We're moving!

Not literally.
At least, not this week anyway (though we are going to an auction next week and will bid if it's the right price - but Father Bear expects the bidding to *start* at our limit - like the last one we went to!!!!)

My change of address is in cyberspace.
The hilariously-makes-you-laugh-out-loud-funny Sarah, who writes The Funniest Blog in The World commented on a discussion board that Wordpress leaves Blogger for dead. She gave some pretty compelling reasons as to why this is so....and I determined to show her how much I value her professional opinion and Made The Move. This time yesterday she was wishing she had not given any unsolicited advice as I emailed her every hour or so with very particular not confined to blondes technical unique to wordpress problems. I'm sure she would have given me undivided attention except that Karen (who recently moved from just-round-the-corner-to-me to very-far-away-from-me-and-not-too-far-from-Sarah) went to visit her. That would not have been so bad in and of itself - they could have emailed me together....but the visit meant that Sarah, who is obviously a Very Good Hostess, went out to buy milk, because she had visitors coming. And so I was left in the lurch without any help whatsoever until late at night when she was supposed to be doing business administration. Sarah's big trip out to the dairy caused me to drop from her memory and I suspect Karen-n-Sarah spent the day yakking instead of checking for my emails - I'm sure it didn't take All Day to buy milk.
Ah well, all's well that ends well.
Which reminds me, you don't know that all was not well.
At least not HOW BAD it was.

Wordpress is meant to be amazingly better.
It has more options and more themes and better commenting facilities and easier editing functions and fancy schmancy things called Widgets (that's the bit that sold it to me I think - coz let's face it, you only need one theme and you do nothing with the remaining 732 that you don't choose, except perhaps wonder if they would have looked better.....or, if you're like me, you try them all first and in the process lose half your posts and upload pictures that take over the whole computer screen).
I think you're starting to get the picture.
Wordpress was not all roses.
It ate an entire blog. It chewed up my header photo and spewed it out split into three horizontally. It would not let me access the kids' blog and suggested I transfer all hundred-and-something blogposts manually. It insisted on putting my pages in alphabetical order even when I ordered them numerically. And right back at the beginning it didn't tell me I would be stuck with my username forever....if I'd known that I would never have chosen a name with nineteen letters!
I still haven't worked out how to do anything with photos, but that is an invalid complaint right now as Father Bear played with the computer the other night and now the camera and computer are not talking to each other so I can't get photos anyway.
The camera and computer might not be talking, but Father Bear was talking to me. I have a sneaking suspcion that he got a bit nervous about my very nonchalant dropping of new words like "widget" into dinnertime conversation. Now you need to know I will never be mistaken for a techno-geek. Never. Father Bear, on the other hand, could be. Well, only if you heard him talking. If you *saw* him your fears would be allayed, because he really is quite stunningly striking/debonair/spunky/just plain gorgeous - tall, dark and handsome, that's him (though the dark now has to refer to his skin tone and not hair colour as that is becoming speckled).
Anyway, Computer Consultant Father Bear must have been a tad disconcerted that Blonde Wife could use a technical term he had not taught her (in fact, that was probably the hair to break the camel's back - she had been caught doing her own html-ing a few weeks earlier - the first html episode left Father Bear with a slight smile of admiration shimmering on his face, but this widget-talk turned the admiration to threatening-behaviour-alert)....and so he got involved in my blogworld....he even solved one of the Problems (quite funny really, in teaching me the solution, he talked about gif and png.....to Father Bear that is a such-n-such file "just like bitmaps or something else he said that I can't remember and didn't understand at the time"....to me they are gifs and penguins! I told you I wouldn't be mistaken for Computer Geek!)

There you have it. The transition from Blogger to Wordpress.
Here's the link.
Don't try this at home yourself unless you have a Sarah - and make sure you buy her a bottle of milk before you start.

speed quilting

twenty-four hours is all you need to make a quilt
(and supervise chores and knit a few rows and do some shopping and visit friends and cook dinner and read a chapter and grab some shuteye....)




presenting.....




the twenty-four hour quilt......
(complete with fluff that needs to be picked off but I'm oh-so-impatient about getting it onto the blog!)


Laying it on top of the Blue Quilt was probably not the most aesthetic thing to do, but I can't put it in the garden as it's raining! And I really *wanted* to lay it out on the dark brown bark...coz this is The Ghecko Quilt for The Ghecko Boy, who is turning five next week.


But I don't think it's *ever* going to stop raining, which takes me back to the impatient comment above.


TGQ is a leftover quilt: leftover ghecko material from the boys' shorts last summer, leftover cord from our lounge suite, leftover brown cotton from my pants, leftover checks and plain brown from the boys' jackets, lots of leftover suede (which never got made into what it was bought for - heehee) and a little cord that wasn't leftover, but *was* a bargain from the Sallies.

The back looks just as good as the front.....in spite of me throwing all caution to the wind and just picking up random pieces (Very Not Me, but it's how you Get It Done in 24hrs...and more importantly, Before The Birthday!)

God Bless the Sallies

What a find at the Sally Shop....
(BTW, last week it became apparent that some of my smaller kids think the Sally Shop is so-called, because they *sell* things)

$2 for a bag of Very Useful Bits and Bobs.

More specifically, a latch hook hooky thing (OK, so not too much more specific!).

Not one, but two, darning mushrooms. Just yesterday J12 had brought me ER's wooden stacky toy thingy and suggested the base of it would make a good darning mushroom if only it were smaller. Well, now we have one each - and one of them is even red with little white dots. (Who said all preteens are into playstation and Harry Potter?)

There are self-cover buttons....just last week J12 learnt how to use these and made herself three buttons for a vest so her beady wee eye spotted them pretty quickly in the bag.

But wait, there's more.
Zips, thread, bias binding, Metal Things and a very cool wooden and metal contraption,which will probably need an Engineering Mind to devise a use for (or at least explain to me the intended use....all I know is it's something to do with a bobbin).

ah the agony

The maths books had to be abandoned.
There was a Big Lie Incident.
How can you concentrate on Exciting Books when you're sleuthing and refereeing?
That's no rhetorical question - I have an answer.
It's quite simple really - I can't!

I can, however, make up a knitting pattern.
Looks quite nice don't ya think?


And while we're on the knitting theme, I finished this hat and vest this morning while the kiddos ate breakfast.


J11 has kindly offered to make the requested-by-M4-for-whom-the-vest-and-hat-were-made- pompom to dangle off the end of the hat. I valiantly started it myself, thinking how sweet it would be for me to make a *whole* something for my darling M4 all myself, but crikey, pompoms are BORING (and that's a word we don't use round here - except, of course, in Exceptional Circumstances - and this is one of them). J11 doesn't know it, but I would PAY him to do it! (I told you this was an Exceptional Circumstance). Now don't anyone go letting him know, OK.

(And yes, the vest is enormous for a four year old......but next week he'll be five....and next year when he's allowed to start wearing it he'll be six and I hope it'll last two years, by which stage he'll be eight....so methinks it's just perfect! Goodness me, it's nearly only one year till we go away!)

One last comment - I know I shouldn't have bothered doing a cable in a variegated wool, but I was finding the going round and round all the way from waist to armpits to be rather monotonous so I needed something *different* to do.......a pocket eventuated....and then I thought I'd better repeat the cable pattern at the top of the vest too. So even though you can't see it, I know that little labour of love and creativity is hidden in there;-) I had intended doing it up the hat aswell, but plain ol' forgot. So the hat is just plain ol'.

the height of excitement

There's nothing like hearing that knock on the door and racing up the hallway to discover, not a face-to-face-friend, but a New Friend all wrapped up in paper and cardboard and a big plastic bag.

Yesterday the first of our recent book purchases arrived. All the way from America.
Which ones would this box hold? Latin books? Knitting books? Farming books?
No, it was the maths books.


J12 and J11 are a good way through their first ever maths text book and they were keen to get a hold of A Human Endeavour after they're done this b*o*r*i*n*g, but useful one (to be honest, I'm impressed at how they are sticking with a book that is just page after page of sums - they are not *overly* enjoying it, but they can see how much quicker they are getting at the basic facts through their almost daily practise and they are ploughing on of their own free will).

We flicked through the new orange book briefly yesterday...there's no way we'll be waiting to finish the current book before starting this one. It's FANTASTIC. We didn't want to put it down, but other things (like dinner preparation) were calling and we had to be grown-up responsible people! Can't wait for the littlies to go for naps this afternoon (hence why I'm betting the blog out of the way now while I munch on grated carrot, lettuce from the garden and a fried egg).

We dipped into Challenge Math as well. I had bought that mistakenly thinking it was a small book and would be a great one to throw in the backpack for our seven months in China and Mongolia......it's not so small, but it's definitely coming with us!

And the last one: Ten Things All Future Mathematicians and Scientists Must Know (But are Rarely Taught). Well who could leave a book like that at Amazon?

We're looking forward to getting to know our new friends this afternoon.