jenwren's blog

The snow last week was quite unspectacular in the end – apparently it was quite good at 2 am, but funnily enough I was tucked up in bed asleep and missed it.  On Thursday morning, very little remained on the ground, but there was some to see on any cars not left under cover and on roof tops.  It continued to snow off and on all day, but did not settle.  Not very conducive to school work either…

On Friday I flew to Sydney for another day of professional development.  Unlike last time, I stuck to buses this time to get around town.  I stayed at Tim and Jenny’s again and celebrated Tim’s birthday that night with Kath and Damien (and ‘Strawberry’) as well.  On Saturday I managed a spot of shopping before heading for Newtown and SSK.  Due to my flight back to Armidale, I couldn’t spend very long at SSK, but it was lovely to catch up with them.  I took a few photos but haven't yet put them up on the web.

This time, I allowed plenty of time to get back to the airport, first catching a bus to Central then intending to catch a train to the domestic terminal.  Since I had caught a bus very quickly, I dawdled at the Devonshire Street tunnel, browsing in the bargain basement bookshop, and picked up a cheap hardback copy of “Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction” by Sue Townsend.  I finally reached the other end of the tunnel, only to find that as well as City Circle trains being cancelled due to track work (which I had known about), the airport line was also closed!  Eeeeek!  Once I established where to get a bus to the airport and bought a ticket, I dashed up the stairs, and caught a bus within five minutes, so I still reached the airport terminal in time.  I could have done without the extra stress!

Sunday was spent with Peter and his Mum, who were visiting to look at properties in the Uralla area.  We spent a leisurely morning at the monthly markets in the Armidale Mall, followed by a lovely lunch, before returning to my place and chatting and knitting all afternoon - quality catch-up time.

Monday was a do-very-little day, mainly spent cleaning the house, surfing the internet and reading, while on Tuesday I drove to Mum and Dad’s place at Port Stephens.  On Wednesday morning we went to Mum’s Spinning and Weaving group in Nelson Bay at the Arts and Crafts centre.  I had the chance to see their craft display – or what was left that hadn’t yet sold from the display!  There was some very inspiring stuff.



Mum’s scarves had already sold, but some of her other items were still there.  Downstairs where the group meets, Mum started to teach me to spin on my wheel, starting with plying some ugly purple and orange acrylic yarn together.  When I finished that, I went back to knitting the Patonyle socks, which are now past the heel and coming along nicely.

After lunch we went home briefly before setting off to Sydney (yes, two trips to Sydney for me in one week…), again staying with Tim and Jenny.  The reason for visiting Sydney was to go to Virginia Farm Woolworks on Thursday morning.  I have been in need of a warping board for some time, and as the price of the Ashford one was ridiculous, I’d decided I wanted one from Virginia Farm.  Problem was, they are glued and screwed at the corners (the Ashford ones dismantle), so it would have cost a small fortune to post it to Armidale.  I couldn’t have flown it back to Armidale either (and hadn’t had my car in order to get out to Annangrove).  So it was a good excuse to make a trip to Virginia Farm and do some damage to both our credit cards.  After about an hour and three quarters, I came away with the warping board, a skein of 4 ply Touch yarn in a lovely purple and deep green-almost black colourway, and some silk-merino blend in deep reds and purples for spinning.  Mum bought some brown fleece, fawn fleece, carded corridale sliver, the silk-merino in pink, and some wool dyes for a friend.  We drove back to Port Stephens in the early afternoon, and I started to learn how to spin singles on some carded merino I had bought from Virginia Farm via mail order back in May.  At the moment I’m getting the hang of drawing, but I need to pedal the spinning wheel more slowly, as I’m putting too much twist in the yarn.

I’m staying here at Port Stephens for my birthday tomorrow, before heading home on Sunday.

I finished the Patonyle socks on Sunday evening.   And as I love wearing my hand-knitted socks so much, I'm about to start another pair.  This pair will be a little more challenging - they are sideways socks.  The cast on edge is from the cuff to the toe, which is eventually to be grafted to the final row.  The heel, toe and calf will have short row shaping and the sock is worked in a solid colour yarn plus a variegated yarn.  Thankfully, the pattern is both charted and has written-out instructions, because it is more complex than most knitting I do, and I think I'll actually have to concentrate on what I'm doing.  The pattern is from the book Socks Socks Socks.

I've also been playing around with some Fimo and made some sheep beads - a whole flock of them.  At least some of them will end up on stitch markers.  Obviously I'm spending lots of time marking school work and preparing for next term.  Not.

I started the sideways socks and found the pattern wasn't as hard to follow as I had thought (especially after I worked out the first written version was wrong, but the chart and second written version were correct).  However, after 22 rows I decided it looked ugly, as the photo shows, due to my choice of yarn colours.  So I ripped it all out.  I'll try this pattern again with more appropriate yarns at some later date.

So I've started another pair of socks on dpns in the round with "Miami" yarn from Bendigo Woollen Mills.  I bought two balls of it in "brown" (actually a variegated brown/blue/grey) late last year when it was first released.  Peter said on justdoitknits that Miami yarn was now in a bargain bin at the Mill.  It's weird stuff - 40% wool, 45% cotton, 15% nylon, with each of the 4 plys composed of a white strand (the cotton?) plyed with a coloured strand (wool/nylon?) giving a denim look to the yarn.  It isn't very elastic.  I may find it knits up ugly, or is unsuitable as a sock yarn, in which case it will go the same was as the sideways sock - into the frog pond.

I also finished spinning my first bobbin of singles from carded Merino, and have started a second.  I'm looking forward to finishing the second bobbin an plying them together into yarn.  As a first attempt, it probably won't be great, but I'm still excited.  It'll probably take another week at the rate I'm spinning though (45 to 90 minutes per day).

I'm a happy jennywren today - I found late last night that my digital set top box is now able to tune into SBS.  Test transmissions had begun on 8 June, which quelled my fears that the aerial was faulty as the STB showed signal at the correct frequency.  I've been checking every week, and since the holidays began, every couple of days to see if the testing had finished and broadcasting had begun.  It looks like 8 July was the day...

So now I probably ought to start looking at DVD recorders more seriously - before the hard disk recorder on the STB becomes full with Mythbusters episodes!  I'm torn between buying the three Mythbusters DVDs released last week (1, 2, 3 - these are selected experiments/episodes, not the complete series), or waiting to see if SBS repeats the series from the beginning when they run out of new episodes (we have 7 episodes to go before we catch up with the US).

And you may have noticed a change of colour scheme.  I'm still deciding whether or not I like it more than the old layout.

I've finally gotten around to putting up the SSK photos I took on 25 June while I was there briefly.

Do Not Disturb - I'm busy reading the latest Harry Potter book.

Well, I've finished my first read of Half-Blood Prince (I'd have finished sooner, but I went to Spinning and Weaving this afternoon...).   J.K.Rowling does not disappoint...  I read much of the last 100 pages while bawling my eyes out.

Woah!

I've been having troubles with the drive band of my spinning wheel.  It had a piece of string for a drive band when I got it and one of the first things I had found it necessary to do was shorten it.  I think it had been in use for some time and had stretched too much so that the tension could not go any tighter.  But then this band became pretty lousy - slipping all the time.  Mum had already ordered me a band from the Sickingers, and said last week that she'd mail it to me.  I asked her to send it to my post office box.  My street box is tiny, so the postie bends everything he puts in it, and the mail gets very wet if it rains.

So having gone back to school on Monday, the spinning wheel was not exactly top of my list.  I forgot I was expecting the drive band in the mail.  So it was a bit of a surprise while speaking to Mum on the phone last night when it dawned on us that it hadn't arrived yet.  Erm, what's my PO Box number Mum?  It transpired that my (normally extremely accurate) Father had supplied the box number.  The WRONG box number.  Bummer.

So I went to the post office after School.  I queued up, and when I got to the front I explained that I have my PO Box number, but my silly Mother had mailed me something to a box number that differs in one digit by mistake, and could he possibly check this wrong box for a letter addressed to me?  To my amazement he did go check.  To even greater amazement - the letter was there and he gave it to me!  He said it was such a good story he decided to go along with it.  I'm fairly sure he actually checked my box was in the name I gave - he was gone for quite long enough to do so.  I offered ID as proof but he didn't want to see it (I am in there frequently to collect items that were too large for the box, so he knows my face).

My local post office is wonderful.