We came. We saw. We planted.

300 people. 4,000 plants put in. Two sausages and one falafel roll each eaten afterwards (hey, all that planting makes a person hungry!). Not a bad effort, methinks.

Lots of volunteers, hard at work.

Carefully putting in a plant.

The few buckets got snaffled up pretty quickly, so our heroic water bottle came to the rescue. Grumbles forgot halfway through she wasn't supposed to drink the dirty water and had a big gulp. Silly duffer!

Related links:

Planet Ark - National Tree Day

Merri Creek Management Committee

Plant yerself a tree

I don't know what your plans for the weekend include, but I'm going to plants some trees, for this weekend includes National Tree Day. It's a pretty cool set up - you find a site in your neighbourhood, then pop along on the day, help with the planting and then pig out on the free bbq afterwards. Sweeeet! In fact, I think the one I'm going to even has a band playing.

To quote from the official site, "The planting of these local native trees helps to provide food and shelter for Australia's wildlife, increasing native biodiversity and combating the habitat loss that threatens much of our wildlife." In a big city like Melbourne, which has one of the greatest urban sprawl rates in the world (one of the websites I visited before defined it as 'world class'. Geez, like it's something to be proud of?!?), I think a few more trees or shrubs certainly wouldn't go astray.

So grab yourself some gardening gloves, and I'll see you there!

Oh, and for anybody interested, here's a nice little easily disgestible article on Ecocities. Enjoy!

Sheep and slippers and getaways and prizes!

Well, well, well! Thanks so much for all the birthday wishes, especially from the delurkers. It was fun to find out who you all were, that's fer sure. As for the birthday prize - last night I made the Galumph do some computer wizardry involving random selection and lots of coding that I don't understand (confession: I didn't even ask him to explain it to me, just in case I put my 'glazed, tuned-out' face on, which I try and avoid at all costs - I think the secret to a happy marriage is appearing to be most interested at all times). So, after he mucked around for a while he came up with a winner.

What, you want me to tell you who it is now? Ok, it's (drumroll, please)... Boffcat! Well done, you. Send me your address, and I'll put your pressie in the post pronto.

Rightio. What other news? Oh, we went away for my birthday, and stayed in the cutest little cottage ever, but man oh man was it cold! The Galumph, being much more of a wuss than I am, was walking around during the day wearing him jim jam pants under his normal ones, the sooky la la! Twice we woke up to frost covered ground, which excited me beyond all reasonable expectations, so much so that I found on both mornings outside in my very non-waterproof slippers snapping away at the frost goodness of it all. See?

Very ugly pink sheepskin slippers may have been injured (i.e. soaked through) during the taking of this photograph.

It was so nice to be away from the hustle 'n' bustle of the big smoke. The cottage we stayed in was on the edge of a small country town, and opposite us, on the other side of the road, was a paddock full of sheep. We all spent far to many hours sitting on the verander, listening and watching the sheep and lambs go about their daily business. What can I can, it wasn't baaaaaaaad!

Now I am 30

It's my birthday tomorrow, and I'm turning.... wait for it... thirty! And to be honest, I'm not actually finding it the big deal that most of my aquaintances have. After almost dying giving birth to Grumbles, I'm just thankful to be here full stop.

Although, now I'm thinking about it, a lot of things have changed for me in the last decade. So, to celebrate both leaving my third decade and entering my fourth (oh, groan, now I am feeling a teeny weeny bit over the hill!) I'm going to do a bit of a before and after.

This time ten years ago I was:
- bored out of my brain studying, amongst other things, haematology, microbiology, histology and clinical chemistry
- doing musicals in my spare time (geez, how embarassing)
- bemoaning the fact that I didn't have a boyfriend, and my prospects didn't ever seem to be improving
- living in a tiny flat by myself without a television, trying not to freeze to death in winter as the flat had no heating
- working at a supermarket to support myself
- scared of computers - I was convinced I would break them somehow

Now I am:
- a stay at home mum looking after my gorgeous Grumbles
- quite a proficient knitter and sewer
- not so scared of computers anymore - heck, I can even wrangle about in Photoshop!
- a big old hairy environmentalist
- happily, blissfully married, and soon to celebrate our 5th wedding anniverary (feel free to barf now)
- an avid swimmer, bike rider and walker
- much more cantankerous, passionate, agreeable, light hearted, wondering, can-do, bonkers, secure in myself, compassionate, and, more often than not, to be found in the kitchen cooking.

So happy birthday to me, and here's to hoping that the next decade is as fun and joyful as the last has been. Hoorah!


PS Delurk and wish me a happy birthday! Go on, I dares ya!

UPDATE! I can't believe I almost forgot my birthday tradition of giving away a little gift for all my lovely blog readers. Well, here it is now. You know the rules - leave a comment and if your name gets pulled out of the hat a copy of a super snazzy book of crafty goodness will be winging its way over to you. Hooray for birthdays!

Can I call myself a journalist now?

Feel like a good read? Then go and get yourself a copy of MixTape! Added bonus - I'm writing a column in it, huzzah! It's a little zine that focuses on making time for the small things, and has heaps of excellent articles, tutorials, crafting stuff... oh, just trust me, it's fab!

What? You're still here? Go on, go. Shoo!

(Meheheh, I felt so much like Ferris Bueller saying that!)

The one where I rant about my knitting

Remember this?

Well, I've finally finished knitting it. Only a month and a half late for my sil's birthday, oops! But the worst is yet to come - I have to sew it together. Normally I don't mind the sewing part, because as soon as you're done, you've got a brand new jumper to hop about in, but this one is going to be a doozy. The instructions have called for the neckband (which, incidentally, took me three! days to knit, as it was 210 stitches long) to be attached using the free-loop backstitch method.

Oh, in English? Right - you knit the neckband, then cast off using a different type of wool. This last row is then unravelled, stitch by stitch, and sewn oh so very carefully onto the jumper. The potential for completely botching this up is incredible.

For all ye mathematicians out there, the formula can be expressed thus:

Jorth plus delicate work inverted over the square root of stress-induced sweating divided by equal parts of nervy trembling fingers equals sure-fire cockup, plus or minus some acute hollering.

So, if you hear some odd screaming along the lines of "You f-ing, f-ing, f-ing stupid whoreson cullionly barbermonger* piece of knitting, you!" emanating from chez Jorth in the next few days, then you'll know things are going not quite as hoped.

*Apologies to Mr Shakespeare.

Please see your doctor if pain from quilt persists

I quite enjoyed spending this weekend quietly inside, pottering away and cutting out my new quilt, but wheeeeee! All those various computations of black and white can sure give a girl a bad case of vertigo. Combine the dizzy feeling that came about from looking at the patterns too much with the ickyness of spending a couple of hours bending down from the floor then back up to the table, floor to table, arranging, rearranging etc and guess, just guess what you end up with? A headache. A quilt induced headache, nonetheless. Whodathunkit? They should come with nifty little signs: Beware of the quilt. This quilt may be a health hazard!

Still, it's going to look at treat when I sew it up (I hope). And with all that crazy patterning going on, I won't have a hope in hell of discovering if Grumbles has been jumping on the bed via the tell tale footprints. Who could find them amongst all that vividness?