I must have been a good girl...

...because Santa Claus went online and bought my Christmas present today. I'm getting a Kata 3n1 20 to carry my Nikon D90 camera in. I love Santa (and not just when he's buying me presents, honest!)

And here are some photos of my hand-dyed yarn when it all dried and I put some of it in pretty skeins. You can really tell why commercial variegated and space-dyed yarn is sold like that. It makes a huge difference to how pretty it looks.

 

 

 

I think it's pretty, and I'm just a little bit proud of it. 

A good day to dye

I had the day off from work today. I find that when I'm stressed out at work, occasionally I just need to take a day off and have a bit of a rest. Today I watched some TV and decided to attempt to dye my big bag of cream Cleckheaton 12ply. I got all the food colouring out of the cupboard, realised it wasn't going to be enough, and set the yarn to soak in a 50:50 mix of luke-warm water and white-wine vinegar (I should have used white vinegar but I didn't have any, and the white-wine vinegar was very old) while I did some other stuff and then went to the supermarket for more food colouring.

This stuff is only 99c for a 50ml bottle and the girl on the checkout didn't bat an eyelid when I put through this little lot. People must buy some really strange combinations of stuff.

I roughly followed the guidelines set out by Suse from Pea Soup.

I covered the kitchen bench with cling wrap, squeezed the excess liquid from my skeins and laid them out. There's 350g or yarn here.

I wanted a rich green with small spots of yellow, so I made up a mix with two bottles of green, and one bottle of blue. I tested the colour on a small piece of kitchen paper and it was a bit too green so I added a glug more blue. I was more interested in trying the process than repeating the exact outcome so I didn't measure the glug.

Then I started pouring food colouring onto the yarn. I've since realised that I should have mixed it with some vinegar as well, but everything seems to be reasonably colour-fast now so there must have been enough vinegar left from the pre-soak.

I ran out of my dye mix towards the end and just tried to squeeze some dye out of the greener of the skeins I'd already done. The last couple of skeins have ended up a bit lighter than I wanted but it's all a bit of a learning experience.

I put the first half of the skeins in a glass bowl and microwaved for 5 minutes, let it cool and microwaved for another 5 minutes. I let it cool a bit, then chucked it in the sink and ran the hottest water that comes from the sink over it, gradually cooling down the water until the yarn was cold and the dye stopped running. When I had a good look, I realised that I had just put the first skein at the bottom of the bowl and piled the others on top. This led to the green dye from the other skeins pooling at the bottom of the bowl so the first skein is very dark and the yellow has been almost completely overdyed with green.

When I set up the second bowl for microwaving I grabbed the yellow sections and held each skein's yellow bits at the top, putting each skein in vertically rather than plonking them on top of each other. This worked a lot better and the yellow, which came out a lot more orange than I wanted, stayed well defined on the second set of skeins.

Here's what they look like hanging on the line after their rinse.

Not what I imagined, and I'm not really certain that I like the way the colours turned out, but I'm really happy about the experience. I certainly think I will live to dye another day!

The sound of one hand knitting.....

...

...

Is very very quiet.

Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this....

I have a very sore wrist. I blame Farmville, a farming game on Facebook which involves a large amount of repetitive mouse use. It's certainly the only change to my routine that I think is likely to have caused the wrist pain. It even hurts to knit. So I am resting my right wrist and I have it wrapped in a bandage. I've moved my mouse at work to the left hand side which gives me the giggles because I am totally uncoordinated mousing with my left hand! So I have quit Farmville so that I don't risk worsening my Repetitive Farmville Injury.

So no knitting for the time being. I'm hoping it will heal up quickly as I want to get back to the Stripy Booga Bag, which needs to be finished for the 11th of December, and is now only about 14 rows of black bag base.

 

And I'm really excited with how Margot is going, and all I want to do is keep knitting on it.

But, still, this enforced knitting break will give me the opportunity to finish these

and read this

And if I still run out of things to do, I've got these.

Oh - in the comments, Maria asks how I can knit in the heat...well, I guess I don't at the moment, but I find that as long as the knitting is small enough I'm okay. Once it's big enough to sit in my lap I can't do it if it's too hot. Air conditioning is a blessing. 

A big bag of happiness

I've just got gauge for my Margot in the 8ply Luxury Mink on 4.5mm KnitPicks needles....And the fun begins!

Wishing and hoping.... and plotting and planning

I called Bendigo Woollen Mills about my order yesterday and they said it went in the mail on Tuesday so I'm hoping it turns up today. Aus Post says parcels from Bendigo to Brisbane should take 3 business days so it could be today.

When I was doing some stash diving for the blue stripy Booga bag the other day I found a bag of cream Cleckheaton 12 ply wool which I saved from a half-finished project someone gave me many years ago. I can't even remember what the original project was, but from the small amount I have, I think that either I lost some of the yarn, or it was originally intended to be a child's jumper. It's in a weight I don't tend to use and in a colour I'm not drawn to, so it's stayed in the stash.

I've been seeing a lot of beautiful hand-dyed yarn online recently and have wanted to give it a go for a little while. I got some good advice last week on starting with food dyes, and I think this small pile of 12 ply might be a good place to start experimenting. I weighed it all up last night and there's 350g. There is one lone ball still hanging on to its ball-band but the bad doesn't list a yardage. It's long discontinued so no readily available info online. I ended up doing a rough calculation by measuring how much yarn it took to wind once around a folder that was handy, and measured up the smallest of the little balls. 9 grams of yarn was just over 1000cm. All calculated up, the 350-ish grams of wool came to about 417m.

Now, what to do with it. I can't find any patterns I really like to make something for me. So the options are to put it aside for kiddy clothes for winter or to design my own shrug. What do you think, friendly commenters? Should my first foray into yarn dyeing lead into my first foray into designing?

Newsflash - the Bendigo yarn just turned up. Everyone here at work is laughing at my huge plastic postage bag full of yarn. (apologies for the bad photos - I only have my mobile phone here, and despite the fact that the manufacturer's documentation raves about the camera on this phone, it really takes crap photos)

Who let the frogs out?

I've been knitting bags as gifts for The Boy's teacher and for a couple of family birthdays in December. I've finished knitting two of them, and one has been languishing. It's a blue stripy Booga Bag made with double strands of DK. I realised a little while ago that it was turning out a bit big. It was 25x14cm on the base and after the requisite 64 rows would have been 42cm tall. I've found in the past that bags made this way don't lose a lot of their size when they felt, and while it was probably not too humungous as a tote bag, it was taking a lot of yarn and I was approaching the point where I would ahve to decide whether to buy more or to make the top of the bag a radically different colour to the bottom.

If I hadn't lost interest in the knitting, none of these things would have been insurmountable. But, somehow, the thought of ripping it all out and making it smaller is more palatable than slogging through to the end.

I'm going to make it 28x28 rows on the base rather than the 34x34 called for in the pattern, and 52 rows rather than 64 for the sides. That should give me a bag which is 20.5 x 11.5 x 33.8cm in dimensions before blocking. I think that should make for a perfectly acceptable bag.

My Bendigo Woollen Mills order still hasn't turned up. I'll try and call them tomorrow. Hopefully it's just that they are busy with their sale and not that it has gone awol in the post.

Shiny

I've finished the knitting on two of the bags I am making for gifts. I still have to felt the bags and add some needle-felted embellishments.

Also, here is a photo of my Kaylee Frye (from Firefly and Serenity) costume from the Friday the 13th birthday party on Friday night. It's a little bit blurry but it gives a bit of an idea. I couldn't get good boots cheaply, so just wore my walking shoes. I died my hair brown to go along with it, it's a bit shorter than Kaylee's but it was cheaper than a wig, and I think it did the job.A few people recognised who I was attempting to be, which was good. There were some amazing costumes - Death and Dream from Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels, Velma from Scooby Doo, a really cool witch, Medusa, two people who had been run over and buried in shallow graves, a librarian, a nun, a gangster, assorted ghouls and a very cool Ms Marvel. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera, so I can't share.

I hope my Bendigo Woollen Mills order turns up soon. I really want to start knitting something new!

Burn, baby burn

Ever do something stupid? I slipped while making a cup of coffee this morning and burned my finger on the steam wand of the coffee machine. I didn't think it was all that bad at the time but it has formed a small blister.

This shows where I carry the yarn while I'm knitting - it's far enough away to continue to knit, but close enough to make me nervous. It's pretty sore, too. All that for a cup of coffee.

In the comments, Krista asked if the new camera makes it easier to take good photos - and I think it does. It definitely takes much better photos than my  basic point and shoot camera,it's encouraged me to think more about how I set up my photos, and it gives me many more options. (Of course, the flip side of lots of options is that there are many more ways to screw things up!) There's lots more to learn, and I have to take time out from knitting to do it, but I'm sure I will continue to improve. 

Wanna be starting something

I've been feeling really tired and a bit down for a few weeks. I haven't really felt like doing much of anything, including knitting. Strangely, despite the fact that my attention span isn't long enough for anything complex, the monotonous nature of the projects I have on the needles at the moment, rather than being soothing and relaxing, is making me anxious to start something new and exciting. I think it's only the fact that the Cascade Eco Wool I got on the weekend is in huge hanks which will be a little bit fiddly to wind into balls that has stopped me from casting on for Owls.

I'm trying to wait until my Bendy haul arrives, when I will begin the Chicknits Eyelet Cardi. I'm going to do it with short sleeves. Either that or the Shawl Collar Vest. I think I'll wait to see which yarn calls to me the most.

The costume party I mentioned a couple of weeks ago is tomorrow night, and I'm sitting here at the moment with semi-permanent hair dye on my hair. I'm going as Kaylee Frye from Firefly, and Kaylee has brown hair. Mine is mostly blonde, so to do it right, I needed to dye my hair or hire/buy a wig. Since I don't have a problem with dyeing my hair, and the dye only cost $4.99, that was the easy option. I'll try and get some photos of me in the costume tomorrow.

And now, because this post has turned out about as inspiring as I feel, here are a couple of photos to at least give some colour. These are from my first go at playing with my newish Nikon D90, all taken in the front yard. 

 

 

My name is Alexia, I'm a yarn addict

It's been 10 hours since my last yarn purchase......

I don't have as big a stash as some knitters I know, but it's sizable. I have 4 million tons (possibly a slight exaggeration) of acrylic from my early years when I didn't know any better, many odd balls of all sorts of stuff, and many projects worth of various yarns, some with mental project attached, some waiting for the perfect project to come along.

So I probably didn't need to make the purchases I did in the last couple of days.

But, oh, it was so much fun.

Yesterday I made a dash and grab run to Tangled Yarns to pick up a present for a friend's birthday. No hints in case she's peeking. While I was there I was seduced by the Cascade Ecological Wool in the very sexy chocolate colourway. You can never have too much chocolate, but I stopped at two hanks because that's what I need for an Owls sweater. Since I've bought it I've read that the Eco Wool runs a little thinner than the Rowan Purelife British Sheep Blends called for in the pattern and a lot of people have had trouble getting gauge. I hope I haven't made a mistake. Or at least any mistake bigger than thinking that it was a good idea to knit this sweater despite the fact that I live in Brisbane. (Although, I figure that since I fell in love with a bloke who loves to ski, and since I love to hang out with said bloke, even on ski-fields, and since I don't like being cold, my owlies could well get more wear than you might expect from my home address.)

Today I took advantage of the Bendigo Woollen Mills end-of-year sale to pick up some other stuff I wanted for a huge queue of projects.

9 balls of Luxury 10 ply in Blue Denim for The Man's Hero Pullover, and for my Shawl Collar Vest

6 balls of Luxury 8 ply in Forest for a Chicknits Eyelet Cardi and a Gooseberry Cardigan, both for me

3 balls of Luxury 8 ply in Mink for a Margot for me

2 balls of Luxury 4 ply in Oceanic for a shawl for me

1 ball of Luxury 4 ply in Leaf for baby clothes

3 balls Cotton 8 ply in Denim Cotton for a dress for my niece.

I think I will be set for a while with this little lot.

Oh - and how did that get there? It must have fallen into my bag, honest!

Your dogma is peeing on my karma

I work in software development. We have a development team of about 40 people, which is reasonably self-contained process-wise within the organisation, so individuals have the ability (and indeed a responsibility) to influence practices, processes, toolsets and the like.

I don't know whether this environment attracts people who are passionate and outspoken about their opinions or just provides an open forum, but nevertheless, robust debate is common.

This morning, one of the guys sent out a link to a blog post about a fairly controversial opinion.

I'll start here by saying that I think there might be some good points in the post, but some of his justification for his recommendations seems a bit mangled and waffly so I'm not certain whether he makes them very well.

But I'm not really concerned with the post itself. What concerned me was the "religious war" that started up in the comments. Some of the comments were thoughful, well written and non-inflammatory, but a lot of them weren't.

It is of course, not the first time I've seen this situation. It's representative of something I see a lot online, and it's not just isolated to IT discussions. You often see comment or forum postings a little like the following"

1. (insert discussion point here) is good because it is. 

2. No, it's bad because it's bad.

3. I use it in (insert limited scope here) and it works really well so therefore everyone should use it. 

4. But it doesn't work in (insert other limited scope) so therefore it's really bad and you're mad if you even consider using it. 

5. But everyone I know uses it so therefore it must be good.

And from there, personal attacks often ensue.

I don't have a problem with the aforementioned robust debate, in fact I think it's necessary. But what I want to see is a little common sense - a recognition that there's usually no black and white in these things. I very rarely see comments that say "I've found that this works really well out of the box in this situation but we've had to modify it in some cases, and I can see that there might be situations where it might not be suitable at all".

I don't know whether it's the nature of the internet that makes some of the exchanges so nasty. Is there something about human nature that makes us think our opinion will be valuable to everyone else, and causes us to devalue those who don't share our opinions?

We knitters appear to be better than most other online communities I've observed, but we are not immune either. I've seen a lot of debate about the relative merits of knitting and crochet, of acrylic vs natural fibres, of acid vs natural dyes, and even between various breeds of wool, some of it not so polite!

So I will continue to try to use common sense in my arguments, backing them up with appropriate evidence from my own experience, and expecting that others will have different opinions, and plenty of evidence to back theirs up as well. I will endeavour to try new things and to occasionally change my mind. Who knows, I may even learn something!

On the knitting front, I've started another bag. This one will be a Booga Bag in various stripes of whatever I can find enough of in the feltable-wool box (8 ply/DK wool held double). Not much to see yet as it's only the black for the base, but I hope to get it finished this weekend.

That's why I'm starting with me

I love to sing. I sang in the school choir all the way through primary and high schools and with the staff choir in my first job. But I haven't really sung in public since then. So when a colleague, knowing my interest in choral music, told me that his family was involved in the QYC, and I found out that they have a non-auditioned community choir for the over 26's, my interest was piqued.

I went along for my first Vox Populus rehearsal last night and I loved it. I don't know whether I'm an alto or a soprano (I sang both at various times in high school) but I don't suppose that matters as I was able to hit all the notes in both parts last night, so I guess I'll go wherever I'm needed.

I especially enjoyed the opportunity to sing Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror, which I love as a choral piece. Lots of fun.



On the knitting front, I got the body of Dad's vest done and have put it aside to concentrate on some gifts I've decided to make for The Boy's Teacher (to say thank you for teaching him this year), and some birthdays in the family.

Gift #1 - Sophie by Julie Anderson of Black Sheep Bags
I've made lots of these. It's a great pattern. This one is in Carnival Pure Wool 8 ply from the stash.

I'm thinking of trying out some needle-felting on this one once it's felted - possibly some flowers, with the stalks and leaves in needle-felting and the flower heads made from buttons.

I don't know what I'm going to do for the other two bags. I'm thinking that with the deadline ahead of me (they must be complete by the 10th of December) I'll be best to stick to either another Sophie or a Booga Bag as I have memorised both patterns and they're ultra simple (and look quite good). I'd like to have a go at some of the bags in Bag Style, but I think I might try some of them when I have a little bit more time, and when it's not going to matter when I want to keep them for myself!

After they're all done, I'm going to make some stuff for The Man and me.

The man is getting a Hero Pullover, with the ribbing all over instead of the chevron pattern, probably in BWM Luxury 10ply, Blue Denim.

Then I'm getting greedy. I want two Chicknits Eyelet Cardigans, a Margot, an Owl Sweater and a Shawl Collar Vest. I fell in love with the Shawl Collar Vest when I saw Salihan's. Some will be from stash, some from BWM.

(so I guess I'm starting and finishing with me!)

Stitch by Stitch by Stitch

Today was okay. We had lunch for Melbourne Cup so I dressed up and wore a pretty dress and a fascinator and won the office best dressed contest.

But still, I thought about Doug a lot today. I hope he would be proud of the person I am now, of what I have achieved.

I'm not sure today's essay is any good. It probably hasn't had the amount of editing it deserves. Still, it's finished, and I think it says what I want to say.

Stitch by stitch by stitch.

A lot of time has passed since June 2005, when as a depressed, tired and stressed new widow, I wrote about finding solace in my knitting, and my dreams of building a new life free of the immense pain and loss I was immersed in.

Then, I had been knitting for six years, but I was a timid knitter, afraid of any technique I decided was too hard or tedious, and in my fear, I convinced myself that I didn’t like cables or lace or intarsia or entrelac or socks or double pointed needles.

I was also poor and frugal, and while I did have a small stash stored in plastic crates in a spare room, it consisted entirely of acrylic, bags of odd balls gifted by various friends as their elderly relatives died, some eyelash yarn and a couple of balls of Lincraft Cosy Wool.

Since then, a lot has changed. I travelled to London by myself to stay with my Sister, and spent three weeks discovering some unexpected self-reliance in that amazing city. I stood in awe in the Rowan shop at Liberty but was still too poor and frugal to even allow myself to touch any of the yarn.

I met and fell in love with a gorgeous man, who is not descended from wool millers or knitting needle manufacturers, but is pretty amazing nonetheless. I moved 1000 km away to a new home in a new city in order to live with him and his now 6 year old son, to whom I have jokingly become “the evil Stepmother”.

I lived through 12 months of the job from hell, which put my emotions and self-confidence through the wringer until I couldn’t take any more and resigned without a new job to go to. I survived 6 weeks jobless, calling recruitment agent after recruitment agent, listening to them telling me that they had no jobs for me, or that they couldn’t recommend me to their clients, until I found one who believed in me. He helped me get an amazing job with amazing people who have continued to challenge me and support me and only occasionally irritate me. Every day, even if I’m not enjoying my work every single moment, I love working with the people.

I learned to drive, and passed my driving test at the age of 34. I love the independence having a licence gives me.

I took dance lessons, made new friends and, sometime when I wasn’t looking, I found myself.

Knitting was my companion though all of it. I learned to knit in the round, with first one, then two circular needles, I knit lace, and cables, I knitted and felted bags, and tried intarsia and entrelac.

I realised that acrylic yarn has its uses, and is fine for pretty much everything when you’re poor and knitting on handouts, but that there are much more exciting yarns out there.

I found out that I wasn’t really scared of intarsia and entrelac but that I didn’t like them all that much, and that that was okay.

And I established that I don’t get on well with DPN’s and if I’m ever going to knit socks then it’s going to have to be using 2 circulars or magic loop.

I finally finished the perpetually unfinished jumper with the short row shoulders. It’s not the most attractive of garments, but it’s soft and warm and snuggly and it feels like home.
 
I joined Ravelry and reveled (raveled?) in the sense of community and the big wide world that opened up in front of me. I started a blog, and laid my knitting and parts of my life bare to the world…not much of the world if the hit-stats are to be believed, but every reader is valued.

I’ve made some wonderful new friends from a starting point of nothing more than a shared love of knitting (and other fibre arts).

The new life I’m knitting is unfinished, and it’s got a lot of dropped stitches, and a few holes and knots here and there. Some of it’s a bit scratchy. It’s every colour you can imagine, and it’s a bit wonky in places.

But on the whole, it’s beautiful and soft and cuddly. It wraps me up in the love of friends and family. It displays how far I’ve come, and it still has room for me to grow.

I think it’s a pretty good place to be.

Knitting a new life

Tomorrow is the 5th anniversary of the death of my Husband Doug, who died at the age of 30 of a pulmonary embolism.

5 years seems like a long time and I think it deserves some sort of commemoration. So today I'm posting an essay I wrote in June 2005, 6 months after Doug's death, about grief and knitting and how the two affected each other. Tomorrow I am hoping to be able to post a follow up - about how far I've come, in knitting and in life (as I suspect the two can no longer be separated!). The follow up essay is not finished yet - it's written, but needs some serious editing so I can't promise it will be ready, but I'll try.

Today's essay is almost exactly as I wrote it in 2005, edited only for spelling. If you have read any of my blog, or know me from Ravelry,  it will be clear that I've changed a lot since then. But I guess that's tomorrow's story.


June 2005

Knitting a New Life

The love of my life died last November. It was sudden, one moment he was there and the next he was gone.

I didn't knit for two weeks afterwards. When I did pick it up, I realised just how hard it is to knit when your hands are shaking.

As anyone who is even partially serious about their knitting will know, your craft becomes a part of who you are. And regardless of whether our significant others love it, tolerate it or hate it, we're not going to stop. But it's better if they love it. Doug loved my knitting. He was there when I started, he watched the construction of the first revolting scarf, with holes and dropped stitches and inadvertent short rows. He shared my preference for simple clean lines and supported my passion for knitting children's clothes and toys and giving them away, and he even shared my dislike of cables and fair-isle. He tolerated my stash, and hated my aversion to finishing, but he loved the fact that I knitted, and he loved the finished articles, especially the Clown toys and raglan jumpers for children. There's something amazing and addictive about having someone there who you can rely on to ooh and ahh over whatever you're working on. And having someone who thinks you're a genius the first time you successfully complete a task every other knitter on the planet does in their sleep.

The only items I've ever completed for myself are hats and scarves. And nearly a jumper. It's a really basic turtleneck and I've knitted all the pieces except the neck itself. I got to the point where I realised that the stepped bind-off shoulders weren't the best way to do it and I really should short-row. And that's where I stopped. It became my "I really should finish" project. Doug mentioned it every time I contemplated buying yarn, or started a new project. A part of me will always regret that he never saw me wear it. As I write it's still sitting in a bag in my craft room. I really should finish it.

I had been intending tempting the wrath of the sweater curse. One day I would have knitted a sweater for Doug, but he was attempting to lose weight, so I hadn't started yet. I had completed a hat for him though - a beautiful, soft, pure-wool, knit-in-the-round, 2x2 rib creation in the jet black he requested. In the nature of these things, I finished it in Spring, which in Sydney is way too hot for knitted hats. Apart from briefly trying it on, he never got to wear it. Actually, I don't know what I'm going to do with it now. He had a big head, so it is way, way, way too big for me. I can't bear to send it to the frog-pond though.

The first project I finished after he died was heartbreaking. Other people's praise didn't have the same value his did. Other people weren't quite as excited by it as he would have been. Like everything else I'd ever knitted, he'd been there from its inception, he'd watched it grow, and now it was complete, I couldn't share it with him.

On top of the loss of emotional support, there's the money part. I am now in the most scary financial situation I have ever been in. We'd lived in our house for 18 months. The mortgage was a stretch on two good salaries. Doug only had minimal life insurance, which hasn't paid out yet. I can't afford clothes, or take-away food or a coffee, let alone yarn. It sure is great for stash reduction. I think everyone in my life will be getting knitted or baked gifts for the next couple of years. But look on the bright side, Alexia. Can't afford clothes? What a wonderful excuse to finish that jumper! Maybe now you'll use that grey cotton/acrylic blend that's been sitting in the cupboard for 3 years.

And way off on the horizon is the possibility of a new partner. He's a long way off, but I can hope that he's there somewhere, sometime. Someone to hold me and cherish me and make me feel like the most wonderful, beautiful woman in the world again. But how will he feel about my knitting? Do I have to train a whole new person not to talk when I'm counting? Should I make up bumper stickers that say "Love me, love my stash"? Will he want me to knit him a sweater? Aah, as long as he's just hypothetical, I guess I can aim high, dream in Technicolor as my Dad would say. His father's family will own a woolen mill and his mother's family a needle manufacturer. He will think I'm a genius even if I never knit another cable. He will give me handpainted yarn with flowers and chocolates for Valentines Day. He will bake chocolate cakes while I knit. And he won't ever ask me to knit socks.

But for now, my knitting is one of the things keeping me sane. My attention span is the shortest I can ever remember it being, so I'm not attempting anything even remotely complicated, but having something to do with my hands seems to help my mind to be still. I can meditate in the simple, comfortable rhythm of knit stitch after knit stitch, letting my fingers fly, building something beautiful (for myself, this time) the same way I'm building my new life, stitch by stitch by stitch.

Just because it's Halloween.

The Boy is possessed!. Well, not really, although I'm sure all parents of 6 year olds must think that occasionally. I found these photos last night, which were taken on a visit we made to the Queensland Museum. I thought they were appropriately demonic for today. (hint: click to embiggen - the red eyes look so much more creepy that way!)

I didn't get much knitting done today as I was concentrating on things I need for my party costume. I needed a heart patch and a blue flower patch, and couldn't get hold of the pre-made iron-on type so I embroidered my own on a scrap of fabric and sewed them on. And I cut the sleeves off the flight suit.

The Man is taking part in Movember this year so I'm expecting a lot of laughs at goofy facial hair over the next month. He's photoshopped up this photo as an indication of what he will look like with a Mo. I think this should come with a disclaimer like one of those photos in catalogs. "Ferrari not included"