Thursday, July 22, 2010

We've moved in but I still can't find my swift and ball-winder!

We have successfully moved into the new house (thanks to the 4 burly blokes from the moving company who spent about 6 hours cheerfully and expertly moving all of our stuff 110m up the street) and have unpacked all the essentials, so it's starting to feel a bit like home. We've reached that limbo point where we need to do some big stuff like getting the Salvo's to come and get the furniture we no longer need and buying bookcases to go in the spot currently being occupied by unwanted furniture before we can realistically unpack any more boxes.With the next two weekends totally booked up, it looks like we're going to be in limbo for a while yet. That's frustrating, but we're just going to have to live with it.

Most of my knitting lately has been for a swap project so I can't show it yet. I've finished all the knitting for the swap and while some of the work (which involved some techniques new to me) didn't end up as precise as I would have liked, I'm pretty happy with the end result. 

Since I finished the swap knitting on Tuesday night, I've started on two new things. The first is a hyperbolic crochet bath scrubbie, which I'm trying out because my old plastic net scrubbie reached the end of it's unnatural life and the new one I bought at the supermarket was really rough and scratchy. The idea for a crocheted one started out when I was crocheting flowers for the knitted garden for I Knit Brisbane and thought that if you just kept going with the hyperbolic crochet you'd end up with a sort of squiggly ball which would work really well as a body puff/scrubbie. 

I think it's turning out okay, but it is taking forever as I'm not good with the crochet and I'm slow. I'm not even sure if I'm doing it right as I'm using a technique partly from half-remembered lessons from my sister and partly gleaned from the internet, but I'm definitely making fabric and it looks like it will serve it's purpose and ultimately that's all that matters, right?

The other project is a scarf for Mum. She rang a couple of weeks ago and asked if I could make her one of the "fine, narrow scarves" she's been seeing around lately. Since I was up to my eyebrows in swap knitting at that time, and now there's not too much left of winter, I've decided to make a simple scarf now and plan something more complex for next winter. It's a One Row Lace Scarf in Arucania Ranco Solid. So far it's 19cm long.I had to hand-wind the ball from the skein as I have no idea where my swift and ball-winder ended up in the move!


I'm sorry for the blurry photos, but I still haven't gotten myself sorted with the proper camera after the move so these were taken with my crappy mobile phone camera.

I'm hoping to get the guest/craft room more organised over the next week or so, and then I will post pictures of my new domain. It looks like a yarn shop exploded in there at the moment!

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Has anyone seen my life? Oh yeah, I packed it in a box...

We move into our new house on Tuesday. That's providing there are no issues with settlement on Monday, but I've been as much of a control freak as I can and chased everyone up on this side and I think everything is now actually out of my control now.

Virtually everything is in boxes or bags or suitcases or plastic crates and everything else will be following suit tomorrow. I'm pretty sure my sanity is packed along with them. At least I hope it is, because I sure as hell can't find it anymore.

I know just about everyone says this when they move, but I had no idea we had so much stuff.

I have finished the knitting on my Citron, but there are six balls of yarn in it and the yarn was full of knots so there are about four million ends to sew in. I've put it aside for the moment and I'm working on several pairs of Saartjes Booties for all the babies who are due among my workmates at the moment. I also finished a little baby knitted t-shirt that was sitting almost finished in the UFO pile. No photos yet as I can't find the camera. It's probably in the box with my sanity.

I've signed up for my first swap, for Christmas in July with Brisbane Stich 'n Bitch. I hope that I'll be able to have something nice completed even with next week being totally messed around with moving. I'm nervous but I'm sure I can make something passable, and make up any shortfalls with chocolate!

We had a trivia night for the choir tonight. My team won best decorated table (we were black and white and had streamers, tablecloths, stuffed animals and everything) and we also won the quiz. It was a fun night.

To make it all a bit bizarre, some local students were filming a scene for a short film just outside where we were having the quiz, and they asked us all to be extras in a party scene.. It was meant to be a scene at a "teenage" party so everyone over 30 and everyone under 12 had to stand up the back, probably so they could keep us out of focus. Somehow I don't think this is going to be my ticket to stardom!