with apologies to Pete Seeger

turn turn turn
there is a season
turn turn
and a time for every purpose under heaven

and my purpose, this fine and cold Castlemaine morning, was to take PND up on his three year old promise to teach me how to use a lathe ...

so there I was in a pair of blue overalls, protective goggles firmly in place - so not a good look - and now that the hour had come, filled with doubts as to my ability to actually DO this
I mean it's all very easy to say ' one day PND's going to show me how to turn wood"
what if I sucked at it?
what if I didn't know which end of the chisel was which?
what if I got sucked into the machine fingers first?

remind me why I wanted to do this...

oh yeah - because I have a lathe sitting up in the shed

anyway long story short
I spent an hour turning a block of pine into


wait for it
wait for it

a bit of dowel

I'm still three legs short of a seat
unless it's a milking stool in which case I'm two legs short
and this is the bit that has been lovingly beeswaxed and polished


are you not amazed and delighted??
okay so maybe you had to be there

yawn

it's not quite 6am and I'm up already
I was actually really really asleep
deeply asleep
dreaming even

epileptic cat
under the covers
wet bed

so I'm well and truly up
Trying to dig a claw out of your leg at 5 am when it's attached to a convulsing cat tends to wake one up in a hurry as does the dash for dry towels

Given that the washing machine is next to David's room, I'm waiting till he's up to do the laundry.

Cup of chai
knitting
Sophie probably could do with some quality lap time round about now

yawn
proper post later

this week in review

After the high of last Saturday's Peace Concert, and the puppy delivery of Mother's Day, Monday shaped up to be an entirely different sort of a day:
Nadie and I had breakfast together and then I left to take Seigaiha down to Melbourne and to visit Saint Anthony for him to work his usual [ high priced] miracles on my mouth. Nadie was going to follow along later so that she could start work at 2 after some last minute puppy fondling

The trip down was fairly uneventful but the mobile rang just as I landed on Corrie's doorstep.

Nadie
flat battery
oh dear
someone was going to be very late for work
still, as she said, there are worse ways to wait for the RACV guy than with a cuppa and a book on mum's verandah.
nothing at all I could do about it, so onwards...

the quilt was handed over, duly raved about and paid for,
lunch with Corrie and Ian was a wonderful cauliflower and spinach soup and falafel avocado wraps [ a la catsmum], and then I headed over to Blackburn for the less joyous portion of the day.
Let's just gloss over it by saying, 2 fillings and one hour later and slightly over $400 poorer, I emerged with a numb face and rang ma in law to tell her to put the kettle on, I'd be there for a cuppa in 5 minutes.
although with hindsight perhaps I shouldn't have specified a hot beverage
two fillings on opposite sides of my mouth
extra anaesthetic when the first one wore off mid filling
equals Catsmum dribbling coffee all over MIL's clean tablecloth
uneventful trip back up
Tuesday
quilt class here ... this is more of a guidance group really. Anyone who wants help with a particular project or technique comes along for however many weeks they need to. Mostly they end up staying semi permanently. Good friends, good music, and a reasonable amount of patchwork. Ms Beverley D, who is an opera teacher decided mid class that she was going to teach me how to breathe properly for singing. Apparently I intercostal breathe when what I should be doing is diaphragmatic. Time will tell if I can do it.
Tuesday night, I should've been at clogging class in Bendigo but Karen wasn't going and I was too tired to face the 45 minute drive each way so the carer took Dave out for an hour or so and then picked up takeaway. Good man!
Wednesday
quilting in town - I was still working on the double sided drunkard's path and probably will be for months to come. this is a BIIIIIIIG quilt.
Wednesday night was our peace choir 'final' get together and debrief. Except it wasn't because we're singing at a conference in 2 weeks. Sort of anticlimactic as half of 'em weren't there. Still we had a good sing.
Thursday you already know about - Silk paper making at Daylesford
Friday - Line Dancing at Fryerstown followed by a quick trip at the Campbells Creek General Store...yes... I said AT not TO.
The floor has a ledge along the centre of the shop - maybe 5 inches or so high - which is usually barricaded off by display shelves. This time it wasn't and I ended up going forward onto the concrete floor, taking a display with me. Very elegant.
- net result a slightly wrenched ankle, assorted bumps and a bruise the size of my palm on my right knee. Not all that dark though... bugger... it should be a spectacular aubergine purple for how much it hurt[s].
I should be able to display it to my friends for their horror and immense sympathy.
It's not even worthy of taking a photo for the blog
how sad is that?
I had to resort to an afternoon of listening to gorgeous David Hobson to sooth my ruffled feathers.
PND and Brenda arrived back from Tassie yesterday so I am no longer on extra goat-and-other-assorted-animals feeding duty at ungodly hours of the very cold morning. Just my lot to look after which some days is quite enough.
now
don't all die of collective shock but there has been actual knitting happening here Chez Catsmum and I'll show you
tomorrow

Today I...

drove across to Daylesford, passing through some beautiful rural aussie countryside on the way there.
That's Mount Franklin at the left of photo 1 - an extinct volcano with a picnic ground in the center of the caldera. The hand built stone fences probably date back to the 1800s
Silk paper which is what I was there to teach
had a great time
and
dropped into Spa Quilters for a cuppa and a chat rather than trot straight home

[and there were choc coated shortbreads!! ]

all:
goats, cats, ducks, mini horses, dog and new puppies - present and accounted for and doing fine. No other names for the puppies yet but PND and Brenda are due back on Saturday. Privately I've been calling big, boofy boy #2, "Bear"

Happy Mothers' Day

This morning when I went across to feed all PND and Brenda's animals, I didn't receive my customary greeting from a hyperactive Jack Russell and I could see that all of her food was untouched. When I looked inside her kennel, it was fairly obvious that the puppies were going to arrive soon.
Battle stations.
Like any good surrogate auntie I beat a path between my place and the dog about once an hour.
At 11.30 I found her with one pup - male - and got duly growled at for trying to check his undercarriage.
Nothing for a while then, and I was beginning to think maybe one was all there was.
Then Nadie arrived around 2pm and we went over again to find 3 puppies ... another black and white boy , considerably bigger than the others
and goodness knows how such a tiny dog pushed him out by herself
... here's the boys with tassie at the back: and a slightly smaller and very new, wet and bloody, mostly black little miss.
From the state of mum and daughter, I think we probably missed out on seeing the birth by a matter of minutes.
Nadie ended up covered with unspeakable substances and her clothes are drying even as I type, but it was just lovely to see.
The new 'grandparents' have been phoned in Tassie at each stage of the delivery and have accordingly decided to name boy #1 Tassie.
Goodness only knows what fathered these puppies because they certainly don't take after their tiny wee mum.

Imagine

The setting: the century-old-and-then-some Castlemaine Uniting Church
The occasion: the multi - faith Peace Concert

It all started with a chant written by the Dalai Lama, presented by the monks of Drati Khangtsen monastery who were introduced by the Venerable Lozang Tenzin, who is a Victorian born Buddhist monk - or perhaps Buddhist nun would be more precise - and quite possibly the only woman in the room with a hair cut shorter than mine.
Hers, however, wasn't dyed purple for the occasion

It finished with our Peace Choir, joined for the final verse by The Arcafellas and The Chat Warblers, and John Lennon's incomparable "Imagine" sung in the glow of hundreds of candles.

In between we had 2 hours of beautiful music across a wide range of genres, sung by the many community based choirs of our very musically oriented city.
...the Arcafellas [ including one young father who cradled his new babe for the entire performance ]
...the other 'gender specific' choir, The Chat Warblers

...A lovely folk/gospel group, The Blenders - rather unfortunate choice of name notwithstanding - who were joined later by Mainly Gospel for some close harmony - and perhaps you can see why certain members of my extended family refer to this area as Hippy Central and/or Hippy Heaven.

and of course our Peace Choir accompanied by James Rigby on the guitar to finish up.

To be honest I think most of us were a little apprehensive [ shit-scared was the phrase used by one male singer I believe ] mainly because the other groups have all been together for a very long time and sounded absolutely bloody wonderful, with clear tight harmonies, whereas OUR experience of group harmonics stretches back into the dim mists of ... oh, about 2 months ago.
Jane and James being the smart little choir master/mistress that they are, let the audience in on the open secret of out relative inexperience - thank goodness -
The response was slightly overwhelming actually. It escalated with each song and by the penultimate one was almost a roar ... Felt pretty damn good if you want to know.

David sat in the front pew and was beautifully behaved for the whole time although there may have been a bit of vocalising to some of our songs... and why not? he'd been to most of the rehersals and he WAS wearing a Peace Choir T-shirt after all.

We sang:
Make A Change - Buckwheat Zydeco
Peace Must Come - Paul Metzers [ New Zealand ]
Bridge Over Troubled Waters - Paul Simon
Am I not Pretty Enough - Kasey Chambers
Three Little Birds - a lullaby based on the singing of Bob Marley's mum
and of course
Imagine

The funny thing was the [relative] quiet after we sang Imagine - you can't clap with a lit candle apparently... mind you, some got round that by stamping their feet instead.

Although we had to extinguish the candles to walk out of the church for safety reasons, everyone was encouraged to relight them at the door so that those tiny bobbing symbols of hope could lead us out into the clear, crisp, autumn night.

oh no[s]e

Peace Concert tomorrow night and I hab wokened up wid a code id da dose

lots of fluids
Ease a Cold tablets [ that's echinacea and zinc ]
what else?