Birthday, and other happenings...

Well, I've been really getting on with knitting things the last week or so, which is good (and probably due in no small part to the fact that assessment is creeping up on me, and I have a chronic need to procrastinate):

I finished the Hedera socks:

Behold, my whacking great manly feet posing on my freezer (yeah, there's not much natural light in most rooms of my place) in socks that actually fit. Yeah! Go Hedera! After I posted the FO on Ravelry with the comment that I got it to fit my hulking feet with no mods to the pattern, people started messaging me about it, wanting to know my gauge, etc, so I guess there's a fair few other big-footed people out there curious. For anyone who still wants to know, I give this pattern a hearty tick of approval on the giant footed front. Also, now I understand why people like Patonyle so much. Lovely soft, stretchy yarn, that probably also helped with the fit.

I started a Woodland Shawl:

Here's the blurry photographic proof. I figured that now my assignments are looming, I needed the diverting power of lace (ie. something I can concentrate on and use to not think about essays for a few precious minutes) without tackling anything scary. I tried this pattern a while back with some sock yarn, but the varigation totally masked the pattern, so I used it for something else. So, this time around, I decided that I wanted to try something with very subtle vargiation. Now, a normal person would just buy some yarn, but because I'm me and I'm overambitious/impractical/a bit of a mad scientist at heart, I had to try and dye myself some. So the above shawl is being knitted in Naturally Haven 4ply Merino, dyed green by yours truly. I was actually quite pleased with how it turned out; there are noticeable differences in the colours, but they're not too glaring.

Unfortunately, it turns out my camera is a man, or more specifically, my camera has what my husband refers to as the 'man's' way of seeing colour (and by 'man's', he means his): it simply can't pick up subtleties in colour. So, you can't really see the proper effect in the photo. Oh well, I can see it. The yarn is lovely by the way, very soft and smooshy. And I love green; especially since we're heading rapidly into winter. The shawl doesn't look like much yet, but I'm only one repeat in, and lace always takes a while to get going...

Also, I had a birthday (my 24th, if we're getting technical):

My mother in law procured for me (amoung other things) a pattern book, some new bamboo needles, and some of the above yarn (the chunky blue stuff to be specific). It's acrylic, but I actually quite like the colours (sort of blue and teal shot through with metallic streaks), so I'm thinking I'll do as she suggested and make a scarf out of it.

Incidentely, the other yarn in the picture is stuff that I've dyed myself (yeah, I'm hooked, for better or worse). The green is the stuff I was talking about earlier, and the other ball was an experiment that didn't quite turn out how I planned, but it has a certain festy charm that I can't quite resist. Blue/orange/grey brown is not a colour scheme I would have picked, but meh. Actually, when I was winding back into a ball, I was thinking (nerd that I am) that if chaos could be embodied in sock yarn, it would be this colour. So watch out for some Chaos socks in the future.

And then there's cake :D Since we took over the shop, I haven't been baking nearly as much as I used to do (I used to bake a lot). So it was very nice to get back into it, and make myself a birthday cake of sorts (chocolate of course). The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's Feast - it's the 'Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake' and it's mighty tasty. Very rich though; the recipe made a fair bit more icing than the cake really needed (though I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing).

So now I have the wherewithal to have tea and cake, two of the finest things in the universe. Yay!

In other news, I also celebrated my birthday by diving headfirst back into my writing project (it's been languishing a little lately... not being neglected, just progressing slowly) and cracking 50k words on the second part. This pleases me.

In other knitting news, I also started a pair of garter mitts for my brother as part of his birthday present (just in boring black though, since I doubt he'd wear a pair that were in colour's like mine) and started and promptly frogged a plain sock (they were too short, and the heel flap wasn't big enough). Also, I finished the first sleeve on my Honeymoon Cardigan. It's nearly there!

Now, off to enjoy tea and cake...

My poor brain...

Well, still no photos, because I've been too lazy/broke/tired/leprous/purple to buy batteries for my camera, and it's not like a whole lot of progress has been made on the knitting front anyway (oh golly, gee whiz, my scarf is ten centimetres longer, how exciting!!!!!! *sarcasm*)

Been beavering away on my Wavy scarf when I have time, but unfortunately that is not often, what with nine hour work days, six days a week and all. Tuesday-Sunday currently looks like this:
8am: Get up and go for walk
9am: Shower, breakfast, write and write some more
12pm: Lunch, attend to husband type creature (ie. actually spend some time with him that isn't at work), knit a few rows on scarf, do dishes
2pm: Leave for work. Vend many foodstuffs, wash many trays, shred mountains of cheese
11pm: Home from work. Lie on couch, ingest a beer if have sufficient energy, sleep.

Occasionally, morning has also been used to bore unsuspecting people with my presence in an attempt to prove that I still have some kind of social life. So, not a great deal of knitting time, unless I sacrifice writing time, which right now I'm not wanting to do (the writing is kind of keeping me sane in this time of pizza shop drudgery, because drudgery it is, no matter who owns the business). But, the knitting is still happening, and I'm still enjoying it, and that is the main thing. This is just the reason why it's a little quiet on the FO/WIP front at the moment. We don't really need to see endless blurry photos of my scarf. We just don't...

On a related note: I AM LIVING THE KNITTER'S DREAM (albeit in probably the least exciting and grossest way possible)! Chris has always asked that I not knit anything for him, because he doesn't like the way knitted fabric feels. This is fine by me because I know that it's true, and has always been true (I don't think that there's a single knitted thing in his entire wardrobe - which to be fair, consists mainly of tracksuits - grotty boy!), so I don't take it personally, and spend more time making things for myself (a good system). But the other day I found some really cheap thick cotton yarn (Cleckheaton Fiddle Di Dee), and I made a tea towel/clothy thing out of it. Now, it gets very hot near the ovens in our shop. Hence, the boy has a tendency to sweat a little when he's working near it. So now my beloved tea towel has a new occupation: sweat mopping cloth of doom! Husband type creature is actually using an item that I knitted.

One word: Victory!

Okay, granted this victory would be somewhat sweeter if said knitted item was used for purposes other than the soaking up of bodily fluids, but hey, I'll take whatever I can get. It's being used, right? Err... right?

Oh dear, I just spent several paragraphs talking about my husband's bodily fluids... What was I just saying about how writing was helping me to keep sane? Maybe it's still too early to tell whether or not it's working...

Um.... oh no *sarcasm*

Finally a post where the poor bloggo is not forced to showcase my amateurish attempts at photography; camera is momentarily out of batteries, and at any rate I haven't made a great deal of knitting progress over the last few days.

The main reason for this is that shop is now up and running: today is our first day of actually being open (rather than messing around in there trying to set things up). So that hasn't left as much time for knitting, and all the other random stuff I like to do.

Writing is the exception to this. I've actually found it a very useful outlet for all the stress and anxiety that's come with getting shop going, so I've now sailed merrily past the 50k mark. I am pleased with this.

Anyway, so in minor knitting news, Wavy scarf is still coming along nicely, and I'm trying something out with my Moana yarn... And that's about it... Can we say uninteresting?

Haha, got it!

I'm on to you, digital camera! I was thinking it was doing a pretty bloody good job for what I paid for it (Anna = broke tight arse at the moment, so what I paid for it was not a lot), but now I've found it's weakness.


I've started knitting the Wavy scarf from Knitty in that shiny pretty rainbow merino yarn I was spamming pictures of a few posts ago. I wanted to make a scarf with it, but I needed one that was interesting to knit without any pattern being totally lost in the varigated colour. So far, this pattern has been living up to this requirement admirably... except when it is having its photo taken anyway.



Behold! In real life, the wavy pattern is showing through perfectly. But after about fifteen attempts, I've been totally unable to take a photo that demonstrates this. In photos, it looks like someone ate a ball of rainbow yarn and then vomited it up in a scarf shape. Maybe it's flash issues, I don't know. Point is, photographic evidence aside, I am happy with how it's coming along.

It's not scarf weather yet of course, in fact it's about the opposite. Though that said, Melbourne summer is treating us remarkable gently so far this year: the last two weeks the temperature hasn't strayed too far north of 30 degrees, and most days it's actually been cooler than that. Then again, as Chris points out (pessimist!), February is always the month that's bastardly hot, so I guess we're not out of the woods yet. Anyway (tangent alert!), back to scarf; I'm looking forward to having something colourful to crank out when it does start getting cold.


I still love my Greenjeans, though it's still languishing with a badly sewn button for I am lazy and easily distracted. It's not like I'll be able to wear it for months anyway. I am so feeling the internet love on this one too; someone had favourited (is that a word?) it on Ravelry about ten minutes after I'd put it up, and now five people have, and several of them wrote really nice comments as well! It is truly, truly embarrassing how excited this makes me. I suppose it's because, as I've lamented before, in real life I don't really interact very often with people who knit, so nobody really says, "hey, you made that? How awesome!". So, I'm very grateful that there's an internetty way to let me interact with people in this way.


The only downside of all this is that yesterday morning I was far too excited about my cardigan to be able to write much of anything; I scraped out a few thousand words eventually, but because I was a little, shall we say, hyperactive, my idiotic sense of humour kind of leaked out into passages that weren't really supposed to be funny. Idiocy clean up, aisle four! Still, I've beavered my way up to 38k this morning, so that's a good thing. Time to get back to it, too...

At last...

What's that? It's a blurry, badly taken photo! This can only mean one thing: Anna has a digital camera, and she's not afraid to use it!

This is the first attempt at fair isle that I've been blathering on about so much. I'm taking it easy by only using two colours, and it's turning out okay so far (haven't run into any major difficulties, and that's a very good thing). As of the moment, I am yet to start pounding my head against a brick wall screaming "Why, oh why, did I ever decide to attempt fair isle for the first time using my own crappy improvised pattern instead of looking to someone who actually knows what they're doing". This can only be a positive thing. Still, there's plenty of time for despair later. Plenty of time; heaven knows this thing is moving slowly.

The slowness, I suspect, is because I'm just doing the thing that all the knitting books imply is amateurish; i.e. picking up one colour at a time, then dropping it when I need the other one. Don't care, I am not dextrous, and as of right now I can't be bothered to learn to knit with the yarn in my left hand so I can hold both at once. Maybe one day, but for this first attempt, I'm happy to take it slowly.

Hurray! A slightly less blurry photo! This fellow is my Argosy scarf, in the beautiful Silk Garden yarn that I lashed out and bought to celebrate quitting my hateful bread vending job ($15 per ball of yarn normally being more than a little out of my price range). It is shiny, and pretty, and lovely, and I am in danger of developing a very expensive Noro habit if it doesn't stop being so beautiful quick smart!

And last, but not least, this is the blue bag I've been making with the mysterious unidentified yarn (photo taken with a much better quality camera than my new one, as is painfully obvious). It's nearly finished now; I just have to sew the strap ends together, and then put in the lining and zip. I really like this one so far; it's so unusual. The texture and colour of this yarn really us something else; the photos here don't really do it justice.

Anyway, I'm off to take more photos and generally be a nuisance. Oh, and to try my hand at felting.

Still finishing away...

Well, still on my mad finishing spree, and I think that it's long overdue really...
The frustrating thing is that even though I'm finishing all of these things that have been kicking around for ages, I don't have a digital camera with which to take pretty photos of them so that I can stick them here/on Ravelry. On the up side, my old work finally transferred the accrued holiday leave pay that they owed me into my account, so I'm not quite as desperately broke as I was last entry. I'm seriously thinking about picking up a cheapie digital camera from somewhere... something under $100 (good technology being pretty much wasted on me because I'm such a wally that I can hardly tell what I'm using anyway...).

Anyway, on the knitting front, finished my Cleo halter top, and the crazy furry scarf I'd been knitting while Chris was playing endless hours of Wii. I'm getting close to finishing my crazy blue bag too.

The blue bag is a bit of a mystery; I have no idea what the yarn is, other than that it was Lang brand (I lost the labels long ago). I bought it for $1 per ball at a Lincraft sale just after I started knitting, because I liked the colour, though I had no earthly idea what to do with it. I still don't know what it's made off... you could never make a garment out of it, it's too ropey and scratchy. A friend of mine commented that it feels/looks like it's made out of the same material as they used to make those green enviro shopping bags. Anyway, so, a bag it is becoming. Now all I really have to do is bite the bullet and sew all the seams up... I hate sewing...

My Argosy scarf is nearly finished too... but I'm thinking I may need another ball of Silk Garden; I'm not so big on short scarves, and unless this one grows half a mile during blocking, then it's going to fall into this category. Must go and scrutinise it before I make the call. The annoying part is getting said ball of Silk Garden. To my knowledge, there are two shops in Melbourne that sell this yarn (though I suspect there's more, there's only two that I know definitely sell it). One is closed until 14/1 (but isn't too far away), and the other one is about an hour's commute away. There are no quick/easy options for lazy me. Boo. Oh well.

Anyway, since I've had a fair bit of time, I've been sorting through the old stash, trying to organise it a bit, since it's beginning to take over our not particularly big unit. I'm trying to organise things by potential project, and it's fun; I have so many potential things I can do, as well as some yarn that I have no bloody idea what to do with, because I can't see it working as anything, as pretty as it is in ball form. Oh well.

Finally, I'm also making a brave first attempt at Fair Isle knitting. Colour work is kind of the final frontier for me; I've done the lace, the cables, the short rows, etc, etc, and now I figure it's about time to try my hand at this. The only problem is that I'm pretty sure it's going to be doomed to failure, because I have this very stubborn tendency to try and work things out myself the first time around. It's only after I've failed dismally that I go and actually do things the intelligent way. So, my first Fair Isle attempt is designed entirely by me, with only the general advice in my various knitting books to guide me. This should be amusing...