Ten things about me

This is a Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Post

Talking about yourself.  This is not always the easiest thing to do, nè, because although there might be a million things to say, what do you actually say? So I'll try and go with the first ten random things that pops into my head. 

1. 

I love my laugh/life lines.  (I'm lucky to not have frown lines :-) . I thinks it adds so much character to one's face, and therefore I will never try to peel it, fill it, botox it. 

2. 

I have ocular myasthenia gravis (which is why I will never botox).  With MG, your overactive immune system blocks the messages from your nerves to the muscles, preventing them from doing their work - I walked with droopy eyelids for a couple of months and my face felt half frozen.  Why would you want to do that to yourself with an injection?

I thank God for my Mestinon pills that I carry with me, and I am even more thankful that I haven't had to use it for 5 yrs now. 

3. 

I train hard.  Because of MG, I want to be strong.  I recently started with CrossFit and I'm growing to like it, and I'm recovering from this morning's bike ride (a new thing :-)

Tut tut, now don't laugh, that's me learning to do a dead lift. Or something. 

4. 

I twirled around a pole.

Not really!  I did Pole Conditioning for 18 months, and that was some of the hardest training I ever did. I have so much respect for anyone who can lift herself up into an invert and then flag (horisontal), what not to say the various methods of climbing, standing, sitting, sliding - sometimes all of this on a spinning pole, and not falling on you head.   It took me a month just to get my feet off the floor for an arm hold.

I trained with these girls.  They're good!

A benefit of Pole Conditioning is Really Strong Arms and Shoulders, because you work on a upright pole (static and spinning), parallel bars and high bar, and the added benefit of that is...stronger crochet arms, elbows and wrists!  It fixed my sore-ish elbow in no time.

Knees to elbow?  Bring it on. 

5. 

I can do artificial insemination on cows.  

(Many moons ago I did a BSc Agric in Animal Husbandry and Plant Production)
(That is why I can also eat pizza while doing in vitro digestibility studies ;-)

6. 

In my life-before-being-a-stay-at-home-mom, I was a professional ecologist. 

After an Honours in Rural development and MSc Agric in Plant Production, I did environmental impact assessments for various types of developments in rural Limpopo. 

I saw some of the most beautiful landscapes in South Africa, encountered women who still walk around bare-breasted, kids got scared of me because I was the first white female they had ever seen, I worked in a village where on the same day a lion was killed (escaped from Kruger Park), I had to stand on top of my bakkie to try and get a mobile signal so I could call for help when getting stuck in deep sand and learnt to drive really fast and really well on gravel roads.

One of my first site visits, Mamvuka village, rural Venda. 

7. 

I fantasise about doing off-road rally driving 

(see nr.6)

I went there.  See, I can do it :-D

8.

I love travel but hate flying.
I've been so fortunate to have visited Northern America, Europe, Australia, Asia/Middle-East, and of course live in Africa.  I would love to see parts of South America, but Antarctica...best leave it clean and untouched by tourists. 

Love the views

9. 

I was named after my grandfather Charl with the second name of Charlé.
(Didn't like it when I was younger,  but now I do.)

(And now I'm really interested in genealogy and slowly researching the unknowns in my family history).

My grandfather Charl, oupa Sakkie.

10. 

I love love love great coffee.  To the point that I would rather have tea if I'm not sure of the way a cappuccino is prepared.  I buy freshly roasted beans at a local roastery and also get my cappo there most mornings.
That is my vice.  

This at my old favourite, Pure Café

That is also where I'm going now, before picking up boys from school :-D

That's it, ten!

(And on the hooky side, the current PHD is a cowl for school.  Then another one!)

To see other blog posts on this topics,  search 6KCBWDAY2

What to do with those keepsakes?

...like your parents' wedding telegrams?

You decoupage the inside of an old trousseau kist with it, of course. 

I am sentimental, and a hoarder, the combination of which makes for horrific storage challenges.

I keep things.  I still have my nursery school blankie, a little test book from Sub A, my Baby Love doll, books since forever.  Heirlooms like my dad's 2.4 m tall grandfather clock, his desk chair, my gran's dinner bell, my other gran's ring from an Italian POW.  I keep not-so-logical things, like my dad's uniform cap with his rank insignia on, the old tea tins my mom used for her curtain hooks (as I do), my mom's beautiful Bally shoes (not my size), an old anvil that was among the last things on my dad's mind as he lay dying - I still don't know where it comes from or the reason for his obsession with it. So I keep it.

And then I had the box with cards and telegrams of congratulations hat my mom saved after their wedding in October 1969.  It travelled with me from Polokwane to Pretoria to Brisbane to Pretoria and as I prepared now to move again, something had to come of it.   

Luckily I remember a pic of a decoupaged something, so the plan was made:

1. Take mom's old trousseau kist, one of those sturdy-but-not-so-pretty ones with the lacquered surface, that you store the linen in.

2. Lightly sand it down and paint with a non-drip satin enamel in a much better looking bone white...

3...While also cleaning the clasps

4. Modge-podge for the first time in your life and almost make a big bugger-up (luckily modge-podge is very forgiving. And luckily the wrinkles do disappear. Laaaaater).

4.   Lightly sand it down again et voilà, one better looking kist.

I used the telegrams on the inside of the lid, and more-or-less matching gift wrap for the trunk.  By then I also discovered adhesive spray, to make things a bit easier.

The rotary cutter...I was contemplating those edges, wondering how in hell I was going to cut it straight, when luckily (again) a Pin came past, advising me to fold the paper flat over the edge, and literally sand it off.  Beautiful finish, straight as a ruler, and just modge over it again. 

Done, I'm happy, can almost re-pack it!

Now to the list of twenty other things to do before we pack
(I also procrastinate...)

Next up: one retro wire garden set to de-rust and repaint.