A week in which not much has happened.....

Today is a cold grey cloudy day, a good day to stay inside and sew, or read, or toodle around on the computer, or just do very little.  As the saying goes, time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.

There is progress on the green purse.

That doesn't look like progress, but believe me it is.  Next step is to sew the inner pockets to the outer bag, which may be done today......and if not, why then it will be done on another day.  It will be a cheerful bright purse, just the Very Thing for our forthcoming spring.

The books are still not in order, but now there is A Plan in my head for doing that.  Meanwhile, it has been fun searching through shelves for a particular volume and being surprised by what is found.

The treadle practice also hasn't started because I have been unable to find the spare leather belt bought several years ago, and obviously put in the proverbial Safe Place when we moved here.  In the back of my brain I can still see the design on the plastic bag with the belt inside, but do you think I can remember where it was last seen?  At the time we bought two belts; Kevin installed one but the other machine is still beltless.  We have decided it will just be easier to buy another, because both machines need to be tried out to see which one is easiest to use.

Someone said to me at a meeting last week "I hear you are leading the U3A ukulele class"......"Oh, am I?  That's news to me" said I......I suspect (in fact I know) I am the most advanced in the group so it looks like it has fallen to me to lead, and I am in two minds about that.  We'll see what happens by the end of the year.

Lately our Federal Parliament has been in somewhat of a tizzy.  One section of our Constitution, put together in the closing years of the 19th century, requires that all members of Parliament must be Australia citizens - fair enough, I have no problem with that - and also that they must not be dual citizens of other countries.  Therein lies the fun......recently it has transpired that several MPs are, indeed, dual citizens although they all claim not to have previously known that fact.  Our local MP found out he is a dual citizen of New Zealand because his father was born there, and for 30 years from 1949 a child born anywhere in the world to a N.Z. parent automatically became a citizen of N.Z.  All these cases are going before our High Court, the highest in the land, for the learned judges to make their decision.  Personally, I hope they say that our local bloke (for whom I didn't and would never vote) is not eligible to be in Parliament and has to leave and, even better, has to pay back all the whopping salary he has been given since taking up his seat.  I would laugh loud and long.

We take our pleasures where we can find them, don't we?

I wish to goodness that TV and radio announcers would learn how to pronounce big words.  Don't they learn in school how words are put together?  A young woman reading the radio news has just said "prodiggus", but we're sure she meant "prodigious".  The woman who often reads our local TV news bulletin adds extra syllables to many words - "three" becomes "the-ree", "threat" becomes "the-reat".  She also mispronounces many local place names.  It has become quite irritating, and I am turning into one of those Olde Phartes who yells at the TV because of it.

"Writing as an aid to correct talking.
To converse correctly - to use correct language in conversation - is also a matter of importance, and while this can be acquired by a strict attention to grammatical rules, it can be greatly facilitated by the habit of writing down one's thoughts.  In writing, strict regard is, or should be, paid to the correct use of language, and when a person, from constant writing, acquires the habit of using correct language, this habit will follow him in talking.  A person who is accustomed to much writing, will always be found to use language correctly in speaking."

Newsreaders, please take note.  Not only do you need to pronounce words correctly and in context, you also need to be able to string words together on screen or paper to make sense.

Enjoy your days!

The books are not yet in order......

........but sometimes I just look at them, and sigh a sigh of contentment because they are home again.

Aaaahhhhhh.......

Not much of anything has been done at all lately.  For the past couple of weeks I have felt slightly ailing....but not ill.  Possibly coming down with a cold......but no, it seems not.  There has been a lot of lack of energy though; fortunately that seems to be going and some stitches were sewn in the sewing room today on the lime green purse. More will be sewn when I get off the computer.  The knitting has been continuing in the evenings as it's a great in-front-of-TV pastime, the front is nearly up to the armhole decrease.

Consequently no photos have been taken lately, either!  However, I've been trawling through the Great Photo File and found a few.

This callistemon - Aussies call them 'bottle brush' - was in our garden in the Big Smoke.

 These spring daffodils were in the garden of a very old house in a small town, an hour south of where we lived at the time.

The jacaranda tree in our Big Smoke back yard with a neighbour's huge house extension in the background, one of the reasons we moved.  I'm not sure why this photo has attached itself to the previous one; I can't be this beautiful and have a technical brain as well, you know.

Jacaranda trees are beautiful.  They originally come from South America but grow well in many other countries including much of Australia, and the view across our town in spring with those blue trees in bloom against the green hills is a glorious sight.  Ours was a self-sewn seedling a few years after we moved to the house, and twenty years later when we moved out it was a big spreading tree which took up a lot of the small yard but gave wonderful summer shade.

Lovely as that tree was, we don't miss living in the Big Smoke.  We have settled in here now.

The local historical museum is having its biennial (bi-annual? something that happens every two years, at any rate) open day next month and I have offered to demonstrate treadle machine sewing.  First, though, the machine needs to be cleaned and oiled.....and much practice needs to be done, I haven't treadled for a long time......I have two mid-1920s Singer 66 model treadle machines, one bought by my grandmother in about 1926 to make baby clothes for my mother and her little brother, the other given to me by my brother about 16 years ago because his neighbour was going to take it to the rubbish dump although there was nothing wrong with it.  They are wonderful machines.

"In every class of life, in all professions and occupations, good manners are necessary to success.  The business man has no stock-in-trade that pays him better than a good address.  If the retail dealer wears his hat on his head in the presence of ladies who come to buy of him, if he does not see that the heavy door of his shop is opened and closed for them, if he seats himself in their presence, if he smokes a pipe or cigar, or has a chew of tobacco in his mouth, while talking with them, or is guilty of any of the small incivilities of life, they will not be apt to make his shop a rendezvous, no matter how attractive the goods he displays."

Fortunately it has been a long time since a retail dealer was chewing tobacco in my presence.

Enjoy your days!