This'll make you laugh ...

For Valentine's Day — no mawkish pink fluffy hearts or maudlin soft-focus pics of roses.
Just a shot of Les and Dave, 1983, on our honeymoon, May 1983, in the house of our best friends, Dave and Cathy, in Cold Spring, NY.
We look a bit jet-lagged, and probably were. By this point we'd had two weeks in Rome (note my sensational Italian loafers), two weeks in Egypt, a few days in England and still had two or three weeks in the US to go before our return via Sydney.
When Cathy sent me this pic that she'd unearthed last year, she remarked on how impossibly young we were. But I'm more staggered by how incredibly thin we were! Coffee and nicotine will do that ...
For our 30th-or-so Valentine's Day together, David brought me a bowl of Cheerios with exactly 13 grapes and low-fat milk, and in return I'm going to be tidying the kitchen.
Livin' the dream.

Sunday

In between everything else going on around here, I've got stuck into my crocheting again, in an attempt to either finish this granny rug or at least get it to a size at which it can be useful in some way. As a cushion cover or lap rug.
Of course, it might be that I hate this arse end of summer and am projecting cooler, wintry fantasies — often when I'm crocheting I have to throw the whole thing off me as it's just too darned hot to be sitting with it over me.:: Lily and Nick (pictured above, hiking in Utah) have moved in here temporarily before they move to Melbourne. They have a house organised, but cannot move in until after the 18th of this month. Lily is also waiting for her interview here in Perth for a place on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program. If she's successful, she'll be moving to Japan for a year.
I'm trying not to think about her leaving, after so loving having her and Nick living about a kilometre away and seeing her so often. But oh, I do understand the lure of wonderful Melbourne for bright, active young people.
:: The Perth festival show, Donka: A Letter to Chekhov, was breathtaking last night. Clever, moving, beautiful, spectacular. If you get a chance to see it, make sure you do.

Weekend tangents

I was just listening to the news while I checked my emails and had my cup of tea, and then caught sight of this corner of my desk — coincidentally appropriate with all the tumultuous news from Egypt (oooh ... fingers crossed). The lotus seed head — the flower is the ancient symbol of Upper Egypt — I dried out last year after Shelley gave it to me when it was beautifully green and fresh and on a long stalk.
:: My David is going to be so busy over the next few weeks now the Perth festival has started! No more quiet nights of dinner and an old episode of Cracker (I must say, they have stood up surprisingly well in the decade and a half since they were made!). Last night was the Big Festival Opening (yes... with fireworks ... stifled yawn) and tonight we're off to see Donka: A Letter to Chekhov.
:: In the meantime my best friend Shelley and the girls are soon to arrive for a sewing marathon with Lily and me, making more loveliness from this book. So I'd better quit whingeing and clean this mess up!
Have a great weekend, everyone!

Sunday scrapbook

Quite a lot of photos my kids have taken end up stored on my computer. There's a series of about eight shots of this big huntsman spider*. If you click on the pic, you can see it even bigger!I get a lot of Will's pics in particular because while he has a fab camera of his own, he likes to use my little one. When I retrieve my camera, use it and download the pics I've taken, I occasionally get a load of his as well.I included this one, above, so you get some idea of its size against the doormat.
I think this next spider's poorly, or dead.This next one is one of our enormous bull ants — their bites really, really hurt, and the resultant swelling will itch like hell for weeks afterwards.
Plus videos — there is a series of videos showing ants removing the flesh from the dead mouse whose skull Will still has.
So this week, I thought I'd take part in Dawn's Sunday Scrapbook with some of the creatures Will has photographed that end up stored alongside my far less creepy pics!
All these were taken down south, where the house is on a bush block and there are lots of bugs. On some summer nights, there is a constant banging on the window as beetles and other insects hurl themselves at the glass trying to get to the lights inside.
This is one of my shots. Last weekend, in the strong blustery wind generated by Cyclone Bianca, this beautiful leaf insect blew on to the verandah upstairs. Its wings and body are the same shape and green as the leaves of the eucalypts in which it lives, and its legs are identical to the reddish leaf stalks. Wonderful.

:: I was looking at my recent stats and I seem to have had an awful lot of visitors from two or three so-called "adult friend" sites. I'm wondering if they ventured my way because of the title of the post before last ... what do you reckon?

* Huntsman spiders are really common and not deadly to humans. They don't make webs but they can move fast and jump. And they can be big — they can eat cockroaches.
You very often see them indoors, where they like to cling to the ceiling. One jumped on to my pillow one night — the noise of its landing just centimetres from my face woke me up ...

Laundry

I get an inordinate amount of pleasure from doing the laundry, which is odd, because I am not the slightest bit interested in other forms of domestic toil, though I will keep the loos reasonably clean.{Over the Line, oil on canvas, 2002, by Jeffrey T. Larson}

But give me a pile of washing to sort, wash and — oh joy! — hang out, and I am weirdly happy.
Not so happy about bringing it in and sorting it and putting it away, but I'll do it.
I enjoy the flap of cool wet linen on a breezy, sunny day, the bright pegs (always cheap and cheerful placky ones) against the blue sky, and the basic process of exposing washed fabrics to the whitening and drying effects of the sun.I even stuck to my guns in Southern California, a dry, desert environment where it rains little and the sun shines a lot, and where hanging out your washing to dry indicates your social and financial inferiority and is therefore prohibited in many neighbourhoods lest you bring down property prices and upset the kiddies. And this, of course, is far, far more important than the dire environmental effects of 20 million people all using dryers, even if they are gas-heated.

But I won't go on about that again ...{In the Light of Morning, oil on canvas, 2003, by Jeffrey T. Larson}

I laundered my handmade napkins today — including this one, which someone decided last year would be the perfect cloth for wiping down something gross, like a wet bike, or a set of lawn bowls. Grrrr.

Baby love

We had a glorious time down south, despite yucky weather caused by the approach and eventual fizzing out of Cyclone Bianca, which fortunately did very little other than drop a bit of rain, increase the humidity and rough up the sea.
But we still had a wonderful time, especially with grandchildren Mack and Harper.
Mack had a ball with Will, and lots of fun swimming, surfing, studying bull ants and beating me at Mario Kart.
He started Year 2 at school yesterday — amazing!
It was one-year-old Harper's first trip to the beach house and it was a bit of a shame that the weather was either too hot or windy, and the sea too rough and noisy, to take her paddling.
Oh, but Nanna Lesley enjoyed lots and lots of cuddles and affection!
She is an amazing eater — whatever is placed in front of her. Broccoli, carrots, avocado, cherries, spinach, tomatoes, the lot! And while it was all a bit strange for her at first, once she'd settled in she slept almost all night every night, until after 7am.
We miss both of them.
:: Started some round-and-round knitting therapy (a beanie for Lily, who is about to move to Melbourne) as we watched the news unfold yesterday of Queensland's approaching menace, Cyclone Yasi.
I think the whole nation watched anxiously all day — we all still feel such an emotional connection with Queensland after the disastrous floods in the south of the state.
This super-cyclone was even more of a worry as fellow blogger and Scrabble mate Tracey lives in Townsville, which is about 200km south of where the eye crossed the coast but was still subjected to an incredible battering. And is still experiencing huge winds today.
We experienced vicariously a little of what she went through as she posted bulletins on her blog and on facebook.
Thankfully, she and her family are safe and sound.
Seems Nature really has got it in for Queensland this year, which is a worry!

Heading south

I've been counting sleeps!
Yesterday, I put my last edition for now to bed (Sir is back next week) and from today I'm on two weeks' holiday.
As soon as we've finished breakfast, and maybe a coffee, we'll pack and be off.
I've put together a couple of boxes of things to do — watercolours (it's been years and years!), drawing, knitting and crochet — and to read, like the gorgeous cookbooks we got for Christmas and haven't had time to glance at. We've packed the wii and games, I've even dug out my bathers and there's a hat on my bed waiting to be packed.
My eldest son is already down there with our grandson, and our grand-daughter will be with us next week. Lily's coming down with Nick in a few days, and Will will arrive on Monday with two of his mates. My best friend Dace is coming for a weekend, and everyone else is welcome to arrive at a moment's notice.
And on top of all that, we have a forecast maximum of just 29C today (84F) and it's started to rain — very happy.

{Today's lovely pics are of textiles and colours in the home of Scottish designer Fiona Douglas, via Design Sponge. I'm looking at images of bedrooms with an eye to re-painting and brightening up our bedroom down south, and if I could get it to look like this, I'd be in heaven ...}