You spin me right round, baby, right round.

At the end of last year, I went to support some of my Stitch 'n Bitch friends at the Queensland Spinners and Weavers Christmas Fair. It's one of only two days per year where non-members are allowed into the hallowed hall of the Emporium, a large room full of fibre-y,  yarny, equipment-y goodness. The very lovely Miss Vicki helped me to choose some lovely Merino from Treetops and a gorgeous silk hankie and recommended that I should find a nicer spindle than the plain Ashford beginner's spindles they had available.

So the fibre has sat, largely unregarded in its bag in one of my sneaky stash spots, under my desk, until this last weekend. The also very lovely Fee decided to hold a crafty day at her cosy abode and there was the suggestion that instruction in the fine art of drop spindling may be made available.

(side note. I have no idea why my language has suddenly become extremely flowery.Please bear with me. Hopefully it will sort itself out!)

With the prospect of some assistance in getting started, I thought it would be a good time to buy a drop spindle and found a lovely looking one at Spun Out, for a very reasonable cost. This is Emma, made by Kevin Rhodes. She's got a 3" cocobola whorl and a 10" purpleheart shaft and she weighs 47g. I think she's beautiful.

I watched a couple of YouTube videos for background and only needed a little encouragement when I tried to spin at Fee's place. I was pretty pleased when a couple of the girls said "Are you sure you've never done this before!". This is what I have made so far. I'm pretty happy with it, although I'm sure when I come to learn how to ply it, it'll be overspun and underspun and everything in between. All in all, pretty good for a first effort, I think!

In knitting news, I've finished the Bendigo cotton Pinwheel Baby Blanket for my Sister's expected baby, who has the nom-de-womb of Munchkin. I took a punt on the edging and did a slightly ruffled garter stitch border. It turned out absolutely perfect and I am so immensely pleased with it. Sometimes something simple just works out really, really well, and it certainly seems to be the case here. The cotton yarn is stunningly soft ("softer than any Bendy cotton I've ever worked with" seems to be the consensus from virtually everyone so I don't know whether they've improved it or I just got a good batch), the swirl pattern of the eyelet increases is simply beautiful, and the edging finishes it off with a stylishness I wasn't expecting. This project just fills me with such pride that I've been able to make something so gorgeous for this much-loved and much-anticipated little person. I live 1000km away from Munchkin's home and so it is incredibly important that my Sis can wrap her (or him - the scans seem to indicate girl at this stage but you never know) up snuggly in my love, even when I'm far away. 

Healthwise, I'm well enough to go for six months before I see the gastroenterologist again. That's a good thing, but he did say that I have some narrowing of the small intestine where my ulcers form, and my haemoglobin count is on the low end of normal, which could have contributed to my tiredness. He also thinks that it's possible that the drugs I'm on are not really doing anything as there's no significant scientific evidence that they do anything for Crohn's, but I'm staying on them as they're relatively non-noxious and this is the longest I've gone without a flare, so there's some possibility that I'm getting some benefit from them. I haven't needed prednisone in nearly a year now, which is brilliant. I'm lucky enough not to really get any of the nasty immediate side-effects of prednisone on the short bursts I've needed, but the Doc said that everyone who takes prednisone gets some side effects eventually, and I do tend to put on weight and get a little bit puffy in the face, so staying off prednisone is a good thing in my opinion.

On the work front, my performance review was really good - better than I expected, and while the mountain that is my to-do list is still resembling Everest, I really feel like I've achieved some important things lately. I have a new boss, who is really supportive but firm and won't put up with any crap, and just in the last day, I've started feeling optimistic about the future again. This, of course, goes in cycles, so I know there'll be downs again, but it feels good to be feeling up, even if it's only short-lived.

I think I'll end there today. Sorry this post has been long and all over the place, but so much has been going on and I haven't felt up to blogging most evenings so it's all piled up. I think I might go and knit a bit more on my Margot sweater. It's been a bit neglected lately and it will be nice to finish something for myself!

Is there a wet dog in here?

I've been felting today. These three bags are the closest thing to Christmas knitting that I have committed myself to this year. Two are for birthdays in the family and the third is a thank you present for The Boy's prep teacher. They all need to be finished by this Thursday. I got them all felted this morning - due to my wrist still being a little bit fragile, I went against my usual principles and did them in the washing machine. Currently they're all blocking on shoeboxes or stuffed with plastic bags.

 A booga bag in Homemaker Clinker DK

 

 Another Booga Bag in double stranded DK, various bits and pieces

 

 Sophie bag in Panda Carnival Pure Wool 8ply.

It's disturbing how much wet wool smells like wet dog.

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!

Happy Australia Day

We made our way to Southbank parklands today to take in the Australia Day atmosphere. The Man and I claimed our favourite spot on Southbank beach with our Australian flag towel and settled back with the newspaper and the Boy ensconced himself in the water, where he happily played for the next 4 hours. The weather was almost perfect - warm enough for the Boy to be comfortable swimming all morning, not too hot for the land-lubbers and the occasionally threatening clouds only dropped a few sprinkles!





Tomorrow is a big day in households all over Queensland and this one is no exception. Our little boy is not quite so little anymore and he will be starting school tomorrow. First day of school, wow. The Man and I are very much more nervous than the Boy, and we have taken the day off work to be there when he goes into the classroom and when he comes out. Hopefully the latter will not be immediately after the former! Photos of the little munchkin in his all-maroon uniform tomorrow!

On the knitting front, I was hoping to have my short-sleeved cardigan finished for the big event tomorrow, but the constant errors (all my own fault, unfortunately) and design-alteration decisions have meant that there's still one row of knitting, an awful lot of seaming, and 80cm of i-cord to go. Not going to happen. Oh well.

I don't really like the way this cardi turned out but I've fallen seriously in love with the Rowan Cashsoft DK I used for the edgings and I'm wondering how I can justify spending the money it will cost to buy enough of it to knit a whole jumper. Hmmmm. Maybe I can call it "helping out a friend"..... My friend D's hubby is the local rep for Rowan yarns. Yep, that's it, I'm not spending $155 plus shipping on a jumper, I'm helping out a friend. Sounds much better that way, right?

Good luck to everyone who's starting school and everyone who has a little person in their household starting school this week. We're happy and sad and excited and nervous and encouraging and concerned all at the same time. Hope it works out well for all of us. Somehow I think the kids are having an easier time than us grown-ups!

A cardi update

The eyelet cardi is nearly finished.

This is what it looked like last week before the sleeves and main ribbing were finished.



I decided I needed new needles to finish off the sleeves and thanks to the lovely Janette at Yarns Galore my 3.5mm/30cm Addi Turbos arrived on Friday. I finished the sleeves yesterday and gave it a wash/soak to set the stitches before picking up for the front and neck bands.

Here it is soaking in the baby bath on the floor of the shower.


Here is the pile of towels waiting to dry the cardi, with the bottle of handy dandy Martha Gardeners Wool Mix in the eucalyptus fragrance that induced The Boy to walk past asking "what is that smell?"


And here is the cardi itself, drying on the dining room table.



When it's all dry, I've just got the front bands, the neckline and a couple of tiny underarm sleeves and the ends to weave in, then she's all finished.

The end of the long weekend

This is what it looked like when I went to leave the house this morning. I waited until it stopped.


I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. I've had a really good break, and I'm quite a lot more relaxed than I was last week, but another week or so off would be nice. Oh well, just got to make the most of what I've got.

I really enjoyed my day out at the galleries on Sunday. I slept in and bummed around the house for most of the morning and got to the Gallery of Modern Art in time to have lunch and watch the hula-hoop display in front of the GoMA RiverCafe.
The very lithe Miss Ra-Ra Sparkle (I kid you not), sharing her hula hoop prowess.
The Warhol exhibit was great, I loved the fact that it included examples of his "time capsules", and Interview magazines and film works as well as the screen-prints, paintings and drawings.


My forearm's 15 minutes of fame. Surely my pass-out stamp can be considered Pop Art?

I wasn't tremendously blown away by anything else at the GoMA, but I did quite like a series of photographs of a Chinese artist sitting waist deep in a river, stamping the water with a traditional wooden stamp of the symbol for water.

In a move quite derivative of the Yarn Harlot, here is the Eyelet Cardi visiting the inflatable pink poodle in front of the State Library.


Speaking of the cardi, I got up to finishing the eyelet rows by Saturday night but noticed a mistake and thought I could drop a couple of stitches back to the error, fix the mistake and redo the stitches back up to the current row.

I'm good, but I'm not that good.

I had to rip back all the eyelet rows, fix the error and do it all over again. I'm still happy with what I've been able to get done this weekend though, and this morning it looked like this.


I think it fits - but it does need to be just a leetle bit longer!


I had a phonecall from the intrepid traveller this evening. He's having a great time in Niseko - apparently the weather has been really good from his point of view. Not too much new snow, but sun and blue sky today. He said that he quite liked just being able to cruise around and he's not desperate for bucketloads of snow. He's got some good video too, apparently, so I'm looking forward to seeing his little ski movie.

A whole lot more than I'm looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.

In which, surprisingly, Alexia comes good on her word.

I promised another post and some photos. So here goes.

I suddenly realised that the last photo I posted of Tivoli was back in April, when she was less than half finished. I can't remember when I finished her, but it was a while ago.
Anyway, here is a dodgy photo of me wearing her. [edited to add: I mean dodgy only in the sense of the fact that I didn't do my hair and makeup and wear appropriate pants for the photo, not in the sense that The Man took the photo badly ] I love how it fits although I think the Zhivago yarn, while it feels really silky, is probably a little bit flabby for a close-fitting top like this one.
Oh, and I wouldn't normally wear my pants untied, it's just that the bow from the waist tie disturbed the way the bottom of the blouse sat.

I don't think I've shown anyone this photo (below) of Little Petal, from Creative Knitting magazine, can't remember which issue. I made this for a friend's baby girl, and I loved the yarn it was knitted with, which I also can't remember....oh, hang on, a quick look in the overstuffed knitting drawer shows it to be Elle Caress wool/nylon/courtelle blend. Very nice and soft. And I was really pleased with how this turned out. If I made it again I'd be more careful with some of the work around the collar. I redid it about three times as it was, but just as I finished I realised that I'd made a serious misjudgement with some of the picking up stitches. By that time, however, the little petal it was intended for was well and truly born, so I didn't really have time to pull it out and do it again. The Man tried to point out that only a knitter would recognise the mistake but it still eats at me a bit. Oh well, apparenly little Beth loved it (which I think translates to Beth's Mummy and Daddy loved it - how much can a newborn love something that isn't their Mummy or Daddy ?) so I'm happy with that.

I have number two of the Christmas Booga Bags in the washing machine felting as I blog. It seems to be behaving itself and felting nice and evenly, which was actually probably too much to hope for, considering that I was mixing different brands of yarn, including one I'd never used before, and I didn't swatch and felt-test. Obviously the knitting gods are smiling on me today. When I think about it, it was probably the knitting karma (knitma?) I earned by starting to teach The Man's 8 year old neice to knit this morning. She had the good grace and tenacity to stick to it for a good 30 minutes and was starting to slowly get the hang of the knit stitch before she gave up with sore hands, and she insisted on taking her yarn and needles with her. I'm so proud!
Probably because his cousin was doing it (which makes it cool), The Boy firmly stated that he wanted to learn to knit also. I set him up with a pair of blue 6mm needles and a row of stitches, and showed him the knit stitch over and over, and then he took the needles, moved one backwards and forwards against the other and claimed to be knitting. I'm just over the moon that he was interested enough to do that much. He's only 4 - I've got years to indoctrinate him... BWAHAHAHAH HA HA HA. Maybe I should start using the subliminal message audio tapes while he's sleeping.....
Unfortunately, I forgot to get his Dad to get photos of us knitting, so this one of him hard at work at another artistic endeavour will have to suffice.



Oh, and this one of him holding a plastic fish over his nose at a recent birthday party....

And some gratuitous roses, just because they're beautiful.

Finally! An accomplishment or two.

The first software release I was totally responsibile for at work was completed this week. I'm proud of it, but it's hard to feel excited as I'm still a little fatigued from the long hours I did last week to get it all developed, and there are other big issues I still need to take care of at work this week. We are quite understaffed at the moment due to a bit too much work and a number of people who have left but have not yet been replaced. There's another great developer leaving at the end of this week, so it's going to get worse, but at least we are coming up to the slow period over Christmas when everyone goes into code freezes. That does of course mean that the next few weeks are going to be hell as every customer wants their work done before the freeze, but it's only for a couple of weeks. I also got a bit of a compliment on my work this week so I'm feeling pretty happy about that.

Plus, I worked out a design for my Christmas cards and so far I've got 11 of them done. Only 20-30 or so to go. !

Oh, and the Christmas gift knitting is going quite well. I'm not happy with the handles on the first of the booga bags, but I did do them on the clover wonder-knitter rather than a 5-stitch i-cord as recommended in the pattern so they're a bit thicker than designed. I will need to work out an appropriate replacement for the bulky knots on the handles, but that should be easy. I might try actually doing the proper i-cord for the second bag..... what? actually following the instructions? How novel! *grin*