Took My Cabin Fever To The City...

...and left it there!

Not sure if it's a sign that I'm itching to be off to Canada or what but after 2 days at home I was more than ready for a "spree" lol Boarded the 10.40am train to Perth and walked and wandered for the next three hours with a little shopping and a lot of people watching thrown in too.

Snatches of overheard conversations...
"Would the store cleaner please come to the switchboard" (what was that about? a dirty phonecall?)
"He keeps asking me for the numbers of other people...."
"Then she said...."
and my favourite...
"It's like rockin' the gym and then goin' to Maccas!"

There were some very talented buskers, some tragic looking homeless people, some people with far more money than sense; there were people from all over the world, some in traditional dress, others with dyed blue hair and the shortest of shorts, muslim women with colourful scarves and even a full faced burkha. Footwear from the biggest boots to the daintiest gold slippers, patterned tights, hungry pigeons and delicious smells all added to the good and happy spirit of this small city...

Restoration on one of the beautiful old churches 

The domed roof and frescos of local beaches at the Carillon Mall

Lunch? Hot curries, dahl and rice? Yes please :D

This young busker has a great voice and says he has an album coming out soon, I didn't catch his name

Modern "art" in front of the lovely old railway station

 I walked over to Kakulis Bros in Northbridge to buy various lentils and spices and saw this poster on the way, it's looks like fun...

This caught my eye, I think it's the entrance to the Bat Cave...

The Brass Monkey Hotel, can you see the monkeys on the first floor verandah? I was as cold as them today and had to buy a fleecy jacket...

A tribute to Perth actor, the late Heath Ledger. Jacob's Mum went to pre-school with him many years ago.

Coming exhibitions at the Perth Art Gallery, the Van Gogh  one is a 'gotta' for me

These scarab beetles lead the way to Perth Museum where there is a fascinating  new exhibition, Secrets of the Afterlife.

The city looking over the railway station from the Art Gallery area

 Now, it's a very long time since I've chased a man but chase I did. Huffing and puffing up the Plaza Arcade to take sneaky photos....BECAUSE he was dressed in the exact railway outfit that the staff on Hull to Gatineau Railway in Canada wore when we had a lovely day out with them in 2006! lol

Just after this photo he turned to me and I thought I was in big trouble but he and his brother were looking for Woolworths so I was able to point them in the right direction, I was too shy to ask where his train was.

It wasn't this one, home again home again jiggity jig!

That certainly blew the cobwebs away and I feel much better now.
Do you get stir crazy at times? I certainly have enough housework/gardening and hobbies to amuse me but sometimes I just need to 'get out'.

Bye bye for now,
Sue
xx

Yellow

Today's post is brought to you by the colour yellow.

It's a glorious sunny day today and the sky is so very blue. I've just watched the Socceroos defeat Jordan 4-0, you can see from my link that they wear the Green and Gold of Australia with pride. This game was a qualifier to see who goes through to the final rounds of the World Cup in Brazil next year.
As I watched I finished a baby blanket I have been making from some of the yarn that Wendy sent me from Victoria recently...funnily enough the Brazil football team play in blue and yellow!

A yellow baby jacket finished yesterday...

a yellow poinsettia is flowering in the back garden...

a carpet of yellowy leaves under the deciduous cape lilac trees...

the first hint of yellow on a passion fruit...

 a nice ripe lemon...

duck eggs defrosting to make a quiche, this way you can save them when you have a glut and use them when your hens are resting...

pea and corn impossible quiche...

Not yellow but very sweet, Twitch comes to the front door when we get home to see what goodies there are for him, lettuce in this case! (Sorry about the evil plastic bags)

Priscilla updated her blog yesterday, you can follow the link on the right-hand side of this page and we got our tickets today. Woot. Starting to get very excited about our trip now.

Hope you're having a great week,
Love from Sue

WWKIPD

Knitting in bed probably doesn't count, Gromit, unless you move your bed outside!

Huh?
World Wide Knit In Public Day of course. It goes from June 8-16 because knitting is like that, once you get going it's hard to stop, "just one more row" is often heard muttered.

You can join up here and see what events are taking place in your neck of the woods or just get your knitting out where-ever you are. It's a great conversation starter and just might inspire some-one else to 'get their knit on'!
I love these vintage photos of "stars" knitting, often on set while they wait for to play their role...other pics show men in prison knitting and some very old photos from the UK showing traditional patterns.
http://pinterest.com/lynnerubyred/vintage-knitting-posters/

Have you joined Ravelry yet? 6,000 plus free knitting and crochet patterns, tips and advice, groups to chat with and it's simply wonderful. They're on Facebook too :D
"Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, weavers, and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools and pattern information, and look to others for ..."

I try to take a photo of each knitted item I finish and then give it a name (eg Liam's Cardi) so that I know what I have made and for whom, my photo album on this pc is rather large and it's lovely to look through it and remember the pleasure I had both knitting and then giving the finished product.

Can you see my bunnies in my china cabinet at the top of the page? They were designed by this lovely blogger who lives in the Lake District and knit by me. I especially love the poster on the side of this page where the little lad is bundled up in his Mother's love but is wishing for a little more freedom lol

Soooo, do you knit or crochet?
 Do you "do it" in public like me?
Tell us your story please?

Hooroo
Sue

A Little Lot of Everything...in one pot!

I mentioned the wonderful slow cooker Fb group I'd joined last week recently and when Mum told me about her mince special that Dad loves I thought we were ready to try this all-in-one dinner prep.

My nickname should be "Thrift and Vegetables" but that's nearly as big a mouthful as this dish...it takes around 8 hours on slow so start early.

I browned 500gms of minced beef(if you don't brown it it 'melts' into the sauce and I like to know I'm eating a little meat)

While it was browning I chopped 4 carrots, 4 celery stalks, 3 potatoes, 2 sad tomatoes and a cup full of eggplant and turned on the kettle.
Put everything into the slow cooker along with

a tin of chopped tomatoes
2 teaspoons of beef stock powder
1 t of dried herbs
big pinch of chili flakes
lots of pepper (the stock powder and tinned tomatoes add enough salt for me)
a dollop of Heinz tomato ketchup to finish the bottle.
enough hot water to cover everything, don't over do it though

Turn onto low and leave for 3-4 hours.

Then I added a tin of baked beans and stirred well and left it another 2 hours.
Now the piece de resistance!
2/3 of a cup of broken up spaghetti mixed in and cooked for another hour or so, this is the genius(lol) part as it thickens the stew beautifully.

steamy dinner ready to serve...the gravy has come to the top, it was a lovely thick stew...

We had this with the little bit of left-over Potato Bake I made yesterday...

fill the cooker to 2/3 capacity, trust me, it shrinks and is soooo delicious you'll kick yourself for not making more!
thinly sliced potatoes(washed but unpeeled)
thinly sliced onion(one is enough)
crushed garlic, salt and pepper
Pour over a cup or so of cream, I added a little grated cheese too

Have you got the Crockpot bug yet? What are your favourite dishes to make in a slow cooker?

Love from Sue
xxx

Phoenix Turned 2!

How exciting, Phoebe's baby Phoenix is now two years old, what a cutie he is...

He's holding the $10 note we sent, having 12 grandchildren makes gifting harder but I save a little each pay to cover them all. We can't wait to meet you at last in August, Phoenix, hope you're having a very happy weekend.
Love from Granddad and Nana
xxxx

Five Years Ago Today...

and it was Day 2 of our month in Paris. We left early to go exploring the city, from our apartment in the 16th arrondissement we made our way to the Metro at Trocadero and walked towards the Eiffel Tower...

  Our first stop was the cafe near St Augustin where Joe had left his favourite cap the day before when we had lunch there...

...
We then walked east along Boulevard Hausseman towards the Palais Garnier, the beautiful opera house of Paris, but first we were drawn into this Aladdin's Cave...

A side view of the Opera House... it is so big and so hemmed in by other large buildings that it was very difficult to photograph...the details are beautiful...

 This is part of the front...

On we walked in search of lunch...this was a little too costly for our budget...we had soup and a baguette in a rather modern little place just past here...

Joe met a friend in one of the beautiful covered  arcades from the 19th century...

My turn for a photie...

 A tiny shop dedicated to Tin Tin and his friends...

This is one of the very old city gates, the walls around Paris are long-gone but five of these magnificent gateways remain...this is the Porte St Denis

There are wonderful vistas in every direction, I'd love to look inside this building...

Another city gate, this one is Porte Saint-Martin

A cheeky and cheerful lorry driver spotted the camera...

We must have walked miles that day(and every day!) and at times there was simply too much to see and comprehend but I would return in a heartbeat and hope we will have that chance again.

Au revoir,
Sue
xxx

Elizabeth's New Facebook Page

Would like to link you to Eliz's Fb page where she is displaying her wonderful paintings. She's painted several brilliant racing bike photos, the minute details are intriguing...

https://www.facebook.com/MGPPaintings?fref=ts

Love this one too, our local galahs...

The fact that she's completely self-taught makes me extra proud!
xxxxx

Yep, It's Winter!

Not exactly sure why but today is the first day of Winter Down Under, most other countries use the solstice dates but we use the first of the month instead.

Temps have been dropping and we've had a lot of heavy rain. Perth had a low of 2C yesterday morning and last night was the first two-quilt night of the year, I love the heaviness of them as I sleep like a "bear in Winter"! I think today we'll get the gas heater out of the shed today, we've done very well without heating so far but enough is enough!
How the mighty has fallen...the thermometer was up to 45C at times in summer, I think it will drop even lower than the 9C shown here...

Autumn leaves, we don't have a lot of native deciduous trees around here but the council has planted many of these chestnut type trees...

I loved the way this huge gum tree caught the morning sunlight today, it's quite special to me as it is big and beautiful and also lets me know which way the wind is blowing(important when deciding which windows/doors to leave open). It's several streets away and looks smaller in the photo than it is...

Sunrise today...

Finally finished Liam's cardigan after posting at the forum that it needed so little work to be done!

I have another plum cake in the oven and some soup on the stove top...I used the chicken jelly from the slow cooker as the base along with a generous dollop of chilli sauce, red lentils and some sad tomatoes.
We're having a quiet weekend at home, do you have any plans?
Keep warm if you're local, enjoy your summery weekend to my northern hemisphere family and friends,
Sue
xx

Using My Slow Cooker/Crockpot

I've been getting much more use out of my lovely Breville slow cooker(thanks Mum) these days and then Mandy linked me to this great facebook site, My Slow Cooker Recipes . A lot of the recipes use canned soups etc but the techniques can be modified to suit the "cooking from scratch" recipes I prefer to use.
The members are friendly and very helpful and Jenny does a great job of keeping this very large group running smoothly and the recipes clear and easy to follow.

However yesterday a lovely member posted this ridiculously easy pull-apart bread recipe and I was very keen to try it myself using one of Joe's tins of condensed soup, his childhood favourite.

3 1/2 cups of SR Flour
1 tin of condensed soup(that is the kind that you add a tin full of water or milk to to dilute it)
1/4 tin milk
handful of chopped bacon
handful of grated cheese

Mix them altogether and then knead lightly
Break into 6 pieces and place in slow cooker on baking paper or grease well
Bake on high for 1 1/2 to 2 hours with a tea towel over the cooker but under the lid to soak up the steam

It's a keeper!

This week I've also used the slow cooker to make a lovely Vegetable Bake using mainly root vegies and tomatoes and I'm cooking a whole chicken in it this afternoon.

Vegies at the ready...just a couple of tablespoons of water and Worcestershire sauce provided the initial liquid and as the vegies cooked they released their juices...

 



I bottled up my second lot of olives yesterday...I had no idea there were so many and I had to use every jar in the house...

It's cool and very wet here today as we wait for the lady to come and do our Rent Inspection.
Stay warm and dry,
Love from Sue
xxxhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/202013473167734/?hc_location=stream