Bits and Pieces

This arrived in the mail on Friday!

It's the Competition Schedule for the Royal Melbourne Show...

Should I, shouldn't I... maybe next year, maybe not...

Lots of indecision here.

It's always been my ambition to put in some entries to the Royal Melbourne Show. I grew up knowing that my paternal grandmother regularly won firsts and seconds for her spinning, weaving and knitting. She even had some of those extra special felt sashes. Mmmmmm. Need to think about this some more.

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Progress on my two knitting projects:

• finished the back and front of the hoodie and have started the first sleeve
• up to dividing the back and front for the neck of the red rib cardi

No picture as I thought that would be a bit boring - in fact the progress report itself isn't all that interesting. I'm just writing this because it makes me feel better.

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More nerines...

Last weekend I visited Peter Genet's farm at Gembrook. Among other things he grows fabulous nerines on a commerical scale. He sells the bulbs and flowers. It's a family thing. His father grew and bred them before him. He has a great collection.

Including some that were bred during WWII in the UK - called things like Bombardier and Spitfire!

The soil is well drained and they are grown on quite a steep slope. Peter is a wealth of information about growing them. He told us that recent research indicates that one of the most critical factors in determining flowering is soil temperature at or above 25 dec C for at least 6 weeks.