Category Archives: Learn New Skills

#112 Attempt a Resuscitation

It was late on a Sunday evening, after the chickens had been safely locked up and the final load of washing was happily swirling in its soapy juices, that I settled down to watch TV and simultaneously send a few text messages.

Except my iPhone was missing. Nowhere to be found, even after upending all the sofa cushions, checking every room I’d wandered into on the way towards relaxation time and dialling it from my landline.

I knew it couldn’t be lost. I’d had it not forty minutes ago, just before, just before … putting on the washing.

OMG the washing! Had the phone been in the pocket of my jeans?

#112 Attempt a Resuscitation

It’s hard to describe the feeling of watching your iPhone grinning gleefully at you as it sloshes around in sudsy water from inside your washing machine .

Did you know that interrupting front loading washing machines mid-cycle is not at all intuitive?

And it’s terribly stressful trying to locate a 10-year-old washing machine instruction manual in a hurry, find the section on “How to Add or Remove Items From Your Machine”, then discover it’s nigh on impossible if the drum is full of water. The internal screaming at your own stupidity doesn’t help either.

So I resigned the phone to its fate, managed to switch the washer to a shorter cycle and spin, all the while googling “Can a Drowned iPhone be saved?”

It turns out, that’s not as stupid as it sounds. If the immersion has been short-lived, there’s an outside chance of rescue. But there was no mention of “full cycle”, “soap”, “suds” and “high speed spinning”.

Following Google’s advice, I switched the phone off the second I could retrieve it (and it did look very clean) removed the SIM card, rinsed the phone of soapy residue and put it in a jar of rice.

The next morning, after further research told me that rice isn’t a good idea because small grains can get into the mechanism, I moved onto silica beads.

*DO NOT EAT ME … but do save me for a rainy day*

You know the ones. They come in little sachets slipped into various purchases to reduce damp spoilage and they have written exhortations on the packets not to ingest them on pain of death.

But the few packs I could scavenge didn’t seem enough, so I bought more from my friendly hardware monolith, slipped the phone into an old sock and buried it in a heap of the beads for 5 days.

*… and that’s the SIM card at the top, wrapped in a piece of tissue in an attempt to salvage it as well.*

The amount of water extracted after the first 5 days was surprising

so I repeated the process with fresh beads for another 5 days with similar results. (Being without your phone for ten days is a whole other story … )

Being loath to risk electrocution by turning it on or recharging it after such a soaking, I took it into a very brave iPhone repairer who did the deed for me. He, too, was mightily impressed with the silica beads’ water extraction capabilities and offered to nurse the phone on his bespoke temperature controlled warming-bed for another 24 hours.

I find this hard to believe, but my phone has been working since I picked it up from him.

Yes, really!

I’ll be honest, a machine can’t go through that much trauma and come out totally unscathed.

It can no longer manage facial recognition, take a screen shot or allow me to pay using the Visa card in my apple wallet, but these are minor issues and so far, everything else works pretty well.

HALLELUJAH!

And the major lesson I’ve learned from this adventure? (Well, apart from the obvious.)

Save up all the little sachets of DO NOT EAT silica beads you ever get, because who knows, one day the phone they save may be yours.

#111 Knit The Impossible

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It was early May when I first had the ridiculous idea of knitting something I’d never before attempted.

A friend and I were browsing in Spotlight, looking for the fabric she needed to complete a quilt for her sister’s expected baby, when I strolled into the knitting section and came across a book of Paton’s (trusted since 1923) Ombré Baby patterns.

As the baby wasn’t due until the end of August, it struck me that I’d have heaps of time to create something small and cute for him.

And I had runs on the board in the craft-y area. Why only two years ago, I’d completed a very, very long winter scarf during the height of lockdown. Easy peasy.

Oh, the arrogance of ignorance.

#111 Knit The Impossible

*So small, so cute—and **trusted since 1923**. Who couldn’t knock a pair of these out in a few days?*

But there were a few important facts I’d overlooked. Sure, the booties were small but it then became apparent that

The wool had a ply only a tad thicker than gossamer
The needles were the width of toothpicks
Four of these tiny double pointed toothpick needles had to be wrangled simultaneously, and
I seem to have grown farmer’s hands during lockdown

The task suddenly took on gargantuan proportions.

*Late May 2022: It took the better part of a month to cast on (undo, cast on, undo, cast on …) without twisting the needles or accidentally knitting backwards*

A few weeks of pixie-knitting later, I arrived at the first truly challenging stage of sock creation: turning the heel. What on earth did people do before YouTube videos? Thanks to a knitter who posted this excellent demonstration on how to create a flap before turning it into a heel, the manoeuvre worked out tolerably well—

But then things went awry, and the little bootie took on a life of its own as I tried to follow the obscure instructions (trusted since 1923) on how to knit up stitches at the sides to bring it together before completing the foot section.

Sadly, the final product ended up totally skewed.

*Late Jun 2022: Something important has gone seriously wrong*

Back to the drawing board for a second attempt. Only this time, while trying to neaten up the opening, I narrowed it way too far:

*No sweet little baby foot could squeeze into this one!*

By now, it was mid July and although I’d knitted two booties, knew how to turn a heel and could seamlessly combine the toe section, neither item was good enough to present to a brand new mother. I was ready to admit defeat.

Fortunately, my friend was having none of it. Her gorgeous quilt was almost finished, so she urged me on, believing two tiny matching booties would one day be possible.

And so, several weeks later, spurred by her encouragement and just two days before the baby arrived, I staggered over the finishing line:

*No twisted stitches, no mysterious ‘v’, no narrowed inlet, just two tiny booties waiting for their baby!*

On reflection, it took almost as long to knit these little presents as it did for the parents to create, nurture and grow to full birth size an entire human being.

Isn’t nature wonderful?

*Baby Darcy by @lucypike and @alexwregg*
*Quilt by @l________________p*

#110 Relearn a Language

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We’re constantly being exhorted to exercise our minds as well as our bodies, so when a friend told me a few months ago about Duolingo, “The World’s Best Way to Learn a Language” (according to Duolingo’s website), it sounded like an idea that was perfect for the times. Certainly a much better idea than exercising my body which wasn’t ready for anything as dangerous as say, walking.

So I promptly enrolled in their French course, a language I had once haltingly stammered over 50 years ago, and found myself ensnared in a juggernaut of relentless encouragement.

#110 Relearn a Language

The Duo part of Duolingo, as well as meaning two, is also the website’s green owl, a mascot who keeps urging you on in that intermittent re-inforcement fashion that psychologists have shown to be most effective at keeping people trapped in their addictions.

When you least expect it, he pops up to your right

*… to give you that little frisson of satisfaction and convince you to keep going*

or to your left,

It’s much more interactive and engaging than the classes I remember at school in the ’60s taught by the rather quiet nun who’d never been within cooee of France, and the rewards (points to amass, promotion to a higher grade, or just flattering encouragement) are frequent enough to satisfy, but inconsistent enough to keep you returning.

Peer pressure works well, too. Other students will often follow you in the hope of being followed back, so you can send and receive congratulations when you both achieve your goals.

But after six months, and having successfully graduated from beginner’s to intermediate classes, it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn’t enjoying it so much any more.

Each day became filled with too many messages urging me to do even better, work even harder, amass more points, and maintain my position. And if I slipped behind, or was about to be overtaken, the messages arrived as relentlessly as those in the opening scenes of Harry Potter, impossible to ignore.

But still they kept coming, reminding me what I’d achieved that week and what I could do the next:

Finally the shaming began. I was going backwards:

*Oh no! 93 minutes less than last week. A pathway to disgrace*

Things had to change.

I realised that something I was doing for pleasure, purely to keep my mind active—and to prove that I could almost recognise every fifth word spoken during an SBS French film—was turning into a nightmare. I had no time to sleep, no time to eat, no other enjoyments in life. And as I was never going to stroll along the Seine again on a warm Parisian afternoon, would I ever need to ask directions or enquire as to the cost of croissants?

Enough, I decided!

So I’m back to an enjoyable ten to fifteen minutes revision every day.

*Yes, every day. I’m on a roll, you see, and what would Duo think if I suddenly stopped?.*

Who cares about points and promotions?

Anyway, I have a new love now. A friend introduced me to Quordle, and I think I’m hooked.

#108 Make Soap (yes, really!)

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It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

With the Omicron peak waning, most of us happily vaccinated and lockdowns and restrictions a thing of the past, adventures far from home beckoned. So this month’s blog should have been about fresh fields, exotic travel, excitement, restaurants and glamour.

And yet here I am, explaining how to

#108 Make Soap (yes, really!)

Constructing new cakes of soap out of neglected, leftover shards of old soaps is reminiscent of the sad, lonely, lockdown-type activities of 2020 or 2021, but due to a recent spontaneous fracture in my leg (insultingly called an ‘insufficiency fracture’ as though I neglected to care for my bones sufficiently) I’m on ‘minimal-weight-bearing-until-it-heals’ orders from the orthopaedic surgeon.

And so it’s back to finding new activities that can be done without venturing from home. Or walking really.

So I scoured the internet to find instructions on how to convert all the bits and pieces of old soaps I’d found in the bathroom cabinet into brand new hearty bars of soap.

*Gather together about a cup of old leftovers. It speeds up the process to shave or grate them into smallish pieces, as I discovered too late.*

Place them in a saucepan, cover with cold water and leave overnight till the mixture becomes a slushy mess.

Add a tablespoon of olive or vegetable oil and a few drops of a fragrant essence or lemon zest and stir over medium heat until all the soap has melted. It can take a while —up to 30 minutes.

*It helps to have a jazzy stirrer like this, but a wooden spoon works too*

It ends up looking like the smooth custard you’d prepare for a Portuguese tart, but sadly cannot taste.

Add a few drops of food colouring and pour into silicon moulds to set:

Leave for 24 hours, then remove from the moulds and dry on a wire rack for a few more days before using.

The websites I found speak of packaging these small soaps in pretty shapes adorned with ribbons and giving them away as gifts,

but although they’ve been sterilised by boiling for ages, I’m a bit uncomfortable about forcing them onto unsuspecting friends. And they’d not win any beauty contests.

However, to my surprise, the fully dried cakes of soap work extremely well and I’m excited to see if I can collect all the shards from this lot to create even more batches in the future.

It will, of course, follow the laws of diminishing returns, but I’m hopeful it may be some time before I ever have to buy soap again.

#106 Try Calligraphy

#104 Turn a Guilty Pleasure into a Treasure Hunt

#102 Learn to Arrange Flowers — in an Ikebana Style

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Almost everyone has a special skill, although sadly, many of us don’t acknowledge it.

Praise someone who can sing in tune, and they’ll shrug and say ‘anyone can do that,’ but for those of us who are pitch imperfect, that’s just not true.

In a similar vein, people who can arrange flowers to look effortlessly gorgeous don’t understand how some of us struggle to coax a single rose to stand up in a narrow specimen vase.

So a recent opportunity to

#102 Learn to Arrange Flowers — in an Ikebana style

with a group of friends was too good to pass up.

Ikebana is the ancient Japanese art of flower arranging and is governed by 7 Principles: silence, minimalism, shape & line, form, humanity, aesthetics and structure.

As we were good friends teaching ourselves how to cut and measure and determine correct angles using videos and Youtube demonstrations, you’ll understand that the first Principle of Ikebana went out the window in no time.

But we embraced the concepts of minimalism, of using simple shapes and lines (based on a triangular pattern) and eschewed busy-looking, heavy, symmetrical Western designs with gusto.

Just as pleasing was discovering that the small metal, spiked flower base many of us found at the back of our vase cupboards—

is a specific device used in Ikebana called a kenzan.

While I know the designs we created are not true examples of Ikebana (hence I’m calling this blog post in an Ikebana style) we were thrilled with the results, marvelling how creating an elegant flower design doesn’t have to be a daunting task after all—even in the middle of winter with sparse pickings.

Another bonus of this activity was discovering a hidden flower growing among my narcissus in the back garden at home.

Called an Erlicheer jonquil (not an obscure Latin term, but named because it’s an early-flowering specimen guaranteed to cheer you up in winter!) it’s a new favourite.

I’m imagining a mass planting of this fragrant beauty in my front garden next year!

#101 Finish a Blog

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Whoever claimed ‘It’s not about the destination, it’s all about the journey’ clearly never suffered from motion sickness. I have vivid memories of every childhood holiday (and fortunately they weren’t too frequent) spent in the back seat of a hot car with my head over a bucket wondering if I’d die before we made it to our destination.

And don’t remind me of the horrendous boat trip out to the Great Barrier Reef in the ’80s where I became that pariah below deck, throwing up her insides; nor that New Year’s Eve yachting party on Sydney Harbour in the ’90s where a water-taxi had to be called to ferry such an embarrassing guest away. Oh no, journeys have rarely held much pleasure for me.

So imagine my surprise to discover, on finally reaching my destination of completing 101 Fun and Frivolous Activities in Retirement—after almost 9 years—that I’ve actually loved this particular journey. Not a hint of travel sickness.

But where to from here?

#101 Finish a Blog

So for something a little different to celebrate this 101st and final blog post, I’ve created an interactive one for a change.

If you like quizzes, this one’s for you; if you love crosswords, it will fill in a few minutes of your day; and if you’re of a literary bent, you’ll enjoy recalling past reads because this one’s a literary-themed crossword.

And in a final twist, there’s a mystery message to be deciphered at the end.

*My apologies that it’s not a crossword where you can type in the answers, but that skill’s way above my pay grade.*

Clues:

Once you’ve found the answers, you can go on to solve the mystery message:

And if you think I have too much time on my hands, you may be right, but it sure beats travel sickness!

#100 Appreciate Small Discoveries

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This pandemic has challenged us on so many levels over the past—how many?—months, but there’ve been unexpected rewards along the way to compensate.

For example, the realisation that owning a dog means escaping lockdown whenever an excuse is needed to leave the house was a lightbulb moment for many. Similarly, it’s been a real eyeopener for many businesses to discover that all workers don’t have to battle peak-hour traffic twice a day when they can work effectively from home.

As the world contracts and international travel fades into memory, one way to extract the best out of life is to:

#100 Appreciate Small Discoveries

Parking in a side street a couple of weeks before Easter, I came across this cute rabbit painted on an inconspicuous wall.

It brightened my day no end:

*Easter Bunny by talented local street artist Kade Sarte.*
*The eyes even follow you*

Another unexpected offering appeared alongside the entry to a car park. This sunny butterfly frieze greets passers-by like a welcoming smile, so thanks, Kristina and Albury City:

*by Kristina Greenwood for Upstream 2021*

Its personal significance was enhanced exponentially when a matching beauty landed in my garden a couple of days later:

*Australian Painted Lady Butterfly on chive flowers*.
*“Hey, you’re famous!”*

The pandemic threw up another joy recently when Warburtons, a UK company that bakes much loved crumpets, released their secret recipe to comfort suffering compatriots during the depths of winter.

With a rallying cry of

who could resist giving it a go?

My first batch, cooked in a pan on the stove top, resulted in terribly mismatched crumpets, until the idea of repurposing my pie maker into a crumpet maker seemed a worthy experiment.

Woohoo! Yessir!

Have a look at them cooking:

*Perfect shape, perfect bubbles, perfect browning when turned! What’s not to love about a pie maker*?

Here’s the adapted recipe if you want to give it a try:

An innocuous visit to my GP this week threw up another new and exciting discovery when the doc asked me if I’d like eScripts sent to my phone instead of handing me the usual paper ones. (She’d noticed I was using earpods in the waiting room, she said, so assumed I was tech savvy. 🤣)

Heart thumping, I agreed to the eScripts, not wanting her to know the truth about my dread of technology and its propensity to go bad. Of course, the minute I walked out of the surgery, I checked my messages, convinced it wouldn’t have worked, but to my surprise …

So now all I have to do is show the pharmacist the super trendy eScripts on my mobile to get them dispensed.

There are so many wonderful small discoveries to be found at our new Harris Farm Market that I don’t know where to start, but the little lime-green kale/silverbeet/herb stripper has to be up there with the best. It rips out the pesky central stalk in milliseconds.

*Insert the stalk into the hole of best fit, pull through and voila! the leaves are freed.*

Harris Farm sells assorted native finger limes, too …

And what this means is that I can now amass any and all ingredients needed for my latest craze: the home made poke bowl with added crispy kale and finger lime bubbles topped with sriracha mayo.

And a final discovery has been the talented Marsh family from Faversham in the UK, who’ve been coping during lockdown by repurposing songs and posting them on YouTube.

Here’s their performance at the BBC Comic Relief concert. They re-worded Total Eclipse of the Heart to reflect what everyone can relate to on some level during the pandemic.

*They’re more often found performing (in pyjamas of course) in their bedrooms, kitchen or living room.*

Who’d have thought small discoveries could give so much pleasure?

#95 Learn more about our First Nations People

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There was barely a whisper about the history of our First Nations people while growing up in Australia in the 50s and 60s.

Occasionally a momentary regret at my ignorance would surface—like the year a young Irish girl, who spoke Gaelic*, attended our school for a while. As we crowded around this transparently-skinned lass with nary a freckle on her pale face, listening to the glorious lilting description of the lush green hills of her homeland, we assured her that we, too, knew and spoke an indigenous language.

We managed to string a few words together— ‘yoothamurra’ (the name of the property where one of us lived) , ‘burrumbeet’ (a tiny town nearby, where we occasionally picnicked) and ‘bet-bet’ (we were reading The Little Black Princess that year)—but even our new Irish friend Noírín, saw through the pretence.

Later, any historical education I may have gained—white or indigenous—was waylaid by taking predominantly scientific and mathematical subjects. But on the basis that it’s never too late to be educated, the time has come to:

#95 Learn more about our First Nations People

It’s clear why Australia Day is thought of by so many as Invasion Day, because that’s exactly what it was. Changing the date to a more inclusive one seems a no brainer. Back in my childhood, in the land of the long weekend, it was always celebrated on the Monday closest to January 26th, so it would fall on any day between the 23rd and the 31st of January.

By way of proof, my 1968 diary entry:

(Early to the realisation that James Bond films were not for me)

Note that entry for January 29: ‘… It’s a public holiday for Australia Day.’

So—hardly a date set in stone.

Then there’s our national anthem. We stood for God Save the Queen until about 1984. Then we switched to Advance Australia Fair which exhorted Australia’s sons to rejoice. Australia’s daughters made a fuss, so that became Australian’s all rejoice. But if the daughters were cross, imagine how the oldest known civilisation on earth must feel having to claim to be ‘young and free’. So that needs to change.

I’ve just finished reading Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe’s breathtaking book,

outlining the evidence that land cultivation, sustainable farming practices, housing, water and fire management were all practised for aeons before the arrival of the white settlers. The victors always get to rewrite or whitewash history, I guess, but reading it gave me one of those rare moments when the worrying way we’ve managed this continent hit home. By introducing cloven-hoofed animals to clomp around the place, destroying the soil and eating what little arable grasses exist right down to stubble, we’ve done a great disservice to the land.

As the judges of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards said: ‘Dark Emu is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation.’

So then I turned to the Uluru Statement from the Heart to better understand how we can become a more inclusive nation. It’s a beautifully worded rallying cry for us all to come together.

Surely a voice in Parliament must be the first step?

Meanwhile, my journey continues …

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*I have it on good authority that ‘Gaelic’ is a term no longer used. The language is known as ‘Irish’ now.

outsidethesquare101

101 fun and frivolous things to try in retirement: a single's guide

Category Archives: Learn New Skills

#112 Attempt a Resuscitation

#111 Knit The Impossible

#110 Relearn a Language

#108 Make Soap (yes, really!)

#106 Try Calligraphy

#104 Turn a Guilty Pleasure into a Treasure Hunt

#102 Learn to Arrange Flowers — in an Ikebana Style

#101 Finish a Blog

#100 Appreciate Small Discoveries

#95 Learn more about our First Nations People