Category: Knitting

Knitting as Blood Sport.

Tuesday

Melon Scarf Progress

Here is where I was at this morning.  But looking at it while I waited to get my foot x-rayed, I decided that I wouldn’t be happy with the finished item unless I ripped it back and started again.  So I did.  Good thing I spent so long at the hospital today, I am back up to three pattern repeats.

And my foot is fixed.  Well, fixed enough to give up the boot.  No football for another 6 weeks, but I should be fine after that.

Bought a suit, for the increasingly likely NZ trip (Jussi, I don’t know what the itinerary is, but I’d love to catch up).  Also picked up a really cheap GPS – advertised for $299, got it for $290.  Which would be absolutely spiffing if the damn thing would talk to the satellites.  Works perfectly, but doesn’t seem to want to do the “P” part of “GPS”.  Pretty sure it isn’t a carbon unit error, Mark couldn’t make it behave either.

PS.  Today I passed another milestone in my knitting career – I ripped something back for purely cosmetic reasons.  A first for this goal oriented knitter.

PPS.  Bloody shoulder hurts again.  Asked the foot man “WTF”, he reckons disk injuries can wax and wane, but to be sure, best see the specialist again and get another MRI.  That’s $600 at least – and the outcome would be the same as before.  I can choose to have surgery, or wait for it to go away.  If only it wasn’t affecting my knitting, I’d cope better.

Advertising

There’s a new chip ad that made me smile. Builders, singing a version of “So Happy Together” by the Turtles. The song Mark sang as I walked up the steps to the rotunda @ Observatory Hill at our wedding.

So it’s been a while between posts. I kinda got on a roll during that month when we challenged ourselves to post every day. And since I fancy myself as a journaler (if not a journalist), I have been trying to keep up.

This weekend I was too busy having fun to tell the world about it. We had a lovely day at “Spinning in the Park”, did some muggle outreach, and I managed not to strangle some children that were gagging for it.

Here’s a small taste of the action.

And just because I am a big fan, here is a picture of Lee.

Sunday, we had a family do so that everyone could meet TBA, and then we drove up to Newcastle to see my friend Dionne finally tie the knot. It’s a long and wonderful story.

Spinning Day

Is actually the 3rd – this sat!

Date: 03/03
Time: 10:00 am, wrapping up before 3:00pm
Place: Burwood Park in Burwood
Bring: wheels, spindles, fibre, a good sense of humour, food/picnic lunch, knitting, crochet, etc.
Open to: anyone who feels up for a bit of spinning, or wants to learn, or just feels like hanging out with people who are spinning.

And thanks to Yarnivorous, this link might make you rethink your next chicken dinner.

Dunny Roll, Fresh Hay, and Spinning…

Today, I spent far too much time discussing different grades of toilet paper. Wanna know about embossing and perforations? Don’t ask – I’ll tell you.

Mark informed me that the small and furry people with long ears are out of hay. Which is a problem, considering that hay is their principle diet, and that the little rotters can eat their own volume several times over, each and every day, but I managed to get to Carlingford Produce after they officially closed, but before they went home.

The hay is gorgeous! Fresh smelling, and bright green in colour. I think it’s the most I’ve ever paid for a bale of hay ($27.50), but it is possibly the best hay I’ve ever seen – definitely the best since the drought got bad.

Tonight, after the creatures had their dinner, I plucked some more fur and mats out of Miss Blueberry. She was not amused, but she got craisins (bunny crack), and I now have a much larger sample of fuzz for our spinning day on saturday the 10th.

Sally – I may have to rescind my offer of a lift to SSK, unless you want to come to the spinning day too ? We’re meeting in a park to spin and bitch, all welcome – comment if you want me to send you the details.

Picture is of a Lorikeet that came to visit at Tony and Kates after the party last weekend. It’s a bit blurry, but it is true to the state of my mind that morning!

Victorian Lace Today

Thanks to Sally, I now have my very own copy of Victorian Lace Today. And as soon as I can finish the tattoo for TBA, I’m casting on for something slinky and drapey, and yummy, just for ME.

I have promised mum another shawl from this book, but I think the next one is for me. I bought the yarn at R+L’s, it’s a viscose and Baumwolle blend. David translated Baumwolle to mean “tree wool” – we later found another translation of “cotton”, but I’m sticking with tree wool.

The colour is a rich and deep plummy eggplanty burgundy sort of purply shininess. It deserves pictures, but it’s nearly 11.30pm, and rather wet out. I’ll put in a concerted effort on the tattoo, and shiny yarn will get its day in the sun. It isn’t seasilk, but I have great hopes. There is a shade card here, but the colour is far to dark, totally wrong – though you do get some idea of the shiny and slinky…

And here is the stitch pattern I waited for a year to find. Thanks Celia! I have swatched extensively, and am looking for the perfect increase (the KFB leaves a little coloured ladder, and isn’t ideal for what I have in mind).

Post Script – I think the colour is number 45 on the shade card, but I forgot to mention that because the shade card is too dark.

Happy Weekend!

Happy Birthday to Bex, I hope your day was filled with good things.

Mark and I drove up the mountains last night for a housewarming party, and we’re starting to think more seriously about moving west – it’s very likely that when we buy a house, it will be somewhere in the mountains, but in the meantime it may make sense to rent up there for a while.

We had a great time at the party (I met a woman who is going to raise alpacas!), I fell into a deep sleep on the very comfy couch while the party raged around me (getting old, I think I did very well to keep the eyelids up until after 1am), and we had a leisurely breakfast overlooking the valley while the birds kept us entertained.

Not going to the pub today – Mark hasn’t had much sleep, and it’s wet, and we’ve done more than enough driving for one weekend.

And thanks to Celia, I finally have the stitch pattern I need for the sock of my dreams. I’ve been swatching for nearly a year now, and I am on the verge of a breakthrough. Just need to refine a detail or two, and then I can proceed to an actual prototype. Happy!

And if you want to read something a wee bit disturbing, click here.

Tuesday

Not even hump day, and I am aching for the weekend.  Boss won’t be back till thursday, and I am running out of things I can do to occupy myself.  Tomorrow I’ll be turning into a printing press for a mass mailout, at least that will keep me amused for a few hours.

I left work a little early to get to Mosman to pick up a monitor adapter, keyboard and mouse – so that I can use the larger monitor that is on the desk I am using.  Ask me why I don’t say “my” desk.

I spent over four fucking hours in traffic.  It’s a good thing Mark hooked up the FM transmitter in the transporter, I got to catch up on two episodes of Cast On, one episode of Lime & Violet, and two episodes of Sticks and String.

I made the choice to start work with a broken foot, knowing that driving would not be good for it, but also knowing that I wouldn’t be able to get to work unless I drove.  I wasn’t counting on spending over 4 hours driving (including driving to work this morning), and tonight my poor wee (size 11) tootsie is aching. 

All because there was a boat in the harbour.

(if you know Sydney, check out the size of Fort Dennison compared to the monster ship.  Check out the Opera House)

Solidarity

Unravelled has decided to have a knit in simultaneously with the Yarn Harlot’s New York act of resistance to being ignored. Much as I adore Canberra, and race to get there frequently (yes, that was sarcasm, which is a little rude – I have had some good times in our nation’s capitol), I won’t be there for that particular event.

But I can be here, and hopefully inspire others to join me, and maybe even inspire others to get together in other states so that Australians don’t have to go to New York to show solidarity.

A lot has been written about why it’s good to knit this week, why it’s ok for men to knit, and why we are so totally not our grandmothers and that we are really just racy and sex mad, and that knitting is the new singles bar without the Hep C. But frankly, I’m just here for the yarn and the beer.

Kris, M-H, David, anyone else that has a way to spread the word – are you in? Anyone in Tassie ? SA, WA, NT? Even Queensland ?

One small hitch. When it’s 7pm in NY on the 22nd of March, it will be 10am in Sydney on the 23rd. Perhaps we can compromise and hold an event in Sydney on the THursday night ? The venue Kris picked for the WWKIP day was very nice….

Another roadtrip

Today was a great day. It started off with some political bullshit. Hornsby Council had another by-election (after one in September last year), and since I knew the candidate to be a good bloke, with an outside chance of getting the job, I thought that it would be the decent thing to scramble out of bed at the crack of sparrows and spread the green word to the uneducated voting masses. Or hand out “How to Votes” at least.

At 10 am (after some malarky with the liberal candidate pretending to be an independent pretending to have environmental principles), Candi, Sally, Meg and Mandy arrived to ferry me off for yarny good time.

First stop, the Wool Inn at Penrith – I am sure Meg will have a great description (and pictures) of our adventures, because I forgot to take my camera out of the bag all day. I blame the drugs. I’ve been good with the painkillers, but today required some intervention. Sally, Mandy and Candi are, sadly, blogless.

I bought some Filatura di Crosa lace-weight in white (yes, I believe I will dye it in preparation for the arrival of my new book), a ball of Zara in a very intense teal/turquoise colour, and a variegated cotton that I found in a sale bin.

Then it was off to the Blue Mountains Knitters Guild meeting. I had never been to a guild meeting before, and it was educational, and inspirational to be in a room full of crafty women of all ages, skill levels, interests, styles, and degrees of yarn snobbery. I deliberately only mentioned women because David was the only man there. It was freaky. My knitting life is full of men – most weeks at the Courthouse we have more knitters with balls than knitters with boobs, so it was rather strange to be in such a large room, that was so overpoweringly female dominated.

Though it is definitely the case that a persons gender is the least interesting aspect of their knitting, it appears that I have taken for granted the rather special group that makes up the Courthouse. It never occurred to me that men were all that special – I thought they were just like people.