What I wasn’t told by neighbours (until days later), was that up near the road (my house is down a driveway, about 80 metres from the road) there was sparks flying from the electrical cables on a pole. About 9.30ish I was told that the private power pole beside the common driveway was smoking or steaming. I learnt one other neighbour was without power, and also phone – they had been out when this had first started. It was freezing cold, and I really didn’t want to venture out in the rain, so I went to bed.

At 11.30pm I was woken by the other neighbour without power. The gas main was leaking. Energy Australia were in attendance as the whole street by now had reported the flicky-flicky, raising the status of the fault, and the fire brigade and gas people were in attendance for the gas leak. The big unhappy news was that the fault was located on our side of the electrical network boundary (the first pole off the street) thus it was up to us (in my case, my landlord) to engage an electrician capable of pole and underground work to restore power services. Power was cut to the whole street while they disconnected me and two neighbours (I’ve never met the second affected neighbour as she lives here only part-time). Then the rest of the street got their power back at about 2am.

On Friday morning I found I had no phone line and had to report that to Telstra. I had hot enough water in the hot water tank for a shower in the morning. After seeing the neighbours, I saw the charred remains of a conduit and the capped gas supply in a ditch filed with rain water. Charred remains of a cable are visible at the base of the pole.

The base of the pole where the fire presumably started

Cut off from the grid at the top of the pole

My neighbour and I arranged a tag team around each of our school commitments (she works in the library of another nearby school) to be at home for the tradespeople. As I had to teach 8.20-9.40, she informed my landlord’s agent at 9 am and it was agreed to engage a common electrician to the job to assist progress.

I made a quick dash to Kmart for a portable butane gas stove and gas cans and batteries and got back after 10am. By then there was a $7000 quote for the electrical work in the process of being approved and the gas people were in the process of fixing the gas main and were supposedly finished. As the damage was a fire (which probably burned for about 2.5 hours), it was hopefully all covered by insurance. Then the gas people hit a snag. There was yet another burnt section to replace. So they dug up a section about 15 meters further down and lined the broken pipe with another pipe.

So, the electrician had to come back to see the altered situation. The $7000 quote was out the window now as a much greater length of conduit would need replacement, but there are trees obstructing that. Late on Friday afternoon, I was told a new figure of $30,000. My neighbour contacted her insurers, and an assessor was to come out on Monday. She also arranged generators (mine at my landlord’s expense), which arrived after dark. They didn’t work.

Friday was freezing cold. I gave Calli a hot water bottle with water heated on the butane gas stove since by this point she was whining about the cold. Thankfully, I have a wood combustion heater that I rarely use as I’m hopeless at chopping firewood. So I brought in the firewood I had stored in the garage and lit the wood heater in the evening. I used torches and candles for lighting. The cat and I had two hot water bottles with us in bed. We were warmer than Thursday night.

On Saturday, the hire place the generators were from sent out a mechanic who got my generator going at about midday, and got parts for the neighbour’s one and had it going some time later. The generator ran the fridge and either a light or the television, but had to be switched off at 10pm as the racket was intolerable. The neighbours were able to run their fridge and gas heater (which needs electricity to work). The rest of the weekend was a blur of heating water on the gas stove for washing, making sure I had petrol for the generator, dry firewood for the heater, doing some school marking that couldn’t wait and getting some laundry done at my brother’s home (and a shower to wash my hair). I couldn’t start the generator without help, and pulled all the muscles in my arms while trying. All the carrying things also put strain on my knees, and by late Sunday I could barely walk. On Sunday, my neighbour and I were fearful a noise complaint would be made about our generators, but thankfully it didn’t happen. Calli was very upset by the generator noise, and I felt it wasn’t worth all the cost and effort for what could be done with bags of party ice – most of the fridge contents hadn’t lasted the 40 hours without power before the generator, and then it was on only 10-14 hours a day. The freezer contents were a total write-off.

On Monday there was a stream of insurance people and electricians who dug various holes and concluded the damage is storm damage, resulting in fire in the underground power supply beside the private pole. Initially I was told all three houses were insured with the same insurer, but it later transpired that the third house (the woman I’ve never met), is with a different insurer. Various reports had to be written and processed. There was more of the same on Tuesday, but they finally resolved to put us on a larger generator that would power our whole houses (including hot water) and which was quiet enough to run 24 hours a day. (My neighbour and her family have a cat and dog, and I have Calli, so temporary accommodation was not a simple solution.)

On Monday evening, my generator died when the electrical connection to the spark plug snapped. The mechanic had to come back on Tuesday morning and get it started again. It was simply taped up with electrical tape. The resulting poor connection made the generator produce more electrical noise. I had lost patience with the small generator by this point, and was hanging on to the promise of the large generator on Wednesday morning. Telstra got both the phone lines back on – I really don’t want to go into that side saga – I got terribly upset by some miscommunication over it. Tuesday was a bad, bad day. Somehow through all of this I managed to be at school for all my classes, and go back and forth in my lessons off – very, very tiring!

Late on Wednesday, the big, diesel generator arrived and was connected to the two houses. It is being maintained with fuel by the electricians. It was a joy to have hot water again, and I was able to get most stuff up and running again (the freezer is staying off for the time being and the cordless phones were all flat as a tack). While it isn’t too noisy, the low hum resonates in parts of the house, like in front of the pantry cupboard. It is noisiest in my bedroom, so I’m sleeping on the single bed in the spare room.

The new generator in front of the neighbours - the orange cable going up and to the right goes to my house.

On Thursday evening I cleared out the freezer for bin night. Dreadful job. Then I was up very late marking assignments that had to be returned to Year 12 before next week’s HSC Trials. On Friday I was exhausted. Yesterday was much, much better as I got plenty of sleep. I finally got to do some knitting!

After I went to bed last night, the generator stopped. As I’m a tenant, not much gets communicated to me, so I don’t even have the electrician’s number and I wasn’t shown how to fuel the generator or start it (my neighbour was shown). So I did nothing about it, since there’s nothing I could do about it, and went back to sleep. It was started again around midnight.

They might start work to reconnect us on Monday, or they might not. Every time I’m told something, it contradicts what I was told before. I still have no idea how far up the cables the fire went – because of what I reported about the sounds and smell at my switchboard, it may be burnt right up to there. The electricians probably know, since they connected the generator up through the switchboard, but I wasn’t told anything. Things are much better with the present generator, so I can manage until whenever it will be. I’ll just be “pleasantly surprised” when I am put back on the electricity grid.

On the knitting front, I finished the Noro socks.

The lightweight cardigan is still stuck and I’m contemplating frogging it as I’m hating knitting such a fine yarn into such a large garment. In the meantime, I picked up some Zara yarn in a sale and hastily cast on a different cardigan called “Basic Black”. Due to being ill and on the sofa for several weeks, this cardigan flew off the needles in record time – just a touch under two months. I made some modifications to the pattern – lengthening the body, raising the V neck to start higher, knitting the set-in sleeves top-down with short rows (very happy with that mod in particular) and adding a shawl collar. The shawl collar kicked my ass for a whole week. Having never knit one, I was making it up as I went along. When I figured it was done I cast off (about 400 sts) and blocked the cardigan. But the collar kept rolling back and standing up – not long enough. After consulting my knitting friends, I unpicked the cast off and added more depth to the collar. It has had another blocking this weekend, and all is better now. And I’m in love with Zara yarn.

There’s a little leftover Zara that is presently being turned into a Wurm hat.

The annual Guild open day was last week, and I did a little stash enhancement – BFL sock yarn from Wooldancer and a BFL braid from Waratah Fibres. It seems I was on a reds/BFL jive…

I have been slowly plodding away on the spinning too. I’ve been doing two projects – a natural grey merino and the cream wool/alpaca/silk I bought in Adelaide in 2008. Having filled three bobbins with the wool/alpaca/silk, I’ve spent the last couple of days plying it into 3 ply yarn – nearly 400 grams of it. There’s about 50 grams left to go, which I will probably chain ply off one bobbin to finish off. The plying workshop I did in January has paid off – I’m very happy with how this yarn has turned out. I haven’t decided what it will be yet.

Lastly, there is another pair of socks on the needles – the 9 to 5 sock pattern I used in 2007 that ended up as wristwarmers because of insufficient yardage. This time, I’m knitting them from a 130 gram skein of Yummy, so I’m fairly sure there won’t be a problem making the pair before running out.

I may have run out of holidays, but I haven’t run out of things to do.

Apart from seeing the rellies, I managed to persuade my parents that a few yarn shops needed visiting (my Mother didn’t need much convincing!). We were staying at Marcus Hill on the Bellerine Peninsula, so we were handy to Point Lonsdale. Our first stop on Friday was Wild Purl in Point Lonsdale, which was an interesting shop with a small range of high quality yarns (and some really different walking sticks, noticed by my Mother). I was interested in the Pear Tree yarn, but they only had one colour, so I decided to pass in the hope of picking up some elsewhere.

Second stop was Twisted Threads in the main street of Geelong. This is a really lovely yarn shop with a great range of yarns, books and accessories. I bought a ball of Noro Silk Garden Sock (I already have one, but this was in a colourway I hadn’t seen before), another Zauberball in a different colour to the blue ones I already have and a shawl pin. They had just received the Zauberballs and had some “flying saucers” (I think that’s what they were called) which were two strands of yarn wound together and dyed in a disc so that two identical socks could be knitted. Jenny B liked my Noro and later visited Twisted Threads too and bought one of the flying saucers as well as some Noro. I think I’ve created another sock knitter…

At Twisted Threads I was told that Pear Tree Yarns are no more (*sob*) so Twisted Threads didn’t have any. So on Saturday morning we went back to Wild Purl and I bought a skein of Pear Tree 4ply wool/alpaca blend.

On Sunday my parents and I visited the National Wool Museum. The Collectors program was filming Gordon Brown in the wool museum, so it will be interesting to see what they were looking at when it airs on the ABC. The carpet weaving loom demonstration was interesting, as were all the displays. But I had real fun in the museum shop where I found they were selling Tarndwarncoort Polwarth wool blended with mulberry silk spinning fibre. I didn’t hesitate in grabbing two 100 gram bags. I also bought a woven wool stole (I thought it was Australian, but I’ve just found a “made in India” label).

We left Geelong on Monday morning, and after a stop in Wodonga overnight, arrived home yesterday. The Noro sock I started last week is finished and I’m ready to cast on the second one.

My Mother visits regularly, but this was my first visit. We made a beeline straight for the back room where we found some lovely laps (BFL/Alpaca/Silk) and I also picked up a bunch of 50 gram balls of cream 8 ply Rustic ideal for a felting project I want to do at school next term. When I saw they had calico bags, I just had to have one, even though I have lots of calico bags already.

I have one knitting project on the road with me – striped socks in the left over Noro from the iPad cover. They are coming along nicely (and a lot faster than the River Rapid socks I left at home).

I’m stuck on sleeve island with the lightweight cardigan (eek! not blogged that project since December!), and sock two of the River Rapids Socks got cast on, then knit half the leg before tiring of the thin yarn and tedious stitch pattern (this can only be defined as a “long term project” – sock one cast on 1st April 2008, completed on Year 8 camp March 2009, sock two cast on February 2011…).

The very little knitting time I have had has been spent knitting a cover for my shiny new iPad2. I decided in January that I had a bad case of the “I wants” but decided to wait for the iPad2. As soon as the specifications of the new model were available, I started designing and knitting a cover. The inspiration was this bag project on Ravelry, which had originally been knit as Boo Too from Knitty. I chose two balls of Noro Kureyon Sock (S149 & S185) at Cherryhills and knit some swatches. I tried to felt the first swatch. There’s one project on Ravelry that claims to be felted Noro Kureyon Sock. I could barely get it to do anything but grow alarmingly. I scrapped the felting idea, went down a couple needle sizes, and knit a swatch I was happy with.

The first time I cast on, the iPad cover was apparently going to be too narrow. I recalculated a new stitch number and cast on again. Too wide. The maths was right the first time – I cast on the original number of stitches again and it was fine. No idea what was wrong the first time. It was slow to knit the slip stitch pattern. It might have been nicer to knit this pattern for something wider as the colour changes in the Noro were slow, particularly for the very long stretch of purple. Seeing as I love purple, that’s not really a problem. Most of one side of the cover is purple. I was kind of glad I didn’t finish the knitting until after I had my iPad2 (on launch day – not a great experience and I won’t ever line up for an Apple product launch ever again) since I didn’t quite know what effect the smart cover would be on the final dimensions.

I finished the knitting on Monday and blocked it. It became longer and narrower when wet, but I still managed to block it to the required dimensions. Yesterday, I cut out the lining fabric lining (Saffron Craig’s “Bird Tree” in bright blue to match my smart cover) and sewed the zipper in to it (it is asymmetrical so that the zipper can be opened up just enough for the charging USB cable to be attached while the cover is on). Once the lining was sewn, I basted the knitted part over the top and stitched the side seams. I would have taken photos as I did all this, but the camera battery was flat. Later, I’ll hand sew the cover to the lining to finish it.

I went with buying the iPad2 on release day because I wanted it before travelling these holidays. I took my laptop to Adelaide in 2008 and resented the bulk of it. I took my iPhone to New Zealand in 2009 and, while that worked okay, the screen is tiny which makes some stuff hard. The iPad2 has already exceeded my expectations. I’ve cancelled my home delivered newspapers as I now read them on the iPad, I subscribe to Interweave Knits through the Zinio app (and can see myself buying some books through that down the track), have loaded some school textbooks on it for easy access, have a video cable that I’ve used to watch ABC iView on the telly from it, use it for web surfing, email, tweeting, and on it goes. And I have the camera connection kit, so hopefully there will be a few more posts from me from the iPad while I’m on the road.

Here’s a little test blogging this last part from the iPad – a photo of the socks I’m knitting with the left over Noro from the iPad2 cover. I used about a third of each ball and the balls have three colour repeats in them – so two are left. Perfect to be spilt into a colour repeat per sock. I’ll have to rip this out and start again though – I cast on the wrong number of stitches…

Also quite common are the leaf-tailed geckos. I had them at my last home too. Soon after I moved here, I came home from work to find a baby gecko on the ceiling of the bathroom. I will never know what went on between the gecko entering the house, and ending up on the ceiling, and Calli will never tell… The one below was one I released from my dyepot in the garage last month. Last week, I found one behind Calli’s litter box in the laundry, and managed to get it out the back door before Calli knew about it. They may look cute, but they make high-pitched squeaking noises! This one was not happy with me. I think he liked living in the garage and didn’t want to move back outside.

There are no blue-tongued lizards here. I’m not sure why – maybe because there are so many other lizards that there isn’t room for one. But I have a few other less common garden inhabitants. Both are known to my neighbours, but it has taken a while for us to meet. The first of these two large reptiles is an juvenile lace monitor (they grow much bigger than this one). One day last February, while working in the study, I heard something scraping against the outside of the spare bedroom window. Calli was watching it intently. This small lace monitor was attempting to climb up the window to gain entry and access to Calli. I think it saw her as a potential meal! I haven’t seen him lately, but the neighbours have.

The last inhabitant is the largest! My neighbour showed me a skin he shed last year, so I knew he was around here somewhere, and big. We met yesterday. I got home, and found him sleeping in the garden bed beside where I park my car. He’s still there now, over 24 hours later. This overcast weather means he’s not very active. He’s a diamond python and I’d estimate he’s about 2 metres long. And he’s fat.

With all the lizards here, several visitors said I wouldn’t have any snakes. Well I never believed that. I’m expecting to come across a brown or a red-bellied black snake in the grass around here one day. Might even add a blue-tongue to the lizard collection.

I was amazed to find I got the gauge specified by the pattern first try and had no need to modify the pattern at all. This made it a fast knit (12 days), even though I didn’t pick it up to work on for maybe half those days. I ended up using about 60 grams of the 100 gram skein. The remaining 40 grams will go into the stash for a scrappy scarf I want to make from leftover bits of handspun down the track. I’m sure the cowl will be lovely and snuggly, but I have no need for snuggly right now. I should get back to the lightweight cardigan next.

Otherwise, I’ve been spinning. I forgot to photograph it, but I’ve spun a whole bobbin of singles from the wool/alpaca/silk I purchased in Adelaide in October 2008. I wish I could normally turn out a bobbin of finely spun singles every two weeks… I will now switch back to the grey merino project for the next bobbin so I don’t get bored.

I’m calling “Super Bunny” done.  He’s not going in the Easter Show as I just didn’t have the patience to re-knit the legs and also realised the head has the same problem.  The pattern calls for long tail cast on, which I don’t normally do.  Because this sets up the first row in stocking stitch to be a purl row, I had to fudge things, and it resulted in a less-than-ideal appearance on the base of the feet and the back of the head.  Toys are fiddly, and attention to detail is necessary for a show.  I think he’s gorgeous just as he is, so that’s how he’s staying.

I’ve cast on a new cowl in the merino-silk hand spun I finished last year.   The pattern is the Northumbria Cowl from Knitscene Fall 2010 magazine.  It’s a very simple 2 row lace pattern.  I haven’t knit enough yet to tell if it will come out the right size, and the pattern doesn’t specify the yardage required, so heaven only knows if the yarn will go far enough.

I should get back to the lightweight cardigan knitting.  It is nearly at the point at which I need to knit the sleeves.  I should do the maths before returning to school next week.

The site overhaul is now complete.  The front entrance has been revamped, the BlogRoll reinstated and the pages on Tencel Dyeing moved to within the blog pages structure.  The comment system is working well – all the spam has been picked out by a plugin without trouble, and the legitimate comments get through with little issue (I have the WordPress app on my iPhone so I can even approve comments on the go).  I’ve setup the redirects that I could, but was unable to redirect old blog post addresses to new ones.  No matter…  It’s hardly the first time that’s happened!

I’ve photographed my little sample cards and am posting this here, mainly to remind myself what I’ve learnt. I arrived at the workshop with two bobbins of spun singles – one of purple merino I spun years ago with the intention of plying it with a silk merino blend, but the colour wasn’t right for it; and one of bright pink that I spun last month to contrast the purple from some fibre of unknown type (other than it being wool) I had in my stash. I used my Sickinger wheel since I really need to get a new drive band for the Wind Wheel.

We started off with a standard two ply:

From this I learnt that my singles are a little over spun for a two ply yarn, so I really should sample in future to get the twist right to make a good balanced two ply.

I wound some pink onto a spare bobbin to make a three ply (1 x purple, 2 x pink):

The first section of this that I spun (not shown) was over plied. I was still working on getting the right amount of plying twist into this, but it was a more balanced yarn than my 2 ply. I love the roundness of 3 ply yarns, but chain plying makes little “bumps” that this method of plying doesn’t. This is the kind of yarn I’ve been aiming to spin, especially since I bought a new lazy kate when I decided to do this workshop. My old lazy kate only had space for two bobbins, the new one has three.

Next up was a cabled 4 ply yarn. First an over plied 2 ply was spun onto two bobbins, then the two 2 plies plied with each other (try saying that fast!):

I hate crepe yarns, and this one was particularly ugly. I also hated the plying – from trying to work out how much over plying of the 2 ply was needed and how much twist to give the two 2 plies back on each other. The two colours in the plies tended to form longitudinal stripes along the yarn that made looking at what was going on during plying just appear like a coloured mess! Yuck, yuck, YUCK!

Next up, I wound some purple singles onto the (last!) spare bobbin, so I had two pink and two purple plies, and did a regular 4 ply yarn:

This one surprised me because I really liked it. Well, not the colours… It has that same roundness as the 3 ply yarn, and I didn’t have trouble determining the amount of twist necessary. Like the 3 ply, it was also nicely balanced. It seems I’ve been intuitively spinning my singles for nice balanced 3 or 4 ply yarns. Maybe I will regret having bought a new lazy kate with space for only 3 bobbins…

Next up was a method I have plenty of experience with – the 3 ply chained yarn (often called “navajo plied”). Just one single is needed for this and I went with the pink:

No trouble with this since this is how I spun the angorino for Gaia (spinning and knitting links) to preserve the long stretches of colour. I also like to use it for small amounts of fibre so I can spin all the singles on one bobbin, then chain ply, leaving no leftovers on one bobbin as splitting the fibre into two lots to put on two bobbins almost always results in one bobbin having more singles on it than the other. As the single doubles back on itself, it makes “bumps”. These, ultimately, are where the fibres are likely to break and weaken the yarn over time. But this method has its place.

I also made a short sample of some machine embroidery thread plied with the pink wool singles. I found it hard to control, and the result was too ugly even to photograph. And most art yarns don’t interest me much. Marie demonstrated a few other methods I didn’t try.

I have two completed lots of yarn I’ve spun recently I still haven’t posted on here (a 3 ply and a 2 ply). I really should photograph them and do so. I’m now keen to continue with the spinning of some natural grey merino I’ve already spun one bobbin of, and tackle some alpaca blend sitting in the stash. Three plys.