Iro Poncho

Yesterday I finished this poncho. I bought the yarn on sale at WEBS. It is Noro Iro. The Yarn seemed to look better on the computer screen, but that's the gamble you take when you buy yarn online.

There was a poncho pattern I liked but I was having problems downloading the pattern. I emailed the person on Ravelry but they haven't got back to me yet. So I looked at the picture of the poncho and other 12ply poncho patterns on Raverly and designed my own. Well, it's only 2x2 rib st and increasing on the front and back - not rocket science.

I look grumpy in the pics - I'm feeling like crap because I'm fighting a cold that my boys had this week. I got the turquoise necklace last year at Lawson Market for $10 - I was so excited. I couldn't afford to buy a chunky turquoise necklace like this in the shop these days.

I started it, then frogged it. See the photo below?  It has this bright yellow in the wool which I thought was too bright. So I started again and omitted the bright yellow. I prefered the Autumny colours in the photo above.

I took this picture last night of my cheeky boys looking down at me while I was on the computer (which is under the stair case). It's very cute. At night Marty our cat likes to sit there and watch what is going on while I'm on the computer.

Ink

The other day Lou announced that he wanted to make ink. He is into making potions at the moment and he wanted to branch out into ink ;)....... So we went out the back where we had a bonfire and gathered together some ash.

Lou found some rain water that was lying around in one of his mud pie pots and added some ash and water. It would have been better to crush the ash to a powder first, but an eager almost 5 year old does not wait for his mother....LOL....

So we mushed it as much as we could to make a paste.

We looked around the yard for a wild bird's feather but we found none. We found this black feather inside in the play box.

We put some on the rock ....... 

... and then we drew.

Reds, Oranges & Yellows

Autumn colours are all around me right now when I go for a wander around my garden.

South Coast

Pictures tell a thousand words: the pictures speak for themselves in this post of how much fun we had on the beach.

  

Katie, her brother and I went for a trip for 5 days down the South Coast during the school hoildays. It was wonderful to be by the ocean again to re-energerise us for another term. It was such a beautiful morning. It had been cloudy and rainy all week except for our last day before we headed back to the cold Blue Mountains.

Mandala

Over a week ago I received a beautiful gift from the other side of the world; the Netherlands in fact. I won this Mandala from Fiberrainbow's blog. You should pop over for a visit and check out the beautiful creations  that she makes.

Isn't the Mandala beautiful! Els is such a talented artist. I love the sleeping cat - it just looks like my Ninja Cat Marty sleeping in my bed. Also, I'm born year of the rabbit and I love Owls. I have little owl knick-knaks around the house. I love flowers - I have a floral tattoo on my back that I had done when I was living in Ireland. So Els has captured little parts of me in this mandala. I was so blown way when I won it. I had a really stressful 6 weeks with my youngest son so it was a lovely surprise that really cheered me up. Thank you Els.

 I've put it in a frame for now until I find a much nicer frame and plan to hang it in my lounge room.

Thank you so much Els for your lovely email and the Mandala. I'll be treasuring it for years to come.

Tipi, Kids,Cat, Wood and a Full Moon!

It has been such a beautiful few sunny days up here in the Mountains, it feels like the Summer we didn't have. So we were able to get out and about in the garden.

I got the Tipi out. This was a find at a garbage clean-up a month a ago. I was driving past with a friend and we were looking a the stuff people put out on the side of the road for council clean up. I have found amazing stuff over the years. Anyway, I took the tipi home and gave it a wash. There was nothing wrong with it. It was just faded from being outdoors but my kids were excited. I've wanted to make a Tipi for the kids - it was on my 'to make' list but didn't get around to it.

Katie was busy making a hand puppet. Friends are coming up from Sydney to visit and she wanted to pefrom a puppet show for them. So she made this cute hand puppet.

Katie and Marty (our cat) were hanging out in the tipi for while. Katie was giving him cuddles after he had hurt himself - he has a big scratch under his eye. I'm assuming it was from falling out of a tree.

Lou is slowly sewing his Autumn leaves onto his bunting. He decided one leaf a day, so it will probably be Winter by the time he finishes it. That's OK, he enjoys making this. He looks very cute sitting there sewing on his leaf.

Here is Marty the Ninja Cat up a tree again. He likes being up high. It worries me to see the way he jumps/falls out of the trees. I'm worried he is going break his leg or paw.

You can just see Marty in the top corner keeping watch over us as we get on with our day.

Here he is trying to get down. You can see the cut under his eye.

My partner got the chainsaw out and chopped up some wood for Winter. Our back-door neighbour gave us all these logs from the big storm that happened up here in the mountains last year. About 9 trees came down between 3 houses and there was lots of wood lying around. We are hopefully getting a wood burner soon as we have heaps of wood to keep us going for the season. I love the way the wood looks all piled up.

And to cap off a beautiful day, an amazing full moon was rising just on sunset. It was so bright in the sky. The gum trees frame it beautifully as we watched it rise. Lou got the telescope out to have a closer look at the moon's surface.

We finished up with a veggie curry with fresh chili from my mum's veggie patch, which made it a bit spicy!

Eggs, Crayons and Paint

It was such a beautiful sunny day up here in the mountains today, Lou and I did some Easter craft outside. I blew the egg yolk and white out of the eggs a couple of weeks ago and had them drying out on the window sill ready to be painted on.

Lou took a picture of my egg as I was drawing on it with wax crayon. We then painted over the wax crayon. We had to be careful not to press too hard as the shell could break, as Lou's big brother found out when he was drawing on his egg this afternoon.

We left them out in the sun to dry. This week we might try to make some felted eggs.

After Lou was finished, he went off and played. I got out some paper, played around with the paint and crayons, and came up with a new header for the blog. It's a bit rough, but I like it.

What do you think?