A foiled update

oh my goodness.

I just wrote out a huge tome-like post and then with the clumsy mash of a few keys on the keyboard as my fingers flicked away typing like the wind...

it was gone.

*sigh*

Somehow it's too raw a feeling of being robbed to try to retype it now... I shall recommence a little later I think!

For now let's comfort ourselves by looking at some super delicious stash yarn...

Knittery 4ply Merino Cashmere Sock - 60%Merino, 20% Cashmere, 20% Nylon

So dreamy - still deciding what to do with it even though I've had it so long..

Okay, that feels better now :)

Yarn can always right the internet's wrongs and heal the wounds it leaves by its frustrations! ;)

Another favourite colour

Green is of course still my truest fancy, but another favourite colour must be added to the mix!

Who would have known having one's OWN orange tree in ONE's own backyard would be such a fantastical experience?! Of course the Shveetie and I have long been yearning for our own land with more than a lone orange tree - many fruits and vegetables and so on.. But til now we have only just imagined the joy of fresh plucked goodness!

Our very own orange tree with such delicious goodies on almost every branch! I have consumed two such goodies today and plan to continue in this reckless manner until the tree is completely looted, or I am completely cured - whichever comes first!

Terrible Loss

My thoughts have been with Claudia lately, a fellow knit-blogger who has had her life turned up side down by a terrible loss. Something I'm sure we all fear, but can never imagine the reality of.

My thoughts and heart are with you, Claudia

Crook!

Alas I have been struck down by the dreaded lergy! Long have I dodged, ducked and dived out of the way of its infections and hideous symptoms but alas, I have fallen victim! I don't know whether to blame my last 4 weeks at the new job, being once again thrust into an environment of airconditioning and recycled air - but I walk so often out in the fresh air each day - who knows!?

Suffice to say I am feel very crummy and my chief triumph of activity today was to attend a Dr's apt (two blocks away, by car) and to watch Emma without falling asleep. The rest of the day actually has been spent asleep! So I'm hugging my hot water bottle (complete with lovely fuzzy faux-mink cover from my lovely Mama) and consuming much of the fabulous elixir that is hot lemon and honey

The real kicker is that with my wrist playing up lately (I blame the 25 push ups I did at my work medical, and the 40 hour weeks of constant computer use) I can't even KNIT on my days off from work! Oh the HUMANITY!! I may just slip in a few rounds here and there for medicinal purposes, but will try to be very good and extremely restrained.. Don't want the pain to continue on and on or develop into something worse like Carpal Tunnel.

So I shall use the proven remedy of chocolate, much Austen paraphenalia (movies, audio books etc..), lemon and honey and cuddles from ze shweetie - and also try a French remedy suggested by Flore; hot red wine with cinnamon!

More Malabrigo...

Yes, it's definately becoming an addiction, I'll admit that. They do say that admission is the first step towards recovering, don't they?

But is Malabrigo dependancy really something I need or want to recover from?! I just don't know.. So I have welcomed a little more into my life.. and into my relationship ;) 9 lovely skeins of Red Mahogany for a jumper for the shweetie.

He's so very deserving of a scrumptious hand knit jumper, being a scrumptious himself. There will be many self designed, customised and handspun jumpers in his future too, so we decided on a quick and easy pattern to follow for this first one, so I can get cracking sooner rather than later - Cobblestone!

It's had such success and led to much rapture in the kntiting world, so I showed the design to Sir Scrumptious and he agreed, so off we go!

Not much done at this stage in terms of measurement vertically - but the width is giiiiinormous!! Skoot wants a nice big, super snuggley oversized jumper and well.. this will certainly deliver! About 9 inches of ease!! heheheee I'll be making other little alterations as I go along, but I'll tell you of them when we get there, for now I'm thoroughly enjoying endless stockinette in the round with soft.. soft.. buttery addicitive malabrigo... mmmmmm....

p.s. if you're not yet addicted and perhaps want to try a little, I highly recommend my local crack dealer, Yarn and Kisses, such fabulous yarn in the most amazing of colours, surely you can't resist it for long? Better be done with it and give in now to the urge... ;)

Berry Beret!

Well after much deliberation over decreases, frogging, and testing the stretchiness of rib…

…my Berry Beret is completed!

But will I wear it.. hmmm...?

Pattern: One Day Beret, Through the Loops
Yarn: Malabrigo Merino Worsted, Amaroso, less than one skein
Needles: KP metal Options, 5mm (4mm for rib), magic loop knitting
Modifications: I didn't use the equation on the pattern to calculate my decreases, as I found it left me with too many stitches and not a small enough circumferance for my head! So instead I reduced down to 80 stitches (instead of the 96 the pattern equation came to) and did a 2x2 rib instead of 1x1.

I’m sure whether I quite like it or not.. It doesn’t quite sit how I think I’d like it to. A little too droopy, or flat on the top or.. something though I can’t figure out quite what it is! Too much slouch? Not enough slouch? Not decreasing fast enough? I think the main problem is that I’m comparing it to my other hand knit beret – the Verity Beret. And I LUFF my verily green verity, so have of course set the bar very high for other beret. Plus the Verity has a sort of.. gathered ruffle effect almost, which is very different to this sort of smooth flat beret.

I don’t know.. Any suggestions?

Mum’s beret is zooming along VERY nicely indeed J The colours of the Velvet Grapes Malabrigo are so rich and luscious – perfect for Mum! She’s so smitten with it, in fact, she’s planning an entire cardigan of the lovely soft stuff in the future!
[photo of Mum’s beret to come – I haven’t uploaded it yet!]

As you can see from my troubles taking photos the weather here has been generally blissfully sunny during the day...

But FREEZING in the early morning and night!
I think I need to knit myself up some mittens to wear on my walk from the train station to work… Maybe a chance to try out fair isle?

In a time of need..

...You were there!!

Thank-you my fabulous knit sibs and fibre-friends! =D

ellis

Excellent suggestions for how to source the Norah Gaughan Berroco pattern books I mentioned in the last post, and Chelsea(theyarngeek) even offered to pick them up for me from her LYS and ship them over - THANKYOUUUU!

justina

I also found myself delightedly alarmed to see a message in my Ravelry Inbox from Norah herself! She suggested I get in touch with 'gusseting' on Ravelry and lo! What wisdom and guidance is this! Gusseting is arranging a mass order of the pattern books, mainly for the crisp new edition, Volume 3 which is much desired by all. So she has added me to the list to snap up a copy of each volume when they arrive! Hurrah! And being an order placed en masse and to Oz shipping shouldn't be too bad - double Hurrah!! Thankyou Norah! You're an absolute treasure! Not only do you design these magnificent wonders, you help me to acquire them!!

kukka

So I want to extend a giant warm fuzzy to everyone who helped me out with their kindness and generosity of suggestion and brain power - a big, snuggly, sparkley warm fuzzy to you all :)

Finding Norah

I am officially lusting after Norah Gaughan's fabulous collections of patterns produced through Berroco - aren't they incredible?!

I'm a bit flummoxed as to how to get them to me though... harrumph! The Berroco site and yarnmarket sell them and will send them on, but last time I calculated postage it was MENTAL - more than the price of the books! - so there must be another way!

I've searched the net for the keywords and such hoping that a vendor will come up - perhaps a yarn store somewhere here in Australia, or better yet, WA...?In anycase, they will be mine... oh yes.. they will be mine...

If anyone has any suggestions or knows of places I can find these treasures please speak up! =D

New Knitty!

The Summer '08 Knitty (fabulous online knitting mag) is out! Let us all rejoice in its patterns and delights!

I have two definite favourites amongst the mix...

Gigi

I've been so struck by this sillouette. I think the fitted waist ribbing and kimono-like top will work well with my generous hour-glass figure (was that put diplomatically enough? hehe) and I'm thinking maaaybe something a little luxurious likea cashmere blend..? I have two skeins of a cahsmere blend in beautiful soothing greens from Daphne at the Knittery, but it's a discontinued line and I don't think I'll have enough! But we'll see, I'll work something out! :)

Ziggy

And these little gems caught my eye immediately! I'm loving the colour mix here and think the simple zig-zagging gives such an incredible effect!

Ifyou haven't checked out the buffet of new patterns over at the ever-fruitful and lovely knitty, then get on over - as always there's something for everyone!!

Photo update!

We has teh internets! Hurrah!!

Unfortunately.. what we also have is some sort of strange fault in our monitor following its voyage from one house to the next, so now the screen constantly shakes in some fit-inducing quake!

But that is nuuuuussssing when I has mine internets! *grin*
(note: for those of you who wonder where my grammar and elocution have run away to, please visit www.icanhascheezburger.com for much hilarity)

So to make up for all those picture-less posts, and to stop myself from having some sort of seizure from typing too much looking at this screen, I give thee... a picture update!

Firstly, my hoodii progress - now officially a hoodii, with a HOOD!

I continued the cable up the back of the hood, instead of it being truncated at the neck

Unfortunately miss-timed cable crossings at the front though!

Will have to sort something out to fix that up...

Kitchenered the hood seam which went well

The slight seam from grafting a little tightly will block out I reckon...

And now some Works In Progress shots!

My Moseys!

Well.. mosey singular still at this stage, but coming along nicely :)

Lace ribbon scarf knitted with Rebekkah's most exellent happy rainbow handspun

An absolute joy to be knitting up *beams*

The raspberry flavoured malabrigo worsted (amoroso colourway) all wound up and ready to get started as my berry beret!


Lovely Mum's berry beret is in velvet grapes, and in much more succulent purples than this photo suggests!

Berry beret beginnings

And some new projects on the needles!

Rachel's "toes"!

A super simple garter stich beanie knit flat for one of the little frosty bubs in my life!

They must all have knit wear, I declare!!

And a Norah Gaughan pattern simply named "#12 Skirt" from the Spring/Summer 2008 Knit 1 mag.

I love the swingy style and eyelet bands - think I must knit this at some point!

Another knit nutt!!

Yesterday my lovely Mum came down to see our new pad.

We both had a fair chunk of time free to spend together so we decided it was the perfect opportunity for our first knitting lesson! Yay!!

Yes indeed, Mum has come over and joined us in the KNIT! Wheee!! *beams*
I am so phenomenally excited about this!!

I had given Mum a skein of delicious Malabrigo worsted in the Velvet Grapes colourway – perfect rich purples for her favourite colours! Mum had seen my Verity, knit from worsted Malabrigo and liked the idea of making a beret for her first project.

So we set about finding the perfect pattern (thankyou Ravelry!!) and settled on the excellent beret recipe from Through The Loops – The One Day Beret!

I decided that I would jump righto onto that beret bandwagon (you can never have too many berets, right?) and balled up my Amaroso Malabrigo worsted into a nice tasty yarn cake so Mum and I can have our own little KnitAlong for her very first project!!

We sat out the back in the relaxing out door area and started our lesson! With some plain, light pink yarn (8ply) I demonstrated the basic stitches and passed the knitting over for Mum to have a go. Well! I might as well have sent her home straight away to get started – she is BRILLIANT! A natural knitter! Instantly comfortable holding the needles and manipulating stitches, she was ‘k2tog’-ing and ‘kf&b’ing in no time!!

So after a quick demo of how magic loop works to knit in the round, we both cast on for what we’ve named our Berry Berets! Mum’s in mulberry and plum colours and mine in raspberry/strawberry!

When it finally got too dark and too cold and we deigned it time to pack it in (Mum had a long drive ahead of her, plus it’s a ‘school night’!) and were both about 6cm diameter into our berets! Very exciting!

It was SO delightful to spend that time with Mum sharing something I am so passionate about and even more thrilling to see Mum’s enthusiasm and delight in learning the new skills! We would often stop and clap our hands with glee, giggling with the joy of sharing the craft together.

I know we have many more such fabulous knitterly moments together ahead of us, awaiting in our crafting future! How magnificent to have another knit nutt in the family!! =D

(apologies for lack of pictures – they will come eventually, as soon as internet is back up at home!)

Happy Camper

Despite immeasurable house chaos and the frustration of…

Me: “Have you seen my Greek fisherman cap?”
Skoot: “Where did I see the grater…?”
Both: “WHERE are the phone chargers?!”
and would you believe it neither of us can find the Giant. Waist high. Bright white. Washing basket even though we’ve checked every room – where can something that big HIDE?!

…I am a very happy camper =)

Am so very much in love with new job that, were I not committed to another, I might very well marry it. Yes, at the moment I’m in a cubicle with no windows, and haven’t really got ALL that much to keep me occupied until we fly out. But the area is SO gorgeous for walking around at lunch time with innumerable options for delicious lunch fare and colleagues are unreal, that I feel that balances out the current downfalls =)

It’s super exciting as this is my first role in this kind of industry, and although the Shveetie has worked away Fly-In Fly-Out before, I haven’t! So I’ve experienced it second hand but this will be my first time working away on remote locations and all the exciting jazz that goes with that!

So wish me luck!

When we actually get going that is... The project is pretty involved and worth kajillions so of course the planning involved and changes to plans, delays and variations keep coming in. But relatively soon I’ll get my notification of my mobilisation date and then I can get down with the important decision making…

what sort of knitting to pack!!

teh internets, i not has them

Part and parcel of moving house is of course transfering phone, internet, postal mail and all sorts across from one address to the other.

In our case (and it seems in most) there's an inherent delay in transfering our old phone number and... TEH INTERNETS!

I know... life without the internet for a knitter is a grey, pale version of normal life. But we must struggle on. *grim determination*

So at the moment I only have work access to teh internets, and because I'm still new here ( and LUFFING it by the way! *beams* ) I don't want to abuse my internets priveleges - well.. even if I wasn't new I wouldn't want to!!

So posting and such will be sporadic for the moment, but rest assured there is much knitting going on!

With moving house we discovered that some of the furniture we intended for certain spaces won't actually fit into those rooms in the new place!

So we've had to do a bit of a hot-shoe shuffle and have made things work with some exciting results...

I have had a yarn / stash / storage epiphany!

You may remember way back a whiles ago when a nasty little critter weaseled its way into my lovely yarn and wreaked havoc upon my stash mentality. Granted my stash WAS living in a basket sitting flat on the carpetted floor in a not-well-frequented room and was hardly ever dislodged or ferreted through - perfect housing for a carpet beetle or other such insect I will henceforth attempt not to discriminate against based on their choice of diet alone. *immense restraint*

However, not only did I remove the sash from said unsavoury location, I also went a little bit hysterically mental with plastic wrappings.

Plastic non-fantastic

But no more I tell you!! No more!! I henceforth say NO to suffocating my yarn in tight and air-less plastic bags!

I refuse to lock it all away in tubs and will NO MORE support the generic zip lock bag manufacturers with my paranoid and agoraphobic behaviours!

I have decided that since the GIANT multi-shelved unit we bought for my studio will no longer fit into the studio and is currently residing in one of the main living areas... my stash shall reside there too!!

This will have several fantastically marvellous outcomes...

1. How much more inspired will I be to knit with all he luscious yarns I have already in my collection, when I can see them every day!! So often I sort of forget or overlook fibrey deliciousness I have with me simply because it's ferreted away and I don't SEE it!

2. For me, the enjoyment of my fibrey lovelies is more than the knitting or spinning process - I'd like to be able to enjoy the sensuous look of the skein not only when I purchase the yarn and then get it out to knit with, but be able to enjoy the pleasing aesthetics of these colourful, vibrant, textured goodies all the time!!

3. Why not spread the joy? Friends and family probably have worked out by now that I'm more than a little fibre obsessed... but do they really have a realistic depth of understanding of that obsession? By placing on display for all to admire and fondle perhaps I might lure some others over to our realm! Or at least tempt them a little *grin*

Fibre Freedom! Doesn't that feel better?

I don't think I'll relocate the ENTIRE stash, as some of it is in a bit of a shamozzle, but certainly all complete skeins, balls and cones will be settling into their new home soon! I also won't be commandeering the ENTIRE wall unit, but putting little yarn possies in amongst the books, ornaments and other things we'll have in there :) Pictures to come once it's all sorted!