A Peaceful Interlude

Well, as you all might have guessed from the lack of new blog posts, the last week and a bit has been absolutely insane in my neck of the woods. I worked quite a lot, had the first major assignment due in my editing subject, and last but not least, one of my dearest friends got married. I am proud to say that during the ceremony, I got through my reading with only a few small, virtually imperceptible mistakes, and that's really no mean feat, considering the fact that I was reading from Dr Zeuss! Erm, bride's choice, not mine!

Anyway, the wedding went off wonderfully, the bride and groom had a lovely time, and now that they've departed on their honeymoon, I am house-sitting for them and tending to their two lovely cats.




The above kitty is Loki, and there's also a sweet ginger and white boy called Puck roaming around, trying to eat my yarn whenever I attempt knitting. Thankfully I worked yesterday and used the mighty power of my staff discount to purchase a dangly toy to distract them.




With cats distracted, I've been free to keep working on this hat! It's a Druidess Beret, and I'm a bit over halfway through it. I was a little hesitant to start work on a beret, because they tend to look absolutely terrible on me, but then I decided to throw caution to the wind. If it looks awful, I'll just give it away, but I'm hoping it won't come to that - this pattern looks like it can be worn as a beanie too if you just pull it down a little, and I have a better track record wearing beanies. At first I didn't think that the yarn had enough stitch definition to really make the cables pop properly, but it's looking a bit more promising as it grows. The problem was particularly pronounced in the bobbles, so I ditched the method specified in the pattern and adapted a tried and true technique instead, and they're looking much better now.




I also did a bit of yarn dyeing over the last week (I fitted it in somehow, though it did involve frantically rinsing the yellow hank out when I should have been prettying myself up for the wedding ceremony... oh well). As usual, I just used supermarket gathered food dyes, and my lazy take on these instructions for cold-pour technique dyeing. The blue had a few irksome white patches after its first encounter with the dye, so I tossed it back into my trusty dyeing saucepan and heated it in a weak dye solution for a while.

I'm really, really happy with how they came out. Every time I dye my own semi-solid yarn, I always wonder why I don't do it more often. And why everyone doesn't do it - it's so easy!

The above yarn is destined for a pair of warm, stripey socks to get me through winter. I deliberately dyed it as brightly as possible, as I think that come June I'll need the extra colour. Until June 14th that is, because that's the day I will be getting on a plane... On that note, I'm off to drink more tea, eat another English muffin, and do some travel plotting!

Natural dyeing, and more restlessness

Okay, so as previously mentioned, I did some dyeing with eucalyptus. I rashly promised to document the exercise, so here we go.

I'd read a little bit in books and on Ravelry about the uses of eucalyptus, and had been itching to get into some more dyeing, as previous experiments had been good fun. Also, I just generally wanted to try a few new things while I had the time, so I figured I'd take a bash at it.




I used dried leaves, for the very scientific reason of: that was what I could acquire. Then I simmered the leaves for a while (and for the record, they made my kitchen smell delightfully of rainy forest), then removed them, cooled the mixture slightly, and then added the yarn - probably "cooked" it for about 40 minutes all up:




I also did some dyeing with turmeric while I was at it, and man is that stuff vivid! I've heard that the light-fastness is not great, and I had to rinse it for ages before it stopped bleeding, but at the moment the colour is still very intense. The eucalyptus is much paler than I expected (I'd seen some people get some very vibrant colours), but the result was still very intriguing - a pale grey-brown with faint purplish streaks in parts (which of course fail to show up in the photo).




Not bad for a first attempt, all in all - especially considering I didn't bother checking the exact variety of tree involved. I'm thinking I'm going to use the yarn to make some lavender bags or something, as neither are really my colour. Still, it was definitely a fun experiment, and I definitely plan to play more with natural dyes in future.

In knitting news, I started yet another project. Bad Anna. I'm very good at starting and not finishing at the moment, but such is the ebb and flow of creativity I suppose. At any rate, my younger brother is heading off to Canada on exchange come August, and he's going to freeze his arse off if I don't furnish him with an appropriate level of woollens. So, a scarf:




Admittedly, it's not a very interesting scarf, but my priorities with this one are to make something that he'll actually wear, rather than something with gorgeous yarn or an elaborate stitch pattern. Last thing I checked, twenty-one year old guys weren't renowned for their love of lacework. So yes, at the moment there is a lot of scarf. Perhaps given time and enough cups of tea, I might actually get around to finishing one of the other projects I've been putting off. Perhaps.

Back to reality

I have officially been reminded of the reason why I'm always so tired during semester. Urrkkk. Of course, I can't really complain too much, because I doubt that the situation is really improved by staying up until 4:30am watching bad sci-fi with a friend when you need to get up again at 7am. Um, whoops... Ha, at least this shows how I'm still emphatically not one of the cool kids, even with the fashionable Monday morning sleep deprivation. Blake's 7 has not been cool since the 70s, and even then I suspect it wasn't as cool as my dad makes out...

I've been knitting away on my Liesl, but it's coming along slower than I had expected. This is mainly due to the general business of life and my younger brother corrupting me with computer games far more often than I'd like to admit, though can also be attributed to the fact that writing is currently trying to wrest it's title of "Anna's Procrastinatory Craft of Choice" back from knitting. I've written a colossal amount over the last few days. I'm nearly finished on the piece that I'm writing (I am hesitant to say book - it's not a book unless someone publishes it...), so now I've got some adrenalin going and it's hard to put down. Sigh. Poor neglected Liesl...


There's my dodgy work-in-progress snap to prove that I am still persevering. The body is done, and now all that's left are the sleeves. But I'm just having trouble biting the sleeve bullet for some reason. I think it's just a little bit of "I-can't-be-bothered-to-pick-up-stitches", because I'm generally quite happy with how it's coming along. Hopefully the laziness will pass - once it does I should finish fairly quickly.

I also did a little bit of dyeing on the weekend. On the rare occasions that I dye yarn, I tend to go mainly for blues and greens, so I decided to deliberately do something different for a change.


The goal was to try and dye yarn in fiery colours, and I'm quite happy with how it came out. The last time I tried for red, it came out orange, so this is a definite improvement on that front. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing to do with it (though with my nerdish/mythologically inclined leanings, attempting to knit a phoenix isn't out of the question...), but I'm glad that it worked out.


In other news, uni is making me lax on my recreational reading, and I really need to update my reading/writing blog. Perhaps I'll wait until I finish the piece I'm writing, and then do some kind of fist-pumping victory post...

I'm pleased to report that the resident critters are all doing well. Titus is still happy and full of beans in his tank. He's a greedy pig by betta standards - every morning I wake up and he's bobbing up and down in the front of the tank wanting to be fed. He's very cute though. And Alex, my dear senile old man cat, has discovered my bed. Because it's not the room I used to sleep in before I moved out, and because he's 19 and really not quick on the uptake any more, it's taken him a while to figure out the whereabouts of my bedroom. But a few days ago, he made a discovery...

Survival!

Well, exams are over for another year. Thank heavens for that. So now I have nine sweet, sweet days to procrastinate before I skip the country. I'm seeing a lot of knitting in my future. Not to mention I need to pick a project or two to take with me on holiday - I guess it will have to be something fairly lightweight, and probably in a small gauge, as I need something that'll occupy me for as long as possible without being too bulky... *muses idly* Socks or lace, I guess.


There hasn't really been a great deal going on around here as far as knitting goes - exams sort of ate my brain, and when I was knitting, a lot of it was just random swatches of stuff - it was just pure knitting for stress relief. However, I have started a summery top - I was sort of in between projects and needed something to take to the Melbourne Ravelry meet up (which incidentally was about eighteen different kinds of fun, and I met buckets of awesome and talented people), so I figured I'd finally try out the design I'd concocted a while back.

(please ignore the immensely unflattering around-the-house pants - that's an order)

I started from the waist and am working upwards in an openwork rib stitch pattern. I wanted something airy and light, but also something that wouldn't be totally shapeless (I'm not a fan of the whole empire waist thing that everyone seems to be so enamoured with at the moment - the fact that I don't think that they do anyone any favours aside, I have a waist, and I'd like to make the most of it instead of hiding it, thank you very much), so a lace ribbing seemed like a good compromise. I'm also adding some shaping by decreasing in the purl sections. I quite like how it's coming along - it's quite loose, so should be good in the warmer weather. It's in a pretty cheap cotton acrylic blend, but if I end up liking how it comes out, I might end up trying another version in a nicer yarn.

Speaking of nice yarn: I got my post-exam reward in the mail this morning. It soothed my one-beer-too-many-the-night-before headache quite nicely too.

Yum. They're from Live 2 Knit and they are quite, quite lovely. And one of them is yellow! I never thought that I'd ever buy yellow yarn - normally, yellow is most definitely not a colour that I go in for. But I couldn't resist this, and it's so beautiful that I'm glad that I didn't - it's like summer time in skein form. They're going to be socks. I'm thinking I'll try my hand at toe-ups for a change. I just invested in a new sock knitting book, and I'm itching to try some of the techniques in it. I'm also idly considering some colourwork, because these two yarns do look beautiful together.

Oh, and again, speaking of yarn (but not quite as impressively gorgeous, to say the least):

My other post exam present to myself (hey, I need all of the bribery that I can muster) was a drop spindle. See this yarn? I made it! And I made it that colour as well! Yeah, yeah, I know it leaves a little to be desired - this was my second attempt at spinning (second to a five minute spree when I first got the spindle), and because I have a short attention span when it comes to following instructions, my technique still leaves a lot to be desired. Still, I'm very pleased with it. I do love doing things myself, even when the result is a little bit half arsed. The way that I see it is that when you make something yourself, you can either sit there and be dissatisfied with it because it isn't perfect, or you can make the choice to love it anyway because you made it and you enjoyed making it. I opt for the latter. I'm going to use it to make a pouch for my poor long-suffering laptop mouse...

Anyway, I'm off to have a quiet moment with a strawberry Freddo Frog, and then I'm off to bed.

Shawl!

Well, I finished exams today!

And fittingly enough, I also finished my Woodland Shawl (aka the Sanity Retaining Exam Period Shawl):

I blocked it last night, got back from my Corporations Law exam (about as much fun as it sounds) this afternoon to find it all dry (talk about timing!) and took these photos straight away! I don't think I even took my shoes off first, I was that excited about the shawl! Wow, I don't think I've used that many (sincere) exclamation marks in a sentence before. I must be excited; I'm not an exclamation mark kind of girl normally...

Shiny nice shawl! I'm feeling extra triumphant about it since I dyed the yarn as well (some 4ply Naturally Haven - 100% wool). It was my first try at doing something that was closer to subtely different shades of the same colour, rather then 'here a colour, there a colour, everywhere a different colour' (though that's not without its charms, of course), and it came out okay. Really, I would have preferred a darker green - this shawl is bright, but I'm still happy with it.

The pattern was great too... very easy to memorise. I'd definitely make another one of these.

This was my commuting knit for the last month, and it was great for that (lightweight + comparatively short rows = train friendly). I got asked about it a fair bit as well - not to mention stared at. My favourite commuter incident was the most recent one; last week a little old Somali lady came and sat next to me and started stroking the knitting. She spoke virtually no English (if she actually knew the word 'knitting', she didn't use it), but somehow she got across that she knitted herself and she thought my shawl was pretty! I was smiling all day after that; I love the fact that something like knitting can make people go out of their comfort zones (i.e. approach a total stranger, of a totally different generation, who doesn't even speak the same language) like this. Really lovely...


Anyway, so now that I've finished the shawl, I feel justified in starting 60,000 new knitting projects. And sewing all that stuff I've been meaning to. And the writing! Ahhh, the post FO validation! I can feel it seeping into every pore...


Don't mind me... I think I'm suffering from post-exam flippancy. Bad Anna.

*flails arms wildly*

Hehe... I've taken up calligraphy again. I learned in primary school (which is more random the more I think about it, and quite medieval really - let's teach all of the ten year olds how to write in Gothic hand, because that's a life skill they're really going to find indispensable....) and have done a little bit now and then ever since. But now I decided it was time to get back into it again. Might learn some new styles. I bought a new pen, so now I have to break it in and get back into practice. Prepare for aching, inkstained hands!

Truest thing ever. This photo is funnier if you can make out the title of the book...

Anyway, the past week has been... well, yeah...

Long story short, I am now going to bury myself up my ears in creative outlets in order to pretend that the rest of the world does not actually exist...

Still chugging away at my Woodland Shawl. It turns out the shawl has magic customer attracting powers. I tried to knit some of it at work last night, and every time I picked the bloody thing up a customer would come into the shop. This wouldn't have been weird, except that it was 10:30pm. Normally after about 9, customers are sporadic indeed. Magic shawl!

Actually, I have two stories about magical knitwear. I lost my iPod on Wednesday. It was in my bag when I went into the medical library (yes, I'm not a med student, but I've been writing a research paper on abortion law, and it's been taking me to all manner of libraries), and when I got off the tram later, it was no longer in my bag. Turned my bag inside out several times: no iPod. I figured I must have dropped it somewhere (I am clumsy at the best of times, and this week I've been under so much stress that it's a wonder I didn't leave any vital organs at Flinders Street station), so I went to uni to ask at the various lost and found desks if anyone had handed it in. I figured the chances of this were slim, so I needed all the help I could get. I put on my lucky socks (stripey!) to aid matters (yeah, I'm lame, shut up). Asked at all the desks, no cigar. :(

So, dejected and very annoyed at myself, I went off to study in the law library. Several hours of trawling through journal articles later, I went to pack up my laptop and what did I find? The Pod returns! Turns out my laptop case had a pocket that I never knew existed (!) and the iPod had wormed its way into it. Don't ask me how, and I was too pleased to care (albeit a little sheepish as well). Anyway, I attribute this reappearance to the socks - I'm quite convinced that if it hadn't been for the socks, then the poor little pod would now be languishing in some other students bag, being violated by someone else listening to my bad music! Yes, I know that's illogical, but I don't care :P

Here's a totally gratuitous picture of my Garter mitt, with a lovely background of my disgustingly cluttered desk (because apparently having one box of matches to hand is simply insufficient... I don't even smoke... I'm just a candle addict). And you can see my pin tin on the left: its an old 'Erinmore Flake' tobacco tin with a jaunty yellow and red lid, and I have no idea where I got it from; I've had it forever and ever. Though mainly the photo is here just just because it's the first picture I've been able to take of these mitts that really shown how nicely the yarn-dyeing went (well, I was pleased with it anyway) - it makes me happy just to look at those lovely blues and greens.

Anyway, off to go and hide under an enormous pile of enviro bags, wishing I had some time to relax. Instead, I get to work for nine hours today, and fourteen hours tomorrow (yep, fourteen hours, a shift at each of my jobs). Fun...

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...

Behold the glory of the tam!

See! There's my head (and hair that very much needs cutting), and there's a hat on it! A shiny, nice, brand spanking new faux fair isle tam to be precise. There's also a lot of the bathroom wall, because it's kind of difficult to take a photo of the back of one's head unassisted. Or it's difficult for me anyway. Perhaps I'm just inferior...


Pattern was the Tam C from the Three Tams Knitty pattern, though I love this one so much that I think I might need to make the other two as well. The pattern was great; really quite easy and very quick (I knocked this out in a few days, just doing an hour here and there sitting in front of the computer, putting off studying for my Evidence exam... whoops). I arsed up the start of one batch of decreases (I thought it was just me being a wally, but Ravelry tells me that I wasn't the only one to get caught up on this, so I feel marginally less wally-like now), but you can only tell if you're looking for it.


Yarns involved were a ball of Holiday 8ply wool (I have had this stuff for so long that I think it actually might be the first yarn I ever stashed... no exaggeration... I bought it years ago to make a cardigan from Stitch and Bitch, but the urge passed and the yarn languished for quite a time) and the leftovers of my dyeing escapade (the stuff that didn't get used up by the Garter Mitts). There wasn't a whole lot of thought put into the decision; these were just the two yarns within arms reach when I decided, on a procrastinatory whim, to make this hat. But it turned out serendipitously well; the green and blue works wonderfully against the black (I've always had a total fetish for black and green together). Behold, my blurry evidence:



Sigh. I love my hat. Very much. I don't have enough hats, so I'm attempting to rectify the situation this winter. This is the first step. Don't ask what the next one is... I have an essay to write... Sigh...

A brief tangent, and the fabled socks

Well, as previously mentioned, I was particularly pleased with how my attempts at yarn dyeing came out. So pleased that despite already having a million and one projects going, I felt the irresistible need to make something out of said yarn. Thankfully, it turned out to be such a quick project that it was finished in three days, and therefore it doesn't really mean that I'm disgraceful and choc full of procrastination for finishing the other things. Really. I swear. Anyway, behold:

*cue Mr Burns voice*: Excellent!

The pattern is Garter Stitch Mitts by Ysolda Teague, and what an awesome pattern it is too. Deceptively simple, but really great result. Reading over the pattern I didn't really get how the thumb was going to work, but low and behold, it did! I got to play with short rows as well, which is good, because I need practice with them. These were so quick, easy and good that I think I might make a pair for Richard's birthday (in two weeks time), though perhaps not in such a loud colour...

Sigh... I still love the colours. These mitts do not go with anything that I own (possibly with the exception of my enviro shopping bags, as pointed out by the man in the supermarket this morning), but I love them dearly anyway. And they keep my hands toasty warm... I made the slightly larger size, and I'm now thinking that I should have made the smaller, but they're still fine. Also, they make my hands look hilariously large in the above picture. It's the perspective I think; I'm not a scary mega-handed person. In fact, they're quite small for someone of my height, especially given how huge my feet are (Dad refers to them as my 'tiny, starving, emaciated, artist hands' - thanks Dad).

Here be close up, so we can ogle my eye-stinging yarn. Pretty colours (yes, I have a somewhat perverse idea of pretty)! I was pleasantly surprised at the relative lack of pooling, actually. I am very pleased with how the yarn knitted up, and am planning to celebrate by dyeing some more yarn this evening after I get home from my Evidence class.

Oh, and here is photographic proof that the Hedera socks do indeed fit my overgrown feet:

Of all the bad photos I took, this was the best. What does that say about my shaky-arse hands?

But yes, the socks do fit. If anything, they're a touch loose around the ankle, but meh, I'm happy nonetheless. I've just started on the second one, and I always seem to do the second sock quicker for some reason, so it shouldn't be too long until they're done.

Now, I'm off to read about Evidence law and plot colour schemes for my second dyeing attempt.

I love trying new things...

Hurrah! On Saturday I finally tried my hand at dyeing some yarn with food dye. I used this tutorial - it's absolutely made of very comprehensive awesome. What can I say except that it went off surprisingly hitchless, and I may have a new obsession on my hands...


Here be the components (well, minus the yarn, copious amounts of Glad Wrap and a few other bits and bobs). I think the food colouring was 94 cents a bottle, the vinegar about $1.20 and the gloves about the same (for 80 gazillion pairs), so I felt merrily thrifty. Yes I did.





Here is yarn merrily sitting in my vegetable steamer (or at least it's a vegetable steamer when husbandy type creature isn't defiling it with his nasty dim sims). The instructions I was going by suggested a baking dish, but I didn't really have anything suitable, so instead I just used a steamer in a saucepan of simmering water, covered the top with foil and then wodged a confectionary thermometer through a hole in the edge so I could keep tabs on the temperature. Worked very well this way.




And here is the finished yarn. Yes, this is a lousy photo (well, they all are frankly), but it was the only one that came even close to showing the colours of the end result; it came out so vibrant that I just want to eat the yarn. I think I'm going to make something to keep my hands warm now that the weather is getting nippy.



So, all in all it was terrific fun, and I still can't believe just how well it worked. I am not a person for whom things involving any level of science/competance/neatness come easily, yet this worked like a charm. Nothing went wrong (!). This doesn't happen very often.

I'm so glad that I've found a good method to do this. I love colour, and more to the point, I love weird combinations of colour. So now I can indulge my perverse senses and thoroughly blind everyone else. Sounds good to me. I can't stop concocting wicked plans in my head, and there's a big ball of unsuspecting sock yarn in my lounge room that's going to get it next...

In other news, um, well, not that much. I am, among other things, a partially reformed binge reader (a reformation due more to lack of anything grabbing me lately than any actual inclination to change my wicked ways) and a sci-fi/fantasy addict. There has not been much knitting lately because a bit over a week ago I picked up the first book in Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series, and then felt compelled to read for the better part of my waking hours until I finished the rest of the books. Oh my, what a series; I was in thrall, there's no other phrase for it. It's been a long time since a series picked me up by the scruff of my neck and dragged me away kicking and screaming, but this one did it. Thoroughly recommended (though I'd rather not consider right now the classes/meals I missed in the process).

Anyway, so all of the binge reading has meant that not a great deal of knitting took place. I finished the tea towel/wipey cloth I was making - not particularly exciting there. More interestingly, I finished my first Hedera sock and am pleased to announce that it fits my great big hulking man-feet perfectly. Consider me pleased. I've already taken too many blurry pictures today though, so there shall be no iffy photographic evidence of said sock-fittage until a later date. I'm sure the world can wait...

Now, off to read more (did I mention there was a follow on series...), drink my tea, and fondle my lovely dyed yarn. Mwa ha ha ha...

Purging my poor little brain

Urk... spent most of last night doing job applications, and that means writing cover letters and fine tuning my resume. Both activities that I hate, loathe, despise, etc. So, must purify brain by knitting. I'm thinking socks might be in order; I can break out that Boxing Day sales Patonyle that's been staring at me pointedly for the last few months...

Also, speaking of Boxing Day sales, why do I keep buying mohair yarns when I really don't like mohair very much at all? I can't seem to stop, and then they languish sadly in the stash for months while I glare at them and wonder what I was thinking. Maybe it's the pretty colours...

I've been reading a lot about yarn dyeing the last little while, so now I'm getting an itch. This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I have a research essay proposal to write for next week... Stupid attention span. Thankfully, I'm prohibited by my current financial situation from progressing further down this particular path of procrastination; I can't justify buying yarn just to dye it (no, I mean REALLY can't justify it... this isn't the usual can't justify where really you can, this is a matter of choosing between yarn and meals with vegetables), and because I tend to go in for dark colours, none of the purposeless stuff in my stash will really cut it.

On that note, finally, my hoarding instinct pays off. The last month or so the financial situation here has been, well, kind of dire. But, even on days when there has been nothing (and I mean nothing) in my bank account, I still have plenty (and I mean plenty) of yarn to knit with. And so it bloody well should be!

No, I have nothing particularly interesting to say, or any new blurry photos to post. Just the announcement about socks. And mohair. And rants about how it sucks to be broke.

I think I need another cup of tea.