by ·0 Comments

Good things that happened in 2024:

  • We saw the Aurora Australis twice, kind of.
  • We saw the Cirque du Soleil show Luzia and was shocked and awed, mostly by the contortionist.
  • We went to a restaurant where you could eat unlimited pierogies, what a dream.
  • I went on an epic trip to Christmas Island where I saw amazing wildlife and learned a ton about photography.
  • We went on a pleasant weekend away in Torquay.
  • I saw a performance of Wallace and Gromit Wrong Trousers with a live brass band and it made me cry with happiness.
  • I competed in the Victorian Weightlifting Championships and nearly had a perfect competition.
  • I played a heck of a lot of pickleball.

Favourite Books:

I watched a lot less TV this year and instead started listening to audiobooks, which works a lot better with knitting as I never used to look at the TV enough to follow what was happening. That plus bed time reading.. I got through a lot more books than last year! These were my favourites:

  • Solito by Javier Zamora – intense true story of a little poop-obsessed kid trying to get from El Salvador to USA
  • In Memoriam by Alice Winn – man, WWI really sucked
  • Know My Name by Chanel Miller – the world is so exhausting and unfair
  • Five Little Indians by Michelle Good – another pretty sad book about kids that had to go to residential school in British Columbia
  • Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin – at times frustrating, but interesting story about friends that make video games
  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – multi-multi-multi-generational story about a family from Ghana to USA, my favourite part: when they said segregation wouldn’t have been so bad if the white people just left them alone
  • Greenwood by Michael Christie – another Canadian book, makes you grateful for nature
  • Educated by Tara Westover – shocking, fascinating story of a girl with insane Mormon parents

In summary, the more depressing or disturbing the better, especially if also set in Canada.

Board games:

I played 21 games this year, with 26 different people, in 11 locations.

14 were new games! Everdell, Unfair, Empire’s End, Scribbly Gum, Inis, Pollen, Brass: Birmingham, Disney Villainous, Portrayal, Quadrapolis, Habitats, Vivid Memories, Zoo Vadis, and The Fuzzies. Definitely not all of those new games were good. Brass was so confusing, Villainous was torturous with 6 players, and Zoo Vadis was SO annoying as a quiet person. But I really enjoyed Empire’s End, Pollen (going to make my own travel version), Quadrapolis, and even The Fuzzies (Jenga with pompoms).

Our most played game, by far, was Wingspan. Mostly on Steam with Scott and Rosemarie on the weekends. I played 39 games with Rosemarie over the year! (Of which she won 48% of them!!!)

PBs:

No snatch PBs. Clean and jerk 58kg -> 59kg in comp. Total 108kg -> 109kg. No other PBs on squats, deadlifts or presses. No wonder I felt like retiring.

Pickleball game has improved heaps but not as easy to measure.

Great new recipes:

  • Everything that you can put in an air fryer
  • Brussels sprouts are actually tasty!
  • Dumplings like you can get in Chinatown (I used peanut butter instead of sesame paste)
  • Dense bean salads, like this one

Favourite bird pics:

Because it was HARD WORK to get this picture.

Because it looks like a moody painting.

Knitting:

Year of the beanie, apparently! Learned colourwork, continental knitting, intarsia and cable knitting.

2024 goals: Use camera more!!! (That dusty thing in the corner?) Design bird sweaters. (Started this, then abandoned after I realised designing clothing patterns is an extremely difficult task due to people coming in many many different sizes.) Be more comfortable being me. (Maybe a bit TOO comfortable, jk.)

Last years thoughts: “Hopefully Scott ends up getting a new job soon so that we go back to traveling and doing more fun stuff again.” HA HA HA. :(

This years thoughts: While it mostly didn’t seem that bad at the time, upon reflection, 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.

by ·0 Comments

We had a really fun Saturday where we did a pickleball tournament in the afternoon, then went out for dinner in the city, and then went to a concert. And the only picture I took was our food. Typical.

The tournament was the Maroondah Classic and we did the Mixed Doubles 3.0 and under category. From memory we won three and lost three games, and ended up in 4th place. Classic. It was fun and we saw lots of pickleball friends at the competition.

We had Roule Galette for dinner. I had a breakfast-y one with ham and eggs and swiss cheese, and Scott had something with apple and camembert. A delicious quick dinner. Then we saw Lior at the Melbourne Recital Centre (my new favourite venue since going to see the Wallace and Gromit thing). It was a nice concert, very relaxing.

I mentioned in my last post that I stopped doing weightlifting. Instead I started playing pickleball three times a week, swimming, and signed up for a sewing class. If I finished work early on a sewing class day I figured out I had enough time to drive to Fitzroy, go for a swim there, get plant based ice cream, and then go to the class. A very productive and fun day.

The sewing class was good, it was nice to get some guidance and learn the proper way to do things. I made a jumpsuit and a pair of shorts in the three classes.

Spontaneous momo lunch (and fabric shop). We also had pani puri which was so fun! And a “salad” that was definitely not healthy haha.. it seemed to be made mostly of crispy noodles and rice krispies. I don’t know what spices Nepalese food uses but it’s so neat to eat a different flavour profile than we are used to.

It was really hot this day, ok.

Unfortunately this is when things started to go bad for us.

Scott got a really bad headache after playing hockey, which everyone decided was concussion. More about this later. And then in the same week, he got laid off from work. So no more sewing classes. Scott spent a lot of time lying down in the spare room in the dark.

A concussed guy harvesting garlic. And French braiding garlic is easier than hair, haha.

We’d been growing this garlic for months!! One morning Scott told me to come outside and look because he thought the garlic had been trampled. Every single plant was now lying down on the ground instead of growing straight up like the day before. Apparently this is how soft neck garlic tells you it’s pretty much ready for harvest. Exciting! We got a decent harvest, although some of them are pretty tiny. We still haven’t actually tried any of it because we keep getting given a new bulb of garlic in every food delivery box, although as I’m writing this now I realise I think we need to just use it anyway.

Games night as Bis’s featuring crazy snacks that Bis and Yay brought back from Europe and Japan. Including… PLANKTON chocolate. I’m not even joking. Now I know next time I go on a trip I need to find the absolute weirdest food ever to bring back as a gift for Bis, lol. Yay brought back the most delicious fluffy soft fruity pillow mochi that I love soooooooooo much.

We played Zoo Vadis, which I hated because it involved loud negotiating, and Habitats which was good except everyone got too distracted by trying to find the exact right animal token even though it didn’t actually matter which token you used.

What pepperoni oil stain?

Lunch time jellyfish socks are coming along. I made a mistake though and accidentally knitted the whole foot part without switching back to the larger needles so they are very narrow. Who do we know with size 8ish, but very thin feet?

Rosemarie’s sweater almost done. I had to do all sorts of knitting math to try and maximize every meter I had of the yarn because I only had JUST enough to finish. Thankfully Rosemarie doesn’t have quite as freakishly long torso as I do.

Unpictured stuff:

  • We had a family lunch at Brett’s on Melbourne Cup Day. Love a public holiday that no one cares about the reason for having the public holiday any more.
  • Played games at Maz’s. We played Lords of Waterdeep (classic) and Quadropolis (simple planning type of game).
  • We had brunch out with Scott’s friends’ family that live very close to us but we don’t see very often (well actually I haven’t seen them since our WEDDING PARTY, lol). Scott made their daughter a crochet Pokemon thing that was a hit. They started playing pickleball so maybe we will see them more often now.

by ·0 Comments

We had a fun board game day at our house where we played Lords of Waterdeep with all the expansions and had a mega sandwich buffet with good bread from Baker Bleu, and Golden Soup with crunchy chick pea topping.

We were going to have another boardgame night the following weekend with different friends but ended up having to cancel because I got mega sick. I thought it was just a bad cold at first, then started to feel better mid-week, even well enough to go to training on Wednesday morning, but then I got much much more sick after that and ended up taking the entire week off work. I completely lost my sense of taste and smell for about a week as well. But tested negative on several different covid tests! Weird.

Luckily I was well enough to go to watch the Geelong-Brisbane finals game with Scott and Donna and her whole family. (I mega bundled myself.) We had great seats. The kids were a bit devo when Geelong lost but Scott was elated as that meant his team was making it to the Grand Final again (and he had a connection to get a ticket).

Then Scott started to feel sick! I was worried for him because it took me a full 9 days to feel well enough to do anything and he had just spent $800 on a Grand Final ticket that was about 5 days away at that point. But out of sheer will and determination, he seemed to have cured himself in time and he had a great day at the Grand Final (Brisbane won, by a lot).

He did not feel well enough to go to the showing of Wallace and Gromit Wrong Trousers with live brass band with me during the week, so I took my friend Charlie instead and we had a great time. The band played a a bunch of random amusing songs at the beginning, and then they played the whole soundtrack along with the movie on the big screen. I LOVED IT SO MUCH. And then we got Japanese food for lunch near by and it was an excellent day overall.

Rosemarie’s sweater progress! That thin blue tubing (barber cord) can attach right onto the ends of your needles so you can make the circumference big enough to try stuff on as you go. I ordered it for a few dollars off Amazon. Neat! I decided to do the neck and sleeves before I continued on with the body, which is different to how the pattern is written but I think helps with keeping motivation up by getting the harder parts out of the way sooner.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Scott took Myles to see Transformers One at the movies for his birthday. I was still sick so I stayed home, which deeply concerned Myles at first… until he remembered that I could watch it on Disney Plus later. Hehehe.

by ·0 Comments

OMG I’m so behind in blogging I can’t really remember what we did on this trip. So how about I just show you some pictures.

Winkipop
Bells Beach
Amazing ENORMOUS seafood platter
White-faced Heron
Spicy momos at the farmers market
Boardgames at the Airbnb
Ramen dinner
Entertaining ourselves while we waited for brighter aurora
Lil’ smudge of aurora
I like that the signpost looks like a microscope pointer. Exhibit A: Milky Way
Knitting in the sun

Scott did a good job of planning the whole weekend (other than picking another Airbnb that has no bathroom door). It was a nice relaxing weekend away with delicious meals.

by ·0 Comments

Agh I’m super far behind again.

I turned 38. The day before my birthday we went out for dinner with a couple friends at Rasa, of which I took no pictures. But we had a tasty meal and good chats. Then on my actual birthday I had the day off, so I had time to go to Chaddy and get my free Boost juice and free doughnuts. :D Then I went into the city to meet Scott who had told me we were going to be doing an adventurous maze at Marvel. It was more like an art exhibit though and we were in and out in like 20 minutes. At least I got to get the train home on the same ticket? Then Scott cooked up perogies for dinner, my favourite.

We had a family lunch in Boronia. Jemma got lots of pastries from Drom which we chopped into bits so we could try everything.

The next week the Lonards were in town! Everyone came to have brunch around the corner from our house before Scott had to go play bowls. And then the next day we went to Luca’s birthday party. It was cold and rainy, but he seemed to have a good time anyway.

Our July #SMAJ was going to a food convention. Scott thought it was in a completely different location. Once we made it there, we got to try A LOTTTTTT of samples. We bought a few things… some low-lactose cheeses, seaweed mayo, vegan cheese sauce, and a slice of tart from Tart Anon. And we got some onigiri too.

Date night sushi train and fro yo. These kind of things stress me out a bit because it’s hard to keep track of how much you are spending, but we were very responsible. I love mochi.

We went to a games potluck at Bis’s of which I have no pictures, again. We played Pollen, and The Fuzzies (like silly jenga with pompoms), and Vivid Memories (which we abandoned). I made a big tray of kimbap but not many got eaten, so that’s what Scott and I had for dinner. I was pretty happy with them!!

Ash, Scott and I took a day off work to go the Bendigo Wool Show. We thought we’d take the train so it would be low stress and we could knit the whole time. Unfortunately due to me cutting things too close, we had to run all around the station trying to find the platform and missed the train on the way there. Oops. Anyway eventually we were on the way and the train was nice and quiet and comfortable (and full of knitters!).

Sheep!

After a long day of looking at sheep products we got on the train to go home. The train was a lot more full but at least we got seats together. While we were on the way back we started to hear about this Blue Screen of Death/Crowdstrike issue that was happening back at everyone’s work. And then the train stopped at Clarkefield Station and they announced that they had no idea when they would get going again and we should feel free to arrange our own transport from there. Unfortunately we were still like 80km from home in the middle of the country!! After like an hour of waiting Ash asked her partner to start driving towards us but that was going to take a while from their place and also he’d just worked a super long shift. Eventually the train started moving again and J picked us up from Footscray and eventually eventually we got home, and all vowed that next time we will just drive.

I easily could have spent $1000 haha. But in the end, most of what we got was from trusty ol’ Bendigo Woolen Mills.

I stress-knit a good chunk of this hat on the train, haha.

July was a big knitting month. The pink thing is a modified Musselburgh hat (ribbing in the middle section), which I somehow managed to trap a Mike & Ike in the inside heheheheeee. And the funfetti thing is the start of a sock. So fun!

Unpictured things:

  • We played so much pickleball I started getting a sore shoulder. But the best cure for any injury is to book a physio appointment because by the time you are in the waiting room for your appointment, you will definitely feel much better.
  • We did a pickleball tournament at GESAC. I didn’t really talk about it much because we lost every single game. We played a little bit worse than usual but everyone else was a lot better than us. It was… moderately… fun.
  • I got called into work. That would not be exciting at my old job but it’s so rare these days. (Fine by me.)
  • The Olympics started and I watched all of it. The timezone suited us very well here in Melbourne. We watched a lot of gymnastics, table tennis, badminton, BMX, and of course weightlifting.