Umbrellas

This seems appropriate lately:

A Bit of Rain

We've had a few drops of rain. This is a little corner of our garden:

Our water tank is full to overflowing, the supplementary tank is full, and the ground is very very wet.

Everyone's dams seem to be full to overflowing. Low areas around town are under water:

There's a lot of water.

Everywhere.

Almost the whole population of Lal Lal is here:

To see a rare sight

 and hear the roar

 of Lal Lal Falls!

Compare with last September here, where I was impressed by what now seems like a trickle, and how the falls look for most of the year:

Photo from January last year.

Christmas in September?

At the supermarket today:

Christmas puddings, cakes, mince pies... It has started.

Even the reindeer are shocked, they haven't grown their antlers yet!

(Spotted on our walk this afternoon. Probably not actual reindeer.)

Warm

Warm is a community textile art project, currently at the Ballarat Art Gallery. "WARM reflects on why the earth is warming and what we can do to create a sustainable and safe climate future."

My very poor photo - taken without flash and obviously with movement!

Closer view of pink heath:

And red parrot peas:

If you would like to see much better photos of the piece, and read more about it, visit the Sustainable Environment Arts Movement (SEAM) website here. There you can also see a time-lapse video of the installation of the piece.

A list of the contributors is part of the display (Mary, if you are reading this, I found you on the list), and a couple of small display cases allow you a clear look at some of the component parts:

The gallery has a book of the knitting patterns for sale, if you would like to knit your own wind turbine or wildflower:

Or you can get individual patterns on Ravelry,

Walls Done

Yesterday the brickies completed their work on the walls. A couple of photos taken after they had finished:

The various openings will get gates. And once the walls are completely dried out, we can decide if they need painting. At the moment they are almost the same colour as most of the house.

Just as well they were finished yesterday, as today has been non-stop rain.

Dot's First Bath

This morning Dot found a little something probably left behind by a fox. She dropped her shoulder and smeared the stinky substance down first one side of her body, and then the other. Nice!

Unfortunately for Dot, we didn't want the revolting odour in the house, so this happened:

She did all she could to escape:

But no amount of eye-rolling was going to stop the wash!

But look how white and clean she looked as she dried off in the window seat:

I think she has forgiven me.

Finishing

Bright and early this morning the brickies returned to finish the garden walls. They braced the walls first:

Then spent the rest of the day mixing concrete in small batches, then tipping bucket-loads full into the core of the walls.

They still weren't finished tonight, so will be back again tomorrow.

I spent some of the day in my sewing room, finishing a top:

Trying out the pattern, using up some fabric that has been in my stash for a long long time. The purple is a warmer colour than it appears in the photos (as usual with purple).

This is the pattern:

Mine isn't any of the four "views" on the envelope. I made a few changes, in part dictated by the amount of these fabrics I had, and in part for personal preference. I made the whole thing on the 4-thread overlocker, except for the twin-needle stitching on the hems.

As the day finished, the dogs had an off-leash run on the "lawn" after finishing their walk: