Entries Tagged 'Random thoughts' ↓

Whoa! Just had massive lightening strike that spiked the power in the office then a really lound crash of thunder right above our building that set off all the girls screaming (and the Mister a little bit) and lots of mad Ctrl+S’ing! Now it’s freezing and pouring down.

The blog of the woman I’ve done some test knitting for was asking for stories about when you learned to knit. I submitted my memories … bit of a trip down memory lane.

I can’t remember exactly when I learned – but I must’ve been 6 or 7. My mum knitted some, but it was mostly my grandmothers back then – they made us amazing aaron & bobbled jackets, dress/knicker/bonnet/bootie sets for our dolls, pom pom hats etc.
I was first shown how to knit by Mum’s mother, she was Danish so I was taught the Danish way (holding the wool in the left hand, not the right) so was watched with much curiosity by other school friends and their mothers when I ‘knitted funny’. I liked knitting a lot and was very patient with it, my knit rows were always very tight, and purl very loose but after a year or so I realised that my other grandmother knitted the ‘normal’ way and she seemed to go much faster so I spent hours on the couch next to her when they visited copying her and eventually taught myself to knit in the normal style – with much better results! To this day I think I still cast on and increase Danish style, but everything else normal style.
I can’t remember the specifics of what I was knitting as a kid – blankets for my doll’s cot, crocheting coin purses and table mats but I’m sure that before I went to high school I’d knitted my first jersey for myself – a really hideous green, pink and royal blue fluffy crew neck – those colours were big at the beginning of the 80’s!
I’ve knitted on and off most of my life but I probably stopped doing it regularly in my mid 20’s and only picked it up again about 4 years ago (almost 10 years on) when I was having a particularly stressful time at work – one day I got home and in the mail there was a ball of wool, knitting needles, and a pattern for a kid’s toy with a note from my mother that said “perhaps you need to find something else to do other than work” and I haven’t stopped since.

Just saw this pic on stuff.co.nz of the world’s [currently] largest jet, the ‘super jumbo’ Airbus A380 that Qantas has flown into Auckland for a practice. The Welly runway is undoubtedly WAY too short for it although they can land/take off an empty 747 on it.

Planted some marigold seeds in one of the empty pots on our apartment anniversary last month. According to the picture on the back of the seed packet there should’ve been more activity much earlier on but 30 days on we’ve got one healthyish looking marigold seedling.

I planted way more seeds than that and I’m sure I didn’t plant them too deep or water them too much or too little – I think our weather is just too cold – although according, again, to the packet picture I planted them at the right time. Mind you these days, who can tell when spring is these days anyway.

I suppose it could be my fault that I didn’t use seedling mix in raised beds but I’m sure as kids we just planted seeds in the ground and stuff grew. Don’t say this funny old world of everyone allergic to peanuts and loosing concentration skills is spreading to soil nutrients. Sigh.

Why is Ricky Ponting always about to get a century at bed time (that’s cricket for my international audience)? Sigh. Oh well, I have an electric blanket and it’s still no too summery to use it.

“Preparation is my coping mechanism.”

Can’t believe it – my jolly clivia that didn’t flower at all whilst in my care is now in full bloom for the SECOND time this year in Awakeri – I saw the start of a flower when we were up there in September. Not sure what Mother does for it, but at least she tortures me with illustrative updates!

Someone picked up a typo in my work today – d’oh got the r and e around the wrong way and ended up with pervious instead of previous. And why didn’t the damn spell checker pick that up? Because pervious is a real word!

Pervious

Admitting of passage or entrance; permeable: pervious soil.
Open or accessible to reason, feeling, argument, etc.

Just saw a new police car on the way to work this morning. The new rack of lights on the roof is much much lower than the previous red, white and blue strip. It’s going to be a lot harder to spot their cars 1km in the distance – the old roof lights being higher give the cars quite a distinct shape from that distance making them quite easy to identify as police cars … usually about the same time the radar detector picks them up but they don’t always flick their radars on until they get a lot closer.

We like shopping for our nieces (or other baby/kid friends) at Borders. They’re pretty helpful to people like us with nice big signs showing books for age ranges. If you’re not up with the play on the latest ‘reader series’ for a particular child or know their favourites it can be quite daunting trying to choose something age-appropriate.

Yesterday’s plan was to get a book for Sarah, who’s turning 4, that features a penguin. Well. There actually wasn’t a section for 4-8 year olds, and we figured that 4 is no longer a toddler, and board books are for babies so we were at a bit of a loss. We know that Pingu is on the right track so went to the ‘Characters’ section but couldn’t find Pingu anywhere amongst stories of Maisie, Miffy, Thomas and friends.

So we headed to the ‘picture books’ bit. It soon became apparent that there we books about every kind of animal except penguins! We even sectioned up the shelves and systematically scanned, calling out to each other the animals we found – at one stage I was crawling along the floor reading out the animals I came across in books along the bottom shelf (god only knows what the other shoppers thought of us) but honestly, no penguins? Dogs, cats, dinosours, gruffalos (what?), wombats, giraffes, bears (lots of bears), tigers, wild things, alligators, bunnies, possums, monkeys, fish, kiwi, ducklings, mice, elephants and a potty (!!). We did find one adventure story about a penguin at sea but it was a bit scary and then the Mister stumbled upon this fantastic book – which we read aloud to each other to test it out, yes in the store where everyone could hear.

How big is a million? We figure it’s got penguins in it AND is educational so hopefully can’t go wrong. And the poster in the back which supposedly has a million stars on it is actually amazing, even through an adult’s eyes.