We went out for a Seriously Fancy dinner for my birthday at Amaru in Armadale. It was very interesting. The theme of the meal to me was Things That You Think Are Going To Be Crispy But Actually Aren’t. And also, Drinkable Salad Dressing.
Radish Bite and Carrot CrackerOnion Taco and Hummus TriangleMacadamia Eel TartOysterTuna TacosCrabMarron Two Ways and Mochi BreadCoral TroutWagyuPineapple Sorbet and Ice CreamMoussePassionfruit Gaytime and Orange Choc and Rhubarb Jelly and Smoked Strawberry Ice Cream
We were so awkward until I accidentally exhaled while eating something with extremely finely grated macadamia on it and it went all over the table and the waiter had to sweep it up with a fancy tiny broom. That broke the ice a little bit.
Our favourites were the tuna tacos, marron, beef, and the passionfruit crunch ball. Oh and the mochi bread was like the most delicious fluffy bread I’ve ever had. I don’t think I would get the paired non-alcoholic ferments again, they were pretty weird. Very savoury. Oh yeah and they made everything for me dairy-free!!
We went to see Book Of Mormon. I am not a big musical person but it’s pretty unique, we enjoyed it! (Maybe not as much as the lady next to Scott who was laughing hysterically the entire time lol). I wore my knitted cardigan that I made two years ago and never wear.
Momofest was the best day out I’ve had in ages. I LOVE THIS FESTIVAL. There were at least 30 different stalls selling all different types of momos. We went with a group of friends so we each would go buy a plate of momos from a different place, and then regroup and share everything, so I got to try sooo many different types. Everyone was super friendly, it wasn’t crowded, and the lines were very manageable. A dude explained every single item on the menu at a dessert stall for me, and we decided to try one that was made of carrot, almonds and raisins. Always neat to try something new. Excellent day.
Jen organised for a bunch of us to go to a watercolour workshop where we painted some muchrooms. I haven’t used watercolours in agesss so it was great to get a bit of a refresher. We went out for brunch afterwards as well.
We went to watch the Melbourne-Brisbane game at the MCG. We sat with Scott’s Brisbane friends in the Brisbane section, so I felt even more weird in my new EXTREME PUFFY Melbourne coat but Melbourne won and also I was very cozy so yay. :)
Priz and I did an outdoor evening tournament in Noble Park. I forgot how nice it is to play pickleball outside. It’s way quieter and if it’s not windy it’s really calm and serene. I think I will try to play more pickleball outside this summer. We didn’t make it to the finals but it was still an enjoyable evening.
We got our travel vaccines for Borneo and went out for laksa afterwards. We have sooo many anti-malaria tablets.
I felted my slippers! I thought they came out too small but after squeezing my feet into them they actually sort of molded to my exact foot size and actually they are sooooo cozy and I never want to take them off any more. Some people put grippy stuff on the bottom of their slippers but I love to slide so I’ve not bothered. I don’t get to slide in pickleball any more so at least let me slide into the kitchen.
I also started making a pair of mittens with wool from last years Bendigo Wool Show. It’s 4 ply held double and I love how the variegation came out! It reminds me of newspaper.
I realised I had made a mistake on my cable knit blanket and had to undo several hours worth of knitting. Devastating. All fixed now though.
I think I’m about 70% through. Getting there!
My favourite dairy-free soft serves in Melbourne at the moment. Miguelitos ube soft serve Oreo sundae sub vegan coconut drizzle. Not so sweet, vaguely healthy. And Kariton soy soft serve Biscoff sundae. Super rich and satisfying.
Not very photogenic but radish cake and shrimp rice noodle roll. Really nice.
We had some nice food at home this month too. I roasted some pork for cubano sandwiches. Doreen messaged me out of the blue and asked if I would like some freshly caught tuna. UM YES. It was soo nice, really melted in the mouth.
Finally figured out how to make Fannie Farmer cookies in Australia and not have them spread out too far. It’s my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe but I don’t know if the brown sugar is different here, or if it is the differences in measuring spoons, but it took a while to make them work again.
Unpictured Stuff:
We had a casual Easter lunch in Boronia.
We went to the craft cinema with Ash and watched Muriel’s Wedding and My Big Fat Greek Wedding whilst knitting.
We went out for dinner with Michael and Gina while Gina was about the pop with babby. It was a nice dinner except for when I thought I’d put our order through on my phone but it actually hadn’t gone through and actually Scott was eating Gina’s meal. LOLOLOL.
We planted garlic in the garden boxes again.
This month looks really fun on reflection but actually rapidly went downhill and I ended up in burnout and ended up feeling absolutely horrible at the end of the month. But I learned a lot from this and am doing much better now.
Scott took me to the night market at Queen Vic for a #SMAJ. We had a Sri Lankan roti stir fry, a lobster roll, some Filipino skewers, and a strawberry lemonade. It’s kind of fun to be able to have so many different cuisines at the same time, although it wasn’t cheap! We went at 5PM so at least there weren’t any lines.
We had a big weekend of pickleball at the Pickleholic Autumn tournament. On the Saturday Scott competed with Jarrod in the morning, and then I competed with Eloise in the afternoon. We went up a category so it was pretty hard!! Especially because my OG partner got injured the day before and Eloise and I only got organised at the last second. But fun was had. Then on Sunday Scott and I competed together in the lower division and we made the finals but lost both final games and finished 4th. We were happy that we played pretty well together that day though (doesn’t always happen).
A couple weeks later I did another tournament at Pickle Play Dingley with Priscilla and we crushed it!!! We squeaked into the finals, but then won both final games and came home with a gold medal! The final game was our first time playing with an umpire and a bunch of people watching, which made us very nervous at first but eventually we remembered to talk to each other again. It was a very fun day with lots of laughs and making friends, as Priscilla is very friendly.
Scott won a different tournament with Jarrod that evening as well, so it was a very good day of pickleball for our household!
We went to the Melbourne – Carlton game with low expectations, as everyone expected Melbourne to lose every game this season, but we won! Also, Scott stood up and caught the ball in a perfect mark and it was very funny and exciting. Everyone around us cheered.
I got drenched in a surprise Melbourne rainstorm while pumping gas and had to show up to my hair cut appointment looking like a drowned rat, haha.
I think my team might have a bit of a sugar addiction…
Chocolate is too expensive so I decided to try and make marshmallows for the nieces and nephews for Easter. It was pretty sticky and messy but they came out great and the kids seemed to love them!
I also tried making homemade pasta for the first time. We’ve got a pasta roller attachment for our stand mixer but not a cutter yet so we have to slice the noodles freehand. I also made a slow cooked beef ragu and it all turned out extremely delicious if I do say so myself.
I finished my scrappy stripey socks while on our Guildford trip. As per usual I am not that happy with the way the variegated yarn worked out. I probably should have just skipped over the weird brown section of the wool.
I used duplicate stitch to stitch two loons onto the cashmere gloves. I designed the loon pattern using my old cross stitch software, with the grid modified into rectangles instead of perfect squares. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out although it was not easy to do on a pair of gloves! I had to use a cookie cutter to keep the wrist opening open enough to be able to reach inside. I am planning on using this technique in the future on some kids sweater designs. Eventually.
I also worked on a pair of felted double layer slippers using chunky 100% wool. It was kind of a fun project although the (free) pattern sucked. I should probably write my own version.
Unpictured stuff:
Jono visited from Scotland and they went golfing and he came over for a very impromptu dinner.
April interviewed me for a school project about growing up in another country. I talked about having to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow of course.
We saw Project Hail Mary. Both of us enjoyed the audiobook. The movie was fun too.
Went to Braeside for a bird photography outing with my new lens and saw enough birds that I’ll make that it’s own post.
We went to Guildford for a #SMAJ weekend! I’ll write it up in another post too!
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.
Scott got the hole in his spinal canal patched up and successfully got through the no-BLT time and recovered back to normal! He also started working again.
Rosemarie and I ate our way around peninsular Malaysia and had the best time. We ate kaya roti twice in 12 hours. We didn’t die on the world’s longest zip coaster.
Rosemarie came to Melbourne and we played 4000 board games and twinned at pickleball, which they have still not recovered from.
Scott and I finally got to go on a real holiday together. We went to Hanoi for six jam packed days of fun and eating and shopping and sweating. I survived crossing a parade line clinging to the back of a scooter.
Dad and Diane finally made it to Australia! Two family visits in one year, what a treat! I won a game of Wizard!
I found out that I am neurodivergent. Maybe confirmed is the proper word.
I started going to Bodypump and pickleball drills sessions.
Made some new friends through pickleball. Many fun meals out and lots of laughing.
A lot of games days and crafternoons and trivia days with my pals. My friend Bis prepared the most epic New Years Eve hot pot party that put me into a food coma, but I did actually stay up until midnight this time!
Favourite Books:
I actually only rated one book 5 stars this year and that was The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne, another sad book, I just found the way the parents interacted with the son really funny.
Other good ones were:
You Are Here by David Nicholls – nice story about people walking across England
Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy by Lisa See – historical fiction about life in China in the 1900s
The Women by Kristin Hannah – historical fiction about American women who served in the Vietnam War
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton – a thriller that talks a lot about nature
The Trees by Percival Everett – a wild book that is kind of funny and also ultra depressing?
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (audiobook) – cute story
Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid – easy read, good story
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett – easy read, good story
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (audiobook) – nerdy science entertainment
Board games:
I played 27 games this year, with 20 different people, in 13 locations.
11 were new games! Critter Kitchen, Finspan, Qwixx, Uno No Mercy, Deep Sea Adventure, Nekojima, Farkle, Micropolis, Wayfarers of the South Tigris, Verdant and just snuck one more new one in last night: Flamecraft Duals.
Critter Kitchen was definitely my favourite new game. It’s so cute and unique and fun! And Wingspan on Steam continues to be our go-to game, we played even more than last year. I played Wingspan 65 times and I have improved my win rate, I am now at 49% and Rosemarie down to 38%. Muahahaha.
Great new recipes: The Moroccan slow cooked lamb shoulder I made when dad and Diane arrived was probably my favourite new recipe, but it’s from the Recipe Tin Eats cookbook so I can’t really link it.
This beef rendang was also delicious. And I finally made Singapore carrot cake (black style) using a combination of this recipe and this recipe (and advice from Doreen).
Favourite bird pics:
I am not actually that happy with any of my bird pictures this year. I saw a lot of cool stuff through my binoculars but by the time I got my camera in the right spot the bird would be long gone. This is ok, I like seeing birds with my eyes too. I do wish you could just take like a screen capture of what you can see in the binoculars though.
Knitting:
I knit one sweater, one tank top, two beanies, three pairs of socks, and one pair of fingerless gloves! I just posted individual pics on my Instagram here.
I learned how to knit with mohair, how to alternate skeins to avoid colour pooling, and a new way to do really neat folded collars.
2026 Goals: I didn’t make any resolutions last year! We had enough going on. This year I’m resolving to PHONE LESS KNIT MORE. I have uninstalled all the dumb games on my phone.
Last years thoughts: “2024 wasn’t our best year. Unemployment x2, injury, chronic illness, saving up for trips that might not actually happen, and leaving weightlifting. But alas, we truck along. Hopefully we can get things back on track again in 2025.” I think we did.
This years thoughts: A much better year. We are healthy. We got to travel, spend time with family and friends, eat delicious things, and play A LOT of pickleball. What more can you ask for.
