Seasons Greetings 2012!

 

Wishing all of my lovely readers and friends of the Yellow Wood 

a truly lovely holiday season, however you choose to celebrate it, and happy days and peace in 2013.

Take care of yourselves!

Love,

Feronia xx  

I danced my legs down to the knees

Summer is well and truly upon us here. It's 35 degrees here today and I have drawn all of the curtains and blinds to try and keep out that baking sun. Despite this, Mr Yellow Wood and I ventured out last night to shake a tail-feather or two to The Smiths - or at least an excellent local cover band, Plagarism begins at home. It was so hot at the venue - no air-conditioning and lots of people crammed into a small room - but damn, it was fun! Good to see that even in my decrepitude (forty next year), I can still move a step or two!

This is all in the lead-up to Morrissey himself visiting our remote shores next week. I only hope that after twenty-six years of admiration I won't be disappointed and discover that the hero has feet of clay (as they say). Twenty six years! Oh my...that's older than most of the people who were there last night!

I hope it cools down soon so I can bake up a few little treats I have planned as Christmas gifts. I've also got a few other little crafty goodies on the to-do list for the weekend. I'll show you next week.

What are you doing in the lead-up to the holiday season?

Everything's just purlie keen

Ahem...I have an announcement! It is with considerable pleasure that I can announce I have finally learnt to do purl stitch!! It has taken me so long. I just couldn't get it. I watched You Tube instructional videos, read books, looked at diagrams and yet...those pretty little stitches eluded me. But on Saturday afternoon, I thought 'Right! Enough of this flummoxing around!' (or something similar). I sat down with the excellent Learn to Knit by Penny Hill, read everything very carefully and IT STILL DIDN'T WORK! I tried again and again and finally through my own befuddling about and plain and simple perserverance, I got it! I have to say I was pretty chuffed.

So I have just made this sweet little pouch for my Etsy shop. It has a pretty Australian Mookaite stone inside too.

Beautiful Sounds

Have you been watching This is England? It may not be to everyone's taste, but I have found the original film (This is England) and the subsequent series' This is England '86 and This is England '88 to be extremely well done and very moving.

Part of that has been due to the beautiful soundtrack by Ludovico Einaudi. Here is one extraordinary example ~

In the grip of the grape

Mr Yellow Wood had a significant birthday yesterday which he was not at all happy about, so I treated him to lunch at De Bortoli's Winery restaurant  (http://debortoliyarra.com.au/restaurant.html) in our beautiful Yarra Valley region (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarra_Valley). We had a huge and sumptuous lunch (I am still getting little shivers of joy about the salt-encrusted olive bread) and then we walked around part of the vineyard and through the lovely garden. There were harlequin beetles everywhere (including the little fellow above, perched on some purple stasis), as well as gorgeous roses, trailing nasturtiums and, of course, lots of beautiful grapevines.

As is sometimes the case with what is right under your nose, I had forgotten how lovely the Yarra Valley is. We both agreed we should take a drive up there more often. Especially if there is food involved...

Misha

A pin found on Ebay

In 1981, when I was eight years old, we went to the Royal Melbourne Show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Melbourne_Show), as we did every year. I was bought a teddy bear - Misha - who has remained a faithful companion ever since. He is sitting on the dresser in our bedroom now, thirty-one years old and a little careworn but still keeping his end up, as they say. When I was eight, I didn't realise that Misha (or Mishka) had been the symbol of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. When he made it to Melbourne, Misha had been transformed into a football bear and wore a little Hawthorn t-shirt.

Lately I have been looking around the Net at all things Misha, partially on a nostalgia trip and partly due to my love of Soviet-era vintage. There's a lot to be found! Misha is still a very popular bear...

Do you still have a special furry childhood friend?

Lovely 'flock' covered Misha on Dawanda

Hipster Misha getting down in time for the Olympics

Image found at http://femtasia.blogspot.com.au/2009/05/misha.html

Image found at http://paulina.holbreich.org/tag/bear/

Misha as I knew and know him (though no Olympic rings on my Misha)

http://collectableteddybears4sale.com/misha-bear-by-olympic-mascot/

Hello Again

Hello! I feel like it's about time to start blogging again! I hope you've been doing well in your corner of the world since we last spoke. During my blog break, we 'cat-sat' for a friend of mine who was renovating and then moving house. Midg was with us for about five weeks, and after he spent the first afternoon behind the couch in total shock, we got along quite well. He is fourteen years-old and quite set in his ways, but it was a delight to have him around. I have never had a pet, so I was quite fascinated just to watch him do his thing...

Sometimes he watched me do mine...

Sometimes he really didn't want to be watched at all...

A lot of the time he watched the birds in the front yard with eager interest...

And more often than not, a nap was the activity of choice.

We are thinking now about getting our own pet. I went to Save-a-Dog today (who also have cats - they're at http://www.saveadog.org.au/) and there are so many animals looking for homes. If you are going to get a pet, please think about adopting rather than buying from a pet store. Midg was an adoptee and I saw so many sad canine and feline eyes this morning...