Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine, Gilly's Nine......

Happy Birthday Lorelai Gilmore, eighteen months ago we weren't sure you'd make it to eight, so nine years old is pretty wonderful!!! She'd had a dip in the paddle pool after her special birthday breakfast. (And nicely obscured Hedy Lamarr with her tail) Their breakfast today was chicken breast, carrot, celery and a little rice.

Here is baby Gilly, she was so cute!!

Do not think that Hedy Lamarr was missing out. She likes to stand on your lap, dripping with paddle pool water, showing you that she really wants to play with her Billyball.

In celebration of Gilly's birthday we are giving away a shopping bag, Labrador-ified. It is bag #134 and the second bag of 2018. Please leave a comment, and then in a week we will draw out a name from a hat. And we promise to send everyone a card with Gilly and Hedy's photo!!

It is a polypop bag in my favourite lime green colour with a strip of the Labrador fabric I "created" last year on The Spoonflower.

I am feeling a little more like myself again. Antibiotics are a wonderful discovery and without them I would be dead. Thank you, scientists, for all your life saving discoveries. I know doctors counsel against the overuse of antibiotics, but because I have a compromised and suppressed immune system, any small health issue can become serious very quickly. I am allowed ALL the drugs!!!

Here's a quick review of last year's craft and cooking. I didn't knit very much at all, basically because I was poorly, had a chewed finger that needed plastic surgery and had my eye operation. I made hats and cowls and small things. And only one pair of socks.

I sewed a lot of shopping bags: thirty. I love sewing these. Someone asked if I would make them for their cool and trendy little shop, but I am not only unreliable health-wise, but I could not bear to have to make bags under pressure. I only make them when I need them, and I enjoy it immensely. I like to try and match the bag fabric to the person and it is fun looking and choosing.

I sewed a variety of other bags too.

I sewed some garments, which I was very pleased with. Two dresses for me and one for MrsDrWho's sister in Supernatural fabric.

I made a table runner, wall hanging and the final of three cat beds:

And finally the "other" category, a baby quilt, a cross stitch and some tiny bunting.

I was not very consistent with Friday Food last year, for obvious reasons. Here's what I did make:

So all in all, in spite of being chronically poorly and having extra medical happenings this year, I was very productive. I like to keep as busy as possible and to be useful. Since I can't be a teacher any more, I have to find ways to make myself productive and useful.

Today I am baking some biscuits for Gilly, going to The Eye Hospital because I have an errant stitch sticking out of my scar, I think if there is a hole big enough for a stitch to poke out then germs can find their way in, and possibly baking a cheese and spinach slab quiche.

And we shall be resting after yesterday's heat. It wasn't 47*C / 117*F, but it was too hot for us.

A Week Is A Long Time In Christmas-tics

I have made it through the week. The mind is intact though the body is weak and totally worn out. The days have been packed with activity, one, two or sometimes even three things, for seven days: in spite of all my planning, it just happened.

Also, there is a smudge on my camera lens, I breathed on it just now and gently cleaned it with some soft fabric. This is probably the wrong thing to do, but the smudge went away. I can feel the lens is scratched. I may need a new camera.....

I have had so many Christmas occasions and appointments and my mum came to visit for three days for her birthday: we did so many things and had a wonderful time. I baked lots of things for my mum and sewed her nothing. I did take up her new trousers. We ate curry and toasted sandwiches and a delicious meal at a posh restaurant where I even had a tiny dessert. It was a passionfruit meringue sundae, served in a tiny glass with shortbread crumbs then passionfruit curd, passionfruit ice-cream and a caramelised meringue shard. It was so delicious but I felt far too full!! Mum had the frozen lemon parfait with caramelised mandarin and a scoop of lemon curd icre-cream.

The Labradors have felt neglected. They went for a walk with mum and Hedy is in love with her. She wiggled and waggled and carried on a treat. They both ran very fast as they were so excited. It is good to see Lorelai Gilmore running and being well.

Gilly is far more sensible. You can tell she is more sensible because she is poking out her tongue!!! We had a lot of rain after the heatwave broke and Gilly and Hedy took every advantage and were totally wet all the time.

Though they may have felt neglected, they were not and there were games and paddle pool adventures at ten o'clock at night.

I have been sewing for my friends. I sewed some Project Bags by By Annie for our Sewing group. I made the third biggest size, there are four, and they measured 35cm square. The back is quilted and the front has vinyl and a zip. I made them to easily hold layer cakes and our Moda Cake Mix papers.

I made two needle rolls for our Knitting Friend who is going to live overseas. One is for Double Point needles and the other for interchangeable tips, and I left a space for some cables.

I sewed Christmas shopping bags for my friends. I didn't go to our 2017 Christmas because my mum was here, so I sent them all off to good homes!!

And finally I sewed some zippy chip/popcorn bags as well. These are always popular and they are well used. The children wear them out so I am happy to make them a new one every year.

Consequently there was no Friday Food, but I made a gingerbread traybake for Leukaemia Christmas BBQ. It was so easy, and though I didn't taste it, I had so many requests for the recipe I sent it off to our nurses for them to email to the group. I can highly recommend it and I will post the recipe this Friday. I did have tiny gingerbread decorations but I could not for the life of me find them so I used festive M'n'Ms. I forgot to take a picture of the bags I sewed for our fabulous nurses, they look after us all so well.

MrsDrWho has bought an aviary,

and furnished it with love in anticipation of finches. The finches are being re-homed and they arrived this week. I am looking forward to seeing them.

And finally, I managed to take a reasonable photo of The Labradors for our Christmas card. Someone had their eye closed, or was looking away, or would not sit close enough to the other dog!!! This is not the photo, but it is pretty good. I was holding a seaweed rice cracker to entice Hedy Lamarr to look my way. Lorelai Gilmore is a super model, she needs no encouragement.

If you have read this far, well done and would you like a Christmas card from The Labradors?? There is an Email Me button at the bottom of the side bar, or you can leave a comment and we will email and ask for your address. We sent cards last year and it was lots of fun. We can't promise they will be there before Christmas, but that's par for the course in our lives.

This week I am going to try and sew a dress to wear to the Star Wars The Last Jedi at a quarter past midnight on Thursday morning. Wish me luck. I have my back up Star Wars dress, so we shall see. After our walk tomorrow we plan to sleep ALL DAY.

And finally, The Parliament said Yes, and same sex marriage is now law. People can be married from January 9th I think. I do think it rather rich that some politicians smugly congratulated themselves on the passing of the Bill. I say that we did their job for them and they could have saved the $122,000,000 and done their jobs. We did it for them and they should not steal the credit. Happy New Marriage Year!!!

Eye Am...Eye Said

Now that The Finger is doing nicely, it is time to have an operation on my eye. I can't have two very sore things at once. A cyst has been growing on my eye for some time now, and yesterday the doctor removed it. MrsDrWho kindly dropped me off and waited for about ninety minutes. It all seemed to go very well and my cyst was appraised as "giant". It was about as big as a peanut M'n'M. I didn't have sedation, just a whole lot of local anaesthetic. I could feel things happening by pressure, but not pain.

My eye doesn't hurt at all, but it is nice to keep the eye patch on because the swelling irritates when I blink. Hedy does not like me: I am some kind of evil pirate from the right, and myself from the left. If she is lying on the left and rolls over and is suddenly on the right she has to scramble to run away. Gilly takes it all in her stride and wants to lie next to me all the time.

I need to go back on Monday to have my eye checked.

Lorelai Gilmore went to the vet last week for her blood tests. Hedy came too, as she howls like a banshee if left home alone. And vice versa. Gilly's tests were excellent and she doesn't have to go back for six months. She has to continue taking her Imuran tablets every second day for the rest of her life, but they don't seem to have any real side effects. Dr David, who diagnosed her last August, is very pleased and we are very grateful.

The weather has been not too hot and we have had lovely brisk walks at the dam. The paddle pool has been in constant use at home, and no-one has fallen in a hole at the dam again!!

My produce box arrived and it has some different things in it this week. And mint! I love mint. I made tzatziki last week and I will probably make some again, but with mint. I grated the rest of the apples into some pork sausage rolls and made a leek and kale pasta bake with anchovies. This week I am making a Thai red curry and plan to use the Spring cabbage, pumpkin and silverbeet.

Esme's Patchwork has some of the Moda Cupcake Mixes for Charm Squares in stock and I bought one. It is a pad of fine paper, printed with sewing and cutting lines. I am using my Batik from the Quilt Expo and some denim-like quilting fabric.

You pin the two fabrics right sides together, paler fabric on top. Sew along the dotted lines with a short stitch length and then trim and cut along the solid lines.

Press to set, then press open and tear off the backing papers. Sew together in the formation you choose and voila:

I love it, it is pretty much perfect and the points are pointy too.

Now I am tired and need to rest again.

Ding, Dong, Bell, Hedy's In The Well

Who put her in?
Little Johnny Thin.

Who Pulled her out?
Lorelai Gilmore and me!!!

 

A new toilet block, and BBQ area, is being built at the dam. They have excavated a giant hole, which has filled with water, and put a high portable fence around it: which is no barrier to limbo-ing or commando crawling Labradors apparently. We were walking, and I looked around and saw Gilly inside the fence and Hedy was in the water. Hedy was frozen with fear and/or trepidation and would not come for a biscuit or her Billyball. I managed to find a way into the "pool" area and I had to lie flat in the mud and try to pull Hedy out. To no avail. And as I was contemplating my next move, Lorelai Gilmore came back in, leaped into the water and swam around to Hedy's left side and then climbed out. Hedy watched and then, encouraged by Gilly, tried to climb out and I was able to grab the scruff of her neck and haul her out.

Gilly doesn't really swim and so she is a hero for showing Hedy how to climb out and rescuing her.

Hedy Lamarr has been wicked, no surprise there. I put the brownie I had baked on the dining room table ready to take to MrsDrWho's house and as I wandered about getting ready she seemed to be acting suspiciously. I couldn't work out why until it was time to go and I saw this:

I knew how much dark chocolate was in the recipe and I calculated she had eaten about one third and it was less than 100g. She was fine, but kept us up all night wanting to go in and out and being generally hyperactive. I put the other baked goods up high in the hall.

I showed Hedy the brownie and then squirted her with the diluted apple cider vinegar. She wouldn't talk to us for about half an hour and sulked as far away as she could go.

Thank goodness for Gilly, who is such a good girl and paddles happily in the paddle pool, eats grass and plays with her plastic cups!!! I think her only flaw right now is her love for the muddy puddles at the dam.

I finished the batik jelly roll quilt. Somewhere in the house there are some jelly roll strips and I know not where, so I added some plains to make up the length. I am so pleased with the way it turned out and I may quilt-as-you-go again.

This is the first thing I have sewed since August 11th when Hedy chewed my finger accidentally. My finger is almost as good as new. I have normal feeling in the top, but at the sides I feel as if I am touching the freezer in the supermarket whilst having pins and needles. That is where my finger split and they plastic-surgeried it back together. I can see and feel the hard scars. But look, my finger looks like a real one again: it's my middle finger.

I am sewing two shopping bags for my sister and Bella'sMum. My sister has a Shar Pei so I bought a fat quarter from The Spoonflower and Bella'sMum has a black Labrador and so I found some dog drill.

The Spotlight has Doctor Who fabric and I have it ALL. The comic strip version will be for the skirt of a dress and then the other is to make gifts for friends.

We have the second medium produce box and I am about to be cooking outside my comfort zone: there is kale, a big bunch of kale. I have never eaten or cooked kale, but there are leeks, pumpkin and fresh thyme, so I shall be searching the internet for a recipe.

I used the cucumber and spring garlic to make some tzatziki, along with the tomatoes in some wraps for dinner. There was not quite enough to save so we ate the tail end for "dessert".

Speaking of dessert, which I can usually never eat when I am dining out, I ate dessert for my lunch on Saturday. I caught up with MrsDrWho and three of TheHouseOfs and I had French toast with nut brittle, ice-cream and salted caramel sauce. It was delicious: the toast was crisp on the outside and pillowy and luscious on the inside. And was there a custardy sauce???

Wow, this is a very busy week: unexpected Patient Partner with the Year 4 doctors yesterday, curtain making for a couple of hours on Monday, medical appointments today, lunch tomorrow and then the vet on Friday. And add to that our extremely high temperatures, it was up to 15*C above average: 32 in Hobart and 28 here. Thankfully it is cooler now, but I have a slight heat headache. We are not looking forward to a hotter than normal Summer. Bah Humbug. We shall make hay while the Sun doesn't shine!!!

Instant-gram

There was no Friday Food last week because my cold was still too nasty. I baked a cake by Yotam Ottolenghi, and the recipe asked if this was the best ever chocolate cake. I gave the cake to MrsDrWho for her and her dinner guests, so I will tell you the verdict on Friday in my Friday Food post.

Today is the first day I haven't had a residual cold headache. I had an almost four hour nap (not quite sure you can call that amount of sleep a nap?) after my new Exercise Physiologist ran me through some assessment tasks. I can balance on each foot for 45 seconds. If you need a balancer, I'm your woman!!!

If you want mud, then surprisingly, Lorelai Gilmore is your Labrador:

She was in the puddle at the dam with Hedy, but came out the muddier of the two.

And here we have Rafa, Gilly and Hedy at the top of the 'hill' on our walk. It is the place we used to stop to farewell Sandy and his dad as they continued up the hill to their car and we went back down to ours. Hedy is doing a very good job of being a puppy dog!! We have turned Rafa to The Labrador Side and he wants a biscuit now too.

The weather has been Spring-y. We had some more wild, windy, wet weather and when we went to the dam today, there was a tree half across the road. The Ranger must have been there because some of the tree had been trimmed already.

Hedy has been, not very secretly, eating something she shouldn't be eating at home. Well, the plain flour in the shopping bag: the flour on her nose was a dead give away, but she is happily unaware!!

 I have started sewing the Jelly roll quilt as you go baby quilt. Phew, that's a long name...JRQAYGBQ, and the acronym looks like gobbledygook. I used a batik jelly roll MrsDrWho gave me for my birthday and some flannel for the backing. I used spray adhesive to 'baste' the backing and batting together as I am still a bit wary of my injured finger becoming more injured: which is has, which finger do you think The Labradors squashed against the fence and made bleed?? You'd be right if you thought my injured one. It had a bandaid and antiseptic and seems to be healing well.

I think I am ready to start knitting again. I have some normal feeling in my fingertip, still pins and needles, touch-the-freezer-in-the-supermarket at the sides, but I am going to give it a go. I have some lovely wool, Katia Darling, from the wool shop. MrsDrWho picked it out. They had some new sparkly Opal, but I had just knitted her a glittery pair, which I realise I have no photo of: ahhh, maybe they don't exist??

I have joined The Instagram. I have resisted The Twitter and The Facebook, but it suddenly struck me that people whose blogs I used to follow, now have The Instagram. I can keep up with them through a new medium. And so I joined and then before I knew it I was on The Instagram. I am not sure how to properly drive The Instagram, but I had a quick lesson from the lovely WoolShopDesigner, and she said I am doing OK! I am not at all sure about Instagram Etiquette. When I searched it was all about following and then un-following or some such strategy. I don't want to gain followers, that's not my goal. I just want to keep up. Trying something new makes my brain work hard and keeps it on its toes.

And have I shared my birthday shoes? My sister sent me money to buy a specific pair, or two, of green shoes she had found, but they didn't come in my size. Bah humbug. So I ordered some shoes from The Homyped people. I have to wear sensible shoes because I have a sore knee and it seems silly to endure pain for a high heel. Well I think so. I bought two pairs of shoes, one is a mineral metallic which goes with everything and the other a darker olive than the photo, which I am very pleased with. My sister is very kind!!

 

 

Our Council has instigated a Food and Garden Organics kerbside collection: FOGO. Our bin arrived in the wrong place, but our kind neighbour pulled it all the way around the corner and up the back of our house. We have three bins now: the ordinary Monte Carlo biscuit filling colour regular bin, the yellow lid for recycling and this new bin has a green lid, so we are chuffed. There is also a little FOGO caddy to keep in the kitchen and carry up to the big bin. We don't have a lot of FOGO waste, but I have already put some lettuce core scraps and banana peel into the caddy. It is not a big change, but it might help make a difference.