Acquisitive me

G'day all!

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I'm going to put all the birthday wishes comments into a hat and pull one out, then send that person something nice. Plus I have to announce the winner of the "what is it" competition. These things require organisation and after trying to pull together a birthday gathering I have very little organisation skill left in me.



I had a lovely day - I drove up to Bulleen Art and Garden, which is my favourite nursery at present, maybe even more favourite than Kuranga. I bought some stuff from them, mostly stuff from their sad plants area - I love bargains and sad plants are excellent cos I can bring them back to life if they have any kick left in them. Plus I got a big bag of quite dry sheep manure cos it is supposed to be good for the garden. And a mushroom box so we can grow our own mushrooms. Then I found a new nursery that had 20% off plants and bought Nathan a special native plant and me a special native plant and then discovered one of my favourite (ok, my favourite plants number in the hundreds as far as I can tell) native plants at 50c a pop, so I bought a few of those to bring home. I got the scratch in the roof of the car polished out and dyed some tops and yarn. Nathan didn't do dishes for me and didn't cook dinner for me or anything though. We went out to a place called The Palms where a group of friends gathers once a month, Nathan had dinenr and I chucked a spaz cos I realised I didn't have enough time to go shopping. Nathan ate with friends whilst I went and did the shopping for the picnic.

So you want to know what goodies I got, and whether the Socks That Rock Club is worthwhile. Let's start with the STR club.

What do you want out of the club?

• Do you want to get yarn that noone else has got, or at least has not been released to the public?
  
• Do you want to knit up patterns that are at the very least tangy and possibly piquant if we use the Knitty scale of difficulty?
  
• Do you want to be a member of a (relatively) exclusive club and gloat over all the poor souls who could not afford to join?
  
• Do you mind paying roughly AUD50 per skein of yarn and pattern?
  

If the answer to any/all of these is yes then you might want to consider joining the club. It is not cheap. Nosirree it ain't hceap. Have I gotten value out of it? Well I do have some nifty patterns and I have learned a bit more about dyeing yarn and what goes on behind the scenes of Blue Moon Fibre Arts but I have not really reaped all the benefits I could. Heck, out of the hmm four? skeins of yarn I have received so far I have only knitted ONE sock! Not even a pair of socks!

So there is your food for thought.



Now I know that various people want to know what I got for my birthday.

My Brit friend E sent me a box of my *favourite* biscuits (which might not be my favourites if I could get them here cos scarcity makes something even nicer when you do get it) and a cute pussy cat salt and pepper shaker set.

Believe it or not until now we didn't have a salt and pepper shaker... Customs opened the parcel and can I just say they did a VERY poor job of wrapping the gifts back up again.

Dreamcatcher was very tricksy. See the label on the parcel?


So I open it and find two packages, one with some yarn (it was squishy - does anyone else try to figure out what their presents are?) and something that feels like a book, an oddly shaped book. All thought of accessories flies out of my head. A book. A video? A DVD in an odd package?


Isn't the yarn pretty? Aqua - one of my favourite colours. Plus it is a cashmere blend - the knitting world has gone nuts about cashmere. I have a bag of cashmere fluff but it is so short stapled I've never been game to try spinning it. Behind the aqua cashmere is what I thought must be a book or something, having forgotten the customs label all together.

So here's me opening the other present. Good lord!



Lookie, it's for real! I have me some Denises! (Does anyone else in Oz watch Spicks and Specks? Do you remember Denise Scott telling Denise Drysdale "You can do it! You're a Denise!" Since then I've often exhorted something "You can do it! You're a Denise!" even if it isn't a Denise. Now I have a set of Denises, so I must be able to do anything with a whole set of them! (except knit socks, LOL))

Thank you, Dreamcatcher!

I guess this obviates me wanting to buy some Knitpicks Options. Sorta. A bit. But I still want to get online and order me some and also some of the dye your own sock wool and stuff, but they don't ship to Oz. And I don't have any money for that anyway cos I managed to track something down yesterday morning. Pics later.

A group of my friends (not ONE of whom turned up to the picnic yesterday) got together and bought me these.

Yep. I got me a set of egg cartons. Empty egg cartons.

Any guesses why?

I finished the first of the gradient dyed and black socks. You might be able to tell I didn't use the Caesar's Check pattern cos I found something tricker in the book.

Cool, huh? It is only when I looked at the pictures I took, not even at the sock itself, that I realised how the pattern really works. It is sorta like what I expected and sorta not.


Back later with more acquisitions and my lone socky gift.

anon!