Magic Garter Mitts!

I am in LUFF with Ysolda's fabulous pattern for these garter stitch fingerless mittens - love love LOVE!

So clever, so quick!

I knit them up in Cleckheaton Vintage Hues, used juuust over one ball. The pure wool yarn is so nice and warm but not too scratchy - perfect for keeping the hands and wrists snug in frosty morning temperatures!

The melding of colours is one of my favourite things - reminds me of a beautiful Pilbara sunrise

10 days

Goodness gracious...

Doesn't time fly when you're... well, not having fun exactly, but cloistered-away-in-an-alternate-reality-time-vortex fits the bill pretty succinctly.

Have been moving steadily along with my current knits but also have a lovely practical quick and easy FO to share, the pattern for which I am thoroughly in love with and recommend to all who wish for practical quick and easy FOs! But more on that later when I can upload pretty pictures to accompany the text!

So this is really just a little catch-up visit, popping my head in the doorway of the blog to check it's still here and apologise for tardiness in posting. Although most hours of the day are reasonabley regimented (bus leaves from camp at 6am, bus returned from site to camp at 5pm, pub shuts at 6:30, re-opens at 7, dinner room closes at 8pm etc..) and hence one's day is also regimented to a certain extent - it's still something of a surprise how each evening pans out up here working FIFO. I might be so certain that I'll go home, do my washing and have an early night - and I end up out at a pub off camp staying up til all hours, washing left scattered carelessly! So you see how easy it is to have the best intentions for a well informed and updated blog.. and yet.. not reach that somehow..

But I'll keep trying ;) and I'll post pictures too

Trip to Tortuga

At the moment I'm sailing the seas on a trip to Tortuga!

Delicious worsted malabrigo in colourway Tortuga that is :)

I'm working on a little something for my stylish suave brother, who has yet to be gifted with any hand-knits, so I'm very keen to get this soft squidgy warm-as-toast number finished and off to keep him snug.

So far it's going swimmingly - in a good way, not a walk-the-plank-ye-scurvy way ;)

A Swirl of Home

I'm a bit of a nest-er, that is, very much akin to the bowerbird with it's obsessive collecting of all things shiny or blue - I likewise decorate the nest with fervour..

And so it was that y little donga needed some sprucing up.

It now has a swirl of homeliness on the wall - magazine pictures, photos from home, practically any good images I could get y hands on! The air-con unit is just visible in the top right of the picture for scale.

I feel much ore settled now that I've 'bowered' a little ;)

Knitting Content!

Well.. fibre content at least...

On my week home from my first swing of FIFO (Fly In Fly Out) work I learnt the following equation:

Seemingly large amounts of disposable income (x)
plus
false sense of deprivation (y)
which has an exponential relationship to
time spent in isolated area (t)
multiplied by
proximity to craft store (p)
and
accompaniment by knit sib (a)
equals...

well...

this.

Don't get excited - I didn't knit the string bag, but hopefully within the next 2 YEARS I might manage to knit up what is IN the bag!

Well, no, I didn't really adopt all that much yarn, but it certainly felt like it. Probably the time I've bought the most yarn in one sitting.. standing.. rolling around on the floor throwing yarn at Jo... you know how it is visiting the craft/yarn store after a long absence - all sense of reason and propriety goes RIGHT out the window!

So now I shall show you my new preeeetties!
Basically I went mental with just the one yarn, Vintage Hues by Cleckheaton. I'd seen it before and admired the colours, mused on felting something up in it, but not made the plunge. But then as fate would have it, Vintage Hues was severely reduced on sale on the day Jo and I visited... so we both took some home with us *grin*

I adopted two balls of this fabulous sapphire and burnt orange number - to knit myself a little pair of mitts to ward off the Pilbara frost (ha! I know - I couldn't believe it either, FREEZING up here!)

Five balls of the purple, green, yellow fantastica that WOULD not let me leave the store without it! - which I plan to felt into fuzzy feet for myself

And 5 skeins of this entrancingly bright yet intriguing orange-blue-green-bizarreness which I am now completely infatuated with! These will also become fuzzy feet somewhere in their near future - for Skoot's tootsies :)

I also picked up a couple of extra skeins in the purple colours for my now-knitting Mama to send down in a care package for her :) I know she'll dig those colours as much as I do!

So not that much of a spree really, in all truth, but I'd certainly like to get some of it knit up before next R&R - which I'm already getting on to, and will post about soon. The falsity of the sense of deprivation I mentioned earlier is heightened by the fact that my shweeetie has informed me of a crunchy parcel that has arrived and is waiting for me at home... a parcel from Ravelry, no less! Yes, indeed, one can spree perfectly well indeed when away from home too!! Ah well.. ;)