Labradors and Toilet Humour

Reports from the toilet-training battlefront.

My, this is so fun, I don’t think I can express it! – We’re on underpants and trousers number three and socks number 2 for the day so far (just after lunch). For the past week or so, there have been pull-ups (a useful but hideously expensive and environmentally unsound option – even when using the attractive Disney princess ones left over from this process with the Princess). Destructoboy looked particularly good in the Snow White ones, but now we’re onto real pants! This simply means more environmental damage through washing!

Let no-one tell you that toilet training is not a battle ground – I had to interrupt that sentence because the boy who was sitting on the toilet less than 2 minutes ago and was asked 10 seconds ago if he needed the toilet has had a poo in his pants. It is a war – it’s very easy to give in and go back to nappies – but I will prevail! Make that: underpants 4, trousers 3 and socks 2 for the day.

Destructoboy will be 3 next Friday. That means that I have been changing nappies with no let up for 5 years and I have had enough – I’m not going to take it any more!

Combined with a ludicrously runny nose, my major preoccupation has been dealing with debris from both ends of Destructoboy today – I follow him around with a potty in one hand and tissue in the other wiping and swiping through the day.

On a happier note, I finished the third pattern repeat for the Turtle Walk socks and nearly finished the heel flap last night. I was initially unimpressed by the sock yarn, feeling that such a lovely sock pattern deserved a much better class of yarn, but now I am really happy with it. I hadn’t realised (knitting from the centre of the ball as I am, and only seeing the outside) that it has an orange-umber core and a rainbow dyed wrap – as you knit you get quite wide but gradually changing rainbow stripes over the orange – it’s subtle and very beautiful, so I have totally revised my opinion. I am now happier that I have excellent taste in yarn to go with Spidey’s lovely pattern.

This morning we did the craft thing (the weather is a bit on the poor side – 150km/hour winds, horizontal rain, you know the sort of thing) so we did stuff – gluing sequins and buttons on other things, bits of paper, felt finger puppets – I felt momentarily like parent of the year! – It’s OK though, it wore off fairly quickly when I cleaned up the glue and small bits of paper!

I don’t believe I mentioned Luath to you. Luath was our main dog while I was a child. He was a Mundin strain black lab, very big, with the appropriate boof head and deep chest. He was a ‘watter dog’ as they are described in old books. Nothing pleased him more that swimming – except, maybe, eating. Or sleeping. Or being patted. Or riding in the back of the ute. Or the car.

He loved the water. We lived near a river. Countless afternoons were spent throwing sticks into the river for him top fetch – a game he never tired of. He also loved people swimming with him, and as my mother couldn’t swim, I was always allowed to swim in the river, if I took the dog. We trained him to come if you yelled ‘Help’ and he would tow you to the bank while you held to his collar or the scruff of his neck.

If you were just floating in the water, he would grab your arm in his soft retriever mouth and tow you anyway. This system worked really well the whole time I was growing up.

Until we took him to the beach. Where the man was snorkelling. Not only was the man patently drowning, but he had a stick in his mouth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier Labrador! He towed the man in – by the stick. Luckily, the man wasn’t drowned and had a sense of humour. And didn’t sue.

Luath used to collect all sorts of things for us. When a nest of baby ducks escaped he brought them back, one by one, in his mouth. They were rather damp, but totally unscathed. As were the guineau pig, kittens and chicks. Definitely slobbered on, but no problems. I love labs. Ours died last year and I still miss him. Cats and children adored him. When I was cleaning out the freezer yesterday (our fridge has died) I still found black Labrador hairs in the bottom.

By the way, on the whole Google search thing, I am proud to announce that if you search for ‘Paraplegic budgie’ my blog is the first hit you get.

I wonder why that is?

Turtle Walks and Heavy Horses

Just as I feared! You’ve all been off doing exciting stuff – and I haven’t been there to see it all – just a day and a half I’m off the airwaves, and there you all are – knitting, cooking, playing with animals, sheep planning mass breakouts! What am I going to do with you?

So, since I’ve been absent I’ve:

1. Finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Liked it (of course) but thought it could benefit from stronger editing.

SPOILER ALERT

Also, can someone please tell me a) how did the sword get back to the hat? And b) How did Draco end up as the wand’s master when Snape killed Dumbledore?

2. I cast on Polyglot socks and discovered after knitting the first full repeat that there was a mistake in the pattern and I ended up doubling the number of stitches in 10 rows!!! Frogged it (2 nights work, not including the 2 nights spent untangling the skein to ball it, making a complete dog’s breakfast of my new ball winder, untangling it all again, taking the mess off the ball winder, rewinding and re-balling it by hand and putting it in a ziplock, as I would have done originally had I not had the new ball winder – decided to watch the instructional video on YouTube) and emailed the designer in a panic, only to discover there WAS a problem with the pattern but I wasn’t sent the corrected chart – she was very quick to get it to me though.

3. the feather and fan scarf at playgroup yesterday

4. Cast on a plain pair of socks in Patonyle faux fairisle for travelling and meetings

5. Cast on and did 2 pattern repeats of Happy Spider’s Turtle Walk socks in JoJoland Melody (I would have searched out some of Spidey’s own gorgeous wool, but I was so upset about the Polyglot socks I grabbed some reasonable wool from the downstairs stash)


6. Felted and semi dried the Squatty sidekick. Tips: Increases and decreases in the side stitches I think for the next couple. Slightly longer strap and less bound off stitches between the flap edges and straps. Waiting for it to dry.

It’s been wild weather here and there’s been little prospect of playing outside from about lunchtime yesterday. I’ve decided I feel a bit naked without a big knitting project, so I’m going to try the ball winder again with the Rowan for Juno.

This will bring me up to 3 WIPs – which is my limit. On the other hand. Maybe I should just finish the Turtle Walk socks and then do Juno. Decisions, Decisions.

I notice that some of you are enjoying the animal yarns (he, he). As we lived on a farm, we always had lots of animals drifting in and out of our orbit. Even the mice which lived in our house (no, not pets – the sort that come out at night and poo in the cupboards!) had names – my mother actually used to put food out for them. One (particularly fat and buck toothed) was called Mousey Tung. The extremely fat and slow moving one was called Enormouse. How they managed to stick around in a house full of cats (we always had at least 3) is beyond me!

Mostly, the sheep weren’t distinguished enough, with strong enough personalities to get their own names. Bottle fed lambs circulated through the house, drank formula out of Seppelt’s Solero sherry bottles with teats on (much to the disgust of our Brethren neighbours who were convinced we were enticing them into a life of alcohol and vice), grew strong and were either matched with a ewe who had lost lambs or were weaned and went back to the flock.

The real stars of the farm were the collection of horses. My mother was a bit scared of horses (this is a women whose hobby, prior to moving to Australia from Wales and settling down with Dad, was mountain climbing. She also went around Europe on the back of a BSA motorbike with a former boyfriend). But she was a softie (our farming practices were the source of enormous amounts of laughter from the REAL farmers around us). So she bought an elderly Clydsesdale mare, Jewel, to save her from the knackers. This cost her 45 dollars (or 2 weeks housekeeping). For 2 weeks we ate lots of porridge and potatoes. Jewel was in her early twenties (we think), was calm and placid, and suffered from chronic greasy heel, which required baths in copper sulphate and bran poultices. She generally got the sack containing the poultice off her leg and ate it (the poultice, not the sack). A bran poultice has the same ingredients as bran mash.

She hated the copper sulphate wash, so generally, someone had to distract her with food at the front end, while someone else crept around the back end with a bucket of the wash and got as close as possible before hurling the contents at her heels. She generally trotted off, but became extremely wary of buckets. If there was food in a bucket, we had to put it down and back away, allowing her to investigate its contents!

Jewel eventually died of extreme old age, having had a loving and lengthy retirement. We used to sit on her very broad back and play cards, while she ambled along eating grass (pulling herself along by her teeth). She never minded. The only time I ever saw her moving quickly was when she saw a bucket!

This is all your fault

Right, you lot!

Immediately stop being so interesting! Stop having funny things to say and making wonderful knitted things and living interesting lives – stop it immediately!

Stop knitting in public and making beautiful, enviable garments and shawls and socks and scarves and other bits and pieces! Stop it this minute!

You’re making your blogs all so interesting that I have to stop by to check on you every day – and I’m only 2 weeks into this month’s broadband allocation and I’ve already used 75% and it’s all YOUR FAULT!

If you lot weren’t such wonderful, interesting and fun people, I wouldn’t be in this situation – again!

I think I need a new plan – at least as far as the broadband goes, anyway.

So, I’m not going to check on any of you till Friday – OK, maybe Thursday. I’ll have to store it all up. I’ll expect knitterly progress reports on shawl and socks and scarves and lace and jumpers and other stuff to be on your blogs then. And then I’ll ooh and ahh and tell you how clever you are and wish I had unlimited (but very fast) broadband like they do in cities.

I also promise to tell you more about the animals who have shared my house – not all of them came to bad ends – many just died of old age after doing extremely weird and bizarre things throughout their lives with us – like the orphaned calf, Claude Hopper (go on – say it aloud – he always trod on our feet in his eagerness to get at the bottle), who my father wasn’t ever allowed to sell, and died of old age, a fat and sooky steer. He was always so tame that even when he grew up and went back into the cattle herd, he’d let me ride him.

Or Ajax, the Hereford bull who loved nothing better than people feeding him apples and curling his fringe. He once treed my grandmother (the Welsh one, Nain) up an apple tree for 3 hours as he circled around underneath while she was picking apples. She was scared of him, and started throwing apples to make him go away. Unfortunately it had the opposite effect – he thought she was feeding him – eventually we heard her plaintive cries and rescued her by luring Ajax away – with an apple!

He was much more interesting than his successors, Bearable, Capable, Disreputable, Effable and Gullible. Go on – say them aloud too. The liking for puns is an appalling family trait.

So, I’m not going to tell you about any of these. You’ll just have to wait.

I’m not even going to tell you about my lovely parcel that arrived yesterday – 6 skeins of Noro Blossom and 500gr of Silk Road in a really dark green (another swing jumper?).
You’ll just have to wait. So there. Now go back to doing interesting stuff. I’ll pop in and see what you’re doing later in the week.

Pets I have known

Thanks for all your kind words on the party front – I’m still basking in the warm parental glow that accompanied it!

Meantime, I examined some recent posts, and noticed on Knights Don’t Knit a link to the most astonishing and gobsmackingly enormous stash – Look at this! I swear – I will never suggest that my stash is getting overwhelming ever again!!

She also suggested the low maintenance goldfish as a pet – a good suggestion, but it brings me to the subject of today’s post – pets.

During my time I have owned or lived with the worlds most neurotic and downright crazy pets. So let’s start with Eloise, the suicidal goldfish.

I actually found Eloise in a pond in an abandoned gravel pit – I have no idea how she arrived there, but there she was swimming with others in the pool. To children of sixish, this was a godsend. I took Eloise home (probably in a billy or ice cream container -standard practice for tadpoles etc) and only when she was ensconced in a clear bowl on top of the fridge (we had 3 or 4 cats) did her tendencies become apparent. She would leap from the fridge top nearly 2 metres to the floor on a regular basis. We usually returned her to the bowl in time, but one day we were too late – and one of the cats seemed too full to eat dinner.

Then there was Baabaa – the orphaned lamb we bottle reared. He buddied up with the Labrador we had and thought he was a dog. He tried to herd cows. He walked behind horses. The first time my father hand sheared him, it was so bad that the ducks laughed at him. He retreated to the hen-house and refused to come out for 3 days – mind you it was possibly the absolute worst sheep haircut I have ever seen – tufts held together with Rawleighs Man and Beast ointment on the nicks!

Baabaa lived to a ripe old age (for a sheep), became enormously fat, and was driven into a heart attack by the pig we acquired from the local vet. We only owned half the pig – the vet owning the other half, but Snorty was a playful and active pig. He lived in our quarter acre chook yard – along with the ducks, occasional geese (who hated me and used to bail me up in the corner by the brambles and peck my legs), and Baabaa the sheep.

Snorty had been given to the vet as part payment for a debt and was raised by us on a diet of windfall apples, soy bean meal swept up from the wharf when the bags broke (this included the odd bottle cap and cigarette butt) and dad’s home brewed beer that used to explode in the middle of the night under the house. He thrived on this diet and when he was castrated (by the vet) my father had the gall to draw the cookbook cuts on his white skin in indelible pencil – he looked just like the diagram. This also reminded us that living on a farm meant we couldn’t hide from the origin of our food and Snorty’s eventual fate.

Snorty met his fate and my mother and I refused to eat pork for more than a year. I still feel bad about Snorty. I didn’t get so attached to the 10 ginger Tamworth pigs we got after Snorty – we called them Mao, Chauvin, Stalin, Trotsky, Marx, Pol Pot, Lenin, Kruschev, Chaplin and McCarthy – they were red pigs and Mum figured that naming McCarthy as a Communist was the least she could do. Besides, it was my job to clean out the pig house. When they left us, I still ate pork.

Probably my favourite weird pet wasn’t actually mine, but belonged to a flatmate. Genghis the paraplegic budgie had been in a serious car accident with his owner. She sustained major leg injuries and his cage slipped off the back seat and lodged under the driver’s seat. He was left unable to move his legs from the elbowy bit down. He used to balance precariously on his perch, stall in midair to land on your shoulders (he preferred wool to cotton because it gave him the chance to tangle his toes in it and bring him to a halt – polished cotton shoulders often meant a slide on landing and an uncontrolled plummet to the floor.

He used the stalling technique of landing all the time – he’d fly around and just stop flapping his wings when he reached stalling speed – then nosedive into the carpet. Genghis had a tendency to sit on your shoulder, nibble at your ears and then try to stuff your earrings into your ear – a painful and potentially injurious process.

Unfortunately, my cat of the time, Floozy, developed a fascination with Genghis. She’d sit on his mantle-piece staring at him for hours. Sometimes we’d find him on the bottom of his cage with his legs in the air, but he always recovered. When he finally went to the great birdcage in the sky, the entire household and all our friends went into mourning. He was one of the few budgies I ever really liked and admired.

I love pets – but seem to be a magnet to those with strange personality quirks – I can’t understand it. After all I’m a sane, responsible… grown – up….OK – Now I understand. No wonder they feel at home!

It's my party

Well we’ve survived the 5th birthday party – getting to be old hands at thegame now, and it gets a bit easier in some ways as they get older. Ten little girls, and 2 little boys all 5 or nearly 5, a ‘Come as your favourite fairy tale character’ theme – the girls did Disney proud with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, 2 Snow Whites (including the Princess), a Dalmatian, a number of assorted fairies. The boys went to less effort – 1 had a tube on his nose (yep, Pinocchio in a wildlife warriors T-shirt), the other turned up as Harry Potter and took his robes off within a millisecond of arriving.

Destructoboy did not dress up. His only interest in the entire party thing was the Party food, so he sat in a high chair in solitary splendour, eating his way through chips, fairy bread and the icing on 2 cup cakes while ignoring everything else.

The kids had a great time. We did bursting balloon games, balloon races (you’ll notice we like balloons – they’re cheap, cheerful and unlikely to break the china or injure others) and pass the parcel – a prize for everyone and messages such as ‘to the person who makes the best animal noise’, who has the longest tongue, who blows the best raspberry, makes the funnniest face etc. This is as much fun for the parents as the children.

Then party food, the cake, playtime, loot bags and home – while the Accountant and I collapsed exhausted into a glass of wine.

Princess was over the moon about her presents – hooray for parents who buy crafty stuff and useful things – she scored a little over night case, which will no doubt later become a beauty case, some dolls and books and activity books. All deeply satisfying and lots of fun.

The mess was minimal and quickly cleared up – hooray for plastic plates and tablecloths and for having the food bit on a polished wooden floor – slightly louder but very easy to vacuum up – and now they’re a little older – no spillage!

Everyone was getting into the party spirit. Cat of the House (COTH) brought home a friend last night. I let him in and he was closely followed by a rather gorgeous ginger and white fellow. The ginger and white boy decided to claim the back room as his territory and was promptly hustled outside again. He would very much have liked to return inside, but I decided that one cat is enough. We once acquired a cat when I was a child because he came inside, ate everyone else’s dinner and refused to leave.

It’s an interesting way to acquire residents – ‘He followed me home, Mum – can I keep him’ has to be one of the oldest excuses for acquiring a pet (and one I used to use with remarkable frequency and success when I was younger. I love having a houseful of animals, but we are hoping to have some holidays over the next few years and animals must be cared for. I haven’t wanted another dog since our gorgeous elderly black lab died last year and while I love cars they tend to be hard on native wildlife, bells and nights inside not withstanding.

I have a feeling that rabbits and guinea pigs may just be providing meals for quolls and we’re down to 2 bantams who eat, scratch around and provide eggs for about 6 weeks a year!

Tried out my ball winder on Friday and it gave me a large tangled mass – maybe it doesn’t like the Colinette jitterbug. Managed no knitting that night as I prepared for the party instead and last night I spent the entire allocated knitting period doing 3 rounds of the Red Bird May sock of the month and then disentangling and re-balling the damn jitterbug.

Tonight ironing night (hope there’s a decent movie on) and if I’m fast I might get some knitting done. Squatty sidekick remains unfelted and Rowan aran un-balled.

As a knitter, this weekend has been an abject failure.

As a parent – maybe I’m not as appalling as I hoped.

Procrastination and Domesticity

I am the queen of procrastination.

It was a well known fact at University, that the only time my house was ever immaculate was when I had assignments due. In fact, the more assignments I had due and the more urgent they were, the better my house looked. Friends would drop over, look around and say ‘Gosh TB, if we’d known you had assignment deadlines, we wouldn’t have come in’.

I have to tidy the house, vacuum all major areas, clean the kitchen, do the washing up and make a birthday cake and cupcakes. I also have to decorate and ready the house generally for a party and attentions of 10 five year old and their parents.

So I’m writing a blog entry.

I’m very cross with the Knitting Daily. The squatty sidekick pattern is wrong, wrong, wrong!

I’ve been through it and through it – the stitch counts bear absolutely no relationship to what is actually happening on the needles – overall in the pattern, and especially on the handles and flap – I have emailed Knitting Daily to point this out and had no response. How can you have 3 sts on your needles, S1, K2otg K7, SSK, K1? Not possible!!!

So I made it up – this is what it looks like unfelted.


I will felt it on Sunday and see how it works. Have a look at the pattern – go to Knitting Daily, look at the patterns – or search their patterns under ‘Amanda’ ( I’m having broadband usage issues again)

Tell me what you think – even better, tell me AND tell Knitting Daily.

The importance of being swatched

Gauge is important. Correct tension is critical to knitting success. You should knit a swatch, measure it, adjust needle size and wash and block your swatch. You should do these things, and most of the time, I don’t.

Those of you who have been following my knitting adventures for the past month (yes – today is indeed my 1 month blogiversary) may have gathered that I am not exactly a hotshot in the swatching department. I take liberties with patterns and I only swatch when I knit for other people, and on the very rare occasions I make something fitted.

I don’t swatch because I am lazy, but mainly because instant gratification takes much too long – when I finish a project, I want to have a new project up and on the needles ASAP – and swatching takes too damn long.

I have had a couple of knitting disasters, but my standard no maths method of pattern adaptation (eg knit on a size or so larger needles because patterns don’t usually come in a proper 16/18) generally works OK. It works because natural fibres – especially wool - are forgiving. It also works because I am willing to take any disasters on the chin and frog when necessary.

In fact, some years ago, what should have been a non-swatching disaster turned into my very favourite jumper. I had made a red mohair jumper which I loathed when it was finished. So I frogged it (yes – frogged mohair) and had a play with a design and started knitting – on much bigger needles. At that time I had just lost a jumper I adored because I broke up with the man who owned it, so I was trying to recreate that size and style (I was slim, young and likely to wear only this jumper in the mornings). I started knitting and realised I was going to run out of wool – so I bought more mohair, different type and slightly different shade. I striped the front and the sleeves. I knitted a very loose funnel collar. The neck is so wide it always slips off one shoulder. It comes down to my knees. I roll up the sleeves by around 30 – 40 cms. Even now, it is almost possible to get someone else in there with me. It ought to be a disaster, horrible, unflattering, awful.

But it’s not. I adore it – I love wearing it. Every time I wear it, people offer to buy it or ask me to knit them one. Whenever I wear it I feel sexy and snuggly and warm and gorgeous. I love wearing it over black pants, black boots and a black skivvy. It is a dream of scarlet fuzziness and I have only just managed to hold on to it to protect it from acquisitive friends and boyfriends over the years.

So, maybe one day, it will happen again. I use the right needle size for socks. I swatch if I knit for others. I almost always substitute yarn and knit on larger needles. I generally knit clothes I love and love wearing. I wait for the wrath of the Knitting Goddess to descend on me. I will humbly accept the penance she is no doubt planning to give me after she wreaks her vengeance upon me. I willingly frog and tink disasters.

I accept all this – and one day I may create another perfect jumper, because I didn’t swatch.