Belated Australia Day in Knits...Noice

This knitting book in the Victor Harbour op shop in South Australia.
It is full of 80's design gems celebrating Australian-ness.

Like these Jenny Kee geometric "Oz" maps for father and daughters...that's right,"Oz".

The poor girl can't even bear to look!

But wait! There's more!

For all those who love Vegemite so much they want to snuggle up with it all night....

 And yep! That's a knitted"Norm" from the "Life Be In It" campaign...
 And here's the not so Jolly Swagman....

Just what every kid wants on his jumper- a creepy old man! And then there is more maps on your accessories...

And I don't even have words to describe this one... 

 

And what Australiana collection would be complete without a reference to Ned Kelly?
Unfortunately some of the book is missing but the contents page eludes to the missing marvelous "wildflower dress" and "fosters cardigan"!!! Yes! A hand knitted beer logo cardigan!What bloke wouldn't that?

Happy to scan any of these pattern is anyone wants to indulge their nostalgic knitting nationalism. 

Lists make me feel better: Best Books of 2013

Do they work for you? Lists? Do they make the chaos seem more bearable? Make the blur seem more in focus? I'm going to give it a burl!

Here is the first of my "best of 2013" lists: BOOKS!

I made a conscious effort to read better in 2013 and I must say that joining goodreads and keeping track of what books I have read and what books I want to read helped me to choose better books.

I read so many good books! Highlights included reading the latest release from Kate Atkinson "Life After Life" - (which I see has just won The Costa Book Award!) a favourite author of mine. The excitement of reading her new book was heightened for me after I went to see her speak in Melbourne and got her to sign it and had such a buzz from meeting her that I could barely sleep that night. Really! Like a silly teenage girl and a pop star. What I love about Kate Atkinson's writing is her wry humour, her asides and the way she writes family dynamics. Her first novel, winner of the Whitbread award, was "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" which had one of the most memorable mother characters since Mrs Bennett in "Pride and Prejudice"! "Life After Life" has a hypnotic effect, a life lived over and over with a sense of endless chances in a time fraught with chaos - the Second World War. The chapters set in the London bombings is incredibly visceral. I almost felt this book could never end with it's fractal divisions opening exponential possibilities.

But it wasn't all new releases for me: Two favourites were  "Careful He Might Hear You" by Sumner Locke Elliot, published in 1963 and "Heartbreak Tango" by Manuel Puig, published in 1968. The former such a slice of Australian life from the past and so beautifully written and the latter a wonderful book from Argentina set in the 1930's and comprising of various angles, perspectives and documents that, as a reader, you felt as though you participated in creating the story from the gaps in between what was written.

I read three Margaret Atwood books this year: "The Handmaid's Tale", "Maddaddam" and re-read "The Blind Assassin". All three left me gasping at the vastness of Atwood's imagination and depth of her insight and warmth of her humour. Sometimes I almost wish to get dementia just so I can re-read Atwood as if for the first time.

Another high point in my bookish-ness last year came from another female author I admire, Rose Tremain. I read her 1989 novel "Restoration" followed by her 2013 released sequel, "Merivel". It was fantastic to read these two books together. The character of Merivel will stay warmly in my heart.

Other favourites include "The Sisters Brothers" by Patrick De Witt a western of sorts with a wonderful "voice", and "The Forgotten Waltz" by Anne Enright. 

What did you read last year? What do you plan to read this year? I'm taking part in the Australian Women's Writer's challenge, an initiative created to redress the imbalance in books written by women that are reviewed in mainstream media.Other than that, I'm not sure what the year of reading has in store - except that I hope to read even more in 2014.

So...where did that year go?

Are all the years blurring into one? I need to start to keep a diary because as I reflected on the past year I realised some of the things I was fondly reminiscing about as "highlights" actually happened...a-hem...the year before. But then, calendars are such an arbitrary container of lives that I suppose it doesn't matter what my mind considers a highlight from any other time. It's all a merge really, isn't it? A merge of goodtimes-badtimes-hardtimes - of juggling the variables of a complex family life; tackling one thing after another no matter what the date.

I told myself - and anyone else who would listen - that I wanted 2014 to be without crises - to be without a significant disaster. You see, it does seem as though the last three years running have contained a serious event or loss...is that just life? We have had huge grief and loss - my mum in 2011 and my father in law in 2012. And the year just passed almost broke me in two with one of my children struggling with mental health issues - which hardly seems adequate to describe the stress and pain and heartbreak and all the beating ourselves up over what we should have done that the phrase encompasses. So my final words on New Years Eve 2013 were:  I want no more disasters. No more crises. No more middle of the night phone calls or hospital emergencies.

As the sun rose on 2014 there it was - the emergency phone call. The crisis. The hospital. That will teach me to open my big mouth. (All is fine now. Sigh.) 
I had to stop myself from tainting the whole unfurling year of 2014 with a wash of bad blood. I had to stop myself from seeing this as a significant augur of bad times to come for the whole year. Because really - it's a date, isn't it? It's completely man made constraint placed onto the turning of the planet and the ebb and flow of the tides. And in a complicated life there will be pain and stress and heartbreak and self examination and conscience-sifting and regrets and guilt - along with all the love and attachments and achievements and plans.

So. Another year! Another month, another week....it's really just another day. So good day to you all!