Fyrewitch's Knitting Adventures

Blog This Challenge - Living in the Past

If you could choose a day, a week, a moment in time to re-live - what would it be?  

Why would you do it? 

Would you change anything?  Take us back there - with words and pictures if you can....

This is such a great challenge. Like most people, I've had a number of less than impressive moments in my life that I can look back on with shame and embarrassment. I wish I could make them disappear. But isn't that the point of life? Making wrong decisions, having them backfire on you and learning from the experience.  That feeling of shame and embarrassment that stays with you makes sure that you will never make that same mistake again. If you could make a wish and actually make it disappear, then you would no doubt end up making the same mistake again.

 The time in my life I would like to go back to is one that gave me immeasurable joy. Earlier this year, the witchlet and I had a week's holiday at Kirra on the Gold Coast. I love Kirra the way it is at the moment. It's perfect for families. Kids can run and run as there is just so much beach and so few people on it.

We stayed in a lovely hotel called Kirra on the Beach, which was right across the road from the sand. We took most of our meals at a lovely cafe adjacent, which had just been taken over by a family from Paris. It was wonderful to talk to them, listen to their French accents and hear about Paris. Plus, the food was amazing!

It was such a wonderful week, just the kid and me, removed from all the worries of the world. There was precious little housework to do, no school or work to worry about. Just the beach, and the sun.

I taught the witchlet how to swim in the surf, and she went from completely freaking out about the idea to loving it. A pod of dolphins came within a few metres of us whilst we were swimming. It was a magical moment.

We took a day trip to the Crystal Castle, where the witchlet was awed by the amazing geodes.

We took another day trip to the famous O'Reilly's bird sanctuary and stopped in at an Alpaca farm along the way.  They had a number of babies which were only days old. They were so cute! We tried to figure out how to get one back on the bus with us, but the fence was a bit too high for us to carry out the deed.

The witchlet adored the alpacas, but had much more fun feeding the birds at O'Reilly's.

She has always loved animals and embraced any chance to interact with them. She did freak out a bit when one landed on her head though.

The week was such a wonderful opportunity for us both, but particularly for me. It was the first time I'd really managed to draw breath and take time out to really be with my girl since her father and I divorced when she was tiny. I had spent so much time trying to make sure that we had a roof over our heads and that she had the absolute best that I could give her that I had forgotten the reason that I was working so hard in the first place. I discovered how much of her I had already missed. Another mistake I wish I could reverse.

Not long after this trip, I quit my job. My witchlet is my life. Things are tougher financially, but our relationship has never been stronger. 

I will always remember her joy and wonder that week at the beach. And I wouldn't change a thing.

Blog This - Gifts Glorious Gifts

Do people think you're hard to buy for or are you constantly dropping hints?  What's on your ultimate gift list?  If you were to write a list of 5 things that would be on the list of perfect presents for your next birthday what would they be? Would it be a particular thing or anything from a particular store/shop? An

experience or something with pretty bows? Practical or whimsical?

They don't need to be physical or even attainable gifts - tell us (and those who read your blog) what you want!!

This is actually a very appropriate challenge as my birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks!

I think I'm the easiest person on the planet to find gifts for, as there is one major category of "stuff" that will make me happy every time.

Yarn.

I love yarn. Merino, alpaca, soy, bamboo, corn fibre , sugar cane or plain old acrylic, I'll take it as it comes. All colours, the more vibrant the better. I love to touch it, feel it, sniff it. I have the occasional fantasy of dumping my whole stash on the floor and just jumping into it.

According to some people, it can get too hot to knit. I can't say I've noticed. I love knitting and crocheting. I have a piece on my lap as I type this. Yarn craft keeps me sane.  I take it with me where ever I go - you never know when you might get some down time.

Socks are my big thing at the moment. They  are small and are very portable, fitting easily into a handbag. The basic sock pattern is easy to memorise once you've done it a couple of times, so you don't need to cart that with you either.

Most of my knitting is for other people. I belong to two charities - Knitting for Brisbane's Needy and Knit 4 Charity - and knit items for them in order to help people less fortunate than myself. A lot of my crafting this year has gone to Strathpine West State School for their upcoming fete. There's only so much knitting you can do for yourself in the Brisbane climate. Knitting items for people who you know will appreciate them is so much better than churning stuff out for relatives who look at you sideways when you present them with a gift. You can almost here them thinking "Bloody hell, not more knitting."

The other thing I love about yarn is that it has a purpose. Each ball or skein is full of potential. It could be a scarf, cap, jumper, tank top, blanket. It might keep someone's feet warm, or be wrapped around a street sign for decoration. When you give someone yarn, you give them a hundred grams of opportunity for them to seize and fulfill. I ask you, what could possibly be a better gift?

Blog-This - What's on your bedside table?

I've recently started following the Blog This site, which is a site specifically targeting Aussie Bloggers. One of the recent challenges that I missed was the above title, and I love books so much that I feel the need to pass comment.

I love books. Prior to my divorce I had about 1000 of them. Moving to a much smaller house meant I had to cull my collection by about two thirds. 5 years later and I still miss them. A friend of mine laughingly says that whenever I gain a new interest, my book collection increases.

When I was at uni, my favourite place to hang out was the library. Any library. During my studies at QUT I would do weekend "library crawls" where I would start at Kelvin Grove campus, walk to Gardens Point, then jump back on the train and hit the Carseldine library. The undergrad library at the University of Queensland was my favourite though. The books smelled awesome and there were just so many, on every topic you could possibly imagine. I would stand in awe and gaze at the books, wandering up and down the aisles, gently touching the old covers, thinking about all the stuff I hadn't yet learned.

During the holiday periods, while everyone else was drinking and partying, I would load up on as many books as I was allowed to take home and spend the time reading. My favourite holiday period was one where I took all the fiction from the existentialists that I could find - Simone de Beauvoir (one of my heroes), Jean-Paul Satre, Albert Camus - and buried myself in their world. From de Beauvoir's depressive immortal man in All Men are Mortal to their tales about the resistance during the second World War, I found their words and worlds fascinating.

I don't actually have a bedside table. I tried that, but it just wasn't big enough. I actually have a bedside bookcase, and it's full to overflowing.  It contains books about all the things I love - knitting, astrology, tarot, Wicca, Buddhism. I think there's even some fiction in there - Neil Gaiman, Robert Rankin and Terry Pratchett. Since my daughter has come along, I find it difficult to get any decent reading done. I tend to pick up a book and read a chapter or so on whatever I'm thinking about at the time prior to bed. Pema Chodron inspires me, Erin Sullivan helps me to nut out planetary relationships, Rachel Pollack and Dione Fortune assist me on my seemingly never-ending quest to learn about the Qabbalah, and Robert Rankin makes me laugh.

Books are like old friends. I find that picking them up and delving into them can take me back to the time that I bought it, or back to the state of mind and feelings that I had when I first read it. Whenever I read Bram Stoker's Dracula, I am transported back to my first reading of the book at the age of 18 - sitting in my bedroom at my parents in a rocking chair, knees up to my chin, with Mozart's Requim Mass blaring and adding to the ambiance and totally freaking me out. It was wonderful!

I am trying to pass on my love of reading to my daughter. At the age of 7 she is very keen to read by herself and is finally asking me to read to her. I've packed most of my books away to make room for hers. At the moment it's lots of Doctor Seuss and Disney stuff, but I look forward to seeing where her tastes end up.