Wool, Wood and Swaps.....

First of all many of you will know that my Dad moved from Queensland and has been staying with us the past 5 wks while waiting to move into his unit .... well the day finally arrived for him and look at the lovely gift box of goodies the real estate gave him when they handed over the keys!

At the same time I got an early surprise when my parcel arrived from my swap partner for the No Fuss Swappers - fill a tin swap ....... What a lovely tin and filled with such lovely bits and pieces - hubby enjoyed the cherry ripes - he's getting to know that swaps usually include lollies or chocolates of some kind lol 

Stonehaven is finally finished!  It's taken a year (with many projects made during it's time on the needles) ....... and I have to say that knitting a large sized man's jumper in dark blue is not something I want to do again straight away lol! 

I was pretty excited when it was finished and cast on my 3rd Woolly Wormhead hat for this year. 

I'm following along with the group on Ravelry to try making 12 of her hats in the year.  The pattern is Spring Cap and it was a fun knit which I finished over the weekend.  I'm not usually a hat person since I find it tricky to get a winter hat that suits me - hence another reason for taking part in the dozen hat challenge (one of them has to be able to suit me!) 

Its not easy trying to take selfies with an ipad!

DH was given permission by a farmer who lives on the river to get a pile of beautiful red gum firewood - so we took advantage and headed over on Sunday morning for a good work out
Scruffy of course was busy supervising .....

A very nice load for the trailer and back of the ute ....... of course there is also the unloading and stacking of it all once we got home again .... my stomach muscles had a work out and sure did make the 10,000 steps that day!!  
 I couldn't leave without having a bit of fun .......

Enjoy your day! 
 

Pretend OPAM

Well, it's pretend because I somehow totally missed the OPAM start (there has been lots going on!)......  and I figured, oh well, that's fine ....... but after having done OPAM for a couple of years and missing it once before, I'm really missing it now ..... and I've found I'm still putting down what projects I complete anyhow!  So with Pegs permission to use the OPAM photo since I'll be linking back to her and Kris , I'm showing you a quick display of projects I managed to finish during March! 
And the continuation of the hexie project ........

FNWF and Stage 2 Kitchen Garden

FNWF (Friday Night With Friends) hosted by Cheryll  was on and as usual I seem to take the entire weekend with snippets of craft work happening throughout.  We actually had our daughter and her partner stop in for a quick visit.  I had pancakes cooking for dinner (Friday nights here are often very simple meals), which they were happy to enjoy while they caught up with "Grandpa" and us. ........ not to mention daughter was actually up for a kitchen tea and had asked for an assortment of my handmades.    She bought a fruit basket and we filled it with the stuff I had made ....... the dishcloths and handtowels from the last post (minus 2 dishcloths she kept for their kitchen), a bottle of the laundry liquid, some soaps, candlemelts, jam and relish.  I was surprised how well it ended up looking lol 

Mostly though, my weekend was spent trying to catch time to keep going with the knitting of Dh's Stonehaven Jumper ....... its getting mighty close as you can see.  Not tooooo much more of the sleeve to go and then I'll have the collar.  I'm really hoping I can get it finished before the MKAL starts.  


The organisers of the Outlander Mkal had to change the name to Dragonfly Mkal due to some trouble with copyright.  

   I'm looking forward to making this shawl.  My yarns arrived from Bendigo Mills for collection at the post office on Saturday morning!  After a bit of a debate and asking hubbie for input ....... I'll be using the Mink and Shadow colours.  We have a clue of "plaid" and I think these will work well together and give a bit of a hint of "Thompson" Clan, being my maiden name (or at the least, the name I was born with).

 

After taking that photo from the previous post with the tartan project bag, I've been thinking about how those windows on that end of "The Beehive" (aka the cabin), needed to be painted .  DH originally started painting them to match the guttering of the house since it sits right next to it ...... but this end is not visible to the road  since it ends at the washing line and has a high fence beside it.  As the wood pile from here gets used, my plan has been to turn this area into a little cottage garden which will be nice for the Beehive setting as well.  I pulled out some old paints we had here .... and also did a couple of touches elsewhere.  DH presented me with a planter box he made up for the area!  I also claimed the very old wheelbarrow (which I intend to paint also).  It's a work in progress - I'm ok with doing it bit by bit ...... it has all of Autumn and Winter to get ready!

A full view from the clothes line looking down.