A gentle whisper of spring...

Sunshine today! And signs of life around the garden - a dash of blue from the primoses and velvety purple blooms and fuzzy buds from the magnolia tree.

In a yellow wood goes commercial! :)

A shameless advertisement today! I have finally managed to get my online shop opened at Etsy - http://www.etsy.com/shop/Inayellowood. There has been much procrastination but it went live yesterday. If you are interested in vintage knick-knacks and clothes (the latter will be uploaded shortly), please drop by and have a look. Its very much in its beginning stages at present, with not many items listed, but this will grow given the frequency with which I visit thrift stores!

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Our crazy weather continues on today with winds of up to 60 km/h predicted by lunchtime. Spring, where are you?

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The election campaign which has been dominating the news here in Australia for weeks (it feels like years) will finally be over this Saturday. And I still haven't decided who to vote for! I have considered doing a 'donkey vote', so non-plussed am I by all of the parties, but then my conscience nags at me about what a privilege it is to be able to vote and how many people in other countries don't have the vote etc., etc. So I still have no idea what I will do once I am in that little booth.

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With the grim, wintery weather continuing on, our front porch is increasingly resembling a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. I dropped some seed near the path yesterday and ever since, as the wind has blown the seed towards the house, the birds have moved further and further towards us, realising too I assume that there's shelter to be had if they get a bit closer.

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And of course the cold means baking. Well, it does to me anyway. I have converted my basic cake recipe into a basic muffin recipe and have now added either mixed dried fruit or orange zest with marmalade centres. Absurdly easy. And even easier to eat. Harder to avoid...

I posted this a few weeks ago, but just in case you want to try it...

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

Pinch salt

1 cup sugar

Few drops vanilla essence

2 unbeaten eggs

4 ozs. butter (melted)

1/2 cup milk

Combine. Bake at 180 degrees celsius. Depending on your filling, muffins can take up to half an hour. Just keep an eye on them.

Some days are diamonds, some days are stone

Do you ever have those days when you just don't seem to achieve much? I guess it happens to people who are self-employed a little more than people who work in offices etc. so I tend to have them now and then. It's not that I don't have things to do - I am working hard on getting some of my short stories published at the moment and also getting two online shops set up for my greeting cards and my vintage stuff - but some days (like today) just don't seem to have any 'scores on the board' when they come to a close. You feel as though you've just frittered away at the edges of things instead of really getting anywhere. There's always tomorrow, I guess. Do you have days like this?

News from Nowhere

We are still having some very wintery weather here at the moment, though I suppose this is fair enough given we still have a couple of weeks of winter to go. There was a tornado a couple of hours north of us yesterday. A tornado! Apparently they do sometimes happen in Australia but I had assumed this was pretty much an American phenomenon. Strong winds here today too apparently, and lots of rain - the latter of which we can't complain about given that in a couple of months I will probably be telling you how hot it is!

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Even though spring is coming (I think), I have decided to embark on a fairly wintery knitting project. Having immersed myself in Little Dorrit and more recently Return to Cranford, I have decided to knit myself a very simple shawl. Not terribly large, just to go over the shoulders as seemed to be the Victorian style. And being the novice knitter that I am, I think it will all be in a knit stitch. I know - potentially not the most exciting garment in appearance - but potentially nice & snuggly warm.

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You may have noticed the lack of my own photos on here since my trusty point-and-shoot digital camera died and I got my schicki-micki Sony a300 for my birthday. Well, I basically can't master the bloody thing! There, I've admitted it. Every time I try to load photos from it onto the computer, it tells me they're too big and it jams the computer. What do I do? Any advice most welcome.

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Every time I go into an thrift store these days I seem to find a good book. As I result my bedside table and living room coffee table are bulging! Currently I'm reading Walking in Pimlico by Ann Featherstone (a Victorian whodunit), Wintering by Kate Moses (about Sylvia Plath) and Pride and Prejudice. Crazy Aunt Purl has set up a virtual bookclub over at her site and the latter is our book to start with. I've got Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook and Emily Perkins' Novel about my Wife lined up to start on next. What are you reading right now?

Only a house

There is a house being pulled down almost immediately opposite us. The asbestos was (carefully) removed the other day and now there is a big bobcat sort of thing raging around the block pulling down the house itself. I know everything has to change but I always feel a little sad when I see a house being pulled down. Where do all of its memories go? I was talking to my mother the other day about my parents' house which is the only house I lived in while I was growing up. It's the house I went back to when my father collected my mother and I from the hospital when I was born. My parents are thinking about getting something smaller now and I said "But it's our house...you can't sell it!" Mum replied, "But it's only a house." Only a house? I struggle with this idea. The same is true of where my husband and I currently live - my grandparents' old house. Even now, after we've been here five years, every corner has a memory - new memories of us, of course - but also memories of the happy times I had here growing up. I would find it hard to move and see someone else living here. It, like my parents' house, is a part of who I am. What do you think? Do you connect with your surroundings in the same way?

Balm for the ears, food for the mind

This is a most incredible piece of music from Australian group Dead Can Dance, coupled with a most poignant clip.

Have a wonderful Tuesday.

Herbie goes Gardening (Gardening goes Herbie?)

Now that spring is starting to poke its nose out from under the winter covers, my mind is wandering back towards the garden. I have decided to plant a small herb garden in the backyard but I'm not sure what to plant. Has anyone got any suggestions for a sometimes shady, sometimes hot patch of soil?