flower and fruit - hopefully that will do the trick. When I was watering the vegies yesterday I went around to the back of the pots by the fence and found this...the forgotten cucumber hanging down behind the pot. That will make some nice salad.



I have now got more tomatoes than the measly 2 that I thought were all that I was gonna get. One of them is starting to turn red, so am dying to eat that one. My pumpkins are doing the same thing as the cucumbers, dying as babies. I picked one the other day, so will have to try it. LOOOVE pumpkin. I noticed lots of little white flying bugs under the pumpkin leaves yesterday, will have to find out what to use to kill them, maybe they are the cause of them dying before they get bigger than a 50 cent coin. I have learnt one valuable lesson, as soon as you think about picking a strawberry, do it - otherwise the birds will enjoy it instead.



Canberra Needlework were having a closing down sale the other day, 50% off everything. I went into the shop and felt so guilty, I hadn't been in there since before I bought my house. I sorta felt like it was my fault, even though I only made really small purchases in the past. I walked out with 3 patterns, a pigma pen and a clover chaco marker in my little pink paper bag. One of the bag patterns is for a bag with round handles. I will use the round handles that my Nan gave me years ago. They have been sitting in a box looking for a better home - I am so happy that I have found the perfect home for them.



Here are the pics of the yarn that I got for $2 a ball at the Cassidy's sale. The red will be for something for Niece2, she looks great in red. The blue sirdar snuggly will be something for me, when I figure out what I will make with it. It is 10 balls of DK yarn, I am not sure yet what I will do with it, have been searching all pattern books and mags.





Speaking of mags, I have been sorting out my magazine stash. I have nearly emptied the bottom shelf of my bookshelf. Here is a photo of all the mags that I have culled. I have been doing it in all my spare time over the lat week and a half. I have a system where I write on the pages which mag and issue they are from. I have also started to write what the block is to make for easier filing. At the moment I have them sorted into folders under categories like: angels, cats, bags, techniques (ie quilting, batting, labels etc), stars, triangles and squares. I will have a bit of a reorgansation and put each category into alphabetical block order...one day. I have the pattern sheets tossed into cardboard magazine holders. I need to organise them properly so that I can find the relevant template when I need it.