Yarnivorous

G'day all! What a busy week! I've hardly had time to knit or spin - the best times have been whilst reading email, believe it or not, and that is main cos our connection here is kinda flakey and sometimes takes a while to load a page (especially since my yahoo account is based on an English server, not a yankee one). So far, I've been to Lambspun and My Sister Knits. I would show off pics of my first purchases but for whatever reason I have not taken any yet! (Probably because I am unsure about downloading pics onto a borrowed laptop.) I would show pics of knitting too but again, I've not even thought about taking photos! I have been taking pics of sunsets thought. I fear my next purchase is going to be some Sugar N Cream to make a dishcloth with - we had a dishrag here but suddenly it has disappeared and we only have a tea towel. The tea towel is for drying dishes (and hands), not for wiping surfaces and I am danged if I am using paper towel to wipe benches with....

G'day all! I accidentally drove into a VW dealership's back car lot today. I sorta got lost looking for a place to turn around in. Yep, I am out on the road, a hazard to myself and everyone else. I don't know the rules, y'see, but that doesn't stop what appears to be half the population of Fort Collins from getting out on the roads themselves. I have the additional handicaps of not being familiar with the area AND not being used to this left hand drive bizzo (though I am getting better and rarely now flip on the wipers instead of the indicators, or as some people use them, confirmators). I am mighty glad that the brake pedal and the accelerator (gas pedal) are in the same arrangement as at home, otherwise I would've pranged the monster a gazillion times over so far. My first port of call was, of course, a yarn shop ! But alas they are closed on Mondays. Quite frankly I am not real sure of what day it is at the moment, nor the time so I was not really sure...

G'day from Fort Collins! After 28 or so hours of travel, we are in Fort Collins. It is warm and sunny. I have to show off my poor bruised, white (and slightly hairy) leggies (someone has a tendency to walk into boxes and furniture that "were not there a minute ago"). We have a car for a couple of days (medium sized 4wd, teensy sized SUV by American standards - I saw the enormous GMC things otuside the grog shop yesterday!), a whole lotta sleep to catch up on and a case of jetlag to get over. (room 121 at the Marriott residence inn for those who need to know - they have free internet access so I can read email and blog!) Let the adventure begin! anon!

G'day all! Happy solstice! I doubt I'll be blogging until we get set up in the USA, or at least until I find a net cafe or something. We have the last minute panics happening - one of our house sitters moves in tomorrow, we have not cleaned out his room yet, my computer probably gets unplugged tomorrow and returned to its rightful owner, we have not cleaned out the house, only half the rooms are half cleaned.... I have not sent off all the paperwork that needs to be sent off or fixed all that sort of thing up yet, nor sent some mail to the USA that will keep me occupied for a while... nor gotten all our tax stuff together (our tax year ends in 9 days). Some people are wondering what is happening with my yarn site. Welll, amongst the gazillion things I have to do tomorrow is take pictures of all the yarn that is not up on the website. I have labelled it all, plus some lovely tops I dyed, and it is all going to a friend to mail out to the lucky lucky buyer. (Thank you Peeved...

G'day all! Awooga, awooga! Visas are here! This means we fly out on Saturday - we have flights booked. PANIC! I'm a teapot! Yes the house is in a much better state but we have not done all the legal stuff yet. Eeek! anon!

Early morning all! Why am I awake at 2am worrying?* Why am I worrying about handing over my car to his new owner? Why am I worrying about me not having an income? Why am I worrying about having our house sitters in? Is it because we made various promises with the idea that we were leaving last week and now the possibility of staying here for an extra three months is rearing its ugly head? Our house sitters need a new place to live ASAP - their current landlord is making things very difficult for them. We effectively said they could live here from last weekend. Umm, how? There isn't room for us all! I've effectively sold my car. Soon I will be carless, which will be blasted inconvenient. I'll just have to get used to catching PT and riding my bike to the shops that I can get my GF food at. I have promised various people various items (in particular one person). I hate breaking promises or assurances. That is probably what is fussing me most. Other things are fussing ...

G'day all! Waaaay back in the mists of time, I did picture knitting as we called it back then. I were a young un then. I was enthusiastic and desperate to avoid doing cables again (I did them on my first jumper). Picture knitting was all the rage and I wanted to be trendy. Ta-dum! Fabulous, no? I was going out with a dark-haired guy at the time, though he was shorter than me, and I thought it was a great jumper! I believe I actually knitted it in the colours specified (let's, ahem, face it, I only had a couple of colours I could reasonably use for the faces) and have the feeling I got bored with the black things on the sleeves and left them off one of the sleeves altogether. Some of it was done with a gazillion little bobbins of wool, some was done by duplicate stitch. Anything that was only one row or column thick was done duplicate wise. You can see the ends woven through the knitting. Crufty, eh? I like the way the grey waves on the back look vaguely like the Sydney Op...

G'day all! Way back in the dim dark ages when I last had the knitting bug in a big way, I made jumpers. (Not sweaters - sweaters are things like sloppy joes and windcheaters and stuff that you sweat in not that we particularly use the term sweater anyway - jumpers are for looking nice and keeping warm in. Don't ask me why they are jumpers - maybe because you were active in the newly fashionable knitwear of the late 19th/early 20th centuries and you could do things like jumping in them at a time when everyone wore stays and constrictive clothing.) I found my box of jumpers that I can't throw out, but conversely don't want to wear any more. Here's fair isle one: It has *beautiful* full sleeves that gather into the cuff and a turtle neck, as you did in the 80s. It was quite warm I seem to remember. The colours are very 80s too, but then again that is when I knitted it. I probably knitted it with an old standard here - Paton's Totem, though I may have used a pl...

G'day all! Estes Park fibre festival has slipped beyond my reach. I won't get to meet Chris or Margene or any of the knitbloggers who will be there or catch up with ones I've met (Kristi). Sniffle. But on the bright side we have a few more days with the cats and more time to tidy up the yard and plant stuff and offload stuff onto friends. OK, why naive? Cos I trusted the US govt to deliver when it said it would. The guy at the "interview" said it would take two days to issue the visa. With a stupid public holiday (normally I *love* public holidays but when you are unemployed every day is a public holiday) delaying things by a day, I thought the visas would be here by Wednesday - after all our interview was on last Thursday. They told a guy who was flying out this Saturday that his visa would be issued by then. Alas, I should never trust a government (department) that says something will be issued quickly. Most Australian government departments say it will t...

G'day all! We are waiting for the post to arrive. He normally comes between now and midday. Waiting waiting waiting.... (If the post arrives with visas, I guess we are all GO GO GO! But if it doesn't we have to delay our flights some. V.annoying but we'll have more time to get everything done here.) anon! edit 16:56 13 June 2007: No mail, well nothing good, only another bill :-( No special delivery late this arvo either. Sniffle. There goes my chance to get to Estes Park this year for the fibre festival.... we were "promised" the visas in two days (plus one day for delivery), probably deliver in 2 years.... edit 21:07 Not only are we not going to be in the USA this weekend, but I've lost my new mastercard, the one that is replacing my perfectly good visa card. Plus I've lost the pin. Plus I hadn't signed it yet.... Joy all round. I think my head is going to explode from worrying about it. Someone put it in a safe place but can't remembe...

G'day all! Today I went and did a whole lot of things that were OUTSIDE the house! There is still a world out there! My car now has a roadworthy certificate - Gibbering will be happy to hear that. I have 30 fewer skeins of saleable handspun yarn (plus the ones that are ok but not noice that I put in the building fund box). (I have one 25g bag of Black Diamond to play with. Ooops.) I have half a carful-less junk that the Brotherhood can sell through their op shops. (I bought 6 small knitting pamphlets. Oops.) I have NEW glasses! Hooray for new glasses! They feel very different to the old ones, including the way my vision bends at the edges, plus they have little side thingies that I can see. They are pretty good though I reckon and are a good colour on me. (Haven't I got one helluva squint? Plus I have pretty bad bags under my eyes - 24/7 stress isn't good for me!) My private health insurance (Aussies have publicly funded health care which we whinge and moan about ...

G'day all! You know that picture "The Scream"? Well that is me. I have parcelled and boxed up most of my yarn and fleece, then what do I find? A secret cache by the couch. ARRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!! I am cleaning stuff out. I have taken about a thousand balls of yarn to the charity bin, and tomorrow I head for the op shop with a heap more stuff cos we filled the bin up. Oops. Hope the old ducks enjoy knitting cos they have enough yarn now..... I have nearly got the fibre room cleaned out but it still looks a mess cos it has a huge drift of empty boxes in the corner and a lot of bags hanging around for "just in case>" I've kept waaaay too much stuff for just in case." I blame my mother in particular for the "waste not, want not" outlook on life that people who grew up in the Depression and WWII have. It is a very good outlook but honestly we have so much access to consumer goods now that it is hard to not fall into the trap of waste not, w...

G'day all, again! This offer is only available to Aussies in Australia. Sorry, sending any of this O/S is just too complicated (and expensive). I am reducing my sock yarn stash. Yes, you hear me aright! I am reducing my sock yarn stash for Australians only with yarn that is hard to get here. I figure soon I can go and roll in new to me sock yarns. Given that I have no money to buy it, I'll just have to pull it off the shelves at the LYSs and roll in it there.... I have ONE skein of Vesper self-striping "Fire in the Sky," with yellow, orange and reddy pink stripes. It is a bit oversaturated in the picture at the bottom of this post. $25 to the first bidder. (I think I swapped this yarn for something for Kellie so I think it is ok to sell it) I have ONE skein of Mountain Colours Bearfoot in Huckleberry, bought in March this year. You can see a picture of it here , along with the TWO skeins of Spruce Nature's Palette in the same photo which I am also sellin...

G'day all! What a good weekend so far! Nathan went ballistic in the fibre room yesterday and cleared out all the junk that I had been sorting from the good stuff. Suddenly there was CARPET! Goodness me! There is hope that we will get stuff sorted out in time - we only have four days now! EEEEK! We had a housecooling yesterday so peoples started dropping in and chatting from about 2:30 until 10ish. We got to catch up with a number of people we haven't seen for a hwile, so that was good. (OK I told my friends, Nathan didn't tell his so it was my old social group that showed up). It was quite excellent. Why do I need a doctor? (Because I've had a muscle spasm in my side for over a day now and it is only just starting to ease up? Feels like a stitch. Makes it hard to breath. It is definately muscular cos if I rub the bad bits it eases a lot. No, it will go away eventually. It is just my body objecting to something I've done - I am overly flexible and things...

G'day all! In less than a week I expect we will be in Colorado. FREAK ME OUT! But we don't have the visas yet. We may not get visas. This means we don't go. But we most likely will get visas. But it is possible that we won't. They have our passports and the rest of our entry documents too. Makes it very difficult. Today we are having a little house cooling. I have so much to clear out of the loungeroom, but we have the study almost clear now. The study suddenly seems spacious, now that the stereo with its huge speakers, the two sets of hammerlock shelves, the lounge chair and most of all the JUNK have been moved out. It is now our swap space and the space where we can sort out what we really want to take with us. Assuming we get the visas. I have the feeling that I will have to dump some of my fleece with friends and family, and when they come to visit they can bring along some of it with them, like a couple of largeish ziplock bags or something. Posting stuf...

G'day all! Ask me about the visa process some other day. Gawdsakes, what a waste of time (and nervous energy!). Dunno if they will be issued. Tickets are booked for NEXT FRIDAY! OHMIGAWD! I'll just flip out a bit for a while, ok? Not ready to go yet. May never be ready to go though. I'll have to do lots of Nutmeg belly rubs cos I'll miss that pudding.... Hope the cats don't miss us too much! anon!

G'day all! Ah still fun and games here. We are moving stuff out of the house and into the garage and also to Nathan's parents' place (someone asked why not to my parents' place. Umm, well they don't have one except for this little plot of dirt out in the Lilydale Memorial Park under a rose.... not much storage space there! But it does have a nice view of the Dandenongs ). Still no camera progress. Quite annoying cos I keep forgetting to get Nathan to download pics. As I clean out more and more stuff, I keep making discoveries. Mostly they are nasty discoveries, like I have a LOT of stuff that I really don't want, I have a LOT of stuff I do want, and I just in general have a LOT of stuff. I really don't know what do to with some of the yarn I have (and I still have to fix up the cottons with three people!). Most of the pure wool went to the Uniting Care bin yesterday, just before I was asked about it. Mostly it is single balls of yarn and leftovers f...

G'day again all! Our house sitter was around again today helping out with stuff. Tonight he asked "So is it all going to be ready by the 8th?" Umm, no. No it isn't. The 8th is Friday. THIS Friday. The 8th is the day after we do the visa interview. We won't even know fer shure that we are going until then at the earliest. List of things to do this week: a) finish the bathroom (entails a sub list: ring the company to find out why the silicon is still sticky after EIGHT days measure up the next tiling sheet twice, cut it to size, check it, check it again, drill out holes for the plumbing fixtures, check again and glue onto wall. Sounds easy but it ain't. paint the waterproofing membrane around the bath and wait at least one day for it to cure. measure up the next tiling sheet, check it again, cut it, drill out holes for the plumbing, check again and glue onto wall fix up plasterwork behind vanity and along wall (possible job for house sitter's dad who c...

Fire whips though bondage parlour A misplaced candle is believed to have started a fire that caused about $100,000 damage to a bondage and discipline parlour in inner Melbourne. Metropolitan Fire Brigade crews were called to The Correction Centre in St David Street, Fitzroy, just after 10.15pm and contained the fire to a room on the second floor of the two-storey building. An MFB spokesman said 18 firefighters "were tied up for some time but disciplined and controlled firefighting contained the blaze to one room on the second floor" excerpted from The Age 23 May 2007 (Did the Headline writers, editors and fire brigade spokeman have a fun time with that one!) (BTW, we now have a whole lot more paperwork to fill out, including some to get plane tickets booked and a credit union account. yay!)

G'day all! I am packign up some yarn to bring with me. Do you think I have a problem if I want to bring more yarn and more fleece than bedding, clothes, kitchenwares, books (my knitting and spinning books of course!), etc, etc? I have several jumpersworth of yarn (one for nathan, about 5 for me), a HUGE bag of sock yarn, like I mean about 40 pairs of socksworth, random yarn that I love but doesn't have a plant for it (about 4 kilos of that!) and yarn that I can't bear to leave behind. Hoo-ston, we have a yarn addict! Then there is the fleece. I've been poking around online and whilst the US has lots and lots of different fleecey sheep, it doesn't have the fleece *I* have, the fleece I picked out in person, the fleece that called to me, singing my name, spin me spin me.... One thing that is nice about squishing my yarn into vac packs - I was reminded today as I bought a MOST be-yoo-tiful fleece from Wendy Dennis (I wish you could see it - staple of 5', silvery/...

G'day all! We now know how much stuff we can take with us. 2.1 cu m, or 75 cu feet. When we worked out how much that is, the best way to describe it is imagine a large refrigerator. yep. That is how much can come with us apart from whatever we have in our luggage on the plane. Crappity crap crap crap! I am going to have to put a lot more stuff in storage than I imagined. Hopefully Nathan's parents can take stuff like our bed - we can't take that! I have to contact various peoples about yarn - I am terribly behind at present but at least I know how much I can take (and have a good idea of what I can't take with me too!). Then we have the expensive part at the other end - finding a place to live with no references, setting up home again - we'll have to buy all our electrical appliances, a bed, furniture (though I am thinking renting furniture might be a good idea), more bedding/linen. I'll take our crockery/cutlery with us I think to save a little money and ...