Purple Purl

Things to do...

2008-12-13T11:57:00.002+11:00

I saw this fun meme on Mick's blog. It's a list of things I have/haven't done. If it's in bold, I've done it, if it's not, I haven't (yet).

1. Started your own blog.
2. Slept under the stars.
3. Played in a band.
4. Visited The Great Barrier Reef.
5. Stood under the stars in the outback, the real outback – think Uluru. (Does Chillagoe count?)
6. Given more than you can afford to charity.
7. Been to the Gold Coast’s theme parks – anyone, you take your pick.
8. Climbed a mountain.
9. Held a praying mantis.
10. Sung a solo.
11. Bungee jumped, jumped out of plane, been paragliding or hang-gliding, hot air ballooning – you get the idea, you’ve been hundreds of metres about earth in a seemingly flimsy contraption.
12. Visited Melbourne.
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.
15. Had a child. Raised a child. Worked with children.
16. Had food poisoning.
17. Been to the Snowy Mountains.
18. Grown your own vegetables.
19. Visited the Brett Whitely studio in Surry Hills, Sydney.
20. Slept on an overnight train or bus.
21. Had a pillow fight.
22. Been backpacking.
23. Taken a mental health day.
24. Been buried in sand with just your head and toes sticking out.
25. Held a possum, kangaroo or koala – or any other native Australian animal.
26. Gone skinny dipping.
27. Been in a fun run.
28. Been on the Blue Mountain cableway.
29. Seen a total eclipse.
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.
31. Played, or watched, summer cricket.
32. Sailed, kayaked or canoed our beautiful waterways.
33. Seen the Daintree.
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors.
35. Visited an Aboriginal settlement or mission.
36. Learned a new language.
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied.
38. Toured the Sydney Opera House.
39. Tried rock climbing (indoor or outdoor), abseiling or just simple bushwalking.
40. Visit Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art.
41. Been to the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
42. Sunbaked at Bondi.
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant.
44. Visited Broome.
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.
46. Been transported in an ambulance.
47. Had your portrait painted.
48. Gone fishing.
49. Seen Tasmania’s old growth forests.
50. Been to the top of Q1, on the Gold Coast.
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling.
52. Kissed in the rain.
53. Played in the mud.
54. Gone to a drive-in theatre.
55. Been in a movie.
56. Driven the Great Ocean Road.
57. Started a business.
58. Taken a martial arts class.
59. Visited Norfolk Island.
60. Served at a soup kitchen.
61. Sold Girl Guide biscuits.
62. Gone whale watching.
63. Got flowers for no reason.
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma.
65. Gone jet boating.
66. Visited Port Arthur.
67. Bounced a cheque.
68. Flown in a helicopter.
69. Saved a favourite childhood toy.
70. Visited the Australian War Memorial.
71. Eaten Caviar.
72. Pieced a quilt.
73. Stood in Federation Square.
74. Been on the Murray River.
75. Been fired from a job.
76. Travelled, or climbed, over the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
77. Broken a bone.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.
79. Seen the Three Sisters at Echo Point, Katoomba.
80. Published a book.
81. Visited St Mary’s Cathedral, in Sydney.
82. Bought a brand new car.
83. Been to Hermannsburg.
84. Had your picture in the newspaper.
85. Read the entire Bible.
86. Visited Parliament House.
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.
88. Had chickenpox.
89. Saved someone’s life.
90. Sat on a jury.
91. Met someone famous.
92. Joined a book club.
93. Lost a loved one.
94. Saved a pet.
95. Been to the site of the Eureka Stockade.
96. Swum in The Whitsundays.
97. Been involved in a lawsuit.
98. Owned a mobile phone.
99. Been stung by a bee.
100. Read an entire book in one day.

Random honeymoon photo number 1

2008-11-21T23:49:00.004+11:00

This little guy looked pretty sad in his cage. His body language was so much like that of a child, and just screamed "I just want a hug!". I put my finger near his cage and he grabbed onto it with his hand and then promptly fell asleep holding my finger. We sat like that for about 20 minutes. Aw. I think the closest thing he gets to love is little kids poking him and teasing him. Monkeys aren't supposed to be in cages.
On a happier note, we saw lots of monkeys in the wild, kamikaze jumping between trees... they looked very happy.

Stuff and things

2008-11-21T23:29:00.005+11:00

Here are a whole bunch of photos of yarny goodness that I took ages ago (note the lack of leaves on the trees!) and never got around to posting.

An old finished object (around August from memory!) Made from my first handspun yarn :)

Another FO. With the gorgeous ruffles yarn my lovely friend Alice bought for me in Germany. The colours aren't as bright or horrible as the photo makes out. My camera just doesn't seem to do reds.
A purchase from the ACT Craft fair... sparkly brown merino.

Some merino purchases from EGMTK. The one on the left is called clown face!
Gorgeous 2ply alpaca which I bought in the alpaca shop in beechworth and am going to turn into a travelling vines scarf.

Another goreous laceweight, which I got at the Craft fair, which took me two evenings to wind into a ball and has convinced me to invest in a swift and ball winder! I was very close to throwing the whole thing in the bin in tangled frustration. It's becoming a feathers and fan scarf. Which I started knitting sitting in a hut in the snow near the top of Mount Buffalo! Lace projects are perfect to take on a backcountry ski trip - lightweight, but can keep you amused for hours while your more skilled mates rip up the slopes!So... the stash is getting bigger and there's very little knitting going on. I'm putting that off until after I've had time to sleep and do last weeks dishes. It's been a long week!

Can I be brutally honest?

2008-11-05T20:25:00.007+11:00

Upon observing that it's been over two months since I last posted, and roughly a month between posts for the few before that, maybe I will have to face up to the fact that I might not be a natural blogger. But for some reason I still seem to hold out some potentially misguided hope that it's just all the circumstances of the last while that have been preventing me from blogging... quarter life crisis, corinbank, job hunting, wedding preparations.... But everyone else seems to keep blogging through the busiest parts of their lives, so maybe I have to face that I'm just not a blogger. None the less, I can't seem to shut down the blog for fear (or hope) that 'maybe one day I will want to blog more regularly again'.

When I get on the computer, I get so distracted by other people's blogs, that I never get around to posting on my own. And then I leave it so long that there are too many things to catch people up on, that it seems like a big task and I avoid it. (ah... some deep seated procrastination issues coming out here, but that's a separate struggle).

When I read everyone else's blogs, I am so blown away by how much you achieve... not only how much blogging, but how much knitting, cooking, gardening, sewing, photographing. Where do you find the time? And what am I doing wrong?? So I read everyone elses blogs, marvelling at all they are doing, instead of going and achieving something myself! Hmm.

A reflection - there is a lot of guilt associated with blogging. (again, perhaps me and perhaps related to my extreme procrastination problems). Noone has every critisized me for my very sporadic blogging... so I guess it's not guilt imposed by others so much as by me. I feel guilty for not posting, for not commenting on others blogs... (although there are so many blogs that I love out there that I'm sure I would never be able to keep up with reading or commenting, so don't even really try), I feel guilty for not doing the other things I want to be doing (knitting, cooking etc!) or should be doing (housework) when I'm instead spending time on the internets. But I guess there are no rules about how often I have to blog... only the expectations I'm imposing on myself. So... I'll continue to leave the question of my blog open ended, and see how things go. Maybe I will get reinspired. Maybe I wont. Either way, I'm going to follow Quilting Mick's lead, and make sure I leave time for doing 'real' things!! Maybe if I achieve more in 'real' life, I will be more inspired to post about it!!

Anyway... if you've made it through the self-indulgent ramble, here's a post. There's too much to share to not post. So here it is.

Mr Purl and I tied the knot on the 11th of October. It was a perfect, glowing, happy happy day. To be surrounded by everyone that we love, celebrating our love of each other and of our community of family and friends... made me so ridiculously happy that my cheeks hurt from all the smiling. I couldn't be surrounded by a bunch of more talented, generous and beautiful people, or be blessed with a more amazing man to share the rest of my life with!
So... less gushing more photos?? Sure! Thanks to one of those highly talented people, Tim Grainger for the gorgeous photos.

Our gorgeous outfits (including our beautiful flower girl's dress) were made by our even more gorgeous friend, Polly of Polby Designs. She's one incredibly talented and generous lady!

I wonder if one thing thats discouraging me from blogging is the fact that it takes me so frick'n long to write a post, in between all the distractions of everyone elses blogs, photo editing etc. This post has taken well over an hour and half! Anyone have any advice for blogging/internet efficiency techniques??

This is... my favourite childrens book

2008-08-24T10:04:00.006+10:00

Peepo, by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. I got this book when I was a baby... and it got a lot of loving. (As you can see from all the pages being held together with sticky tape!)

One of my favourite aspects of the book is the chaotic and cozy mess that their house is in!

This is... my first time

2008-07-20T18:24:00.003+10:00

I've been enjoying reading everyone's posts for the 'This is...' meme over the last couple of months - a very clever idea thought up by Three Buttons. So I've decided to throw my hat in the ring too.

This is... what makes me happy.

Spending a rainy day inside in the warmth with good friends learning new skills and getting thoroughly hooked! The lovely Katherine ran a (free!) beading workshop for us. I've always loved pawing through beads in the bead shops, and have accumulated quite a few, but have never had quite the right tools, skills or inspiration to do much with them other than making hemp friendship bands (which, incidentally I quite like, but you can only take so far).

It was a real thrill to learn new skills and to come away after five hours with three completely unique handmade creations! I know what everyone's getting for Christmas this year!! Not these ones though. These are mine!!

Thanks Katherine!!

Knit-Con*

2008-07-20T17:54:00.005+10:00

*obscure reference to Can-Con - in Canada, the radio stations have to play a certain quota of Canadian Content (or Can-Con) .

I realised it's been a while since I posted any knitting content, so here it is!!

Finished a couple of weeks ago: My Mum's tea cosy! Mum specifically requested a tea cosy to fit her favourite tea pot, which doesn't cover the handle so that the handle doesn't get super heated. This is the first tea cosy I've made, and I just made up the recipe. The wool is hand spun and dyed that I bought at a gorgeous little handcraft shop called The Purple Paddock in Keith, South Australia. I used a basket weave cable. (officially my first cables. So many firsts!) If anyone would like the pattern, let me know in the comments and I will put it up (it's pretty straight-forward).

And last night in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep, I looked up some info on how to knit up the funky tape-like yarn that my mate sent from Germany. It's called Geniale by Schachenmayr Nomotta (50% Merino, 50% Acrylic). And thanks to the ever amazing Ravelry, I discovered that it is very similar to "Linie 194 Solo' and saw lots of examples of things people had knit up with it. (I also saw that Jejune had stashed some way back when.) Anyway... it's kind of fun, kind of awkward to knit with, and automatically makes little ruffles. I liked the look of the skinnier scarves people had made with it, so this is just 5 stitches wide. I've twisted the tape at the end of each row so that the purple shows up on one side of the scarf, and the orange shows up on the other. I like how it's turning out so far. Thanks Alice!! :)

Great minds think alike?

2008-06-30T22:36:00.002+10:00

I was curious when looking at my blog stats that lots of people had stumbled across it whilst googling 'purple purl'. Now it doesn't seem like that common a phrase, and there's not that many people who know my blog name and would be searching for it. At the time I started my blog, I checked, and there wasn't that much else around with the same name. But upon a quick search of my own, I discovered that apparently a new yarn shop called The Purple Purl recently opened in Toronto! How bout that? I'll have to visit it one day :)

A year.

2008-06-28T18:12:00.004+10:00

Happy blogiversary to me... Seems pretty crazy that it's been a year... sometimes I get a bit scared how fast time goes... like somehow I'm not taking enough notice of each moment as it zooms past. Something to work on!
Hehe... reminds me of the Douglas Adams quote: "I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they go by."

So here are some flowers to say thanks to those of you who read my blog occasionally, and put up with the extreme sporadic-ness of my posts! Cos you reading it is what makes blogging worthwhile I spose! If someone blogs in the forest and noone reads it, does the blog cease to exist?

I'm back on the job hunt. It's kind of exciting picturing all the different things you could do. Kind of painful answering selection criteria. Kind of nerve-wracking going to interviews. And kind of crushing getting turned down. Ah well... all good experience right?

Time waster

2008-06-12T21:40:00.002+10:00

Does anyone remember the old MS-DOS game Rockford, or it's precursor Boulderdash? I've recently rediscovered it thanks to the magic to the interweb, and it's nostalgia plus around here! Just check out those little sandwich-butterflies!! Awww.

Cordially

2008-06-12T21:25:00.005+10:00

I'm proud to present... our wedding invitations. Each and every one of them lovingly screen printed by Mr Purl and myself (neither of whom, for the record, had ever touched a silk screen in our lives before deciding to take it upon ourselves to master the photo emulsion method and do 2-colour printing of One. Hundred. and. Twenty. Invitations!!). The fabric is quite heavy, and has a funky botanical wallpaper-style print on the back.

We also managed to make a complete team effort of designing the waratah motif.

When Mr Purl first suggested screen printing the invites, it was kind of a joke, as we were talking about getting a silk screen for making some patches for Rat Patrol. But it somehow grew into something to be seriously considered... and to give him credit, they came out amazingly, and they're certainly different than your average wedding invite, which is what we were after! :)

Space to breathe

2008-06-12T21:05:00.003+10:00

I've been back to the yoga retreat twice in the last couple of months. It's a truly gorgeous and special place. Here are a couple of piccies from when Mum and I went there for a week long retreat last month. It was a treat to re-live the autumn colours after they had pretty much finished in Canberra.

Trivialities

2008-06-10T15:04:00.003+10:00

It's been a lovely relaxing long weekend. Mr Purl was off in Newcastle flying his hang glider (although it sounds like there was more sitting around camp drinking beer than actual flying - the winds weren't right apparently). So I stayed home and mostly vegged.

Friday night was a trivia night at Cafe Satis in Watson, organised by my favourite workmate. It was definitely the best trivia night I've been to, partly because of the yummy tapas Cher from Satis served up, but mostly because of the original trivia questions!! One of the bonus rounds was a sheet of pictures of hairy, bead wearing hippie folk, and you had to guess whether each one was a Guru or Folk Singer! Then there were rounds such as "Name that Grain" - identifying grains/pulses/herbal teas etc in big jars, "Name the Smurves" (they decided that in the leaf/leaves plural tradition, the plural of smurf must be smurves). Then there were questions on games (everything from Dungeons and Dragons to Scrabble to Jump rope!) Questions on Canberra, Cartoons, and a round entitled "Questions we got from the Internet". Nice work to all involved, it was a thoroughly enjoyable night!

I think I'm definitely over having housewife time. Apart from sporadic moments of productivity, I'm finding I'm not actually being that productive, and then I'm feeling bad for not being productive!! So I think it's definitely time for me to be doing a few more hours at work!!

Decadency

2008-06-02T16:38:00.003+10:00

We had lovely weekend in Rutherglen last weekend, celebrating Mr Purl's grandma's 90th birthday. We stayed at The House at Mt Prior. Very fancy!! (but not to exxy!)

Their hospitality was amazing. When we got back to the B&B late on Saturday night after pubbing in Albury with Mr Purl's cousins, this little offering was awaiting us in our room!

This is their cellar, takes up a good part of the room under the house.

On Sunday we got a bit of time to explore the wineries, including our favourite, Chambers, and All Saints, where we got some delicious cheeses!

On the needles

2008-06-02T16:29:00.005+10:00

While I'm here, I'll show you what I'm working on at the moment!
A tea cozy for mum... as a very late mothers day present, using the handspun wool that's in the blog title bar! I'm using a basket weave cable pattern.

And the back of my cardigan... which I haven't really been working on much, but is coming along pretty quickly anyway... (the second picture shows the colour a bit more realistically).

And seeing as it's the second day of winter today, here's some Winter Thyme!

Reflection

2008-06-02T15:23:00.008+10:00

Well... seeing as it's been about two months between posts, apparently I'm just not blogging! Part of the reason is that I'm far more interested in reading everyone else's blogs than actually updating my own. And the other reason is I just can't seem to find the time in amongst everything else! I suppose when I look at the things in my life that are really important to me, blogging isn't coming out anywhere near the top. (which is fairly evident from the complete lack of activity on my blog).
And the silly thing is I have a lot of guilt about not posting... not sure where that comes from? And then because I'm feeling guilty, I'll put off posting even longer!! So it seems like one solution to not feeling this guilt would be just to scrap my blog all together... but some part of me just wants to hang on to it... to know that it's still there. The thing is, if I find I do have something I want to say, I like the idea of having somewhere to say it!! And I really do enjoy being a part of this knit blogging community!
Hmm... so I think I will keep it around, but remove myself from the blog rings etc, where you're actually required to post at a certain interval. And I'll ask everyone to forgive me in advance for my incredibly sporadic posting! Or maybe it's just me that needs to accept my sporadic posting, and everyone else is already OK with it!?

Anyway... that's probably enough introspection for you, so here are some photos...

Last month, there was a freaky cold snap and it snowed in the Brindabellas. I got home from work on a Monday night to Mr Purl and T & H saying "we're going to the snow!" I thought... that's nice... thinking they were just telling me about their own intention to go to the snow... not realising that it involved me! They had all my snow gear ready for me, and within about 5 minutes we were on our way up to the mountains. We drove as far as we could... played in the snow, then had a yummy dinner in the Bulls Head stone shelter where T & H had gotten married almost a year ago! (time flies!) What an incredible way to spend a Monday night!!

As a very early wedding present, Mum and Dad gave us a new fridge. We've been incredibly overdue for a decent fridge as you can see from the before and after photos: (notice the broken top shelf, serious lack of space and the metal bars Mr Purl had welded for the front of the shelves in the door after the chintzy plastic broke!!)

A little poetry...

Done

2008-03-07T22:17:00.006+11:00

Well... Corinbank has been, and gone. And it was AMAZING!!! Only those who were there can truly understand the amazing vibe, the wonderful hidden surprises in each little nook and each wilderness campground. At the end of the festival, there was not a scrap of rubbish to been on site - a pretty amazing testament to the waste crew volunteers and the environmentally conscious punters!!
The Chai tent was a huge success, and I was pleased to be able to contribute my own little part of the festival (as well as being on a huge high that people actually liked my chai, and the chill out space I had envisioned!)

That's my sister, and that's Darren Hanlon playing an acoustic gig under the trees!!! Festival highlight for sure!!!
And that's Xavier Rudd!!! Playing at Corin Forest!!!! OMG!

Now my life is my own again, and will slowly get back to normal. Today I had my first lunch break where I didn't have to do corin stuff in about 2 months. So I did some spinning. What glorious relaxation therapy!! Woohoo!! Lots of WIPs coming soon! :)

The months zoom by...

2008-02-20T20:15:00.004+11:00

Wow... I can't believe that my last post was a month ago! Life is crazy and consumed with organising this festival. I can't wait to get my life (and my fiancee) back - in one and a half (!) weeks time!
Anyway, I wont go into detail about how exhausted and over it I am. Because there's also a lot of excitement... things are looking absolutely amazing for the festival... the program has just been released, and even those of us who've been working on this thing for over a year are blown away by just how much is on!! (definitely check it out!) And preparation for the chai tent (my little bit of the festival) is going really well.

The yoga retreat was amazing... relaxing, centering... just brilliant. I discovered when I got back though that it's really hard to hold on to that relaxed state when you spend your days with 20 toddlers... your lunch hours and weeknights and all weekend helping to organise a festival, and absolutely no time with yourself or the person you're supposed to be getting married to! (oh yeah, but I wasn't going to go into detail about being OVER IT!!) Anyway, I'll definitely be going back to the ashram. soon!

Anyway... that gives you an idea of why blogging has fallen by the wayside. (and knitting too incidentally!). But that's all going to change in a week and half hopefully!! :)

See you at Corinbank!! This is what the sky looks like up there... (sometimes) (well OK, only once... but you might be lucky!)

Catch you on the flip side!

Il pleut!

2008-01-19T18:45:00.000+11:00

Lovely lovely rain is falling. And I've been sitting inside relaxing with H. I've been passing on the art of the heel, passed on to me by Ms Spider. Like we did in Spidey's sock workshop, I got H to just knit the heel part of the sock on it's own, so that when she gets up to that bit in her actual sock, she knows how it goes and it's not so scary. Then I passed on my very limited carding knowledge for some lovely brown alpaca fleece she's inherited. Then we did ear-candling! Weird, but relaxing!

Went to the ANU Food Co-op today for the first time ever. (I'm so embarassed that I've never been there before!) All this wasted time!!! What a great place to shop. They have an amazing range of natural foods, yes, but it's just a pretty cool place to shop, atmosphere-wise. You feel like you're back in a pioneer-days general store! What a contrast to woolies with it's excessive packaging and stuff we don't need and screaming children and grumpy check-out chicks! I'm sure the stuff is more expensive (not sure just how much though, need to compare that)... but is it worth it for the pleasurable shopping experience, and the lack of packaging?? (you take your own bags and jars from home to put stuff in).

Sorry... still no photos. Have to pack for my yoga retreat now, I'm leaving first thing in the morning.

See you in a week... hopefully all chilled out!

Thoughts

2008-01-15T21:33:00.000+11:00

My beautiful friend H lent me a book last weekend. It's called Laurel's Kitchen, and was written in the seventies. It's all about nutritious, healthy eating and lifestyles, and vegetarianism. Unlike other books on the same subject from the same era that I've read, it's not at all preachy. The main author has a beautiful 'voice', and is very down to earth and honest.
Anyway... this book feels life changing for me, but I think that's mainly because it's come at a time when so many factors have been converging for me. The more I learn about and practise yoga, buddhism, meditation... the more they all resonate with me and agree with and support each other. And I spose I've always felt like ecologically, being vegetarian - or close to it - really makes more sense... but I've always loved meat too much to follow through with it! But now, with all these things coming together I feel like being vegetarian is just part of a whole way of life which makes sense. OK... I'm potentially not making sense... but this is a big thing for me at the moment, so I thought I would try to express it. Thankyou H for sharing the book with me. You're a lot more like Laurel than you think.

Next week I'm going on a yoga retreat at an ashram just north of Sydney. I'm really excited just to have that intense, reflective time (at least that's what I'm hoping it will be!). I'm not really sure what to expect... I've never been on anything like this before. But with all the work for the festival, and my life being very much focussed on supporting someone else's endeavour at the moment, to have this time for me will be a real gift. Apparently as well as getting up early in the morning and doing yoga, and listening to talks and stuff, we do gardening and baking bread and stuff and contributing to the general ashram life. It all sounds pretty good... kind of a pampering for the soul rather than for the body!

Neglect

2008-01-15T18:03:00.000+11:00

Poor neglected bloggy (there are some flowers to assuage my guilt!). I've taken blogging without obligation to a new level... I call it 'Not Blogging with absolutely no Obligation whatsoever!!' :)
Life continues to be crazy. Being part of organising a festival... and being engaged to the head organiser apparently takes up a lot of your life!

Combine that with long work hours where I'm nowhere near a computer and come home as wrecked as spending the day with 20 two year olds is likely to leave you, and my blog has fallen by the wayside a bit.
Anyway... I'm still here. Still knitting... in between sleeping and working bees up at Corin every weekend!
I'm enjoying the socks I'm making with my hand dyed wool... they're going slowly though, because I think I was getting a bit bored and in need of a new challenge. So I've started a cardigan which hopefully I can finish sometime before the end of next winter. It's with a really pretty wool... but no pics today because the camera's not here. I'll also have some pics soon of the gorgeous purple merino all spun up.
Instead I'll share some pics from my Christmas break.

After Chrissy, I had a lovely week AT HOME (miraculous). I got to catch up on a lot of stuff I wasn't getting done, which had been hanging over my head for ages. I also got to do some yummy baking, which I had been having withdrawl from, having not cooked anything exciting for many months. Here were the results:

Ginger Caramel Crunch cookies out of a Womens Weekly. Sooo yummy! (those are whole Werthers caramels melted on top!!)

Blueberry, Ricotta and Almond Cupcakes from the Cupcake Bakeshop blog. Also incredibly yummy. But mostly, pink and cute! :)

This is where we spent a good part of New Years Day after New Years Eve up at Corin. Cooling- off in the pool at the top of Gibraltar Falls. It was a sweltering hot day here, so the cold water of the falls was a beautiful relief! And not a bad view either!!

Sorry for my absence from SnB, lack of commenting etc... miss you guys and will hopefully catch up soon!!!

So much to tell you!

2007-11-22T19:47:00.000+11:00

WARNING: Very long and overdue post follows...

Well... I'm still alive, and have been up to lots of stuff... but just a bit behind in posting about it!

Since I last wrote, I've had a birthday. My first birthday present was D & E having their bub on my birthday!! (thanx guys, that was sweet). She is a beautiful, perfect little bundle of joy! And I think she likes her new bunny 'Herm', who I can now finally post photos of. Yay!!
He was crocheted from a pattern in the US magazine Knit Simple.

In other finished items news, I made Mr Purl a stubby holder! My first colour work... (It says 'Nancy' which is his Rat Patrol name...)

And, speaking of Mr Purl, the wonderful man got me a spindle for my birthday!!!! (and he hasn't seen me much since!!) He got it made by Pete Filmer at the OBD Markets... not sure at this stage what type of wood it's made of, as Mr Purl didn't retain that information... but I will find out. It's absolutely gorgeous!!

And that purple roving I got from Helen now looks like this:

Two little balls of plied yarn, and one ball of singles yet-to-be-plied. You can certainly tell what order I spun them in... I'm getting less uneven (although some people say that unevenness is a desirable feature). I'm a little over half way through the 50g of roving... and thoroughly enjoying the process! (so much so that I've done very little knitting since I got the spindle!!) I also really like how the slightly different hues of purple are all showing up when it's spun :)

And in other birthday goodness, my beautiful friends were very generous... including a gift voucher for Stitch 'n Time in Mawson, and some homemade goodies! Pol made me this gorgeous bag... which happens to be just the right size for my spindle and roving!

H. made me this stunning knitting needle roll. She's a talented lady!! (and sweet too).

I got great enjoyment out of deciding where to slot in each pair of needles!!

I've also been playing with some alpaca fleece which some of mum and dad's mates generously gave me (thanks also goes to the alpacas Monty and Ruben!). On my way down to mum and dad's last time I stopped in at Ashford and dropped a substantial amount of money on some stuff... including carders (which, incidentally were way more expensive than I expected).
Carding takes a long time. And is dirty. But still kind of fun. I did quite a bit of it in the evenings at mum and dad's, sitting in front of the telly.

And I spun up one little ball of Monty's fleece just to see what it looked like:

Other things I've been up to include my first picot edge - performed on the sock I'm making out of my first ball of home dyed wool :) (oh, and in other dyeing news... the mulberries are out... soon to be made into a dye bath!)

And this... (no, not me, but a dear friend who got hitched on the weekend).

Right... that's all. As you were.

Roll you sweet rain

2007-11-08T22:26:00.000+11:00

On my lovely long weekend with my folks, mum and I attended a sculpture course near Cobargo. Gorgeous setting, gorgeous company and gorgeous rain!

Mum hacking into her limestone block.

This is the soapstone block that I was originally making my sculpture out of. See that big crack down the middle of it? Yeah.

Mum's finished 'reclining goddess'

My finished sculpture. Namaste.

On the main street in Cobargo.

On the way there I stopped a Ashford in Cooma and bought some carders (amongst other things) to card the Alpaca fleece that mum had acquired for me. Carding is hard work!! But strangely therapeutic! After 1 1/2 evenings, I ended up with about 35 grams of rolags ready to spin. *sigh* this jumper is going to take a long time!!! :)

The kids were wild today. It's not a full moon is it? Or perhaps they found some magic mushrooms in the garden. It's funny how all 20 of them manage to have collective moods.

OMG!!

2007-11-01T20:55:00.001+11:00

I was wondering in my last post what Wensleydale sheep looked like. I found out!! (photo from www.wensleydale-sheep.com)

I want one!

Hook, line and spindle

2007-11-01T19:39:00.000+11:00

Ooh ooh ooh! What an incredible day was had last Saturday (don't let my tardiness in posting about it reflect how I felt about the day... I think it's just taken me this long to come down off the high!!). I forgot my camera, but check out Taph and Spidey's photos of the day.

A bunch of Stitch n B!tch-ers (and Knit n Talk Sh!t-ers) went to play at the Waratah Fibres Studio in the home of Helen Rippin in Bundanoon. Helen's home is fibre heaven... she has a whole room at the back of her lounge room where the walls are lined with scrumptious hand dyed yarns and fibres!
After much drooling, fondling and hoarding, we settled in for a drop spindling lesson. As I think I have mentioned a couple of times, I have been super keen to learn how to spindle (is 'spindle' a verb?). Helen made it look so easy. It wasn't. But it was tonnes of fun, and very relaxing once you got into the groove. But most of all it was highly addictive. On Sunday I went straight out to order my new spindle! This whole week I've found myself daydreaming about all the beautiful spin-able things you can buy at Ewe Give Me the Knits (thanks George!)... and trying to convince myself that I don't really need them, seeing as I have copious amounts of alpaca coming my way! But they're so pretty... Anyway... moving along!

After a lunch of gourmet pizza and salad (did I mention that we were completely spoilt?) we headed outside for a lesson in dyeing. We learnt how to make 9 different shades of colour from two original colours, and we all ended up with little sample cards to take home. Seems like a great technique so that later when dyeing up a batch of yarn, you can choose which colours you like together etc and reproduce them exactly.

So of course, although I tried to be restrained, (don't roll your eyes Mr Purl!) I came home with lots of gorgeous goodies... wanna see?? :)

Most excitingly... my very first spinning attempt knitted up into a tiny square.

And fibre (is it roving? is it sliver? is it tops? who knows! I'm sorry, I know a few people did try to explain the difference to me!). Hand painted Wensleydale in 'parakeets' colourway. If this doesn't inspire you to spin, nothing would!

This is some beautiful merino which I think was dyed by a friend of Helens. It somehow ended up on the pile of stuff I was buying because someone thought that for some reason I might like it (I can't imagine why! :) Thanks Spidey!). It really is lovely. There are about 5 different colours of purple in it... less blue looking than in the photo... I'm really having trouble getting true colours from my camera. I think this will be the first thing I spin.
And some very prurdy lace weight in Jacaranda and Outback Sunset colourways. (I'll let you figure out which is which!)

This may be the most lovely of all... Polwarth/silk blend which Helen dyed over grey fibre, giving these incredibly gorgeous muted purples and pinks and greens. Stunning! And it's so incredibly soft. Not soft like alpaca... but a different kind of sturdier feeling softness... mmm...

Some very fun 8 ply in 'Tropical Birds' colourway.

And this is just something that, inexplicably had to come home with me. Gorgeous curls of Wensleydale... dyed in my favourite colours... and they're really soft and pretty... and I couldn't stop fondling them... and they just made their way into my shopping bundle. I'm seriously considering not doing anything at all with them except fondling... but they would also be really cool thrummed (my new word for the week!) into a scarf or something! (I can't spin them... because then they would lose their cool curlyness!) I can't believe that there's a sheep that actually has these cool curls. I have to go check some of them out!

These are the sample cards that we came home with. All of those combinations out of three original colours - 'Raspberry', 'Mulberry' and 'Daisy'.

So huge thanks to Helen and the ladies from the local spinning guild for hosting us, and to Taph and Spidey for setting-up this awesome opportunity, and to Emma for driving us there!!

What's that wet stuff falling from the sky?

2007-10-25T19:28:00.000+10:00

Nice to see some rain that is actually convincing enough to be called rain! You can almost see the gardens smiling!! I just hope that it makes all the grass seed grow that we've lovingly raked in for Corinbank!!

Not much happening here... plugging away on my gift for E's bub... which could arrive any day now. Can't wait to show some pics of the finished creation! (the pressie, not the bub!)

Lots to look forward to, with a SnB roadtrip to Bundanoon this weekend (woohoo for learning to spin!!), and a sculpture course that mum and I are doing next weekend! Plus... I've just had a five day weekend approved for next weekend, so I get to have a proper visit at Mum and Dad's! Ah... life is good! (except for the fact that I'm coming down with yet another cold, thanx to the petri dish that is a childcare centre!!)

Hooray garden!

2007-10-18T22:00:00.001+10:00

Everyone else's garden pics have inspired me to share some... The most exciting thing in our garden is asparagus that after two years is finally big enough to eat... but asparagus is very difficult for the camera to focus on.... so there is no photographic evidence!

I'm so proud of my thyme bush that I nurtured from a seed and managed to keep alive!!

Wisteria... along with jasmine, daphne and jonquils is my favourite smelling flower!

All of our lovely seedlings... not supposed to plant the tomatoes in the ground til after Melbourne cup right? The big lanky thing is Mr Purl's hops plant for his homebrew!

And in non garden-related news... here is an early stage of my pressie for E's new baby... due in a couple of weeks!! (I'm slightly further along now...) Can't say what it is incase E is reading... but it's probably obvious anyway! The crochet is fun... but not as therapeutic as knitting I think. I'm really enjoying the Bendigo cotton though!
Hugs to you all... I'm thinking of you... even if I've been a bit absent!

Hooray socks!

2007-10-18T21:41:00.000+10:00

Well... I've been realising that I may not actually have time in my life to upkeep a blog. But ah well... I'll do what I can!!
Anyway... excitingly... here are some pics of the turtle walk socks!! YAY for my first pair of socks ever!!! A big thanks to Spidey for the expert guidance in her sock workshop, which definitely gave me the confidence to try making a pair of socks at all!! These are for my sister, who I'm pretty confident doesn't read my blog, so I should be safe to post the photos here!

This photo is taken on Lady Musgrave Island... where Mr Purl proposed... of the fresh bebe turtle tracks in the morning... my very own 'turtle walk'!! :)

Oh...

2007-10-09T22:23:00.000+10:00

Oh my goodness! Apparently I had signed up for Ravelry... and then promptly forgotten! So I'd never been checking where I was up to on the waiting list etc, because I didn't realise I was on it!! Then this evening, trawling through my junk mail folder I found an invite!!!! Craziness!! I spose I'd better say goodbye to that last sliver of time I had!!

In other news... I've signed up for the Southern Summer of Socks. Here are my personal goals for the KAL as posted on the SSS blog:

1)To knit my second pair of socks ever... from wool I've dyed myself (my first foray into dyeing - yay!)
2)Potentially knit my third pair of socks ever... from the very special 'purple trainwreck' colourway, hopefully coming my way from the lovely Julie, care of the lovely Bells!! These socks will definitely be for ME! (also a first...)

And... excitingly, I've finally finished the turtle walk socks!! What an incredibly satisfying feeling to have made my first pair of socks and have them turn out roughly the same size etc!! Sorry for the lack of photo... one coming soon!

Monogamy is boring!

2007-10-02T19:04:00.000+10:00

As much as I'm loving knitting the turtle walk socks... I keep finding myself dreaming about all the projects I want to start! It would be nice to have a couple of other things on the go to be able to mix it up a bit! I've ordered some cotton from Bendigo to start on a present for E's baby... which is due in a month! I'd better get moving :)

It was a lovely weekend (hooray for the long variety!). Saturday saw me up early at a yoga class... I was dubious about having to get up at 7 on a weekend, but it turned out to be a lovely way to start the day... and even lovelier when Mr Purl met me for brekkie at Cornucopia afterwards. We got the last two chicken, almond and mushroom croissants! Woohoo! (they're seriously yummy if you haven't tried one before!). Then we explored Floriade with our favourite 2 3/4 year old (Mr Purl's goddaughter)... taking in the ferris wheel and the petting paddock in particular. Then hanging out with our favourite 8 month old, and a delicious bbq lunch... then dinner at E's house (perhaps the last dinner party before the bub?). It was a lovely, bonding day!
Sunday, I was very excited to go and hang out at Floriade and knit with Aunty Daisy and Margaret -the Indigenous ladies from the Alice Springs Beanie Festival. It was really fun... it was a shame not to see more SnBers there! (there were only the two of us, aswell as one newbie and a couple of ladies from the spinning guild). None the less it was lovely... just sitting around knitting together, without having to say much at all. Some local people came and gave 'Aunty' a traditional 'welcome to country'... and the respect they showed her, and the way they treated her as part of their family was incredibly touching and brought a tear to a few eyes. So we sat and knitted for a fair while... the only weird bit was the huge crowd that kept gathering around to watch... presumably they were watching the indigenous ladies and not us as such... but it did feel a bit like being an animal in a zoo.
Then I popped past the Old Bus Depot Markets to say hi to our mates who have just taken over the Portuguese food place. I was drooling over the gorgeous bits of fabric... sorry, 'fat quarters' (I have no idea what that means!) at the Japanese stall... and thought "stuff it, it's expensive, but I'm going to buy some because they're pretty and I might find something incredibly inspired to do with them down the track!"

Aren't they prerty??

Yay! I kind of made this decision that I don't have to have any particular project in mind to buy the odd little bits of fabric or yarn... I'll find things I can use them on :). Probably not the ideal attitude seeing as my stash is outgrowing the bottom of my wardrobe, and Mr Purl has learnt the expression SABLE (don't think I'm quite at that point yet though). But hey....

Oh, and I'm getting really excited about the prospect of learning to spin! Now all I need is a drop spindle (anyone know where I can buy one in Canberra?) and someone to teach me (anyone want to teach me?)!!

Second time round

2007-09-27T19:04:00.000+10:00

Suffering under the obviously flawed impression that the heel on the second sock would be easier to turn than the first one (or at least equally easy), I foolishly tried to watch TV in the break room at work today at the same time as turning the heel. A trick for young players... I stuffed up in trying to continue the pattern on top of the foot... so am now going to attempt to fix it with a crochet hook without tinking back (which would involve dropping all my 'picked-up' stitches from the side of the heel, which I don't want to do!!). Wish me luck :)
See you all at Floriade on Sunday... can't wait!!! :)

The green green grass of home

2007-09-24T21:22:00.000+10:00

I seem to have fallen off/been run over and crushed by the blogging wagon in the last few weeks. I blame my new job for my complete lack of time. But who really knows where time goes?? I haven't been home on a weekend for at least a month... so am looking forward to this weekend!! Maybe part of the problem is also that I feel un-inclined to post if I don't have much to show, or don't have any photos? Also... whenever I go near the net, I spend so much time reading everyone else's blogs (not much commenting recently either... sorry guys!) that I run out of time to write anything on mine!!

Anyway... now I do have a photo!! Mr Purl and I spent a lovely weekend down at Mum and Dad's place. It was the first time Mr Purl's been down there since we got engaged (which, considering that was back in May is kind of crazy!), so there was lots to talk about (we're getting married at Mum and Dad's property). It made the whole wedding thing seem a bit more real... I think it's kind of been pushed to the back burner while we get ready for Corinbank... so it was nice to remember that it is really happening and it's going to be tonnes of fun!!

Anyway... in knitting news... I've finished my first ever sock!!!! :) What a great feeling! And I didn't even mind that I had one still to go, because I'm so enjoying knitting the turtle walk socks! I love the wool, I love the pattern, and I'm just loving the process! I wont post a photo of the finished sock until I'm finished both... it only seems right. But here is a photo of the second sock on it's way over the Monaro Plains...

And going down the Brown Mountain (which is really much more green than brown!)

Ooh and note my thumb ring in the photos: it's made from the handle of an antique spoon! Soo gorgeous. I got it on a recent visit to Tilba, where I also bought some gorgeous brown alpaca fleece from an aplaca named Denver!! Can someone teach me to spin??? I'm keen to learn soon, because one of my workmates has aplacas!! Fluffy alpacas that will need to be shorn soon! Alpacas of all different colours! I'm not supposed to drool on them apparently.

I've settled into work at the childcare centre. I'm really enjoying the change of pace, and the relative lack of stress! (and now that my health seems to be holding up, it's definitely easier to enjoy!) The kids are gorgeous, I'm potentially becoming a bit attached to some of them (oh no!). They say the funniest things... like when I was changing the stinky nappy of a two year old and I said "what have you been eating??"... he looked at me very solemnly and said....."sand". Well... I had to take a short break from nappy changing to piss myself laughing!! I think it was mostly the seriousness with which he said it that cracked me up!! They do funny stuff like that all the time. And I'm sure there are times when it's probably best not to laugh (i.e. if they're doing something you should be discouraging) but it's so hard!!! Today one of the cutest little girls looked up at me from where she was sitting in the garden, and her face was just covered in dirt... It really was too cute! (ok, you probably had to be there!). Today one of the kids got a wave from the postman. Small excitements!

Other than all that, there's not too much news. I think the possum has moved back in to the garage... even after the handyman fixing up all the possible holes where he could be getting in. Damn it!! Possums really do stink out a garage pretty effectively! So... time to call the mysterious 'Possum Man'.

Watched "Y Tu Mama Tambien" last night - a really fun film. I've been meaning to see it for years, and finally got around to it last night when we realised wandering through the new releases section that there really is a lot of cr@p cinema out there, and made a bee-line for the foreign section (which, for some inexplicable reason, the video shop has merged with the kung fu section, meaning you have to trawl through a plethora of "that's good sake" to find the scattered non-kung fu foreign films. I suppose technically kung fu movies are foreign... but they really do warrant their own special section (which up until a couple of weeks ago they had). I hope there are some video store employees reading this (highly unlikely!!).)

Hi Mum! (I've finally shown mum how to find my blog!)

Visuals

2007-09-10T22:00:00.000+10:00

Lovely evening of knitting tonight at the Front! Nice to see all you ladies and meet some new people too. A big thanks to Paul the lovely owner for letting us hang out there!

Here are a couple of photos of yarny goodness...

On our dyeing night at H's, we had a really nice bottle of wine, which we really wanted to drink...but couldn't open due to a lack of a corkscrew! So, we gave it a go with H's pocket knife... the cork broke... we scratched our heads for a while, then I randomly turned up on the doorstep of some mates of mine who live down the street from H asking to borrow their corkscrew!! The long and short of it was that we ended up needing to filter bits of cork out of the wine... so here is H pouring our wine out of the coffee plunger!! :) I love it! (Note the wool dyeing in the background!)

Our finished product hanging up to dry. We followed Ms Spideys instructions for dyeing with food colouring. Great results for a first try we thought! (but Ms Spidey, how do you get the vinegar smell out of the wool?)

And here is my stash all systemised!! The nice purple and blue wool right in the middle of the shot is some gorgeous hand dyed mohair Mr Purl's mum bought me when I was going through my quarter life crisis. Isn't she sweet?? That's the kind of future MIL a girl wants!! Now all that remains is to figure out what to make with it!!?

Ramblings sans photos

2007-09-09T11:06:00.002+10:00

My lack of blogging time continues! Again, I've probably only been on the computer twice in as many weeks!! But hey... I'm going to embrace blogging without obligation!! And, I have had some good knitting time, which has been lovely! I've turned the heel of the first turtle walk sock!!! What a thrill!! I've even done some extreme knitting... (photos to come soon!!)

This weekend I'm in Melbourne, celebrating the 40th birthdays of three very close friends. It's been a stunning sunny weekend! Wonderful... except whilst packing in Canberra's chilly weather, it didn't occur to me to pack any t-shirts or anything!! Ah well! We've had a great time... slightly sore heads this morning! Heading into St Kilda for some breakfast :)

Things are going well at work... it's becoming less tiring, and is good fun. On the other hand, it's also nice to know that it's only for 4 months! AND I just found out that one of my workmates owns alpacas!! Ooohhh...

Ooh... and in Stash news... (who would've thought that I could have already accumulated a stash at this early stage in my knitting career?!), I've employed Rose Red's Standard of Stash Systemisation!! Photos to follow of that too, and of my dyeing exploits with H. Fun fun!!!

Simple Joy

2007-08-28T21:37:00.000+10:00

I'm amazed how little time I've had this past week!! I've barely had time to turn the computer on, let alone blog or read/comment on everyone else's blogs. Where does all the time go? Partially to being sick I spose. And partially to catching up on a serious backlog of housework. And a big part to starting an exhausting new job!! (and very little to knitting unfortunately!) Anyway... here I am now. Procrastinating about cleaning the bathroom... feeling like I really should be in bed. But here are some long awaited (well for me anyway) pics of my finished objects.
Mum looking lovely in her shrug... which she LOVES!! (thanx for loving it mum!)

And Dad's beanie and with the last minute card I made for him. In the end I think the beanie was a bit too short. There's probably something to be said for following a pattern...

Thanks to everyone for all your kind words! This week is going really well. The kids are really fun (except when they're being little monsters)! And some moments are just magic... like when a helicopter flies over the yard, and the sheer joy they derive from that... I can't help wondering if the pilot realises quite how much joy she is causing??
And today while we enjoyed the gorgeous sunshine, we went blossom-spotting in the yard, and talked about spring and sang a spring song. Not a bad way to spend your afternoon really...

I sneeze when I look into the sun today

2007-08-26T22:00:00.000+10:00

Well... I'm still alive (just!). In case some of you were wondering!!
What a week!! My first week of childcare has been thoroughly exhausting!! I think I caught every single virus that every kiddy in the centre has... all at once! Aargh! Then a fairly traumatic day at work on Friday left me absolutely floored! Hey... it can only get easier from here on in! On the up side, every one is nice, the kids are cute, and I'm settling in well.
Also last week I finished Mum's shrug. She loved it!! I have pics of it and Dad's beanie to post. Super soon, I promise!! Now... I'm due in bed!
Hugs to all for their well wishes the past couple of weeks!
Oh and hooray for the 18 degree day (though maybe it was warmer than that?) And to 5 loads of washing all drying today!!

Two more days

2007-08-16T09:44:00.000+10:00

Thanks everyone for your kind words about my life changes... they make it all a bit easier!! Thanx in particular to Mez, my beautiful colleague from SA... I'll miss you the most... but will still be in contact of course!

Slogging my way through the last week at work has been tough... but it's been cheered by a couple of lovely nights of knitting!! The first Inner North SnB happened at the Front cafe and gallery on Monday night. It was great to meet Mick finally, and all the other lovely knitters who I hadn't met before!! We had a great old chatty time, and discovered a few more instances of what a small city/country it is!!

Then last night was a lovely Knit and Talk Sh!t at R's house... with her two big husky dogs very intrigued by all the knitting folk!!! :) Thanks to K for the delicious roo stew!!

AND... 2 hours before his birthday (today) I finished Dad's beanie!!! Got up early this morning to block it... I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't hear the air fizzing out of the wool like George did... because I was quite excited about the prospect of that!! :) So it's sitting obediantly at home now drying out... and will be all ready to give to Dad when I see him tomorrow night! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out... maybe a bit too short, but ah well, I spose that's what I get for not following a pattern! I'll post a pic of the finished object soon!

I'm excited to do some work on the lovely turtle walk socks this weekend!! (I'm going to be hanging out with Mum and Dad, so I can't work on the last little bit of mum's shrug - which I need to finish off sometime between now and next Wednesday...)

Inspiration

2007-08-13T15:14:00.000+10:00

I had a lovely time going to the craft and quilt fair on the weekend! I wandered the stalls for at least a couple of hours, in a bit of a daze. So much pretty stuff! There were disappointingly few yarn-related stalls…but the ones they did have pretty good! I was blown away by the free-form crochet and knitting stall.

This photo doesn't do it justice... check out the website. Although they may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I was so impressed by the creativity that has gone into these pieces. Some of the coats etc were hard to take in, there was so much going on. Definitely wearable art!

I made a couple of small purchases. Some lovely soft Bolivian alpaca yarn…

And some very pretty beads which I have no idea what to do with! But I also bought some beading wire, so we’ll see what happens!

But for me the best bit was the quilt show. I’ve never really been that into quilting… although I like looking at the pretty fabrics for sale at quilting stalls, and admire the patience that quilters must have…it just never really took me as something I would be that keen to try. But OH MY GOODNESS I’m inspired now!! All of the quilts in the show were absolute works of art! And they also looked so fun! And I really like the idea of the free hand ‘drawing’ with a sewing machine on top of all the quilted together bits. Wow. Congratulations to everyone who made all the gorgeous quilts! Mick’s Cobargo Squares quilt looked absolutely vibrant in real-life. My favourite of all the quilts had to be the 50cm square tree of life quilt, with a gorgeous swirly-branched tree and over 1600 (!) tiny leaves all sewn by hand!!! This tiny quilt had won so many ribbons that they took up more room on the wall than it did!
I was only sad that after I’d finished drooling over all the quilts (not literally mind you), the fair was closed so I couldn’t pop back in and buy my first bits of quilting fabric!!!! Which is probably a good thing. One obsessive hobby is definitely enough at the moment!

Dad’s beanie is coming along quite well despite a couple of setbacks on the weekend. Setback 1: Whilst knitting at S’s house on Friday night as the boys set up the band equipment for S’s Global Warming Party on Saturday, there was a burning-of-the-special-butter incident. Not a pretty smell. Which then permeated everything that had been within a 3 block radius of the house. Including the beanie in the lounge room!! But a good airing on the clothes-line the next day worked wonders. And provided the opportunity to take a pretty photo of the sun shining through the beanie. Did I mention spring is almost here??

Setback 2: In calculating the decreases at the top of the beanie, I thought I would decrease in multiples of 7 – i.e. have 7 decreases running up to the top. So… 112 divided by 7 = 16, therefore I should decrease every 16 stitches right? But instead, I decreased every 7 stitches, and continued thus every second row before realising that I had way too many decreases, and the beanie was going to be incredibly short. (I claim distraction as I was also watching the subtitled ‘Ten Canoes’ at the time!) So… I got to frog for the first time ever! And I found it kind of sadistically exciting. I took advice that I had read somewhere, and picked up the row I was frogging back to on smaller needles, so there were no live stitches to try and catch up when I got back to there. It’s amazing how easily all those time-consuming stitches come undone!! Anyway… I’m back on track now, was able to enjoy the rest of Ten Canoes… and will hopefully get close to finishing the beanie at SnB tonight with plenty of time to spare before Dad’s birthday on Thursday!!

I threw open both the windows

2007-08-13T15:00:00.000+10:00

Is it just me, or does it feel like spring has arrived?? That’s incredibly exciting to me!
I’ve seen the following evidence in my garden:

And this:

But then this morning, this:

Maybe it hasn’t arrived quite yet??

I go up I go down

2007-08-09T21:08:00.000+10:00

Wow... this quarter life crisis stuff is HARD. But I'm slowly getting there. We find out next Tuesday whether they're going to make someone on our team redundant. 'Strategic Realignment' they call it! Meanwhile a cloud hangs over everyone's heads as they all mull on the idea that it might be them that's going. Ironically, I'm pretty sure it's not me that's going, but I'm angling my way out anyway- at least for a while.

Yesterday my request for leave without pay until the end of the year was approved. So as of the end of next week, I embark on my life-change... hopefully resulting in a more relaxed and happier me!!

Besides the small high point of getting the leave approved in a lunchtime meeting with HR, yesterday was a painful, all day strategic planning meeting which had us all strung out... and saw me ending the day in the kitchen in tears over something small and stupid. But then a couple of hours later, Knit and Talk Sh!t was on at my place... and I somehow managed to pull together a Thai pumpkin soup, and myself - and the lovely Mr Purl obliged with the fire again. In the end there was just three of us... including our first serious boy knitter! The wonderful M who remembered all the stuff we taught him last week, and excitedly knit-up an impressively mistake-free rectangle which we're hoping to (somehow) turn into a baby bootee :)

And then today, as if a weight has been lifted by knowing I have my leave, I was much more relaxed, and tonight sees me home alone (Mr Purl is somewhere in Victoria getting a slabbing attachment for a log mill...), drinking my favourite Rutherglen Chardonnay, and catching up on my blog reading and commenting. AND I made a fire, which I cut the wood for myself, which for some reason I haven't done for ages. And as I was chopping the wood, I thought "why on earth haven't I been doing this after every hard day I've had??" It's soooo satisfying to get rid of all that yucky energy into a piece of wood... and then burn it! :) And it also made me realise how little energy I've had for everyday things over the last year... which I think I can attribute to the way I've been feeling at work. So... it's a good feeling to finally be doing something about the work situation!! YAY!! So tonight instead of crying in the kitchen, I'm dancing in the kitchen!

On my way home tonight, I rode past the child care centre which is to be my new workplace... just to be close to it made me happy.

Sorry for the complete lack of photos or knitting content. I got a bit done on Dad's beanie last night... and I'm loving how the speckled (thanks for the linguistic help Bells) wool knits up!

And thanks for everyones advice on how to come up with post titles. I'll try to be more spontaneous!! (but I also liked your suggestion Mick of using song words... this post title comes more or less from a Jill Sobule song)

Does anyone else struggle to come up with witty or even relevant post titles? Any tips?

2007-08-07T16:29:00.000+10:00

I finished listening to a taped book late last night - The Secret River by Kate Grenville. Quite a good read... (or should that be 'listen'?) set on the Hawkesbury in convict times. Thanx to the lovely K for lending it to me! Taped books are definitely the perfect companion for knitting... significantly improve my attention span and are a good way to keep me up knitting til midnight!

Last night also saw me cast on a beanie (which brings me up to 3 WIPs... oh dear!). The shrug is sooo close to being finished but still not quite... but seeing as Dad's b'day is a week before Mum's... I figured I should get trucking on something for him. He has a complete lack of good beanies, so there you go. It's in a lovely cream Cleckheaton Country Naturals and a specked (I'm sure there's a proper word for that) forest green which was left over from my trip through Africa where I learnt to knit. Here they are in front of the gorgeous orchids Mr Purl gave me over 2 weeks ago, which still look good as new!

I got absolutely no knitting done on the weekend... it was another working bee weekend, preparing for Corinbank. So we were up in the mountains cutting and carting trees and stacking them on a couple of huge bonfires to clear room for the main stage, and the rustic bar... great way to keep warm and get fit all at the same time. Bonus!! :) It's always nice to spend the weekend working outdoors... makes a great change from sitting in the office.

Cotton-wool-head

2007-08-03T14:27:00.000+10:00

I've been struck by the dreaded lurgy that's going around... makes me feel like I'm thinking through cotton wool. One of my workmates is medicating me with whole cumquats, which are apparently supposed to heal everything. You eat the skin and everything - incredibly bitter! I was completely bummed not to make it to SnB last night... but I was comatose and curled around a hot water bottle. The lovely Mr. Purl whipped-up some yummy fruit salad which definitely helped!!

Knit and Talk Sh!t on Wednesday night was great! A big thanx to S, E and J for the yummy roast and curry! They needed two dinners to feed the 11 people that showed up!! And, for the first time ever we had 3 boys knitting with us! Yay for the boys. I tried to get some work done on my turtle walk socks... but a couple of newbies including one of the boys needed to be taught to knit, so I did that instead (pleased to be able to infect more people with the joy of knitting!). I only got one row (!) done on the socks in the end. But enough to remind me how lovely they are to knit! I'm really enjoying the small needles and gorgeous hand dyed wool!

And in (very funky) randomness that I found here:

As promised.

2007-08-01T13:36:00.000+10:00

Here's the shrug in its' almost-finished glory. Looks like some kind of strange sea creature to me. The sepia photo is because I can't bear what the camera does to the colour!! (need to figure out how to get around that...)

All was quiet

2007-08-01T11:28:00.000+10:00

It's been a quiet week for me on the blog front... which can partially be attributed to my continuing 'quarter life crisis' (as Mr Purl calls it), partially to the room that the computer's in being a couple of degrees warmer than an igloo and partially to me having very little progress to show you, and not much to tell.

But I'm getting there (on all fronts - except perhaps the cold computer room one).

I'm getting sooo close to finishing the shrug for mum. This last bit seems to be dragging out for inordinately long. Maybe because this is the crochet bit? Or because there are now all these other projects I would prefer to be working on. Like my turtle walk socks! - which I've forced myself to put aside so I can finish the shrug in time for Mums birthday! Oh the dilemmas!!

I had a lovely night last night though, sitting in front of the open fire (which the lovely Mr Purl made me to pull me out of the "I'm-completely-over-winter-in-our-freezing-house-and-want-it-to-be-spring-already" doldrums) and madly chaining-away at the border of the shrug!!

And things are looking up... with Knit'n Talk Sh!t with the girls tonight, then SnB tomorrow night. And... on the weekend I got to try my hand at being a personal yarn shopper for S who wanted some funky wool to make a beanie/booty set for her cousins bub. I got her the very bright rainbow coloured Cleckheaton merino bambino. So funky... (why are there so few wools for babies that aren't yucky pastel colours???? Babies like bright things! And hey... when they puke on something rainbow coloured, it's not going to show up anywhere near as much!!) Our mate J is making an incredible round lace baby shawl out of this same wool... knitted from the inside out... so with an ever-increasing number of stitches! I'm so impressed. Definitely destined to be an heirloom. I will ask her if I can post a picture of it when she's finished.

Oh... and... guess what?? Zed's back!! (Zed being the suspension chopper bike that went missing when our mate was beaten up). So thanx for all your comments of concern... I think they really helped, and karma won out in the end... :)

So... with the promise of pictures of the shrug and yarny goodness to come soon, here are some bits of randomness to amuse you in the meantime...

It's a completely crocheted bike (!!!) made by a girl in the states. He he. Combines my loves of knitting and bike building perfectly! Tho if I were to make one, it would be have to be a tall bike or chopper or...

Speaking of combining loves... for those of us who love cooking and knitting... I received my copy of the latest issue of Donna Hay last night (yay for my parents for giving me a subscription to DH - the best Xmas present ever!!), and lo and behold they've done a feature on what to cook for a knitting night!!! The article is ok, but it's more just exciting to see them use a knitting night for it!! (of course, it was all very fashionable, stylish knitting to fit in with the shoot... but we can forgive them that... If my house was that nice I'd force everyone to knit things that matched my decor too!)

I'll try and remember to take a picture tonight, and we can see if it looks anything like this!! Just for fun one knitting night I will have to cook some of the stuff they suggest. Although we have found at knitting nights that there's not too much point in having much finger food because noone really stops knitting for long enough to eat it. Better to just have dinner, get it over with and get back to knitting!!

So... it turns out I actually did have stuff to talk about after all!! :) More (including progress pics) soon.

On the way home from the pub

2007-07-23T22:15:00.000+10:00

Hard to capture in a photo... but there was a halo around the moon tonight as we strolled home from the local. "Caused by ice particles in the upper atmosphere" Mr Purl informs me.

A heel!!

2007-07-23T10:26:00.000+10:00

What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning! Learning to turn a heel! (ok that's not sarcasm... it was seriously fun... and kind of magic) I still don't think I've got my head around the whole thing... but I did it anyway!! Thanks Ms Spider!!

We got our very own mini-skein of hand dyed wool (!!!) to practise turning a heel. So I left the workshop with my very own pretty purple heel. I'm thinking of hanging it on my wall :)

He he... I know it's been done... but he looked as excited about my new-found sock skills as I was!

Ms Spider was impressively organised (she had another word for it) and had put together a booklet with sock diagrams and explanations as well as patterns! I went straight home and started my green turtle-walk socks!! (and after one false start where I didn't read the pattern properly - sorry Miss - I'm going well!!) It took quite a long time to explain to Mr Purl that no, I'm not going to attach the chunky purple heel to the fine green socks... ah well... at least he's interested!

The K1B1 exhibition was such a lovely setting to have a workshop... surounded by so many inspirational knitted objects! And it was great to have everyone there to help each other out. Big thanx to Bells for helping me get my head around the cast-on and knitting in the round on double pointed needles. Fortunately no-one seemed to think I was too crazy for attempting my first sock, first lace pattern and first knitting on dpns all at the same time!!! So-far I'm having fun. Check back in a few weeks!!

In other news... we successfully cleaned out our complete disaster of a garage on Saturday. It felt like one of those 'your life on your lawn' TV shows. Completely embarrassing to see how much junk we've accumulated! I tried to take a photo of the fallout... both of our camera batteries were too flat. I tried to take one with my phone. It's battery was too flat. I think someone up there is telling me "this really is too embarassing to show anyone. Really. You'll regret it". So... there is no evidence save the large pile of junk sitting at the side of the house waiting to go to the tip. We sealed-up the hole where we thought the possums were getting in... swept out all the possum poo... cheked there were no possums trapped in there, and shut it up for the night. Sunday morning we expectantly opened the garage door.... only to see that once again the whole floor was covered in possum poo. I'd love to know just how many possums are using our garage as their toilet. Surely one (or 2 or 3) possums can't produce that much poo in one night. Worse than the poo is the wee... but I won't go into that. So... time to call the landlords to fix it up. (was too embarassed to up til now lest they see the state of the garage!!)

Fluoro

2007-07-20T18:27:00.000+10:00

Here's an ugly-looking photo of the shrug-in-progress. It's not as fluoro as it looks in the photo... damn flash! I'll try and get a better one if I'm actually home while the sun's out one of these days! Thanx for the kind words about the bike incident! It's not so much the missing bike that's upsetting us... more just the fact that it happened.

I'm really looking forward to Ms Spider's sock workshop on Sunday! Can't wait! I knit a little swatch out of the green wool I got from the markets and it looks so lovely! Yay!

The white stuff

2007-07-17T16:16:00.000+10:00

Sunday was a magical day at the snow. The sun was shining, the snow was sparkling, the trees were encrusted... and I had tennis raquets strapped to my feet! (actually, modern snow shoes don't even remotely resemble tennis raquets... but it sounds more fun than saying I had rectangular bits of plastic strapped to my feet!)

We snowshoed (or "snowshod"??) up South Ramshead, right at the end of the Ramshead Range (kind of near Kosciusko). It wasn't as strenous as I pictured 800m of elevation gain in 2km to be!! Maybe the glittery, soft snow made up for the gradient of the slope!

I lamented to Mr. Purl that I'd forgotten my knitting and how cool it would be to have knit a row of Mum's shrug at the top of the mountain. He told me I was obsessed (!)

This is the trig-point at the top of the mountain... complete with windblown-snow-sculpture worthy of any art gallery (or perhaps any un-heated art gallery).

The view from the top... where I think the snow kind of resembles that marshmallow-in-a-jar stuff... It was pretty windy on top of the mountain, but we sat up there and ate our lunch anyway. The view was unbeatable!

Back at the bottom of the hill (this sign must be about 1.5m tall)!!!

Hooray for snow! (probably good I feel that way, as we're probably going to get some tonight!!!)

Wish I could have gotten a photo of the crazy frost this morning! It was -6 celcius when we rode to work!! Man... bring on Summer!

I'll post a progress pic of mum's shrug tonight hopefully... I'm up to the crochet fringe bit!!

On a sad note... if anyone sees this bike around town (it's blue now, but pretty hard to mistake), could you let me know? One of our mates was riding it home after our ride on Friday night... and a carload of guys beat him up (with a metal bar!) and nicked the bike. He's OK... luckily he was wearing a motorbike helmet - so the metal bar mostly damaged the helmet instead of his head... but it makes me sad that a few stupid people can affect how safe we (or I anyway) feel riding alone around Canberra. Plus, countless hours of work and love went into this bike... so it's owner would love to get it back.

What a night!

2007-07-14T00:58:00.000+10:00

Wow. It's been a great (if long) night! Knit1Blog1 is fantastic!! I'm so impressed with all the beautiful work, and particularly with how well it's displayed. So many of these garments are absolute works of art, but I think sometimes we don't think of them like that, so it's so lovely to have them displayed as artworks! My favourite pieces would have to be Bells purple monkey socks, and Spidey's gorgeous green cashmere shawl with the tiny beads (which she assured us we could touch as much as we liked!) Was nice to see some familiar faces there from my first night at SnB! Thanx for the wool and needles advice Spidey!! Knitting on 2.75mm needles will be a new experience for me... but then I see the Sherpa's tiny little cabled cushions, and I feel better!

Then I went on to Gorman House to kill time while waiting for Rat Patrol to make their way into town. There was some really interesting art going on there... including this:

Looks like fun. That's spreadable marshmallow from a jar that the weet-bix are stuck together with!!

Then once I'd finally caught up with the rest of the bikes (who hadn't made it more than a km from our house in four hours!) we dropped past the Merry Muse, then a random house party... and then home. Craziness!

(That's my little bike at the front)

Once again... I'm in danger of losing a digit to frostbite, so time for bed!!

Brain Dump

2007-07-13T11:33:00.000+10:00

Well... after three weeks of excitingly having the net at home... our modem broke!! But now it's had a stay at the hospital and is back, and working (more or less!)... so I'm very excited to be able to update my blog!! It's been such an awesome couple of weeks knitting-wise, that it was very frustrating not to be able to blog about it!!!

I've finally taken some photos of Mr Purls scarf!

It may not seem like much... grey... garter stitch throughout... but it is definitely the longest (time-wise, but also length-wise!) project I've made, so it felt like quite an acheivement for me to finish it!! This scarf was started in Keith, South Australia when I was working over there... some of it was knit on Lady Musgrave Island on the Great Barrier Reef (where he rewarded me for all the knitting by proposing!!)... lots of it was knit at our Knit n Talk Sh!t nights (to the point where I'm sure all the girls were sick of seeing it!) and now it's finished!! Mr Purl was so keen to wear it that he snatched it up before I even had a chance to weave the loose ends in, so wore it around for a while looking quite shabby (they're tidy now tho). It's quite a treat to have knitted him something that he loves and wears all the time... it makes the boring-ness of the grey wool and never-ending garter stitch worth it!! (there's a lot of love in that scarf! - including a little stockinette love heart at the end - the only bit that was slightly more exciting to knit!!)

K and I had a lovely time at SnB last Thursday. It was great to meet the people behind the wonderful blogs!! I was amazed by the gorgeous projects everyone was making! Very inspirational :)

Then of course, as everyone else has already talked about... Sunday was the Creative Fibres day at the Old Bus Depot Markets. Wow. I couldn't stop smiling. There was just sooo much beautiful yarn... hand dyed, some handspun... some where they knew the name of the sheep it came from!

It was a very sensuous experience... you really just had to touch it all!!! And then there was the un-spun fleece that was so gorgeous I started wishing I knew how to spin!! I was very restrained tho and set myself a $50 limit (which I amazingly managed to stick to!) So now I have some gorgeous new wool - and new projects to come-up with!!

I was also quite restrained in not buying only purple wool... because I figured, I have to use some of this wool to make things for other people, and I can't assume that everyone likes purple as much as I do!!

This one's a lovely angora blend... soooo soft!! I had fun winding these two into balls at S's house the other night... my first time!! It somehow doesn't look like as much wool once it's in a ball. But it's satisfyingly solid!!

I've started catching the bus to work some days instead of riding... to give myself more knitting time! :) Mum's shrug is amost up to the crochet-lace-fringing bit!! I'm loving it, and also very excited about starting my next project. I'm not yet at the stage where I feel confident enough in my completing abilities to have more than one project on the go at a time! (soon though. I am going to need small, manageable bus projects...)

This is my attempt to photograph the cold as I headed to the bus stop (happily only a few steps from my front door!!) this morning.

Brrr... the days are getting longer, but I don't think they're getting warmer. If only we could transport Canberra and all the people and places in it down to the coast!! Hehe... maybe with global warming, the coast will come to us! (Dahahoo wrote an awesome song about this called 'When the Ice Melts'). I'm extremely grateful for my brand new, ridiculously puffy down jacket!! It's like a doona you can wear!!

In non-knitting news... Mr Purl and I have decided to delay our wedding until next Spring (which amusingly will be after the honeymoon!). We figured with the festival and how much I'm going to be away with work, it would be easier not trying to plan a wedding for April! Much better to be relaxed and actually enjoy the planning part as well as the actual day!

I'm hoping to make it to the Knit1Blog1 opening tonight!! So exciting :)

Shruggy

2007-06-28T22:53:00.000+10:00

Here's a progress pic of the shrug I'm making for Mum. I'm making it with Lincraft 'Winter Warmth' wool. I can't get over how delicate and soft it feels! Definitely pleased so far! :) It's basically just a big rectangle, then you sew the arms up and do lots of crochet around the edges. (quite suitable for my skill level!!)

I've been giddily exploring the multitude of Canberran knitting blogs out there! You guys are super impressive!! I feel a bit intimidated... seeing as I'm a very new (and slow) knitter. But I figure writing a blog will keep me motivated to keep up the pace!! (plus, there are just so many things I want to make, and not enough time at all!!) But I look forward to getting along to SnB soon and meeting you all!

We had a great turnout at our Knit 'n Talk Sh!t night on Tuesday. 9 of us!! That's gotta be a record!! A big thanx to E for the yummy dinner :)

Just got in from one of the best movies I've seen in a long while. "As it is in Heaven" - I think it was Danish. It's showing at Dendy... a real 'heart toucher'!! Some incredible characters... I'm not really doing it justice... just go and see it!!

Well... the fire's died down, and my toes are going to fall off if I sit here much longer! Night!

Here goes...

2007-06-25T04:10:00.000+10:00

Time to welcome this little blog to the world!! Unfortunately I can't post a photo just now, as Mr Purl has taken off for the day with the camera, AND the scarf I want to photograph! So more on that later I spose!!
I can tell you about the picture in the title bar though! It's of one of two balls of gorgeous hand-spun, hand-dyed yarn I bought from a gorgeous little community arts shop, the Purple Paddock, in Keith, South Australia! I haven't knitted anything with handspun wool before... and am not entirely sure what to knit... but seeing as there's only two balls, it will probably end up as a beanie. Probably for me (as I can't assume everyone else likes purple as much as I do). Maybe a 'sampler' beanie... trying-out new stitches and patterns?? I'll keep you up to date... but that one's a few projects down the list after Mum's long awaited shrug and a very cute purple bunny!