Yarnivorous

O! mosquito! How I hate thee! How I hate thy whine The shrillness of which hurts mine ear And disturbs mine sleep. O! Mossie! Why dost thou bite me even though I am covered in Aeroguard so heavily I cannot stand mine own stench? How dost thou find me despite the obscuring odour? What is thy fascination with finding the edge of my shoe or sock and biting me there? How I detest thy bite which raises lumps the size of 10 cent pieces or larger than american quarters or 10p bits if you are English. Lumps that have interesting contours and follow my lymph, or my blood vessels, take your choice. How I wish my dear father in law were here, for you love him even more than you love me, and you would bite him and cause him much itchiness. Better him than me. How I hate thee, mossie. Go and find someone else's flesh to bite and procure blood for your horde of eggs and new mossies. Dear husband, hand me my antihistamines and cortisone cream so that I may no longer scratch. If I am lucky. Ah.....

G'day all! I have deliberately made a little blogging time tonight. Go stick yourself on my Frappr. Please :-) It is pathetic at present. We are all lonely on it. It's on my side bar. So here is the picovoli. Do you reckon the neck is a bit more draped then I would like? (image not clickable)(mental note for self - trakky dax not good look under picovoli)(extra mental note for self - fix up the puckered yarn join on the front porch area) I am exploring fixes for it at the moment. My current favourite is to run some ribbon/organza through the picots and tighten it up that way. Probably won't work though. Any ideas? Hmm, my brilliant plan last week was to get together an afghan for our favourite Crazy Aunt, but it is going to go by the by. I can't raise enough people and I also can't get anyone in the USA to sew the thing together. I should've organised this at the beginning of November but I was flat chat then keeping the house and the cats going in ab...

G'day all! Well my days are simply flying by at present. I am not getting much chance to blog, although now that the world championship gymnastics is over and done with I'll regain two hours of doing things other than knitting and watching magnificent bods fling through the air. Have to say though that shortening Anastasia to Nastia is not making it a very pretty name, at least not in my books.... (one of the American girls is Anastasia Liukin, aka Nastia. Very good gymnast but horrid name). I've been doing stuff, I've got pics of some lovely sunsets, I've got pics of flowers and of knitting but do I have time to edit them let alone post them? No! No chance even to put some links in, though I have a few. Sigh. Nope it is time to sleep instead. Sleep, blessed sleep.... anon!

G'day all! Well it's been a busy time around here and sure to get busier as I compact all of my Stuff (tm) in preparation for moving. Plus I've cooked up a Crazy scheme to help out a fellow knitblogger (email me if you want more info! natiel3atyahoodotcom It is very exciting!) and I think I'm just a wee tad nuts. So here is what I've been working on this week. After about a week of being faithful to the picovoli tshirt, suddenly I realised that I had to work on my diamond blossom scarf from Modular Knits . It just had to be done. So without further ado, I give you the diamond blossom scarf (you may need to adjust your monitor's brightness) in four different colourways of some ancient Patons Jet 12 ply carefully hand-dyed with food colouring last year. I reckon it is waaay cool. You probably think it is waaaaay too lurid! Admittedly the picture does not capture the colours well but it will do.... You weren't happy enough just seeing the whole scarf? W...

G'day all! Not much at all to report. We got the Archicentre report regarding the hosue today - nathan was reading through going oh, we'll have to fix this, oh we'll need to fix that, but it is quite frankly nothing that we didn't expect to have to do in the first place.... Like the shower is likely to leak. Well we were going to replace it anyway. Knitting is happening. So is fleece processing. Now the me too is all about me joining the frappr mob. Yep! Me too! Me too! So please add yourself to the map - I'd love to visit you! Erin has joined the umm not exactly madding throng of knit/spin bloggers :-) When you click on my Frappr button (on the right side bar) you can add yourself on the right side of the Frappr page. If you put your URL in the shoutout, I can visit you even more easily! :-) OK, well I'll keep tidying up here. I keep finding little stashes of yarn around the place. And fleece. This is much better than stash diving - it is like S ...

G'day all! On Saturday, I bought some fluff. It doesn't look very fluffy in this picture though: Here's a lock of it: It's from a yearling 3/4 Australian Finnsheep (if that makes sense) 1/4 merino cross-bred ewe. I bought it cos it felt nice. Greasy but nice. Soft. $20 for 1.8 kilos of fleece (in the grease). I've never played with a whole sheep fleece before. So I read up a bit on the net and got me buckets of the hottest water I could get out of the heater, put woolwash into one and soaked a few little bits. It came out white! Not apricot or grey but white! Pure white! So on Sunday I got serious and did a whole bunch o fleece. It only took about an hour to carefully wash the tips of say 400g. Here's a little of the fluff washed and dried: You can't see the lock structure but it is there. And then combed up: And that one snail of combed tops became this little skein of yarn, somewhere between fingering and 5 ply/sport weightish: It wants to spin f...

G'day all! It's been a busy weekend! Saturday was insane from the moment it started to the moment we eventually got home. It started poorly when I had some weird allergic reaction (waking up with your heart rate at about 160 is NOT fun!), and didn't get to sleep until after 1am. At 7:30 I was up and at it. Made some pancakes for breakfast, plus some pikelets for an event later in the day, then eventually made it to the guild (45 minute drive) to buy some extra special supplies (more on that next time!), back again via Uncle Rick's for some GF, DF goodness :-), off to Oakleigh to buy nuts and seeds and flowers for the Event, plus the cat food. Home again, arrange flowers (accidentally delete pictures of flower arrangements whilst downloading them), discover I can make a second arrangement out of the native plants in the garden :-), get changed and then off to The Event! (Faces pixelated to hide the "innocent") (in other words, I don't have permission t...

G'day all! House was inspected today by local experts. Pronounced in good health. Yay! It should not fall apart in a hurry (or at all). Now all I want to do is move in. Thank heavens we have a short settlement cos I don't think I could survive waiting three months for it. I keep thinking I want something but I can't figure out what. It is simply that I want to start moving to my own place! Now I am a very bad crafting blogger. I received my first spindling secret pal package via the PiLs (I used their address cos I didn't know where I'd be living by now). The best thing was the sheep mug, but unfortunately it was damaged in the post and has a big chunk taken out of the rim so it is unusable. Dang! Some nice spindling supplies but I have to own up that I am rather disappointed that my secret pal is the president of my local spinners' guild. I thought I would get an overseas partner who could send me really different stuff like cormo and californian mu...

G'day all! Not much to report today. The mortgage application is underway and quote looks good unquote. Building inspection by a professional inspector tomorrow so he should pick up any particular problems with the place (we put a subject to satisfactory inspection on the contract). Since I am told it is miserable and rainy in Toronto and my English friends are not reporting any better weather, here's a couple more flowers for you. Twin rugosa-cross rose flowers - if only I could do smell-o-vision! And one of our current favourites - if memory serves me correctly it is a Helichrysum semipapposum. It is bright and lairy so I didn't turn the contrast down any. It really does hurt to look at in the sun. But it doesn't have any scent I've noticed. That should brighten up a dull day! anon!

G'dya all! I don't think anyone will say "I care not for this news, bring me some other news," well not with our news! The financing is pretty much all sorted out. The first lot of paperwork is signed. As long as the building inspection goes well and RAMS comes up with the moulah, we will be in our very own home (OK, Citibank's home) before Christmas. YAAAAAAY! (Combine the happy Snoopy dance with Kermit's handwaving) I have been knitting but I don't have pics today. Too distracted by happy happy joy joy thoughts (with no need for a happy helmet - anyone know that reference?). I started mucking around with a shawl idea knitted top down in some pretty loopy mohair I have. Then after going and signing our lives away, I started on a diamond blossom scarf (more details when I have a pic of it). No spinning today! Oh heck, forgot to do all my shoulder exercises. Again. I've done a third of them. They are making me sit up straighter and pull my sho...

G'day again all! It seems thinks are getting a little dismal in some parts of the world, so I thought I'd post a few pictures of the poppies flowering around my yard. I love my Flanders poppies in particular - the ones with the black patches in them. They now self sow in the front yard. The fancy ones are not as tough so there are fewer of them each year. I grow them for Pop, not that he would give a toss cos he was a bit eccentric (but that may be this pot calling that kettle black). Freshly out of the pod - a crumpled beauty: Where's the black patches? Despite playing with the colour I cannot make this picture look as ugly a colour as the poppy itself. I am going to save open pollinated seed from it and see what it comes up with next year: What a lovely lass, white with pretty pink swirled around her skirts: A trio of the original and the best: I have heaps more flowers, so if you want more, let me know! I have weird Australian flowers, roses, daisies, triggerplants...

G'day all1 I am enthusiastically bouncing. Bounce, bounce BOUNCE! We can buy the house we've been looking at for the max price we'd pay for it, which is well under our limit for any house we could buy and stay in financial comfort. Bounce bounce bounce! OHMEGAWD!!!! Only problem is once we sign the contract they want a 10% deposit in 7 days. We don't have that much money! We are doing the weird thing with Nathan's parents' equity in their house. We can scratch together a 5% deposit. That is fine. But not 10%. Ackarooney! Anyway, if we can get this all worked out, we will be in our own home by Christmas! Yeeeehar! (Scuse the lack of crafty stuff in this entry but like I have to talk to someone cos Nathan isn't home tonight cos of his mum's choir) bounce bounce bounce! anon!

G'day all! Todays blog is a series of random threads, cos that is where my head is at today. I didn't go in to work today because I was exhausted from a night of gut wrangling. I reckon I have caught an English bug from Nathan because he has been tired and gutty recently. This totally fascinated me. Seeing how things change absorbs me. I've spent hours looking at it. It is an aerial picture of the area I live in at present. The picture was taken in 1945. There are a few landmarks I recognise, but some main roads don't even exist yet! BTW, I live in the block at the very left of the picture in the dark patch above the roads that cross on the diagonal. You can expand the picture by clicking on it. Now, yarngirl asked why do I need to see a physio for my shoulder and ankle? The ankle was from rolling it about three weeks ago (I actually put my full body weight on the wrong side of my foot, like you walk on the sole not on the upper side but I tried a different ...

G'day all! OK, just to show you something you have not seen before, here is my progress on a picovoli in KnitPicks Shine in Blush: See? I am knitting. I have been waiting to get the yarn so I could knit this top. It is another pink top. You would think I like pink or something. So far we are amused by it, though the rounds and rounds and rounds of plain stitch are getting a bit tedious. Thank heavens for hardback books and blogs to read as I go round and round and round.... It looks pretty messy at the moment - a provisional cast on, sleeves on scrap yarn, bits of threads going everywhere. It is going to gape at the neck a bit, but since I've made a picovoli, I can put a ribbon through the picot edge and tie it down a bit. It is onto the body shaping and I've used almost exactly three balls of yarn. I'm guessing the other three will make it to the bottom of the top and do the sleeve edgings. I hope. (crosses fingers) Weeeellll what an interesting slow weekend...

G'day all! Well my week has just flown by. I haven't had a chance to email anyone for days, so apologies to those I have not yet contacted. It's Friday and the 11th day of the 11th month. That means it is Remembrance Day, or Poppy Day. The Flanders Poppies are going nuts in the front yard. I let them grow wild these days. Poppies for young men, death's bitter trade ... (Sting) I have not yet lost a relative to war, so I am blessed. Onto different things. Yarn. How about some pics of some yarn? My good friend Dreamcatcher visited the Colinette factory in Wales a while ago. Lookie what she bought me from the millshop! DH brought it home for me in his luggage. And some extra bonus shots showing some of the colourways - some are definately related colours. Can you blame me for dreaming with all this yummy yarn around me? Isn't that an amazing collection? Like there is about $200 in yarn if I was able to get it all in Oz. I'll just fall over backwards ...

G'day all! A kit of Marta's mohair in rainbow colours. Ahhhhhh..... Thanks, K&D! This is awesome! My favourite colours :-) (and I have to take pics of some more awesome yarn tomorrow, if the weather holds out - wish me luck!) anon!

One sleep and Nathan is back! (crosses fingers) I hope he flying out of Singapore shortly - I am not dead sure of the time difference between here and there (though if the plane takes 7 hours and leaves at 20:15 and arrives at 6:15, that would make them three hours behind us? The flight is 10 hours long from the departure and landing times but is really only 7 hours long). At least it won't matter this time if his luggage takes three days longer than he does to get to his destination.... I don't know who will be more excited to see him - me or the cats. They've been getting rather mopey. Back to our irregular broadcast tomorrow. I haven't downloaded pics yet - it's been a busy night visiting the physio who says my ankle is about 96% right but my shoulder is crappy, putting away 6 loads of washing, getting most of the bedding all nice and neat on the bed (minus doonas cos getting the things into their covers makes my shoulder unhappy), doing some spinning whilst ...

G'day all! Equanimity is resumed. Yesterday's spaz was not over not getting any comments from people who hadn't dropped by recently - like that is silly. My spaz was in part related to the hundred-odd visits recorded by the counter with the resultant ONE comment. As Xantha said, it is likely that it is the web crawlers and bots that cause my hit counter to show a reasaonable number of hits and those hits that don't generate any comments at all.... So thank you to those who wished me a happy birthday. Dreamcatcher , no need to get upset cos I as not cross with you or anyone in particular, I was grumpy cos I supposedly had so many hits and only one comment from the lovely Cathy in Tassie. Now I have a few more comments! I suppose you'd like to see what I got for my birthday? Would you be suprised to see that it involved yarn or things to do with knitting? No? Whyever not? A while ago, I ordered some books from Amazon since they have books we just cannot get he...