Poorneet is my favourite season

Like the heading says. 

Poorneet is my favourite season.

Poorneet is one of the 7 seasons recognised by the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, the traditional owners of what is now known as Melbourne.

It's from September to October.

Poorneet or Tadpole season is when temperatures rise but the rain continues, the Pied currawongs are calling, the Yam daisies are flowering and days and nights are of equal length. 

Which is just about bang on! I can't speak of the currawongs as there aren't any in my area yet, but all the other birds are chirping and screeching enough.

And daylight is incrementally getting longer as the sunset now sets around 6pm. In just under 2 weeks we'll have sunrise at 6.14am and sunset at 6.14pm.

I probably should get around to picking the 6 oranges that have firmly hung on the tree all winter!

I have been a busy crocheter over the past few months.

I had a funkilious granny square jumper pattern published in Homespun Crochet magazine.

This is the first big piece of clothing I have ever designed. I wanted to create something easy to suit the magazine which is for "Beginners & Beyond" according to the subheading.

 It also uses bright, inexpensive acrylic DK from my local Spotlight store, although the bright neon pink is from Big W.

I wanted to encourage new (or experienced) crocheters to grab any old yarn that suits any old budget.

The editor asked the designers to send in a photo of the finished item to show how best it should be displayed in the magazine, so I got my friend Tania to take a photo of me in her backyard.

Annnnd they decided to use my photo instead of splashing out on a model 😂

Yes, I absolutely did sing "Nah nah nah nah nah nah, your girlfriend is a Centrefold" to the Bear when I showed him.

They asked me first and I said, "Sure! But can you get rid of that brick wall background?"

I was hoping for a nicer background.

The best their graphics person could do was to blur it a little....

How about I give it a go for them next time?

Here are my efforts:

In ACDC Lane...

In the glasshouse at the Ballarat Begonia Festival

In the Partridge Family Bus (very 1970s groovy granny square appropriate!)

Or we could go really wild!

See? That wasn't so hard, was it?

I also crocheted a sweet little elephant and beluga whale for my nieces.

The elephant pattern was a free pattern I found on Supergurumi and the adorable beluga whale was a paid pattern from Theresas Crochet shop on Etsy.  While there were a stack of free patterns, this one was my favourite.

Since designing the jumper, I've been thinking about cardigans.

I am definitely more of a cardigan than a jumper person. I'm not a huge fan of chunky cardigans, preferring them more lightweight and fitted.

I have absolutely lusted after a fairisle style cardigan but they are really expensive and knitted.

"SO KNIT ONE!" I hear you say. So far my knitting efforts have been most limited to socks.

Knitting is just so...ugh. It's slow. It requires 2 sticks. There's like only 2 stitches. What's up with that?

I say knope to knitting (a cardigan).

So the beginning stage of my journey to crocheting cardigans was to gather ALL my leftover sock yarn remnants and a couple of full skeins I have in my stash, and to just crochet a straight up raglan cardigan.

I read quite a few different websites and blogs about 'How to crochet a raglan cardigan' to figure out what to do.

They all either used half double crochet (hdc) or double crochet (dc) stitches (using US terminology), but I wanted something that I could potentially tweak a little more so I have been crocheting with single crochet.

It is extremely 'scrappy yarn' looking, but I quite like the effect. Stay tuned...

8Track has been less 'kill kill bite claw stab" lately and more into cuddles. I'm hoping he has finally grown out of his aggressive young cat stage and into a chilled out bachelor. Here you can see he actually climbed on to my lap for cuddles. A very rare occurence. So rare, it had to be documented...

My big, beautiful floofy black cat Bijoux is sadly in a slow decline.

She is 17 years and 10 months old.

In January she was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism.

We were alarmed when she was wheezing one day, so rushed her to the vet thinking she had developed asthma. 

X-rays revealed a mass in her lung. Anti-biotics cleared up an infection which stopped the wheezing, but a follow up x-ray in late May confirmed she has a tumour in her lung.

It seems to be slow growing. I decided not to get a biopsy done. Apart from the cost, I really thought it would be too much for her to go through such a procedure.

She seems content, she currently doesn't have any difficulty breathing. She is alot slower now but she is nearly 18. I think that's 88 in human years?

She is also on a treatment plan for her arthritis, and now the poor old lady has had another hit...

Her last tests at the vet revealed Stage 1 chronic kidney disease so she has now been put on a prescription cat food for CKD.

My poor old Queen Bijoux! 

However, sadly we know her time with us is now limited.

So she is getting all the pats and cuddles and she spends most of her time outside on a heated mat inside the pergola or up in her favourite sleeping spot up on the corner of Sonofagun No.2s loft bed where she surveys her little kingdom.

Bijoux admiring herself on her favourite cushion.

Louise

 🐈Red Haired Amazona🌺