Shaker Style Sampler Rug update

65 squares finished so far!

The Connor child thinks it is looking awesome but wishes I'd hurry up a bit.

I haven't been knitting too much over the last month or so - when everything got so hectic at work, I started driving in. That was better for getting home after late nights, but lousy for my spare knitting time on the train.

I've estimated that I will need about 130 squares for a single bed sized blanket, so I'm about half way.

Rhubarb

Remember that old English film Rhubarb? The one where the only dialogue throughout the entire movie was 'rhubarb'?

I planted a couple of rhubarb rhizomes this morning, so fingers crossed that they grow for us.

The variety I planted is called "Ever Red". I prefer the red varieties over the pink or green ones, so I'm hoping it lives up to its name :-)

Hints for surviving dance concerts

I got a great hint for coping with costume changes at concerts - layer the tights!

I mentioned to one of the teachers that I wasn't looking forward to trying to change Niamh's tights in the crowded dressing room, and she suggested that they all go on at first, then gradually get peeled off after each dance.

It worked brilliantly, and Niamh's costume changes turned out to be quick & easy.

I wish they'd shared this hint with other parents - I had to help some of the other little girls change costumes between dances, and as I'd suspected, it was the tights that were really difficult to do quickly.

Another thing which I found useful was packing each of her costumes with all the accessories needed for that costume into separate ziplock bags.

So for Niamh that meant I had one bag with her leotard, pink skirt, pink tights & pink scarf, second bag with rainbow top, blue skirt, shimmers & blue headband and a third bag with the unitard & stirrups (would also have had the blue headband if she hadn't needed it for an earlier costume). No rummaging around in her dance bag trying to find the pieces needed for each dance, everything was ready to grab & get into. Unlike some of the girls I helped where I had to empty out their bags to find where their headband had got to!

If you are a backstage helper - take along emergency supplies like safety pins & a simple sewing kit. The velcro top for the tap costume wouldn't stay closed for one girl, so we had to pin it on her instead.

My last hint is that if the dance school offers a hair & makeup workshop, do it. Ours has a free one every year, about a week before the end of year concert. I went to it two years ago when Niamh started in Tiny Tots & found it took all of my panic about stage makeup away. We got individual tutition on what is needed & how to put it on. One of the teachers demonstrated what was needed on half of Niamh's face & helped me duplicate the effect on the other half. And they had some bright lights set up, so you could see the difference makeup makes on stage when they popped girls with only half a face done under the lights. Really shows you why stage makeup is needed!

I didn't do the hair braiding part at that time - Tiny Tots just have high ponytails with bobby pins to catch the wispy bits (acknowledging that at least half of them won't have enough hair to braid!). However I did learn to cross bobby pins over each other, to keep them in place & to spray fine hair with hairspray before trying to do anything with it, so it sticks together better. Linda left a comment on an earlier post suggesting using gel as well, and smoothing out each piece of hair with a comb as you go when braiding.

One last sanity hint - don't supervise the tap class, try to get ballet or jazz or anything that doesn't involve trying to keep little girls with noisy shoes quiet on a concrete stairwell :-).

How dare they???

Okay fellow patrons of Parramatta library, listen up. Borrowing the books I wanted is just not on, are we clear on that? Return them immediately and we'll say nothing more about this, okay?

Likely to happen? No, I didn't think so either :-).

I found a series of books at the library on Friday, I think it's just called the Blood series, or something like that, by Tanya Huff. Thought they looked interesting, so I borrowed the first in the series (Blood Price) to see what they were like. The first one amused me, so I went back today to pick up book 2 (Blood Trail) & none of them were there. I'm sure there were at least 5 there on Friday, so I'm shocked that someone has taken all of them.

Of course, if the one person borrowed them all, they were probably peeved that the first book was out :-).

Strangely the books were in the mystery/crime section even though they are marked as fantasy on the spine & might possibly even be better classified as horror (very mild horror). The main female character is an ex-cop now private detective, so I guess that's the basis for the library classification. The other main characters are a former colleague & sometime lover Mike & the vampire Henry Fitzroy (illegitimate son of Henry VIII). Vampires appear to be quite reasonable 'people' in this world. Demons on the other hand ...

Oh well, I've put them on reserve & read them in a week or so.

Some concert pictures

Getting sprayed with glitter hairspray (I always do that outside)

Ballet costume -just imagine pink ballet shoes rather than boots & the skirt tied at the back

During ballet performance
(& with the skirt tied correctly this time!)

Tap performance

Tap performance

Tap performance

Tap costume

Acrobatics costume

Rowan looking in our front pond

Unfortunately there are no action shots from the acrobatics, because I can't separate out the other children. I try to avoid posting pictures of other people's children without permission.

Mid year concert today

Today is the mid-year concert for Niamh's dance school. She will be dancing in:
* When You Wish Upon a Star (ballet);
* Happy Boys & Happy Girls (tap); and
* Superstar (acrobatics)

Should be a fun day, N. has been looking forward to the concert for weeks.

The costumes are all pretty simple, but we do have one issue - each costume requires a different type of tights! Three types of tights for one simple concert. She has to have pink ballet tights for the ballet costume, shimmers for tap & then stirrups for acro (performed in bare feet, so they can't have full footed tights or they'd be slipping constantly). So I've volunteered to be a parent helper for one of the classes, just so that I can be there to help her with the tights changes.

She has to have her hair braided this year as well, and I'm not the best at braiding. We've been practicing, and it looks okay, but I can't get them as precise as some of the more experienced braiders yet. One parent from the tap class is great at it, but she says she's had years of practice with horses well before she started on children! Not having the horsey background, I've learned how to do it from You Tube videos.

I'll try to get some pictures of the cute costumes later!

Edit: post acro class report: apparently I am one of the few mothers to try braiding my daughter's hair. At least half the class were heading to hairdressers after class to get braided, or had already been before class. No wonder my efforts don't look as professional as some of the others!

More mushrooms. And backtracking

I feel a bit of an idiot - making an announcement this morning that I had mushrooms ready to pick was pretty meaningless when I'd never mentioned on this blog that I had started a mushroom kit.

So backtracking, Connor & I chose a button mushroom kit back in early June. This particular brand of kit also comes in portobello mushrooms & a mixed box where you get half buttons & half portabello. Unfortunately the shop we went to didn't have any of the mixed boxes in stock, so Connor chose the buttons.

Mushroom compost with spawn beginning to spread

It took a while for the spawn to spread over the surface, I think because of the weather - it's getting pretty cold here now.

Eventually it spread & we got to open the bag of peat & spread it out over the surface.

Ready for the cupboard - peat spread over the mushroom compost

Then we watered the surface & popped the box into a cupboard in the loungeroom. We have a fire in that room most nights, so I thought the warmth from the fire would be good for the mushrooms.

first little dots coming through at the edges

It took a few weeks & regular watering (with a spray bottle), but eventually little white dots started to come up.

Gradually they got bigger & bigger. Then suddenly today, the ones at the edge were huge & ready to harvest!

big enough to eat

So we picked the biggest ones - & one fairly little one, because Rowan knocked it over in the excitement.

ready to chop

And tonight we had beef stroganoff for dinner!

There are more little dots coming through all over the surface, but all of the first crop are from around the edge. Which makes sense - the spawn started at the edges & gradually spread in to the centre.

First mushrooms

Breaking news - we have some mushrooms ready to pick!

No time to write much - have to be out of the house in a few minutes.

Be back later with pictures.

Seen on a shop door in Parramatta

Maybe they think there are 8 days in the week?

CEO Sleepout

I was writing a comment on one of Linda's posts at Rebel Pigs and suddenly remembered the CEO Sleepout. According to the stats on this site, there are at least 105,000 Australians homeless at the moment, with around 34,000 of them children. You can read about what St Vinnies are doing to help here.

It suddenly got very cold here last week, after a balmy long weekend winter decided to actually arrive with a vengence. Our area is fairly temperate, but even we have been getting frost! My children are tucked up into warm beds at night, with blankets & hot water bottles - it would be nice if every other child was lucky enough to be able to do the same. St Vinnies does a great job helping as many people as they can.

My director has signed up to sleep outside on Thursday night, I'm feeling pretty proud of him for doing this and have made a donation to sponsor him.