Adventures in Crochet

I learned to crochet at school in 5th grade.

This little martian sheep/bumble bee was inspired by one of my cousin's designs (not an original, sorry..), I made it for a little 3 year old friend

It's like riding a bike, you never forget...

Dressing up a fake indoor plant from IKEA

I also watched my grandmother make doilies ever since I can remember. She also used to crochet clothes for my barbie dolls which I *loved* her for.

I turned it into a hanging planter, inspired by Dottie Angel

I tried to learn how to knit but it was like learning to write with my left hand! Too clumsy...

You can make hanging planters from doilies without having to crochet a thing, check out Dottie Angel's blog for inspiration.

Also, DIY Neon Plant Pots.

On marriage

I have been reflecting a lot lately on my impending nuptials to a certain Mr. M... Mainly because I have started thinking about my vows, about what I want to say and what our relationship means to me. Coincidentally this beautiful blogpost (The True Story of a Seven Year Marriage) landed on my feed and it really resonated with me and what I believe, so I wanted to share it with you in this space.

"... Before you can make high towers, it’s best to build a good strong base. It comes from laughter, empathy, forgiveness, accepting the other person’s struggle, and knowing yourself.

But sometimes without knowing it, you build too high and too fast. Things get shaky and start to wobble.

There is alway a way to rebuild if you’re willing. Always new and different blocks to try, always time to take a few steps back and build the bottom stronger."

My own philosophy is that relationships are complicated, and they are hard, but the really good ones are supposed to be hard!

All the good things in life never come easy and it's the same with love. It's only through the tough times that we get to know ourselves better. It is only by trusting and persevering that we learn to understand and love each other more every day.

Sappy lady out.

Read also on living without boys...

Getting Lucky

It has been widely agreed that Get Lucky by Daft Punk (ft. Pharrell Williams & Nile Rodgers) is the song of the summer (winter here), and quite possibly the song of the century.

I don't know about anybody else but for me it is a rare masterpiece of a song, one which begs to be listened to over and over again. I will go into a sort of trance, and have it on repeat for hours without getting sick of it, such is the intensity of its hypnotic effect.

For those of you who can relate, and even if you can't, here are a few interesting and original covers of the same song which I have also enjoyed...

A very mellow and cool version from Daughter


An indie version by Miracles of Modern Science


An instrumental (using a looping pedal) version by the very talented Andrew Chang


And on the other extreme, a completely A Cappella version by frenchie JB Craipeau


And lastly, a pop version by one-man-band George Barnett


And I am still not tired of it!

For further reading: why some songs make you want to cry...

Winter [again]

Palm Beach, NSW

When you think of winter, the words blue sky and beach certainly don't come to mind... We have had the best (read: sunny and warm) winter this year. Thus is life in Australia...

Hilarious

Mumford & Sons Enlist Big-Name Comics For ‘Hopeless Wanderer’ Video

DIY: Neon Plant Pots

I am a big fan of the neon-on-neutrals movement:

Images via: The Proper Pin Wheel,  Bird and Feather & Dellie

So when I ran into a pile of dismissed terracotta pots on my street, I took the chance to try and re-create some of these beauties above.

If you are re-using some of your own pots, or picking up free ones from the street like I did, make sure you give them a good scrub to kill the bacteria currently living in them (I used a bleach solution for this)...

I had some acrylic pale grey and canary yellow left over from a different project. Two coats of the pale grey alone looks rather classy:

Some strategically placed painter's tape...

And voilà! I am extremely pleased with the result.

There is a lovely woman and her father at Addison Road Markets in Marrickville who sell plants and herbs of all sorts, including a 6-pack of various succulents for $20!

I am very excited about my new succulent plants but have never actually looked after any before. If you have any tips for me, please share in the comments.

Excuses

Here goes my bi-annual blog post, I suppose...

My previous phone, which contained the bulk of my photos from South America, was accidentally misplaced at a cafeteria, and thus... I have very little to share.

Still, I will see what I can dig up from M's files and share it here sooner or later...

The real reason I am writing, is because my crafty spirit has been recently re-kindled and I look forward to posting photos from a couple of projects here, sooner rather than later. Not to mention, I have a bit more time in my hands now than I did in the last couple of years, thus, the blog lives on... Enjoy the new design and buttons. xoxo.

Canaima, Venezuela

Canaima lagoon

Guacamaya Bandera, Venezuela's national bird

Tucan

Churun River

Behind El Sapo Falls

Carrao River with our guide who goes by Muerte, among many names

Angel Falls

Los Roques, Venezuela

Our daily routine: swimming, reading, napping, swimming, lunch...repeat...

Boquete, Panama

Visiting the Kotawa Coffee plantation in Rio Cristal

Raw coffee beans taste very sweet!

Coffee tasting

The waterfall in the Rio Cochea canyon

Packing for the next leg of our trip!

Isla Coiba, Panama

View from the ranger's post (lookout)

Yum

Out at sea

What M wore to protect himself from mosquitoes

 We went to Island Coiba national park for a scuba diving weekend. The islands were beautiful and the sea life sensational! We saw monkeys, reef sharks and turtles and even one ginourmous WHALE SHARK!

Between 6 and 7 every night the mosquitoes would swarm and I came home with about a trillion bug bites. What can I say? I'm just so tasty...

Honey

Honey can't pass up a nice warm engine

Panama City

Las Bóvedas (casco antiguo)

bar kitteh

rum time

Travels

Tamarama Beach, New South Wales

Dear all,

I am sorry for not doing a better job of blogging. Anybody that has a blog out there knows what a challenge it is to maintain certain frequency and coming up with well presented and original content. Thank you for continuing to read, but overall, lets all take it a bit less seriously OK? <3

What has happened since May:

- M took some Spanish lessons

- I quit my job

- M applied for long leave at work and it was approved

- We moved out of our house and in with our friend down the street

- We saved lots of dough

- We bought Round-the-World tickets to explore South America for approximately 3 months

Why?

Because M has always talked about doing a big long trip and it's time we get it over with

and of course,

because we can. Yes, we are very lucky indeed.

I'll try to post about our trip on this blog as often as we can, but will likely keep it short on the text and details. Thanks for sticking around nonetheless!!! We love you,

L + M

PS. If you use instragram, you can look me up I'm missbongaloo

Upholstering a chair: part 1

This post, and subsequent parts, tells the story of my numerous attempts at upholstering an old chair.

I will start by stating that a much better and more detailed step-by-step was hosted by Little Green Notebook in NYC. So read that too!

I found this chair dumped on the curb in our street:

As you may or may not know, I am a big of old things and old furniture. And an even bigger fan of free things! So I took it upon my self to give this bad boy a brand new look.

The first step was to unscrew the seat, and remove the 2,677,831 staples that were holding the vinyl to the wood (of both the seat and the back).

Friends allow me to warn you: this is BACK BREAKING work. Yes, you will endure a lot of back pain, and your knuckles and arms will be sore, and you'll step on staples and scream sometimes. Professionals have a garage or studio where they can work with the chair at chest height, which I suppose would be nice... but at home we just worked on the floor.

By we, I mean my mom and I. She was visiting at the time and helped me enormously, in fact I dare say she removed 80% of those annoying little staples all by herself. Bless her little hands.

Next! I had to sand down the current finish on the chair, by hand. M helped with this as well, and this time we worked outside.

I don't know what kind of lacquer exactly was applied on the chair, but as it turned out it was a really thick layer of it.

This took many hours of brute work which could have been saved had I had a power sander...

Wipe with a wet cloth and time to apply the new stain!

In this picture I was working at my neighbor Lisa's backyard, because she was also sanding and staining her old chairs at the time (one of hers is on the left).

Here comes the fun part!

Or so I thought.... turns out the old varnish was still on the chair! It was just deeply, deeply engrained in the wood. So the chair did not take well to the new stain, at all. I tried all different spots of the chair, I tried different brushes and sponges and different stains. I tried 3 coats to see if it would even out eventually, or end up with some weird cool look. But no,  nothing worked and it looked like crap.

So back to the drawing board.

Coming up on part 2: spray paint! :-)

The last warm rays of summer

Camping trip to Mt. Kosciuzko National Park.

 We drove from Sydney to Thredbo after work on a Friday night a couple of weeks ago with some new friends... 6 hours later (around midnight) arrived at our first campsite on Thredbo Diggings.

It was so late and we were so tired that we quickly setup camp and simply went to bed.

The next morning everything was covered in dew (I LOVE dew everywhere!).

And then there were the spider webs everywhere too.

And this is my dashing mountain man:

After breakfast on Saturday we moved to Geehi Flats to camp over night, where we found hundreds of wild kangaroos. They were chilling on the grass until M scared them off and they started jumping in every direction.

Kangaroos are magical....

So you get an idea of the size of these:

This is my trusty and gorgeous tent, the MSR fling:

Our typical setup:

And you can't go to Kosciuzko National Park or Thredbo without climbing to the top! Most tourists (ahem if you are short on time) take the ski lift almost to the top and then it is a relatively easy walk (about 60-80 minutes) to the highest peak in all of Australia! A glorious 2228 metres :)

The trail looks mostly like this.

I'm sorry there aren't more photos of our vegetarian Russian friends or of all the yummy food we had. It was such a lovely weekend, we laughed, ate, drank and made new friends. I want to go camping again!!