Procrastination in all its forms

Apologies for the blog silence. Uni has been busy, my internship has started, and to top it all off, I spent a lot of last week being sick with a rather rotten head-cold. Being sick is never a lot of fun, but at least I got some of my assignments done. For some reason though, I never feel like knitting when I'm ill. I've done a little bit of work on my cardigan, but I've been terribly lazy when it comes to finishing my hand warmers. This is especially deplorable because I know very well that all they really need is an hour or so of work, and then they'll be done. Bad Anna.

On the up side, I have been doing some more spinning!




I bought this a while back, but wanted to go through all of my dodgier 'learning' fibre before I tackled it. And I actually kept this resolution - the last of the plain fibre was dyed with avocado pits and spun up during the week, so I've started on the nicer stuff!




(I know the photo is slightly weird - I am having Camera Issues at the moment). I'm really enjoying learning how to spin. I find it very relaxing, and kind of addictive. And I can do it when my eyes are too tired to knit, which is a plus. And as you can see, I'm gradually improving - the above skein is bordering on respectable! That said, I tried my hand at plying last night and the result is, erm, not quite as impressive. But still, that's what learning is all about, I suppose.

Next post, actual knitting content - I promise! In the mean time, I leave you with a picture of the home brewed beer we bottled a few weeks ago. Still needs a little bit of time to improve, but it's pretty good - the first brew I've been involved in from start to finish. Exciting! (well, I think so)

Self indulgent yarn love...

Well, I'm still hanging on to my well meaning intentions to not start any new projects before I finish the hat and jumper that I'm currently working on. But man, it just got a whole lot harder this morning when my package got here (well, by "when my package got here" I mean "when I strolled down to the postal warehouse to pick it up because they, for some reason, had issues with just sending it to my PO box like they normally do" - oh well).

I did an online yarn store raid a couple of weeks ago - thankfully just before the Aussie dollar dropped like a stone (don't get me started on that - I'm still irked about what it means for my growing internet retail therapy habit). One of the things that I ordered was some Dream in Colour Classy yarn from the Yarn and Fibre Company (who do free international shipping and can therefore be assured of patronage by my tight-arse self forevermore)...

I bought it because I'd heard so much about this yarn and was getting increasingly curious. Being the green freak that I am, what I really wanted was to get my mitts on some in the Happy Forest colourway, but because everyone in the universe seems to be making those February Lady cardigans in that colour, it was unfortunately not to be. So, I bought some in 'Cloud Jungle' instead - I wasn't entirely sure about my choice, but I figured that given the yarn had such a good rep and it at least sounded interesting if nothing else, I'd give it a shot.

Well, it got here today, and I can't stop looking at the stuff.




*quivers in delight*

It's... just... so... beautiful! It took forever and ever to get a photo that even slightly shows the variation in colour - and even this one leaves a lot to be desired. In a nutshell, it's a sort of grey with lots of other colours mixed in for good measure. A better way of describing it might be to get you to imagine what it would look like if someone decided to do a more subdued, more tasteful version of rainbow coloured. I love it. And now I have four skeins of it - mwa ha ha! I'm thinking I'm going to make a Corona pullover (why yes, I do refuse to say sweater, because I am an overly stubborn Australian dammit!). Now I just need to put off starting while I dutifully finish my other things. Or something. *grumble* Swatching doesn't count as knitting, does it?

Only problem is that next to the glory that is this yarn, my other jumper seems thoroughly unexciting (as much as I still have an unquenchable love for top down raglans), and my hat is currently looking irritatingly like a shower cap (I shall continue with it because I have a lot of faith in Ysolda Teague's pattern writing, and because even a shower cap would be gorgeous when knitted in the yarn I'm using - but I'm a little daunted).

Oh, and I also snaffled me some Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy yarn - mainly because I'd never knitted with a yarn with hemp content before, and it's about time I got stuck into some summer knitting (you know, before it's actually winter again).

Here it is, nestled happily atop my Butterworths Concise Australian Legal Dictionary... I like it, though it's a lighter green than I was expecting. Oh well, it'll make it more summery I suppose. It feels interesting - sort of soft and rough at the same time, though I've heard that it softens more after washing. I suppose I'm pleased with it - it's just that because I'm so much more enchanted with the Dream in Colour, I fear it might be languishing for a while. Oh well...

So yes, not a lot of knitting. I've been working like a crazy person over the last two weeks, and when I've gotten home I've actually been too tired to knit - I know, such a thing *does* exist. But lots of tasty yarn!

And more to come too - a couple of months ago I signed up to the Sundara Seasons yarn collection, figuring that since I'm at home again and have a little bit of extra spending money, now is the time to be indulging myself and buying stuff that in the past (and probably the future too, once I move out again) I would have dismissed as out of my price range. The first mailing went out late last week, so hopefully I won't be waiting too much longer.

People on Ravelry Just Won't Stop Talking about how great this yarn is, so I'm very curious to see if it lives up to expectation. I'm optimistic - I'm yet to hear a negative review of this stuff, and heaven knows the internet is normally choc-full of people willing to vent their spleens when things don't live up to their every expectation. Hey, I'm more than optimistic. I'm excited...

*looks back over entry*

Wow, I can't believe I wrote that much about yarn. I think I'm turning into a crazy person...

Hat-ness and new yarn!

Well, Richard's hat is now finished, though I think it's going to end up being a hat for me, because I honestly don't think it would fit him and his giant teenage boy type head. Here it is on me, anyway:



I look like some kind of cartoon character in this picture... Sorry about the blurriness... what can I say, but I suck at photos (especially ones taken of myself in the bathroom mirror).


Anyway, this means that I have successfully wrangled colour work for the first time. And had to do it with a self-designed thing, because I am stubborn and overly ambitious. Well, it worked anyway, or at least the colourwork part did. However, the top shaping fell victim to my short attention span, and my lack of botheredness when it comes to maths. So the decreases are bizarrely random and weirdly spaced, and it's a little too short. Methinks I shall refine the design a little (change the colourwork pattern so it's worked over a saner number of stitches, or at least one that's more easily divisible for decrease purposes, and make it a little bigger) and then make another one for the brother dear. Since I do still owe him a hat. Oh well, it's still thirty-odd degree weather here, so I'm sure he can wait a while longer...


Anyway, still beavering away on the Basalt tank. I picked up stitches with no issues (for some reason, I'm still deathly afraid of it, one button band and half a log cabin later), and am now happily working my way through hexagon two.


Oh, and I have shiny, shiny, lovely yarn.

I ordered some Merino/Cashmere sock yarn from The Knittery earlier this week, and was beginning to wonder why it hadn't arrived yet (it didn't have to travel very far, and the website had implied that it would be there within a day or so - which had passed). I got home yesterday from a three hour lecture all cranky because my bank account was overdrawn again and I had blisters on my toes that were as big as the toes themselves (or very nearly anyway), hoping that my shiny nice yarn would be waiting for me. There was no yarn...


Anyway, so I cheered myself up in other ways (other ways in this instance being eating cheese on toast and Lindt chilli dark chocolate, reading some Michael Moorcock, watching Lady Chatterly and knitting some more of my Basalt tank - all fine things), and then at about 11pm Chris got home. When I was just going to bed not long after this he said "By the way, a package came for you the other day. It's in the car, because I keep forgetting to bring it in". So, while I was languishing and yarnless (okay, not yarnless, but without this yarn), my beloved Merino Cashmere 4ply was going for pizza scented joy rides in Chris' car.... Right...


Anyway, we finally got there!
I bought two skeins, one in Moonlight (the bottom one) and the other in Earth, and they're... just... so... pretty.
I should not be allowed to own things as pretty as this:

*swoons*. And they came with a Chuppa Chup in the package!

I'm thinking I quite like The Knittery...

New stuff

Well, celebrated yesterday's day off from pizza servitude by making a pilgrimage to Sunspun in search of some more Noro to finish my poor languishing Argosy scarf. Unfortunately, they didn't have any more of the colourway I needed, so unless Woolbaa has it (which I doubt), it may need to be a shorter scarf than I intended. Never mind, it's still pretty, and I'm sure it'll grow a bit when I block it. I just don't like stingy scarves.

The lesson to be learned from this is that when I'm looking at scarf patterns, I should bear my above inclination in mind and buy an extra ball of yarn that what the pattern states. Problem solved. Anyway, it seemed a waste to spend an hour on public transport and not buy something while I was over there (and heaven knows they have no shortage of beautiful, beautiful yarns), so I indulged:

Hehe, what a weird photo. I was trying to get some good light, so the yarn is sitting on my knee in the kitchen (you can see the blue handle of the dustpan and brush underneath the table in the background)... Still, yarn is beautiful! I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do with it. At $16 a ball, making anything large out of just this yarn is totally out of the question budget wise, so I'm tossing up between just making a Dream Swatch head scarf out of the ball that I do have (http://www.knitandtonic.typepad.com/dreamswatchwrap.pdf ), or making Excuses (hehe), which I've had my eyes on for a while ( http://www.magknits.com/Dec07/patterns/excuses.htm). Currently, I'm leaning towards the latter, because I'm not really a head scarf kind of person. I can't even wear shawls without them falling off...

Anyway, Richard's hat is coming along well. The colourwork is coming out nicely; I half wasn't expecting it to work, but it is. Unfortunately, I couldn't take a decent photo of it because it's gloomy and overcast today, and it's hard enough to take a photo of a hat in progress even when there's good light. There'll be a pic of this one soon enough.

Anyway, the day is getting on, so I should go and prise the boy out of bed. Thankfully, I probably don't have an entire night of pizza servitude to sit through tonight (the plan is for me to get everything prepared, and then high tail it when the other staff get in - and I am very much hoping that we stick to this plan), so more work will be done on hat this evening. Also, have written nearly 90k on my story. This pleases me greatly; first draft is nearly done now!