Yarnivorous

G'day all! I am still catching up on stuff from before we went away, and now work-related stuff is catching up on me too. I have to go see another temping agency tomorrow morning. They didn't seem as organised as the first lot and the consultant's phone kept dropping out even though I am fairly sure it was a landline. I guess her phone is cactus. (Ooops, I've now been. She is a lot more relaxed than the first consultant I saw at another place, but not only are their phones playing up, so is their computer system - some virus has gotten in. Maybe my old linx box is annoying but it is never annoying cos it has a virus... just cos it is annoying ;-) Anyway, I did a little dyeing of some cheap yarn from Scroaties before I left. Can you spot the acrylic content? This tape type yarn obviously has a strip of acrylic running across it. I reckon it adds to the effect. See how many colours there are in that bit of merino tape? Compare and contrast with the 50:50 wool/acr...

G'day all! Today I got off my lazy butt and rode halfway to Monash with Nathan. Only halfway cos the other halfway involves a big long hill and once I do that I have to sit down for an hour to recover.... By the time the riding has taken over an hour and the sitting after the riding up the hill has taken an hour, most of the morning is gone. So I rode halfway and then back home again, for a nice little ride. I got home and realised (three hours later) that somewhere along the way I had lost the bike lock, which attached to the bike via a strip of velcro (stupid arrangement). Someone had already appropriated the lock which is *totally* useless without a key. You can't even lock it without the key. $22 later we have a new bike lock that STINKS to high heaven of mothballs. I didn't smell anything wrong with it in the bike shop. Some of you might know that I am deathly allergic to mothballs. They make me quite nauseated and very light headed. The effects can last for h...

G'day all! All the names of the commenters from my blogiversary week went into a bag, and my lovely assistant drew not just one but two names. Why two? Well the first one was AINSLEY! Yes, Purplexity, come on down! Now just in case someone decided that the contest is rigged cos Ainsley is a fellow Melbourne knitter and a friend, I had my lovely assistant draw a second name. This one was KRISTEN . Kristen followed a link on Stumbling over Chaos Now because I am a nasty nasty person, to collect your prize, ladies, you have to leave another comment outlining the sorts of things you would like, or email me natiel3 at yahoodotcom :-) I can guess what Ainsley would like, but Kristen? Heh. This quiz amused me - apparently I am one classy chick. If you saw me in sitting here in my baggiest, daggiest trakky pants with unbrushed hair.... As for flooring everyone, I don't think it is my class that does that.... Your Hair Should Be White Classy, stylish, and eloquent. You've...

G'day all! It's DH's birthday today - he turns mumble, but not the same sort of *mumble* that I'll be turning soon! No, he's a baby and isn't even 3/4 of the way to *mumble*!!!! It is a be-yoo-ti-ful day here today. We've had some rotten cold weather, but today is tshirt weather (except if you are one of the weird people walking around Oakleigh who are in their raincoats and their woollies). So here's some Saturday sky just after the early morning fog cleared: And some self-striping yarn I dyed up. It's all skeined up now and ready to go. It will self stripe in socks, beanies, gloves/mittens and clothes for small children, but the stripes will be pretty skinny on adult sized clothing. There's 2 X 100g skeins there in what we call an 8ply, Brits call DK and Mericans call sorta worsted, and over 200 yards of wool in each skein. The wool I'd say is corriedale, nto merino, but it is Aussie wool. If you like skeins and covet them, I'll se...

G'day all! We are at last getting some much needed rain here in Melbourne. We've had about 20mm (most of an inch) so far. Hooray! The downside is that it is cold and wet and I have to fix up my resume. I hate trying to sell myself. I have to get the resume done this arvo so that I can send it off to a temping agency before I have an interview and computer tests tomorrow. I don't want to do it, so instead I've been doing housework, etc. Once I start doing it hopefully I'll be ok but nyeh. Hateses this jobhunting stuff - it is one reason why I stayed so long at the last place despite it slowly draining the life out of me. The other downside is that it is cold and wet and dull - very grey. It is hard to get good pics when the camera says 1/30 and 1/15 sec shutter speed so I still don't have pics of my recent dyeing efforts (including yesterday's). I've spun up some yarn for a friend's birthday. It is pretty but barberpoled. Hope she likes it, ...

G'day all! Thanks for all the entries into the 2 year blogiversary contest, the grand prize being something you don't know about yet cos I don't - the winner will get something of their choice. Since I got the date wrong, I'll run it until tomorrow SATURDAY 26 August, 6pm Oz EST. Tiphanie, who has not made her blogger profile public so I cannot link to her blog, asked if I have any tips for new bloggers. First hint - make your profile public, Tiphanie, if you want people to find you by following the links in the comments, which is how I find some new blogs. Tip two - always be true to what you like. That doesn't mean being nasty (or as we say here "slagging on" other people), just letting people know something of what you like and enjoy doing via your blog. If you have some interesting quirks that aren't illegal or immoral, talk about them. It may be that you will find there is a whole group of people who, for example, are addicted to the colour or...

G'day all! Lynne and Nathan had waited a long time to go away. Nathan had booked the plane (Jetstar, Australia's cheapy Qantas airline that isn't a Qantas airline. You buy your food and drink on the plane, if you don't bring your lunch/dinner/drinks with you. Comfortable seats, new planes, adequate service) so we drove to Avalon Airport, once only a military airport, and inconveniently 60-something km from the city. We got our baggage on the plane by the barest margin and got us through the security stuff, there to wait until we boarded the plane. We arrived at Perth and our chauffeur picked us up and drove us to Merredin, three hours away. He also just so happened to be the liaison for the council that Nathan had been talking to for hmm four months. Nathan had to work, but Lynne got to play and play she did. After walking about 12km on the first day, cars came out of the woodwork (so to speak). She got to know some of the wildflower locales quite well :-) She a...

G'day all! Just realised that yesterday was my second blogiversary! Happy 2nd blogiversary to me! I am running a contest. I think I'll put up some nice handspun or some nice yarn or tops that I'll dig out of stash. Local stuff. Maybe I'll dye up some sock yarn. It will be the winner's choice. (ie I am too lazy to go through stuff right now) What do you have to do? Leave a comment for this post or any I post between now and Thursday this week! Entries close on Friday 26 August at 6pm Australian Eastern Standard time. Don't ask me what time that is where you live - we are plus 10 UMT, you are ???? anon!

G'day all! Home again. Very odd. Merredin is suddenly just a dream. Isn't it amazing how you get in this tin can and hurtle across the sky for an hour or two or four or 20-odd and suddenly you are Someplace Else? OK, Perth isn't terribly Someplace Else, cos it is Australia, but it isn't the same as Melbourne. The WA wheatbelt isn't terribly different to the Victorian/SA wheatbelt, but it is different. Of course the longer you sit in the tin can, the more different the place yet similar. That's the funny thing about flying to the US or the UK - it is subtly wrong there. The houses are wrong, the sun is wrong, your inbuilt direction-sense is wrong, in the USA all of your ideas about what way to watch for traffic are wrong (cos you guys drive ont he wrong side of the road! Worng I tell you!), etc, etc. Crikey. You want photos? We landed less than 10 hours ago and I am only up now because the cat whinged madly and wouldn't let me sleep past 8am... (th...

G'day all! I am here in sunny Western Australia, just a few thousand kilometres from home (or if you prefer a couple of thousands of miles). Two years ago, Nathan and I drove to WA from home. We figured it was a pretty long drive, but even flying over Australia helps you appreciate just how far it is from the east coast to the west coast and how empy much of Australia is. We crossed the Nullarbor where it truly is an apparently endless, treeless plain. The flight took just under 5 hours (headwinds made us fly lower). It's a bad year in the wheatbelt of WA (I'd link but on this windoze box it is too much effort to run multiple copies of IE). Not enough rain and what has fallen has fallen at the wrong times. There's stuff all in the way of the ephemeral daisies flowering, which is a shame - last year there was rain at the right time and the ephemerals and the orchids were spectacular. The shrubs and stuff are looking great - flowers everywhere. All native. (Well m...

G'day all! I have been working nearly all day on these silly pics for Knitty. Of course I can't just stick my socks on a bush or get a line up of feet for them, no I have to be all fancyschmancy. So far, I've created these: and one other which I forgot to upload.... It has a screened fireplace in it. Fear not, no socks were harmed in creating that picture (though I think my brain has been harmed). Are they not gloriously tacky? I am starting to wonder why I am bothering! My ideas seemed good at the time but after 8 or 9 hours fairly much attached to the computer with DH whining at me.... I have so many other things I need to get done at this point - I think I'll give up and get the washing off the line and plant the blood orange before it dies and bring my backpack in from where it is "airing" and start planning what to take to WA with us. We'll be away a few days and the poor puddy tats will have no humans to love them. Ack, haven't set up the ...

G'day all! Today I have been feeling urges to dress up like a girl instead of a slob. What is wrong with me??? I want to have nice hair and a nice dress or skirt (and top) on, something 40s or 50s-ish, cute shoes, etc. (Note to self - am not wearing 1950s underwear in search of "the look.") I think I can blame Am for showing off her pins last night. She has good legs, good lot of muscle on them and curvy, not like these "models" with their stick thin things that look like twigs. I have nice curvy legs too - my mother's legs - heck, she's dead she doesn't need them! So why do I hide them? Also a couple of the girls showed up to craft night wearing their corsets. E's was especially impressive as she already has a goodly big front porch and my goodness in that corset! I found it a little confronting actually. Big boosages have that effect on me - they scare me. I do not have a big boosage, and remain thankful for small mercies (so to speak)....

G'day all! What is this mad obsession with lace? Knitted lace or lace knitting depending on which version you do (one involves lace stitches every row, the other doesn't. Eunny explains all - do I really need to link Eunny's blog?). Why am I in a lace yarn swap? Why am I spinning 20-30g batches of my new fleeces up in search of the right fleece to spin up nice and fine? Polwarth, merino (the silver spotty fleece) and hmm, what is the brown one - a merino/corrie cross, the scurfy, disappointing fleece. They weren't fine enough. Then came this: an almost black corriedale fleece from Andyle. Heavenly! Nice and long, spins up dreamily.... (Gosh I am white! Yes I am white but I see so many black people and Asians around here that I sometimes sorta forget that I pretty much glow in the dark. My hair isn't really that white though - it caught the sun a beauty) Plus one lot of yarn is still relaxing on the bobbin. (Ah, a little update about the guild and volunteering ...

G'day all! Last week I got out some pretty coloured merino and silk, and merino and played with it and some bubble wrap and hot soapy water. Yep, my first bit of felting. Deliberate felting that is ;-) We've all fulled stuff - one of my favourite pairs of socks got washed by DH the other week. The socks are tighter than they used to be. (Most of our washes, like 99.9% of them are done in cold water. The other 0.01% are in hot water cos after chucking all over the place, a certain pussy cat then went and messed in the dirty clothes pile....*sigh*) You wanna see Yet Another Sock? This one is Widdershins in a discontinued Patonyle colour (rather pretty in burgundy tweed), done on 2.5mm needles. Be warned this sock is tight! I ended up increasing in the shin/cuff (on each side of the cables it goes from one purl to two) cos it really was not particularly comfortable. The 2.5mm needles are 0.5mm up from what the pattern says. I do have a wideish foot but I would not say m...