Adventures in Paris and Sydney!

My latest project was to whip up this hat over the weekend.

Purl Bee's version

my neon version

I’ve been making lots of plans this month in an attempt to keep one of my new years resolutions to see more of australia. My mum arrives this week so we’ll be going to Brisbane for a holiday. I’m really looking forward to a break, should be a relaxing holiday.

I’ve also booked a weekend in Melbourne and I’m in the process of booking a 5 day trip to Tasmania so by the time my birthday rolls round I’ll have been to 4 out of 8 australian states. Much better than last year.

On the weight loss front I’ve kept up the gym every work day so I’m happy with that and I’ve currently lost 10 lbs.  Its slow and steady so maybe it’ll be easier to kept it off this time round.  I think I’d like to lose 20 lbs still so we’ll see how that goes.

The weather is still a little unpredictable but I’ve managed two beach days in Manly the last 2 weekends which were lovely. We stopped by my favourite cafe too, Hemingways. It does food that you used to eat as a kid but fancier. So fish finger sandwiches and coco pops ice cream etc.

View from the ferry

Its been a while since I’ve updated everyone as I’ve been waiting to upload some photos but I can’t find my cable so that’ll have to come later. I got back to Australia on 2nd January and its been a really good month. The weather’s been fairly weird though. Changes from humid and warm to hot and stormy and then cool again.

I joined a gym this month and I’ve been going everyday before work for 2 and a half weeks now. Its fit into my routine nicely and I’m getting used to having to wash and dry my hair everyday. I started up the C25K again so I’m now on week 5. On friday it’ll be my first long run (as in no walking breaks) of 2 miles in 20 minutes. As I’m on a treadmill this time rather than outdoors I can monitor my speed a lot easier so I’ve got up to 10 km per hour now. This is a lot faster than last time so I’ll be really pleased if I reach the end. On the in between days I’ve been swimming as I find it really relaxing.

I’ve been exploring different Sydney neighbourhoods on Sundays by having brunch in a different place each week. So far this month we’ve been to Newtown, Leichhardt and Balmain. Hopefully its Potts point this week.

We celebrated Chinese New Year last week and tomorrow its Australia day. I’ve been to the Hyde Park Barracks which is where the convicts were first processed when they arrived in Australia. We also went to the moonlight cinema in centennial Park to see J edgar. Definitely getting one of the beanbag chairs next time and bringing a blanket.

We also went to Symphony in the domain which was a really nice picnic with some classical music in the background. The 1812 finale with fireworks and cannons was amazing though. Very nice considering it was free as part of the Sydney festival.

I’ve also been reading quite a bit so I’ve started a reading list to record all my books this year. Hopefully I’ll get through at least 52.

My new years resolutions have all been started this month so I guess they can be summarised as this:

1) don’t buy anything you don’t need and use the things you already have (e.g. no more make up/clothes)
2) See more of Sydney/Australia
3) Exercise
4) Read more
5) SAVE!

I recently found myself wandering aimlessly through a mall in Sydney and before I knew it I was in a LUSH shop talking to a sales girl. Now normally I try my best to get out of those scenarios as i know I’m a sucker for a good sales pitch but I didn’t actually know that much about their products as I’d only used the soaps before and as good as they smell at the end of the day it’s just soap!

 So she showed me the massage bars which seem like a nice idea but they leave a greasy sheen to your skin which i don’t really like so we moved on to the Bath section. I love taking baths so its something I’d be much more likely to use. The girl reviewed most of their bath bombs and bubble bars and I ended up getting 3. That’s really quite extravagant for me but it turns out I love them. I got the Dragon’s egg ballistic, the golden wonder ballistic and the comforter bubble bar.

I’ve only used the golden wonder ballistic but it’s already made me go online and check out the rest of their new christmas range. The golden wonder is a large present shaped bomb which rattles when you shake it. They don’t tell you in the shop what it’ll be so it’s a really nice surprise. It starts off fizzing yellow but then turns to a violent blue colour which meant the water was yellow, green and blue all at once. Then small golden stars shoot out of it making it look like a nights sky in the bath. Then the thing that’s rattling are 3 separate stars/planets that shoot off in purple, orange and yellow completing the cosmos look of the bath tub. The smell is supposed to be bucks fizz but I mostly smelt a citrusy kind of smell but deeper and richer than you’d normally expect. I have a terrible sense of smell though.

On top of all that once I got in the water it felt really silky and smooth. It was such a luxurious effect and made my skin so nice afterwards. I’d definitely recommend this product although I might try stocking up in the UK as the prices are much more reasonable at home.  I can’t wait to try the other two now.

The first thing I did when I arrived down under was book myself some Surf lessons. I’ve tried surfing twice before once for my 25th birthday at a weekend away in Cornwall, which was amazing and also earlier this year in Biarritz, France. Unfortunately despite 4 half days of lessons I still suck and can’t stand up at all on a board. So I figured this is the year to really try to make an effort to get the hang of it. I booked 4 lessons with Manly Surf School which works out at about $43 a lesson which is only $10 more than it is to hire a board and wetsuit so it’s a pretty good deal. I’ve been going every other Saturday so I can still have a couple of lay ins each month.

After 4 weeks I’m still rubbish at standing but I do enjoy going. I’ve learnt to get over most of my fears and dive under the waves which I’m really proud of given that I’m the kind of person that starts to hyperventilate after about 2 mins swimming in the sea normally so this is progress!  I also had one week using the ‘Never fail’ which is a special board for really bad surfers. It’s absolutely huge, like surfing on a table. But this means it’s so stable it’s almost impossible not to stand up. Put it this way I stood up 10 times in a row on this board.  It was really fun and made a nice change to falling in all the time but it really felt like cheating. Also its size makes it so hard to drag out past the breaking waves.

I’ll give it a couple more tries but after that I think I’ll just switch to body boarding as it’s all the fun but none of the hard parts

Its been ages since I updated this blog so first of all sorry for that. I’ll do my best to start adding regular updates. Life’s been pretty crazy the last few months. In June I moved from Paris back to London. While I really wanted to come home and see everyone I’ve really missed Paris, much more than I’d expected to.  

I was in London for 6 weeks over the summer, living on Tottenham Court Road and it was amazing to be so central. I’ve never lived in London before so it was nice to be close to everything and have so many people nearby to hang out with. I really enjoyed my summer in London and I even managed to finish off my CISI qualification by passing the FSA regs module so that’s completely done

After 5 weeks I got confirmation that there was a role for me in Sydney so I packed up my flat, sent most of it home and took my one suitcase to the airport.  Most people will have heard my saga about luggage allowance but suffice to say Cathay Pacific’s allowance is only 20Kg and if you want to buy anymore its 40gbp per 1kg. I was 14kg over as I was planning on buying a second bag allowance like you can on BA and Virgin so I had to do the grown up thing and lose 14kgs. It was so hard to do but at the end of the day they’re only possessions and I can live without a lot of them as I’ve since proven.

I had 2 days in Hong Kong  to sort out paper work and look around the city. I really enjoyed HK and I didn’t even mind the heat that much. I’ve never planned on visiting Asia really so I was surprised by how much at home it felt, I could see myself living here for a little while.

After that I arrived in Sydney and started making a life for myself all over again.  Its been much easier this time around. I think I was much more prepared for whats involved in moving to a place you don’t know anybody but also Australian’s are definitely easier to connect with than the french.

I’ve been here 10 weeks now and it really feels like home. I’ve made some friends and every week has different social events so its been a lot faster settling down here. I booked a flight home for xmas almost as soon as I arrived and that really helps as I have an end goal in sight so i don’t need to worry about being homesick as I know exactly when I’ll be back.  That’s Dec 17th – Jan 1st if anyone wants to arrange anything.

This last weekend has been the first with really good weather so up until now its been quite cold really. I wasn’t prepared for that side of things at all as I was convinced it would be hot everyday.  Hopefully from now on it’ll just be getting warmer and warmer so I can hit the beach up and get my tan game on.

I’ll try to put a few updates of what I’ve been up to in Sydney in some other posts.

That’s all for now.

As per usual now that I’ve learnt the basics of a new skill, in this case knitting, I’m bored with doing it. So I decided to move onto something similar and give crochet a go. 

I found a nice simple pattern on the purl bee: http://www.purlbee.com/crocheted-linen-grocery-tote/ for a grocery bag. It uses 100% linen as the yarn and the only place I found in Paris with this in stock was La Droguerie.

Its a haberdashery in the 2nd near Les Halles. The walls are covered in samples of all the beautiful coloured yarns available and once you choose one you order a weight and someone goes into the back room and makes you a spindle of that exact size.   I chose a happy salmon pink for me and a dark grey green for a friend who’s doing this project as well.

I found with the help of youtube that crochet really isn’t hard to pick up.  Within an hour we’d both got the hang of the basic chain stitch and single crochet and made the circle at the centre. After that it was really quick to make up as I’d finished it 3 days later.

Here’s what it should have looked like:

I didn’t like the short handles so I extended mine to 100 stitches instead of 50 and I also widened the bit where the straps attach so it didn’t make a wierd shape. Here’s the finished piece:

  It is a little bit too long as it stretches length ways unless you really fill it out but I love it anyway. I’ve started another one in purple as a gift.

Another recent creation was a housewarming present for a friend. I got my inspiration from martha stewart on the purl bee http://www.purlbee.com/heart-shaped-pot-holders/ and then the how to from http://www.dana-made-it.com/2011/02/heart-hotpads-tutorial-proper-and.html .

  I couldn’t find any special heat proof padding as the american sites talk about so I just used 4 layers of normal padding.  I wanted them to be nice and bright so I chose some bright cotton prints from the Moline Mercerie   in montmatre.

 I’ve never used bias tape before so that was actually the hardest part of this project. Since it was so much thicker than usual I had to trim the batting from the seam allowance before the bias tape would fit but I think it worked out really well and was a quick little project to try.

Woohoo! It’s finally done. I really never thought I’d finish this program when I started but I have. 2011 is a year to get things done it seems. I’m even happier that I managed to get exactly 5k in todays 30 min run. I had to run faster than I thought I could to get there so by the end I felt like I wasn’t going to make it but I did. It was hard but at least that means it’s a good work out. I have now run a total of 148km’s since I started the program last year. With 19 of them just this week. How can I be someone who runs 19km a week!!

I’m not sure what I’m going to do after this. I know I don’t want to start another program or train for 10k. I’d like to keep doing 30 mins but just get a little faster/further each time. I’d also like to swap out a run for a swim day so maybe do:

run, swim, rest, run, swim, rest, rest.

We’ll see how I feel in the coming weeks but its only 3 weeks till skiing so I don’t want to stop completely.  I also would love it if I could take part in the work run this year. Its 5.6k and I always watch but if I could get that distance in 30 mins it’d be very respectable. The only problem is its in July so I’d have to keep up some sort of training for the next 4 months. Only time will tell if I don’t revert back to my lazy ways.

One run left to go! This one was another okay run although again I was going too slow to get the 5km in so I ended up sprinting for the last 5 mins and just missed it at 4.95km. I think for friday’s run I’m going to try to monitor my distance as I’m going so I keep my speed up the whole way. I can’t believe even from last week where I was finding it so hard how much easier it is this week.