Disco Knitter

The silkies. There are three of the there, though it is hard to see with all the fluffiness going on. A good thing they are different colours!

Robyn Nevin

Lois O’Donahue

I’ve been on Freecycle for a few weeks now, and got some cool stuff. Last night, I got home from the Opera (thanks Bev!)to see an email listing three Chinese Silkie Hens, looking for a home.

Since our flock is now reduced to two approximately eight year old girls, we’ve been thinking of getting a few more, and this looked like a good way to get some fabulous chooks and a good match for our family. So I emailed the woman making the offer, and told her a bit about us, and that the girls would have a forever home with us, whether they were laying or not.

Usually, there is quite a bit of competition for freecycle items, especially things that have a high value, like purebred chooks. Anyway, I got an email this morning, the chook lady decided that we were offering the best home, so Inigo and I went to pick them up this afternoon.

So please welcome Lois O’Donohue, Robyn Nevin, and Meryl Tankard. Their previous people named them, and I think we’d better keep the names

Video from TED. Surprisingly, happiness has nothing to do with circumstance, it really is about resilience, or manufacturing happiness.

There’s just something so engaging and expressive about Auslan. And I have to confess a soft spot for this song. You wouldn’t think that a woman doing a signed translation of a trashy pop song in her bedroom would be so compelling and beautiful.

But it is.

Thanks to the Hoydens for the link.

Inigo just pointed to a shape, and quite clearly said “parallelogram”.

Those of you that know Mark well will know that he has taken a personal mission to stop teaching young children that a parallelogram is a “diamond”. He has even gone so far as to take the letraset machine to some of Inigo’s baby books. And I can’t really talk, because I have re-labeled baby bottles from “milk” to “artificial baby milk”.

And the ringlets bounce as he runs up and down the hall. We nearly died from the cuteness.

Now, instead of going to the AGM, I’m off to ride a steam train with Iggy and his best mate.

Late Thursday afternoon I got the email I’ve been waiting for – I have been accepted as a volunteer Breastfeeding Counsellor for the Australian Breastfeeding Association. I spoke to the roster co-ordinator last night, and have been assigned my first helpline shift (2nd Friday of the month, starting in April). And this morning I logged in successfully – and logged out again quickly before I had to take a call. There is not enough caffeine in the world to make that first call easy.

So wish me luck, between now and the 9th of April I have to take lots of calls to get myself ready and comfortable enough to tackle an entire 4 hour shift on my own.

There is other (huge) news around the corner too, but I don’t want to say anything until it has been confirmed and I have more information. But needless to say, there are exciting times ahead!

But press play for the clip. You’ll thank me.

When needs must, a glass table and a dolphin torch do quite nicely.

Inigo was indecently proud of his new shirt, rubbing his belly, and telling anyone that would listen that, “mama made that for me”. He also refused to take it off at bedtime, so we discovered that it makes a pretty good pyjama top too. The only other shirth he feels so strongly about is his “Nuna Nuna” shirt. Actually, it is of Brobee from Yo Gabba Gabba, but because of the Elijah Wood/Yo Gabba Gabba/Dragostea Din Tea/Numa Numa clip I found on You tube, Inigo calls it his Nuna Nuna shirt, and wants to wear it every day of the week. And apparently this lime green shirt goes best with the purple sparkly trousers I made him for his first birthday party. They’ve been washed so often recently that the sparkles are fast disappearing.

Sad, but true.

The Lactation Resource Centre put on a conference/seminar every year for health professionals working in lactation, and every year there are exciting international guest speakers. Last year I saw the speakers as a webcast, but I really wanted to attend this year. Of course, registration fees were beyond the meager budget, so I was really excited when an opportunity came up to volunteer (and possibly sneak into the sessions).

And then a week passed, and another week, and I hadn’t heard from the organisers, so I figured I’d missed out. No friends Nigel once again.

But yesterday I was emailed a registration confirmation, and I’M IN!

I used to get excited about going to concerts and parties. Look what I am reduced to.

Just made these this morning. Best. Pancakes. Ever.

1 Cup Self Raising Flour
1 Cup Milk (I used Soy)
1 Egg

Mix.

Cook.

Eat the fluffiest pancakes you’ve ever had.

Recipe from here.

A new ad featuring Pamela Anderson dressed in a gold bikini, rubbing herself against another woman in an office environment, and being splashed with a white liquid has been taken off air. Crazy Domains (the company being advertised) managing director Gavin Collins said the ad was “tongue in cheek” and blamed feminist bloggers for stirring up complaints.

Because of course, it’s UN-AUSTRALIAN to complain about women being objectified.

SMH article here. Can’t wait to read the Hoyden on this one!

Link here.

It is common for women to believe that there will be a problem with their milk after a natural disaster, that the stress, or lack of adequate nutrition will make their milk “bad” or somehow unsuitable for their babies. In fact, the human body will provide milk for an infant even when the mother is malnourished.

And with the influx of foreign aid comes powdered infant formula (PIF, sometimes referred to as artificial baby milk or ABM), with the inference that this is better for the baby than what the mother is already providing.

And in a disaster, where there is a lack of clean water, giving a mother powdered infant formula often means she has to make it up with dirty water, leading not only to introducing infections to the infant, but by depriving her of breastmilk, she is also deprived of a natural defence against life threatening diseases.

In normal circumstances, breastfeeding needs to be protected. In a disaster, it is vital.

My first FO!

Are you scared?

Water droplet at 2000fps.

40.

I do hope to get a lot older, but 40 has a certain gravitas. I do feel that 40 year olds should have a certain amount of their shit together. Not all of it, of course, or you might as well give up, but 40 means goodbye to nightclubbing (at least the way *I* used to do it), and hello grown up and responsible.

So I am planning a party. A knitters house party. Mum and Dad have said I can have the house at Pearl Beach for the weekend of my birthday, so people can come and go all weekend, and hopefully some people will want to stay over, so we can all sit around and watch movies, drink wine, knit, and chat.

Sounds like a proper grown up part don’t you think?

And this is a bicycle built for two. Perfect t-shirt for a small squishy boy?

Thanks to my friend Simone who made Inigo’s first birthday cake, and then shared the recipe with me to make his second.

Ingredients
250 g butter
250 g white chocolate
200 mL water
1½ cups caster sugar
1¾ cups plain flour
1 cup self-raising flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

And food colouring. Don’t bother with the liquid ones you get at Woolies, you need specialty cake decorating gels. Liquid colours won’t give you the intense colours that you need for the full rainbow cake impact, and if you’re going to go to all that trouble, you want to get the wow factor. I got mine here – cheaper than eBay, and awesome quick service.

Method
Preheat oven to 150°C. Line the cake pan with baking paper (this cake will stick).

Heat butter, sugar, chocolate, and water in a saucepan and stir over low heat until all combined. Let it cool a little bit so the self-raising flour doesn’t fizz before its time.

Sift both flours together and blend into chocolate mixture (don’t worry about lumps).

Stir in eggs, sour cream and vanilla (use a whisk for this bit and any remaining lumps will break up once these wet ingredients go in).

Pour the mixture into a deep 20 cm tin* and cook for about 1 hour, or pour into two 20 cm shallow tins and cook for about 45 minutes (this time is way out – cook it until a skewer comes out clean which will take much longer). I would also seriously consider cooking the cake/s au bain marie ie. once the mix has been poured into the cake pan, put the cake pan into a big roasting pan and fill the outer container with boiling water so the cake won’t form the really thick crust that comes with having to cook it for so long.

Recipe notes
Instead of sour cream you could use thickened cream, yoghurt or condensed milk, this just adds to the moistness of the cake. Also great with white chocolate ganache (hell, what isn’t?).

Colouring

Here is where being married to a maths nerd is handy – but don’t worry, I married one so you don’t have to. My cake batter weighed at about 1600gms, so I separated out the batter for colouring in the following proportions -

500gms – red
400gms – orange
300gms – yellow
200gms – green
150gms – blue
50gms – violet

Pour the colours into the tin in the above order, trying as much as possible to keep the pouring centered. You will end up with a tin that looks like a multi coloured target from the top, and each colour will fall “inside” the previous colour like a bubble.

1.7 litres (3 pints) = 200 mm (8 in) ROUND = 180 mm (7 in) SQUARE
2.3 litres (4 pints) = 230 mm (9 in) ROUND = 200 mm (8 in) SQUARE
3.4 litres (6 pints) = 250 mm (10 in) ROUND = 230 mm (9 in) SQUARE
4.5 litres (8 pints) = 280 mm (11 in) ROUND = 250 mm (10 in) SQUARE

And if you want more rainbow goodness – try pancakes!