jenwren's blog

If you look at the sidebar on the left you should now see some progress meters for my current knitting and weaving projects.  The afghan squares I was working on for my spinning and weaving group have been finished and handed in.  They were quite late, since I missed the AGM in December and the meeting before yesterday's thanks to my cold.  The kid mohair lace scarf in the list is pictured (left).  I bought the kid mohair from Kaalund Yarns (warning - site loads very slowly) at last year's Wool Expo with the intention of knitting a scarf from it.  But somewhere along the way I changed my mind and I was going to weave something with it, then I started knitting a triangular shawl with it but decided there wasn't enough yarn to finish it.  So this is actually its third incarnation.  And it is knitting up really nicely in "Old Shale" lace.  It will stay a lace scarf.  The Patonyle sock is still waiting for me to frog back below the heel and the Bob & Weave shawl is waiting for the slubby wool I've ordered.  I have already got the ribbon though.  The baby blanket should be finished some time in the next week. 

I went to the markets in town this morning and bought fresh zucchinis, yellow squash and snow peas.  It might have been nice to dawdle around, but it was just too hot!  I'm glad I got the week right - the local council distributed calanders (I got two - one at home and one to my PO Box) which has the markets down on the fourth Sunday of each month instead of the last Sunday.  Doh!

I'd like to remain in denial of the following fact, but I return to work tomorrow. *wimper*

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.

Here's a picture of Bob and Weave in its 75% complete state.  It's just under 140 cm long and so it is keeping my legs warm while I knit - very snugly now the weather is actually cooling down.  I can't wait to wrap myself up in it once I've finished it.

You can perhaps make out where each skein of wool was started.  I didn't bother alternating balls.  The first and second balls are nearly indistinguishable, while the third definitely has more blue in it.  I'm not terribly worried since the ribbon to be threaded through the dropped stitches is likely to draw the eye away from these variations, and they are much clearer in the photo than in reality.

And the mouse?  Hasn't been seen or heard since I went out to get the traps yesterday, with the exception of some possible noise in the kitchen this morning (before I got up and that I didn't bother going and checking).  I hope to get any holes behind the oven blocked up (contacting my landlord's agent tomorrow), and if I detect no mouse activity for a week then I'll block up the passage it was using beside the pantry cupboard with space-filla foam.  I moved any food that wasn't already in a jar or container into air tight containers (including the Easter egg stash - the marshmallow eggs, Lindt bunnies, and Pink Lady wombat are all mine and he's not having them!).  At the moment he's called "bastard mouse!".  Suggestions for better names welcome...

Now I'm off to sit in front of the telly, watch one of my recently purchased DVDs I've been trying to find time for (Yes Minister: Series 3, The Goodies: A Tasty Second Helping and Monty Python's Meaning of Life), and continue knitting.

Thank heavens for long weekends.  I finally feel on top of my school work and all my marking is up to date - well, for the next 48 hours anyway.  Two more bundles of marking will come my way on Wednesday...  But it is only two weeks until the school holidays.

The Bob and Weave shawl seems to be on the home straight too.  I'm around half-way through the last ball of wool.  It isn't really a portable knitting project anymore - it takes up all the space in my felt carry bag.  I got a lot of knitting done while selling raffle tickets for my spinning and weaving group on Sunday morning at the local markets.  But it was the spinners who got people interested in us and buying the raffle tickets.  Knitting is pretty pedestrian when next to a woman with a spinning wheel and another with a drop spindle.  Kids were especially mesmerised by it.  But no, I'm not about to take up spinning.  I'm still playing around with weaving (and my yarn stash has expanded a fair bit over the last year or so without me spinning too!).

I hate moving house.  It's all so much work.  With the help of my wonderful parents though, a large proportion of my belongings have now moved to my new address.  My parents also delivered a sofa my sister wasn't using (well, Oscar the cat might have been using it...) and kindly parted with (thanks pooh-head!).  What's left is mainly either very heavy (books, especially the floras and textbooks) or very bulky (eg. sofa, beds) or both (eg. fridge).  A truck comes for them on Thursday.

The unexpected surprise at my new home when I signed the lease was that they'd repainted the interior walls, ahem, yellow, and that they want to recarpet the place sometime soon.  I'm going to try talk them out of the recarpeting.  It's quite enough to move all my furniture once...  And by the time I arrange the furniture and bring over the rugs (they're staying at my old place until I steam clean them at the same time as the horrible brown carpet) then no one will know there's some dreadful patches and holes underneath in the living room carpet.  Of course, the painters removed almost every picture hook too, so now I need to get permission to put some back up.

So the week ahead involves lots of cleaning at one location, and lots of putting stuff away at the other location (thank heavens for school holidays!).  I have loads more cupboards at my new place; this is probably not such a good thing as I tend to hoard things and never part with them.

Moving out so much of my stuff has meant I could spread out the Bob and Weave shawl to adjust the tension of the ribbons.  I finished knitting it a week ago, and the ribbons have been a bit more fiddly than I anticipated.  I also didn't buy enough ribbon (the shawl is a little longer than expected) so it will be a bit longer before I get a chance to get some more for the last three drop-stitched ladders.  It is very snuggly and warm already!

The latest Knitty is out.  I'm a tad annoyed because I'm on the update list and I still haven't received the notification email for the new issue.  I checked, and I am on the Yahoo! list, and Amy did send out the notification.  I suppose that Yahoo! just can't deal with a list of nearly 20,000 subscribers!  And my browser is being silly and won't refresh to the correct issue.  I'm looking forward to Southern Cross Knitting coming out - an online mag with the seasons in sync, and hopefully using yarns I can actually lay my hands on!

Tomorrow, my phone line gets shifted, so I probably won't have my ADSL connection for a while.

Edit:  the Knitty notification was in my spam box.  I've fixed the filter to allow them through in future.

I've just returned from seeing The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie, and it was fantastic.  I loved the "point of view gun", the factory floor on Magrathea was visually stunning, and the knitted sequence (pictured) was a laugh.  Yep, they did a knitted sequence where the space ship and all the crew were temporarily knitted dolls and knitted walls, floors - everything!  And Arthur Dent coughed up multicoloured wool, and continued to after 'normality' was restored.  The whole thing was brilliant.  If you go see it, be sure to stay through the end credits because there's a postscript from the Hitchhikers Guide...

School's back in so I'm flat out with work, but I have picked up the needles again on the kid mohair scarf.  It's at that stage where the ball doesn't seem to be getting any smaller and the scarf doesn't seem to be getting any longer but in fact both are happening according to the measuring tape.  Any day now it may actually cool down enough to wear a scarf.  It's still ridiculously warm considering it's the last day of April.  It's colder at night but there's still not been a decent frost and the daytime temperatures are above average.

Despite the lack of cool weather, I went shopping this morning and bought a pair of chocolate brown 'wool denim' jeans (expensive, but hopefully worth it), and a brown jacket.  I liked the jacket because it's 100% wool (the shop assistant described it as "boiled wool" - it's a knitted and fulled fabric) and unlined - most of the jackets have polyester linings that I hate.

I also went to the garden centre and bought a new Rosemary plant (my last one died during the first Winter I was in Armidale - it didn't adjust from Sydney's climate) and a mixed punnet of Asian greens - Bok Choy, Chinese Cabbage and Choy Sum.  My last attempt at Bok Choy wasn't very successful (raised from seed and bolted straight to flower), so it will be interesting to see what happens.

And the Bob and Weave shawl is a whisker away from completion - I have the ribbon needed to finish it and have been threading and stitching it when I get the chance.  Which is usually when watching bad television that doesn't require my full attention.  There hasn't been much time for that in the last week - I have several hours of (good) taped programs to watch.  Like I said, it's been a hectic week.

Yes, I have finally finished the Bob and Weave Shawl - about eight weeks too late to wear to the wedding I had intended it for...  No matter.  The ribbons through the dropped stitches have a habit of shifting about so that parts of the shawl gather and loose ribbon protrudes elsewhere, but I don't care.  It is lovely and warm and colourful.  And the weather seems to have finally cooled, so it may get some wear very soon.

A new online knitting magazine launched its first issue today - Southern Cross Knitting.  Go have a look!

So much for posting "tomorrow"...  Ahem.  Got too busy, as usual!

Wool Expo was last weekend.  I was in the woolcraft tent on both Saturday and Sunday and had a great time.  On Saturday there were lots of people coming to look at the display and there were other stalls selling a variety of wool and other crafty bits.  I ogled some spun recycled silk throwers waste yarn, but thought it was to impractical for anything I'd want to make.  In the end I bought some undyed Mulberry silk noil 10/1 yarn (all the dyed skeins were in horrible colours in my opinion) for which I have some ideas.  I had barely any time to knit the kid mohair lace scarf in between raffle ticket sales and handing out information on the spinning and weaving group.

Sunday was quieter, but I got no knitting done at all because I had to separate and fold all the handspun, handknitted rug raffle tickets for the draw in the afternoon.  We have been selling tickets since February, and I spent both the last two market Sundays selling tickets in the mall.  In the end it was won by a lady from the Central Coast, and I found out today the final tally was over $900 raised!  So it was well worth all the time and effort put in.

On Sunday night I finally reached the end of the ball of kid mohair, finishing the lace scarf.  I washed it on Monday after school and started wearing it on Wednesday.  It's a bit longer than anticipated as it relaxed on washing, but it is absolutely lovely to wear.  Pictures soon...

So I'm finally back to knitting the blue socks I started last October.  I thought I was going to have to frog back to before the heel because the foot was too long, but on looking at it again I decided that it wasn't that bad, and continued on.  It's grown a few centimetres already.

A long weekend and I'm still not on top of all my marking *sigh*.  It's school report writing season, and while the marking is not in check, the reports are fairly much done from my point of view.  With all the school work, not a lot else is getting a look in.  Only two more weeks to the end of the (private) school term.

As promised, a picture of the finished Kid Mohair scarf.  It is getting a lot of use - I wear it most days because it is so lovely.

I've had a lovely collision between my fibre pursuits and teaching - using natural substances to dye wool.  My experience of dyeing wool or tencel has involved only synthetic dyes, and the indigo dye pot day my spinning and weaving group was to have last week ended up being postponed until later in the year.  But my year 8 Science classes have been studying "Natural Resources" and the textbook even had a wool dyeing practical in it.  So I jumped with joy at the prospect of trying some natural dyeing.  I modified the practical a bit with some other references and some totally experimental plant substances.  The results were quite fantastic.  In the picture they are (from left): skeins 1 & 2 - wattle (yes, yes, I'll identify the species once it flowers...) with copper sulfate mordant; skeins 3-6 - rosehip and hibiscus tea bags (very convenient!) with either alum or vinegar as mordant; skeins 7 & 8 - blackcurrant and lemon peel tea bags with either alum or vinegar as mordant; skein 9 - eucalypt (again, yet to be identified) with alum mordant; skeins 10 & 11 - beetroot (yes, really, that green is from beetroot) with copper sulfate mordant; skein 12 - beetroot with alum mordant (was meant to turn out apricot - the only disappointment of the whole bunch); and skeins 13 & 14 - onion skins and alum mordant (the first one was brown onions, the second was red or Spanish onions).  I've yet to test how colour fast any of them are.

My biggest news of the past few weeks would be succumbing to buying a spinning wheel.  It's a Sickinger wheel (made in Coffs Harbour) and bought second-hand (or, more likely, third or fourth-hand) from a local woman via eBay.  It's almost exactly the same as my Mother's spinning wheel (also a Sickinger), with a few minor differences.  I've been so busy that all I've had time to do with it so far is glue some of the mistreated bobbins it came with back together again, and give it a good clean, polish and lubrication.  I'm looking forward to those school holidays...

And lastly, I finished the first blue Patonyle sock last night.  As this sock was started last October, I now have to work out how to start the second one (this was my first toe-up sock and I didn't use a pattern) and try and make it match the first one...  I'm keen to finish the pair because I love wearing my other four pairs of handknitted socks during winter, one pair at a time, naturally!  It has been getting colder, with frequent frosts.  But it has been dry - the promised rain this weekend has amounted to little more than drizzle - nothing on Saturday (I even put out two loads of washing to dry as encouragement), 3 mm yesterday, and maybe about another 3 mm today.  Not exactly great for the farmers around here.

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).

Remember the Ugly Socks?  Well, I ordered some suitable undyed yarn (Kona Superwash from the Wool Peddler) which arrived on Thursday.  Today I dyed some of it for the Sideways Sock pattern.  I hadn't done any wool dyeing in ages - and this was the first dyeing I've done since moving house in April.  Note to self: careful what ends up in the laundry tub - this one is cream acrylic, not stainless steel...

I dyed one lot of about 50 grams with Landscapes dye in Marine Blue, Wild Rasberry and Cyclamin, and a second lot of 50 grams in Gaywool Indigo.  This was the first time I'd used the Indigo colour.  I like it, but I don't think the two skeins combined will give the effect I want.  I might wind off another 50 gram lot tomorrow and dye it with the Cyclamin and use the Indigo for something else later.

Along with the Kona, I bought a skein of 'Silk and Ivory' for the stash.  Today has actually been quite productive on the fibre front - I also finished spinning my second bobbin of Merino.  The second bobbin has taken nearly two months, thanks to my having virtually no spare time during school term.  I'm looking forward to plying and actually producing my first skein of yarn.  That probably won't happen until next weekend since I've left everything else that needs doing this weekend to tomorrow.

There has been very little knitting lately.  I bruised my left hand Friday week ago trying to quietly deal with a heater while supervising an exam at school.  I didn't close it hard enough and the door fell back on my hand leaving me with a nice swollen lump and bruise.  It's fine now, but Strawberry's Surprise #1 is awaiting buttons (hopefully I'll get a button-buying opportunity while in Sydney on Tuesday as I've ruled out all of the limited Armidale button range as unsuitable), and the Miami socks are not all that enjoyable to knit, so progress is almost non-existent.

Some photos from the garden:

This is just one of the flower spikes on my Babianas or Baboon Flowers.  Last year I had one spike with a few pathetic flowers.  This year I have at least 8 spikes.  They're quite cheery.

And these are some of the Ranunculus.  I love the deep strong oranges and reds in these flowers.  They get the afternoon sun and just seem to glow in it.

Some knitting - I've started another pair of socks since I'm really not enjoying knitting the Miami Socks at all.  This new pair is in Heirloom Jigsaw colour 33.  It has blue, black and purple stripes separated by black and white "stripes".  I've just realised I forgot to photograph my first skein of yarn.  Typepad seems slow tonight so I can't be bothered right now.

Back to school tomorrow.  I would have liked a bit more holiday time to finish catching up with a lot of stuff.  I just never made it to the bottom of the list *sigh*.

I won't bore you with why I've been too busy to post - just put it under the heading of "school".  I'd rather cover the more interesting things I've done in the last nine weeks.

In early November, my Spinning and Weaving group had an Indigo Dye Pot day.  It wasn't just indigo dyeing - there were some other methods employed, but as my interest was only in the indigo, that's all I participated in (I can do other types of dyeing any time I like).

I had 400 grams of Bendigo 8 ply cotton in 'snow', and a tencel warp (which I still haven't weighed)  prepared for the indigo pot.  Indigo is an interesting dye - as I understand it, the  indigo is insoluble in the oxidised blue form.  To dye fibre, you need to put it in a reducing vat, which is an alkaline solution.  It is soluble in this solution and is a bright green colour.  Where the solution is exposed to the air, some of the indigo becomes oxidised and forms a skin on the surface.  Ours looked sort of metallic-coppery on top.  You dip the yarn into the vat for long enough to take up the vat solution, then remove it slowly so that the excess liquid in the yarn runs back into the vat before it can oxidise.  We weren't very good at that part, so vat solution went all over Pauline's lawn, turning the grass blue!  We then hung up the dipped skeins and they were left to oxidise and turn blue.  Mine seemed to take forever - whenever I opened up a bit of a skein to look inside, there was lime green fibre, which then  exposed to the air would oxidise and darken, eventually becoming blue.  The indigo was tending to form a skin on the yarn preventing the oxidation until it dried out a bit.

Then came the rinsing.  Lots of rinsing.  I made lots of buckets of yucky, murky blue water (so more of Pauline's lawn turned blue).  Thankfully, Pauline has a couple of rainwater tanks (as well as a town supply) from which we took the water, and it has rained a fair bit since, so she won't have ended up short of water.  Then I took them home and rinsed them some more and hung them to dry.  Once dry, I wound the cotton into balls and rechained the warp.  I'll probably rinse the tencel warp again before I use it as I want to team it with a pale weft, and I don't want the colour to bleed (much?).  Rinsing it again will indicate if it's going to be a problem.

I've knitted a couple of swatches in the indigo dyed cotton so that I can modify the pattern I intend to knit from it.  The pattern is the Denim Pinafore in Erika Knight's "Simple Knits for Little Cherubs" designed to use Rowan Denim yarn.  Rowan Denim yarn shrinks by something close to 20%, but in length only.  My indigo dyed Bendigo cotton won't do anything like that (and my stitch gauge is way off the pattern's, while I like the drape produced), so I practically have to rewrite the pattern.  Knitting with it is divine - it has come out quite soft after all the washing, and it has a nice variation about it.  The pale stitches here and there are from where the  skein was held while being dipped in the vat and consequently didn't take up much dye (and I unwittingly did that with every skein).  And I suspect the slight dark/light variation over the rest of the yarn was caused by the solution in the skeins being held in the fibre towards the bottom of each hanging skein while the oxidising took place.  I like it a lot.

And until I actually rework the pattern, I can't cast on.  I'm actually WIP-less at the moment.

As I said yesterday, I have no works in progress.  I finished these socks in Heirloom Jigsaw yarn last weekend, and they are lovely and snuggly.  Not that I'll need them until next autumn/winter - this week has been hot.  Being Armidale, and 'hot' being only around 30 deg C, I won't complain too much - elsewhere it has hit 40 deg C - yuck!

The Miami Socks went to the frog pond.  I hated knitting them, and realised they were also going to be too loose.  I haven't decided what that strange Miami yarn will become - it's gone back in the stash.  I have other projects awaiting my attention, but they involve some dyeing first, and I hadn't been home from school early enough to ring and order the necessary dyes in business hours until this week.  In fact I've splurged a bit this week - more dyes, more yarn (Bendigo Woollen Mills sale) and a pattern (it's for that silk and ivory yarn in the stash enhancement list on the left - after I've dyed it).

And I picked up a copy of the first issue of Yarn Magazine, released today.  It looks good and I hope it gives 'Creative Knitting' (an oxymoronic title!) a run for its money.  I'm just happy to have an Aussie magazine worth buying that should have patterns in locally available yarns and has ads for local yarns - it can be a real tease to open one of the overseas mags and see ads for products or patterns using yarns you can't get here (or can if after exchange rate and shipping it proves not too costly).

When I arrived in Sydney on Tuesday, I went to see my sister Katherine and go for a swim, and I finally had the opportunity to give her Strawberry’s Surprise.  I can now reveal the pattern was Kate Gilbert’s “Samantha”, which I knitted in Bendigo 8 ply cotton in “snow”.  I also gave Kath a couple of other baby items I’d knitted - “Daisy” (the hooded version), and a little jacket with a lace border I’ve made a few times now and is quite nice.  I think I have photos of them somewhere but I can’t be bothered to go in search of them just now.  I hope to get some photos of “Strawberry” wearing them before too long...  The bub is due on 13 January.

It took a bit of effort to get my laptop onto my brother Tim’s wireless network - many hours of stuffing around with security settings to get it to work.  I don’t bother with the same level of security at my place.  My next-door neighbour’s network is not secured, so I figure if anyone wants a connection they’ll use theirs before trying to break the encryption on mine (I also regularly check my router’s log for suspect activity).

I’ve been visiting folk here in Sydney as well as doing a fair bit of shopping.  Not present shopping for Christmas, as I did all that before leaving home.  This has been shopping for all the little things I don’t get to buy in Armidale.  Like walking into a shop of just earrings (Starfish Earrings).  And I did my usual drop in to Tapestry Craft (sale!) and Haighs in the city.  Calling into the Gardens Shop at the Royal Botanic Gardens was particularly damaging to my credit card - the fifth and final volume of the Horticultural Flora of South Eastern Australia was there, and I needed to complete my set with it - at $160.  I like books too much!

A little more shopping tomorrow and SSK on Saturday...

Happy New Year!

SSK turned out to be something of a fizzer on Christmas Eve.  Barmuda was closed and no one else was stupid enough to be out in the heat like silly me.  No matter.

It has remained horribly hot over the last week or so, and even here in Armidale I'm frying.  So I've been doing very little, as I really don't tolerate the heat all that well.

The Denim Pinafore was virtually finished on Christmas day, with only the neck and armhole edging and side seams remaining to be done.  But I didn't get around to finishing it until yesterday.  I'm really happy with the finished product.  Very cute.  I ended up using just under half the indigo-dyed yarn, so I might make another one in a smaller size for about 12-18 months age (this one is the 2-3 year old size - the smallest in Erika Knight's book).  I got that idea from this blog.  I won't start on that too soon as it would be a little boring.

I started a Wine Sock on Christmas Eve and finished by fulling it on Thursday.  It ended up far too tall - I thought I'd fulled it enough (two times through the wash parts of the heavy duty cycle on my machine, and seemingly not willing to get any smaller), but it seems to have stretched as I pulled it over a rolled up towel in plastic to dry.  It's about the right height for one of my stoppered glass bottles I keep in the fridge with water or fruit juice in them, but it is too tall for a standard wine bottle.  If I make this again (and I probably will, as it is a great way of using up leftover yarn), then I'd make it shorter than the 46 cm the pattern specified.

Today I dyed the silk and ivory yarn with the Landscape Mist dye I mentioned before Christmas.  Once it has dried and I've wound it into a ball, I'll be able to start the Flower Basket Shawl.  I knitted up the small  sample I'd dyed previously to be sure of the needle size I'll be using, and after having been concerned about having enough yarn when I first got the pattern, it looks like there's no problem.  Meanwhile, I keep itching to start another shawl with the blue 2 ply yarn I bought at Rubi and Lana.  But I don't think I want two shawls on the go at once, so I'm trying to resist the temptation.

The flower basket shawl is growing slowly.  I've made a couple of mistakes in it that I couldn't be bothered ripping back to fix.  Only I will ever notice them.

Apart from that, I'm doing nothing exciting.  I've done a bit of preparation work for school in the hope this year won't be quite as crazy as last year.  Like I said - nothing exciting.

Happiness is thinking you have completely run out of chocolate then finding two packets of Lindt Christmas Bells and a Reindeer hidden in the back of the pantry.  I bought them before going away for Christmas, and completely forgot about them.  The reindeer is probably safe from consumption until I get back from Sydney.

The Flower Basket Shawl is now at the half-way point, judged by the weight of the remaining ball of yarn.  I've already done two pattern repeats more than specified by the pattern (my yarn is not conforming to the pattern's statement of yardage required), and it's going to be hard to judge when to switch to the edging - and with a row length currently at 295 sts, I don't want to go too far and have to frog back.  Nor do I want to finish too soon and have lots of spare yarn.  I'm keeping track of the rate at which the remaining yarn is used with each pattern repeat.  At the moment it's about 10 grams in the last repeat.

I knew it was going to be a close thing to running out of yarn on the edging of the Flower Basket Shawl.  I made it to the cast off row, but only had 4 metres of yarn remaining - not even enough to do half the cast off.  Bugger.  It was close enough though to not want to rip back the last pattern repeat - I would have been left with about 15 grams of yarn.  So I decided to modify the edging, eliminating two rows - which meant ripping back only three rows.  It still looked like it might be a close thing.  I got half way across the cast off and measured what was left - 9 metres.  I still wasn't sure I'd make it until I was nearly done.  And it was indeed very close - I had one metre of yarn left at the end!

I blocked it before going to school yesterday (yes, a half-day yesterday, full days tomorrow and Monday before the students return on Tuesday *sigh*), and it was finally dry this morning (we had a cool, very humid day yesterday).  The final dimensions are 168 cm wide and 77 cm deep.  If I was doing it again I'd buy two hanks of the yarn (Silk and Ivory from the Wool Peddler) and make it larger.  But it is large enough to wrap around my shoulders and tie at the front - and I'll be keeping it close at hand for the cool Armidale evenings when I want it to keep me warm.

Now I have the dilemma of what to start next.  I've really enjoyed doing some lace for a change, but with school going back, I should probably stick to something on which I can zone out a bit more.  I still can't start the vest I want to make with the silk/wool yarn I had my Mum spin for me because my attempts at dyeing samples haven't yielded a desirable colour.  I may cast on the Kiri Shawl in the blue Rubi + Lana 2 ply to satisfy my lace craving, but start something else as well for the too-tired-need-to-relax times.

Not a lot of progress is being made on the knitting front.  My output of late is three baby socks and four swatches.  Four?  Yes, well it has taken that many to get the right needles and stitch pattern.  You can't have too many swatches!  It's the brown 3 ply from Rubi + Lana for the lacy cardigan.  From the top down the swatches are: strawberry bobble (SB) lace on 3.5 mm needles, tulip lace on 2.5 mm needles, stocking stitch on 3.0 mm needles, and lastly, SB on 3.0 mm needles.  I'm happy with 3.0 mm needles, and SB now, but have to decide if the SB is a border or all over design.  I've yet to measure it, but I think my tension was different between stocking stitch and the SB, so it might look odd as a border.  So there's still a bit of planning to do before I launch in and start knitting.

Here's two of the baby socks in scrap Opal sock yarn.  Cute, and easy to knit.  They're for Charlotte, but as yet I have no idea if they'll fit.  I've started another pair in the variegated yarn I dyed for the never-going-to-work sideways socks.

My mail was full of goodies today - more Addi Turbos from STYK in 3.0 mm for the lacy cardigan (I only have a pair of pins in 3.0 mm, so this was very necessary), and 4.5 mm (because I use that size a lot).  And as a treat to myself, some Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Safari from Purl Yarns.    This is destined to become a pair of Rib and Cable Socks from Interweave Knits Fall 2005 issue.  And I'm really keen to cast on.

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.