Blogging has opened doors...

I never would have believed how the simple art of blogging would have made such an impact on my life - at the right time. Since moving out to a flat on my own, I was worried I'd 'stagnate' a bit due to the fact I don't really know that many people outside of work ... but instead of that, blogging has opened the doors to different people I'd never previously known, but have quickly felt like friends :-) It's also so nice to have a forum to more openly talk about my stitching ... as much as I still adore my best mate and ex-flatmate, stitching certainly wasn't in his sphere of interest, apart from taking the mickey out of it. It's nice to share with people who have an appreciation of the art!

G and S ... would love to catch up face to face some time. It can be hard with my shift times, but I'm sure we could come up with something that will work out. You know, G, if I come to your place I may never leave, as long as those ducks are in sight! LOL. Next time I pop home to NZ, I'm going to pick up a box of charts/magazine pages I was donating to the local Guild, and if you like you can rumage through them to see if there's anything you want ... can't guarantee it will be this side of Xmas, though - but it would be nice to get home before then.

No stitching done today, as I went out straight from work to have dinner in the city with F (ex-flatmate) ... was lovely to catch up, even though he bailed on going to the movies, which was the original plan - gave us more chance to chat, anyway. Even though I'm enjoying living on my own overall, I miss our late night chats about everything and nothing - he's one of the few people I could always bare my soul to, and could be brutally honest with.

This week it feels like a joy to be in Melbourne - in my new flat I'm on the 3rd floor of a block of flats, overlooking the street, with large leafy trees in front of the lounge window, with bay windows looking off to the side by the dining area/balcony. The dining area is my favourite spot - the light streams in so cosily, and I love to sit and watch the birds flying past ... it's so lovely. Where I used to live, it struck me often that I very rarely used to see birds anywhere - apart from the very occasional magpie in the front garden ... the first thing that struck me when I moved here is the abundance of wildlife (bird-wise). When I took Mum for our first walk round the beachfront, we were treated to seeing our first ever blue wrens - they were so beautiful. And over the last few days I've been overjoyed to see some of my favourite Aussie birds (aside from the ducks haha) flying overhead - rainbow lorikeets. What a sheer pleasure it gives to see them flying around in the wild, with the sunlight highlighting their bright plumage ... just gorgeous. I laughed this afternoon ... birds were making a raucous noise bright and early from, it seemed, the nextdoor neighbour's garden this morning - I just shook my head and thought, noisy devils ... then I was walking home from work to my car tonight and heard the same noise - I stopped dead in my tracks and looked upward to try and track down the source of the racket ... to my shock, I realised it was a rainbow lorikeet making all that noise! Now, I'll be smiling every morning and thinking "keep chatting, little birds" - it's a pleasure just knowing the lorikeets are so close :-)

I've got a rainbow lorikeet XS chart in my stash in my to-do list, so it will always remind me of my time in Australia ... I really must pull my finger out and get it stitched, as it should be a pretty easy on to stitch (unless I decided to stitch it over-one, which is an option I've considered hmmmmm).