jenwren's blog

The first week back at school was miserably hot to begin with, but cooled down by Thursday and Friday.  Thursday morning was actually a welcome but chilly 8°C when I got to school and I swear it was a good 20°C warmer inside before I opened windows and doors to cool it down.

I've been fairly busy, but some progress has been made on the scarf and the blanket.  Unfortunately, the slubby wool has still not arrived.  I'm sure there is a direct relationship between the urgency or desire to start a project and the length of time it takes to obtain the materials.

At last, my slubby purple mist wool on order has arrived.  I went up to Guyra after school today to collect it.  The pattern calls for a long tail cast on, which I've not tried before.  Time to increase my repertoire of cast-on methods!  The first step will be to wind the skeins into balls.  Hopefully I'll get the cast on and a few foundation rows done tonight.

Today has been overcast all day, with only a few spits of rain.  The cloud rolled in overnight, keeping the temperature from dropping much.  I would like it to rain  - I'm having to water the plants daily.  This afternoon's forecast thunderstorm appears to now be expected in the morning.  So here comes another warm night *sigh*.

I've had some long days this week, and have mostly only gone into my garden to quickly water the plants and not much else.  So I love weekends when I get to spend some time tinkering around and actually seeing how much growing has been done.   The beans reached the guttering on Monday and are now attempting to find something up there to climb on.  I hope they don't find a branch of the nearby Birch tree, or I'll have to climb up there and cut the stems (I'd certainly never reach any beans up that high).  A few flower buds are now appearing so I hope to start harvesting beans soon.   The tomato plant that was supposed to be the Yellow Pear variety was actually the Mini Orange variety as I had guessed.  Must try not to mix up my labels on the seedling pots again next year.  The fruit have been ripening and I've already eaten several in salads.

My chilli plant now has several chillies on it.  When they ripen I will probably use some fresh, but dry any excess.  I have the dried chillies from which the seed for this plant came and they are wickedly hot!  I've been harvesting radishes, beetroot and some of the lettuce, and all of the onions have been pulled up and stored.  I would have planted more radishes, but as I will probably move house in around a month or so, there's no point (I just hope I can get the most out of what's already there before moving).

The baby blanket is just about to come off the loom.  I'll probably then pack up the loom and table for the time being.  I'm too busy during the school term to weave anything and certainly won't be starting anything before moving.

I started the Bob and Weave shawl on Wednesday night - it took a bit of fiddling with the long-tail cast-on before I worked out which bit of yarn I had to go under and which was looped over to do it.  With this cast-on method the dropped stitches won't cause the whole thing to unravel.  Not that I was totally convinced until I did the first lot of dropping stitches and pulled them back to the cast-on edge...  I started out on 4.5 mm needles and have done about 15 cm but I think I should have used larger needles.  So I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place and swatch it on 5.5 mm needles, and I've just realised the mohair lace scarf is on my only 5.5 mm needles and the next size I have is 7 mm - bummer!  If only I could run out and buy some 6 mm needles locally tomorrow - no chance!  I really want to have this shawl finished by early March, but this is looking less and less likely.  I wonder how much knitting can be done at the swimming carnival this week?

The Bob and Weave shawl is now on 5.5 mm needles and growing rapidly.  I finished the first of four balls of yarn this morning.  I don't think it will grow quickly enough to have it finished in two more weeks though.  Oh well.  It is providing good stress relief.

My bean plants now have flowers from top to bottom and many young beans.  They haven't managed to grab on to the Birch tree - the branches finally looped over the hook at the top and are hanging down.  Even these branches have flowers on them and will be productive.  I discovered two toadstools in the Lemon Thyme's self-watering pot yesterday morning.  Perhaps I've been giving it too much water.  I don't think it's one of the fungi that is causing my hay fever (if it is fungal spores - I'm not actually sure) since it's better at the moment.

I'm off to try making this Caramel Fudge recipe.

Last year I entered several items in the local show, some photographs (up against lots of absolutely fantastic entries) and a baby jacket knitted from cotton.  Because it was cotton it has to go in a miscellaneous yarns section, and ended up being one of only two entries.  So the second place I received for it didn't really feel like an achievement.

This year, I didn't bother entering any photos (the quality of entries was absolutely outstanding again), and no knitting, but I put the braided twill scarf into the weaving section.  I had to take it to the showground on Tuesday after school, and because there was no steward for the weaving, I'd had to hand it over at the main office without the full paperwork having been done, where it was placed in a pile of stuff from which I feared it would never be seen again.

But I think I achieved something this year...  Not only did I take first place in the class ("hand woven article using commercial yarn") - the little blue ribbon, but I was also awarded the "best piece of weaving" prize overall - the big gold ribbon, beating entries by both my weaving teachers (obviously I have absolutely the *best* weaving teachers!).  Not bad for someone who's been weaving for nine months.  Unfortunately, there being no steward for the section, nobody contacted me to tell me I should be at the parade to collect the "prize" (an empty envelope...  It was sponsored by my spinning and weaving group and I'll get it later).

For the two nights of the show (Friday and Saturday) I've been helping with the spinning and weaving group's display, demonstrating some extremely bad weaving (not my loom so I'm not used to the shaft arrangement, and I talk too much while demonstrating and forget which shafts I should be lifting next!) and getting a lot of the Bob and Weave shawl knitted.  I'm nearly at the end of the second ball of wool.  It's now getting so large I won't be able to carry it to school to work on at lunchtimes for much longer.  And it definitely won't be finished by next weekend as I had originally hoped.

Next weekend will be a busy one: Mark and Tieneke's wedding on Saturday and Jean and Stephen's wedding celebrations on Sunday (they married in January).  So I'll be flying down to Sydney for the day on Sunday (pity you can't knit on planes these days).  This means I'm trying to get double the usual amount of class prep done this weekend.  Arghhhh!

And by the way, the caramel fudge was delicious.

If you were wondering about the baby blanket I had been working on, wonder no longer.  It's finished, and has been for a few weeks.  I hadn't mentioned it because we wanted it to be a bit of a surprise for Louisa, who received it on the weekend.

And I think I'll keep this post short as I'm dead tired.  Which has a lot to do with my neighbours-from-hell arriving home from a few weeks away at 1 am this morning...