pinku

tribute - done and done

Wow it has been a while since I finished knitting something I love. As soon as I saw the Tribute sock pattern in Knitty I immediately cast on and luckily I had some white sock yarn in my stash. I love the story behind the pattern too - what an amazing friend to design a beautiful sock pattern in memory of a close friend.

There were some hiccups along the way - I made a couple of small mistakes in the second sock and couldn't bear looking at them so I ripped and reknit - that was hard to do but I am glad I did and I also got sick for a few weeks so these ended up taking over a month to finish, but I stayed up until 2:30am last night to finish them off and I am glad I did.

It was fun doing the finished product photo shoot, but I now remember that socks are the hardest thing to take photos of....I actually got a little winded trying lots of different poses! ha!

Oh and we are moving - not hemispheres this time but just across town in Melbourne. It is very exciting because we have been living in an apartment with no outdoor space and we REALLY wanted a garden since we lived in Japan without one for like seven years. So our new place is an amazing little Edwardian house with a great deck for entertaining in the summer or whenever and it has a cute little backyard AND we noticed the neighbours have a POOL - we have to become friends! There were some cute photos on the web but the agent has taken the photos down - yay it really is ours! But here is a crappy iphone pic of our backyard. You are all welcome to come over anytime!!

 

  

Cool things happening in Melbourne

We love our new home and there is always stuff going on!

By far my favourite new event is my new knitting group at the Old Bar in Fitzroy!

Little Big Shots

International Film Festival for kids

we will be going to this one!!!

 

And now bike sharing has come to Melbourne!! We are already members of a car share system, but now there is bike sharing - exciting!

2.5

I find myself slacking on writing down all the great things you are currently doing Jake and I know that if I don't do it I will regret it later on. Jake you turned two and a half last week and I am REALLY loving two. The biggest change over the past six months has been your new ability to talk, talk, talk. Sure you said words before but now it is sentences made up of a combination of a lot of different words and plenty of new words everyday. There are so many cute and adorable things that you do - to be honest most everything you do is adorable except for maybe occasional meltdowns in public places and crashing your toys, but hey we all have our bad moments.

We love:

• it when you jump like a kangaroo
• it when you count teeth at night but call them acorns (um thanks totoro)
• it when you read old hat, new hat all by yourself
• it when you fix bridges, roads and anything else that is 'missing pieces' (thanks dora) with a laser shot from your finger
• your amazing manners (let's keep this one up)
• your love of mostly all food especially vegetables
• your imagination and your imaginary play especially when you serve up lattes with your tea set
• watching you experience so many firsts like eating your first chocolate easter egg
• it when you say ' come 'ere'
• it when you take of your shoes and socks when we get home and place them neatly near the door
• it when you brush your teeth every night and you are very interested in flossing!!
• playing pretend shopping with you with your cash register and plastic money. at the moment you relate all money to Mr Krabs from Sponge Bob....

We had a great summer in Melbourne - our first summer in our new hometown and we made the most of it with lots of trips to the beach, lots of swimming at the pool and you are now a big fan of what is known as 'ice cream'!

 

You also started going to kindy four days a week. You have a little posse of boys and we hear you are the leader of the truck gang - no surprise here!

 

Some of your favourite things include any kind of moving vehicle (no change here from earlier times), your thomas train set, building blocks and of course then crashing the blocks, playschool, sponge bob, curious george (man that monkey cracks you up), custard buns, and many many more things that I can't remember right now.

Just know little man (like I tell you every single night) - mama loves you so, so much!

Fulfilling a dream

Today I fulfilled a high school dream - I went to a F1 grand prix. I was volunteering for charity collecting donations and selling merchandise but it was fun and free. The Australian grand prix is held at Albert park - the perfect calm and peaceful setting for a noisy car race. There are lots of places to escape to and relax in when needed. I only stayed for the first five or so laps of the race but that was enough. I was obsessed by ayrton senna and f1 in general when in high school - I'm not sure why but I was. Fun times.

Kite festival

Melbourne weather is really perfect right now - sunny and 27 and just the right amount of windy for our local kite festival. I am now worn out from all the walking and Jake is asleep but it is great to live somewhere that has festivals, fetes and carnivals on all the time. There is always something to do and see. Happy Sunday people!

An afternoon in north Richmond

Ok so we don't hang out in internationally fancy areas like harajuku and omotesando anymore, but we love our new multicultural home, Melbourne. One of our favourite places to visit is Victoria street. Yes it is a little dirty, crowded and the train station is pretty rank but we love the food and it feels great to be part of such a vibrant culture.

Jake loves getting a custard bun. We love eating BBQ pork buns and Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches - yummo!