Changing Seasons

Well I couldn’t find my shots from Christmas/Billy Idol Day… so this week will be all about Melbourne’s different seasons.

Most of you guys are overseas and I get a lot of questions about the seasons here. Probably because I talk about them like they are exciting… which they are to me because I grew up in North Queensland which only has 2 seasons: hot and slightly less hot. Growing up there, seasons were something you saw on American tv and I don’t think I really saw trees dropping their leaves until a few years ago!

Melbourne has 4 really distinct seasons.

Winter – June, July and August.

Winter is quite cold, I don’t think it’s gotten to below 0C while I’ve been here but the highs are usually between 8-12C but the wind chill is lower.

Winter always has a kind of blue tinge to the light for some reason. All of the trees in the CBD are deciduous so there are sprawling branches to go with the old architecture. I think Melbourne’s building’s look the most beautiful in Winter.

It’s the kind of weather which makes you want to eat cake under a blanket and knit.

Autumn- March, April and May.

We’re supposed to be hitting Autumn at the end of the month and it’s definitely starting to cool down more! It’s a beautiful season here because the city is so full of trees that everywhere you turn it’s orange. The light is still tinged with an orange glow from Summer but the wind is the chilly like Winter and will whip in your face.

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Of course, it happens very quickly so it’s not long before it looks like this:

Big coats are usually still mandatory which reminds me that I need to get mine dry cleaned so I can bring it out again!

I think Autumn seems like the windiest month, but that might just be because you can see the leaves being whipped around.

I think Autumn and Spring are my favourite seasons because they are the ones I really missed out on growing up it’s still a novelty for me to watch the leaves come and go.

And then we’re back around to Summer. I just realised that I’m going through these backwards… well the photos were already in that order and I’ve come this far…

Summer -December, January and February.

Clearly Summer makes me lazy. Heat really does make me pretty lazy. Even though I grew up in much warmer temperatures than this, I don’t function well in anything over 35C. I cannot wait until we can move somewhere that has air-conditioning.


Summer here is hot but it’s a really dry heat so it doesn’t feel as bad as it is. The worst part is the hot wind though, it makes going outside feel like you’re walking into a city sized hair dryer.

The upside of Summer is that Melbourne is FULL of beautiful flowers and plans. There are events practically every day of the year to explore and because people actually enjoy Summer (unlike me) everyone is in a good mood.

The sun doesn’t go down until like 9:30 at night which is very strange for me as in QLD it pretty much went down at the same time every day regardless of the time of year. Melbourne also takes part in daylight savings which obviously factors into that but no matter how long we live here I just can’t get used to eating dinner while the sun is still up.

Summer means an orange glow in the sun and sunset lasts forever. This year it’s been really mild so there have only been a few hot weeks. The year before, the temperatures were up to 45C for almost a week *_* All of my plants died and Lottie, James and I survived by eating frozen vegetables and Slurpees all week. Frozen minted peas = best Summer snack.

Even though it’s been mild, I’m still ready for it to be over!


Then lastly we come to Spring which is one of my favourites.

Spring – September, October and November.

Spring here is full of daisies and dandelions which I absolutely adore.

Spring means flowers everywhere even in the city. I get really excited and want to start doing lots and lots of new crafts. I think Spring is my most productive month because I want to get out and take photos and I actually have the energy to stay up late and follow projects through.

Out in the suburbs there are areas which are full of cherry blossoms too!

Of course, Melbourne is known for having all 4 of those seasons within the space of an hour so I don’t know how accurate any of my descriptions really are!

It’s pretty much impossible to dress comfortably here without layering a bunch of stuff to slowly put on or strip off.

This post got a little weird! But I hope that gives a decent picture of what it’s like living here ^_^

DIY Comfy Crochet Hook

After the amigurumi project I posted about earlier in the week, I was on the hunt to find a way to make using a thin crochet hook more comfortable for long periods of time. You can buy fancy special hooks which have thicker grips etc but I didn’t want to just throw out all the hooks I already had…

The edges on the grip part on the hook that came with the kit were razor sharp!

To begin with I wrapped it in some fabric tape which solved the sharp edges but not really the fact that it can be painful to hold over long periods of time because of the width.

Needle felting to the rescue! I wrapped the hook in some white roving starting around 4cm from the hook and needle felted it together to form a kind of sheath. It was a little tough to get the felting process started without stabbing myself so I wet the who thing and rolled it around between the palms of my hands then continued to poke at it with the felting needle.

What I ended up with was this, which was great but because of my colour choice… it looked quite a lot like a tampon hahaha!

The addition of a pink spiral of roving and some more needle felting  helped with that problem!

Now it’s thick enough to grip easily and squishy so that I can work for hours without any pain. I love solving silly problems like this!

It’s a shame you couldn’t do the same thing with knitting needles really! Anyway, hope you found that useful, let me know if you have any other clever crafting tips!

Amigurumi Dog

Morning! Another week, another busy day. I’m dreading the rest of February and March at the moment because it’s going to be so busy 🙁 I have an Easter mini break to look forward to though so that’s something!

Almost all of the crafts I’ve been doing lately have been yarn related. I’m falling further and further into the world of yarn and every time I try one thing I want to try another harder step.

So amigurumi!

Kim gave me this little kit from Japan after she decided to take a crochet break. I say break because I’m convinced one day I’ll get her back into it… XD

I have done general amigurumi before but I thought this would be a good easy project to learn how to read Japanese charts and patterns.

When I started looking at the charts I realised that while it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, it did require a quick internet search to make sure I was translating the terms correctly.

Bergamot decided not to bother waiting for me and just power through.

Thankfully there were also photos! Because you know, Bergamot can’t read Japanese. >_>

I loved the end result of the kit and the instructions taught me a lot of techniques which will be super useful for other projects but the combination of using a 3mm metal hook which hadn’t been finished well and rubbed against my skin with it’s pointy metal side every stitch and the SCRATCHIEST YARN KNOWN TO MAN made me extremely glad it was over quickly.

The hook made me think about how I could fix it though and I got a bit creative trying to make it more ergonomic. I’ll show you what I did next post!

Of course this style of amigurumi means lots of ends to weave in :/

I only needed half the yarn so I will keep the left overs for details on other projects. I’m thinking it would be nice for noses on bears.

Plus side, it looks so cute when it’s all finished!

I want to order a heap of these eyes and noses so I can make my own things!


I think I had more fun taking photos of the dog than I did making it.


And Bergamot approved of her new friend!

So all in all? Would definitely recommend this kit if you’re trying to learn to make amigurumi. The photos are quite easy to follow and if you have basic crochet skills and do some Googling you don’t really need to read Japanese to understand what’s going on.

Now to order those eyes so I can make more!

 

 

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