Knitting goodies

I love getting presents in the mail!
Particularly knitting goodies.

The lovely piper and rory designed a custom bracelet for me. I already have a Port Adelaide, a Buffy, a Doctor Who, and a Harry Potter cuff. Knitting was feeling left out.
So I got the phrase ‘i knit, therefore i am’.
With the only guidance being ‘something scripty’ I am so pleased at the way it turned out.
It’s like she read my mind.

And it arrived the same day as some sock yarn from whorled domination.
All of the pretty colours!
I really wanted to buy some yarn from a local supplier, buy local. So this is what I found.
Unfortunately it appears that the seller is unwell – so I hope that he (assuming from the name) recovers quickly and nothing is too serious.

I’m still fondling the yarn and will sleep sweetly tonight dreaming of all the sock yarn possibilities.

20120416-211514.jpg

20120416-211659.jpg

20120416-211705.jpg

Grr Argh

I just bought the cutest thing!!!

And I think this officially makes me a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan.

Any regular Buffy watchers would know the zombie that crosses the screen at the end of every episode. Well now that sound is my email ringtone (check out this post on how to convert mp3s to ringtones, and used a free YouTube to mo3 software to grab something off YouTube) and I wear this bracelet on my wrist.

Justduckydesigns is the shop and I am super impressed. I absolutely love it!! And now have my eye on a pair of doctor who bowtie earrings


20120314-103311.jpg

20120314-103319.jpg

20120314-103333.jpg

20120314-103355.jpg

A certain ambience

We got new curtains installed! That has been on the list since day 1.

When I bought the apartment it had some hideous blue curtains.
Hideous and really didn’t match what I wanted this space to look like.
I bought some grey and black striped curtains pretty soon after, but I didn’t do the research well enough. They were expensive and they didn’t fit.
That annoyed me no end.
They were a constant reminder of how much I spent on an ill fitting product.

So when it came to replace them I didn’t have a big budget. So ikea to the rescue. The curtain rail was ~$10 (score!). I didn’t like any of the non-sheer curtains, but we need privacy. So I had the idea to buy bulk sheer ones and group them.
I think it’s worked well.
I love the flexibility I now have.

They can be sheer during the day, and bulked up during the night.

With the new couch, the place is starting to look cohesive.

It’s so nice having a space to call my own to come home to.

20120119-170449.jpg

20120119-170456.jpg

20120119-170502.jpg

20120119-170513.jpg

20120119-170509.jpg

Happy New Year

Happy Christmas and New Year to you all.
I’ve enjoyed my little break. I finished most of my Christmas knitting and baking with some time to spare and even made a few pressies for myself.
I’ve had a bit of time off work to relax and unwind, but after being a month old at the new job I only took the Public Holidays off – but still two long weekends in a row was quite nice.
I spent a lot of time catching up with friends and family, my liver took a bit of a beating but I’m glad to be back talking to you all.

Last year was a fantastic year. I saw so many great bands and have so many good memories. I learnt how to knit (and can’t imagine a time when I haven’t knitted), I bought a sewing machine (and vaguely know how to use it), and I tried my hand at embroidery.
My boyfriend moved in. We had a few notable events together. I looked after him when he got his wisdom teeth out, we endured the great flood (two bedrooms of sewerage is not fun), gave police statements (whilst our apartment was unliveable due to the great flood), and eventually got life back to normal. We both changed jobs (for the better), celebrated new couch day, new mattress day, and new ipad day.

My best friend moved in down the road. Together we’ve laughed until we cried, cried until we had to laugh, seen cricket matches, football matches, and spent a lot of time at The Belvoir (The Getaway Plan, Portishead, Cold Chisel, & Gotye – in the space of two months).

We ended the football season where we started it, at The Inglewood. How much of our time and money has been spent there this year? I don’t know, but it’s been a faithful friend.

And soo much good music. Southbound started the year with a bang, Soundwave, On The Bright Side, Future of The Left, And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, The National .
And new albums too!

The Hairpin and Ravelry have become two very close friends. Between them and all my blog friends, there is all of my internet time.

So here’s to 2011 – and here’s to 2012 being just as good.
Cheers
Happy wine drinking season. Hope you all have a happy boxing day test eve tomorrow

Red velvet cupcakes

this wonderful recipe for velvet cupcakes is divine.
Not that i’ve done extensive research, but my first try at red velvet was a success and i’m blaming this recipe.

Or mostly the recipe to turn ordinary milk into buttermilk.
I am never prepared enough to buy (or remember to buy) all the ingredients for a recipe. And buttermilk always seems like a waste unless I’m planning on baking scones and pancakes in one week.

So that pretty much sold the recipe. And my oh my it was delicious.

To the point that I baked them before dinner, iced them just before going to knitting group, and when I got home there was three missing.
They were really good.

Om nom nom nom.

20111114-215118.jpg

20111114-215124.jpg

20111114-215129.jpg

20111114-215135.jpg

A leisurely lunch at Blackbird

It was a Thursday.
Lunch was beckoning.
And it was too nice a day to be inside. So my packed lunch went in the fridge for another day, and a colleague and I walked down to grab a bite to eat.

We spotted Blackbird, and even though I have a phobia of actual birds, birds in name only don’t scare me.
We had a look at the menu on the window (always a good start), found something that we liked and so decided to stay.

We were both delighted. The service was fantastic, the food was divine, and it really made the most of the view.

It’s not generally a good sign when there’s no one else in the resteraunt but it really didn’t matter, we both had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch.
In particular what impressed me was the attention to detail. The waiter (silly me, forgot to catch his name) really made us feel welcome.
It’s not often I notice someone’s professionalism, but that’s what he had. Customer service was excellent, he had a light, jokey manner without being too over the top and made us feel comfortable and at home. You could tell that he more-than-likely enjoyed his job, which is a pleasure.

And then the food, was so much more than I was expecting.
I ordered the steak sandwich, having some preconceived expectations about steak sandwiches in general and baulking a little at the price ($23 is on the expensive side for a sandwich). This should not be called a steak sandwich. A sandwich it was not. This was a little slice of heaven on ciabatta.
The steak was cooked just the way I like it. Drag a cow past a heater once or twice (go on picture it). With the combination of the dressing and the rocket, and the really thick frites was just divine.

My colleague had the barley risotto, with beetroot and parmesan. Which apparently was wonderful as well. The bright pink dish was a little off-putting at first, but once we asked the waiter what was going on (and he knew what he was talking about) it made perfect sense.

And then we ordered desert.
Chocolate Fondant with chocolate syrup and white chocolate ice-cream.
We really should have shared desert.
I now understand what recipes talk about when they say the centre should be gooey. This was soo gooey.
I gained 5 kilos while eating it, and enjoyed every one of them.

The drinks list was very extensive, however being during the working day it wasn’t that kind of work lunch.
I think the next after-work drinks party will have to be held there. Even if it’s just to see the interior of the place.

With the location on the water, the service, the chocolate!, it’s a pity that I’m leaving this job soon and I won’t be able to have lunch there.
Definitely a keeper.
It was a little on the expensive side, but worth every penny.

20111110-142827.jpg

20111110-142835.jpg

20111110-142844.jpg

20111110-142849.jpg

20111110-142854.jpg


20111110-142858.jpg

Blackbird Restaurant on Urbanspoon

blogging for confidence

Allow me to be all introspective for a post. I was doing my usual blog reading / blog discover this morning and I kept stumbling across similar themes. Blogging for confidence particularly struck a nerve. Since this blog has just turned 1 (happy blogday to me!) it was a topic that I wanted to explore and write about.

I have always been the shy girl. The girl in the corner who dressed a little bit differently and thought about different things.
The girl who felt like Daria except not as smart. The loner in the corner of the library.
The girl who dressed in all black and read Anne Rice novels, when no one else was reading about vampires.
I wore headphones as shoelaces and got in trouble for wearing (fake) doc martins instead of school shoes.
I’ve had pink hair, purple hair, green, blue, and even tried polka-dots once. I’ve gone from a shaved head to nipple length hair and every style in between.
I always preferred to set myself apart. In my own head it was easier to accept that people didn’t like me because I wore too much eyeliner than they just plain didn’t like me.
I have struggled with my mental health. There have been some terrifying lows which I shall never forget.
High School was not easy.

It made my stronger, but I constantly look back and wonder why I had such a hard time.
Therapy helped.
But what has really helped is blogging.

Writing about things helps me stay on track. It helps me be a “proper grown up”.

It helps me get some perspective and some purpose.
There’s a strength I get from blogging.
It gets me out of the house. It gets me looking at the world in different ways.
I appreciate the beauty of things more.

If I was left to my own devices I could quite contently never achieve anything. I could sleep for days, never communicating, never seeing sunlight, living in my own little world with no one to bother me.
But that’s not good for me. I’m sometimes not the best company for myself.
So blogging, even if it’s just what I ate, what I wore, what I knitted, what I listened to, it makes me think about what I’m doing.

It makes me live.
And I’m very grateful for that.

This is why I blog.
Blogging has definitely got me out of my comfort zone, doing things that I never would have done before.
Hell, it turned me into a knitter.
I guess that’s why I relate so much to this challenge. Because I know how much blogging has helped me.

I may just try one or two of these challenges.

Sunglasses and bows

This is probably my favourite DIY.

Super easy. All you need is a wire coathanger and voila! Instant storage for sunglasses and hair bows.

It doesn’t work so well for bows on bobby pins, but anything with a clip works well.

It’s currently holds my trio of modcloth sunnies. I love floral sunglasses.
A collection of hair bows from around the place, but the big striped one I found in a boutique in Mandurah. It’s from the Davie Bow-ie collection. I just couldn’t resist.

20111007-093910.jpg

20111007-093924.jpg

20111007-093930.jpg

It’s a good thing I love a green thumb

I don’t have a green thumb, but my significant other does.

As we were on the go on Saturday we stopped at a garden store.

Picked up a couple of bags of potting mix to fill some Tuscan style pots that my mum had given us a while back and were unused.
We also picked up some veggies and some flowers (because all my flowers I had previously planted had been destroyed by the storm which always follows me planting anything).

We (I say we, but I was more of a supervisor), planted some roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, celery, carrots, and begonias.

We get so little sun it’s really hit and miss as to whether they’ll flower or grow or die. But I have a reminder in my phone for the 10th December. If everything goes all right we’ll have some home grown carrots for dinner.

And my boy being the handy man he is, is building me a little fence for our garden.
It’s going to be our home sweet home.

I love domestic life sometimes.

20110919-103423.jpg

20110919-103437.jpg

20110919-103453.jpg

20110919-081319.jpg