Gettin' Wiggy With It

I have been intending to go to one of these 'Look Good Feel Better' sessions for a while. Women diagnosed well after me have been there and told me I should go. If I was going to do the anti- chemo face and hair foofing I figured it should be before I finished the treatment. 

Lairy and I arrived fashionably late to find a mirror and a selection of personal face products to use and take home. The  mirror also magnifies but none of us took them up on that offer. Seriously?

 They cleansed and moisturised us- all very by the book- and talked about how we should apply the "c and v" of  eyeshadow when we look in the mirror to do morning make up. Bless! This is the woman, right here, who may or may not have had a jamie top under her jumper and above her ugh boots that very morning at school drop off. I had a strong resistance to the dark grey eye shadow they had given me because, let's face it, chemo grey eye shadow I don't need.
BUT I learnt some things I didn't know about applying the ol' pancake. I may even wear a bit some days now because it did make me feel better and we laughed!  In a room full of bald and balding women of various ages we did not speak of our diagnoses or treatments or sad bits but we did have fun.

 Not being a wig wearer, I made it my mission to try on as many of those hairy friends as possible in the allocated time. The above is the one the wig fitter chose for me which is, strangely, not unlike my own old hair. Then we just got into impersonation mode.

 'Julia Rowboats as Tinkerbell' hair....

 Thunderbird hair like nobody I know....

 Pure mean 'Pat the Rat' flash to the future hair.....

 This is my oncologist with the very well groomed hair. Now I know where she got it....

 The Bob Downe hair finished the session and it was all most entertaining and reinforced for me that I am a beanie girl. There are, after all, advantages to the hairless noggin:

*There is the delicious pleasure of a long hot shower at any time of the day or night. Pat dry and apply beanie.
*Getting up and showering, dressing and beanie-ing in five minutes flat to be completely ready.
*The potential power to embarrass my children into submission in a mall by the brief but effective removal of the beanie. This has not been needed yet but their disapproval when I tried on my latest one out in the open was enlightening. Months ago I was hiding in the dressing room at City Beach with the door shut but no more, my cherubs! Mummy is out!
*Savings on hair shampoo and electricity washing and drying the mop.
*When I get out of my suburb I do like to drive without headwear with the window down. Feels SO good.
*The ability to disarm a road rager overtaking me on the Sunshine Coast motorway with just my bald head and a vapid smile. BOOYA!
*Smiling on the inside at my boy's choice of helmet as he tries to subliminally look like his mama. See how his eyes light up when he sees me or maybe that was the $900 BMX that he will NEVER own.

 *There is also the pleasant sensation of the winter sun basting my melon out the front of the house. Just wear your glasses if you drop in because it is a shiny white sucker and will sizzle your retinas in a trice.

Pom pom tutorial

 This is just for those of you who wanted to know how how to make the pom poms on Shortie's beanie.  (especially DMC)

 They are just the store bought felt balls from Spotlight. I slit them with a scalpel enough to conceal a knot.

 Then thread the needle and knotted wool through the slit in the pom  pom...

 and pull it out the other side...

 until the knot is caught in the slit making a little berry kind of indent.

Make a slip stitch in the wool as close to the pom pom as possible and crochet some chain stitch until you have the length you want.

 Pull the wool through the last chain stitch to finish it off. Do keep enough wool on the end to rethread the darning needle and sew the cord to the beanie on the inside. You can pull the loose threads through the crochet to finish it more neatly.

 So there you have it. A tutorial!!! Anna will be pleased!

Chicken Whispering

Our Kindy has been very special to us for many years now. Shorty has taken to it like a duck to a small caged area on a soccer field. Today we dropped in for one of their annual events. 

The calf was overly interested in Shorty's skirt. 

                           
                            Note to self: Never wear floral fabrics near hungry cow type critters.

                          The piglet was the star attraction. Who knew they wore sun screen?

            Then we got down with the chicks. Shorty seems to have an affinity with the fowl. This one fell   asleep in her sticky little hand and she proceeded to put it into a bit of a chicken trance, as you do.

                                                                                                                                                                                       I assure you, no chicks were harmed in the making of this photo essay. This one was just in its happy place.

                         

                            Shorty was less convinced of the need for other chicken acts but I'm thinking she could busk in the mall for spare change.

                                                   
                                                     I just need to recruit a few more kids.

Feeling Hexy

With Masterchef gaining momentum it seems some of the chillun have the yen to  'plate up'. Play dough usually keeps Shorty happy but I have been missing baking lately myself. 

So  I had a  go at some easy familiar cookies that I have baked a hundred times. Shorty had something to stick bits in and I felt like myself briefly...

... until they came out like this. Oven too hot and I cannot do numbers at ALL right now. I read 125g and I put in 250g! It is the same with appointment times and dates. Keeno brain! I told the kids I meant them  that way and they are Hexacookies. They were good with that but have been severely mislead by my inability to count again. (pentacookie, PENTAcookie!!!)

Having indulged the desire to play with food preparation again, I spent the day back at HOCA with Frank, Brangelina, the Queen ...

...and these two who have been placed outside the unit in a kind effort to cheer the inmates. I have just noticed the one on the left is the same as the one in our garden. That penny only took a week to drop!

I did spot this rather cute hexagon rug at the hospital. This may be the next blanket in the treatment regime.

Meanwhile back home, the chillun have realised there will be no baking for the first week of treatment and have resorted to feeding themselves and each other as needed. Will this outlast Masterchef? Who will  be the winner? Thank you Channel Ten for putting it on at a reasonable  hour this year so we don't have to record it and relive it in the afternoon! Although that would be the perfect timeslot for the most popular children's show on the box!

       

Return of the Op Shop Karma

Lady Di wannabe (aka the Bosnian Orphan, aka Shorty),  and I hit the oppy again last week after a long hiatus. Frankly I haven't been up for it and I felt my opping mojo was perhaps compromised.

Imagine my barely contained excitement when after a brief round of the premises, I spied a WASHING MACHINE box full of vintage fabulousness. In fact it seemed to be from the one nanna source.

 Some had already been sewn into pillowcases with ric rac borders. Another woman was already sorting with trembling fingers. I hoped her two energetic toddlers might melt  down so I could take my turn like a lesser hyena at a kill on the Serengeti.
Op shop etiquette held me back till she looked up with the dilated pupils of a fellow fabric addict and asked me to please take some as she was already out of control and had to put some back. She added, as if to excuse her excitement, "I make bags for the markets."
"At least you don't hoard it in old suitcases like moi-self", I thought silently.

There would be more but for the inexplicable fact that one of Ron and Brian's lovely assistants tottered over and bemoaned the fact that she had to put it all on the shelf and price mark it. So she dragged the huge box of booty away from us with remarkable strength for a seventy + woman. My colleague and I took it as a sign to stop and draw a breath. Besides the toddlers were tired of the cutlery shelf by then. One of hers seemed to be trying to balance a rusty steak knife on his dummy. Another sign.

I have not made a quilt or a patchwork teepee yet as it is still lying in the back of the car under the trombone and euphonium.

Lucky I left the oppy when I did as I found this little group by the cash register. The one on the left is either a dog or a weasel. He is ours and we shall call him Dweazil. The mare-mie and foal are cute but.... 

 ...Bambi trumps horse/ dweazil every time.

There has been more crochet in the endless effort to make a beanie that fits my pin head. Fishy boy got the one on the left and Shorty's got non-bell baubles. She does look a bit like a little teapot with it on but that is, appropriately, one of her favourite songs.

 This small token got painted up in a lairy nail varnish to fulfil a Bitossi yearning. It is the only Bitossi I'll be getting for a while as I am supporting certain doctors' yearnings at the moments rather than my own.

Here it is in situ. The Noahs have left the building.

C-rock pots

Every year, I stand on our favourite beach, lens pointing down photographing the rock.

It is eternally fascinating  to me how the sea makes such perfect compositions in rock with shadow and texture and symmetry.

 All the elements and principles of art right there at my feet perfectly joined and constructed by waves.

 One day I will go back over all these photos of the rocks taken every year in the same place and print a couple  up big and black and white for a wall. I'm thinking above the bath to meditate on while I soak in more water.

Other people just want to climb on them. Edmund and Hillary and their sherpa will climb anything just because it is there.

We like to dress them in red on the beach so the helicopters can find them more easily should they decide to swim for the horizon. 

 Rock monkeys!