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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.

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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 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.

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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.

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The Myer Christmas windows are Bluey themed this year. Adorbs. Scott planned a relaxed #SMAJ activity of Vietnamese food in the city for dinner, and a stroll past the windows. It wasn’t busy at all, which was nice. I’m doing it! I’m doing a handstand!

Robert and Jen picked me up to bring me to Maz’s for chill hangs. We played Isle of Skye, which I liked a lot! And Colt Express, which was a bit silly like Camel Up.

Another weekend we went to Meeplecon, where there was a marketplace (picked up a few cheap simple games), demos, and you could play anything from their huge collection. We picked Scoville to try because it can have up to 6 players, and had fun playing it. You cross breed chilies to make fancier chilies that you can make into recipes to get points. Unfortunately it looks like it will be hard to get a copy as the company has gone out of business.

We’ve been going to the Free Palestine rallies in the city every Sunday that we can. There were over 100,000 people there the first few weeks. It helps ease my despair a bit. I just hope it’s helping the cause.

Cardigan WIP. I had to wash and block it before I could attach the buttonband.

I made tres leches cake for the Medical Imaging Bake Off. I won second prize for taste! (Definitely wasn’t gonna win for presentation, especially by the time it got to work). I just made it full lactose cuz I wasn’t actually going to be eating much of it. It was a great event, we got to eat so many delicious things.

I also made homemade mint slices. You have to make a chocolate biscuit first, then make a peppermint fondant, then dunk in chocolate (which Scott helped). They were looking decent but unfortunately even though the chocolate tempered well, it bloomed and so they all have a weird swirl pattern on top. They taste good though!

Unpictured things:

  • So many allergy shot appointments. Thank goodness they bulk bill. They started off very uneventful but once I got to the full strength my arm does get a bit itchy.
  • So much pickleball. We started going to another club sometimes that’s much closer to our house. The people there are a bit younger, so they play differently. It’s interesting how different the clubs are.
  • We took April to the movies for her birthday. We saw Scary Girl, which I was not expecting to be Australian… at one point one of the characters said “OH NAUR!!” and it made me LOL.
  • Multiple trivia wins. Go team. Haven’t had to pay for dinner in a while, which is great while we’re still on single income.
  • Had to leave work early one day to take Scott to the hospital cuz he was in so much pain. Turns out he has a lil’ kidney stone. Thankfully by the next day he was nearly back to normal.