jenwren's blog

I finished the Jaywalker Socks at Knitters Guild on Wednesday, about five minutes before "show and tell".  It was good timing.



There has been lots of rain here this week: I've not experienced anything like it in Armidale in the four years I've lived here and I've heard that some are saying the weather "is back like it used to be".  I hope it is an end to El Nino.  The large drops of water in the foreground of that photo are from the overflows on the guttering.  There is only one downpipe on my section of roof (which I dearly wish was connected to a rainwater tank) and one downpipe on the unit behind me, collecting water from that unit's roof and our garages (which are at a lower level).  I always get overflow at the back door when it rains hard, the other unit gets overflow at the front door.  The rain has been almost daily, and almost always causing the gutters to overflow.  At the sight of sunshine this morning, I did a load of laundry, even though it wasn't a full load, in case I don't get another chance for a week!

Every time I get busy, blogging stops.  I've been busy.  Really busy.  I'm going to be even more busy, but I'm not blogging about that for now.  But I have plenty of stuff I can tell you all about.

Last weekend was the Armidale Show.  The Spinners and Weavers put on a display, and you can see me spinning in public over there (first photo).  I was spinning up some blended possum and merino that Mum brought back from New Zealand for me late last year.  And I finished spinning the singles on Saturday night and plied it on Wednesday.  It was a bit overspun as I kept being distracted, but it will make a nice pair of fingerless gloves when I get around to it...



I also entered the Jaywalker socks into the knitting section of the show, which unfortunately only had two entrants - myself and Bronwyn.   Bronwyn took the honours and my socks were given second place.  You can see a picture of them both on display (last photo).  The number of entries was particularly poor this year - I almost didn't bother (I was really busy, and almost didn't make it over to the showground to enter them).  I hope something can be done to encourage more entries.

I made it to Virginia Farm on Monday and bought some more dyes to extend the range of colours I have on hand and had a long chat to Jenny about dyes.  I gleaned some valuable information about dyeing Optim wool that I will put into practice when I finally get to the 500 grams of it I have in the spinning stash.  Today I used some of the new dyes on some more silk hankies.  They were meant to have more blue and less of the purple, but seeing as these are my two favourite colours, it can't really go wrong.



I'll start spinning these hankies (this is only a fraction of what I dyed) once I've finished with the natural coloured merino I'm  working with at the moment.   I'm spinning it very fine because that's what it seemed to want to be, and as there's only 25 grams of it, if it isn't fine, it won't go very far!  (Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of it.)



I got home on Wednesday and found I had a glut of tomatoes.  I have a plant in a pot on the front verandah (grosse lisse) and several plants out the back (I don't know how many or the varieties, but they're the cherry-sized ones)  that were self-sown from the compost I spread in the garden last year.



This is the same garden bed that was hit hard by the hail storm last December, and my parsley was not really ruined - that's it on the far right end of the plants, more than knee-high.  (Further to the right is a new extension to this bed which I finished about two weeks ago.)  The furthermost plant on the left is the most productive - it's right in the corner of the bed adjacent to the path, and most of the plant is sitting on the path gaining warmth from it and the wall.  The plant extending the furthest from the bed in the centre is very large, but has really only just begun flowering.  I very much doubt I'll get any fruit off that one before the first frost comes and knocks out all these plants.  I'd never have thought tomatoes would have grown here in the first place with only morning sun - the wall clearly makes a big difference, making it a bit of a heat trap.  And they've thrived on neglect as I was really only bothering to water the parsley until these plants really took off, and they've been virtually pest free whereas I've been constantly having to pick caterpillars off the plant on the front verandah.

And yes, I am knitting another sock.  But I forgot to photograph it, so I'll show that another time...

If you haven't already heard it from me and you hadn't already guessed from my last post that something was up, I'm moving house.  I've got a job in Sydney that starts next Monday, so I leave tomorrow.  However, my belongings won't be moving until the school holidays - I have to find somewhere to live in Sydney (no easy task at the moment!).  So far I have about half of my things packed, with the rest to be done over Easter.  Until then I'm staying with my brother, Tim, and Jenny B.  I'm very happy about the job (at "a school in Sydney" - that's all the detail you're getting) and I'll be even happier when I've secured somewhere to live!

Sadly, it meant the weaving project I was working on with the handspun silk had to come off the loom.  It wasn't going anywhere because I still wasn't really happy with the warp, and had realised I'd had the perfect yarn for the warp in my stash the whole time (duh!).  So once I've moved and settled in, I'll make another attempt at that project.  And there's a definite positive in having an income again - I can continue to support my fibre and book buying habits!



Here's the coloured merino I mentioned in the last post.  I've also started spinning a little bit of the silk hankies for variety.  The spinning wheel is coming with me to Sydney tomorrow.



And here's the current sock - nearly at the toe.  You may notice I'm not using my bamboo dpns - I had to go up to 2.75 mm needles with this yarn as it's just a smidge thicker than the sock yarns I usually use, and I don't have that size in bamboo.

Last, but not least, good timing has seen me finally finish the web site I have been working on since January for the local yarn shop, WOW Wool on Wheels.

I'm a happy bunny this morning as I've got my mitts on the latest Interweave Knits.  One of the small annoyances resulting from my leaving Armidale is no longer having the wonderful Carr's Newsagency to visit.  They've been my newsagent of choice in Armidale for four years, and have home delivered my newspapers with only minor hiccups (like the time I got two copies of the second half of Saturday's Herald only) for the last two years.  They get all the good magazines - Interweave Knits, Handwoven, Spin Off, Vogue Knitting, Yarn Magazine, Simply Knitting and several others.  Essentially, I've been spoilt.

Interweave Knits is a bit of a problem.  There's three main ways you can get it - air freighted copies at Borders ($17.95 if I recall correctly - I actually leafed through this issue weeks ago at Borders), slow boat copies at newsagencies (but very few newsagents stock it) or by subscription.  The subscription service seems to be horrendous.  I had a subscription to Handwoven (also an Interweave Press publication) three years ago that had some issues which led me to refuse to renew and go back to trusty Carr's Newsagency.  Interweave Knits' problems seem to be far worse (see Sarah's blog for just one of many examples of the subscription woes).  I don't see subscribing as a viable option.  I could get it at Borders, but I baulk at the cost.  I'm willing to wait the extra 3-4 weeks and get it at a newsagency.  I tried to get it at Carrs on Wednesday, but to my disappointment it hadn't come in yet.  So since I arrived in Sydney, I've popped into every newsagent I've happened across (which is a fair few as I've been visiting Real Estate agents in the search for somewhere to rent).  Today I hit paydirt at a newsagent I'd thought unlikely as it is in the same shopping centre as a Borders.  And the bonus is, it's somewhere I shop regularly and will be living somewhere near - Newsfront Newsagency, level 3, Macquarie Centre.  And see that big yellow sticker "new lower price"?  It was $10.95 (thank you exchange rate).  I could have done a little dance in the shop, I was so happy.