Category: Knitting

Knitting as Blood Sport.

A Minor Win

Brendan McMahon’s application for his case to be considered under the Mental Health Act was denied today.

Judge Helen Symes found that while he met the criteria for consideration under section 32 of the act, she belived that the serious nature of the crime meant that the public interest would be best served by having the matter heard before the law.

McMahon has pleaded not guilty, and a date for a hearing will be set next thursday, the 23rd of December. The hearing will most likely take place in February or March of next year.

I must admit that I was not feeling hopeful that the courts would treat this matter with the serious consideration that I feel it deserves, and todays decision was somewhat of a relief. It is still very possible that he won’t receive a custodial sentence, but hearing the Magistrate use the words “protection of the public”, and “serious nature of the crime”, was a glimmer of hope in what has otherwise been a very bleak horizon.

Court Appearance

I went to court again today – but by the time I got there, it was all over. Another adjournment, till the 24th of November for a plea.

Who knows what the plea will be, and what type of sentence he’ll get.

David King, the journo from The Australian, was there. He looked at me guiltily, and sped off. Hooray. I think I might be getting over it.

I still feel like the last year has been a test, and perhaps I am coming out the other side. Perhaps.

Giant Pink Knitted Rabbit

Press Release

Sounds a little disgusting, and not entirely ecop friendly – but hey, it’s pink….

Re-posted from KnitNet.com…

Three hours from Nice on a northern Italian mountaintop, the art collective “gelitin” has installed a giant knitted bunny that will grace the landscape for the next 20 years. The launch of the work took place on a Sunday morning in September when a procession left the town square in Artesina, Piedmont, for the mountain.

Artanova reports that the 200?foot-long toy rabbit lies on the side of the 5,000 foot high Colletto Fava. Gelatin, it reports, designed the giant soft toy and say it was “knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool”. Group member Wolfgang Gantner said, “It’s supposed to make you feel small, like Gulliver. You walk around it and you can’t help but smile.”

Gelitin expects hikers to climb the bunny’s 20-foot sides and relax on its belly.

Here?s the Artists’ statement:
?Rabbit
The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent; and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.

The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbit?s body, a country dropped from the sky; ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines.

Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside. Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.

i love the rabbit the rabbit loves me.?

Branching Out !

I cast off last night 🙂

It is a little shorter than a normal scarf, but just long enough to fold and wrap, and it sits very nicely on a slim person, and the person that I intend to send it to is rather slim, so I hope she likes it !

This morning I sewed in the ends, and have given it a bath in Martha’s Wool Wash, and it is now resting on my dining table on a lovely turquoise towel. I wouldn”t exactly call it blocking. I have no pins to speak of, and no real inclination to spend an hour trying to get all the edges straight.

And here it is..
Hooray!

And again, with the little stone bunny Mark gave me for Christmas 2003

Can I bear to Part with It ?

How To Follow A Lace Pattern in the Car

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Though I am kinda getting the hang of the lace pattern, I decided that colouring each row differently will help me keep track of which row I am on. And I have a new iPod gadget, called the iGrip. It’s a kind of sticky pad that keeps my iPod from sliding all over the place while I drive. And guess what ? It works with knitting patterns too ! Genius 🙂

What a Delightful Way to Spend a Day!

There are three by-elections in NSW today. Maroubra, vacated because of Bob Carr’s resignation, Marrickville because of Andrew Refshauge, and Macquarie Fields, because of another resignation.

Marrickville and Maroubra both have a strong Greens presence, but not so in Macquarie Fields. Last state election Labour won by a huge margin, the Libs were second, and Greens a distant third at about 4% of the primary vote.

So Mark and I are off to hand out how to votes at Hoxton Park Primary School, and hopefully increase the Green vote by a small margin.

In knitting news, the lace scarf is about as long as my arm, and though I can see two mistakes, they are so far back that I refuse to frog. I admire perfectionism in others, but in me it only leads to procrastination, and I have enough of that already, thank you.

Tyler Models His Surprise Jacket

This is a picture of Tyler, (my cousin Katie’s little one) wearing the Elizabeth Zimmerman Jacket I made while my grandmother was dying. Although I had intended for it to be for another baby, this one was knitted during a time that was very emotional, and I felt that it should go to the first of a new generation of our family, as the last generation fades away.
How Did She Do Those Stripes ?
Underneath Tyler you can see the blankie that I also made for him That was made from one 200gm ball of Bendigo wool/cotton/lycra in a stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch chequerboard pattern. It is finished with an i-cord loop for attaching to strollers etc…