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It was a busy month, this is going to be hella long!!

Carrying on the gingerbread house tradition with new friends. :) Carrying on the tradition of having WAY TOO MUCH candy! Building gingerbread structures in very high humidity is not ideal.. there were some struggles. It took a while to figure out which icing would work. But in the end we got there, mostly. Fun was had.

Poor Ash’s house already collapsed by the next morning due to moisture issues.

Scott and I decided that instead of getting each other Christmas presents we would finally get ourselves a stand mixer. I did some extreme couponing and we ended up getting a great price on a fancy Kenwood mixer on Black Friday. It is AWESOME. It has a scale built into it!! I made strawberry cupcakes to break it in.

We had our work Christmas lunch at the Espy this year. There was so much food this year it was ridiculous. I screamed when they brought out an entire dairy free pizza for me as a substitute for the little pieces of deep dish pizza, hahaha. We all brought so much stuff home.

I went to SO MANY Christmas parties. They were all great! Christmas BBQ at Sonika’s, Christmas pool party brunch at Naomi’s, Christmas dinner at Scott’s bowls club, and English Christmas lunch at Maz’s. So much eating. So much fun. I especially liked playing in the pool with Sonny’s kids, and duck fat roasted potatoes at Maz’s.

Some delicious party meals.

Pre-Christmas crochet time with Ava. #summeroflyingdown

Maybe a new Christmas tradition… cinnamon buns for Christmas morning. Next time I’ll use yeast that didn’t expire 4 years ago. They still turned out pretty delicious though!! I stood next to the dough being kneading in the mixer in awe for the entire 8 minutes.

Luca seemed to like the mimic that Scott made for him! He was going around chomping everyone’s limbs.

Christmas Day was the usual in Boronia, an insane amount of presents, an insane amount of food, backyard cricket, chats with family, pictures. No waterslide this year as Shaun’s family had gastro and no one wants that combination. :D

Our December #SMAJ was going to Day 2 of the cricket with Da Boys. I did enjoy the Boxing Day Test this year but I found it hard to see the ball and follow what was happening in real life. Plus it was very crowded. Scott did bring us thermos hot dogs though! We lasted four or five hours before both of us really needed to leave, and we got to see both teams batting and several wickets, so overall a successful outing.

Still playing heaps of pickleball all around the city. I checked out the Eastern Indoor Sports Centre which has actual pickleball lines, for a drills and structured play session. It was good!

Churning out Lake Reed cable knit hats. Fun to learn a new technique! I finished the pink/burgundy one in 2 days for a Kris Kringle gift.

Lake Reed cable knit hat, before and after blocking. Makes a big difference, doesn’t it?

Rosemarie’s sweater, finished! Before and after blocking. Really pleased how this one turned out.

Vacuum packed Bingo and sweater for travel to Squamish. I don’t think Bingo has fully recovered yet.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Scott has had many MRIs and doctors appointments. The good news is that he’s not concussed and at least we know what the problem is now, and it’s fixable, the bad news is that it’s going to take a little while to get through all the steps, and he might need surgery. He’s still uncomfortable but I guess he’s learning more how to balance lying down time and doing some activities. We’re hoping that we’ll get some updates this week or next week, after all of these public holidays.
  • We went to trivia at a new place, which is always a novelty, but it was very loud and the seats have no backs and my (vegan) pizza was very wet.
  • Our belated November #SMAJ was going to see the new Wallace and Gromit movie at the theatre with the Lonard’s. Ava was giggling the whole time. I loved it too.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Me and Italian weightlifting Giulia Imperio at the OWF International Elite Tournament. She is so smol!! A LOT of people came out to watch her compete. She snatched 80kg and clean and jerked 100kg. Was cool to see in real life instead of on Instagram.

Our June #SMAJ was going to a footy event called Dynamic Dees. I could get my picture taken with some of the players (that’s Caleb Windsor, Jake Lever, and Kozzy Pickett) and then they just talked about Melbourne stuff and answered questions. It was fun although some of the people there were like… REALLY into football. And I ordered a cob loaf that ended up being just a plain loaf of bread and that was a bit disappointing. Still have never had a cob loaf with dip.

It was really cold for a couple weeks. It makes me feel like I’m dead. Getting out of bed when it’s 8 degrees in the bedroom is not pleasant.

I started following these energy efficiency ladies on Instagram (@jenlishfixitchicks) and they suggested bubble glazing (sticking bubble wrap on the windows). The bedroom windows don’t look out on to anything so I thought I’d give it a try. I think it’s helped cut down on drafts and condensation on the windows, but it’s still very cold.

Gav and Aura came over to play Wingspan and Gav’s favourite game: Brass Birmingham. Scott and I tried our best, and it was okay playing it with their help, but it was pretty hard to get the hang of.

On King’s Birthday we went to Eat Pierogi Make Love to eat unlimited pierogies. They were fantastic. We were able to order mixed plates, with either vegan sour cream or regular so I got to try everything and minimise the lactose, which was great. I had 18 pierogies and the outside world started to slow down.

Nankeen Night Heron.
Female Flame Robin.
A whoooole lot of ibis (Straw Necked and Australian White).

The last Birdlife Photography outing was a bit closer to home, Dandenong Valley Wetland and Jells Park. We always seem to see lots of birds in the morning, and then not many in the after lunch spot. I spent a lot of time answering questions about Christmas Island.

I had grand plans of knitting a bird blanket, maybe selling patterns for different birds. I designed quite a few little birds using my cross stitch pattern software and this was my first prototype, a pink robin. I used a sort of combined intarsia/fair isle technique. It turned out ok but tbh it’s not that enjoyable to knit with tons of tangled balls of yarn and the whole thing gave me a lot of anxiety. Plus there are so many ends to sew in. I don’t know if I’ll bother making more.

Scott continues to crush it at crochet. He made April this Pusheen. She loved it!

Rosemarie mailed me some Trader Joe’s ube mochi pancake mix for my birthday. Delicious! Especially topped with homemade cookie dough ice cream for an extremely decadent breakfast.

I made a carrot cake to bring to Boronia for Pat and Jemma’s birthday lunch. I didn’t think I like carrot cake, but now I do. Although next time I would leave the pineapple out, or maybe blend it up so it doesn’t have chunks.

Unpictured things:

  • Scott and I did one quick go kart race with my voucher. They have new karts and I actually had to use the brakes this time! I also spun out almost immediately, hahaha. We did the worst in our group but I beat Scott and that’s all that matters. :D Afterwards we dropped by Maz’s house to sit under their kotatsu for a while and chat and eat snacks.
  • Gav organised for a whole bunch of Phoenix people to go out for unlimited Korean BBQ. So much meat. Some of the people there were like PRO kbbqers. We… were not. But it was still very fun. I ate a lot but felt less terrible than after AYCE pierogies.
  • We started getting fruit and veg deliveries of rejected food. It’s been fun so far. It seems like a lot of the produce gets rejected because it’s too small or too large, but is still in perfect condition. We’ve managed to keep up with eating it all except the oranges are starting to pile up. I’ve never eaten many normal oranges. If you have any suggestions other than just cutting them up into wedges, let me know.