Singed and Sooty

It seems I'm more likely to fling myself into poi when I'm working away than when I'm home - who knows why??

I'm thrilled to be back in to it with gusto

Even if I did cop one right in the kisser!

As good as a holiday

Well, maybe not QUITE that good, but I see where the saying comes from, for sure!

But even better to have a little change while ON holiday - a holiday from work anyway. These are some of the tasty treats I tried whilst on my last R&R;



I popped in to a British Lolly Shop that also stocked other assorted goodies from around the globe - things seemingly from another world, since none of those tasties are found in our regular stores.

The Vanilla drink was delicious but after half a can was TOO syrupy sweet, which is something coming from me - I'd practically drink maple syrup! My favourite of the bunch was the Skor - nothing like some delicious toffee!

What new things have you tried, lately?

Sneak Peek 'n' Updatin

I am EXHAUSTED!

Have just flown back up north and only now unloaded ALL of my stuff (2x giant kit bag, large back pack and a huuuuuuge hard packing chest) into this new camp - yes, I have moved camps! This room's looking great though, loads of space and... a kitchen! No more camp food!!

But suffice to say I'm rather knackered. So for now, here's a sneaky peeky at a hand knit gift given out to the lovely recipient yesterday and as yet to be posted about! You'll also notice my fantastic new shirt! Hurrah for wearing our knitterness and geekery with pride!



p.s. The mega great news is the internet at this camp actually WORKS! :D No more intermittent blog posting!

40 Watt

Not so very secret - I'm a bit of a geek, and am rather a comic book fan, and am particularly partial to Tank Girl, in all her rebellious, pack-rat collecting, tank whispering goodness.



So I thought a printed shirt was in order!


My Shveetie skoota was (is?) a dinki-di, legitimate, system-bucking, mohawk-donning actual punk, so he thinks it's all a teensy bit giggle-worthy and refers to it as "candy punk" or "popcorn punk". But that's ok :) I don't reckon I'm quite tough enough to be a proper punk anyway ;)



Sometimes I like to think that mah shweetie and I are a little like Boogah and TG...



Except of course, I don't smoke.

Snappy!

Ohmigoodness... I have discovered a wonderous website!!

SNAPPY WORDS!

Wordsmiths and geeks in general will adore this site, I certainly do!

You enter in the word of choice, eg. 'knit', and the visual dictionary goes nuts!



All the definitions, synonyms and such are shown in this funky visual manner:



So pick your favourite word and have a GO :D

Winning!

I have two 'wins' to report!

The first is a GOLD in the 2010 Ravelympics for completing the Raspberry Shimmer Socks! This was an entry in the WIP Dancing event, as they had been languishing on my needles a little and this helped them get on over that finish line!



I'll post photos of the finished socks soon, and post the actual SOCKS off to my lovely Mama even sooner!

The other 'win' is that I'm finally reclaiming my trim form (not that I've ever been all that trim, let's be honest!) of yesteryears and am feeling (and weighing) the best I have in over 6 years! WOOOOT!



I still have a way to go, but you certainly notice the 10kg difference! It's been a lot of hard hard work and self deprivation so it's absolutely wonderful to see results that motivate me to keep on going!

I hope you've been winning this week too, consider me there with you in spirit, popping the bubbly and shouting HURRAH! ;D

Hat for Harri

A ha!!


I have knit a hat for a far-off friend Harriet from some handspun and... it's in time for her birthday! What a rare accomplishment! :)



This has been knit out of the yarn I spun a few months ago from the Treetops Colour Harmony merino in Madras colourway - truly delicious in texture and vibrancy! I almost gave the yarn away to a fellow knitter as a gift, but have knit what feels like so little from my own handspun that I couldn't go through with it! And now I am giving away the finished knit! Ah well, I'm slowly getting closer to keeping some of my handspun and handknits, step by step! And this one is heading out to a very fabulous recipient.



Harriet is a friend I haven't seen for a very long time - years in fact! - so for her birthday a little bit of crazy fun happy happy love joy needs to be sent her way :) The colour scheme of Australian-Sunset-On-Acid is an added bonus ;D

I had envisaged something a bit larger, perhaps a Capucine, but realised I wouldn't have enough yarn. A quick change of plans and knitting from the top down allowed me to eke out juuuust enough yarn to add the ear warming flaps and bind off - phew!



We've had some fabulous fun and silly times together and she's such a treasured friend, I hope this keeps her nogging nice and toasty in the London winters!

Couchon Coserie

Not proper french, I know, but when I was gifted a snazzy flash new ipod touch by my workplace as part of a company incentive scheme, the lovely new shiny needed a name, and Couchon seems to spring out of nowhere!

Of course I had not had Couchon long before the following things began to happen;

1. I started to realise how fun the touch is
2. I started to fall madly into besottment with the Couchon
3. I became incredibley protective of la Couchon (which of course led to)
4. I cast on for a handknit Couchon Coserie!

Using some of the gloriuos delicious and fabulous Koigu (a miniscule amount from the two skeins I purchased some time ago and STILL have not decided what to do with!) I used Rose Red's fabulous iSock as a model and knit away!



I cast on 40 (too big) then 32 (still too big) and eventually settled on 28 as the perfect stitch circumference to keep the cosy nice and snug around the iTouch.

A three needle bind off at the end to give some structural seamage, and a wee garter stitch strap to fold over with a neat little button! Super handy to keep the earphone cables wrangled too to save the tangle-tastic terror of the knitting bag! Yay!



p.s. Did I mention just HOW in love with Koigu I am..?

Namesake Socks

Some months ago, the generous Jolene of The One About Inori was expanding her hand-dyed yarns and not only created this fabulous lime and turquoise number.... but named it after me too!



I was very touched and knew I had to turn this skein into a selfish knit, a knit for me :)

It didn't take very long to decide that, yes, I would like my very own pair of handknit socks to wear - and so the knitting began. I knit away on them as I started my new job on the new construction site up North, knit them in the bus on the way to and from work, in medical clinics waiting for employees and at every other chance.

But when I had the brainwave of knitting up some socks for my lovley Mama for Christmas, sadly the Tale of Only One Sock Circular ended with the predictable ending of the Sasha Socks being thieved of their needles!



But they are back on the needles again now, or should I say, OFF the needles as they're complete!

I customised the toes such that there is a left foot and a right foot due to the bias of the pointed toe leaning either left or right, and they fit wonderfully!!



Thank you SO very much Jojo, for your lovely gift and the honour of having a yarn named after me!! I highly recommend Jolene's online store - Yarn & Kisses - for both fibre and non-fibre enthusiasts. Plus I believe there will be some exciting new developments over there soon!

R & Ahhhhhh...

How's this for a lovely view while I'm enjoying my morning refreshment?



Certainly beats the view of my computer screen at work... ;D

Bolts Need Cosies Too!

Following in the tradition of the red and black bolt cosy I knit up for my Shweetie's birthday - I felt the other bolts would need cosies too or they'd start to feel left out!



This particular bolt cosy is for the bolt of our largest bore rifle - the Steyr .243 (Shweetie's favourite!).

I used a ball of Spotlight Basics Entwine in a nicely mottled natural sort of shade - a very thick yarn so it creates excellent padding for the bolt.



I whipped up a little lining from the black velveteen mah Shveetie chose, but I cut the piece a little too small and had to do a very thin seam allowance and.... it's come apart!! So I need to re-sew the lining, but apart from that, this little bolt is feeling very warm and fuzzy with it's new bolt cosy!

p.s. Inspired by Ann, I too am making some blog renovations - so please bear with me until I iron out all the creases!

More smitten with mittens than ever before!

So it turns out that I'm in deep smit... with MITTENS!!

Could it have been knitting the Smitten that has me so enamoured? In my recent (and somewhat frenzied) raid of the stash for abandoned and languishing UFOs (UnFinished Objects) I came across the wonderful Bella Mittens I had begun knitting MONTHS ago last year when we were headed for the snow! I decided I would like extremely snug and warm mittens, and having seen Sactosara's wonderful cashmere lined mitts I was inspired to line my own too!



I bought the most luxurious yarn I could think of and afford/find (= Malabrigo!) for the lining and after knitting up the main mitten pattern in a rather non-descript workhorse chain store yarn I looked to the lining.



By this time we were actually on the road driving up up up towards the snow and I was getting there, bit by bit! I picked up stitches around the base of the mitten and knit a replica of the mitten outer, but without the funky cables (which, incidentally, remind me so very much of reptile (especially dragon) anatomy!). Once I had lined the first mitten I was a little concerned with how bulky the mitts were. An already dense and very cosy pattern was made extremely thick with the layer of malabrigo inside. So thick in fact that I felt rather like a cross between the Michelin man and some sort of robotic, yet awfully cosy, humanoid.

So... I stopped working on them. *cringe*

It's an awful, disgraceful and neglectful thing to do, to just move on from a project like that and leave it for "a bit later" which is procratinese for "two chances I'll ever get back to that". But you see we were AT the snow by then. IN the snow. The very SNOW that we had been dreaming of! Snow, all white and crunchy underfoot! We were frolicking and stomping and making the snowbear, riding in over-snows, breathing deep lungfuls of icy-beyond-crisp air and marvelling at all the snowland wonders.



Add to all this excitement, the fact that I was SMASHING myself in to the ice and hard packed snow each day while learning to snowboard! So by the time we were riding the over-snow back to the lodge, or resting aching limbs after nice warm showers, I didn't want to be knitting something un-wonderful and un-marvellous.



I still had my mind set on the mittens being lined, but knew in that deep knitterly way that it just wasn't cricket. SO rather than have to deal with figuring that out, I let them be and continued to use my normal snow gloves (store bought and not even WOOLLEN! But admittedly very warm and handy for manipulating helmet straps). When we returned from the trip I stuffed the knitting bag away with my other goodies and we flew back away for work, and that was that. Only NOW have I ferretted them out and realised... I don't neeeed a lining!! For goodness sake they're fantastically warm and snug as it is and look fantastic, feel fantastic and are super cute!



The lining would be excellent in a yarn of appropriate thickness (ie sock weight, not worsted!!) but is certainly not a necessity. And I'm in LOVE with my mitts!! I'm in deep fabulous infatuated love with them! It's a ridiculous heat outside and I'm sitting in my donga wearing my mitts (obviously not while typing...) and thinking how wonderful it would be if I could wear them all the time! And so the voyage of the Sasha Bella Mitts is now complete! The only prologue to be added is when I actually DO get a chance to use them in the snow!

Smitten & love

I recently had a one-of-a-kind-event gift knitting occasion... my only sibling, my debonaire older brother, entered wedded bliss in January!

I was so very excited, and knew a wee knitted giftie must accompany any other gift we gave, so I ordered the yarn and got to planning their very own matrimonial Smitten!


The Bendigo Woollen Mill Classic arrived a few days before I was due to fly home from work for the wedding - phew! The colour is perfect - Cheery Red - a rich red for deep red, but also bright for prosperity.



So I got to knitting, beginning with the two individual mittens. It was a blessing that we can now knit on planes - I was able to bust out most of one mitten on the flight home!

The knitting then languished a little while we were doing all of the wedding events and excitement, but at the Tea Deremony following the wedding day I was almost finished. My sweet sister-in-law being the petite creature that she is, I had knit a very mini mitten for her, so my Shweetie suggested we secretly have her equally minute older sister try the mitten on for size, just in case. Well thank goodness we did! Turns out I had knit it a little toooo small! So some frantic knitting ensued to knit another one a little more human sized!



Photographed above are the initial mittens, with the teeny weeny one rather than the final well fitting set. I finished them off and the newlyweds were suitabley thrilled to bits, much to my delight :D

I'd love to take a photo some time of them both, back in their wedding finery, walking along hand in smittened hand, then reduce the photo to black and white with only the bright red smittens left in colour!



It was such a heart warming and wonderful experience to share in my lovely brother's nuptials, and once again knitting was there to add that little bit of extra warmth :)

Full Cold is Warming Up

It's getting toasty here - VERY humid too. A mere hour outside walking and one returns to the office looking exactly as if a bucket of water has been dunked over the their head! Shirt saturated through completely and looking very drained!

It's gotten to that time again up here in the Pilbara when turning the cold tap on full, with no hot tap, still gives a warm shower! And that's in the evening too with the sun going down!



I'm knitting with appropriate flamey hot coloured yarn at the moment too. This is the Madras Handspun I spun up a little while ago, I'm planning to knit up some sort of fabulously snug hat with flaps - but we'll see if I have enough yarn!!

The Comforts of Fibre

At the moment I'm working away from my shweetie, and he away from me - which is an awful, hideous, foul and hateful thing. But rather than sink into the doom and gloom of contemplating 4 weeks apart with only 1 week home before another 4 weeks apart (yecchhh) I decided I would use my 4 weeks to PLUNGE deeply in to my knitting and reading!

So to that effect, I managed to scramble together a bunch of my UFOs as I was packing and have been trying to update my Ravelry page so I have a good idea of which projects really ARE Works In Progress, and which are just faking and are in fact hibernating in the UFO world.

As I did all this, I stumbled across some photos of the handspun I made for my lovely Mum last year for her birthday!



I took these shots some time after gifting her the yarn, and then forgot to upload them! (Unless I actually DID, and what I've forgotten is the fact that I have already shown you!)

The yarn is spun from Treetops Colour Harmonies merino in the colourway 'Jamberry' which is perfectly wonderful for my Mama :)

This was spun up on the very cusp and eve of my learning to Navajo ply (the other yarn I spun for her birthday was Navajoed!) so this one was still a normal ply, but with a gold thread to add a little something different to the yarn.

It hasn't turned out too novelty, thank goodness, and I love the finished yarn! It makes me think of a gypsy caravan, and a wonderful wise gypsy woman (like my Mum!) with long chocolate dark hair (like my Mum!) the glint of her golden earrings peeking through her hair.



Mum and I are still brainstorming what she could and wants to knit it up in to, but we will keep you posted!!

p.s. Sorry for the whinge above - it's a tolerable sacrifice and it will get us to where we want to be in our lives and allow us to raise our children on our dream farm, so it's worth it in the end! Just have to hang in there and surround myself in the comforts of fibre!

Sasha Socks

Before my fellow knitter inoriz headed off with her family on their Great Adventure across the continent, she gave me a parting gift *sniffle*



This lovely skein has been hand-dyed by Jo, and even named after me!!

It's a lovely sock yarn, and I LUFF the colours - the bright electric lime and the fabulous turqouisey aqua - I knew I had to be selfish and knit something for ME from this wonderful skein of friendship.



And so I started knitting up a pair of socks!



Great for travel and carting around everywhere - here is the beginning of the first sock right after I landed at an airport and was waiting (and waiting... and waiting) for work to pick me up.

SIDE NOTE: How exciting that soon we Aussies will be able to knit ON planes again! Not have to stow our knitting away in the checked baggage then whisk it out to knit on as soon as the bags come out on the carousel!



A nice plain style sock with a gusset heel - stockinette so they're nice and easy to knit in the dark or while I'm in meetings etc..

(excuse poor quality phone photos)

The one oddity and interesting feature (that you can't actually see very well in this picture) is I have knit a left and a right sock! So the toe is biased to one side or the other for PERFECT fit on my tootsies!



They're not quite finished, but further along than this photo - both heels now complete and working up the cuff. I whisked the needles out to knit up my lovely Mum's Christmas socks, so as soon as I've finished those shimmery shoe liners (ahem, yes, not finished yet) I can put the needles back into my Sasha Socks!

Jolene, thank you SO very much for your friendship, generosity, yarn, and thoughtfulness. Though you're further away in distance now, you're not further away in friendship :)

Organic Icecream

YUM!



I knit this little number up in a jiffy, sometime back in October (thank you Ravelry!) and it only took me one evening since it's such a wee little thing! I've finally sewn in the ends and realised I hadn't taken an FO shot, so here we are :)

It reminds me of a scoop of wonderful creamy delicious ice cream - don't you think?!

Knit out of Bernat Organic Cotton, it's destined for one of the tiny people who seem to be popping up (out?) everywhere!

Uh oh...

There's been a wee hold put on my knitting progress over the last couple of days...

A New Year

Oooh what promise and potential it bears!

I have had such a wonderful and action-packed break over the festive period, with Christmases, time at home, time away, time with family and friends, and our wee Scamp come to stay with us! Thank you so very much, all, for your lovely birthday well wishes :) I had a marvellous day, was very spoilt and am now happily on my 28th lap of the sun!



Before I look ahead with glee at this fabulous and well-balanced-feeling year (2010 - don't you think it seems so solid and grounded?) I want to have a little acknowledgement of 2009 and achievements therein.



My main mission of the year was the 52 in 52 challenge - manifested both in book and craft form. In both categories I fell a little short, but had an absolute BLAST recording my progress and seeing my completions! I found that I was able to prioritise what I wanted to create and read, and was more aware of what I was doing and absorbing - it was a wonderful experience!

I highly recommend giving this a shot; if not with books or craft, perhaps with something else you like to do? (52 bush walks to try... bands to listen to... movies to watch... ??) In fact I enjoyed the 52 in 52 SO much that I'm doing it AGAIN in 2010! Hurrah!! :D



My other general plans include;

• To refocus on my stash, and using all of the glorious goodies hidden therein
• To craft MORE! Particularly while I'm working FIFO without my shweetie - what an opportunity to get my knit on!!
• To revisit my list of 101 in 1001 - so heinously neglected!

I'll blog about these (and who KNOWS what else?!) in more detail in posts to come - for now I'm off to bed with my current book! May your year past and your year ahead both teach and embrace you!