Yarnivorous

Mmmmm, it smells sorta sour and hot, umm what could it be... This is where the steam is coming from, curling up slowly and delicately - a new crockpot! Top(s) soup! Mmm-mmm, my favourite! Have to say I like this crockpot dyeing bizzo! The tops are drying by the heater as we speak. There will be more, MORE I say! Another joyous blissful week of work awaits me. I'll have to get some more training set up - it is nearly August and I have a lot to do by September. Joyous bliss. Ba humbug. Thanks to all those who have commented and made excellent suggestions for things during the week. Even if I don't always get back to you, I do appreciate your suggestions and you'll see I even take some of them onboard. :-) anon!

G'day all! Just been at a 155th birthday party, which then turned into a 210th birthday party. How could that be? Real quick one tonight cos I am a bit tired after a very long day. Had to take the other car across to be checked out by my BiL's mechanic (whom I don't like), wandered around a shopping centre for two hours waiting for the car to be ready, then helped nathan prep the floorboard edging for sanding (ie I pulled out lots of nails from the carpet tacking edge stuff), plied 120g of stuff, spun another 80g, plied up some thick and thin pink stuff with lurex thread, rubbed tung oil into the floorboards.... So what do we have for your delectation and delight? Acquisitions from Thursday! My poor budget - I am not going to be able to buy anything for the next month. The white yarn that I was not going to show off but now I am. Two unfinished squares to be finished and sent off for Kerstin's BiL's memorial blanket. This first one is in some yarn I dyed with f...

Must sleeeeep.... Zzzzzzzzz. Have a good weekend, all! I'll get some pics done and put em up so you can see what I've been up to! But first ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz anon!

G'day all! I trawled off to the craft and quilt fair today on my lovely day off. I was feeling pretty crufty cos my gut was carrying on like a pork chop. Stupid thing. But with a bit of fluid replacement we were go go GO! Now if you want woolly stuff, this is not the fair to go to. But I did get to meet LisaG and Claire from Xotik Yarns , had a good chat with Lisa about selling stuff. I admit that I still bought stuff. I forgot to take pictures of it this afternoon - like DUH! How many of you want to see the undyed laceweight, like real laceweight, 100% wool? 100g for $20. Or the undyed laceweight (slightly heavier though) kid mohair? About $25 for 100g. Or the undyed mulberry silk, fingering weight stuff? About $30 for 99g. I thought you wouldn't want to see it until it is dyed. I already have agreed to dye the wool black and violet for K - she has been looking for stuff like that for a while. Where'd I get it? Kaalund yarns. They are interesting cos it is an...

G'day all! Anyone got any inspiration they can spare? I am madly knitting little mitred squares at present for this project , in honour of Kerstin's BiL. I have some less lurid handspun yarn and am knitting 10cm squares to sew up into a 20cm square. I admit I've only made one cos the first one got ripped after it was made - it was too big. But the second one is well under way now. I reckon I might get back a bit of inspiration on Thursday when I go to a big craft fair. I've been warned that it is more a patchwork and scrapbooking fair but hey, the boss is letting me take a day of annual leave (should be flex but she won't let me work up any flex so I squander my A/L instead) and I am hoping to meet up with LisaG and show her some of my spinning and how it knits up. I'll probably be desperately disappointed but it is worth a shot. Hokey kokey. Let's get onto tonight's real agenda. I've been able to hand wind ball of yarn a ball of yarn much fas...

G'day all! Ohmigod, but wait, there's more! Since my image server was down on Friday night and Saturday, I didn't complete the blogging of the Bendi acquisitions. I think I am doing this for my benefit more than yours, so please forgive me for putting it all up on line. I am already getting nice surprises when I open the old set of drawers I have stashed my fleece in. Oh, I'd forgotten about that already! Oooh, a nice bit of silk! Oh that stuff I bought from Marta's three weeks ago that I just found in a bag - about 25g of a silk thread that is the weight of heavy cotton. I am going to dye some of it up with some wool and then spin and play with it. Marta showed me some fantastic stuff she's had spun with it - if you cut the silk up into shortish lengths then you can spin it into the yarn and make eyelash yarn. OK, some people might think that is a waste but jeez Marta's extra special play bag of silks was stunning! Nutmeg checking out the stash acqui...

G'day all! I though I should put up a pic of the thrummed mittens. You would not believe how much difficulty I am having typing the word "thrummed." Thummed. Thumbed. Thrummbed. Where did the B come from? What is it with the b? Maybe I should be knitting bee booties for babies or something (did you see the yarnharlot's bee and ladybird baby shoes?). I have a surplus of Bs in my thrums. So without further ado, I give you the thrummed mittens: Note that you can't see the thumb (not thrumb or thrum or thum) on one of the mittens. That is because I stuffed up the staggering of the thrumbs, argh there's that B again!, thrums on the thumb. I used three different lots of handspun yarn to make the things and I vaguely followed Steph's pattern for the thrum-along but as always halfway through decided to make it up as I went along. I still ended up with thrummed mitts, even if the tip of one has a bit of a different colourway than the other (known as Mr...

G'day again all! Pics are back! Pity that I am feeling lousy and want to go back and read Gibbering's Harry Potter. It is so good of friends to lend you books when you have done your own dough on Too Much Fibre! We'll get book six soon enough, just not quite yet. (I admit though that, despite a certain lack of budget, today I bought $27 of cheap annuals and bulbs to stick in the front yard cos it is looking so bare. Still, for that $27 I got a whole big tray of about 20 seedling polyanthuses/polyanthi, 130-odd ranunculus cormy things only one of the bags had been opened grrrr so more like 115, 6 hyacinths for a pot, six pansies and violas, and a punnet of snowpeas. I almost bought another barerooted Rosa Tuscany Superb to match the one I have, only I realised that digging out the diosma that dominates the letterbox and replacing it with a thorny rose may not be a good idea. At least the diosma doesn't bite....) So soon I can discuss HP&tHBP with others who have...

G'day all! My image server has been powered off possibly for the whole weekend. So no pics this weekend - typical cos I was finally going to get pics of the thrummed mittens and put them up! Aong with pics of my favourite purchase at Bendi... Maybe I should investigate doing pics via blogger - apparently it can be an image server now. Hmm, will I have any news even worth reporting if I can't show off my fave purchase and my mittens? Stay tuned! anon!

G'day all! When I got home this evening, I could smell dinner cooking - Nathan has been whipping up some great stewy curries recently. I left things to simmer for another hour or so, then starting doing final prep for dinner (ie adding some form of vegies). I added some frozen blocks of spinach, and peas and corn. I reported "I added spinach plus peas and corn." "It's already got peas and corn" "Oh, I couldn't tell them from the chickpeas." "It doesn't have chickpeas in it..." Hmm, I'd be guessing that those funny curry coloured blobby spheres are peas then... LOL Well it amused me but then I've been training half the day. I tend to get a bit tired after that cos I am naturally introverted, but with my training hat on I push myself out there into the audience and after 2.5 hours of that, I often run out of "foof." I can't believe how much stash I have enhanced my stash by. I kid you not I have impressed my...

G'day all! Another quickie tonight. Gotta get a good night's sleep in preparation for the info sessions I have to run tomorrow. Drove halfway across Melbourne to visit my sister in hospital, got there, took one look at the place and nearly flipped out. Same place that my aunt died 15 years ago of breast cancer. Horrible, horrible disease. Bad associations with that place. But my sister is pretty good, all things considered. She has chemical allergies like you wouldn't believe and the hospital pretty much hits all of them on the head - BINGO! Plus she has coeliac disease and needs gluten free foods. You would think a hospital could do GF food but nope, they are clueless. Her knee is mucho bruised and will have a scar on right over the knee cap but much better than the last op where the wound got infected with golden staph.... her knee works and she is very happy. It is the first time in ages since it worked properly. So onto the stash enhancement. Oh yes, there is...

G'day all! This will be a rather random blogpost. I've been catching up on a few things cos I've not really been able to read blogs for days. Good news! Norma had her birthday on Monday. The Yarnharlot found out. 216 comments at last checking... not bad, eh? ErLeCa was accepted into her course and is now going back to "school." Random news yarngirl managed to annoy the ballwinder gods a LOT. Now that is plain odd! Bad news :-( Kerstin's brother in law was killed in a car crash caused by a suicidal idiot female (if you want to kill yourself in a crash, please just drive into a wall or a pole or off a cliff or something, not into another car). Other news One of my friends and I did a bit of dilly daydreaming today. If we had our dream shop, what would it be? It all started off with me noticing that most of the spinning stuff vendors at the Bendi show are not exactly spring chicks. That made me think that I would like to run a spinning and yarn shop. ...

G'day all! A quicky tonight. I shall document the true extent of my madness at Bendi over the next few days... and someone has already guessed my favourite (and most expensive) purchase! A few bits and pieces from Wendy Dennis - two of everything bar the bluey polwarth/silk mix cos I only found one of those. The first two are polwarth silk blends, the last one is plain polwarth. Can't wait to spin them all up.... I showed Wendy a bit of some of her stuff I spun and navajo plied up and she was delighted to see the secondaries coming up - I presume she was meaning the parts where two (or more) dye colours blend together. More next time - maybe tomorrow, maybe not cos tomorrow night I have to go and see my sister who is in hospital. After nearly 30 years with an increasingly crook knee and increasing disability, she decided to shout herself a knee replacement for her 50th. (Mental note to self - if I ever do my anterior cruciate ligament and have cartilage damage I should get...

And there's a sign upon my door.... (shangri-la) Gone stashin' Who could ask for more.... G'day all! Well Bendi has come and gone and yeah, what a day! I got up before dawn and got to K's place when it was still dark enough for the view towards the city to look like this: Though if I looked in the other direction it looked like this - dawn was definately on its way: (But the camera lies a bit - it was quite dark, it just was catching my excitement) So we hopped into D & K's car and off we zoomed. Sunrise eventually caught us up: And then the fog descended as we ascended onto a plateau: (we got to see a lot of grey on the way back....) Finally we were at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show, held annually in Bendigo: Inside unassuming halls, like the LR Osborne hall, we found delights - walls of yarn and fleece, and piles of fudge: There were sweet little sheep in a stand outside - this young ram loves getting a good scratch: (can you guess his breed? There has b...