Yarnivorous

Just a quick note. After a long decline my father (Jack) died this morning. He was 87. It was not unexpected and he has not been at all well this week. I'm currently feeling a bit odd. We'll return to our normal programming soon enough. anon!

G'day all! TWO posts in ONE day! You so lucky! So we went, we saw, we were amused. If you are a Hitch Hikers fan and cannot deal with the idea of one teensy little iota of the book being changed, don't bother seeing it. If you like the irreverent style of Douglas Adams' books, then go along and watch. Enjoy the show stopper scene "So long and thanks for all the fish." Watch out for the cameos (I am old enough to sorta remember the TV series as well as I remember anything from then) and references to other genre media. It is not faithful to the book but it is in the same sort of style. Somewhat pythonesque really, particularly with the Guide interludes. And ladies (and gents) there is KNITTING in it! Noone knits, but before normality resumes after one of the Heart of Gold's improbability jumps everyone is knitted! LOL! In the credits, all the people involved in creating the knitting are guys, only I was distracted at the time and can't remember the...

G'day all! Here's the bad news: A famine of photos continues. Here's the good news: I have lots of photos to put up once I can download them and GIMP them. Plus I have some thoughts to share with you. I am even getting some knitting done! Today's highlights: a) the Yarnharlot 's bookbookbook is rooolly good. You NEED a copy. NOW!!! Even if you don't knit. Nathan thought it is funny too. He doesn't knit. What better recommendation can I make. Oh, yeah, if you can buy it in your local bookstore. I can't. I live in Australia and if I can be politically incorrect, the booksellers here are totally retarded when it comes to getting in new releases except for Harry Potter. b) I found an M&M or a Smartie piece on my desk this morning. It was in the middle of my pile of colourful pens. That was weird cos I can't eat chocolate and I really really DETEST Smarties and plain M&Ms so even if I could eat chocolate I wouldn't leave littl...

My Amazon order arrived! (mental note to self - make sure one has typed book book book, not bookboobkoob)

G'day all! Well today I have a few photos to show you. It is always a famine or a feast with me - I don't know what moderation is it seems. Hokelly dokelly, where to begin? Hmm, let's start with a side branch. Unmoving desks is wearisome, especially when you find the wire manilla folder racks in the bottom of the last box you unpack, after unpacking all the folders and stuff that usually live in the racks. Then you discover that your new desk is sorta limited in space to put said racks so you have to put them on the bookshelf instead. In the meantime, your desk looks like a bombshell hit it (not much different to normal my workmates would say but normally I have organised chaos on my desk if that makes sense. I can always find stuff). One of my team mates unpacked in TWENTY MINUTES! Like she doesn't have half the crud I have that I have to drag around with me - modules in development, modules being reviewed, research for upcoming modules.... So much for the pap...

G'day all! Well one of the most sacred days in Australia (and NZ) is almost done for another year. Today is the 90th anniversary of a battle that is very close to Oz hearts. BTW, ANZAC - Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. I watched a bit of a documentary on the landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and the events leading up to it, on the telly last night. After 45 minutes, I was done. Nathan watched a later bit for 10 minutes and couldn't bear it. Mistake after mistake was made. Totally horrendous. Good men on both sides died because Churchill commandeered the British built Turkish battleships and didn't even give the Turks their money back. Which side would you go with - the ones that GIVE you two battleships or the ones that steal your money and the ships built for you? And out of the actions at one small cove, a legend that birthed a nation was born. Maybe two nations - I don't know how the Kiwis feel about Anzac Day except that they do commemorate it. T...

G'day all! Do you ever find one of those patterns that you think is great but for some reason that you don't quite understand, you can't get it right? I cast on for the lace top again. I've already cast on once and gotten 5 rows into the pattern when I realised that the top was never going to fit me like I expected it to (ie sorta neat fitting around the hips). I thought if I cut a couple of repeats out of the pattern (went down a size) and used smaller needles (tighten up the guage) that it would be fine. Umm, err, nope! It is even BIGGER this time! How is that possible? It goes one and a half times around my hips! So am I the retard or is the pattern? And what should I do? Go to a 3.25mm or give up on the idea of doing it on a circular needle - it should be done on straights. I bought a great suit today. The jacket originally cost $320 and the skirt $90. I got the set for $80. Golly I love me a bargain! Technically a summerish suit cos it is white based with...

G'day all! Today got very very boring. Work was tedious. It isn't usually this tedious. This is a summary of my day at work. Read on, if you dare! I am sure that time has slowed down a whole lot today. We are moving desks over this weekend. On Tuesday I have to remember something that I have already forgotten. Ah yes, I have to go to the other end of the floor. That is like a whole 20m away. Dunno how I will cope. I have been packing stuff for three hours. Dunno how I have that much stuff, but having to pack the rest of the boss' stuff and Marnie's stuff helps a bit. Plus making up labels to whack on everything. Yes, I am making labels for our stuff cos we get six official labels. Six labels to put on our phone, our computer box, mouse, keyboard, monitor, chair, drawers (I have two sets of drawers - I so lucky!), rubbish bin, recycle bin and allocated three boxes (read at least 4 boxes). Now if something doesn't add up, let me know. My reckoning is tha...

G'day all! Very boring time at present. I have lots of things to do and make and you know what? I have a case of the blahs. So does Nathan. Nothing interesting to read on the net. No emails to answer. Generally nothing to report. Can't even work on Nathan's sock co I have mislaid both balls of yarn and have run out of the first ball. Started on a new sock for me. Have to do more of the sleeve for the jacket and knit up the lace top, spin several kilos of fleece, etc etc. Amazon order shipped after 10 days. Forgot to pay an invoice from an ebayer. You know the drill. Training went well enough today - better than I expected. I hope the feedback is ok cos getting bad feedback is horrible. It really makes me re-evaluate whether I want to be in such a role. I feel like such a cretin, especially when I think I've created something Good. The blahs will pass when the day length settles down and I work out a way to balance job with life. We are losing 10 minutes ...

that is the question! Katt asked me a big question the other day. Would I consider selling my handspun yarn? Well yes I would, but the real question is, does anyone have enough money to buy it??? Most of the tops I have been buying cost a princely amount - $12 for 50g. I've occasionally got some for less, but even then $10 is a fair hoik, considering I can buy plain undyed tops for about $3 for 50g. I could dye the tops myself, but that is another night doing that (it is very fun though :-) and I'd have to buy a few more colours that I don't have yet cos I don't think using half a bottle of food dye every time I do some dyeing is economical. Oh, and I do work full time. Of course I have happy little daydreams where I spend my time dyeing fleece and spinning some, selling some and making a living out of it. Unlikely, well not when we don't own our own home outright, etc. We don't even own any property. I have happy dreams of making little kits up of handspu...

G'day all! Well things have returned to normal here at Weedhaven. Nathan pulled the plug on the correct disk, first go! No nasty vir-chunk noises! Gee I like having my own sysadmin! Now since we have computer, you know what that means! Yes, PICTURES! The HOTT hat! Here's the graft on the cable edging. I am sure you can appreciate the wondrous colour match I made: And this is the hat on my head. My head appears very lumpy. I think it must be all the brains trying to get out: I am very pleased with the hat. I am very pleased with the yarn. I knew it would knit up in stripes, i just didn't know exactly what it would look like. Some of the stripes are longer than others, which I expected from the way I drafted the yarn. Some are shorter. They are all LURID! Yay! Here's what the sky looked like at 11am or so this morning: General Gallieni is making a bold dash for the sky. This bloom is quite old so it is very red. Younger blooms have creamy pink in the centre,...

Which old disk? The wicked disk! Which old disk is the problem. At this very moment I am using Nathan's cobbled together PC. I usually use my FiL's old G3 mac, lovingly named skrewt (as in blast-ended) mainly cos you never know when a computer is going to umm blast. However, one of the two disks in that machine is pretty much dead, only we can't figure out which one without opening up the G3 box and physically unplugging one or the other and seeing if the machine boots or not. Last night as Nathan made sure the disks were synched on my machine we had a catastrophic crash. Anyway, it means no pics for the time being cos they are all on my machine. Hopefully I will have pics later, when skrewt is happy again. I bad girl. I bought some more tops at the spinners' guild this morning. Spank me. I am going to see if I can spin them in such a way as they blend from one colour to the next over 2-3m. Not at all like the Noro stuff I've played with recently. No, min...

G'day all! I am in lerv. I am knitting a hat, yes another hat, I seem to have a hat fetish at the moment. This is different. It is a very special hat. It is a hat made out of my own home spun. I grabbed a skein of the red/orange/purple yarn and ballsed oops balled it up and cast on for another hat. I don't think I've ever seen a yarn so lurid, except maybe for the stuff I showed you yesterday. This hurts the eye! it is FABULOUS! Once I have made the hat I will show you it in all its glory. I shall do a happy hat dance. You will cringe and turn the brightness down on your monitor. Tip for the day - keeping the leg elevated OK, so earlier in the week I had to keep my right leg elevated cos of this bee sting. Great, fab, just what I want to do all day long! But what about the shower? Well our shower is over the bath, so the obvious thing to do when your leg feels like it is about to blow off any tick of the clock is to sit down. But how to keep the leg elevated? Do...

G'day all! This will be my third go at getting this posted. Pity I didn't save it as a draft before I tried to post it! Seems like ebay and blogger both like to use the same cookie space, cos if I have ebay open in another tab, blogger stubbornnly refuses to work. Or maybe it is just coincidence... Now what is the most important stuff? Ah yes, the SWATCH. Do you like this swatch for the new jacket? Tell me what you think of it. Your opinion may not sway my eventual opinion but I'll take it into consideration! The girl with the best style sense in my area at work thinks it is fab. (I admit this is the sleeve. Or maybe it is a really big swatch) Remember, this is the jacket the swatch is for: FINISHED OBJECTS! Now I have managed to get a few things that have been hanging around off the needles and fixed up a bit. Voila! (OK, I admit I finished this a week ago) When i bought the yarn,I bought it cos it was "cheap" Noro - only $11.70 a ball. It is Noro Shina...

I, Lynne, do hereby promise that I will do my best to leave at least one comment a month on the blogs I read, especially those blogs that don't get many comments. However if you don't have comments turned on in your blog, I can't leave you comments easily. And if you don't have comments on and an email addy that I know about, it will be even harder to leave a comment! Why am I making this promise? Cos I know how sad it is when you blog your little heart out, put up lots of pics and get two or three comments a week. It does make each and every comment special though :-) Especially when you get a google hit from hot pussies. Yes the cats are pretty cute. LOL

G'day all! Since when did I get old? You would think I am ancient the way I am hobbling about. I have tried antihistamines and skin salves. Had to go to the dr this morning about my poor leg. It is interesting colours, mostly reds and pinks. Dr says I have a skin infection and even a little ulcer! I so lucky! I thought that old people and people with diabetes get skin ulcers. Now I have antibiotics again. I have a pic of it for those who are brave, but I'll put it at the bottom of the post, LOL! I can show you this cos the pic doesn't reveal it very well - my right ankle is a bit swollen. I even had to loosen my already loose sandal by two notches! A very kind stranger sent me this: And this colonial superwash: and a little superwash merino tops. Verra nice. Once I am technically not on bed rest with my leg on two pillows I will start playing with the fleece. Yes, I am supposed to be lying down with my leg up (not over!) and I can tell you that when the rest o...

G'day all! Today started off pretty danged well. Went to the flower and garden show, wandered around in the hot sunshine (after finding the first aid mob and using some of their sunscreen) and then decided my leg hurt too much and I should come home. (I hear any English people out there asking why use sunscreen? Because even in April, the Australian sun can sizzle you like a sausage. The Australian sun is quite harsh, unlike the gentle sun of England. Even I didn't get sunburnt in England and I just fry here. We can usually pick out Pommie backpackers who have just arrived here by the brilliance of their bright red lobster-like skin.) I've spent most of the afternoon and evening with my foot elevated, trying to reduce the swelling. Why is my leg puffed up? Cos I react badly to arthropod stings. The puffing starts around the bottom of my ankle, covers my achilles but not my soleus muscle (except the edge of it) and goes 2/3 of the way up my calf. The bee stung area ...

G'day all! One of my friends emailed me and said it is snowing where she lives in England. Never knew April showers were not rain but snow.... However, we are still waiting for our April showers to show up. It was 32 or 33 degrees C here today. Our warmest April day for 20 years. I've been pretty busy and very tired this week. I took piccies today of the bits and pieces we gathered, but I had a minor drama first. I sat on the grass setting up my first picture. Suddenly I noticed a sharp pain in my leg. YOWZA! When I moved my leg I noticed some funny smelling stuff on it and it had a new hole in it. Then I noticed a bee crawling around... but a bee without its guts hanging out of it. I must've been stung cos my first response was to have a panic attack - the funny smelling gack seemed to trigger it - and then the area started welting up. Anyway, after some basic first aid (eat an antihistamine and wash the area, and wash it again and stick some deoderant on it and...

G'day all! No update on the trip cos I need to get some pics together of our tour around the south coast and in particular the goodies we (I) got at Central Tilba . BTW, if you follow the link to Central Tilba, you may or may not be able to tell where I spent some $$. Have a ping at it and tell me what you think. This is my baby car. He is seven now, so he is not a baby any more I guess. BTw, do you like the number plate slogan "Victoria - on the move"? This is old now. We are now "the place to be." At least we were getting someplace before, now we are just being! This is a most serious question. Does this look like the face of a killer car? This car was the death of many many locusts (no great loss!) and at least one blowfly with maggots on board (ask me how I know!). We also helped select for magpies that get off the road quickly rather than becoming a two part magpie story (oops) (BTW, the Aussie magpie is not the same as the European one, and I hop...