Weclome to my new look

G'day all!

Yesterday I got sick of my old blogger template and went looking for a new one. Hope you like the new feel - it looks a lot more swish to me! I think all the stuff in the sidebar should work. I played around with it after Blogger decided there "was no data in the document" which was a big fat lie of course....

So, Monday I got a little something in the mail.

I joined the Hipknits sock club a while back when I had money. The first skein, from August, is sitting on my desk looking at me saying "print out my pattern and make me." But I am resisting its siren call.

No, here is the second skein:

Can anyone guess what is wrong with it from my POV? Some people might remember that I do NOT do black and white. I even detest using white pegs on black undies when I hang the washing out! Black and white are the colours of the Old Enemy in the footy. I cannot knit with black and white yarn. Simply cannot!

The skein had an accident in the dyepot.

I totally love the colours now - there is a lot more mysterious mulberry than this pic shows, but it has paler areas too and I reckon the knitted up socks will be fab! (is it bad that I overdyed someone else's cunning sock yarn?) It is making me think I should dye then overdye some of the socks to make really interesting patterns. It might help with the pooling problem too.

Speaking of pooling, I dyed up some bright yarn last week and decided to make socks out of it. This is a heavyish sportweight yarn (we call it five ply) that needs 3mm needles for socks.

See the pooling? That is because I didn't really intend to use this yarn for socks - it was meant to be sold but I decided I liked it too much to not be able to use it. I do have two skeins that have more intense colours in them if anyone is interested.

Plus when I went to the dyepot yesterday, I found this lonely skein that I had forgotten all about, languishing in its ball (twil be interesting to see how it knits up being dyed in the ball not a skein).


Remember my cunning plans to put a different pattern in the middle of the scarf exchange scarf? Wasn't ever going to happen the way I envisioned it, mainly cos the new yarn needs a needle about 1mm smaller to make the pattern look nice. The new yarn is a commercial yarn cos my handspun was not coming up the way I wanted it to (of course). It was all fluffy and wild. Grrr. So I am doing the midwest moonlight pattern all the way along and will overdye the whole thing to make it all consistent, if textured. I haven't done anything on this since Sunday - been too busy with this report.


Spring is definately sprung here, even though we've gone back to being dry dry dry again. On sunday the forecast said we would have showers for most of the week. Instead we've had no rain since Sunday.

The apples are all in bloom:


An icelandic poppy (as we call them) couldn't figure out whether to be pale pink or strident salmon, so it chose both. I love sports!


I have to find out what this bulb is - it is a very pretty colour but is not a plant I am at all familiar with (which surprises me cos I thought after 30-odd years gardening and learning about plants I'd at least be able to say more than "It's probably south african and a bulb").


See this horrid stuff?

Photinia robusta. Gods I hate it! I am allergic to the flowers. They give me asthma. Nathan has problems with them too. There are two large shrubs in our back yard flowering away merrily. They were meant to be cut down before they got this far but best laid plans and all that. I can't wield the borrowed chain saw - I don't have the grip strength. Anyway because of them I now have a ventolin inhaler. Only problem is if I take a dose of it, I overdose a bit and get shakey. LOL Me me me.... Anyway, if I survive this year's flowering, it means we have most of a year to get rid of the things. Horrid horrid plants.

Heh. The streetsweeper just went past. When I was a child the things terrified me. They certainly terrify Nutmeg - she runs around the house tyring to find a place to hide but "THERE IS NO HIDING FROM THE STREETSWEEPER! ARGH! Run! Hide! Its horrid whining has found me!" She runs around in circles until it rumbles away. Poor thing.

OK, today is the last day before we submit the report. I had two brainwaves overnight for getting this thing finished - two things that really need to be said. Now I have to discuss them with Nathan. I'll be glad to get it out of the way, and not just cos we will get paid for it....

anon!