jenwren's blog

The day after my last post, I started to come down with an awful head cold, and ended up coming home from school at recess on the Friday, and didn't return to work until the next Wednesday.  The head cold then turned into bronchitis, which has lingered, and lingered (despite antibiotics), and I'm stiff suffering the ick.  I'm sick of being sick.

There's not much progress on any knitting.  The Lorna's Laces socks were cast on about four times before I was happy, then the colour pooling was an issue, and the cable and rib pattern was quite pointless as the variegation made it impossible to see the texture.  So I frogged back to the cuff and have made them plain stocking stitch instead.  I'm about to turn the heel on the first sock.

I cast on a circular scarf with the Touch 4 ply I bought last year at Virginia Farm.  I wanted a full twist in it (not a Moebius half-twist), and the first time I cast on I somehow managed to have no twist in it.  The second time I managed to hit on a number of stitches that resulted in pooling of the variegated yarn (are you beginning to see a pattern here? - maybe this post should have been called "lots of casting on").  The third time I finally got it right.  But then I read yesterday that a full twist instead of a Moebius is too much twist and the resulting scarf won't sit right.  So I'll frog again, and put it away until I get a circular needle long enough to make a true Moebius.

I think I need to start a project in a plain coloured yarn.  I'd start the lacy cardigan, but I still haven't sat down and done the planning.  I need a clear head first - I have to get over the ick.

Last year I got to choose a book for my Spinning and Weaving group to purchase because of the amount of work I did with a fund raiser we had.  Last week I found we still hadn't got the book, so I decided I really wanted to buy it myself anyhow.  So today I got onto Amazon and ordered two books - Yarn to Dye For (the one I wanted in the first place), and Dyeing to Knit.  Hopefully I'll have them in a few week's time.

And it was the Armidale Show this week.  I didn't enter anything at all this year - I'd have liked to have entered some weaving, but I simply hadn't done any.  I went along to see the show yesterday with Peter and Joan.  The knitting, spinning and weaving displays were very disappointing - everything was very badly displayed with so much overlap of items that you couldn't appreciate the beauty or work that had gone into them.  I didn't pay as much attention to the quilting or embroidery, but I think they suffered from similar treatment.

After all my colour pooling problems last week, I found a pattern I wanted to knit, and went up to Guyra after school on Monday and bought the yarn for the project at Black Sheep Wool and Wares.  I cast on on Monday night.  It's the DNA Scarf from Two Sheep, in Jo Sharp DK Tweed colour 416 Cocoa.  I love this yarn, it's 85% wool, 10% silk and 5% cashmere - I made a cardigan in the Paper Rose colour about two years ago.  And yes, the pattern does scream "I am a nerd", but heck, I am a nerd.

I still have a bit of the ick.  I finished the antibiotics on Monday, had a rotten Tuesday, but was much better on Wednesday and continue to steadily improve.  It was Spinning and Weaving today, and I found that the group had finally received "Yarn to Dye For" - the book I ordered last week from Amazon.  Typical.  I had a look at it, and I'm quite happy I bought it for myself anyway.

For the first time in months, I've actually done some spinning.

Daylight saving would normally have ended today.  But because of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, this year they've extended it until next Sunday.  I wasn't even aware of it until a few days ago when they mentioned it on the news.  Alas, today, both laptops (mine and school's) dutifully switched back to Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) without bothering to ask me.  I switched both back, and I'll manually change them again next week.  The hassle is my digital set top box.  I don't set the time on it - it receives the time in the digital signal.  It's pretty handy when the power fails - it is told the current time and date, and presumably stores all my recording information on the PVR's hard disk.  So Thursday week ago when the power was off for around an hour (which was jolly fun at school - not!), the VCR needed reprogramming, but the set top box was fine.  But now the box is on AEST, so all my recordings are set to happen an hour late.  I could change all the recordings for the week, but then the time signal might get corrected at any time.  I may just turn all the recordings off for the week, and start and stop each one I need manually.  But one of them is while I'm at school.

Edit: I've fixed the time on the set top box - I fudged it by changing my time zone.  It seems I have got control over whether it applies daylight saving either "October to March" or a Tasmanian setting for their earlier start to daylight saving.

There is progress in spinning:


And progress on the DNA Scarf.  I am still suffering from the ick, more than four weeks on.  I didn't go to school on Friday because I coughed so badly all night and barely got a wink of sleep.  The doctor is sure that all the bugs are dead - but I may go on coughing up the gunk in my lungs for another four weeks yet.  Sigh.