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July was busy!!

For my 40th birthday we rented out Pickleholic and invited every single one of my friends to come and play pickleball. So many different groups all made an effort to come and it made me feel very special. We had tons of family, including the Lonards who came up from Sydney, work friends, weightlifting friends, pickleball friends, Discord friends, board game friends, old friends, and new friends.

Unfortunately I only remembered to take two photos on the day.

Almost everyone had a try at some point!! Love it!!

We got banh mi delivered in and had tons of snacks as well. And a Costco cake. Scott made a speech, and I disassociated while they sang Happy Birthday to me. Please do not perceive me. :P

Overall I had a blast and felt very spoiled and I hope everyone else had fun too. A good start to my 40s.

The next day we celebrated Luca’s birthday in Boronia. The kids smashed the pinata that we forgot to do at the party. It’s probably a good thing we forgot to do it at Pickleholic because the pinata was very durable and the candy got a bit pulverized and made a huge mess.

The fam went to watch Scott at hockey. It was fun to see him play and see how much he’s improved since the last time I went, but everyone’s favourite part of the game was when he got a penalty and had to sit in the penalty box.

We did some dogsitting while Priscilla went to Adelaide. This is Fanta. She spends most of her day lying down on the floor or the couch. A very chill doggy. She has pyjamas! I am not really a dog person but I didn’t mind this dog. In fact I did feel quite sad after she got picked up.

Quest For El Dorado
Everdell Silverfrost

I got a bunch of new board games for my birthday! The Quest For El Dorado is right up my alley as it is relatively simple but can get strategic! I also like that it is El Dorado when that’s where we used to live in Vancouver. And Everdell Silverfrost is great as well, as I always sort of thought that the original Everdell was a bit too simple, and this version adds a bunch of chaos elements that make every game slightly different. We still have a couple more new games to try as well!

I attempted to make a red velvet cake for Ash’s birthday but accidentally added BLACK food colouring instead of red!! It came out a really appetizing shade of swampy green. But it tasted great and was still probably my most successful layer cake ever. We won at trivia that night too so overall that was a great evening.

This year we decided to make a whole weekend of the Bendigo Wool Show. We booked an Airbnb and had a great little weekend away. We went to the wool show on two different days, which took a lot of the urgency out of the shopping. We scoped out options on the first day, and then figured out exactly what we needed, and then went back with a plan the second day.

Highlights for me were all the beautiful hand dyed sock yarns, beautiful gradient packs of mini skeins, chips with cheese and gravy (as close to poutine as I’m gonna get here), the little wooden drawer thingy I got from the woodworkers association, craft cinema, Dani using a chair as a swift, pattern sharing, the immaculate lawn at the airbnb, and the fix for the car breaking down only costing $33.

This was my haul. Mostly sock yarn and the blue wool will be for a shawl.

Scott organised a blind taste test event for me as a #SMAJ activity. They do stuff like this on Masterchef Australia all the time and we always thought it would be fun. He had different categories and I had to name the flavours/types. Like cheese, Pringles flavours, Oreo varieties, juice types. And dark chocolate that I had to guess the percentage. I did better than I expected! The only thing that really confused me was the apple juice, it just tasted like pure sugar but I couldn’t figure out what flavour.

Priscilla and I did yet another pickleball tournament, at Pickleholic. It was a tough tournament! We only won one game and lost three. Was still fun though and we know lots of stuff to work on.

I love double hand backhand but it’s starting to hurt? I’m not sure what to do about this.

I finished my second Anyday Sweatshirt! It still needs a final blocking but I’ve been wearing it heaps already. It came out bigger than I intended but is actually so cozy like this I don’t even mind. I raced to finish it in time for a chance to win prizes in a knitalong, but unfortunately I did not win anything. I suppose the motivation was good though otherwise it probably still wouldn’t be done.

I made this little onigiri pouch as requested by Rose. It looks cute in this picture but in real life it’s not great.. it’s way too thick and the top can’t even close. I will make my own version sometime… maybe in 2029.

Unpictured Stuff:

  • 50 million physio appointments
  • Scott finished working

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We started June off by going to a Tubular Bells concert. It wasn’t Mike Oldfield himself, apparently he’s a bit of a weirdo. But these guys played all of Tubular Bells I and parts of II and III. There were two percussionists, a keyboard guy, two guitarists, a bass player, a singer, and an electric cello guy. They played sooo many different instruments each. It was fascinating to watch.

I loved this concert so much. It was so nostalgic. They came around at intermission and sold ice cream in little dixie cups too. All the oldies looked like they were having a great time.

Sweat bros doing a private drilling session with our prize vouchers.

Overstimulated bros doing trivia.

Brown Falcon
Black Kite

This month’s photography trip was back to the Western Treatment Plant. It wasn’t that long since I was last there, but the trip was planned in the winter to try and find some endangered parrots. Which we unfortunately didn’t see. But we did see lots of raptors somewhat close so that’s cool.

Garlic update. They all sprouted! Fingers crossed for a good harvest this year.

Lara’s younger sister is visiting Australia from the Ukraine for a few months so they had us over for a dinner and board games night to introduce us to all their friends at once. European kids are so much cooler than Australian/Canadian kids lol. I welcomed her to Australia by absolutely destroying everyone at Ticket To Ride Europe hahahaha.

Pic by @markelbourneshoots
Pic by @markelbourneshoots

Priscilla and I competed in the Pride & Paddle pickleball comp at Raya. It was a fun day but extremely tiring. We had to play six games to 15 with no bye, and then made it to the finals so we had to play a best of three to 11 for bronze. We won the first game of the finals but then ran out of steam and ended up losing the next two, so ended up in 4th place. Too bad, because the medals were really cute. We played well all day but just didn’t have the stamina to last the longer games… almost every game we lost we actually made it to 11 first, but then ended up losing like 13-15. We are working on this!!

It was super nice that so many pickleball friends came to support us through the comp.

Our #SMAJ event was trying out the new souffle pancake place at Chaddy. We got fried chicken and pancakes and Biscoff pancakes. They were redonk. Now I want to try and make them at home.

I think it is very funny that Lara wanted to take her Ukranian sister to a (unlimited) pierogi restaurant in Melbourne when she is FROM UKRAINE. But I guess pierogies are always great. I ate less than last time but it was great going in a big group, lots of laughs. Kira says I look like Mavis from Hotel Transylvania.

More sweater progress. I decided to work on both sleeves at the same time. I would do a step of the instructions on both sides before going to the next step. It made it easier to remember what to do so it’s very matchy matchy.

Unpictured Stuff:

  • I last minute planned us a weekend away in Moonambel for Kings Birthday since we didn’t have anything going on that weekend. I’ll write about it in another post.
  • I got botox in my jaw to help with pain from clenching. It’s great!
  • I went to a work trivia night and my department won cuz we are the biggest nerds.
  • We went to KBBQ with Gav and Aura. So nice to catch up with them again after not seeing them for ages. We learned so many things about teeth.
  • Scott worked ~55 hour weeks for three weeks during Semester 1 exams.
  • Then the day after exams finished he got made redundant. IDGI.

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May was a little bit calmer. I had to pull back on a lot of activities to try to recover.

This is the armour I put on to go out into the real world. Why is the real world so loud and bright.

We played a bunch of crokinole until Scott got too good at it and I had to put it away again.

We went to Noah’s 21st birthday party (Part 1) and got to meet their new puppy. Then when Part 2 began and all of Noah’s friends started arriving we all GTFO’d and left them to it.

Went out for dinner after pickleball with a few new friends and had a Korean junk food feast! Fried chicken, seafood pancake, two types of stew, tteokbokki, and banchan. It was great!

We saw Kooza. i thought it was great. We loved the big wheel thingy of course. I would love to try it (just the inside part).

New Holland Honeyeater
Nankeen Night Heron

I went on a bird photography outing to Blind Bight. We saw lots of birds in the morning and got plenty of good photo opportunities. I stayed for lunch and then headed home after that, and ended up getting called into work that evening!! A big day.

Scott organised for us to go to Dingo Ate My Taco which involved him leaving work early and lining up in an alleyway for an hour. I got to show up right at opening time and skip the line. :D Good work Scott. Love sitting at the counter where you can see into the kitchen.

We had escabeche and a bunch of tacos and a spicy margarita. Very tasty.

And then Kariton afterwards for some soy soft serve. The first bite tastes like tofu and then it tastes like regular ice cream after that. I love it.

I could see on the website that there were a lot of ladies signed up for the Saturday intermediate tournament at MPC for once, so Scott and I signed up, but then they put us in Pool A with ALL MEN!! And all the ladies and mixed teams were in the other pool. I was so annoyed. It’s not fun for me to play against all male teams, I just get smashed.

I finally made it to a crafternoon again. My margarita was extremely delicious and we had a variety of pickle flavoured chips to nibble on. I liked the venue (Nubilum), it was chill in there and the chairs have backs.

Finished my newspaper mittens! They are very soft. And chugging along on the confetti sweater.

Lil cartoon for Priscilla’s birthday.

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In February Yo-Chi had a promotion that if you did 25,000 steps by 2PM you could get $15 of free fro yo per person, so Scott and I decided to try and do it. It was a very funny day. We walked all morning. I took extremely tiny steps to try and boost my numbers. We played pickleball as well which took care of a big chunk. We mayyy have cheated a little by taking turns wearing both watches at once for a bit so the other person could have a bit of a rest… but at least we showed up to the shop tired and sweaty, unlike some of the other people who 1000% cheated because they didn’t look tired at all!!!

Anyway I enjoyed my enormous free fro yo that probably took a month off my life.

I went camping for a night by myself! Near Kinglake. The only part I was worried about was whether I’d be able to set up the tent on my own, but it ended up being easy. I DON’T NEED NO MAN. :P All I did was set up my tent, make dinner, knit for a little while, and then moved into the tent to read once the mosquitos came out. The next day was one of my Birdlife photography meetups which was nice, but we barely saw any birds and I only took two pictures, both of which were terrible. lol.

Our #SMAJ activity was watching Pretty Women at the outdoor cinema. A cute evening. I hadn’t seen it before. Big mistake.

Of course we ordered the Wingspan South America expansion as soon as it came out. It adds on hummingbirds, which mostly just make it easier to get resources, so you can build more birds, which is always fun I guess. Can get a really good engine going.

One (creepy) glove done.

Cable knit blanket coming along. During the summer I could only work on it when we had the AC blasting during Free Power Hours, haha.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Sally had the whole gang over for a crafternoon. We got Malaysian takeaway and had a lovely chill hang out.
  • I watched 70 million hours of the Winter Olympics. Love it.
  • So much pickleball. Still addicted.

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Holy late post Katrina. Oops.

NYE fireworks at Bis’s apartment. It was so cold out.

Wingspan with Michael and Gina. You can see the birdhouse that Bis printed for us because our cardboard one was wearing out.

We played free pickleball in Bayswater and then got suburban Malaysian food for dinner. Scott got asam laksa and I got sar hor fun, which was sooooo gloopy but… I love gloopy!!

Bis needed some help assembling his new shed so Scott and I went over for a day to lend a hand. It reminded me of my childhood at the cottage. He had to over-engineer it to stand up to the gale force winds they get on their balcony so there are a lot of extra pieces and A LOT of rivets.

We got the strangest pizzas I’ve ever seen for dinner afterwards from a Korean pizza shop. This one had corn shaped mashed potatoes on it.

The girls came over for a sleepover! We went swimming at the pool with waterslides, watched Wicked: For Good (so much squealing at the scene with Elphaba and Fiyero in bed omg), and ate chicken nuggets spaghetti and red velvet cake (with secret beets).

We had a Second Christmas at Jemma’s house. Many presents and treats. My brother-in-law looooves Nanaimo Bars.

We went to the outlet mall and bought five pairs of shoes at once. Scott’s Vietnamese fake Salomon shoes did not hold up.

I mistakenly bought tickets to Opening Week of the Australian Open which is actually the week BEFORE the Australian Open starts. However, Jemma’s family also had tickets so we all went in together on our day off and it turned out to be quite good!! And it only cost me $5! You can do all the AO activities with no lines, and there are still some good matches going on for qualifying. You can also watch the top people practice, but I found that quite boring. I also got to see a bit of the One Point Slam which was quite funny, and Myles and Damien got a free legit tennis racket each as well. Would Opening Week again.

I spent a whole afternoon building a collapsible lightbox for product photography. Why? I don’t know, but it was pretty satisfying and it works really well. I did a combination of about 4 different Youtube video tutorials.

Then I spent another entire day taking pictures of every little bit of wool that I have and cataloguing it on my Ravelry account. Again, why? I don’t know, but It tickled my neurodivergent brain just right. So organised.

I went to Phillip Island for a night of the January long weekend. Sonika had organised an Airbnb and we played tons of board games. 12 Rivers had a fun mechanism where you get to yank a barrier out at the top and all the balls roll down into different areas. Whirling Witchcraft had the worst rulebook I’ve ever seen but was actually quite funny once we figured it out. I taught the group Orleans, which they liked. And The Hobbit: There and Back Again was fun but quite difficult for me and Bis to play with our aphantasia.

I went to the Churchill Island farmers market for a focaccia and a fruit sorbet.

Always looking for vegan soft serve. This one was half ube and half avocado in the CBD. Not too sweet. I liked it.

I got Scott and I tickets to see the Hoodoo Gurus at the music bowl. I didn’t really know the band before but it seemed like they’re an Aussie equivalent of The Tragically Hip. It was a very pleasant evening of lounging around on the picnic blanket with snacks and margaritas and live music.

Summer knit projects! Socks and gloves. I still loooove making socks, but I didn’t really enjoy gloves. So fiddly.