MeggaYarnz in 2023 An Emu Stole my Beanie

Traveller's Tales is the 2023 theme for Beaniefest, so I chose an old, long-tailed, emu-beanie-reject, to be my large canvas for crocheting my long-tale of a traveller's story. A reject? Why was it a reject, you may ask. Well, it was my third attempt, many years ago, to create an Emu Beanie, with a neck that stood tall. and didn't lean and sag. It is now incased inside the neck of number 4 (pictured above), which received the addition of a scarf one year, as the soft beanie part, did make a rather cosy snood-like hood, so a wrap around scarf seemed like the way to go. That is how this Emu came to have a Long Tail.

When I was in my early teens, my mum took us off one holiday, on one of her car-adventure-camping-journeys, this one up into northern Victoria. It was there, gazing dreamily out of a back seat window one day, that I saw a huge mob of Emus, a hundred or more! all racing madly across a massive paddock, some running sideways thru the fencing, along the long-paddock, and some across the road infront of our car, a Kingswood by then, the VW Bug having been written off by our house-sitters when we lived in Singapore for 6 months. You don't see Emus in that number these days, so felt it meaningful to felt that story, onto the hat band of a found-object-beanie, I attached inside, to insure such a weighty, beaning might need, to be worn comfortably, without tending to slide off one's head. . . (Modelled by Yuto Nomura)

Did an Emu really steal my Beanie? Well nearly: my friends living down beside Mt Elephanat, near Elephants Pass, ,in north-eastern Tasmania, had two pet emus. When we stayed there, camped in my little yellow camper-van, these two emus would race across the paddy-melon-cropped grass, to check out the visitors, when they were let out of their night time yard. They'd wake us up Uuuup Uuuuping deep bass sounds as they swayed around the van. When we opened up and began spreading out cushions on the mat outside for breakfast, they'd weave their necks around the open doors, trying to investigate our intriguing items on our dash, sparkly things and found wood and feathers etc. They plucked every scrap of sparkly turquoise fabric, from a cushion with colourful shapes sewn on. As we sat eating breakfast, my beanie was easy pluckings for an emu, but I soon got it back. Later on that day, I learnt how to fend off an emu getting too close and domnineering, I raised my hand, bent my wrist, formed an emu beak and low and behold, he stepped back and walked more sedatley beside me. #beanies #alicespringsbeaniefest #alicespringsbeaniefestival #AliceSpringsBeanieFestival #emubeanies #emus #lifeontheroad # #artnomadix #artnomadixmeggayarnz #meganjack #megganjack

Nearly there .....

Well it's nearly the end of 2021 and I have had a much better year than the previous 10 or more years. I am so much better. 'Tho there is still a long way to go to regain my former energy, I have to admit that I am on-track towards my old self. I am able to get things done sometimes. Not all the time, but if I rest-up after different projects, I can usually regain myself after a few days. If it is a big project, like Spring Cleaning Liffy's house for her 90th Birthday celebrations and overhauling my studio/abode also, a 3 month slow project of quite a massive undertaking!; the crash/relapse can take 3 weeks or 3 months, til I really feel like getting back into it. But that in itself is a massive leap forward with my health affected by CFS. It started in April 2020, when I seriously began the LYG protocol, Love Ya Guts. Previously a couple of years before, I had gone down to Ocean Shores, to see Functional Medicine Dr Karel Hromek to try and chelate the Mercury from my system and changed my diet. (Re-introduced meat after being vegetarian since 1976). I did notice some improvements at first, but after awhile I was still feeling fatigued and the cost of the chelation wasn't covered by Medicare, so I discontinued. After 7 or 8 months of LYG I was feeling a lot better within myself and I went to see Jonathon Yang for Acupuncture on my Knee and decided to continue with weekly sessions, thanks to government assistance for pandemic lockdowns etc. Funny thing, for me the lockdowns have been nothing unusual. I have felt lockdowned since about 2008 or 09/10? I have been a virtual hermit, going to town once a fortnight, to market once a month (now once a week to town and to market not at all). CFS/ME is a strange disease. My recovery is a slow, nearly invisible process, just like my decline into fatigue was also a slow nearly invisible journey down a rabbit hole of Brain Fog.

At very least, I have re-found my way back in to my blogs. I hope this continues as it is a great means for me of a somewhat sporadic diary-journal. Very interesting to read back. One day these notes may be useful if I ever get a Round-Tuit for my book. Today I re-found a blogpost draft from 2019 which never got published for some now forgotten reason; I edited it and added to it, published it and then went back in to correct a hyper link in the text. Well after 3 or 4 attempts it has gone back into Drafts as the text kept changing colous and ceasing to show up correctly in the blog. These type of tech troubles are a real pain, and put me off, attempting to re-invigorate my online presence. Aggggghhhh! lol