glory day

Actually we're all winners

We got up at 4 o'clock this morning to watch the All Blacks beat Scotland, as we felt that if the AB's were exhorted not to take Scotland lightly neither would we.  I'm not saying it was necessarily a bad decision but I'm a bit wiped now.  And euugh, Wayne Barnes can't referee a scrum or a breakdown - seriously, why do we have to put up with this man?

And sadly, after nine years Helen Clark is no longer Prime Minister of New Zealand.  I've been a fan of Miss Clark's for over 20 years, and I have a huge amount of admiration for her.  For 30 years she has served NZ with energy, passion and a formidable intellect, and I have no doubt that NZ is a better place because of her.  And to think she achieved all this without once feeling the urge to wink - certainly she could be a role model for many wanna-be women politicians.

Kia kaha, Miss Clark!  I hope whatever you choose to do next brings you satisfaction and joy.

Rugby and guinea pigs, oh my

Last night the All Blacks beat the Wallabies 19-14 to secure the Bledisloe Cup.  It wasn't a particularly pretty game - although all I've ever asked of a game of rugby is that the team that I support be on the winning side of the scoreboard - but it got the job done.

November is my favourite month for a couple of reasons (it's my birthday month!) and the annual Northern Hemisphere tour is one of those reasons.  Enough time has passed since the Super 14/Tri Nations/Bledisloe Cup extravaganza that you really look forward to watching rugby again.  And this year we're trying for the Grand Slam - and to beat Munster this time!

And earlier this week the Super 14 squads were announced.  I'm quite happy with the Highlanders lineup for next season, hopefully it'll go better than last season.

In other news we have been feeding De's pets this weekend, and took some photos of her guinea pigs:

Archie (who bears a striking resemblance to Dougal from The Magic Roundabout) nibbles the lettuce out of the holder-thingie, and then Horatio eats it out of Archie's mouth:

I know it's a bit unclear, but they moved so fast - really cracked us both up!

Four in a row

There's a sadness that comes with Grand Final rugby - basically you're 80 minutes away from the end of the season, ie, no more rugby will be played until February next year.  Except the NPC is still going on back home (Otago is lucky to be in 10th position, so no joy there), then there's the All Black's November tour, so there is a little bit to look forward tour.  But after the last AB's game in November?  Two months of no rugby.

I've often driven past Concord Oval without realising it's, you know, Concord Oval (home to the Aus/France semi, RWC 1987).  But is it not adorable?

All the candy-coloured stands; like something you'd make out of Lego.  And we weren't sitting on the sunny side thank god because we probably would have expired from heat stroke.  I don't mind a bit of warmth with my rugby, but 33° is just wrong.

Randwick started strongly with a penalty in the seventh minute, but a minute later Jerry scored a try for Uni, and from then on it was all Uni all the way:

[first lineout of the game.  Phil Waugh!]  To be fair Randwick came back in the last five minutes of the game but they were never going to win from that position.

2008: Sydney University d. Randwick, 48-20

I'm not sure how to update David's cushion to reflect the result.

Congrats to the Uni boys, they had a great season and played really intelligent rugby today.  It's true that Randwick didn't really seem to turn up to play, but they had their moments and Uni held them out until they'd secured a certain win.  And in terms of fitness, possession, turnovers and pressure they were streets ahead.

Four Grand Final wins in a row - and the highest winning score since the 1950's - go Uni!!

If there's a common thread here I can't see it

Today I came over all mad-scientist-ish and made lipstick.  Or rather, I took all the broken/smushed/nearly finished tubes:

and melted them all together with some vaseline to make a sort of raisin-tinted lip gloss.  For some reason it tastes really nice, and I can't stop nomming it off my lips.

Little projects like this have three benefits:
~ it's easy! and fun!
~ I'm getting rid of all those old tubes
~ I've made something new from some old stuff lying about
and all of those things make me happy.

Tomorrow is the Tooheys New Shute Shield Grand Final, where Sydney Uni will play Randwick (hissss).  It's being held at Concord Oval this year which should be interesting (note to self: you're sitting on the sunny side - bring sunscreen!).  Fingers crossed for Uni, eh?

I love peacocks, and I was thrilled to see one at a local winery when we were in Rutherglen:

Sadly, no matter how much I tried to look like a love-starved peahen he wouldn't put his tail up - I suspect he [rightly] mistrusted my intentions towards his tail feathers!

A feast of short paragraphs

Today we went to see the last and deciding round of the Pacific Nations Cup, where NZ Maori faced Australia A.  To be honest I thought we were looking at a bit of a hiding, as Australia A had played strongly throughout the tournament and NZM, although unbeaten, were down on points, so I was happy that we went into halftime in the lead.  Australia A fought back in the second half, and the last 20 minutes were nailbiting.

I have to ask, why do the teams that we support do this?  Always?  Wouldn't it be easier to come out, rack up a cricket score and win the game comfortably?

Anyway, the victory went to New Zealand Maori, who won both the game and the tournament.  Yay!  Their haka before the game was one of the most amazing I've ever seen.

There was one rather annoying thing (besides the man who sat beside me: dude, I know we're all squashed together on these tiny wee seats, but it shouldn't take you 20 minutes to put your jersey on, and if you elbow me in the ribs againI'll be forced to give you an icy look) - the amount of abuse hurled at the referee.  I'm as fond as the next woman of the "where'd you get your whistle - in a Weetbix packet?" sledge, but the people around us were screaming abuse at every decision.  I've been to hundreds of rugby games and I haven't seen anything like this degree of abuse before.  I mean yeah, there were some questionable decisions - when are there not? - but swearing at someone because you disagree with the way he's doing his job is not cool.

Maybe it's because, as the SMH suggested in an article last week (which I now can't find) we're all stressed and depressed about house prices and mortgages and rising petrol prices and stuff.  Or maybe it's because some people are just plain rude.

And while I'm on this topic, why do some fans from opposing sides feel the need to fight each other?  Over 8,000 people turned up to watch the game today, and [on some level] I have more in common with someone who was there supporting the other team than I do with the people who didn't go to the game.  We both chose our outfits to show our support, we both dealt with crappy public transport, we both paid for over-priced and under-cooked stadium food (and if you were sitting in Bay 35 you also dealt with the extremely brusque door lady).  And we have the common experience of watching the game. 

As always with rugby sometimes your team wins and sometimes it doesn't*, but I hardly feel that questioning someone's relationship with their mother should be a consequence of the outcome.  The annoying can't-put-on-his-own-jersey-properly man sitting beside me supported the opposing team, but we were able to politely discuss our confusion over the location of a penalty ruling (although his partner was one of those swearing at the referee, so go figure).

In short, people, rugby is not a life or death situation (much as I sometimes act as if it is), so try and be polite and pleasant at all times.  If you are unable to do that please watch the game at home or, at the very least, please don't sit near me.  I have an extremely icy glare and I'm not afraid to use it.

And now I'm all sunburnt because I didn't realise we were going to be sitting on the sunny side of the stadium.

*I'm a Highlanders supporter, trust me I know about not winning.

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I've become addicted to PatternReview, which while awesome is also a huge time-suck.  Emails go unreturned, blogs remain unupdated, phone calls are ignored, cats go unfed (oh, as if).

PatternReview is awesome, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has lost confidence in their sewing.  And on that note, a looong post coming soon.

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My oven is still not working (ten days and counting) which is a problem because I'm not much of a stove-top cook - most of my meals are baked/roasted/grilled.  Which means that David has to do most of the cooking as he is the stir-fry/sauce-making king.  He make an awesomebeef stroganoff last week, so I guess the oven situation is working out well for me but it's probably a bit of a pain for him.

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My cat would like you to know that he is very comfortable with his body shape:

 

and feels that the kittehs on television ads are show-kittehs who do not represent realistic kitteh standards.

But it's the start of something new.

Sunday is my Inspiration Night.  I don't know whether it's because for so many years it was the night before going back to work but on Sunday nights I always fill a few pages in my "ideas" diary. 

I swear the last two days have been the coldest so far this year.  There has been much snuggling under blankets and mooching around the house.  Poor David has come down with something throat-y and is currently sick and grumpy.

My camera finally died - what is it with me and the bad electronics this year?  This is the last photo I managed to take that was recognisable:

I mean, you can kind of see it's a cat in a shoe-box, right?  Every photo since then has just been a mess of pink, white and purple lines.  So I'm calling it over.

This camera has never worked properly, even after an extensive working over from the manufacturers, and it's only because of my frugal, hates-to-admit-defeat-and-throw-anything-out nature that I've stuck with it for the past four years.  I've spent the day researching a new camera and hopefully I'll be able to replace it soon.

Last night we went to Ke's place for dinner, which was absolutely gorgeous as usual.  The Potato and Brie Tarts!  And this divine chocolate creme brulee that David cannot stop talking about.  Not only was it a fantastic dinner but Ke is having a baby in two weeks.  I'm sure that if I was about to give birth* I would be lying on the couch calling for more chocolate, but she went all out on a Farewell to Freedom dinner.  Thank you, Ke, and I love you lots.

*obviously we would also be on the planet Jupiter, as an alternate universe is the only place where I could get and stay that pregnant.  But I hear it's nice this time of year!

There has been rugby watching all weekend - NZ Maori narrowly (far too narrowly for my liking) defeated Fiji, and the All Blacks demolished England (even if they did fall asleep in the second half).  We didn't go and see Uni play as I still haven't re-tailored my Uni jersey - seriously, this thing was designed by an engineer who has never met an actual woman.

Month of Sewing My Clothes
Number of projects completed to date: 8.  I'm not doing very well at staggering the "needs to be started from scratch" pieces with the "just needs to be hemmed" pieces.

Look, I made no claims to be organised.

It is winter now, and it has been raining for nearly a week.  The cat and I have developed strategies to deal with this issue (involving a sofa, a blanket and lots of hot chocolate) and I feel we would be very good at hibernating.  Play to your strengths, I always say.

I realised the other day that I have been doing a lot of sewing for other people (blankets!) and I thought that perhaps I remembered some other stuff I'd been working on.  So I checked out the sewing room for unfinished projects - and hey! I was working on making myself some clothes!  I found a few projects, and a few more, and a few more, and hell, I stopped counting when I reached 100.

That's right.  I have well over ONE HUNDRED UNFINISHED clothing projects.

Enough!  I'm not sure how I let everything slip so badly, but I'm sick of the unfinished projects.  Obviously I'd love to have a whole pile of new clothes, but on some other level I don't think I can move on in my life without making some headway on this ridiculously over-sized project.  And while I feel quite over-whelmed I think that if I can sort out at least 50 garments in the next month I can bring some proportion to the rest of it. 

Accordingly, June is declared to be The Month That I Sewed My Clothes.  For Me.

But first I had to finish a blanket.  David had requested a blanket under which to snuggle while watching the telly*

*yes, I know this makes us sound as if we are 70.  But our house is very difficult to heat, and I'd rather snuggle under a blanket than eat bread and water to pay the power bill.

It's actually very pleasant, and the cat loves it.  I've just noticed that when left to my own devices I always make things in shades of purple, blue and green - my love affair with pauacontinutes unabated, it seems.

In order to avoid a rather clumsy segue, here's a picture of my cat in a basket:

The Super 14 tournament came to an end last week.  My beloved Highlanders came 11th - so not great, but better than 14th.  They're a young team, they seemed to enjoy playing together, and I think that if we can get the draft players to commit to a few more years we'd really be in with a chance.  The Highlanders' best game of the season was their last one, against the Crusaders (minor premiers and eventual winners of the tournament).  They were rated with no chance but against all the odds won the game 26-14.

Well, there was much cheering and clapping here, let me tell you.  I decided that to commemorate this blessed event I'd have the final score (26-14!  26-14!) tattooed across the back of my neck in a decorative cursive font, so, you know, tasteful.  David did point out that while getting a discrete tattoo to commemorate the actual winning of the tournament was one thing, getting a large tattoo to commemorate finishing 12th rather than 11th was a bit, well, sad.  I was forced to concur.  I also tried to get Ke to name her baby after a Highlanders player, and forwarded some names for consideration.  Her response was less "polite refusal" and more "completely ignored, and wondering why she's still friends with me".

The upside of the Super 14 finishing is that we have more time for club rugby (go Uni!) and the international season is starting up.  Last night the All Blacks beat Ireland in a match which wasn't particularly pretty, but it got the job done.

Month of Sewing My Clothes
Number of projects completed to date: 2.  I am not doing so well, so far.

Baby blankets

Today the cat threw up while we were watching the Highlanders game.  I thought it was a fairly understandable reaction to the fact that we were in the process of blowing a 31-14 lead against a team ranked below us in the table, but it turned out he'd been licking his flea medication again. 

At any rate we won by three points (although to be fair they had to play with only 13 men at one stage), and the cat's fine now so it's all good.

One of the things I have become slightly obsessed by lately is making baby blankets.  They take a while and can be a bit tricky, but I find making them to be very satisfying.  This one is for David's cousin's baby girl:

it's a 44-piece patchworked top with a layer of batting and a layer of mint-green polar fleece, edged with a black satin binding.  I didn't want it to be too pink and girly, but I did want it to be fairly neutral (as I don't know what their decor looks like at all) and quite soothing.  Obviously it looks a lot better in person as CrappyCam continues deteriorating.

Here's a close-up:

I really hope it gets a lot of use.  It's machine-washable, and probably dryer-friendly, and it's by no means an heirloom piece - I hope it's used as a 'lie on the floor under the baby-gym' blanket, and a car blanket, and a picnic blanket, and a comfy blanket.

Sigh

An inexperienced team, some appallingly dodgy refereeing decisions (dude, if you can't see the try being scored you can't award the try), and I'm seeing a lot of this in our future:

Three of the things in my head

My hand is healing nicely.  The doctor told me to remove the final dressing on Sunday and then we're done with dressings and bandages.  He also told me my body is awesome at healing and that I'm about a week ahead of where I should be.  Woo hoo!  I loved that comment so much!  I've struggled with bad body image problems for most of my life, and it's nice to have a new perspective on my body - the next time I start thinking negative body-image thoughts I'll remind myself that my body has awesome healing powers.

The Super 14 competition starts tonight (in about an hour, actually).  I'm not too sure how my beloved Highlanders will go this year - they seem to be branding themselves as a team of rookie rejects banding together against the odds.  This does not bode well.  Still, we were last in 1997 and the world didn't end.

I've always wanted to grow a fuchsia.  I used to take clippings from my mum and baby them along for a few months until they died without flowering.  A while ago I saw some nearly-dead plants at Kmart, and decided to try to revive them.  And look!

Little pink maybe-will-become flowers!  I'm so excited.