wholesome pursuits

my new household has a communal garden out back, with our friends who live in the apartment upstairs (who need names. hmm. . .) we had two work parties with lots of friends to dig up two big beds, and dig in compost we trucked out from the city dump in ladner (buzzards circling above the rubbish). lots of worms!

now the beds have teeny tiny seedlings sprouting all over, from the seeds eleanor and i put in weeks ago. it's been lovely and warm, so we're tag teaming daily watering. expect more photos as things get bigger and greener.

the garden is one of my main pleasures at the moment. it's so simple and rewarding.

i also have the usual things in pots, including 18 tiny tomato plants on my desk and this bag of strawberries in the planter grot and ddd sent me for christmas:


they've got much bigger since i took this photo, as has the rhubarb:


also in the wholesome activity vein is the dog agility trails i've been attending with pantimalion, and her dog, lyra. here's lyra whizzing through one of the tunnels:


lyra has speed but no focus, but the two of them have a grand time running round the agility track. i enjoy watching them and meeting all the other lovely dogs that attend these things, including a huge beardie with a topknot.

lyra in slow-mo, being loved on by cassandra:


now i'm off to the island for the weekend. i'm going to take my bike and work on getting my calf muscles back.

and eat salad and go to bed early and knit socks for my grandmother and read _pilgrim's progress_ and wash behind my ears and

pamplemouse oui oui?

ah, montreal, land of bagels. i had a grad conference a month or so ago, and took a five hour flight out east.


it's a very european city, kind of like paris or amsterdam (being the last european cities i've visited), except chockers with canadians, which is kind of weird. most everybody speaks french, and usually english as well. i think i could live there, but i think i'd have to learn french first.



i stayed with some friends of friends, who turned out to be funky academic queers, so we drank a lot of wine, played with the dog and talked shop. they were great!


all the staircases are outside, all twisty and slippery and beautiful. you can still see snow on the ground, but it wasn't too too cold when i was there.


i spent two days wandering the city, drinking very good coffee and buying nice clothes, and two days at the conference, listening to lots of english nerds talk about dracula and 18th century novels and victorian prostitution laws and film adaptions and science fiction novels. i'd forgotten how historical english lit is, and also how much of it i'm familiar with. it was very relaxing to be in that environment.


bike lane separated from traffic! so simple! so safe! there was also very sweet public sculpture, which made me happy.

knitting is kool

why won't the paparazzi leave me alone???

look - fishy tail!

i think the red mitts were a success. . .

ah, so cold and damp

so, i gather it's been a wee bit warm in australia, a bit toasty, a bit sweaty. it's five degrees and raining here. . . *stretches*

it even snowed earlier in the week:

i am toasty and stylish in my hat, mitts and scarf by jt!

i'm into week four of "spring" semester. my classes are okay. one is a hard core theory class where we talk about hermeneutics, mostly. i'm enjoying that a lot. the other is about visual culture studies, which is kind of driving me batty, but still has potential. last week i was so frustrated i nearly knitted a whole mitten!

(one pair for cass, one pair for me.)

i finally got off my bum and started doing PD stuff. i got two papers accepted for conferences! i'm giving two presentations at uni next week! i got a comic published! i'm knitting a hat shaped like a fish!


that's really it for my news. i spend a lot of time making To Do lists and muttering "knit three, knit two together." oh, and six feet under. did i tell you i discovered six feet under? droooool . . .

lots of v.g. maillove recently, including these snazzy valve-caps from DDD, which totally match the colour scheme of my bike:

soon the streets will be ice-free enough to ride, soon, my pretties. . .

australian christmas

nanny and nyx


campsite

visitor to campsite! (i have shown this photo to some canadian friends - they think it is fascinating and exotic)

cousin and puppy


photos from grot (or jt via grot?). thankyou!

[if anyone is uncomfortable with an image being on the net let me know and i will take it down.]

solstice, christmas, snow

finally got round to putting up some of my many speccy christmas photos - we had a white christmas! it was very beautiful and very cold and very difficult to get around (iced up sidewalks + cars bogged + buses cancelled/delayed).


oh, just before christmas was winter solstice. i went to a lantern festival at the local community centre. they had a flaming torch in the snow, and we stood around it singing winter songs, with the falling snow making our song sheets all soggy.


there was also a labyrinth made from candle-lamps, which one walked through very slowly, all the way in and all the way out. it was incredibly beautiful, and the whole night made me feel good about the world and the winter.


cass and i went to an orphan christmas at winifred's place, which was fun. lots of food, lots of bubbly, lots of presents. cass got a harmonica in the chris cringle. sweeeet.


the best kind of christmas present. . .


also there was a cute gus dog!


the view from the bus stop the next morning, mountains in the distance.

and cass with her stash!

we spent christmas day hanging out with some of cass' mates. some of the pretty things we saw on the walk there:




we spent boxing day doing *nothing*, which was perfect! it was snowing heavily and i was forced to valiantly snowshoe down to the shops:


the end!

hiking is nice

pantalaimon and i went hiking near deep cove today. the mainland has been deep in fog for the last three days, but up high on the mountains it was sunny, with glorious views:

if you look closely you can see hunks of frozen water in the bay.

not much else news. i have some new picturebooks and i knitted a pair of mittens. they are RED.

this is what i do with my time now

the pink ones are for nanny (ssssssh!) and the stripey ones are for me, as they are my first effort and a little lumpy as a consequence. knitting socks is very satisfying. i enjoy turning the heel.

so uni started again. i'm tired! i'm also sick again (booooooooring), which isn't helping the tired. my classes seem okay so far, and it's very nice to see my uni friends again. my little posse went out for brunch on the weekend, and bitched. it was sweet. i have a gilbert and sullivan play and a jug band concert to attend now (we're a talented bunch).

merry (white) christmas, y'all!

how to

what does one wear when the temperature is 10 below?

stockings
wool socks
wool pants
waterproof boots with good tread
wool singlet
cotton singlet
bamboo longsleeve
big down jacket
thermal-lined hat with earflaps
scarf
mitts


it is also vital to keep one's spirits up!

cold! cold! oh my ears and nose!

a shot in my new neighbourhood, when the snow was still fresh everywhere.


there's still little birds in the trees - i wonder what they eat?


and a view down an alley in my 'hood. this is looking west, you can see downtown in the distance.



today is a forecast top of minus 6, and there's a big snow storm coming. i'm rugging up good and loving on my big down jacket!

growing things is fun

nature just likes to keep us on our toes, you know?



eleanor and i are on a mission to green up the new house. it's kind of challenge cos we don't get a huge amount of natural light, so we're being very inventive.

this is my attempt to grow things from cuttings - ivy bits stolen from front fences, and african violet leaves planted in coffee cups and humidifying in a bread bag. apparently you can make a whole african violet from a leaf!


i'm particularly proud of this window shelf arrangment. eleanor conceived it, other roommate M built it, and i arranged and cared for the plants. i've had to bring in all the vegies growing in pots on the back veranda, because the soil literally freezes solid overnight. so that's rainbow chard on the coffee table (silverbeet is the closest australian equivalent), carrots to the left of the table and tiny baby corianders in the blue pot on the far left of the shelf. we also bought a beautiful chain of hearts (or rosary plant?) to hang. v.g.