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I had a really epic alone-y weekend in Bendigo at the end of February. I took the Friday off from work, did a pickleball round robin tournament in the morning and had a lot of fun and achieved my goal of finishing in the top 10 (I finished 7th!). Then I drove up to Bendigo and went to the conference opening, checked into my motel, and went for a quick swim/hot warm tub.

I couldn’t believe it, Ben Folds just happened to be playing in Bendigo (for the first time) on the same weekend, on the one evening I had free. I got a last minute ticket on Tixel and it was great! I liked that it was a small venue. The funniest part was when the piano bench kept sticking to the floor so he kicked it away and gave it double birds and played the rest of the show in the lunge position like the old days. However, I’m pretty sure he skipped the second encore because of back pain haha.

My first workshop of the conference was Let’s Get Lacey: Starter Lace Knitting. I made soooo many mistakes at the beginning, but once I started using a bunch of stitch markers and lifelines, I got the hang of it.

First time wearing my knitted tank top in real life! I got a lot of comments.

In the afternoon they had some panel discussions about making a career out of crafting and about Bendigo Woollen Mills. They were somewhat interesting discussions but the best part was just seeing what everyone was working on while they listened. Really incredible pieces, very inspiring. I worked on a pair of socks.

Then they had small group table sessions where I learned a few mending techniques, crocheted a bunting triangle, and learned how to do Tunisian crochet.

I got Malaysian food for dinner and then went to the Craft Cinema where we watched The Princess Bride and I finished my socks.

My second workshop was Introduction to Botanical Dyeing. We learned all about the different supplies you need and what kind of stuff you can collect to do dyeing and how to do it.

We all got to take home a mini skein of wool and cotton from each of the four brews.

And then I drove home! Cup full and inspired.

Overall the conference was great!! It was so neat chatting with everyone with our common interests. I loved seeing what everyone was working on and picked up a bunch of tips and tricks too. There were a few hiccups with it being the first time they’ve run the conference, but they also did great problem solving and I’m sure next time will be perfect. I hope I can go again!

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I went to a birding outing to Cranbourne Botanic Gardens. My first time there. It is quite an elaborate place.

There were plenty of birds around, including tons and tons of New Holland Honeyeaters, but again I didn’t get any fantastic pictures. Still feeling a bit rusty after not really using my camera much over the last winter.

I like the background and perch of that New Holland Honeyeater picture but why does he only have one eye??! And this galah picture really made me laugh… you want as much foreground as possible in a bird picture, yes? I submitted it to Crap Bird Photography on Facebook and got a pretty good response, hehe.

I do like this picture though.

After a pleasant morning of wandering around looking for birds I headed over to Ash’s house, who moved out to the boonies over a year ago and I hadn’t visited yet. After chatting for a few minutes I looked up how long it would take to get to my pickleball drills session and realised it started half an hour earlier than I thought it did and I only had ten more minutes to visit. OOPS. Well it was enough time for a tour and a cookie. My bad.

We played Critter Kitchen with Nick and Lara. Nick made chilli and Scott made lemon tart. We also played Wayfarers of the South Tigris which was a little bit confusing, and took us most of the game to figure out what was going on, but then was ok, but we’ll probably never play again because there are always new games to try, lol.

We watched the AFL Grand Final in Boronia with Vicky and Brett. It was a good game, extremely even until half time for excitement, and then Scott’s team (Brisbane) dominated the second half and won convincingly.

I got some new ear plugs made and spent the hour waiting time at Bonbeach. Was pleasant until it started pouring.

Post Pickleball Pizza Party. Our usual Friday night pickleball sessions at Ashburton have come to an end, so we had one last dinner out together. Fun group. Hoping they migrate over to the new session at the venue right around the corner from our house.

Good lunch, bad lunch. Diane brought me Kraft Dinner powder!! Happy Katrina. Another day I completely forgot I was cooking a gozleme on the stove until I smelled a lot of smoke… oops… Sad Katrina.

This is probably only interesting to me but whatever. My pickleball coach kept telling me that the handle of my pickleball paddle was too thick for me, but I also needed to put overgrip on it because I am so sweaty. So I took a risk and peeled off the factory grip that it came with, and added overgrip directly over the bare handle…. and it’s ok!! It took a session to get used to it again but now I feel One With My Paddle.

Finished budgie paint by numbers. I kinda want to add a little speech bubble… what should it say? Something short.

I started making a hat with the neon hand-dyed yarn I got at the Wool Show. I had to split the ball into two balls and learn how to do alternating skeins to avoid colour pooling.

Unpictured things:

  • We also had a games day with Michael and Gina but I guess I took no pictures! Scott made pulled pork for lunch and we played Crokinole and Empires End.
  • Scott came to pickleball drills sessions a couple times because they were in the evenings during school holidays.
  • We saw One Battle After Another at the theatre as a #SMAJ activity and I did not like it. Three hours of bad people and someone banging on the top keys of a piano… it gave me a headache.

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Pat turned 70 and the whole family got together for a succulent Chinese meal in Boronia. It’s always nice to have the family together (only missing Michael and Luca), and I think Pat really liked it because he teared up a bit when he thanked us all for coming.

We had the girls over for a sleepover before Ava and Jess’s flight back to Sydney. We played some games and watched a movie and had snacks. I heard a lot of thumping and bumping coming from the living room over night!!

An elder millenial giving up her skinny jeans (for now). Ava is my style inspiration.

Geared up for an excursion into and onto the roof. A lot of the insulation had been thrown around during the renovations so we spent some time nestling them all back in place. It felt like doing every single hip mobility exercise in a row. I think it’s worked though (along with some of our other draft reduction projects) because this winter hasn’t felt quite so miserable as the last few.

Michael and Gina had us over for an excellent lunch. I felt like we were at a Japanese restaurant! We played Critter Kitchen and Nekojima. Critter Kitchen is really fun! Lucky that we won that from Sonika’s raffle.

Dumpling dinner in the city. Scott was very brave wearing his brand new hoodie, I definitely would have dropped something on myself.

Scott organised for us to do a printmaking class in the city for one of his #SMAJ activities. It was fun, although I felt very rushed, but maybe that is good for me, to not try to perfectionize every activity.

Scott and I did a pickleball tournament at Eastern Indoor Centre and managed to come second! The tournament ran very far behind schedule and we had to wait AGES in between games so it was a weird evening of warming up and then getting cold and having to warm up again. We only finished second in our pool to make it into the semi finals, but played very well in the semis to make it into the final! And then we got smashed in the final, haha.

We had a family birthday dinner at Jemma’s. Myles and I made lots of origami shuriken, which he later combined into a ULTIMATE SHURIKEN. Love it.

Tiny bit of progress on the cable knit blanket.

Unpictured stuff:

  • So much pickleball. Social sessions, drills, and private lessons. I also did a DUPR session at Eastern Indoor with a random old man partner to try and get used to the courts/balls before the tournament. Good thing I did because I was hitting everything out of bounds that day. Sorry partner.
  • Scott worked hella overtime running exams. Very long days for him. He has a lot of TOIL.
  • I went to a Discord meetup. Was nice to see everyone again and meet a few new people as well. The highlight was the apple caramel slice that one person brought. Delicious.
  • I started doing Bodypump classes at the gym near my house. It’s a bit silly and I spend a lot of time flailing around, but it’s also fun and at least I am doing something. Gym motivation is very low these days.

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    And yet again I am months behind in blogging. This will be a pretty short post though because we didn’t that much and apparently I took even fewer pictures.

    I didn’t stay up for New Years Eve, like usual, but we did drive down to the beach for our traditional New Years Day polar bear swim. It was windy and cool so we just dunked and left.

    I felt like we were wasting away our whole summer so I booked us an Airbnb for a long weekend in Warrandyte to trick us into thinking we were on holiday (when really we only had to drive 30 minutes). It actually worked, the Airbnb was up in the trees and really spacious. We went out for a few meals, swam in the river, played games, and watched movies. It was very relaxing.

    I started a new project, a sweatshirt.

    And I finished these jellyfish socks with that much navy yarn to spare! Just enough to kitchener stitch the toe and weave in the ends. I won yarn chicken that day.

    January unpictured stuff:

    • We saw Rufus Wainwright at the Melbourne Recital Center and it was very lovely.
    • Big dumpling dinner in the city. Always good.
    • We went to a Middle Eastern restaurant for a #SMAJ activity and ordered a huge platter.
    • I played a lot of pickleball.
    • Scott’s procedure got postponed.

    The power went out on a very very hot day so we decided to slow walk to Chadstone for fro yo instead of roasting ourselves at home. The fro yo was great and by the time we got home the power was back on. Mission success.

    I got a new phone so now I can take good pictures from a lot further away haha.

    If you’ve ever traveled with me you would have seen my suitcases that I painted 20ish years ago. It really does make it so much easier in the airport. My skills have improved since then… very happy with how my new carry on bag came out. There are sprinkles on all sides for 3D identification.

    February unpictured stuff:

    • After months of waiting, Scott finally got his blood patch done!! He felt better about a week later but had to be very careful with his movements.
    • Helping prepping as much stuff as possible so that Scott would be OK when I left to go to Malaysia.
    • A work dinner to celebrate Leon finishing his placement.

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    We started the month with a belated #SMAJ. He took me to the Accidental Wes Anderson exhibit in the city, which is an art exhibit with lots of people’s pictures that look like Wes Anderson. Like, wide angle, colourful, symmetrical. It was cute. I was really really tired that night for some reason. We had ramen for dinner.

    We went to the one year anniversary Palestine rally, which had a nice big turnout. Can’t believe it’s still necessary. At least we get to catch up with some friends at the same time.

    I went to the Finders Keepers Market and spent too much money on cute things. I got an olive oil bottle, some bird pins, a beeswax sandwich bag, a patch to put over the pepperoni oil stain on my favourite hoodie, and a bunch of random stickers.

    I was really craving a big ass sandwich (BAS) afterwards. It took me a while to find somewhere that was open for lunch on the weekend but eventually ended up with this rare beef sandwich from Hector’s Deli, which really hit the spot.

    I was planning on competing in the Ian Laurie Cup in November, but it ended up being cancelled and instead I ended up doing Victorian Championships. Normally I wouldn’t even have qualified for this competition, but this year they decided to not have any entry requirements so it was kind of a special opportunity, which made me feel excited and nervous and also awkward. They were running quite behind schedule so I had a really long time to wait after weighing in before my session would start so I lay outside on the grass for a while. The ear of my headphones broke off, which was annoying.

    Anyway despite having a shortened prep and a week or so off while I was sick, the competition ended up going well for me, nearly perfect really. My friend Pitty came to coach me and he was great. I didn’t really care how I performed in the snatches so of course I got all three attempts easily (45, 48, 50). Not a PB but very happy to get 50kg again.

    I clean and jerked 55 and 58 pretty easily but missed 60kg for the millionth time. Frustrating. But that’s still a 1kg PB total so yay. And I got to have these cool photos taken so that’s neat as well.

    The next day I went back to volunteer/watch Steph/help Nic. Big weekend.

    I actually haven’t been back to training since the comp. Instead I’ve been playing tons of pickleball and swimming and doing some quick squat sessions in the garage. Still just as busy as before but it’s really nice not to have to be so strict with everything, and it’s feeling fun.

    I finally cooked the frozen garfish that Doreen gave me a while ago. They were already cleaned so all I had to do was roll over them with a rolling pin, pull out as much of the spine as I could, then I breaded them in flour and panko and shallow fried. They were delicious. It’s great that you don’t have to worry about the small bones, they’re soft enough to eat. Served with some dense bean salad.

    This is my lunch time knitting project. Jellyfish socks! I usually get to do about 20-30 minutes on it per day and it’s a nice calming part of my lunch break. Socks are the best portable project.

    Two of my coworkers have the same birthday and we ended up with three cakes at work!! Best day ever.

    Unpictured stuff:

    • A few of my coworkers and I went bowling one night. It was something ridiculous like $42 for 2 games of bowling or $44 for unlimited bowling so of course we picked unlimited and REALLY tried to get our moneys worth. I think I played 7 games? And two of them stayed for ages and played 15 games hahahhaa. I was truly terrible at it, like mixing up which arm is supposed to swing with which leg.. but it was a good chance to try and work it out. We were all very sore the next day.