Weekend wonders

The Weekend is a fabulous thing, I have decided =D

Although of course, always too short. As my brother and his mates often said on a trip we took up to Exmouth and they wanted as much adventure as possible.. "PACK IT IN!!" And that's exactly what Skoota and I did this weekend!

Saturday morning started with meeting my lovely Dad at the river front to do a dog-swap (no more Chilli-Billi for us - she's gone back home, a little plumper than before I must admit!), catch up and have a brief walk. Brief because I was meeting a bobbin-full of spinners (what would be the collective noun for handspinners?! Any suggestions?) for the Spinkhana at the river! It was fabulous, spinners from all over were there, plus the spinning guild I am part of, The Handspinners, Weavers and Dyers Guild of W.A was there in force! We had a fabulous time! Before Dad headed off, he and Chill helped me skein up a bobbin-full of the Spunky Eclectic Pie in the Sky Finn wool which I had plied with silver embroidery thread with the following results..

I love it! I'm planning to knit it up into a headband/earwarmer for a friend of mine - though I'm not sure if there will be enough of it actually... May have to use it for a feature panel, but use normal purple/blue yarn for the majority.

It was a stunning day to be out and about - the sun was shining, but not a scorching heat, beautiful river, grass and trees - which we were all huddled under with our wheels (or spindles) to avoid the sunshiney UV rays!

There was a huge turn-out, with demonstrations of 4 person may-pole style braiding, natural dyeing and so on. I was spinning with a friend of mine, Anita ( with the Ashford joy in the photo above, my lantern moon basket is to the right in the photo next to her) and I had been talking about dyeing our own yarn and different ways to do it, when we heard the dye pot was still steaming away on the barbie for anyone interested! She dived into my basket and came out with a little handful of the lovely pure white merino tops and we dashed off to the bbq to dye it! It's sitting soaking to rinse on the sink at the mo, but I'll post a pic later when it's dried out and all fluffy again - I'm so intrigue as to what colour it will be! The dye was from the sap of the Marri tree - an Aussie native, with no mordent used.

I had brought a selection of all my Treetops fibre along, and decided to start spinning up the rainbow machine dyed merino - a complete luscious joy to spin :)

One of the lovely collections that was going on, was everybody donating a metre or two of handspun yarn - the goal being to collect enough to reach all the way around the equator! I contributed two metres of the PieInTheSky Finn that I had plied with pure white Merino. The tagline they're putting on the project is "United we can put the world in a spin" - how cute! :)

From there I was into the car and off to the city for the CitiKnits Stitch'n'Bitch - one of my favourite groups :) When walking from the car park to the bookstore where we meet however I saw a very strange sight.. I simply had to snap a photo off on my phone of this most unusual get-up...

WHAT IS THAT?! Don't tell me this is the newest of emerging fashions.. the rolled hem, knee short overall-catsuit *cringes* I'm sorry, I'm not normally so judgemental but SHEEEZ!! I certianly won't be wearing them - but I don't even want to see them trotting down the footpaths or around town - hideous!! I guess this counts for the "bitch" part of the Stitch'n'Bitch outing!

As always I had a MAGIC BRILLIANT FANTASTERIC time at CitiK and met Yin finally! Although I managed to confuse Yin and Michelle again! Ack! Why must Michelle where PINK when Yin's blog is PINKY YIN?! They're TRYING to confuse me!! I know you are, you two! *points accusingly at Yin and Michelle* hehehe :)

(Not a very good shot.. couldn't get any further back because of the shop counter and only had my mobile so couldn't zoom out! But Anne, Yin and the others are there somewhere!)
I got some more down on the heel of my sock - yay! With some help from Anne and Helen as I kept chatting to Helen too much and knitting where and how I shouldn't! Thanks too to Anne for the hot-tip on my shortrow heel, and the load of two liddle stitch markers:)

I also picked up the December issue of Spin Off magazine. I'm really thinking of subscribing - it's SO expensive buying them from newsagencies and Borders!

Just before I had to rush off to the next PACK IT IN event, three ladies of about my age arrived at CitiK who we'd never seen before! They have a knitting group they run on a monday evening and have also been doing Saturday groups and such. They were super friendly and one, Clementine (who I know has a blog but can't find it yet!), showed us her gorgeous Cherry Tree Hill yarn socks which she is knitting - both at the same time - on circulars! How magic! She said she'll teach me how to knit two socks at once - yippee! So we're thinking of amalgamating the Saturday groups perhaps, and I've emailed Clementine for the details of the Monday night groups - so awesome to find more knitters out there! And so awesome to increase the size of our knitting groups! KNITTERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!!

I met Skoot at home (he'd spent all day fixing our ute and customising the pit bikes at his workshop) and we glammed it up for my gorgeous friends Liz and Paul's engagement/housewarming party! It was an absolute ball, and as we had to drive so far to get to their place we stayed over the night so I was able to hit the Bombay Sapphire Gin&Tonic and not worry about anything! It was brilliant!

Liz is such a treasure, an absolute gem and an amazingly loving and close friend - I wish her and the lovely Paul the most awesome-ness of weddings and most snug and warm-fuzzy life together in their blissful true love!!

So then to cap off the weekend, Scrumptious Bum and I packed the bikes up and went for a ride! It was so SO much fun! Every time I go riding I can feel myself breaking my personal bests, and improving in certain skills. Lots of sharp corners and deep sand in a fabulous circuit we were doing through some bushy areas - so. much. fun!!

Now we plan to chill out, have a few drinks and appease the addictive gaming gods by playing some Diablo II before watching a moofie or two in bed! Aaahhhhh the weekend!!