Time Travel

Okay, so I can't actually time travel. But the start of another semester of university always makes me feel like I can. Weeks can pass in the blink of an eye - weeks in which I tragically neglect my poor little blog. But here I am, back again.




University started last week, and it looks like it's going to be a good semester, as I've lucked out with teachers and subjects. Very soon I get to start my internship, and that should be a really good experience as well. And I've been catching up with all of the university friends that I missed when I was travelling. One of them gave me some lovely beeswax candles that she had acquired on her own travels - aren't they pretty!

Now, I have actually been managing to fit a surprising amount of knitting into all of this. However, I don't have photos. Partially because I am too lazy and/or busy to take them, but mostly because pictures of half completed projects are just never really that impressive. Or not when I take them anyway. I've seen some lovely shots of works-in-progress on other people's blogs and Ravelry pages, but if there's a knack to taking them, I don't have it, and I don't feel like subjecting people to a blurry shot of my single completed hand-warmer today.

Rest assured, however, that the handwarmers are coming along swimmingly. I've finished one bar the thumb, and the other should follow very quickly since I can just brainlessly copy the first one without having to turn my mind to questions of length, width and ribbing. Hurrah for mindless knitting.

I've also been working on a top down wrap-style cardigan out of some dark blue tweedy yarn that I've had kicking around for a while. The top down style is of course very familiar to me. The wrap style however is not, so it will be interesting to see how that one pans out. It's probably near to half finished, at any rate, so we won't be waiting that much longer.

So while there is indeed knitting progress, unfortunately it doesn't lend itself well to photos. Thankfully, however, other things do! The Boy and I celebrated our anniversary last week; we made celebratory pizzas and had Floor Picnic in front of the television because the weather in Melbourne in July is nothing to write home about. But the pizza was lovely (if a little poorly lit in this photo!).




The cold weather has also brought some of the local wildlife into the house. A recurring guest in my abode is a tiny little gecko, who made his first appearance a few weeks ago in the laundry/toilet area of all places. So it was only logical to christen him Mr Toilet Gecko. Ridiculous name aside, he's a cute wee thing:




Well, I think he's cute anyway - look at that little beady eye!

Next post: finished handwarmers!

Survival, a scarf, and yet more garlic.

Good evening internet! I am pleased to announce that I have officially survived my Week-of-Assignment-Hell. I even have my sanity intact (more or less).

Okay, perhaps I'm blowing it all ever-so-slightly out of proportion, but it has been a long and gruelling couple of weeks. Once I had handed the last essay in, I was so wrecked that it was all I could do just to stagger onto the tram and let it carry me a few blocks to my comfort food joint of choice. Half an hour, a dozen steamed veggie dumplings, and a thermos of tea later, I felt more or less ready to face the world again. That was late last week, and while I've had work and uni since, I spent the last two days making the most of my long weekend, and sleeping as much as possible. Which is not actually all that much, as I tend to wake early and get hungry, but hey, I'm trying!




I've not been idle either, despite all of the aforementioned sleep. I finished the Boy Thing's scarf, and it is just as cosy warm as I'd hoped it would be. Just in time too, as cold weather has hit Melbourne in a big way the last day or so - on my walk last night I experienced the first 'visible breath' of the year. Yes, I know that to all those readers who regularly have snow, this is a little pathetic, but in my neck of the woods, below 10 degrees Celsius is cold, all right!



Mmmm... so warm. I only tried it on for a moment, I swear!

I also got a lot done on my current major project - I'm making a Tea Leaves cardigan from some Dream in Colour 'Classy' that I've had kicking around, sad and purposeless, for quite a while now.




I've just finished the textured part of the yoke, so now it's straight sailing in stockinette until I divide for the sleeves. While I am definitely no stranger to top-down construction, this is the first time in ages that I haven't used the raglan style, so the round yoke is providing quite a novel experience. It feels like it's taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r, but they always seem to. And I'm really pleased with how the semi solid yarn is working here. The variegation is quite subtle, and looks quite lovely.

In other news, I have been doing what I always do when I have some free time - cooking! I spent the worst of the Week of Doom living mainly off of tinned soup and breakfast cereal, so the first thing I did once finished (okay, the first thing after dumplings and sleep) was make up a huge vat of vegetable and barley soup. Of course, the wonderful thing about doing this is that you have meals for days afterwards without having to do anything more taxing than turning the microwave on for a minute or two. And, if you feel so inclined, this gives you more time to get creative with your accompaniments. I've done garlic bread before, obviously, and toasted Turkish bread is something I am rarely without, but this was something else entirely:



Isn't it glorious? Cheesy garlic Turkish bread. I grilled some chopped garlic and olive oil on a square of foil until the garlic was cooked, then spread it on the bumpy side of the bread. I then sprinkled some mozzarella cheese over it and microwaved it just a tiny bit to soften the cheese. And then the whole thing got a good grilling - just long enough to melt the cheese. I always used to just spread raw garlic on the bread, but this usually entails toasting the bread to within an inch of its life in order to cook the garlic through. This was the garlic is properly cooked, but the bread is still ultra soft.

I will be making this A Lot over the coming autumn and winter... I know, I know, I have a bit of a tragic addiction to garlic, but how many foods are there that manage to be this delicious, healthy and inexpensive all at the same time? Ours is a love affair that will continue for a long time to come!

March at Last!

So, it's finally March. February felt oddly long for me, but March is bringing a lot 0f change. New season, new course at uni, new plans, and so on. Oh, and now having to pay full price on public transport because apparently postgraduate students aren't real students *gripe*

Now while I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year and the coming month both, seemingly everyone else I know has taken it upon themselves to get sick (probably has something to do with that lovely alternation between searingly hot and cold and rainy that my beloved city tends to do so very well). As of right now, I do not have this dubious honour, and am attempting to continue on in this way by employing my three proven ways of staying well: resting, staying warm, and good food.




Homemade lasagne (vegetarian of course). Looks awesome, does it not? And it tasted even better...

I was particularly pleased with this one because it was the first time I'd tried my hand at lasagne, and I didn't use a recipe. I've noticed that more and more these days I tend to rely less on recipes. What I do instead (and this is made So Much Easier with the internet, and the wealth of information that it provides upon the simple entering of a few choice words into Google) is find a handful of different recipes for a dish, read through them, take note of the key points, and then make my own version. I did the same thing day before yesterday with homemade toasted museli (which may warrant a blog post of its own in the near future, so awesome was the result). While this method might not be for everyone, I'm finding it works really well for me. I'm very much of the opinion that one of the best things about cooking yourself is being able to tailor recipes to suit your individual likes and dislikes, and this method lets you do this while hopefully making a minimum of fatal errors (and while I dearly love doing my own thing, I'll be the first to acknowledge that cooking does contain a great many non-negotiable rules).

At any rate, for all those playing along at home, I filled my lasagna with instant dried pasta sheets, basic tomato sauce (made from onion, garlic, passata, bay leaves, olive oil and a slurp of some gifted red wine that was, ahem, not really a desirable drinking option, with some baby spinach tossed in at the end), thinly sliced zucchini and pumpkin, and a small amount of grated mozzarella cheese. I topped it with more sauce, poured some extra passata around the edges (because I was clever and didn't make enough sauce), and then topped it with some more cheese and some dried basil and oregano. Once it came out of the oven, I put some fresh basil on top, because I am a fiend for basil. And I lived off the leftovers for three days. Happy Anna.




In knitting news, the boy has been walking around wearing several shop bought scarves. As you can all probably imagine, this simply will not do. It's been a while now - I think I can tempt fate and knit him one. After all, they call it the "sweater curse", not the scarf curse. I am planning on knitting this scarf in the worsted Malabrigo pictured above, just like this version.

Yes, I think I might be in the middle of a bit of a cable binge. Oh well - at least there will be pretty things by the end of it.

In a knitting rut...

It is currently raining here in Melbourne - the heat wave of the last few days has finally broken, which is very good because now I can go into the city and get things done without running the risk of roasting to death in public transport hell. Doing things will be good, if I can make it happen, because once again, I have fallen into the void between semesters: that glorious place where I have free time, but have so much that I want/have to do with it that I end up not getting much done at all. Such is life I suppose. I have been doing things - I've been working a fair bit, getting some writing done, sewing, cooking, and organising university things - but doing a little bit of many things never makes you feel quite so satisfied as doing a lot of one thing. I suppose I shouldn't feel too bad - my brother has just been playing computer games for about 12 hours per day. So, stuff I've been up to:




As I mentioned, I've done a lot of cooking. I've been making huge vats of tabbouleh, or my version of it (a slightly higher ratio of grains to herbs so that it's filling enough to take to work and have as a complete meal). Yesterday I also made a version of these, and yes, they are as terrifying in real life as they look/sound on that site. I made a half batch, and made a basic butter cake base instead of the brownie base they suggested (because I was quite convinced that a brownie base would probably catapult this slice into the realm of too-rich-to-actually-be-enjoyable), and they're still deadly. Nice, but deadly.



I went to a wedding on the weekend (very enjoyable!) and managed to make the bride and groom a card that involved love hearts but didn't make me want to vomit. I was proud of that... It's a little abstract, but I was happy with it.




And I've been knitting. Though not as much as I usually like to. I've sort of snagged on the two projects I've been working on - one of them (the summer top I mentioned in the last entry) is having issues with drape, and it's knit at such a small gauge that it takes a long time to make any progress, so the idea of proceeding only to have to rip back is not appealing. And the other is knit in bulky weight wool that is not particularly suited to summer knitting. The fact that they are both my own designs doesn't really help things either - when proceeding with a project means having to sit down and make calculations, or thread things on and off of waste yarn so that you can try them on, it just makes it a little harder to motivate yourself to keep going. I know that this is a problem that most people face, so I really have no right to whinge, but yeah, there you go.

At any rate, I was still wanting to knit, even though I wasn't too keen on my works-in-progress, so I started the above piece. A basic, top down, triangular shawl - a nice and easy project that I didn't have to think about, and can knit while chilling out and chatting, or listening to music. I am using my long-hoarded Sundara Sock yarn (in 'Brambleberry'), and to make it go further I'm striping it with some basic black fingering weight yarn (I really liked the Sundara, but didn't think I had enough of it to make a decent size shawl using it alone). So hopefully this will be the nice gentle project I need to get my knitting momentum back. I'm sure the lull won't last for long...

The last time...

Well, it's exam period again, which of course means that my life is now devoted to pouring over endless 30 cent notebooks filled with the usual scrawl - the above-pictured page, I believe, contains commentary on the Geneva Convention, though this time last week it was privacy law. It's rather hard to keep up - I know my brain always struggles. At least it'll all be over by this time next week. Not to mention, as alluded to by the post title, this will (notwithstanding me having some kind of epic freak-out and failing my remaining exams) be my final semester of law, my final batch of exams. So theoretically, I should be relishing it. So much for theory.

And of course with exam period comes the stress-relieving exam knitting. The above pictured cardigan is coming along quite nicely - I've only got a sleeve and a half to go now, so I'm very nearly there. Due to yarn limitations (some people would tell you that six skeins of Noro Kureyon is not enough to make a cardigan, but those people are quitters!) it's a little shorter than I might otherwise have made it, but I'm actually rather liking it this way. It's jaunty. I think I'll go with 3/4 sleeves and some bright blue buttons. Everyone I've shown it to so far thinks that it's ugly as sin, and I suppose they're probably right, but I don't care - it makes me happy, and stops me from feeling like all I've done with my day is write something bleedingly obvious about Additional Protocol II.

In other news, it's been far too hot to do anything particularly constructive, so I've resorted to my usual fallbacks for the small smattering of recreation time I do have - reading, playing woefully outdated computer games, and cooking. And buying things on the internet - have to make the most of the strong Aussie dollar. It would be simply irresponsible not to... On that note, I bought more yarn (curse you, Sanguine Gryphon, I just can't resist your charms), but that's perfectly all right, because in keeping with the Not-A-Yarn-Diet, I used up 300g of Berroco yarn and 200g of Noro before doing so. Hurray for me. And I bought less than that, so I'm still making progress. Of sorts.




Also, as I mentioned, I've been cooking, and I have pictures to back it up. This here is the makings of a very fine pumpkin, spinach and goat's cheese risotto, because I took it upon myself to buck the trend of living on breakfast cereal during exams. It never ceases to amaze me how spinach wilts down. I mean seriously, from the above, to this...




...in about thirty seconds. Crazy stuff. Crazy but delicious. I also made this cake, because I couldn't resist the pull any longer. For some reason, it's taken me a very long time to get into looking at recipes on line - up until now, I have been strictly old-school, preferring my cookbooks. But I think I'm finally beginning to get with the times. How astounding. Then again, cake tends to be very persuasive...

Food related diversions

See, this is the part where I feel torn. On the one hand, last post I (foolishly) promised that I'd be showing off my newly completed Sylvi coat in the next update. But on the other, it's been quite a while since I updated!

Behold, my compromise! I shall indeed post, but it will be food related! I've been languishing, sad and baked-goods-less, for quite a while now due to oven related technical difficulties. But then my delightful engineer father returned from overseas and managed to convince the cranky old contraption to work again, so I have been making the most of it.

As shown above, I made Spinach and Feta Pie (under the guise of being Very Sensible, as I froze a goodly portion of it for my upcoming exam period and all those nights when I want to eat breakfast cereal for dinner because I'm just too burnt out to cook).

I made an absolutely delicious Honey Chocolate Cake as dessert for some visiting friends (see, this is why I need a functional oven - baked goods are my social currency and without them I feel woefully inadequate!).




And in a fit of silliness, myself and a gentleman caller (haha, yes indeed...) made Triceratops Pie. Kindly note the delightful dinosaur shaped pastry decoration. I should probably note at this point that the pie did not contain any actual triceratops - and my most sincere apologies to anyone who is disappointed on that front. The pie did however contain pumpkin, leeks, onion, ricotta, garlic, parsley and other such tasty things, so none of the parties involved felt shortchanged by the lack of actual dinosaur product.




These culinary achievements aside, there is no reprieve in sight for the poor hardworking oven. A good friend of mine is getting married on the weekend, and I have been conscripted to provide some delightful nibbly baked goods for us to graze upon while we prepare and make merry. I shall do my very best not to suffer from any kind of performance anxiety at the prospect of cooking for such an auspicious occasion!

In other, less pleasant news: it was confirmed week before last that my poor old man cat does indeed have cancer. This was obviously not good what we were hoping for, and I'm sad that my family are all away and are therefore unable to spend more time with the poor old fellow while he's still around. However, the fact that he's had such a good run of it is somewhat of a comfort - if only all cats were lucky enough to live to his age, after all. The good news is that despite all of this, he's perfectly chipper and is acting his usual nuisance self (i.e. stealing my computer chair every time I get up to get more tea). He's not thrilled about the various pills I have to wrestle into him twice a day, but you can't have everything, can you?

Oh, and many thanks to all those who sent good wishes his way via the blog, Ravelry etc - much love and gratitude to you all! The senile old man says thank-you too!

(well, actually in this photo I think he's just irked because I'm bothering him, but I'm sure he would have put on an obligingly grateful face if he knew the purpose of the photo!)




In closing, back to the details of the compromise. The next knitting related post shall remain reserved for my Sylvi (which is anyway so close to being finished that I could knock it off this afternoon if I put my mind to it, so hopefully the wait won't be long!). So I'm not waffling! Not even a little! Most definitely not!

Survival!

Just here to announce that as of 12:30pm, I have officially survived exam period. Whew! It was touch and go there for a while though - I had my last two exams (both worth 100% of my semester's mark - eeep!) one day after the other, so it has been a VERY long 48 hours. I honestly don't know if I've ever studied that hard before in my life: there were multiple days when I'd listen to well north of five hours worth of lecture recordings, and that didn't even include all of the other reading and note taking. The law degree - she is indeed a harsh mistress.

Yep, exam period is hard. It's been all right though - there are worse things than incessant studying, and since I'm one of those people who's always doodling and writing sarcastic commentary on their class notes, it's at least entertaining looking back over the work I've done during semester (even if sometimes I wish that I'd drawing critters less and taken notes more):


Look! It's an International Law notebook in its natural habitat (i.e. the desk!). Don't make any sudden movements or you'll scare it away!

At least listening to all of those recordings meant that my hands were free to knit at top speed. You would not believe how much knitting I did last night. It was about the only thing stopping me from falling asleep at my desk, actually - for reasons known only to it, my body is impervious to the effects of caffeine, so I've always needed something else to keep me awake and moving.



The above work-in-progress was single-handedly responsible for keeping me conscious during all of those hours of Restitution lectures yesterday. It's going to be a pullover, made from that lovely Sanguine Gryphon yarn that I posted about a few entries back. I'm sort of making it up as I go along, so the actual style will vary depending on my mood and how much yarn I have left, but I have vague plans for a very low front, maybe with a garter stitch neckline, and interesting sleeves of some kind. The yarn is lovely. Normally knitting a jumper with variegated yarn is something I'd pull a face over, but this is just so pretty that I'm having a go anyway (alternating skeins every couple of rows to try and minimise pooling). Granted it does have a little bit of an army camoflague vibe to it, but I'm going to staunchly ignore that and call it 'woodsy' or 'elven' instead in that pretentious way that I have!



Exam time also means exam soup. Seriously, I live off this in exams - I just make a huge vat of it and then eat it for the rest of the week, usually accompanied by toast, or cheese on toast and a glass of wine if my statute-tortured soul needs soothing. I figure I could do worse, right? Vegetables and barley and tomato and fresh herbs... Mmmm...

Carefree and slothful

Eating: salted pistashio nuts by the handful (mmm....)

Listening: this afternoon it's been a few compilations, the Waifs, and Travis

Reading: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch - far too much fun for just one book.

Yeah, I should probably be studying. But it's such a Nice Day... I'm fairly certain that this will continue to be the justification for all my brands of procrastination, at least for the next while anyway. Definitely until the novelty of sun wears off...

Anyway, since it is such a Nice Day, I walked home from my morning class - 3 kilometres of glorious sunshine! - via the market, where I acquired smoothie makings and chocolate biscuits. And now I've spent the afternoon with the television off and the stereo on, full of strawberries, banana, passionfruit, and general feelings of good mood. Hurrah!

Above is said smoothie (tasty!) with the beginnings of a Mrs Darcy cardigan (in my very favourite shade of green - the yarn is cheap and unimpressive, but I love the colour so much that all is forgiven). I started it yesterday, and ended up knitting quite a sizable chunk of it while sitting on the couch with a mug of tea, avoiding reality and watching back to back episodes of Stargate Atlantis (for I, my friends, am a tragic nerd).

I've been thinking the last while that I really want to get back into sewing. Well, "back into" might be more than a little misleading - I was never particularly proficient. I could make skirts, capes, and occasionally ill-fitting pants. But I want to get better. Working against me is the fact that my sewing machine is ancient and the instruction manual that came with it has long since been lost, but I am nothing if not determined... I've been reading a book on how to make skirts, and if I can learn how to do that, then I will be a happy camper indeed. I like wearing skirts, but I am not really shaped correctly for lots of shop bought ones to be flattering. One simple thing keeps thwarting me: my widest part is not my hips - it's my thighs (surely I'm not the only woman out there with this problem?). So if I can learn to make clothes to accomodate this I shall be happy indeed...

Oh, and speaking of happy, I have lovely yarn from Live 2 Knit. Figured it was about time I tried some of their yarn - supporting the locals and all that. So I acquired some 4ply 100% silk in the 'Seaglass' colourway and some 10ply merino in "Tidal". They're both so beautiful I don't even want to take them out of the skein. Behold my photo that totally fails to do justice to the beautiful colours (both skeins are much darker in real life):

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them (a few hazy ideas for the silk, but nothing too specific yet)... They're so beautiful that frankly I'm happy enough just to know that they exist and that they're mine...

Anyway, off to enjoy the rest of my afternoon. Tonight I need to go up and do the final clean of my old place. I've conscripted my Dad to help (well, by conscripted I mean he very nicely volunteered), so hopefully the cleaning won't take too long. Though it's not the cleaning I'm fussed about - it's being there. Too many bad memories now. Oh well, I'll just have to remember the good ones. After all - a whole lot of knitting took place in that lounge room too!

Anna's blog - now with 50% more ice-cream!

Oh no, regular updates! What shall we do? Quick, let's hide over there!

Well, I'm persevering with the Shalom cardigan - as it progresses, I think that I'm gradually shifting to the 'I like it' camp as far as the weird-arse colours are concerned. Though now that's resolved, I bet the bloody thing turns out the wrong size just to spite me (and also perhaps because I am a foul and degenerate creature who didn't swatch... that might also have something to do with it). I guess we'll see. Here is the knitwear in question, at any rate:




Something amusing - during the first few hours I spent working on this one, a certain thought kept nagging at me. As weird as the burnt orange/tealy green combination was, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was somehow familiar. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure it out. Then I looked up at the painting hanging on my Dad's wall - the painting that I'd been sitting next to while I knitted:


Hmmm, perhaps that explains it...

And because there is not enough ice-cream in this blog (and also because I am a lazy bum who keeps toying with the idea of keeping a separate food/recipe blog but is too lazy to actually follow through and start one), here is the recipe for the Best Icecream Ever. Well, perhaps not the best ever, but it's pretty bloody good, I must say. And it's ridiculously easy, because you don't actually make the ice-cream part. Don't look at me that way - I can make ice-cream from creamy/eggy/sugary scratch, and sometimes do, but this recipe originated in my exam period, where I don't really have the time, let alone the concentration span, for standing at a stove dutifully stirring custard...

The three magic ingredients:

• 2 litres of vanilla ice-cream (I used HomeBrand, for I am a tight-arse)


• Dark chocolate (once again, I used dippy supermarket brand stuff, because that was what I had in the house at the time) - I think I used about 100-150g - I wasn't paying attention.


• Peanut brittle (once again, bought stuff) - about 100g-ish, I think.

Leave the icecream out to soften for a bit - just enough so it'll be easy to mix stuff through it. Chop the peanut brittle as finely as you have the patience for - it works best when you've got pieces of differing size though. Chop the chocolate too - I like to almost shave it, so that you don't get too many big chunks (but once again, differing size is good).

Then mix it all together, and refreeze the icecream. Doesn't sound like much, but this is most transendently good ice-cream ever. The smaller shards of brittle sort of melt into the icecream, and the bigger, more peanuttybits stay crunchy. The fact that you don't need to work hard for it just makes it taste even better.

Yum. That is all.

There is no title, for I am lazy

It's weird - I wanted to knit more stuff, but because I'm so happy with the last couple of things that I knitted, I was worried that the new stuff might just be a let-down. This was irrational on several levels, so I started new stuff anyway...


Work in progress No 1 (yes, I am so incapable of project monogamy that I don't even bother trying any more) is a Luna Moth shawl in my Naturally Merino et Soie - the same yarn I used for my Branching Out scarf (I like the way that it looks in lace). My photographic evidence of this valiant endeavour:



I like how this is coming along - it's quite thick and chunky by lace standards, but I was kind of going for this. There's a time and a place for delicate lace (I do want to get in on some of that 2ply action at some stage), but right now I feel like something a little more substantial. I do need to concentrate on it pretty hard at this early stage, but that's not a bad thing...


Work in progress No 2 is a Shalom Cardigan in Patons Shadow Tweed. I don't have any photos of this one because I don't know how long it's going to last - I keep having mood swings about it. I'll pick it up and not like how it's coming because of the lack of stitch definition, but then I'll have a change of heart and decide to persevere (even if it's only because I have no other ideas for what to do with the yarn). So I guess we'll see...


Anyway, aside from that I've been cooking a lot and attempting to do my law reading... I made the Most Awesome Ice-Cream Ever too - might blog about it later if I can be bothered.

Closing thought - I need to knit a venus fly trap. Just because.

Constructiveness

Well, I'm knitting away furiously. Been staying at my Dad's place, and since he has a heated floor (best winter time type thing ever!), I've been attempting to make the most of having the best blocking surface ever...

I'm still working away on the Bevin tank (nearly done now), and it's coming along okay. I've picked up stitches around one of the armholes, and it does fix the problems I had with it, albeit while not looking like the neatest piece of knitwear in the world. Still, I think I'm happier with it this way. Just one more armhole to go... I even bit the bullet and crocheted the other edgings.

I also indulged and made myself a Silk Garden Askew:

It's nearly finished now; I just need to sew the straps onto the back - haven't done this yet because there's a little voice in my head telling me that this one wants to be a halter top rather than a tank, and I'm not sure whether to listen to it or not... My decision may end up being made for me though, because this is not a flattering top when worn with my strapless bra...

Two things really defined this project for me: it was quick (insanely so), and it came out SMALL. While I'm not a petite build, I'm pretty skinny up top, and I could still barely struggle into it, even after a good solid blocking. My gauge was ever so slightly off, so I cast on a few more stitches to compensate, and it still came out small. It fits (just), but wow it was a close run thing, and I think I can abandon any hope of ever wearing it over a shirt like I was planning on doing. Still, I like this pattern, and I definitely want to make it again. I'll just make sure that I make a size that'll have a lot less negative ease for me. And I love Silk Garden... at least the size of this one meant that it was (sort of) in my price range; only took 2 1/2 balls to make.

I made some ugly socks with some cheap and nasty yarn:

They're not the most attractive socks in the world, but if they're ugly, than they're endearingly ugly. They're also warm and comfy; I'm wearing them as I type this. Dad assures me that they're quite 70s coloured... I guess I'll take his word for it since I wasn't born then to appreciate it all...

I've also finished the Ugly Mohair Shawl, but I haven't taken any pictures of it yet (it's a gloomy day here in Melbourne, so there's been bugger all natural light to take a decent photo in). It didn't end up all that large because of my short attention span (yeah yeah, I got bored, it happens to the best of us), and I'm still not entirely sure that I'd ever wear it in public, but for chucking over my shoulders when it gets too cold in front of the computer, you can't really go wrong... It's cute in an obnoxiously fuzzy rainbow way, and I'm very pleased to have that yarn finally used for something (it was itching at my brain).

Oh, and Dad and I made the nicest looking salad ever. I can't normally get excited about salad (I am a bad vegetarian who generally needs to have vegetables shoe-horned into my mouth), but I wanted to eat all of this. It was so pretty that I had to take a (blurry) photo...

Nom nom nom...