a room of my own

a new room

2010-02-25T19:06:00.001+11:00

this post is number 545 in blogger, and it will be my last post in blogger.

blogger has been great, but its time to expand and spread my wings, see where else blogging can take me.

i would love to have you come visit at the all new room of my own

theres knitting, as usual, but also new stuff about dogs, and travelling, and more to come in the future.

thanks so much for all your support here at blogger, and i look forward to sharing a cup of tea with you in my new room. with a different view :)

kylie xx

shape shifting

2010-02-22T09:28:00.005+11:00

in the last few months, i have changed the way i think about the types of garments i am going to knit for myself. being a 'big girl' i have always felt self-conscious about fitted things, so last year i made a number of items that were kind of oversized and swingy. really, the only one that worked out was the first lily cardigan. all the rest, FLS, leisl etc, were mistakes from the get go. partly it was bad yarn choices, so the main thing ive learnt when making things for myself is that they will be heavy, especially if i insist on using heavier yarn! but ive also learnt that oversized and swingy is not always that flattering.

so i embarked on something slightly less hessian sack-like in the form of the mountain view cardigan. the yarn is bamboo, so its light and drapey, but its knit in pieces for structure, and the pattern has shaping, and a ribbed waist even! i think its going to look great on. if i ever get done with the sewing and seaming. i set some time aside yesterday to do it, which meant sewing in ends, then pressing (not wet blocking bamboo) then grafting the shoulder seams, which is far as i got:

thats 5 hours work, and i really needed to knit after that! and knit i did. given i am going to the gym 3 or 4 times a week at the moment and can feel my shape changing, i am feeling a bit more adventurous, so have cast on the featherweight cardigan:

i just happened to have 4 skeins of malabrigo lace in 'paris night' that i had thought was going to be a circular shawl, but when i saw this pattern, and other peoples versions, i had a revelation. there is no law that says that just because i am not a stick figure with no sticking-out bits that i need to hide myself from the world under kilos of 8 ply knit into sackcloth. there is also no law that says i need to wear something that covers every inch of me, or that i cant try for something that might look slightly fashionable (and i really should wear more blue).

i am enjoying this slight shift in attitude. it feels kind of liberating, and opens up a whole new world of knitting choices.

k xx

art vs science*

2010-02-15T09:34:00.007+11:00

i have been thinking about the ways in which i prioritise my knitting. not being project-monogomous i am forced every day to make decisions about what i will knit and when. usually this has been kind of random and just based on what i feel like, but i have been feeling like this is a bit haphazard and i need a more systematic approach if i acually want to finish things!

so i thought about what it is that i actually knit, and what are its purposes? it seemed to me that my knitting fell into two categories, the aesthetic and the pragmatic (or the artistic and the scientific, if you will). the aesthetic is, by and large, shawls. apart from my favourite 8ply shetland triangle which i wear at winter outdoor dog sports, i dont live where it gets cold enough to wear them as an everday item, and the light lacey ones require more formal events than i am ever likely to attend. yet i think these are my favourite things to make, mostly because they are usually challenging and complicated, requiring me to think about what im doing which means im not thinking about anything else (good for my usually overworked brain). and the shawls i choose usually have some historical or traditional origin, so to me they seem like Important Things, not necessarily works of Art, but definitely creative.

i feel this way about two of my current works-in-progress, Icarus (which will take forever) and the Lily of the Valley scarf. the latter actually straddles both categories of art and science, in that it is challenging and sometimes complicated, requiring me to concentrate, but will also be wearable. this is because i have altered the pattern somewhat in order to make it longer and thinner, more 'me' and more wearable in this part of the world. i worked on it a lot this weekend, being forced indoors due to rain, and its the current favourite.

i intend to have it finished in time for the cooler weather, and i think i will get a lot of wear (and joy) out of it. in winter, i also get a lot of wear out of socks, so i have been more committed to the two sock projects i have on the needles at the moment (see previous post!). i worked on the brown ganseys in the car on the way to a flyball competition on saturday and at the competition (in between races) i worked on the flirtini stripey socks (mobile photo sorry):

that is, when it wasnt raining. did i mention its been raining? it really is wonderful to see so much water come from the sky but it did make the afore-mentioned flyball competition kind of interesting - the racing itself was undercover for the first time ever in australia. we havent had the required matting until recently, so it was fun in that sense. but there wasnt enough room in the barn for all the people, so our outdoor tents got well and truly flooded. which meant i did have to stop knitting at one point.

i love the rain though, and am sad to see it starting to fine up today. i think i am a grey weather kind of person:

it seems more artistic somehow, and it means there is more time for knitting, of all kinds.

k xx

* todays title post comes to you courtesy of a groovy little band that made it to number two in this years hottest hundred. its my current ear worm, so listen with caution!.

sockapalooza

2010-02-09T13:35:00.005+11:00

its been a while since i worked on any socks, which is weird because usually thats all i knit in summer. but i had this cardigan bug, and it wouldnt leave me alone, and well you know, socks can be a bit boring, with all that round and round. also, i had started a pair in rib out of the zauberball (rav link) and the colour was gorgeous but rib. aaagh. kill me now. and the yarn was very fuzzy and not stretchy at all, so they were too floppy, and the cast on was messy, and when you have that many things going against you, as a sock, you should know your time is limited. so yeah, i frogged them.

it wasnt entirely their fault however. it was also the fault of a lovely skein of precious that i generously rehomed. i tried to get into the yarntini self-striping club, but missed out, while someone else we know wanted out but left it too late. rather than lose the spot entirely, a clever scheme has been hatched whereby rosered, bells and i are rotating the purchasing of the packages. the next three are mine, starting with this one called flirtini:

given my sock-mates' aversions to pink, this one had my name written all over it. on sunday, in the rain, we met up in berrima and the skein whispered to me the whole time we were at lunch (yes i had steak, it was good). and while we wandered through the book barn while the rain pelted down outside:

in the car, i was good and worked on these:

but when we got home, i lasted about 4 hours before 'the flirt' won and i wound it up and cast on:

i am just using a wendy johnson basic toe up pattern with judys magic cast on but going to do short row heels to preserve the striping.

im pretty sure self-striping sock yarn is (nearly) the best. thing. ever.

k xx

this is not a food blog

2010-02-07T08:56:00.007+11:00

this is supposed to be a knitting blog.

but i have nothing i can show in that department. the pieces of the mountain view cardigan are safely encased in ziplock until i work up the courage to face the seaming. i have been knitting since then, but its secret. can you spot the hint:

i really feel like knitting socks again, and i have two pairs on the needles. one isnt really working out and im going to frog it. the other i have forgotten where i am up to, but will work on it today. i will have some other interesting sock news in the next day or two, however.

meanwhile, its been raining here for about three days straight with another day or two to go. i love the rain, i love the coolness (apart from the 97% humidity) and the fresh smell it brings. not so enamoured of wet stir crazy dogs, or of the fact that my clothes are damp-by-association and thinking about growing mould on them.

but the weather means i can cook in comfort at least, so yesterday i made my current staple, donna hay's banana bread, from 'no time to cook'. its so easy. two bowls, a wooden spoon, no butter:

brown sugar on top for a yummy crust:

et voila:

i also made risotto yesterday. there was a bit of talk about this over on rosereds blog the other day, and it got me thinking. and craving. people were talking about the stir factor, but my risotto requires only minimal stirring. its a recipe i kind of took from a rice packet originally, but have adapted it as i go, so i will share it here.

you start with a VERY heavy bottomed pot. this is the key ingredient! i am lucky enough to live in the same house as one of those cast iron enamel things. a god send. into this you put onions, garlic and pancetta in olive oil and 30g of butter, then add 2 cups of arboria and stir that all through for about 5 minutes until the rice changes colour.

then half a cup of white wine, put on the lid and let it absord. no stirring until you take off the lid about 10 minutes later. of course, this is on low heat, on a gas stove top AND using a diffuser. too hot and youre gone. then add a cup of good strong chicken stock (from the OTHER pot you are keeping hot which contains 4 cups of stock!). again, stir it through, put on the lid, let it absord. do this until youve used up all the stock. after the second stock addition add chopped mushrooms, after the fourth add some frozen peas:

when you taste it and the rice is soft, add some salt and a heap of good quality grated parmesan (this one has about half a cup of authentic reggiano in it but grand padano will do just fine). stir that all through and then serve with some more cheese, cracked black pepper and a sprinkle of italian parsley:

i think this whole process takes about an hour, maybe a bit more if you include the chopping etc. i only stir every 10 minutes or so when i take the lid off, and i taste as i go. there was some sticky bits left on the bottom but i like them. the consistency is moist but not wet, kind of gluggy but not mush. good technical cooking terms there!

seriously tho, i can make this with my eyes closed now and it works out right every time. it was so nice to eat last night with the rain falling outside. and theres heaps of left over (this makes at least 6 bowls worth). i think i will be eating it again tonight, if i have room after the big fat steak i intend to eat at lunch with bells and rosered at the surveyor general pub at berrima today. well what else are we supposed to do on a rainy sunday!?

k xx

dances with wool

2010-02-02T08:52:00.005+11:00

you know how i cleaned out the stash and there was some stuff i didnt want? well i gave most of it away to be made into useful things by the lovely rubygirl at snb on saturday. but there were some bits and pieces left lying on the floor. i really should have picked them up before this happened:

apparently i have now taught the dog to play with wool. i dont know, somehow this doesnt seem like such a bad thing.

k xx

all in pieces

2010-01-31T13:49:00.001+11:00

things have been a bit all over the place this week, lots of 'stuff' going on: mine, other peoples, work, friends. i have been feeling like hibernating, i get like that sometimes. and an endless summer doesnt help. it saps my will to live.

i have compensated for this general 'blah' feeling by working solidly only on the mountain view cardigan. et voila, c'est fini. well, almost. the pieces are finished:

a little matter of joining the neck band, sewing in ends and seaming remain.i am not up to that level of concentration today, but at least now i know its all there, its soft and beautiful and looks like it will fit.

that should be enough to keep any knitter happy, right?

k xx

sunday's adventures in stash storage

2010-01-25T09:05:00.007+11:00

despite what some people might think, i dont have a large stash really. there are not tubs of stuff overtaking spare rooms, and i dont buy stuff just because its on sale and i might use it one day. dont get me wrong, i wish i did do that, but finances preclude! i tend to buy stuff as i need it, and then make it into something, with a slight exception being sock yarn. which is just pretty. and i do need it. because i knit socks. so...

anyway, the point is that this is what my stash looks like:

it did used to be in the lounge room but the arrival of a certain black and white ratbag had forced me to move it to my bedroom, which has a lovely decorative fireplace and mantlepiece. which gets dusty. so because i could no longer avoid the fact that the use value (to borrow a phrase), was more important than the surplus, or in this case aesthetic, value, i succumbed to the inevitable and dragged out the zip lock bags. first, i had to empty out the big basket, cos i knew that had stuff in it that i had saved and probably wasnt going to use. hence, this pile is being donated:

everything else is now safe in plastic, except for the socks, which are hiding under the green cloth, and a few random pinky articles which just look too pretty to be tidied. i may come to regret this lapse of reason, but it looks nice:

tidying up the stash was largely the result of having to tidy up my works-in-progress basket:

i have had this excellent basket for a few years now and have even been able to take it to knitting camp and snb with me etc, but alas, it is no more:

i needed somewhere to put the WIPS and that also meant tidying the under-the-coffee-table bits and pieces basket, which looked like this:

but now looks like this:

so things are now more organised, protected and accessible. after i had done all this organising, and taken the dogs to the park, it was time to sit and knit. a lot. so much so that my wrists got sore. but i am happy to announce that at 10pm last night i cast off the first sleeve on the mountain view cardigan:

i love the way this works, the lace cuff worked vertically across 40 stitches and then turned horizontal and 70 something stitches picked up to become the sleeve:

i am happy to report that it measures correctly indicating it may in fact, fit. this morning i have taken the dogs to the park again, need to write a journal article review and clean the bathroom, and then can sit and knit the second one. it being some sort of public holiday here tomorrow (apparently to 'celebrate' the invasion of the continent by the parasitic white man), i hope to have sleeve number two finished by night fall.

i hope my wrists hold up!

k xx

back to nature

2010-01-17T18:00:00.004+11:00

yesterday i managed to coerce some people to come for a picnic and bike ride in a state forest not far from home. it was a lovely afternoon, boys and dogs went off bike riding, kids explored, the sane people sat and knit (well some people also argued about the correct way to pronounce crochet) and then we ate cold fried chicken (home made, by me!) and salads and tart and party slice. no sliced beetroot out of a tin, however. out of all that, this is the only photo, not taken by me:

while we were sitting and knitting a storm approached and circled all around us. we sat under our pop up shade structure in camp chairs listening to thunder and avoding the light rain. it was so serene and peaceful and unusual. a whole new knitting experience!

this morning, i decided that my renewed affection for nature could no longer be extended to the wilderness that was threatening to overtake my yard (see previous post re reasons to hate summer down under). the tomato plants out the back have taken a beating lately. scorching heat followed by pouring rain meant the remaining fruit developed little black spots. and then i discovered the pest that was eating the good fruit just as it turned ripe:

who knew cattle dogs liked tomotoes?! anyway, thats all gone now. the pests remain however:

the little front garden had been overtaken by agapanthus that needed dead heading:

really, this stuff is a weed and should be banned. there was some other purple flowered woody weed in there that smelt like mint. its gone too:

nature is great, just so long as it stays neat and tidy.

k xx

like a dog with a bone

2010-01-15T11:18:00.003+11:00

we havent had any ricco pictures in a while, so i thought it was a time for an update. and a bit of news. the poor little thing had to have an operation on wednesday. he developed a lump on his right shoulder and it got bigger very quickly, the vet thought it was an infected grass seed. sometimes they can get under a dogs skin and work their way to the heart so we had to get it cut off. he was very sad and sorry when he came home:

and for a little lump they make a big mess! but he recovered almost immediately (unlike the collective bank balances) and was running around trying to grab possum's tail later the same day. yesterday we tried to keep him quiet. mission impossible. so today i am using food as a sedative, and they each have a big bone to chew:

ricco takes his as far away from the others as possible until hes done and then he goes around collecting everyone else's for the rest of the day. musical bones. its quite amusing. anyway, the vet didnt find a grass seed but it was just some free floating lump, not connected to any other tissue. she said he might be prone to them all his life but there is a treatment you can get that stops them growing as soon as you see them. we will watch to see if he develops more. at least its not a big deal and he is his usual happy crazy self. like trying to bite The Shoes:

i wore them to work yesterday and they made quite an impression. they were also extremely comfortable. no buyers-remorse there!

i am supposed to be working on a grant application today. our little 'risky sex' project is getting bigger than ben hur and is going to the gov'ment to get some money, if we are lucky. putting these applications together is a bitch. its given me a headache. literally. not helped by the fact that i have some kind of on-going throat infection type thing that i am being all 'male' about by 1) assuming its cancer and i am in fact dying and 2) refusing to go to the dr about. i did some internet research (no concerns about the quality of THAT science!) and i think its a 'globus' probably from really bad hay fever. hay fever sprays seems to make it a bit better. but i have made an appt for the dr on monday. its just annoying more than anything, and i didnt sleep well and am tired and just want to go have a cup of tea and a lie down, rather than be sitting here trying to write a one page explanation of my past 5 years research output relative to opportunity. in the career interruptions part, do you think it would be ok to write 'took six weeks off to finish lily cardigan in time for winter'??

speaking of which, i am a bit dog-with-a-bone like with two of my projects. i seem incapable of working on anything other than icarus:

or the mountain view cardigan. the latter has taken preference the last 2 days because i am tired and cant be arsed with 2 ply thread:

oops. my RMS session just timed out. oh well. off to the couch i go....

k xx

The Shoes

2010-01-12T07:12:00.007+11:00

last week there was a sale. i brought some shoes:

she made me do it. they are campers. i have never owned a pair before.

they are for walking. i giggled like a school girl when i put them on:

enough said.

k xx

too close to the sun

2010-01-10T18:26:00.004+11:00

in case you didnt notice, its been a bit warm lately. an australian summer really can feel like some kind of hell after a few days of relentless sunshine. i guess it was the years of miserable english winters that made botany bay seem like paradise, but i do wonder what on earth captain cook and his band of merry men were thinking. this place is not made for whitefellas. we go crazy here. the grass grows while you look at it. wild things hide under rocks and just wait for the sun to go down to wreak havoc on your garden, or your skin. constant sweat makes you prickle. sleepless nights make you cranky. and then theres the skin cancer. i am from swarthy polish stock and shouldnt be prone to such things but i had a lesion removed last year and since then i have been terrified of the sun. i went for a swim this morning, just laps in the pool, and i wear a rash vest over my swimmers so i dont get burnt and lather myself up like a bloody clown all for 45 minutes of up and down. ridiculous.

i am thinking a lot about the power of the sun at the moment because i have started the icarus shawl, and every time it grows a bit i think of the myth and the ability of the sun to make things wither and die. today however, my own icarus grew quite a lot (artfully posed in said garden thats threatening to take over the house):

ive already talked about the colour issue and the needle size. i was in sydney on thursday and picked up some smaller needles with the intention of swatching another little piece for comparison, but as i sat down to do it, i noticed a problem in the section i had done, and realised i had misread the pattern. so i frogged it and started again, this time on 3.25mm knitpicks harmony tips. i think this was a good move, the slight stickiness of the wooden tips is helping with the very fine yarn.

this is certainly the finest yarn i have ever knit with. its finer even than the zephyr silk we were using for myrtle. its a 2 ply cashmere, but so is the jade sapphire i am using for 'lily of the valley':

heres a close up for comparison:

so not all 2 plys are created equal, methinks. and neither are cashmeres. this knitters addiction is really lovely and will make a beautiful shawl. but when you fondle that jade sapphire stuff... well you know what i mean.

first world problem: some cashmeres are finer than others!

k xx

the road to hell...

2010-01-06T11:38:00.004+11:00

...is paved with 'works in progress', said someone on a writers blog the other day. also true for knitters. seeing as how i am already going there, in a hand basket even, i didnt think it would hurt if i cast on something else. its lace though, cos its the long lacy summer, so thats ok.

some background first. last summer i started the myrtle leaf shawl with bells. hers is of course, finished, and gorgeous. this is mine as of 5 minutes ago:

sigh. that picture indicates NO progress since my third attempt last february. ok, black laceweight is hard to work with but it was lovely yarn. and the pattern isnt actually that hard. i just could not keep the 11 stitch repeat correct. life lines, stitch markers, all to no avail.there was something about this pattern that robbed me of my lace mojo. when summer rolled around again i thought of taking it up again but have decided against it. i needed something fresh. something of my own. so i started the lily of the valley scarf from knitted lace of estonia. bells helped me with the nupps and now i am sailing along:

because i wanted it longer and thinner than the original pattern i just worked out how to delete some of the pattern repeats and i can manage one repeat of 28 rows in one session. i am using a life line, just in case, but so far (apart from some minor issues in the first repeat which my yarnharlot calendar for today says i am not to tell you about), its going well. i am enjoying it, its easy to follow once the pattern is set up, its lovely and delicate and different. and its red cashmere. it has been a terrific project to get my lace mojo moving again.

i did still want to make a shawl for me this summer and had a few designs and yarn matches in mind, including a pi shawl and something more complicated from estonian lace, but then shelley sent me some lovely knitters addiction cashmere for my birthday and, after seeing bells' and jody's, it begged to be an icarus:

a little story about this yarn tho. i picked a particular colour. i picked this one, deep umber. this is NOT the colour that arrived. the colour that arrived was a rusty reddish orange-brown, more like this one. not my thing at all. then a clever knitty chick saw it and offered to overdye it for me. i asked for it to be like her fabulous bruised bloodwood, and so it is. just stunning. i cast on yesterday using 3.5mm sticks as i dont have any 3.25mm and i am a bit concerned that its making the stitches a bit too open:

i know lace is meant to be open, but the yarn is very fine and it feels a bit awkward. i am going to get some 3.25mm needles tomorrow and do a comparison swatch, just to make sure. what do you think?

at any rate, i am very pleased to have the lace mojo back, and to have such lovely stuff as cashmere to be playing with and wearing. im sure it shall make the trip to hades so much more comfortable!

k xx

normal programming

2010-01-04T18:07:00.003+11:00

why is it that even when commerical tv channels put some semi-decent shows on over summer, they still pull them off in the weeks around christmas and new year? call me low brow, but i have had no survivor and no supernatural for a few weeks now and its irritating. i am of course happy to see the cricket, and you may think im a national traitor, but i especially like to see the cricket when australia are losing (like yesterday, for example). (the reasons for my dislike of the australian cricket team are many and varied, ranging from a dislike of arrogance, racism and nationalism, to a fond memory of seeing the west indies live as a child). at any rate, i am grateful for the invention of the dvd which has allowed me, these last couple of rainy summer days, to indulge my high-brow self with 'wives and daughters' and 'daniel deronda'.

but they are finished now and life must return to something like normal with the dreaded return to work. i have avoided this largely today by working a bit from home, which also included a turn about the park with the puppies, and finishing the right front of the mountain view cardigan. but there is a grant application to write this week and i must force myself to go in tomorrow. i intend to avoid again on thurs with a trip to the big smoke to check out some sales and a movie. oh, and a certain knitting group!

meanwhile i have been playing with my food safari cookbook christmas present. i think i mentioned i made the tiramisu. hmmm, six raw eggs separated and beaten for half an hour makes very light and fluffy. note, eat this kind of tiramisu on the day you make it. not two days later. or you get sick. very sick.

i only felt well enough to cook again on sat night when i ventured into food safari land again and made the char sui pork:

when purchased from the bbq king, this is possibly my favourite thing in the whole entire world. the food safari recipe gives you a few secrets and tips to get this as close to authentic as possible:

the only thing that would make it more authentic i think would be to actually bbq it. it was delicious:

i liked it so much im making it again tonight. not the tiramisu though. not for a little while yet.

k xx

a blank slate

2010-01-01T17:42:00.006+11:00

i have no desire to relive 2009. none at all, thank you very much. for the most part, it sticks in my mind as a Not Very Good Year. it had good bits, and some really good things happened/lessons were learned, but i am unspeakably relieved that its over and the year ahead looks like putting things back on an even keel (touch wood she says).

some clever people have been talking about all the marvellous things they made in 2009 so i thought i would do the same, and i am not surprised to find that my ravelry notebook lists a mere 13 finished projects for the last twelvemonth. however, 2009 was a big growth year for me knitting wise. becoming a more active part of collective knitting, blogging and ravelry meant that i was exposed to new techniques, new patterns and a great deal of Growth As A Knitter. it also meant i experimented a lot and a lot of these experiments, technically speaking, failed. as in, they didnt produce a finished result, but they certainly taught me a lot. hence, my knitting for 2010 is likely to be more precise, of better quality and have a more structured and planned approach to what i make. i have a couple of tools on hand to help with this. one of these is the yarn harlot's 'thought a day' desk calendar:

trent saw this in town a month or so ago and thought i would like it. i do. i like it very much. a little bit of stephanie to start the day makes the world a brighter place.

the other thing is my knitting journal. this is a little notebook i got in florence in 2007 with the express purpose of using it as a journal and it starts with projects from january 2008:

(the picture is a detail of gozzoli's fresco 'calvalcata dei magi' from the chapel at the palazzo medici-riccardi). i keep fairly good records of projects as i start them, including a ball band where possible and a snip of the wool, keep count of rows, and try and write down any modifications as i go:

and now it is full and it is time to start a new journal. for my birthday my sister brought me one of these:

and because i have a lovely red filofax for my work diary, and because i want to be just like rosered (joke), i think it will make a good knitting journal. i dont usually have one with days in it, but this layout might be an excuse to start a project a week in 2010! (this of course doesnt mean i have to finish them!!). at any rate, it presents a nice blank slate on which to turn the year ahead into whatever i choose.

and because i am now obsessed with that mosaic tool, i went and upgraded my flickr and have made another picture of 2009's FOs. there is one project not present here, as i didnt have a picture of the finished object, but you can read a lengthy exposition on its origins, progress and current living arrangements here. the remaining 12 are below.

1. kai mei socks, 2. regia stripey toe ups, 3. aestlight shawl, 4. blackrose socks, 5. feb lady sweater, 6. liesl closeup, 7. koigu no-war socks, 8. cauchy socks, 9. turn a square hat, 10. lily mark 2, 11. monkeys, 12. weldons scarf

2010. who would have thunk it? here's to blank slates.

k xx

no particular order

2009-12-30T17:26:00.004+11:00

the last few days have flown past in a blur of knitting, baking, socialising and trying not to think too much. my first attempt at representation through mosaic is below, in no particular order!

1. wingello, 2. wingello flower, 3. wingello log, 4. raspberry jelly, 5. left over tiramisu, 6. pressies, 7. pressie to self, 8. baking, 9. baked, 10. coffee, 11. xmas morning, 12. my first ham, 13. carving, 14. diggies lunch, 15. bulli xmas eve, 16. forest walk boxing day, 17. lily of the valley, 18. mv front, 19. gansey sox, 20. food safari italian

christmas day itself was hard - i know a lot of people have family difficulties but this year i felt any family at all would have been nice. some habits are hard to break, and wishing it was just another day that i could ignore does not actually make it so.

boxing day was better, it rained heavily and we took off up to the forest where it was misty and wet and cold among the pine trees. trent tried his hand at moutain bike riding with the dogs which ended in an adventure (lets just say those GPS things in the car come in handy sometimes!)

and then bells and sean arrived and we had a lovely time for the next three days, meeting up with jane and andrew and ailsa and alan and donni, and eating lots and knitting and drinking and laughing. and watching some bbc george eliot of course! that part was over too quickly.

i am lucky to have friends who more than make up for family, both absent and dysfunctional! hope you had a good one.

k xx

Gaak and Gah

2009-12-21T11:58:00.003+11:00

i have some knitting growth to report. growth both in terms of the length of the piece of knitted object, and Growth of self As A Knitter. and then there's the gah factor, but we'll get to that....

so the growth is in the form of the back of the Moutain View Cardigan knit in NZ Naturally Atlante bamboo. here it is in all its glory:

i am very pleased with this so far. it measures correctly when laid flat, but i think it will have a bit of 'sag' in it, bamboo is weird stuff, soft and light but also kind of heavy when held upright. i think the rib band at the waist is probably a good idea, as is the knitting in pieces with seams thing. i know when i started knitting it was all in pieces and so tedious once i had discovered knitting inthe round, which i thought represented 'growth as a knitter' (and it does) but i think it also represents growth to be able to learn from my top down, knitted in the round pieces that havent quite worked, and to admit that sometimes the old way of doing things is the best way. not just for old times sake, but because there is a point to good patient workmanship, and its a lesson i need to learn properly. i tried hard to take my time and be patient with the lace panel because i really wanted it to be right:

i think there is maybe one or two places where i swapped the order of the yarn over/knit two together but you can hardly tell and it will block out anyway. this kind of lace, and shaping, in a garment, also represent growth for me. i learnt my lesson about bulky lace with both leisl and the february lady, and i am starting to think that shaped garments look better on me than shapeless hessian sack type things, so i am greatly enjoying this project all round. and i can do it in the heat, the bamboo doesnt make my hands sweat at all! weeeeeeee!!

it is also a sign of growth that when i had finished the back, i didnt just cast on the front straight away. i have made a committment to getting my lace mojo back by starting something from the estonian lace book and you saw the start of the lily of the valley scarf a couple of posts ago. i did as advised, and put in a lifeline before i started the main body chart, and lucky i did because me and nupps, not doing so well. i knit very tight at the best of times, so to have an instruction that reads "K1,YO, K1,YO, K1 loosely into the same stitch" reads a little bit like greek to me. and then trying to purl those 5 together on the way back...there you have the Gah! factor. i tried sliding it back down the cable but then i got all unco-ordinated and it just didnt look right, and then my next row went funny on the stitch count and then i got frustrated so then this happened:

dont worry, its back on the needles now, just above the lifeline, but i am going to wait for bells to get here after christmas and she can demonstrate how to twist my lovely 2 ply mongolian cashmere into knots. i started the front of the cardigan instead. knitting crisis averted. when i texted bells to tell her, she texted back that sean was wondering whether i would have anything else to go on with. isnt that cute?!

meanwhile, i hope to have some Growth As A Baker to report tomorrow, with fruit cake rum balls and pastry for mince pies on the menu.

k xx

thinking too much

2009-12-16T08:45:00.004+11:00

i have been holding off on posting because i wanted to have the back of the mountain view cardi done to show off but alas, not quite. its almost at the neck shaping, but another day or two yet, and some things have happened in the last few days that have got me thinking.

despite claims of apathy, we are a very political mob down here in the antipodes. most of our comedy (well, the good stuff) is political satire, and even when they think they don't, every tom dick and harriet has a political opinion. when you're forced to vote, you tend to pay a bit more attention. and also, theres that whole rabble rousing convict/migrant history thing. so there's been a lot going on this week but technically speaking, i am one of the apathetic ones. in my opinion, the only good politician is a dead one, and we'd better off in a state of anarchy because really, this is the only option for true, total, freedom. yeah yeah i know, dont lecture me about human nature and how it wont work. i know. im just saying is all.

but two things of particular note have grabbed my attention in the last 24 hours and i think they are flip sides of the same ridiculous nanny state coin. first, the ever-brilliant minister for communications stephen conroy (not the fake one) announces plans to introduce legislation to filter internet service provider content. of course, the chattering classes are already busy chattering away about how AWFUL it is, which it is, its just so fucking stupid its beyond words. we get all self-righteous about the chinese government censoring reporters content from the olympics, and this is different how? but really its just the tip of the iceberg. if you think we arent already being monitored, filtered, herded, tapped and surveilled, think again.

ever since "september 11", governments have had all sorts of excuses to tighten the screws in the name of security. one of these methods was the banning of knitting needles in australian airports. i dont need to tell you how much pain, anger, frustration and outrage this has caused, let alone the plethora of stories people can tell about their run ins with flight stewards over a crochet hook while some exec in business class remains unmolested about his metal fork and fountain pen. today, however, it looks set to change. reason prevails.

so, the government giveth, the government taketh away. they were talking about this story on the morning news shows and there was a moment when i thought someone was going to make fun of knitters. i held my breath waiting for someone to say 'grandmas everywhere will be happy' but i think they stopped themselves. they thought about it, but they didnt quite go there. lucky for them, because after the weekend, i know im feeling a little touchy about public criticisms and perceptions of knitting. i know i shouldnt care, i know its good that people were interested, but i never knew sitting with a group of women knitting in public would attract so many weird questions. here we were, quietly minding our own business (ok, not so quietly):

and yet, quite a number of people felt the need to come up and ask us what we were doing (its called knitting), were we part of some group (no its not a cult) where we knitting for charity or a cause (yes, me), and were we knitting the same thing (gah, not likely!). yes its nice that people were interested, but why is it so weird to see a group of younger women knitting in public? why do people still assume its a granny thing? do we look like grannies? why do i feel uncomfortable in some places when i pull out my pair of socks? why is it considered rude if i knit during a lecture, or at dinner? i am perfectly capable of multitasking, its just stocking stitch after all! why do people on public transport think its ok to gape and stare? do i have two heads? NO! im just knitting. at least the government no longer considers me a potential terrorist, so maybe the rest of the world might cut us some slack now.

there is something so peaceful and meditative about knitting, i have come to rely on it for all sorts of things. its like a cocoon, the place i go to be 'left alone' when i feel under assualt, the place i go to relax, to just breath, to just BE. maybe all those people busy staring and gaping should try it sometime.

its especially important to me at this time of year when i find myself a little more flustered than i like. its crazy at work, but only two days to go. i have been trying to avoid thinking about christmas. it has a long and complicated history in my head, and i have been trying to detach myself from it. for a while i thought of avoiding it completely, but have succumbed to some present buying and card sending:

(this little pressie is going across the ditch if youre reading ms fairie!) i feel better actually, doing this. and i bought a tacky little self-lighting christmas tree for the mantlepiece! i have a nice quiet christmas day with trent and puppies planned and then i am greatly looking forward to a variety of after christmas social gatherings, including some cool chick and her hubbie coming to stay. and i have a whole heap of reading planned:

i am going to force myself to not start the milennium trilogy books until next week, so in the meantime i picked up three little booker prize winner re-issues. i think that should tide me over.

and then theres always a cute puppy to make you think that everythings right with the world!

ooh weird camera flash blue eyes. yes he is on my bed. and i dont care what anyone thinks about that!

k xx

here goes nuppin'

2009-12-09T11:49:00.006+11:00

i have been contemplating starting something from the lovely 'knitted lace of estonia' book that the dear dr g gave me for my birthday. i have read the book, identified particular projects, encouraged bells to figure out how to do nupps before i did, and have now settled on, and started, something: the lily of the valley scarf. i had to frog the victorian ruby scarf first, because it was boring and not doing justice to the yarn, a luxurious jade sapphire mongolian cashmere, remarkably similar to the yarn suggested in the pattern. i also had to do some maths (eeeeeck! i was so bad at, and so BORED by, maths at school that my maths teacher, mr howarth (oh yes i remember you) used to suggest i do my english homework and just. be. quiet. the fact that he was right about my need for maths in later life will not be mentioned ever again).

the maths required here was fairly simple however, given that all i was trying to do was work out how to make the scarf thinner. firstly i wanted to knit it on 3.5mm needles rather than the 3.25mm suggested, mostly because i didnt have a set of 3.25 at home! also, the jade sapphire is a slightly fuzzy 2 ply so slightly larger sticks would be ok. but this meant that i probably needed to lose a repeat somewhere, given its a rather wide pattern already and i didnt want to add to that.

the calculations ended up being fairly straighforward, even though there is a different border edging to the main lace of the chart and the stitch counts for the respective repeats are slightly different. i did some sums to make sure that dropping repeats in the border would still line up with the main body pattern:

and it turns out i just needed to drop 2 border pattern repeats and 1 body pattern repeat, meaning i cast on 43 stitches rather than 63, which probably sounds like a lot but really isnt, when you account for blocking as well. i knitted the 21 rows of the border pattern last night, slowly, carefully, counting all the time and am pretty chuffed:

it is definitely wide enough for my tastes, and already feels so soft and smooshy. there are no nupps in the border, they start in the main body pattern, which i will start tomorrow, but i am feeling strengthened by the success so far, and the wisdom of those who have gone before.

i now have on the needles all the projects i need to get me through a long hot lacy socky summer and enough variety for different moods and occassions. and no pressure. the relief is tremendous!

and just because, here are some pictures of little Ricco, who is just so much fun. everything he does is done with energy and excitement and he is learning so quickly. he loves to tug, which is great:

and he loves to chew, my crocs and trents socks are particular favourites (imagine if you can trent running after a thong-carrying puppy shrieking no not the havaianas!):

he sits for his dinner, stays on his mat, hasnt peed inside, knows his name and comes when called:

so far, a very welcome addition to the house. and hes left the knitting alone this week. lets hope he doesnt develop a taste for nupps!

k xx

treading water

2009-12-07T08:46:00.013+11:00

i have been very tired lately. that kind of tired that gets into your bones and gives you dark circles under your eyes, even though im sleeping ok. all my muscles ache, and i have bad hay fever, but mostly i think i have a lot on my mind and its weighing me down a bit at the moment, if you know what i mean. nothing serious or bad really, but work is crazy and when you know you only have 2 weeks before a decent break, its hard to keep getting up in the morning! and its coming up to that time of year, and that makes me pensive.

dont worry, im not going to bore you with my personal demons around the whole christmas thing, except to say christmas is what you make it and i have lots to look forward to this year. ok, so i wont be giving any hand made presents, but i am going to be baking. i started this weekend with fruit mince, for fruit mince tarts. i think these are my favourite christmas things, apart from maybe fresh prawns, glazed ham, ice cream pudding (my own recipe), mangoes and swimming in the pool. in relation to the fruit mince, i started with chopping:

and then i realised i have a food processor (of sorts, i desperately need a new one). so it got processed:

and then mixed with lots of brandy and butter:

and stored in a cool dark place:

i am going to make the pastry from scratch too, but not until the day before they are required.

as reported earlier, i started some simple rib socks, here they are with a bit of length:

i am in love with this colour. i really need to do something about my cuff-down cast-ons though!

meanwhile, both the puppy and the cardigan grew over the weekend. the cardigan remains in one piece but the puppy's bed (which was actually Possum's) does not:

lucky for him hes so cute:

meanwhile, i turned the last page on Wolf Hall two nights ago. i have been reading this slowly at night for a few weeks now and i am not going to review it, that has been done by better minds than mine and i do so hate it when people talk about books on their blogs as though their own 'like' or 'dislike' qualifies as a a 'review'. but i would strongly suggest you get thee to a bookshop and read it. i feel a bit bereft without it. i dont know what to read next, as the pile by the bed indicates:

(the bottom shelf is the 'recently read' pile. i am quite done with vampires, by the way). i am consoling myself with the lilting poetry that is forsters 'a room with a view' (a book and movie i almost know line by line), and then am going to re-read some edith wharton (its easy to forget, in the shadow of all the great english writers, that late 19th century americans were really very good). i am treading water, reading wise, because i want to start the stieg larrson trilogy, but am buying it for myself for christmas, so must wait another two weeks.

and then after that, this year, this horrible year, will be over, and i can start swimming again.

k xx

hey pesto

2009-12-04T09:13:00.004+11:00

this is one of those posts where theres lots of 'things in process' and nothing particularly new or revelatory happening. i am trying to refrain from political comment. call me apathetic, but people go on and on about politics as though any of it matters, as though there is a difference between a Monk and a Bishop, or a Blueblood and a Krudd, when really they are all cut from the same cloth (centrist conservative) and all answer to the same boss (the great overlord Capital). i watch and laugh and think its no wonder Gen Y are busy getting drunk. wouldnt you, if you were their age (in this world)? i know i did.

so, in the interests of sticking my head in the sand, i hereby post pictures of last nights dinner in preparation:

fresh pesto. when i had this in italy (where it was called spaghetti genovese and had no potatoes like that would have here) it was bright bright green, all the way through, like they'd dyed the spaghetti. it was the best thing i'd ever eaten, apart from the proscuttio panini from the florence market, or the choc chip gelato from a street stall near the vatican, or the garlic prawn pizza in cagliari, or the roast piglet on a farm near ghilarza. ah italy.

sorry, i digress.

this pesto was pretty good, probably a bit heavy on the garlic and a bit light on the salt. little ricco slept in possum's bed while i chopped. gratuitous puppy shot:

he is really doing very well, learning the routine, being adorable, biting everything. and grabbing my knitting every chance he can get. he grabbed the mountain view cardigan off the lounge the other day and ran off to his bed with it. cute but evil. i shrieked and moved quickly. it appears as though bamboo is hardy stuff though, because there was no mark. it also appears as though bamboo is waterproof because i knocked over a bottle of water at lunch the other day and it gushed across the same table as the spread out cardigan. again, its funny how fast a person can move when knitting is in danger. but the water merely formed beads on the surface and didnt soak in. a cardigan that is also a raincoat. interesting. here is a picture of where its at, anyway:

and a not very good detail of the lace panel:

this seems easy enough and i think its right so far, but knowing me i will get another few cms in and discover its all wrong. regardless, i am very much enjoying knitting this and i think its going to look pretty good, if i can stay on track!

and because i need some mindless knitting (the diamond gansey socks require a chart), i cast on some magic socks:

just using a basic rib pattern from vintage socks and cuff down this time, because i like the idea of having a pair of toe-ups and cuff-downs happening at the same time.

of course, i hear a certain yarn club package is on its way, providing more evil startitis temptation. i have something else i want to start first, more about that next week.

k xx

accidentally on purpose

2009-11-30T14:36:00.006+11:00

kind of by accident, we have a new addition to the house. sidebar\: for some people who have been reading for a while and wonder about the 'we' i might as well let you know that my ex-partner-of-14-years, (who became 'ex' earlier this year, but remained a friend) is now living in my little house because things happened at his place that meant he couldnt stay there, and so now he is my housemate. sometimes he pays rent (thats an in-joke. of course he pays rent), and as he is about to embark on a career change (swapping IT for law-student), he will be staying here for, um, a little while. it means the dogs are here together, and he does all the cooking and cleaning (oh happy me) and, he even irons. no he is not for hire. anyway, he's here, the dogs are here, we still do dog stuff together, and a couple of days ago, we got another dog. technically its 'his' dog but who can deny the puppy love, and hes a real cutey:

his name is Ricco (from one of our favourite types of coffee (lavazza creme e gusto: gusto ricco), which i bought back from italy a couple of years ago and have not been able to buy here at all. anywhere). he is a border collie cross staffordshire terrier, a very rare mix in australia. it is a very popular mix in american flyball, where the current world record holding team is 4 border/staffies . (i cant find a working video of the run sorry but its pretty spectacular). and we had once upon a time talked about getting one from america. this one was in the tweed shire pound, on the north coast near byron bay, with his mum and three siblings. his mum is the staffie. the reason we have this one is because a fellow flyballer, who worked at that pound, posted to the flyball list about him last week, and some phone calls were made, conversations had, 'tests' carried out and a long drive there and back conducted. it was one of those things where the opportunity comes up and you just go for it. probably best not to think about it too much or you'll convince yourself its a bad idea. we had been thinking about another dog, maybe in the new year, but couldnt decide on a breed. did trent want one for flyball, or agility, or herding? it looks like the flyball-gods answered that one! we dont know really know how tall hes going to be, or if he will be a suitable crazy flyball dog, but its worth a try. and hes just lovely.

hes totally into the tugging games already ( an essential for flyball) and very friendly with people. he wants desperately to play with possum and shes thinking about it. she is not overly fond of him up close just yet:

and jem is being very good, just ignoring him mostly, sniffing him every so often, and not too much resource guarding (ie jealousy).

hes a very relaxed puppy, he is already happy to be in a crate, travelled really well to canberra and back this weekend, follows the other two around, hasnt peed inside (touch wood), and bites my toes if i am bare foot. i love him to bits already! i have, however, had to move all my wool out of the lounge room where it made a nice design feature and into my room. just now he grabbed a project bag out of the WIP basket and tried to kill a cobblestone. hmmmm.

speaking of WIPs. the christmas- gift-angst thing has been solved by executive decree number two hundred and sixty four: there will be no hand made christmas gifts. sorry girls. two of the three shawls have been frogged entirely and the third is now destined for a post christmas finish and maybe a show appearance instead. i have a bettergift idea anyway. and so i am free to pursue my love of all things bamboo. here is the bottom of the back piece:

i am at the ribbed waist now, and have 5 cms of 4x2 rib to do. i was worried about ribbing pulling the waist in tight but i dont think it will:

its quite an ingenious design. i think connie chang is like, a god. i have also started work on the diamond ganseys from the toe-up, and am very happy with my magic cast on and magic looping:

and the magic that is patonyle. this probably wont be done by christmas either. in the meantime, they are very happy to be carried around in my one and only piece of ravelry merchandise:

it arrived in double quick time last week. i love it, and i know bob is a boston terrier, not a border/staffie, but he is black and white! and a dog. and we know how i feel about cute little black and white dogs!!

k xx

S1N1

2009-11-24T21:15:00.003+11:00

i have found the cure for shawl flu. it goes like this. knit one really lovely aestlight out of really lovely silk/merino, promptly give it away and try to knit another one, grow bored with it, and then start two more shawls that are meant to be christmas presents. stand back and watch it all go pear shaped. do i get a large government grant for that discovery?

perhaps its just knitting karma, come back to bite because i debated about giving the first aestlight away. perhaps its the knitting fairy (probably the same one who distorts the patterns i am reading right before my eyes, putting in instructions that werent there before), taunting me for giving away the one nice shawl ive finished this year. not that im blaming the gift giving that was done. i dont regret that. i think its more about the gift giving i was GOING to do.

i started months ago you know, because i am a slow knitter, and a time poor one, and i really wanted to give hand made presents to at least 3 people in particular. last week i started to feel the pressure when things that should have been easy became difficult, and i contemplated abandoning the gift kntting, but i sought advice and strengthened my resolve. i fixed one problem and ripped out another, determined to start that one again. and then tonight, just when i was on the home stretch of the one with the fixed-problem, i realised i was going to run out of yarn. look:

i have since found another small ball that resulted from bad winding, is it possible i have enough?

in which case i wont cry just yet.

but i dont think the third gift is going to get done. it was to be the syrian shawl. this is what it looks like now:

you know how its a really easy pattern? the knitting fairy obviously LOOOOOVES really easy patterns. bitch. i hate that fairy.

my consolation is a large pile of bamboo that was delivered yesterday so that i would have enough to finish my Project For Me, the mountain view cardigan. of course, i dont need all of it right now, but i rang the shop that i got the original 5 balls from, and they had some more, same dye lot and everything, so, you know.....

and maybe therein lies the problem. starting the knitting for me, in amongst the gift knitting, has obviously caused a problem. perhaps i was distracted, thinking about bamboo when i should have been thinking about alpaca. obviously i was thinking about me when i should have been thinking about Others. and i was overly ambitious. three shawls in three months? three shawls all at once? obviously a recipe for disaster. at any rate, it has cured me of my itch to knit small shawls. i wont be starting another one in A. Very. Long. Time.

k xx

made for...self

2009-11-16T12:28:00.004+11:00

when updating my ravelry notebook lately, i have mostly been putting ??? in the Made For field to designate its a gift, and im not telling who for. i have two items, however, one finished, one just started, that are made for me.

the first is the kai mei socks:

this pattern is from cookie a's sock innovation book. there are lots of bulky cables etc in this book that leave me cold, but this one stood out, and the way the pattern curves around the foot is really, truly, innovative. and really surprisingly simple. i loved knitting these, and the finished product is worth every tedious minute of 3x3 rib! the yarn is 'socks that rock' lightweight in 'mustang sally', knitted on knitpicks nickel dpns, size 2.5 i think. it was nice to finish a pair of socks for me, even tho i won't wear them for a while, but i now must cast on 2 more pairs, neither for me, and get them done by christmas. eep.

all this christmas knitting, especially being smaller projects, has left me itching for something large and garmenty and meant for me. its bad of me to want this, because i promised myself i would knit presents for christmas and time is slipping away. but i need something that is not a shawl and not on tiny sticks, and so when i went to my old snb in sydney on thurs night (sooo much fun, by the way), i saw jody knitting one of these, and suddenly, i knew what i must do.

so i cast on, yesterday, too many stitches so i ripped it out then cast it on again in a smaller size:

the yarn, my friends (you may start drooling now) is nz naturally 'atlante'. its 100% bamboo. if you touched it you would not believe me, you would swear its silk, or the softest most expensive italian spun merino. but no, its just plain old bamboo, black with a beautiful shimmer to it and slight variegation every so often. its going to be beautiful. i know this is not a top-down-raglan- knit-in-the-round, which is the kind of garment i swore i 'would only ever make from now on', however, for a larger size and in such a drapey yarn, i think pieces with seams is the way to go. it also means i can knit it slowly, in little bits, over summer, rather than have the whole thing in my lap at once. and the bamboo doesnt make my hands sweat, so its perfect for hot weather. it also has a lace panel in the back. i wonder if this means it also qualifies for 'long lacy summer' knitting? bells?!

k xx

summer socks and shawls

2009-11-12T09:17:00.007+11:00

thanks very much everyone for the supportive and encouraging feedback on the last post. i was pretty nervous about putting that stuff out there, its a fine line to draw between too much info and being closed and secretive, but im glad i took the risk! also, in the line of taking risks, i survived the day long ordeal that was my presentation/lunch/interview and was pipped at the post for the job by one of those young white male middle class overachievers who does nothing except write articles. i didnt expect to get the job over him, so i am not surprised, and only a little disappointed. it was a good experience and i learnt a lot, and will help me renegotiate my current position, so its all cool.

and now for something completely different. and much more important, really. that is, knitting content! yay! i am again a participant in both the long hot summer of socks and lace. i was struck with shawl flu a while ago, and made one lovely aestlight and then started another (that one is just on the border and nearly finished). i then tried ishbel numerous times with the purple wollmeise but that didnt work so i went with damson, which i have made a mistake on and need to rip back about 10 rows, but otherwise thats easy. also easy, surprisingly, is a pattern i completely overlooked in victorian lace, but which i saw being knitted by a little bit crafty person and was smitten. i have started one in some baby alpaca. hmmm smooshy:

i have also finally finished my first pair of toe ups. these were an interesting learning experience.

the sock on the right was the first one to be constructed. after quite some time trying to get my head, and thumbs, around judy's magic cast on, i followed the instructions of others who had gone before. so the toe was increase every round until 40 stitches and then every second round until 72 i think. the heel is a gusset one but i followed the wendy johnson pattern that bells had given me off the internets thingy. i did a normal cast off and realised why you dont do that, unpicked it and did a sewn bind off, i think that was also off the internets. i liked the toe on this one, but didnt like the way the heel attached to the gusset, there is something about the stitch definition that was a bit off.

by the time it came to sock number two i had acquired the wendy johnson 'socks from the toe up' book. i used her basic gusset sock pattern and followed it to the letter. the toe is not cool. it was very pointy, partly because i started with two few stitches, and then the pattern says to increase every second row from the beginning. this made a long pointy toe which fits ok but not as good as the other one. i left it though, because i wanted these socks to be a kind of testament to my toe up learning experience! the gusset on this one is much better, and i did a russian bind off which was easy but a bit messy. partly because the cuff is in 1x1 rib and that bind off works better for stitches in equal pairs, so i will do that differently next time. i think i will get better with the cast offs as i do more of these.

the good news is that i love toe ups. hello, no grafting! i used magic loop, on a 2.5mm knitpicks fixed cable, and the yarn is lovely regia kaffe fasset, and i want to make a pair in each of the striped colourways! i have some green and blue stripey to make for my sister, and having seen a certain pair of knee-highs, i am so doing them as well. before then, however, my next pair of socks to cast on will be a pair of the traditional ganseys from the wendy johnson book, in a lovely chocolate patonyle. boy socks, for a christmas present.

however, i am not abandoning cuff downs, or DPNs either. the other socks i have OTN are the almost finished kai-meis. apart from being stunning, in all their 'mustang sally' goodness, they are fun, and DPNs feel great. my next pair of DPN cuff down socks are going to be embossed leaves, also for the sister, and i like the idea of having one type of each on the go at the same time. i do think magic loop toe ups make ideal car knitting however, so i am feeling quite pleased that i have added this new skill to my knitting repertoire.

all of this knitting is xmas present oriented. i hate xmas and hate the whole gift buying thing, so i am trying to go handmade for the most part (which equates to hand knit, as i am not a sewer or quilter or any other kind of crafter). once this is all out of the way, i have some very exciting lacy summer projects to blog about. they may involve cashmere, and maybe also nupps.

stay tuned.

k xx

significant milestones

2009-11-07T16:12:00.004+11:00

summer approaches, and the garden turns into some kind of wild living green beast:

it seems inevitable that i am drawn to reflect on the huge changes that have taken place in my life, recently, and over an extended period of time. i used to hate change, i railed against it and tried to control it, but now i realise life is change. nothing stays still, nothing stays the same. the last week or two has really brought this home.

i am about to do something on this blog that people usually advise strongly against, and i have been thinking about it for a month or more, as a particular significant milestone in my life approached. people advise to not give away too much of yourself on your blog, and certainly to not identify your real-life self in any way. most of the people who read this blog know me, and some of them know already this thing i am about to share, but some dont and i am a bit nervous about how it may change people's perceptions of me. really, i dont think it should, but thats part of the reason im blogging it. people keep too much about themselves secret, and so we live in fear of each other, of what and who we dont know or understand. the other reason im blogging this is because it isnt actually something i should be ashamed of. i am, and should be, proud, and i wonder if the more people talked about this kind of personal stuff, the more we would realise we had in common, and the less judgemental we would all be.

so, lets cut to the chase shall we? november 2nd 2009 represented 15 years, to the day, that i decided to change my life for good. on wednesday november 2, 1994, i walked, voluntarily, in the door of what was then ward 25 at rozelle hospital (i think its been moved to concord now). i stayed there for 7 days and then checked into a long term residential treatment facilty in stanmore, sydney. i lived there for over a year as i kicked and screamed and laughed and fought and cried my way into a better life. i didnt leave there cured, or 'recovered', or even greatly changed. i just stopped using drugs and alcohol. there were so many things i needed to change about myself but to contemplate them all so early seemed overwhelming. sometimes i lay awake at night in a cold sweat of fear not knowing how i would get through the next day, let alone the rest of my life. i was terrified of being alone. i was terrified of my feelings, i thought if i gave in to the pain and anger and hurt and frustration inside of me i would drown. i didnt know who i was, or what i wanted to be when i grew up, i had major issues with my mother, was scared of women, didnt know how to relate to men in anything even remotely resembling a healthy manner, was 26 on the outside and about 10 on the inside. i had no job, no career, had screwed up at uni more times than i could count, had a large amount of debt, was wanted by the law, had bright pink hair, a nose ring, and wore flanelette shirts with either doc martens or bare feet.

but i was alive. and free. by all rights i shouldnt have been. i had flirted with death and the police more times than was wise. i had seen other people disappear down either path, sometimes both. i tried to reconcile with my family but made a mess of that, and i moved in with someone, into a relationship, when all advised against it. we survived 14 years together. sometimes it was a close call. but i dont think either of us would have made it on our own.

but we have. we separated, and both survived. once i had thought a process like that would kill me, but i handled it so well! and now we are living together again, as friends, sharing the custody of our dogs who have brought so much joy to our lives.

i think i regret not having kids, but it was probably a wise decision. instead, i do crazy weird shit with my dogs, and put up with crazy weird dog people, who make me realise how far ive come, how much ive changed. and now i am 'over 40'. i pay tax. i get angry at the world. i fear for the environment, for young people. i wish i could smash the capitalist system and we could all go back to living in grass huts! meanwhile, i live in a lovely house.

i have lots of stuff. i drive a good quality car. i have a great job. i have a phd. on tuesday i am being interviewed for a proper permanent academic position at a university. i have a 1 in 4 chance of getting it. i have so many friends i cant believe my luck. i have learnt to knit. and to be good at it! i have some of my family back. i am loved, and i love.

this is the most amazing part for me. that now, i can cry, i can feel anger, joy, pain, frustration, and it doesnt frighten me anymore. i embrace it, because it means i am alive. 15 years ago i stood at a fork in the road. down one path lay insanity, imprisonment, death. it looked inviting. down the other lay a complete unknown, fear, loneliness. it looked terrifying. but something made me take the second path and im so glad i did.

i am writing this because i want people to know that there are many like me, who have not walked an easy path, who have strayed from the straight and narrow, but who can, and do, get their lives back together. we are not bad people, we just made bad choices, and sometimes circumstances did conspire against us! i am not now who i was then, but i am the sum of my past and the future still to come. and for others who still struggle, and i know there are many, i promise its worth taking the path into the unknown future. it has so far exceeded my expectations, i cant believe i wasted 10 years in the wilderness for fear of what has turned out to be only beautiful and amazing.

if there are people reading this who need help please reach out, there is help if you need it.

k xx

world dog games

2009-11-02T13:58:00.003+11:00

its all over. four long days of travel to and from homebush and acer arena, the site of the inaugural world dog games. there were 4 dog sports showcased, flyball, agility, canine disc (frisbee) and dock diving. you had to qualify in order to compete, both jem and possum tried out for the dock diving and jem decided he no longer wished to jump off a tall plank into 4 feet of water. possum loved it, and qualified, but because her flyball team also qualified they wouldnt let her do both. so flyball it was. they only took 4 teams, and the total team time had to be under 19 seconds. there are currently only 4 times in australia that run less than 19 seconds and possum was already in one of those teams, but because you had to have 6 dogs (4 to race, 2 reserves), and our usual team only had 4 dogs, we put in a make up team with a dog from the south coast and a dog from victoria. it was fun and challenging to have people and dogs we usually dont race with, and they fitted in really well.

there was 2 days of preparation before the event and then two days of performance. you can see a snippet of the rehearsal here, the people wearing red shirts are my team (im one of the people putting the balls in the spring loaded box. this is called box loading. despite what some people think, this is the most important job in flyball, cos last time i looked dogs couldnt load their own balls. right? right). when you see a guy yelling 'possum, come on baby', thats trent and our very own possum. trent got teased about the 'baby' for the rest of the weekend.

we spent most of our time backstage, in our very own team room:

our room was opposite the 'talents' dressing room, the human talent for the event being grant denyer as the host, and leah mcleod doing the commentary. dr katrina was there, and so was farmer dave. hello. grant denyer is very short and very friendly, but looks silly in a dracula costume. josh, our victorian team mate, was quite fond of leah, but she never seemed to want to interview him. maybe he needs to call his dog baby? she did interview trent, you will probably see that on the tv show which goes to air in december.

personally, i prefer production types. here are some of them in the backstage corridor:

there was the usual contingent of film and tv wannabe girlies being runners and thinking they were important, but for the most part the crew were great, very professional and friendly. the production company usually do big sporting events, like the rugby and v8 supercars, so the show-business wank factor was pretty low, and they were good with the dogs. i couldnt get photos of the actual show but here are some of the rehearsals. this is the agility equipment all set up in the arena:

and here are two of the other flyball teams practising:

behind them is the huge pool for the dock diving.

the actual competition part was short but great fun. normally at a flyball comp you run 6 races a day with 5 heats in each race. this time we only ran 2 races per performance (one performance each day) with 3 heats in each race, and we got points for heats run, tied and lost. our team, the hellfire hounds, won all three of our races over the two days and was the top seeded team into the 'final', which we lost to 6Pak, a team made up mostly of the chocolate border collies that we usually lose to in regular competition. all of those dogs have been in a team together before that hold the current australian record. we did beat them in the round robin though, so we thought were in with a chance but they were too good and were the deserving winners. it was close racing though, and just great fun to be a part of.

there are some changes afoot in our flyball world and i have mixed feelings about that. change is always hard and some people handle it better than others. i am not happy about some parts of it, but relieved about others, and there are always new and exciting challenges around the corner.

i certainly hope another world dog games is part of that!

k xx

People Like Us

2009-10-25T19:51:00.012+11:00

i have had one of those weeks with Other People that makes you think becoming a hermit might be a viable life choice. thank god for People Like Us, with whom i celebrated my birthday a few days early this saturday just gone (bday is tuesday and next weekend's a write-off so early it was!). just a nice quiet lunch at the burrawang pub, with Some Really Great People.

it was just what i needed and totally restored my faith in humanity. bells was truly inspiring with her myrtle leaf shawl and we had great fun playing at being stylists. here is a behind the scenes shot:

it takes a lot of work to look that good you know. even miss gracie got in on the act:

thats a tomato sauce sachet shes into there, giving new meaning to the 'fair suck of the sauce bottle' saying. we all met the sock victim too, who was truly lovely. the knitting talk was nicely balanced with discussions of the relevance of new social media, the merits of the iphone vs the google phone (and other assorted geekisms that i didnt understand), and an analysis of john safran's race relations.

but the thing that really gets me about People Like Us is how amazingly thoughtful and generous they are. it takes a lot of effort to get in the car and drive somewhere to meet for a few hours, in the middle of busy lives, and i am truly grateful to have people in my life who will do that. and who bring with them so many beautiful gifts that i feel like the luckiest person in the world. here they are all together:

there was a Tower of Presents beautifully wrapped from rosered, which consisted of an entire tea set with not one but TWO teapots with those groovy little infuser baskets inside the pot. i have been coveting one of those ever since i first saw bells'. there were also three new sets of knitpicks points, which i was in desperate need of (and even more so after last night when i snapped one of the harmony 4mms!). lyn couldnt make it but she sent me a beautiful book by anne fadiman, a collection of 'familiar essays'. its so beautiful, and after reading trashy vampire novels for the last few weeks reminds me how inspiring it can be to read something well written!

the other book you might notice there is a little volume entitled 'knitted lace of estonia' by nancy bush, a book i have been drooling over ever since it came out. everything in it is beautiful, i already have two on the shortlist! thank you lovely georgie. the little baggie with the pears on it is courtesy of missfee, hand made even:

and i think its the grooviest project bag in the entire world, with one long strap that you slip through the short one, and then it sits nicely on your wrist. i already took it on a car trip with me yesterday, and its perfect for yarn that is not tightly wound and needs room to move. it is so beautifully made, lined inside with red, and a pear on the bottom:

when it was gifted it also had this on the bottom:

alchemy mohair/silk. i dont think i ever seen anything quite like it! i am in awe of it, its like a living breathing furry creature that should be patted not knitted! and continuing with the yarn pron theme, i am the extremely lucky recipient of surely the COOLEST yarn around at the moment. from bells, malabrigo silky merino in 'ravelry red':

thats right folks, ravelry has its own yarn, and ive got some! the red is breathtaking, i have it in a basket but i stop everytime i walk past to admire it some more. i want to knit it right now but it needs to be something special, so i will think on it some more.

how lucky am i? this is a pretty big year for me, it has been tumultous, to say the least, and there is big milestone coming up that i will blog about in another week or so, and it makes me realise how i never thought my life would be like this, how i never thought it possible i could live through so much pain and change, that i could emerge stronger and maybe a better person, mostly because i have People Like Us.

thanks guys

k xx

worst. day. ever.

2009-10-20T13:50:00.000+11:00

knitting wise that is.

you may have heard me mention ishbel recently? it has not been an easy knit, despite the fact that it looks like it should be, and others have gone before and had no trouble. i am perhaps a bit literal with the whole lace charts thing. i like to get a picture of what the whole thing is supposed to look like, but by breaking the charts up into sections that dont line up, she gives me no idea how the sections flowed on from each other. see what i mean?:

(thats 0 from 2 ysolde. my patience is wearing thin). i ripped back the first section once and had trouble picking it back up, a combination of slightly splitty wollmeise and slightly sticky knitpicks harmony points (i much prefer the nickel). it was messy, but i persevered, figuring i could block it out nicely. i got through the main charts and repeats ok, and it started to click and then i looked down at the last section, which is obviously doing something different to the ones before, and i got that sinking feeling where you just know thats not right. see what i mean?

i thought about it for a while but could see no way around taking it back at least a repeat. and then i noticed this:

that would be a dropped stitch right next to the centre stitch there, obviously part of the messy picking up after the first frogging. i decided to rip it all again. at the same time i thought i would wind up the mess that my centre pulling yarn cake had become. but no sooner did i try to fix it then it became severely entangled. in a very nasty way. attempts at untangling led to tears of frustration. i used scissors instead. then as i was ripping the whole thing, one of the cable ends pulled right out of the join, making that cable completely unusable. i was left with this:

at that point i think my polite thoughts were 'screw you ishbel'. lets just say ishbel is no more.

i did have a bit more success with the gusset and heel of the second toe up sock over the weekend. unfortunately, the same can not be said for our team at the flyball nationals, which suffered some equioment and dog failure. we ran the third fastest time of the comp by 5/100ths of a second (18.039) but just couldnt win enough races and came 4th (out of 4) in division one. (there were 7 other divisions but you only race teams about your own speed and division one is the fastest). a disappointing result, but a fun weekend. we will try and regroup for the WDG.

meanwhile, i think i need a cup of tea and a good lie down. both shawls and 'people' are driving me crazy today!

k xx

dog season

2009-10-16T07:55:00.003+11:00

no no not for hunting, for dog sports. summer is crazy when it comes to dog sports. and it kicks off this weekend with the national flyball championships. they are in sydney this time, so not too far to go, but its a lot of racing with early starts. we are hoping to avenge our 'technical' loss of last time, where we won the most races but got dudded by a tallying loop hole. that hole has been closed now, but we will be hard pressed to beat our main rivals. sometimes flyball at that level, when youre the fastest teams in the country, can get kind of stressful. its not supposed to be. its supposed to be fun. but you put competitive humans in the mix and it can get downright nasty. funny the dogs dont seem to notice that stuff.

for some reason most of the dog sport stuff in this country happens in the summer, which is stupid cos its not like winter is cold and snowy, whereas summer is just mean. so we have some kind of dog thing on almost every weekend between now and xmas. including, in two weeks times, the world dogs games. not that there's anything 'worldly' about it, as its just aussies competing, but someone wants to talk it up obviously! possum tried out for the dock diving and did really well, but they wouldnt let her compete cos shes in the flyball. grrr. we are one of only 4 flyball teams competing there, and its a 4 day tv event thing, with $10k up for grabs. just to up the ante a bit. again, the dogs dont seem to care about that bit. they have more important things on their mind:

so i will be M.I.A for a few days. hopefully next week i will have good news to report. and even better will be if i get time to finish some socks! southern summer of socks is on again, and i need a head start!

k xx

not-celebrity masterchef

2009-10-14T19:43:00.005+11:00

over at 2paw, she of the labradors has been testing out curtis stones' coles $10 recipe promotion. they look like guff to me, in that i cant see kids eating anything with mushrooms, and you can get more food for less if you DONT shop at coles. my example. here is a recipe from donna hay's 'no time to cook' book:

while i do think ms hay (who apparently doesnt like to eat in public, see her episode of aforementioned show) is a little bit all style and no substance, unless you like steak and prosciutto and tomatoes, this is my new favourite recipe. its pancetta, sage and ricotta pasta. basically, you cook up a whole heap of pancetta with some sage leaves, crushed green olives, chilli flakes, lemon rind and lemon juice and then put ricotta and parmesan on top when youre done. but i add garlic (um hello? pasta without garlic? what the?) and i warm some ricotta in the pan as well:

she makes it with rigatoni but thats too much gluten in one bite for me. i have opted for the linguine and the thin spaghetti on two separate occassions, and i think the spaghetti won tonight:

the sharp lemon juice cuts through the chilli and the smoky pancetta, and its just scrummy. i added cherry tomatoes too tonight, but they didnt make much difference. roasted first would have worked better. and this cost way less than $10 and would feed an army. i am lucky to live in a town with a large proportion of southern europeans who know how to run a deli. the pancetta was freshly sliced and cost less than $3. the ricotta was freshly made on the premises and cost $4 a kilo. yes, a kilo. the recipe needs 150g. the olives were probably the most expensive thing, but you only need one spoon full, again around $2 worth. and the spaghetti, $2. sage and lemon about $2. spices already on hand.

actually, the most expensive thing (and not included in the budget) is the very special pecorino on top. $69 a kilo (thats why you only buy 100g at a time!) but god its good. so im no celebrity, or a masterchef, but some tv cooks need to get their heads out of their you-know-whats.

and now i will curl up on the couch and see how far i can get on the second kai mei:

i have swapped shawls for socks this week. unlike some, who are turning into shawl-knitting machines.

k xx

everybody's sellin' something

2009-10-12T16:33:00.005+11:00

somewhere in capital (cant tell you where exactly as i am using volume 1 as a door stop), marx stole an idea from carlyle and argued that under capitalism all human relations are reduced to the exchange of money - the cash nexus. of course, its a generalisation, and i know you're all going to tell me how this just isnt true in your everyday life and how glad you are you have relationships that arent about money or exchange or commodities. of course you are. i am too. most of my knitterly relations are not reducable to the cash nexus, excluding of course stash enhancement, which falls under the other marxist rubric of use-value, rather than exchange value, anyway. (seriously, dont click on the links, its wikipedia for a start and i'd fail me for referencing from there, and its dead boring reading). my point is, we buy yarn because we likes it and we wants it.

but im talking about the way we relate to people in our everday life, and im going on about this because lately i have seen an increase in so-called 'social networking sites' like facebook and twitter, which are supposedly for 'friends', being used for blatant self-promotion usually for commercial purposes. i had a whinge about this last night and was informed that this was the way of the world and the things that people needed to do now to build their careers, businesses etc. no doubt that's right, and i know the speaker doesnt entirely approve, but even if it is the way of the world, i dont like it.

i know this is a very delicate area on ravelry for example, where people must tread carefully (and rightly so) when selling their home made products etc, and i know its a cause of concern for many yarn-dying, spinning people who also have knitting friends. introducing the cash-nexus into those relationships is difficult, and people struggle, but if you do it openly and honestly, i think most people want to support their hand-making friends, and its not that kind of stuff that bothers me.

its just this constant use of facebook groups and twitter-spam, by companies usually, that is really getting up my nose. you can be a fan of anything on facebook these days, and sometimes thats cool. im a fan of gene genie and buffy, for example. but im not a fan of products, and i dont and wont join groups or become fans of things that want to sell me something. facebook has an advertising capacity. i hate advertising of all kinds, but i think commerical enterprises should cough up and use it, just like many yarn sellers do on ravelry.

because i can tell you now, you introduce that kind of cash-nexus into personal relationships, you end up with no friends pretty quickly. like the twitter follower thing. i found out today i was following a few people who i didnt know, and werent following me, and when i clicked on their names, they had some sort of commerical enterprise they were flogging on twitter. needless to say, im not following them anymore (i dont know how i even began following them!) and then there's the endless search for more followers, more friends. guess what people? having 160 followers on twitter, 145 of whom dont know you from a bar of soap, does not make you popular, or famous, or important.

so im actively resisting. my blog, twitter and facebook are locked down pretty tight. i dont want any freaks or weirdos from my past finding out anything about me, thanks very much, and i use these media purely for staying in touch with friends. im not saying thats the RIGHT way, im sure there isnt a right way, but i can and will resist the commodification of everyday life where and when i can.

however, when it comes to yarn, exchange away i say. a particular yarn exchange recently (how was that for a segue!) has yeilded much pleasure in the knitting. its the reject-wollmeise being turned into an ishbel:

i am doing the larger size but just doing chart a, b, a, then straight into c, d and e and i think i will have enough yarn. i was kind of meh about this pattern when i first saw it but then i saw jody's and fell in love. i do have to whinge about it tho - the charting is SOOOOO annoying! because she breaks it down into sections, i cant get a visual sense from the charts of what the pattern is supposed to look like. and it is totally NOT intuitive, and is not the same on one side of the centre stitch as the other. so i can not be sure that this is what its meant to look like:

but its pretty enough to go on with i think! and you know what, its not even for me! it will be given away with no expectation of anything in return except for the pure joy of seeing the receivers face.

yeah i know, im a saint.

k xx

ps i changed my blogger id back to plain old kms. the drk thing was starting to feel wanky and its been more than a year now since i got my phd. i can quit shouting it from the rooftops i think! and yes i know my spelling sux today. sorry.

sock it to me

2009-10-08T10:21:00.004+11:00

so the postie knocked on the door yesterday when i was in the shower. he left these, two at once, how exciting:

inside were these things, a book and a pouch:

the pouch is a new randomknits creation and i am the guinea pig. it has a reinforced round bottom and is slightly larger than the standard pouch:

it is so beautifully made, lots of lovely details, and so strong and sturdy. the reinforced round bottom makes it perfect for use with yarn cakes and this one has the rapidly growing ishbel in it, so its great for shawls. it also fits the whole pattern and chart sheets folded up. me likey.

the book is one i have been coveting for a while, and someone else snaffled the last one at sew and tell recently. thats ok, bells and i ordered ours online and got them cheaper anyway. i love this book, being a new convert to the toe up thing (no sewing, hello!). the first ones i am going to make are the traditional ganseys. (you can take the girl out of history and all that).

however, it has presented a dilemma. my first pair of toe up socks are looking like this:

the finished one i made under instruction, that is, sans pattern but with live helpers. i like the toe shape on it better than the second one, which is directly as per the book's instructions, that is, increasing every second round. this makes the toe too pointy for my liking. the toes dont look this pointy in the book. it is still pointy when on, so i dont know if we're being given pattern directions that dont match the photos, or i just have weird toes.

anyway, how did i do the first one for the flatter toe? anyone remember?!

kxx

third time lucky

2009-10-06T17:32:00.008+11:00

what has happened to my world that i am reduced to blogging merely once a week? let me assure you, gentle reader, i am not pleased with this state of affairs. it means i am too busy, and am putting other things ahead of my blogging. hence, no participation in blogtoberfest for me this time. and things are not going to get any better with the months ahead.

this last week has brought a significant change to my working life that may possibly change my whole career path. you know those papers i was bitching and moaning about? i delivered them last tuesday, and they were very successful and i have had some very good feedback including the dean of another faculty asking me and one of my colleagues to work with her on a huge project that would look at all sorts of issues relating to the health, education and welfare of young people. that may or may not come off, but in the meantime my immediate boss discovered that she didnt know i 'wrote that kind of thing' and has asked me to be The Theory Head on a large grant application that looks at young women and risk behaviour. i cant give full details of that one as its kind of secret, and the application is to a large commonwealth funding body, and if we get the grant it would mean a change in position for me. we might not get it of course, these things are very competitive, but at least now i get to do the background research for it, and get to put my name on it as an investigator, and these are all Good Things. it means a lot more work, but i am really happy about it. so the terror that comes before opening your mouth to speak to a room full of strangers for 20 minutes appears to have been worth it in this instance.

speaking of terror in front of an audience. even worse than delivering an academic paper is participating in a yard dog trial, which is what i did this weekend. i may have mentioned previously that me and miss possum go away every so often to play with other peoples sheep, and these are practice sessions where we learn how to move sheep around a set of yards etc in preparation for these things called Trials. because they are yard dog trials, you compete against people and dogs who move sheep around yards for a living, and who live in The Country and wear all the right gear and talk like that and know what the hell they're doing. they all have kelpies, and they dont have names like possum (they have names like butch and boss and sarge and ben)*:

i have trialled twice before and i was terrified and i did badly and didnt complete the course and had no real idea what i was doing. however, 2 years have elapsed since my last trial and i appear to have learnt a few things. as has possum. this trial was one of the ones i have done before. then, it was a disaster. the judge had to tell me to go to the gate. (the task being to open and close a series of gates to move the sheep through). it was at a little place called morongla, which is about 10 minutes south of cowra. we got there sunday night in time to watch the nrl grand final at the local club and eat a club steak for dinner. i did knit while watching the football, and no one chased me out of town, so we were off to a good start (apart from melbourne winning. gah!).

anyway, we get to the trial monday morning (long weekend in nsw), and i am horrified to see that my name has been drawn last for my class. you can enter the same dog in different classes with different handlers if its never won anything before, so i entered trent and possum in the class above me (tougher course requirements, supposedly) but i thought this would mean his turn would be after mine. but it wasnt. he got to go before me, and did a really good job:

there was one place where possum got stuck and she just couldnt get the sheep up the the really small draft and he ran out of time. but for someone whos never worked that dog before, he done good. of course, now hes addicted and wants to use my dog all the time. not happening.

then i watched two other friends go around, george and jo, and they both had some really good bits, and both got stuck in places too, and i was getting more and more nervous. eventually it was my go and out we went, and i sent her round the wrong way to pick up the sheep on the first move but she corrected herself and we got on with the job:

there were a few things i did wrong, and some things we were asked to do that we havent really practiced yet, and we did some bits really well and other bits she got stuck again, but somehow i managed to finish and put the sheep away with 11 seconds of my 10 minutes remaining!

i was stunned, i didnt think i would get around at all! you are awarded a score out of 100, basically you get points taken off for mistakes you make, so i only scored 56. a lot of people looked to have scored higher than me, so about lunch time when our classes were finished we took off and headed home, taking the tourist drive through boorowa, crookwell and goulburn. it was lovely and green the whole way:

there has been some big rain but a lot of the sheep were still red from the dust. that was weird.

then, when i got home, i charged my phone and turned it on and i got a text message from my fellow competitor jo, who had hung around for a while, telling me that i got third place! apparently a lot of people with higher scores were doing the class above but being run at the same time, so they didnt count in my class. i did still beat some proper farmer types tho. pretty happy about that. so my third time in a trial turns out to be the lucky time, and now apparently i have a ribbon, a hat and some prize money coming my way! mostly though, i have a huge confidence boost for next time. speaking of which, i must go look up some more trial dates, cos i dont have anything else to do!

knitting content will resume tomorrow.

k xx

* todays photos courtesy of trent, dog sport photographer extraordinaire

notions:

2009-09-28T10:30:00.007+10:00

things you need for knitting, plus silly ideas i often have. sometimes the two are related. either way, its the theme for todays rather longish post.

lets start with the knitting theme. when i first started knitting i thought spotlight and pony needles were as good as it got. i didnt even know what stitch markers were. yes i know, well may we laugh now! i soon learnt however, that it just wasnt knitting without all the right accessories. im not obsessive about it, by any means, but i do like the bright shinies. so i was very flustered recently when a little coin purse that 2paw sent me which became my stitch marker holder went missing. i searched high and low to no avail. so when we went away last weekend, donni picked me up this cute little number in a store:

it opens up like one of those kids folding paper toy things:

then donni gave me some excess stitch markers of hers to put in it, and i felt a bit better. except i saw this story in designer knitting (lets just call it vogue shall we?) and i felt inadequate all over again:

soon lessened by finding my missing coin/stitch marker purse (inside a project bag of course). the stitch markers were retrieved and put back in their original tin, alongside the new ones:

a nice little collection. the coin purse is being used for coins, as intended.

then there are the project bags. i loooove project bags and have quite a collection hand sewn by various clever people. but still, i never have enough. so i was very happy to support yet another clever person by buying one of her pouches:

i have to tell you, i am super impressed. this is by far the best pouch i have. it is so well constructed, not only beautifully sewn but really practical, because it is firm enough to stand up letting the yarn cake stay inside while knitting:

but soft enough to get crammed into a bag. i like it so much, im going to buy another one. soon.

as for silly knitting notions, one of them lately has been trying to force that lovely 'lavendel' wollmeise into a shawl design not of its liking. it tried being a milkweed, and then a springtime bandit, but there was just something not right about either, so on the weekend it got frogged and is now going to be an ishbel:

(a lot deeper purple than this in real life). i had not been particularly attracted to this pattern until i saw jps, now im sold. perhaps its the purple?! there is no point in resisting sometimes.

in other shawl news, aestlight the second is progressing very well and i am now at the fancy edging:

i got here late yesterday but was feeling unwell and too tired to concentrate on it, so i cast on the aforementioned ishbel instead. i really like how this is turning out though. i have gone for the large size and am confident i will have enough yarn.

on the theme of silly ideas i often have, one of them struck me as particularly ridiculous this weekend, and this was the idea of getting our dogs involved in dog sports, especially ones that take place outside, in the harsh australian climate, often involving other dog-people. this weekend it turned out to be a really bad idea. the weather here has been really very freaky for the last week or so, starting with the now famous dust storms:

and finishing with gale force winds that blew the (fortunately empty) aviary in my back yard over:

and made me feel a bit like dorothy expecting the house to blow away any second. i hate strong winds, they freak me out. and yesterday we went off to do flyball in such a wind, and right by the lake at shellharbour too. really bad idea. i got seriously frazzled, and dehydrated, and what i thought was bad chafing, turns out to be sunburn of course. on my face, cos it was too windy to wear a hat. and it was cold wasnt it, so who thought to put sunscreen on? not me. not happy jan.

we are headed into peak dog sport season now, with a competition nearly every weekend, and this is not helped by being so busy at work i hardly have time to breath, let alone stay in contact with people, keep up with blogs, take the dogs for walks, go the gym, cook, clean, and do the washing.

and i have to go to a conference tomorrow and give TWO papers, feeling like something the cat dragged in backwards through a bush and barfed on. someone should have told me before i started that doing research means presenting it at conferences. in front of other people. who ask questions. whos dumb arse idea was that??

k xx

fabulousness

2009-09-21T11:50:00.006+10:00

it is so a word. it totally describes the weekend i just had. this was the view for most of it:

it consisted mainly of hanging out in a gorgeous little place in berry, good food (like apple crumble and ice cream for breakfast, and hungry duck for dinner, and the best eggs on toast ever), wine (i drank the fake stuff though), poring over patterns, starting new things, frogging new things, singing along to dirty dancing (a memorial for patrick swayze), and lots of talking and laughing:

there may have been a little trip to a certain yarn store where i had been planning to stock up on the cascade 220 for next winter but the range needed restocking, so i settled on these instead:

wendy happy bamboo for socks.

some louisa harding grace (silk/wool) for baby things.

and some naturally atlante, 100% bamboo that feels like a silky cotton. this is going to be a very smooshy clapotis.

not that i have time to knit any of these things right now given i am already working on christmas knitting and its taking all my time. i did try and work on aestlight the second while away but the fake-champagne bubbles must have gone to my head because i have stuffed up the stitch count in the birds nest lace part and have to rip it back a bit. i tried to cast on springtime bandit while watching dirty dancing but something went wrong there, i had better success over breakfast the next morning - here it is in wollmeise lavendel.

and i did nearly finish a sock:

quote of the weekend: 'i hate people'. so do i. except for People Like Us of course.

k xx

wie von zauberhand...

2009-09-16T10:23:00.005+10:00

...here i am back in the land of the blogging. in some ways i enjoy my enforced times away from computers. there are some people i dont see enough and i miss having regular e-contact with them, but its surprising really how easily one manages without constantly being on facebook or twitter. having said that parts of my facebook farmtown farm withered up and died. hmmm.

so the sister came and went. it was all good and im glad she was here, and things are now right between us which is great. despite some initial bumpy bits, i found that if i shifted the way i reacted (or didnt react) then we ended up finding new ways of relating, rather than repeating old patterns. (this is a good lesson for me to learn in general. its only taken 4o years to learn it....). i am still badly out of family practice however and will need to work at maintaining contact.

i dropped her off last thursday and then went into the city to see my old snb buddies and it was great to catch up. i miss that group a lot. there was a lengthy planning session in regards to a certain sock-knitting event and plans are now well under way. stay tuned for more on that one!

and while i was in the city, i had my wollmeise cherry popped. i have felt inadequate as a sock knitter because of my constant failure to get my hands on the good stuff. this time, i was enabled by the ~~crack~~, er, wollmeise dealer herself, who just happened to have a few extras she didnt need (as you do!). isnt it lovely:

apparently these are 'not quite rights' but i love them anyway. lavendel and maria's deepest purple (which has a lot of red in it for a purple, but do you see me complaining?). the lavendel is going to be a shawl and the maria's is going to be plain or rib socks. long ones i think, there is a lot of yarn in these skeins. and while i am content with these, i do think my life will be complete when i have some indisch rot.

what is it about germans and sock wool? another enabler introduced me to these:

zuaberballs. magic indeed.

meanwhile, shawl flu persists with aestlight the second growing considerably, and plans afoot for a springtime bandit, a syrian shawl and an icarus. but dont speak to me of myrtle. i have been crushed by her, and feel pathetic next to the persistence of bells, who started hers at the same time and is nearly finished, while mine languishes at about two inches with a stitch count problem. once i have my christmas knitting out of the way, i will try again, but i dont expect much magic there!

and now i must go read your blogs and post comments, as i have been slack in that department.

k xx

trigger happy

2009-09-07T09:39:00.004+10:00

yep thats me. on the edge here folks. im sure i dont need to spell it out, but when you have no family contact for 6 years and suddenly theres someone there every day, well its likely to bring up some stuff.

we are doing ok, but given events of the last few months and where i am at personally, i am finding it challenging to be talking about family, history, the past, to be talking at all, to be trying to relate to someone who knew an older version of me and doesnt really know the updated version (i dont really know the updated version), and vice versa, and to be around an extrovert when i am actually kind of all clammed up at the moment. i didnt realise how much actually, but i am.

this was exacerbated this weekend when we went away for a flyball comp down the south coast. i find dog sports hard enough because i am with trent but not With Trent, and this brings up a lot of memories and sadness, even though we are getting along better these days than we did when we were together and i know its the right decision. and then to have a long-lost sister around, reminding me of how much i have had to face without family...its just weird. i cant suddenly become all lovey dovey family oriented, i am not that sort of person at the best of times, and now i am very independent emotionally speaking. i dont want to analyse everything all the time. i dont want to go over it all with a fine tooth comb. ive dealt with my stuff and i just want to move on. and im not feeling very open at the moment. or trusting. but i think thats ok, trust is not something that comes back overnight, and i have always had to apologise for being myself in my family and im just not going to do it anymore. i am who i am, and i fought long and hard to get here. i like it here.

but i am happy that we are together and finding new ways of relating and not fighting. this in itself is a major breakthrough!

maybe im just getting old and set in my ways, but i do find it interesting that i have been craving the company of knitters. what is about it knitters in groups that makes me feel so comfortable and connected? at least i can be quiet, externally and internally, when i am knitting. on that note, i have finished the first kai mei sock. its yummy:

and that milkweed shawl thing? its gone. didnt like it. boring pattern, not working with the yarn. it has become this:

thats right, another aestlight. this one will be gifted as well (the last one went to LynS, because it just screamed her name colourwise!) i think this might become my signature shawl knit, especially with christmas coming up. so if youre on my christmas list, and female, might be wise to hold off on the aestlight. just sayin'

tomorrow we are off to spend the day in the big smoke. shopping, art gallery, chinatown, and then i must start thinking about work again.

but thats ok. life goes on, thankfully.

k xx

if symptoms persist...

2009-08-28T09:06:00.004+10:00

just cast on another one! this time, milkweed:

also in knitabulous 50/50 silk/merino that i helped dye myself

its not quite this pink out of the sun. i like this pattern a lot too. i am growing quite fond of the more solid-bodied shawl.

i blocked aestlight yesterday, using my blocking wires for the first time. i wasnt entirely sure whether to thread them through the points of each border peak, so i pinned them manually, but just having the wire threaded through the top made the job so much easier!

et voila, the finished result:

in detail:

sticks: 4mm knitpicks options (i love the feel of the nickel for lace knitting)
yarn: knitabulous fiftyfity silk/merino in oyster. so silky it shines.
mods: none. this is the smaller size, but i would have had enough yarn for the bigger one. there is not one single mistake in it, possibly a first for me, ever.

i will be showing it off all weekend.

k xx

caught!

2009-08-26T13:01:00.003+10:00

look what happens. up there in the big smoke, some people sneeze, and suddenly, we're all dying of shawl flu. not that im complaining, there are so many lovely little shawls (we shall not call them shawlettes) doing the rounds, and i am really pleased to find how many of them use a garter stitch base. i needed to get my lace mojo back, but wasnt up to anything intricate, or made in black silk. and i needed a quick fix. so aestlight it was. it came off the needles last night:

i didnt get time to block it straight away but will do that when i get home tonight, which will be a lot easier now that i have blocking wires.

i loved this pattern so much, so easy and quick, i am going to make some as christmas presents. and the knitabulous 50/50 is my new favourite yarn. please ma'am, can i have some more?

meanwhile, i am a bit excited as my sister, from whom i have been estranged for 6 years, is coming to visit for a couple of weeks this friday (obviously we made up). we have lots of catching up to do, and the poor thing is going to get dragged to a few knitting events (its all happening this weekend), as well as to a flyball comp down the coast. i have even taken some days off work. for the first time in 10 years i have a job that actually includes annual leave. who knew you could get paid for NOT working?!

so things might get a bit quiet here for a bit. and i havent recovered from the shawl flu either. to facilitate my recovery, i thought i might cast on milkweed tonight!

k xx

oh mei

2009-08-22T08:46:00.003+10:00

thanks to everyone for the support and advice on the FLS. it felt comfortable enough to wear it the other day, tho i was a bit self-concious about the length, but as people pointed out, im sure no one else noticed. i do want it shorter, but i think i will just make another one and stop earlier and not iron it!

no more big ticket items right now though (although i do have a cobblestone to finish before christmas). i have made some more progress on aestlight, i am just doing the fancy edging border:

nearly there. i wish i had made the bigger one, i think i would have had enough yarn, but its probably better to be safe than sorry, and at this size and weight (and after blocking) i think it will make a lovely spring accessory.

and then there are the socks. oh mei:

i havent felt this way about a pair of socks for a while. i am trying not to jinx them by calling them 'best ever' (especially as i havent even gotten to the lace panel yet) but there is something a little bit special about these. apart from koigu, right now im thinking STR is the best sock yarn ever.

speaking of which, the culprits in the recent STR mega-order are coming over to my place for a little STR afternoon tea. i am a bit excited. its my first official function, and two of my knitting worlds will meet for the first time, as my flyball-knitting friends are going to meet bells. i am making scones, and these:

and then bells and sean and i are going out for dinner to fireworks cafe. i have lived down here for many years, off and on, and never been there. so i am a very happy camper today. who needs to go clean her house.....

k xx

a slight recovery

2009-08-19T08:10:00.004+10:00

after much advice seeking, i put the disaster that was the ironed and stretched february lady sweater (as reported in previous post), through a light cycle in my front loader. it looked initially like it had bunched back up again but as soon as i laid it out i could see it hadnt really. i didnt flatten it or pin it but tried to let it dry all scrunched up. a few days later and i picked it up, it had reshrunk a little in the body but had still dropped considerably. i did wear it to work yesterday, looking like this:

when i had originally finished knitting this, it was the same length as that tshirt im wearing. also, the yoke stopped across the top of the bust, not below it. i dont want it below, but thats where it is. still, its wearable. i am going to wash it again a bit fiercer, and i may still frog the bottom to bring the length up but i am most disappointed about the yoke. if i knit this again (which i will, because it was easy and is a great design), it will be in a much more solid yarn (as in, more tightly spun), and in a smaller needle size.

meanwhile, i am at the border of the aestlight shawl but put it aside for the weekend because miss possum and i were going off to practice our sheep herding skills and the downtime in between requires sock knitting. the downtime for the dogs means being chained to a fence:

this fence is special though as it goes around the original belgenny cottage, the site of australia's first merino farm. some of the sheep we work are descended from those original macarthur sheep. they are a little odd as a result. while the dogs chilled out, i got a long way through the second blackrose and finished it off last night:

despite my misgivings about the slightly striping nature of the 'socks that rock' atomic 6 colourway, i love the yarn so much it doesnt matter. i think it obscures some of this pattern a little but still, these are lovely socks. and yes, i was lazy and did a three needle castoff rather than kitchener. quick project summary: i did these on 2.5mm knitpicks nickel dpns (not a fan of the magic loop for socks, i dont like the joins) and i cast on extra stitches and then reduced down to 64, not intentionally to begin with but because my extra stitches were obviously making it too big, but then i liked the shaping effect so did it again for the second sock. they fit perfectly anyway.

now that i have my sock mojo back i am greatly looking forward to casting on the kai-meis in STR 'mustang sally':

what a beautiful yarn this is, it flew off the swift like silk through my fingers and the colours are so rich and intense.

oops. i think im drooling.

k xx

rocking socks

2009-08-13T15:58:00.003+10:00

i am done with knitting cardigans. i have made 4 in the last 12 months. lets have a little update on what's happened to them.

1. lily, in black touch yarns possum/merino. great fun to knit, beautiful wool, a bit short but fitted. one wash, hand wash mind, shrunk. status: unwearable.

2. lily (modified), in chocolate zara. awesome to knit with, fit well, grew a little on blocking, a little bit heavy so good for mid winter. status: getting a little pilled but otherwise eminently wearable.

3. liesl, in 'velvet grapes' malabrigo worsted. possibly the most beautiful yarn in the whole entire world. knitted well, fitted well, ballooned on blocking, becoming an ill-fitting coat-like thing that makes me feel like joseph in his frickin' technicolor dreamcoat. status: sneering at me from the cupboard.

4. february lady sweater in 'blue demin' bendigo luxury 8 ply. a few issues with the start but a record fast knit, beautiful soft yarn, looked great on, fitted perfectly pre-blocking so given a light steam iron, under which it grew about 10 cms all around, becoming floppy and misshapen. rewashed and dried. status: still unwearable, pending frogging.

do you see where im going here? me and hand knitted cardigans do. not. mix. or else i can only knit with zara ever again. im pretty upset about the last two, i did blocked test swatches and had no indication they would grow the way they did. i am going to suggest that the problem with liesl is in the pattern, that its really only for small people and the weight of the yarn doesnt work with an unshaped garment. the problem with the FLS seems to be that the bendigo luxury has no 'memory' or springback in it. once blocked, c'est finis.

so i have been attempting to restore my faith in my own knitting ability by working solely on the aestlight shawl, and i am pretty pleased with myself. its looking lovely, and nearly ready to start the lace edging:

it helps that the yarn is, well, just so darn smooshy!! i love this pattern and am going to make this one many times.

and then of course, there are always socks to make you feel super clever. i havent got a finished pair to show right now, but some friends and i may have *cough* slipped on our keyboards and ordered some stuff *cough cough*. this box arrived this morning:

it had this in it:

just in case you're wondering, this is how much 'socks that rock' $440 AUD will get you:

this is my modest part of the order (kawkaw, valkyrie, mustang sally):

i am looking forward to working with the mustang sally first and turning it into kai-meis from the cookie a book.

sock knitting rocks. the less said about cardigans the better.

k xx

rationalising

2009-08-09T10:59:00.007+10:00

so. two cardigans finished in one winter. it makes you think. about what else lies lurking in the WIP basket. 4 unfinished pairs of socks, two are snoozing for now as i dont like the yarn and/or pattern, but two are relatively active. i got to work straight away on one of them and the second sock is now at the heel. so thats good.

but then there was the lace/shawl situation. three lacey works in progress. one of them has no issues and is a simple scarf from 'victorian lace' but its at the boring bit. one of them is black and silk and requires a chart and counting every stitch. not in the head space for that sorry. the other was a pi shawl in malabrigo lace in 'paris night' - a lovely deep steely blue. lovely soft malabrigo lace. with a big bad mistake. there is no tinking of the malabrigo lace. so i bit the bullet and frogged the whole thing. i am not going to re-do it either. i dont think its the right yarn for that pattern, i originally bought a lot of it to make a large shetland tea shawl and i think im going to go back to that plan because the lacework is more open and therefore better suited to the delicacies of the malabrigo. i have some yummy polwarth-silk in a silver grey bought from tom-the-hot-farmer which will be a pi-shawl instead.

i didnt want to cast on something quite so complicated as that right now though. and then i had a knitting play-date and a few things happened. one, i dyed some yarn. i was trying to steer away from purples but didnt quite make it:

this is what we ended up with (not reskeined yet sorry) - sock yarn, silk/wool, and silk:

all in the same colours but applied slightly differently. im calling it 'thursday's surprise' because the play-date was thursday and i wasnt expecting to come away with three skeins of purple scrumminess! i also wasnt expecting to come away with a skein of silk/wool in 'oyster', nor was i expecting to find myself downloading the pattern for the aestlight shawl. but i saw and touched hers, and it was lovely, and its the perfect knit for getting back into some lace/shawl knitting:

im loving it long time so far, the colour is a lot more silvery than this, with just the faintest hint of pink. and sooo soft. i dont need to explain that any further do i?

i havent talked about personal stuff for a while, so i will just do a quick update. i had a bad week, too many thoughts and doubts and paranoias going around in my head. i had a few days with no puppies and i realised how much i missed having both of them together, just the noise and the life, and all that love. it feels a bit tragic, and just a little bit co-dependent, to say i need my dogs around because they make me feel loved, but i am only human, with no close family, and there is a big hole in my life, in my heart, where love used to be. i am trying hard not to fill it up with chocolate, so yarn and dogs seem healthy substitutes right now*. we arranged for me to have them both for this weekend and the sight of them chewing bones in my backyard fills me with ridiculous joy:

and a bit of a revelation yesterday helped as well. i need to stop being so hard on myself, expecting myself to be all perfectly happy and ok with everything after only two months. i need to stop apologising and stop worrying about where other people are at, or what they think. i need to let myself just feel whatever i feel, whether its happy or sad or angry or whatever. im doing really well, to be honest, and should remember to give myself credit for that. and i need to remember to breathe. just a little thing, but it helps!

k xx

* eta: and of course all my wonderful yarny friends without whom i would be completely lost!!

february in august

2009-08-06T07:45:00.004+10:00

can you believe its august already? what has happened to this year? and i wonder how many hours of it i have spent knitting? i do know i managed to finish 2 cardigans for me this winter, which is certainly a record. i did have another man-jumper on the needles but got very annoyed with the wool (jo sharp dk with knots in it. need i say more?). i do intend to finish that by christmas, however, in the meantime, i have finished the Tour de France February Lady Sweater. i didnt get it done within the TDF timeframe, but it did only take me 32 days. thats a personal record. here it is in front of the magnolia, unblocked and buttonless but you get the drift:

i cant tell you how much i am in love with this. its bendigo luxury 8 ply in 'blue demin', the colour is perfect for me and my blue eyes, i am still surprised by the match when i put it on, being a 'i only wear black' type! it fits great, even without blocking, so it might only get a light steam iron. and it took about 10 minutes to sew in a few ends. despite some design issues, i do love the seamless knit. and this pattern is just great. so easy, and the measurements are spot on. i am going to make this again. probably also in bendigo luxury. probably in black :)

now i am itching to get back to some serious sock knitting. i have blackrose socks to finish, and some kaffe fasset regia self striping toe ups, and a rather large box on its way from the US with some rather yummy sock yarn in it. thats a whole separate blog post that one.

speaking of socks and the US, some people i know and i have been talking about maybe organising a very scaled down sock-summit-like gathering here in sydney over summer. pop over to rav if youre interested.

k xx

saturday too far away

2009-08-01T11:57:00.004+10:00

earlier this week i was looking at a weekend with nothing planned stretching far into the horizon of nothingness. instead i find i am far too busy and having trouble fitting everything in. for example, one of the joys of living on ones own is being responsible only for one's own mess. the flip side of course is having to clean it all up by yourself. there is less of it, but now i must do everything. today i have already walked the dog, done two loads of washing and cleaned the house. i have to drive up to bowral tomorrow for a luncheon thing, and am trying to figure out how i am going to fit in a car wash beforehand. this part of living alone i dont like. car washes, and light bulb changing. i am too short for both.

i am also procrastinating. i have a conference paper to write, its due by COB on monday. i dont like to talk about work, cos you know, its work, but i need to have a little gripe. i am working on two projects, one a collaboration that looks at nursing education history, theory and policy. my collaborator is a fantastically nice person, i love him to death, but he is also the head honcho of nursing around here and is busy beyond belief. he warned me i might get 'sucked into his vortex' (his words) and i have. we have about 4 different ideas on the burner, and trying to get them all into a paper of less than 6000 words (working together) has been, um...challenging. as a consequence, my own project for the same conference is running late. i got an extension, but i am having trouble putting my thoughts on paper. this is largely because of the subject matter. i am trying to introduce a historical and political context to all that health promotion stuff about adolescent risk behaviour. the way health people operate, you would think all that naughtiness happened in a social and cultural contextual void! all i really want to say is 'young people have always misbehaved. its what they do. its not always a bad thing. it might even be a good thing'. but somehow i have to make that into 6000 words. sigh. sometimes research is just one big WANK!

this is made even more frustrating by the fact that i can feel winter slipping away (although not at night time at the moment, geeslouise, could it get any colder?), and i am desperate to wear my february lady sweater before its gone entirely. i had to frog the start of the first sleeve but am now 10 repeats in and getting close:

i want to wear it NOW and i still have a whole other sleeve to do! a further sign that winter is thinking about taking a hike is the presence of so-called 'spring bulbs'. i plucked these from the garden this morning:

they are shown here next to a housewarming gift that has flowered, and it does look just like a goldfish! i am enjoying having a little garden, i must say, though i am also trying to find time this weekend to go apply poison to certain parts of it.

i also have had to find time to have a haircut. this is a big enterprise for me. the chosing of a suitable hairdresser being the hardest part. i had the best hair do of my life ever done down here some time ago but it cost over $300. needless to say i cant go back there right now. i did some asking around and settled on a place that at least two knitters i know with nice hair have been known to frequent. i was not disappointed. i met a very nice girl, unpretentious, talkative, not afraid to chop into very long very curly hair. of course, she straightened it for me, and i cant get a good photo but it looked vaguely like this yesterday:

it will only look like this till the next wash, at which time it will return to the usual curly mop that it is.

oh, and i wanted to clarify something about the recent rash of cultural posts. i might like my books non-escapist, but just so we're clear, i am all about escapist tv. i have spent a large part of the last 2 months watching buffy and angel from start to finish. loved every minute of it. i wanted to check out that other vampire show 'true blood' but jb hi fi didnt have the dvds in yet. they did do me a very good deal on three seasons of the xfiles that i didnt have, so current escapism is in the form of alien-government conspiracies and mulder and scully eye candy. life could be worse.

k xx

art v craft

2009-07-28T09:24:00.003+10:00

there has been a whole lot of debate out there about the knit graffitti movement and its relative merits etc. i dont mean to start that up again, but it has got me thinking about creativity, and the nature thereof. i do think a world decorated with knitting is a happier place, however, knitting squares that someone else comes along and arranges into art is neither subversive or artistic in my mind. firstly, it doesnt really say anything, politically speaking, ergo, not subversive. secondly, it assumes a heap of things about knitters. it assumes that we require someone called an Artist to come along and make sense of our knitted objects. it assumes that we just make squares that require someone else to ascribe meaning. it assumes that the artist is the person who does the arranging of the squares, rather than the persons who made the squares in the first place. it also assumes that we arent capable of making decisions about colour, texture and form. this irritates me, because in fact knitters are required to do all of these things every time they even think about a project, and they need to keep making those judgements along the way. i am not saying that makes knitting Art, but it doesnt make someone elses arranging of our knitting Art either.

in the same way, my own decorative ventures yesterday do not constitute art. i have a big bare wall in my office that needed covering, and i have a heap of art postcards i wanted to put up, but blutac-ing them to freshly painted walls seemed out of the question. so i went and got some pin boards and made some pictures:

these are all postcards of paintings i have seen in the flesh, from the van gogh museum, the rijksmuseum, the vatican, the uffizi, the tate and the british museum. i love them because they remind me of where i have been and the amazing things i have seen. the rembrandts and caravaggios in particular remind me of how art can make you feel. i do not for a moment think that my putting these postcards on a pinboard constitutes art (neither does making weird stencils on cheap canvas a la tara dennis). and it bought to mind that whole debate about artistic reproduction. so its not art, and it doesnt make me artistic. but it looks nice.

my knitting is not art either, although it also looks nice and makes me very happy. here is where i am up to on the february lady sweater:

yes the Tour has come and gone and i fell woefully short of a jersey of any kind, although i am very happy with how this is progressing. it looks great on, i love this pattern to death and think ysolda could learn a thing or two about turning lace patterns into garments. i will never make another liesl but will definitely make this again.

so knitting might not be art with a capital a, but being a craft doesnt make it any less important or significant or beautiful. or useful!

k xx

hitting the books again

2009-07-24T07:29:00.003+10:00

last week i whinged about bookstores in this town and the selection and price of books. i take it back a little bit this week because i am happy to report that the large book chains in the main shopping centre still provide something like a decent selection. i bought a couple of things there the other day, and now my bedside table looks like this:

the things i bought were the two re-issued penguins. i have been eyeing this collection for a while now and they just released some new titles, which meant i could buy some. i have a whole bookshelf dedicated to the classics, penguin or otherwise:

and while i love these little orange re-issues i havent been able to justify buying books i already have. but i didnt have these two.

so i stopped reading the wally lamb and moved on to brideshead. the protagonist in the wally lamb was a dissociated, self-pitying, white middle class male who treats his wife badly in the first couple of pages. i found it hard to care. the protagonists in brideshead of course are white self-indulgent upper class males, but they are not disconnected, and the writing is better. i think thats the difference for me with stuff written 100 years ago to stuff written today. unless youre david foster wallace, its so trendy to write in that 'i dont care life is meaningless' style, and of course it probably is. and art imitates life, after all. but i get enough of it everyday around me in the real world. i want my fiction to make me think life matters, to tackle the big questions, to search for meaning. the romantics and victorians were very good at this.

interestingly, all of these books are about men. i think when im done with these i will need to re-read romola or to the lighthouse!

meanwhile, the FLS for the TdF continues slowly climbing the mountain that is the body. it wont be done in time but it will be done soon, and it will be done right, so thats something. and i am headed to albury for the weekend for a flyball comp.

see you on the other side!

k xx

aging gracefully

2009-07-20T10:59:00.005+10:00

you know youre getting old when you:

are a bit excited about buying a new piece of machinery:

are even more excited at hanging out the washing:

consider it a good day to have pottered around in the garden cutting branches and planting herbs:

feel totally comfortable having a nice quiet lunch and knitting in public with some of your favourite people, without worrying about whether its cool or not. i was 26 years old when i started my now ended relationship. some people might feel inclined to go back and reclaim some of those 'lost' years, start again where they left off. but i dont feel like my life is over because i am 40 and single. i have no desire to pretend to be cool, or to go hang out in pubs or night clubs or hang around with 26 year olds (except for the one or two who may be reading this!) i have no desire to do anything that even remotely resembles 'dating' ever again. i take it as a sign of personal growth that i get some satisfaction out of whitegoods, clean sheets, herbs, knitting and grown up friends.

i am not graceful enough however to let my hair go grey naturally. not quite yet.

k xx

just quietly

2009-07-17T16:20:00.003+10:00

someone commented to me the other day that i have been a bit quiet this week. i have, its true. i described myself on facebook as just kind of drifting. thats how i feel. im not sure if this is good or bad, but i just feel quiet. lying low, perhaps. you know that myers-briggs personality type thing? i am an introvert apparently (along with an N, an F and a J), andwhile i dont set much store by those things usually, it is true that for the most part it all goes on inside my head. i am very careful about what i project (she says as she writes a blog that the whole world can read). the point im trying to make is i tend to turn inwards when i feel vulnerable. it takes a lot of effort to call someone and ask for help. but at the same time i cant pretend i feel something i dont, ie, happy happy joy joy, so i havent been much of a presence in the blogosphere lately. not a lot to contibute i guess. i am just quietly reading, biding my time, waiting for the energy to come back. im sure it will.

this state of affairs is not really helped by the fact that, knitting wise, i feel like cadel evans in Le Tour at the moment. not so much let down by my team mates, or over run by a bunch of posturing egos, rather that one bad moment has put me way behind the pack. i got a fair way into my maillot jaune, only to realise that counting pattern repeats of 7 stitches while watching angel may not be entirely compatible. how hard can gull stitch be, for goodness sake? so it got ripped right back to the garter yoke and restarted, and now sits here (again):

already at stage 12 and i am more than 3 minutes behind, thats for sure.

sigh.

k xx

on culture, high and low.

2009-07-10T11:51:00.008+10:00

my stars today said that 'your trusted friends come to the rescue'. one of them in particular most certainly did. she sent me a package:

it contained this:

season two of angel. she had already got me hooked by lending me season one, and another friend lent me seasons three through five, but alas, i finished season one with no season two to move on to. this meant i had to move prematurely on to season seven of buffy.

i watched a few eps of the bufster when she was on normal tv but it was always so late and i missed a lot. watching from the beginning has been amazing. not only is it a great show - funny characters, witty dialogue, social commentary - it has been a most welcome distraction from having to sit and think and feel. quite literally, buffy saved my arse. a lot.

and angel. well. i dont think i need to explain the attraction there do i? no. so lets move along to things a little more highbrow.

i am quite good at watching lowbrow tv. i am all about popular culture. my phd was kind of about low cultures as a kind of social resistance. so i see the politics in it when maybe i shouldnt. maybe it is just mindless crap. but let me tell you, when you leave what was going to be your forever house and your forever life and your forever family, for a whole heap of scary unknowns, a bit of mindless crap is kind of in order. there are plenty of other distractions that i have seen other people use to get them through less difficult times than these. ive been down that road myself. so i am pretty proud of myself that as bad as its been, this time ive resorted only to joss whedon and chocolate! i dont know what i will do when i run out of series' though. suggestions?

i have also been reading. there is nothing like a phd to kill off your love of reading for pleasure. but in the last few months i have weaned myself back onto the book. i started with the twilight series (see above re: being good at mindless crap. while im here though, is anyone going to sue stephanie meyer for a her blatant rip off of all things buffy? hello!!). then i read steve toltz' 'a fraction of the whole'. a promising idea, descending into silliness. i decided i needed something a little more literary, without actually re-doing my back catalogue of woolf and eliot and henry james (some good ideas for dvd watching there tho).

so i read the historian, a more literary take on the vampire theme. i liked it a lot. well written, good twists, and some history thrown in. of course theyre about to make it into a movie and ruin it completely. i recommend read it first. then i moved house and couldnt afford new books, and while i was unpacking i noticed something i hadnt read in a while that i remember liking, so i read that again - fingersmith by sarah waters. you might know her from tipping the velvet (andrew davies wrote the screenplay, is there anything this man cant do?!) i love this book. cant recommend it highly enough. then i read a review of her new book 'the little stranger' and i am reading that now.

its really good, not as good as the older historical stuff, but shes so good with character. but i am nearly finished with' the little stranger' and felt a strange kind of panic seize me this morning. the book reading is for bed time, i put jose gonzalez on the cd player and read a few chapters and then drift off quite nicely. i am petrified of not sleeping and now i am in a routine i dont want to mess with it. i probably have one or two more nights of 'the little stranger' left. so i spent my lunch hour yesterday in the uni book shop only to come out with nothing. i wanted to read more sarah waters but there was none to be had. how is this possible, you ask? because i live in a two-bit flea-ridden town when it comes to books obviously. here begins the high brow culture rant.

this morning, i go all the way over to one of those shopping mall places that i hate because i remember there is a good bookshop there, only to find it has become possibly the lamest book shop in the history of book shops. i was dumbfounded. does no one in this town READ anymore? whats going on? and get this, there was no one else in there. its school holidays and you can buy a dvd for $13 in the shop next door but how much do you think the book i did buy - the only decent one there, cost me?

$35. thats right. $35 for a book. a single, read-one-time-put-on-a-shelf book. what the? oh im sure there are all sorts of publishers justification for this state of affairs and im sure i should just get with the times and go back to my pop-culture lovin', but if an entire major shopping mall has one tiny shell of a bookstore where the best you can get is wally lamb, then surely the end of the world is nigh?

i must be living on the hell mouth.

k xx

nouveau debuts et quelques fleurs

2009-07-08T14:52:00.005+10:00

continuing with the bad french theme, i thought i would show you the beginning of the february lady cardigan (it is NOT a sweater). and because the flowers were such a hit last time, here it is amongst the hydrangeas:

i am nearly done with the raglan increases and so far so good. its knitting up lovely and soft and spot on gauge. the colour is a bit darker than this, and has a bit more steely grey in it. i think the greenery softens the colour a bit! it is weird to live in a part of the world where even in the middle of winter there are flowers and green grass and brilliant sunny warm days (ok its raining at the moment, but it rarely gets below 10degrees celsius here by the coast, tho the southerly wind chill can be something else).

in relation to the hydrangeas, i need to do a heap of dead-heading, and on a number of other plants around the place. there is potential for a great garden here but it needs some tidying and i have no implements. there is also a large steel hutchy type thing that would easily take 2 chooks (im not into bunnies, and no im not a vengeance demon) (buffy joke).

i am into puppies though:

awww isnt he cute. he keeps following me around the house with that little stuffed seal wanting me to play with him. he usually wins. i am much happier having him here, i would love to have both but i think a happy compromise has been reached. things are much improved on that front this week. i had a very very VERY bad day on saturday but got through with some help from friends and lots of tears shed and some very honest conversation. i feel like i have had a bit of a breakthrough really.

i had a bit of a breakthrough too last night, going to a new knitting group. just a small group at the local yarn store but everyone was so friendly and welcoming, and made such lively chit chat around me, i was a bit nervous about going but im really glad i did. thanks guys!

k xx

reviser et Le Tour

2009-07-04T09:29:00.004+10:00

pardon mon francais mal! but im a bit excita-mont about the tour de france this year. i have watched people do the Knit-Along before but never been into it but this year i have signed up on ravelry. i am in team saxo bank (o'grady, cancellara, schleck brothers) and am going for the maillot jaune, or yellow jersey, my personal challenge being to start and finish the february lady sweater. i have swatched for it and cast on and off a couple of times. here is the swatch:

its the bendigo wool mill luxury in 8ply. on 5mm needles i get 20 stitches to 4inches when gauge is 18 stitches with a worsted but im going to go with it anyway. a few more stitches never hurt anyone. i did however read that for some people this pattern blocks larger, so i will stick strictly to the stitch count and measurements, and not do any of my 'oh i'll just throw in some increases here' kind of thing.

i mentioned i had trouble working out how to do the armholes for the february baby sweater in the round not flat as per EZ's pattern. i went back and read the pattern for liesl, because the armholes are taken off and then picked up later and a lightbulb went on over my head and now i am good:

the gull stitch pattern is not so good. i dont know where it went wrong but it did. its right now and im not going to frog it. its for a baby. it wont notice. this is proving to be quite good practice for the real thing.

in other revisers (or updates), i got the STR wound back into a ball, it took 3 episodes of Buffy, if anyone had bets on. i did think of getting in touch with you Moorecat but i managed ok. this time! i have finished sock number one and am onto sock two. depsite the semi-striping they are going to be gorgeous socks, because the pattern is great and the yarn devine!

on a personal note, i am making good progress. there are lots of things that make me happy: having the dogs here and taking them down the beach (as you may have noticed), being a mere 10 minute drive from work, the life and vitality (not to mention food!) that comes from a working class, ethnic populated town (i felt somewhat uneasy in that regard in my old suburb). my little house (which i am about to go clean), cooking for one (surprisingly), complete and utter freedom and self-responsibility. this morning i am happy about some things i found in the garden - the first magnolias:

this tree is going to be amazing very soon. some red red roses:

and some red velvet kangaroo paws:

and then there are things that make me sad, little triggers, memories, sudden unexpected waves of loss and grief and stunned surprise, like everything is not quite real and im going to wake up soon. how did this happen? but you just get up and go on, because you have to. and because i have survived worse than this in my life. much much worse. and i am stronger than i thought i was.

k xx

mojos

2009-06-29T10:13:00.006+10:00

i got my 'babies' back on thursday and i was so excited to get home and see them! they were excited to see me too, they were at the gate when i pulled in and jem squealed like a girl and possum had a bone in her mouth that she couldnt let go of but her tail was going so hard the whole back half of her was waggling! sooo cute! i took them straight down to the beach and got some more photos:

this is a typical possum shot, barking at me or jem to hurry up with the ball chucking so she can run some more:

she got to run her little furry butt off on the weekend. we went out to a big working sheep farm at binalong, near yass, and spent two days in the cold, rain and mud chasing sheep:

poss and i havent worked sheep together in a long time and it looks like we still have our mojo. she remembered everything, i remembered most things, she worked really hard and people think its time we start trialling. im thinking about it....

we crashed early last night and when i woke up this morning there was a parcel at the front door:

hmmm bendigo luxury 8 ply in 'blue demin'. this is destined to be a february lady sweater i think. i am very happy with this colour choice, i am not naturally drawn to blue but i know its a good colour for me, this one has a nice steely grey to it that will be very nice i hope! of course i want to start it straight away but i have some other knitting issues to sort out first and they are the kinds of things that make me think my knitting mojo has gone walkabout.

i already told you about the regia stripey socks being too big. they are frogged now:

and bells has leant me a longer cabled needle to help with the magic loop thing. i have printed out the judys magic cast on document as well so that should help.

and the blackrose socks in the stripey str? well this skein just hates me. look:

it was a bitch to wind up from the get go and after repeated yarn barfs from the centre pulling ball a whole wad of it came out yesterday in the middle of a muddy paddock and i could do no more. i will need to fix this today. how many episodes of buffy do you think it will take to untangle it?!

and then there is this:

yes its a february BABY sweater, started on thursday for a co-worker who goes on maternity leave on wednesday. i thought for sure i would have it done by then. but for the life of me i can not figure out how to do the 'take the sleeves off and put them on waste yarn' thing (like i did for liesl not more than a month ago) so ended up knitting the first sleeve flat. its only a four inch seam so its not the end of the world but my brain just will not work on this one for some reason. like, how does the arm hole work when you knit sleeves flat and then go on and knit the body? i dont get it! i suspect someone wont be getting this on wednesday after all.

maybe i should just stick to working the sheep rather than the wool!

k xx

disastrous?

2009-06-25T08:34:00.004+10:00

i have been talking about liesl (the cardigan. in malabrigo) for some time now and she has been off the needles for a week or two. lots of rain meant the blocking thing needed to wait, because i just assumed i needed to wet block it. the finished product, despite the smooshiness that is malabrigo, was really quite stiff and tight.

so a couple of days ago i filled a bucket with luke warm water containing a drop of wool wash, and the second the wool hit the water i knew there was trouble. it was like one of those kiddy bath toy sponges that are tiny and then expand a million fold when they get wet. im pretty sure my jaw dropped as i watched my malabrigo bloom out alarmingly.

i didnt leave it in for long, and i tried to squeeze it gently but that sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach just got worse. i appeared to have knitted a malabrigo blanket.

when it was sufficiently squeezed i lay it out to pin it (the one problem with things knitted all in one piece is the pinning) and i tried really hard not to stretch it out lengthwise. i just wanted the two front parts to come together a bit more, and the sleeves to expand.

yesterday i took it off and shrieked. it was huge. it was a coat. and the fronts didnt meet. and the sleeves were too tight.

i pinned it again over night in such a way that the fronts did meet and the sleeves could expand. this morning it fits better in both of those aspects but it is still a coat.

i have had to take pictures in the work bathroom but still cant get decent exposure. these give you some idea:

i include this one for the colour:

you can see my problem. to get it to sit properly on my shoulders, i have had to overlap the tops of the two fronts. it is far too big here. i am holding it together with a large wooden pin thing. i didnt do button holes of course, but it needs a couple of buttons to hold it together over the bust otherwise it just gapes open. and it is so long. far too long. while i think omitting the purl bump rows might have been good fabric wise, it has given the whole thing too much drape and not enough structure.

i have a feeling this is a malabrigo issue. i followed the pattern exactly. i didnt up or downsize the stitch count in any way. i used the recommended needles. ok i didnt do a tension square but i usually get pretty close and figured it didnt matter with this pattern. but i suspect i was meant to do some research about washing and blocking malabrigo before i did so.

anyway. is it a disaster? i dont know. its not how i imagined it. its a coat, not a cardi. but i am wearing it. its lovely and soft and warm. its functional. its wearable (will be more so when buttons are added).

but i do start to despair. is it possible for me to make anything that is mistake or drama free? i have so looked forward to this one, and i cant help but be disappointed. given my rather fragile mental state, i feel like crying.

i have not had a dog with me this week either and i am cranky about that. i have them both for a week from tonight but this shared custody thing is going to grow old real quick.

at least i have a good weekend to look forward to. possum and i are going off to chase sheep around a paddock. this means i get to catch up with some canberra friends as well.

so its not all bad.

k xx

mostly socks

2009-06-23T11:08:00.005+10:00

the sun is out finally and liesl is blocking. im sure a good stretch on the rack will help with the slight tightness issues. i hope to wear her this weekend. in the meantime i have been doing mostly socks (i have to rip the pi shawl back a bit as my stitch count went awry but the lovely victorian ruby in the jade sapphire cashmere has seen the light of day occasionally).

i bought some of the regia kaffe fasset at a certain yarn store sale (which means i actually paid the usual recommended retail price. sigh). i wanted to do them toe up so i could use all the yarn but with no internets at home, i had only the ann budd article in IK about working socks toe up to rely on. the eastern cast on looks like it shouldnt be hard but it was. i did finally get it going, using DPNs, and then switched to magic loop, but there are problems. firstly, the cable on my 2.5mm circular is too short, so the joins are not great. plus, i read the tables wrong and didnt adjust for gauge (me? not thinking about gauge? surely not). so anyway, they are too big:

they will be frogged. i like them though. once i get a longer circular and research magic loop cast ons i will start these again.

and since i made the cauchy socks using STR rauen, i was dying to work with my other skein of STR. i bought myself the atomic 6 going off the colours on the screen and it looks great in the skein but i had a real nightmare winding it up. but still, i thought it would be a good colour for the blackrose socks from knitty. so off i go, and its easy as pie and the yarn is lovely and thick and smooshy but hello - whats with the stripes??

they will be gorgeous to wear so i am going to persevere but am not happy about this. i had made a decision that striping or highly variegated yarn gets made only into plain socks, no lace, no patterns. so this annoys me somewhat. next time i buy STR it will be from the semi-solid range. maybe they need to add a label to their multi-coloured range "warning: may stripe or pool. use with plain stitch patterns only".

still, i am quite badly addicted to socks that rock. i really need some more. like, this one. like, now....

k xx

a week and a bit

2009-06-19T09:20:00.004+10:00

firstly thanks to everyone for the lovely comments on the previous post. it made my day on wednesday to come into work and read them all! i still have no internet at home however, because the appointment that was made for yesterday (because a previous appt was made without checking with me if it was suitable which it was not so it had to be changed to yesterday) has been changed because there is actually no space on the exchange to get me connected until monday. how is it that a national telco can sell a product it doesnt actually have? talk about a seinfeld moment.

anyway, they promise me monday and they had better deliver because i am not enjoying only have internet at work where i cant spend hours at a time reading and commenting on other people's blogs. i am trying not to pay attention to the number of posts adding up in bloglines! i will start commenting again soon i promise.

in the meantime, jem and i have been going a little stir crazy as it has rained for most of the week and a bit that i have been in the new house. we couldnt stand it any longer and went down to the beach anyway. it is weird to post these photos because i have posted ones like it before, having lived here before, and it is weird to be going to the same places under different circumstances. it feels kind of ghostly, if you know what i mean. but it is still a beautiful piece of coastline, especially in winter:

looking north towards thirroul:

looking for fishy bits:

around the headland:

happy boy:

please throw the stick mum:

looking south towards mt keira and wollongong:

the rain has also put me at a bit of a loose end knitting wise. i finished liesl but i can not block her until it stops with the wet, and i cant wear her without blocking. she is just a little bit too tight and stiff, but looks lovely anyway:

i will blog full project details when she is really finished. and whats this? a matching pair of socks!

these are finished, and are on my feet. they are plain socks with a twisted rib cuff and a german heel, in koigu pppm, knitted on 2.75mm square needles bought in london. i call them 'dont mention the war socks' because i started them in england and they have a german heel. they are lovely to wear though. if only all socks could be made from koigu, there would be world peace i'm sure.

as for my own peace, well thats a ways off yet i think.

k xx

a whole house of my own

2009-06-15T14:21:00.008+10:00

careful what you wish for right? it is a big thing of mine, the need for my own space. now i have it. a whole house of it. all to myself. i have been there since tuesday and am nearly all unpacked, still the spare bed to construct, but most boxes empty and some food in the fridge finally. i cooked properly last night even, tho it took me a while to work out how to use the oven. let me show you around the place (warning, lots of photos).

the outside front view:

the front door:

the hallway:

let me just pause here. as soon as i saw this i knew the house had to be mine. it has been lovingly restored back to something like its original glory and smells of oil as all the wood you can see had been painted over and was recently stripped and re-oiled. there are picture rails. i love picture rails. every room has a chandelier or funky light of some description. the ceilings all have beautiful art deco patterns in them. this is the one in the hallway:

the first room on the right i have made into the office. it has a sun room off the front of it:

thanks to the flat-pack queen i was able to set up the computer finally yesterday (still no internet, not till thurs now. i am posting this from work):

then there is the main bedroom looking in towards the beautiful bay window with storage seat:

and looking out at the old fireplace and dressing table that i bought from the owner:

at the end of the hallway and separating the main room from the spare room is the bathroom, brand spanking new:

with groovy tiles:
the spare room is so large it has its own wardrobe and book shelf (not that you can see them here):

then back down the hallway and into the lounge room which i love, its like my little knitting nest - looking in from the hallway:

looking out towards the back of the house:

looking in from the back of the house:

the back of the house is probably an extension, it has a sloping roof and a brand new kitchen:

with the mega stove:

and then the dining room:

i dont have a proper dining setting, and some of those crates have gone outside now to the little shed and laundry. i dont have a washing machine yet so am hand washing smalls in a bucket and tomorrow i am going to the laundret. but i have nearly everything else i need, some little things i can acquire over time. you collect a lot of junk over 14 years and its hard to know exactly what you have or will need.

saying goodbye was very hard and i am very sad but am managing ok. there is a little back yard with a new fence for the dog (i have jem with me at the moment and he is helping a lot) and its close enough to walk to the shops, about a 5 minute drive down to the beach, 10 minutes to work. i had a lovely trip up to sydney on sat for wwkip day and lunch/dinner with friends, i even won a set of harmony interchangeables!! and have been busy at home unpacking, eating chocolate chip ice cream and watching buffy.

oh, and i have finished liesl. but thats for another day :)

k xx

the last post

2009-06-06T11:34:00.003+10:00

no i am not dead, tho i look and feel like death warmed up. i have some kind of flu. its not of the porcine variety. its just a normal regular run of the mill flu that i just had to have right now, when im stressed and emotional and tired with too much to do. like pack more. do you know how hard it is to work out who gets which piece of tupperware, for instance? or who knew a set of tea cups could make you sit on the kitchen floor and howl like a baby? horrid.

but this will most likely be my last post for a while, as i move on tuesday and there is no guarantee that optus will have my broadband set up when i get there. i have a busy week at work to contend with as well, so might not be very internetsy for a week or so, so if i dont comment on all those fabulous blogs out there thats why. i apologise in advance.

i promise to compensate when i return with lots of pictures of my fantastic new house. in the meantime, here is liesl basking in the saturday morning sun:

off the body (longer than expected, so i didnt do as many ridge rows at the bottom), and with the first sleeve started:

i am magic-looping the sleeves. i have tried magic loop before, on socks, and for the start of the pi shawl, and i hated it. but on thicker yarn and bigger needles it is a lot easier, and easier to manage the sleeves this way. i may be converted yet.

have a magic long weekend (god save the queen etc etc) and see you all again in my new life.

k xx

where liesl's at

2009-05-31T13:51:00.005+10:00

the cardigan that is, not fern's sister! i have been harrassed for a progress update so here it is:

to borrow a phrase, i am loving myself sick right now on this one. i borrowed rosered's technique of not doing the bumpy row for the whole body, and tho i was worried about the lack of definition for the feather and fan effect, i think it looks ok:

i did the bump rows for the whole of the yoke then some repeats so that the bumps stop where the sleeve starts. i think this will work ok, i will then pick up bump rows for the bottom of the sleeves and the body. now that i have corrected my mistake and figured out my chant, its humming along.

i would have had more done except i spent as much spare time as i had the last couple of days getting scratches and lines of 'socks that rock' dye across my index finger so i could finish the cauchy socks, the first of the sock patterns i have attempted from the cookie a book. rosered, bells and i started these at knitting camp and I WON!! not that it was a competition or anything, but i am pretty sure this is the first time i have beat either of them to a common FO, and im going to take it where i can get it. they look terrific:

they are not meant for me so are thankfully too long. i think they will be much appreciated when i gift them tomorrow.

k xx

things that make you go mmmm

2009-05-29T15:21:00.006+10:00

- parcels that arrive in the mail addressed to 'dr' (still gives me a giggle)

- the gorgeous things inside the parcel. thank you olivia, you are lovely

- olivia's pears in my fruit bowl

- lots of tomatoes to make The Soup with

- chocolate chip cookies

- nearly finishing a pair of socks

- the line of dye that is rubbing off on my finger from the 'socks that rock' yarn

cold weather, which means i can hibernate. i think i want one of these.

k xx

burn like a fire in cairo

2009-05-25T10:25:00.006+10:00

i am not sure what the cure thought was so special about egyptian fires, but at any rate, i am pretty sure they burn better than the one i made on the weekend. let me explain!

so i said in my last post that i was moving out, and in order to do so, one needs to pack. i have not been looking forward to this process. we have moved so much the last few years, i was really hoping to be settled for a while with the last move. i hate packing, at the best of times, which this is not. i was not looking forward to the stirring up of unwanted emotions. however, the need to pack at least presented an opportunity to clear out some files. there were about 6 book boxes of stuff downstairs that i had not bothered to unpack so i started there. they were uni files - notes, notebooks, chapter drafts, printed articles. i was ruthless. i pulled out stuff that had been hard for me to find the first time, and any primary sources (one needs to feel that all those hours spent hunched over a microfilm reader and the consequent loss of eyesight amounted to something), and put them into two small nappy boxes. the rest went straight into the wheelbarrow and was wheeled out to the garden bed that was meant for vegies but now won't be anything (i suspect possum is looking for worms, not enlightenment):

yes thats a petrol can. yes i poured petrol on it. yes i nearly lost my eyebrows ( i really need to start thinking things through before i do them). despite my best efforts, it was a pretty mild fire:

i watched it for an hour or so, but it was raining, and then the wind picked up and i freaked out and put dirt on it. 5 years to make this:

and it ends up like this:

at one point, when i thought i might be about to get a visit from the rural bushfire people, i did say to possum that i probably should have just gone the recycling route, but that wouldnt have been quite so cathartic. it was cathartic. it felt good to be so bloody destructive.

i was also a bit creative over the weekend. i combined all these yummy things:

to make this:

tomato, chickpea and chorizo soup. i made the recipe up myself by combining aspects of two different internet recipes. oh it was yummy. i ate it all weekend and still have two serves left! i would omit the chilli next time tho.

i also finished one cauchy sock and have exactly one week to knit another. i have never made a sock in a week before. eep! and i took liesl out for a lovely afternoon at roseredville, (we also went to the movies - easy virtue - much fun), at which i got distracted, and discovered a mistake that needed tinking. how hard can it be?! sigh.

i have been reading at night time, it is helping me sleep, and i just finished an excellent pseudo-intellectual take on the vampire legend, the historian (ironic, given the symbolic burning of my historian-self mentioned above), and then went back to re-read new moon but bella's pining after edward made me feel nauseous. thankfully, after we watched the dvd, rosered informed me that there was a book of the princess bride (which i did not know. how did i not know that?), and so i started that instead. much better.

despite its charms, i am, however, somewhat sceptical right now about the existence of 'twue wove'.

k xx

and i forgot to say thank you for all the lovely comments on the last post. you are all wonderful!

when it rains

2009-05-22T09:19:00.004+10:00

it really pours. this is what it looked like yesterday over the back:

it is still raining now, not quite as heavy but the pool is nearly overflowing and the pond is full. i love it when it rains but dogs can get a little stir crazy. and murderous. look away now if youre a bunny lover:

meanwhile i have made some progress with liesl (not lily!), i have copied rosered and stopped doing the bumpy rows for the body because i dont need any more bulk there really:

i am not sure if the feather and fan shows up properly tho. what do you think? it does look better without the flash, and the colours are much deeper too (its malabrigo worsted in velvet grapes). i have taken off the sleeves and tried it on and so far so good. i really just want to work on this exclusively but i have some deadline gift socks to finish.

last night, watching madmen, i finished this little hat i started on the weekend to knit in the car:

its jared flood's 'turn a square' hat minus the stripes, in sublime organic merino that i got in london. it only took 50g and i have another ball. it is lovely on and i will make myself one (this is a gift). i really like this pattern, it fits great. he says to block it, maybe to flatten the decreases a bit, but it works without blocking. how good are hats in the round?

i am home alone this weekend, and a bit sad. i guess this is a good time to talk about the thing that is happening, that some people already know about. in two weeks time i will be living on my own on a permanent basis, as my 14 year partnership with trent appears to be over, in its current form at any rate. we have not had an easy year and he has decided he needs a change. no one has done anything wrong and we are working on staying friends, which is important given what we have been through together. i couldnt bear it if it was one of those relationship break ups where all the good times were forgotten in a flood of hatred and recrimination, where 14 years came to mean nothing. the nature of our collective pasts and the way we got together has meant that we have been very dependent on each other, and it is probably time that we figured out who we were separate of each other. i am alright with it on some levels, but absolutely crushed on others. i swing from excitement about my own future to terror at the unknown. what do you do when you have had someone to talk to for 14 years? how do you go from that to living on your own with a dog or two for company? there are some things i will not miss but lots of things i will. i can see why people go the hate and blame route, because in some ways it would be easier to be fuelled by anger and be able to blame someone. there is no one to blame, but we are both to blame. we have tried really hard but sometimes its not enough to just love someone. its sad to leave someone i love, thats the hardest part. but love takes all forms, and there's some saying i heard somewhere about if you love something set it free? a cliche perhaps, but true as well.

at least i have a new house to move into that is just gorgeous and close to work and i have plenty of support and am talking to my sister again. that is proving interesting. it may even be kind of healing, to not be the black sheep anymore, as she has also cut ties with our mother, which makes me a feel a little less like the crazy one. families. sheesh.

speaking of which, my dad goes in for his surgery on tuesday of next week. he has been poked and prodded and scanned and all signs are that there is no spread of the cancer to anywhere other than the tumour, so it will come out along with some lymph nodes. they are planning on keyhole surgery, how amazing is that! he is hoping to be home in time for the first state of origin. thats my dad! he lives in queensland now but he used to play in nsw, so there better not be any cheering for moroon colours up there.

so my plan for the rest of the weekend is to do a bit of work at home today, start going through my boxes of files and maybe have a sacrifical burning of the phd papers, and make a tomato soup. i have a movie date tomorrow arvo that will be fun. then there is watching of dvds, drinking of tea, and knitting.

it could be a lot worse.

k xx

just a little bit...

2009-05-18T13:51:00.004+10:00

a lovely weekend was passed in the nations capital (aka The Can) where there was much eating, gossiping and knitting with good friends. we may also have popped into a little tin shed where they have some markets, and a few things may have been aquired. i actually think i was pretty restrained. somebody (ok, not just her, quite a few somebodies!) had nabbed all the beautiful red aplaca/silk from the glenora stall so i settled for this little bit of silk instead:

just a little bit really, to make a thin YO scarflet with (for some reason my camera wants to be out of focus today, sorry).

i also picked up just a little bit of wool/silk blend from tom-the-farmer-who-wants-a-wife-called-renee. (well we dont know if he wants one, but hes getting one!):

seriously, the wool is divine, it hails from this little place and is destined to be something lacy and shawl-like.

that was it on the wool front. strangely for me, i bought some jewellery for myself, a lovely hand made heavy silver crossover ring (its not blurry in real life i swear):

i needed a new ring. just because.

k xx

what happened to liesl?

2009-05-15T09:15:00.003+10:00

for what i am sure is the first time ever, i finished one cardigan and immediately started another. normally i faff around a bit with socks or scarves etc, and i do have some deadline socks and a hat to start, but i had heard liesl was quick, and there was malabrigo to go with it, and the thought of actually having TWO hand knitted things to wear in the one season, well it went to my head. obviously.

i started on tuesday night i think it was, and powered along, thinking it was a pretty easy pattern (tho i had heard tell of someone having trouble with it which was silly because its just a simple feather and fan pattern right?) and my stitch counts were right after every increase, and yet, something was amiss. the fan-parts just werent lining up. i took it out with me last night to knitting group and there was much fondling of the smooshiness that is malabrigo and there was much reassurance that now i was finished with the increases it would look ok, and i told myself it would look ok, but really, i knew it wouldnt. i dont know how it happened, it really isnt a hard pattern at all, but i guess i am not quite with it at the moment and missed some yarn overs somewhere. or something...

so i took her out this morning and she looked like this:

smooshy yes. correctly patterned, no. so now she looks like this:

its just better that way i think. there is no point trying to become a better knitter if you make things that you KNOW are wrong. simple mistakes that you dont know about till later that dont make the pattern wonky, thats different. i am a very reluctant frogger and will live with much that is amiss. but fans that dont line up, well i just couldnt do it.

at least worsted yarn on 7mm needles knits up quick. sigh.

k xx

FO - lily that is not really lily

2009-05-12T12:57:00.007+10:00

i have been working forever on my second lily cardigan, and finally finished it over the weekend. it took a while to block and i wore it to work yesterday with a brooch as a closure but today i have added the final touch in the form of a toggle, and present it here in all its glory:

pattern: lily cardigan by marie grace designs
yarn: filatura di crosa 'zara' in 1663 'marrone' (brown, in other words)
sticks: knitpicks options 3.75mm
modifications: so many that it is a lily cardigan in name only and i apologise to the designers

the first lily i made was done strictly according to the pattern. it was too short in the body and too long in the sleeves. the picot edges curled inwards. the possum/merino has since started to felt. sigh. so i thought i would try again and change a few things along the way. i cast on as per the pattern but pretty much changed everything from then on. firstly, despite the fact that it says you shouldnt need stitch markers for the raglan increases because the yarn over is obvious, my raglans are crooked in places. because the yarn overs werent bloody obvious. or i am just a bit slow.... (quiet!)

secondly, i wanted it longer in the bodice so the side shapings arent quite exact, nor as distinct as in the pattern. its still got them, just not so much in and out.

thirdly theres the length. i kept going until i was dead sure it covered my butt. no waist-length cardi for me, thanks very much.

and then theres the finishing. not a picot edge to be seen. i did a wide garter stitch border along the bottom which i matched on the bottom of the sleeves and along the front edges. i dont think my picking up of edge stitches was that great because the two bottom points tend to lift upwards. i dont mind though, with the notches in the sleeve cuffs it has a japanese look about it i quite like:

and then theres the closure. no knitted on cord, or sewn on ribbon. i made a quick YO button hole and have sewn on a toggle. i think this adds to the oriental look as well (complete with dog hair. already. thanks for that jem):

so its a lily thats not really a lily. but i love it. i love the zara. i wore it over a tshirt yesterday and it was soft as cotton next to my skin. it dropped a LOT in the wet blocking. be warned if you dont want your zara to grow. it really really grew. it took the pinning really well though and has held its shape and i dont mind the extra length, it was a little snug on anyway. did i mention i love zara? i kept admiring it all day yesterday. it made me happy for a while.

also making me happy is this lovely little book:

i started the pi shawl with bells' help and a photocopy but i loved what i read so much i wanted the whole thing. i love the way she writes knitting into her stories, and the way she makes knitting seem so easy, and the way she calls us 'my dears'. its like the mother and grandmother i never had. these last couple of weeks i really feel like knitting has saved my arse, yet again. knitting and knitters.

now i want to start leisl. in this (rav link). immediately.

k xx

little comforts

2009-05-08T08:43:00.004+10:00

i am taking them where i can get them at the moment. like taking a full lunch hour and sitting in the sun knitting socks. i feel like i am cold right into my bones and cant quite get warm. if i had a choice i'd be curled up on the lounge undertaking some serious doona wearing-bbc watching-timtam eating therapy. but i must soldier on.

so i made soup. i had a sudden craving for pea and ham. i have only ever had it once and have never made it but suddenly it was what i wanted. so i got out my cooks companion and of course she had a recipe and of course it was dead easy. i had a chat to the butcher and decided on using both bacon bones and a ham hock (for meat AND flavour), chopped it all up:

cooked it for a couple of hours:

then ate some:

it was lovely. warm and smokey and tasty. just what the doctor ordered. and it made enough for several meals during the weekend.

i also managed to get lily mark II cast off late yesterday:

there are ends to weave in and some serious blocking to do (i just realised the problem with knitting all in one piece is the blocking. eeck) but i think its a success. will have proper pix by end of the weekend, at which point i will officially list it as an FO on rav but not before then because i know how that annoys some people!

k xx

paris nights

2009-05-05T10:26:00.010+10:00

i have never been to gay paree but on the weekend i went to malabrigo (in 'paris night'):

thanks must go to a few people for this lace-enabling act. firstly, fee, for showing off her gorgeous pi at knitting camp (one time...), and then to bells, doubly, for knitting a beautiful one of these in malabrigo herself, and also for starting a new lace project thus breaking our lace-monogamy committment. ok it wasnt in writing but still, what are you supposed to do if one of your BKFFs is being a lace-slut? (oh and also i have to thank bells for STARTING the project for me. did someone mention enabling?)

and i must confess to being a bit bored. i cant knit the myrtle leaf shawl at the moment. i need complete quiet to be able to concentrate and i am not in the right head space (no? really?). victorian ruby is lovely (whats not to love about jade sapphire cashmere?) but it is at the body which is just a mindless 4 row dropped stitch repeat. and there is the never ending lily-thats-not-really-a-lily (its been heavily modified, as you will see when its finished). it will be finished soon, in the next day or two i hope, as i have nearly done the second sleeve:

and then i just need to pick up and knit a garter stitch border along the front edges. (i also need to learn how to do button holes as i am aiming for a toggle-type closure on this one).

and then theres socks. im not feeling the cauchy-love right now (again with the no? really?) and the koigu war socks are all in plain. good for lunch breaks sitting under a tree but thats where it ends. enough with the socks already.

so a pi shawl in paris night seemed like a great idea. i had bought this yarn with the intention of making the shetland tea shawl from a gathering of lace but then i realised i had not thought about a pi shawl, and surely EVERYONE has a pi shawl, and it gave me a chance to read that chapter from the book, which was lovely and i must now purchase, and surely one must have at least one malabrigo project on the go at all times? do i need to justify it anymore?

in other yarn enabling news, given i was in canberra for the weekend (just because), and given that the good dr renee, who only recently moved to The Can hadnt been there before, and because this is the kind of thing good friends do, i took her to the woolshed at manuka. this little store has changed hands recently, and i had not heard much about the new arrangement, but i was really pleasantly surprised. ok its still a mess, still too much in too little space, still not really well displayed (note to LYS owners, its ok to take it out of the plastic bags, we promise not to drool on it. well not so you'd notice anyway). also, they are still selling ugg boots. i mean really, just cos it comes from sheep doesnt mean you have to sell it in a yarn store. if she got rid of the ugg display, she'd have a lovely window space where she could put chairs and books and we might sit and play for a bit longer. all that being said, the selection was really most impressive. firstly, our beloved zara. also zara plus, zarina prints and baby zara. in all colours. lots of it. at a good price. filatura everywhere. no sign of supplier problems, factory meltdowns, going out of stock or replacing with cheap chinese knock offs. happy happy joy joy. dr renee has been introduced to the filatura love and all is right with the world. then there was heaps of yummy stuff from touch yarns, including the possum/merino and the possum supreme in lovely solid and variegated colours. the full range of jo sharp, and i mean ALL of it. some sock yarns (not enough, but there was some online) and then, lo and behold, a whole heap of noro.

now i am not a noro fan. yes yes burn me at the stake, but its scratchy and the colours are weird. so there. of course i know it washes up soft, and yes i have seen some lovely things done with it, but its just not my bag you know? until now. until i saw a rather large pile of small skeins in solid colours, nice reds and greens and blues, and this:

yes i bought some noro. its pink. its Cash Iroha (cashmere/silk/wool/nylon). its lovely, really really lovely. i think it will be a thin night-time clappy, or something similarly stylish.

this topped off a lovely weekend with great friends (bummer we couldnt get in to see wolverine. mmmmhugh. but the good dr and i made do with some vampire-lovin'). crying in the car the whole way home was slightly less than fun, and probably a little bit dangerous, but i think its going to be like that for a little while yet, and i am just grateful that i have plenty of people and support to help me through a difficult time. let alone some really nice yarn :)

thanks guys.

k xx

moving right along

2009-04-29T12:41:00.005+10:00

i am not going to talk more about the bad stuff right now. its too yucky to blog and theres no point really. more will be revealed, probably when its all over.

in the meantime, i have knitting to show. i might have done some at knitting camp (y'think?)

the first thing i did was finish the first 'dont mention the war' sock (german heel french toe started in england etc):

scrummy koigu pppm. with french toe neatly kitchenered by bells at camp because i cant do it without looking at a book. (can anyone except bells do it without looking at a book???) this is my first go at koigu and i love it, i may never want to wear non-koigu socks again. lucky for me i have two more 100g lots waiting for my itchy fingers.

i didnt start them at camp tho, instead i started something from the new cookie a book, along with rosered and bells . we all started the cauchy socks in different yarns which im sure we will blog about eventually. mine is in socks that rock rauen (lightweight):

we decided to cast on extra stitches because the pattern was for only 60 and we were making boy socks. i dont think i am making mine into boy socks anymore (hint) so will just decrease the extra stitches and keep making them for me. i love this yarn, more variegated than expected but still working nicely.

and then there was lily. i worked hard on the sleeve but didnt quite get there. it was finished last night but not before a visit to roseredville and some very sage advice. that is, dont knit the garter stitch band in the round because then you have to purl and everyone hates purling, especially in the round (yes they do) so just put a notch in it and knit the garter stitch band flat.

et, voila:

im a big fan of this notch business. i cant tell you how much i am loving this project. everytime i try it on i realise how much i have learnt from it, and how much my knitting has improved and how cool it is to be making something that is going to be a delight to wear. cant wait, and just in time cos its goddamn cold here today.

k xx

beyond bleah....

2009-04-27T15:46:00.003+10:00

knitting camp was great. you can read about it here and here and here see some photos here. im sure more stories will emerge shortly.

coming home was not so great. not just because knitting camp was over but because things at home took a turn for the worse (not my dad thankfully).

2paw said in her comments that life is either all up or all down and that was very prophetic.

i dont want to say too much right now, but there are some big life changes ahead that i am sad and scared about.

but i know i will be ok.

thanks for the kind comments on the last post, very grateful for all of them. im very grateful for a lot of people actually.

k xx

all a bit much

2009-04-24T10:44:00.005+10:00

this post comes with a 'too much information' warning, that is, its one of those posts thats not about knitting but about the 'rest of my life' and given the way i write about these things, could be considered to contain information some may deem inappropriate for public blogging.

i am feeling a little frazzled. first, i had to frog almost an entire arm of lily last night. for some reason, i thought i knew what i was doing, and i measured the top of the sleeve, found it wanting and thought it would be a good idea to do some quick increases along the underside of the sleeve before doing the decreases. why i thought this would do anything other than add a balloon effect to my otherwise lovely zara sleeve i have no idea. at 8.25pm last night, just before madmen came on, i decided the balloon had to go. so go it did. this means lily is unlikely to be finished while at knitting camp.

ah knitting camp. i am going straight from work so the car is packed with too much stuff, including probably too much knitting, but i am looking foward to it. if only just to sit somewhere and listen to chatter and giggle and eat some chocolate and not really think about much.

because i have been doing a bit too much thinking. its not my fault tho. just when you think life has settled into a comfortable rhythm something new comes along. as if the personal impacts of the global economic crisis werent enough (which i have been admirably calm about i think), we get hit with a new double-whammy, the second thing flowing from the first.

the first is that i found out last weekend that my dad underwent a colonoscopy during which a tumour was found. they dont know the full extent but he is having CT scans this week and an operation to remove it soon. the thing is his sister died quite young of bowel cancer. i dont like the look of those genes. i would like to return mine please and trade them in. including the inherited fat gene as well, thanks very much, with which i am really struggling this week.

i am not very close to my dad. he and my mother divorced when i was 9 and i only found him again a few years ago. but we talk every so often and we went there for christmas, and whenever i am around him my own personality makes complete sense.

and then about 6 years ago i became estranged from my mother and sister, the first willingly the second only because they were a package deal. but with this news about dad i thought my sister had a right to know. i found her on facebook (oh yes facebook is wonderful blahblahblah), and sent her a message. she sent me one back. we talked on the phone on tuesday night. it was really great to talk to her, a lot has changed, for both of us, in 6 years. but it has bought back a lot of stuff i thought was well buried, and i guess really a lot of sadness that my family is the way it is. so much hurt and anger, so much time wasted, so many lives messed up along the way. i would like to be magnanimous and forgive and forget and all that, but some things cant be forgiven, or forgotten. i hope my sister and i can work through what we need to and not hurt each other any more. im sure we can. its just frustrating and tiring that we should even have to work at what should really just come naturally.

so im sad and angry about time lost and scared about time slipping away and sometimes when i sit still for a moment i just wonder what the point is. we struggle so hard to make life into something more, but what is it really other than the endless struggle to beat the next amoeba out of the primordial ooze?

dont get me wrong, i dont think life should be all sweetness and light, and i dont think i have a particularly bad lot, in fact, life is for the most part very good to me and i am blessed with much to be thankful for. but there are some days, especially when your workplace adds its own little cherry on top, where its all a bit much.

thank goodness there's knitting camp!

k xx

something substantial

2009-04-20T14:54:00.004+10:00

i mentioned a few posts back i would have something substantial on the knitting front to show shortly. i have been working almost exclusively on my second lily cardigan, because it is starting to get cold and my first lily cardigan, in the lovely possum/merino, is not going to get me through winter on its own. and so, after much seemingly endless stocking stitch, i have this to show:

i have done a few things differently this time, like coming back to pick up and knit in the sleeves after the body. i think this made knitting the body easier but it is not making knitting the sleeves easier! but i think it is better this way. i also am not using picot edges. as pretty as they are, and despite the rather vigorous blocking to which i subjected them, they will. not. sit. flat. so i have knitted a quite thick garter stitch band along the bottom:

and this will be joined by garter stitch bands along the front edges and around the wrists. i think i might be able to get this finished by the end of knitting camp this weekend. ah knitting camp. (snigger giggle at memories of last year).

speaking of which, i had the pleasure of travelling to The Can (Canberra, that is) this weekend just gone to see my lovely friend dr renee and her boy oscar (the dog) in their cute new house. i was very happy to see them both and see them so well settled and happy, and very happy also to spend saturday constructing furniture, baking, knitting and gossiping with a couple of other good sorts. we made cupcakes and sausage rolls in honour of george not being able to join us (sob):

we also spent some time dissecting and analysing the latest literary offering from interweave press, Sock Innovation, by cookie a.

i wont do a full review, but i am a big fan of cookie socks. this one left me a little underwhelmed, partly because some of the patterns look so damn complicated, like a 48 row cable pattern repeat (aaagh) and i dont think many of the patterns will work with variegated yarn (which is what we all love about monkeys, non?). but i have taken quite a shine to these (rav) and i am going to start them this weekend at afore-mentioned knitting camp, but in boy style with a twisted rib cuff rather than a picot one. in socks that rock rauen, no less:

hmmm smooshy. lucky boy!

k xx

some other cute things

2009-04-16T13:17:00.005+10:00

so i am not really into cutsey stuff, altho i did have a bit of penchant for hello kitty and all things japanese for a minute there. i am a bit suspicious of all the domestic goddessy stuff doing the rounds at the moment, like the ads for appliances where the women are in high heels and aprons. not only are we now supposed to be career women and mums, but we're supposed to go back to the 50s and do all things hand-made as well?! sheesh.

feminism aside, one of the things that caught my eye at the easter show was the 'my little cupcake' stand. they have a shop here in sydney, and they do nice cupcakes:

but they also do really nice tea things:

i have been wanting to add to my teacup collection for a while, so my lovely house-husband got me a set of the tea cups, and the flyball team bought me the pot-for-one as a present for box-loading (ie, putting the tennis balls in the springloaded box that the dogs get the balls out of during racing).

the tea i got from another stall, its nice but not strong enough for me. i have developed a hankering for tea with my knitting lately. i must be getting old.

k xx

easter exhaustion

2009-04-14T10:52:00.012+10:00

the easter weekend in this house has, for the last few years, been spent at the sydney royal easter show participating in the flyball competition. this year, the team (st george phoenix) in which trent races possum were the defending champions, having won last years two days of racing. we had a bit of an element of surprise on our main competitors then, who are still the australian record holders (they broke their own 17.3 second record a few weeks ago). we are not so surprising now. they have 6 dogs to rotate, including some very lithe border collies, and we race the same 4 dogs over the two days, including the little pocket rocket called poppi (a foxie cross). anyway, we were neck and neck all weekend and it came down to the last race, where we were beaten by less than half a second. so we came second. its a good result, a great result really, all things considered, but its pretty high pressure at that end of the flyball racing spectrum, and the phoenix likes to win, not come second. and there was the usual dog-politics crap of course just to take the shine off things. some dog people are less socialised than their own dogs, and should not really be let out in public. but we had fun anyway.

on the friday, when trent was just judging not racing, i got some time to walk around a bit and see a few things. the usual icons were there, the utes:

the champion wool:

crowds:
displays made out of fruit and vegies:

devonshire tea with friends at the CWA cafe:

some nice knitting:

some other knitting and assorted weirdness:

more crowds:
treats:
dolls that are now called heritage (which makes me heritage, as i used to get one of these every year!):

some pretty show dogs:

(we have one of these, called jem. we dont show him, hes too busy running around an agility course doing something useful, but his breeder was showing his nephew:)

and then the flyball, of course:

its possible to spend a lot of money on a lot of crap at the show, i confined myself to some new crocs (half price), some to-die-for rocky road (including a honeycomb variety. oh my!), and some other cute things i will blog about separately because the photo has gone walkabout. no showbags, they are never as good now as i remember when i was a kid and i always feel ripped off, so i didnt bother.

three days out there is exhausting and we spent most of yesterday snoozing. i did get quite a lot of knitting done as well this weekend, i hope to have something substantial to show in the next day or so.

now i am 'back at work' (albeit from home) and not lovin' it today, not at all, so will shut up before i get in trouble for whinging about having a job when other people (including my most excellent house husband) dont.

k xx

in which lace knitting kicks my butt. again.

2009-04-07T17:33:00.009+10:00

i have a monkey on my back. its called the myrtle leaf shawl. she is like my siren, calling me to crash again and again on the merciless charts of lace knitting. goddamnit.

see, now that its turned colder (and thats where it ends. not.) i am desperate to get myself another cardigan. lily 1 from last year in the possum/merino is lovely but went badly out of shape very quickly, and it was a first attempt, and i am making it again using some filatura zara in a lovely deep chocolate. really, this is just the best 8ply, so smooth and smooshy, and knits up with beautiful stitch definition. so i have been working on her almost solely since i got back. she is up to here:

another bit of body and two arms and shes done. but gosh theres a lot of knitting there. me not being small and all that.

and i really miss knitting lace. bells and i started the myrtle leaf shawl together on australia day, using the same yarn, and she has done 15 repeats and i have done 2:

sheesh. it kicked my butt when i first started and i resisted all advice (eg, life lines, stitch markers etc) until the third frogging (why am i so bloody stubborn??). then i put stitch markers in to mark the repeats and keep the stitch count right. that worked, and i knitted two beautiful mistake free repeats and i thought maybe i had this lace knitting thing figured out.

maybe i did, i dont know, but i made the fatal mistake of putting it aside for a while. when i picked it up today, just to do a row or two with a nice cup of tea, it just looked at me and laughed. like i was some kind of evil adulterer who needed to be punished for my philandering. and with a boring cardigan at that. a cardigan knitter obviously has no call to be knitting lace. thats what my myrtle said anyway. she kicked my butt again. i have no idea how but the stitch count went wrong and i have thrown it away in disgust. it laughs at me from under the lounge. an evil high pitched witchy cackling laugh. damn you myrtle leaf.

in other news, i started some socks while i was overseas. i decided not to risk trying to smuggle pointy bits of wood onto a plane, so watched movies in both directions (twilight (mmmmedward), quantum of solace, the duchess, shakespeare in love (again), vicky christina barcelona and the dark knight). but while at iknit i purchased some of these:

they are square dpns. made of very light metal-type something. they are quite short so take a bit of getting used to but otherwise they are as strong as knitpicks but nowhere near as heavy, so they dont drag the wool down in the corners. hence, i have no ladders:

i love these needles, they are like manna from the knitting gods. of course, they cost 9pounds, so they would wanna be good. the yarn is koigu kppm in a scrummy set of berry colours, being knit to a basic sock recipe with a twisted rib cuff. no pattern required. given they were started in the UK and have a german heel i am calling them 'dont mention the war' socks. i am happy to mention how much i love koigu however.

but best we dont mention the lace, not for a while anyway.

k xx

the uk in dot points

2009-04-05T16:45:00.011+10:00

welcome to the new home of 'a room of my own'. thanks for following me here. it was time to get out of that rut and decorate a new one! and thank you for the thoughtful and insightful comments on the last post.

i have been strangely reluctant to blog too much about the recent trip to london and wales. i get the feeling sometimes that people think i make too much of my travels. i know other people have travelled wider and further than me, and i dont operate under illusions about what i do or dont know about the world at large, but travel is exciting for me because i have had life throw some things in my way that meant the ordinary rites-of-passage that many enjoy were not possible. but since i got my life together and started my phd then all sorts of opportunities arose that i thought would never come my way. to be where i was 10 years ago and to now be going overseas every year or so is such a leap, it makes my mind boggle! and i dont take it for granted. its a great privilege, and i am very fortunate to have support in my life that makes going overseas possible, even if it is for a mere 10 days at a time. next time though i am not going alone. i dont cope with that part really well actually.

so this last trip was to london and cardiff in the uk. i could tell you all about it chronologically, or in themes, but im just going to do the highlights. in dot points.

the tube. surely the best thing the british ever gave the world
getting lost in bloomsbury
wading through the treasures of empire in the british museum, mouth open most of the time

walking past the london school of economics and birkbeck college before stumbling upon the street of my life-long heroine, viriginal woolf (if i could write like her my life would be complete)
drinking peppermint tea in the tate modern (after seeing a real live rothko. sigh)

refusing to pay 10 quid to see the inside of the globe
finding great coffee made by aussies in soho
crossiants and orange juice from pret a manger
the shops on oxford and regent st

the wall of rowan at liberty and john lewis at which i was admirably restrained (ie, i did not actually take it all down and roll in it)

having my clapotis recognised when i walked into iknit
discussing shelving arrangements with the workers at iknit
chatting with an american boy crocheting in iknit
the book selection in iknit
just iknit in general

kings cross station
seeing jane austens perfect hand writing and some of virginia woolfs scrawl in the british library
the amazing breathtaking beauty in the victoria and albert museum, for example, the history of fashion and the shoe display

catching a taxi to paddington station (hilarious and scary)
travelling through the countryside into wales, trying to take pictures of sheep out the window of a high speed train

discovering the best thing about cardiff is the bargain rugby shirts
meeting some really important people in nursing research
running a really good workshop at the conference
coming home

a lowlight was not being able to get up to colinette, it was about a 3 hour drive north of cardiff and i was going to hire a car but some extra meetings/sessions were scheduled during the conference that i needed to get to and considering i was there for work i thought i'd better show up.

otherwise, i think thats a pretty impressive list for a flying tour! there are more photos here on my flickr if you havent seen them already.

i seem, however, to have brought back some kind of throat/chest infection with me and am feeling a little sickly, nothing major though. but a good reason to get a whole lot more sleep. writing that list has exhausted me all over again.

k xx