Yarnivorous

G'day all! DH is off at a conference in Winnipeg and this mouse has been playing! On Monday night I rode across town to the local SnB. Had a lovely time chatting to people, including Kristi and Deb Robson . Heh. Deb recognised me but I didn't recognise her! How embarrassing. LOL and another SnBer, Amanda, recognised me too. That is sorta odd. I am really somewhat of a nobody in the blogging world. My knitting output is sporadic and the technical level of it tends to be low mainly cos I knit to have something in my hands rather than to have to think constantly. That is probably why my progress on the mystery stole has been so slow - I have to think about every single line, so it needs some concentration. Repetitive patterns are good - I stop having to think about them all the time. I'll have something with a repetitive pattern finished soon for your enjoyment. Yesterday I washed a heap of fleece (but it was less than half of the fleece! Ack! But I've taken ...

G'day all! I proudly give you, The Husbandly Sweater! Started 18th August. Finished 26th August (at 11:25pm!) (unless you insist on it being washed and blocked) Yarn - two strands of DK held together (hence the dithering in the intermediate areas). Yarn was bought at the Sandown Scroatfight (Melbourne, Oz) for 99c a ball. I think I used 8 50g/92m balls of each colour. Pattern: the top down raglan calculator found here . This is a great calculator but it does not generate a fitted sweater (I made a close-fitted top a couple of years ago and had to fiddle the numbers quite a bit). For DH, I needed to cast on more stitches for the back and fewer for the front - he is a computer geek and has pretty poor posture. But I didn't. He is happy with the result and it looks pretty good on him, a bit baggy around the chest front but overall I am quite pleased with this. I knitted it in just over a week, which shows how fast I can knit if I want/need to. Is this my first proper FO fo...

G'day all! I got my extra-special random number generator to spew out a lucky number for the comments, and it said 20968! Hmm, methinks I needed a number between 1 and 42, or the number of comments eligible for entry into the contest.... Heck, if I get 20968 real readers (not just google, bloglines and other search engines finding my blog) in a year, I reckon I am going really well! So we tried again, and the lucky winner is Theresa , of Knitting Under Way! Theresa, come on down and claim your very purple sock yarn! I've had lots of fun reading your comments, and goshdarnit a couple of you decided you should blog in part because of me! I am visiting all of your blogs slowly, slowly because... I almost have an FO! A whole big mansize sweater, started either Friday or Saturday week ago! I've been knitting like a maniac for days and days and days, and boy am I over this sweater! I might even have it finished before DH's birthday is over! But I have to finish the neck...

G'day all! I had a lovely time chatting at a LYS, my favourite LYS, today. It just has a nice feel and I could hang out there quite happily. They asked me twice if I was going to come along to their knit night so I guess I will, especially since DH is away next week and I am on my lonesome! They won't know what has hit them cos I'll just blather non-stop. I won't have had anyone to talk to for a day and a half, so I'll be ready to talk the hind leg off a donkey. The aim of my trip to the LYS was actually to get a new set of circs. I was tired of the ones I had to knit DH's jumper. I had been knitting it on Denises with a loooooong cable but they grabbed the wool (two strands of DK) and hung onto it like terriers. I bought a set of bamboo circs (a whole $8.80 plus tax) to help knit DH's jumper with. Ahhhh, bamboo, how I do love thee! Now the jumper just glides around and around and around with hardly any effort, and the yarn has gone from feeling lik...

G'day all! Today was a very interesting day. It has been stinking hot here recently, like well into the 30s/90s. Today it reached maybe 22/70 something. It is now about 15C! Golly, how cold is that! We have not had temps like that for ages, even overnight! I had to put on long pants for only the third time since we got here exactly two months ago! So today I decided to go out and look for a mobile phone. Americans call them cell phones. We can only get a prepaid plan cos we don't have a social security number nor a credit rating. I rode off to the other end of town ignoring the little spots of rain that were falling on me. What I couldn't see was the big black clouds looming behind me. I trawled around, found Verizon. They seemed to have decent phones and plans (until I discovered that calling Oz would cost $1.49 a minute, which seems steep). I went to Home Depot and bought compact fluoros for our new lamps (and discovered that one of the lamps doesn't work p...

G'day all! Holy cow, it is my third blogiversary ! Wow, time flies when you are having fun :-) And boy has the blogosphere changed since I started blogging - there are so many people to meet out there these days. This means it is time for a competition! Leave a comment telling me about why you started blogging (and your blog and ravelry names if I don't already know you) by midnight on the 24th of August (wherever you live) and I'll put you in the draw for something nice :-) How about some self-patterning sock yarn in purple, burgundy and a hint of olive? (I dyed it myself :-) There's enough for a plainish pair of socks for up to size 11 feet. It looks something between these two samples - these colours are really hard to capture accurately. Or Aussies can choose 100g of yarn from my Yarnivorous yarns website . Yep those yarns are still for sale and I have to put some more up now that I have found the pics I took over two months ago. Hooray for finding pics! S...

G'day all! Well I am so obviously not a organised freak of nature unlike so many on Ravelry. I am one of those who hates doing audits of stuff and knowing exactly what is there. I guess I am just not detail oriented. eg I am trying to add bits of my stash onto Ravelry. This means having photos and knowing what the name of the yarn is and having all sorts of details about it that I have never bothered spreadsheeting. I just like having the yarn, not having all its details at my finger tips. I guess Ravelry will change that. As for my various handspun yarns, well, umm, I don't have details of that either. "It's wool and about DK weight and about 200m long." I will get a set of scales eventually so I can get weights but that hasn't happened yet. Plus there is all the stash back 'ome - I only brought a little of it with me (ok, about 10 kilos of yarn, not including fleece). I do have a list, but it is of the form "10 balls green wool, 2 balls yi...

G'day all! I have cast on for a New Project. Soon you will see pictures. It involves raglan sleeves, top down knitting and four colours. You may or may not be amazed. Anyway, help me Obi-Wan Kenobi! I fear I will soon fall prey to the dangerous, treacherous pleasures of KnitPicks. How will I avoid such a fell place? Plus I want to go to Rhinebeck and need to book stuff. Any suggestions of how to get there from Colorado (flying, obviously but what airport? Rental car needed?) where to stay? Anyone else going? Plus I have been looking at this and feel a strange attraction in the Force. Can I resist the lure? Why do I want to make one anyway? 'Specially out of cotton? Hmmmm.... anon! anon!

G'day all! Lookie what arrived the other day! A prezzie for me :-) One of my good English buddies promised me a certain sort of yarn . But I got more than that! Thanks, Dreamcatcher ! Of course you want close ups of the yarn. Here you go! Lovely, eh? The one with white in it is from the Yarn Yard and the pink/blue/mauve one is Posh Emily in Jolly. Oh boy, I just can't wait to find a good project for these - any suggestions? Plus I bought a little something from Fearless Fibers : Getting accurate representations of these purply colours is almost impossible. That one is called Midnight Passion and oh boy is it a luscious 4 ounces/550 yards of purply goodness! (BTW, for any of my Aussie mates, if you want something off one of these etsy places or some place on the web that only ships within the USA, you know who to ask! You can use my address and pay me back the postage to Oz via paypal. Email me if you want my address.) You wanna see some recent knitting? Well I am onl...

G'day all! My invite to Ravelry came in! I'm not exactly set up yet though, but my username is (surprise!) Yarnivorous. Will I ever blog again? Will I fall into the time-sucking pit that is ravelry? We spent a lovely day in the Rockies wandering around, going places that we are unlikely to go again, going other places we will definitely go again. We left at about 9:30 and got home at 9:30 and am I knackered now! Someone down the road from us is using a ?circular saw? at 10:50 at night. They are cutting metal or grinding it. Hmm. I guess we will get more and more "interesting" neighbours now that college (uni) and the schools are about to start again. Bed calls! Soon more pics, including a couple of lovely somethings that arrived in the mailbox recently and my special specialness from the op shop! Oo err. anon!

G'day all! I have a feeling I've had better days - Nathan's cold transferred itself to my sinuses overnight (I have this picture of cold goober virions all carrying pillows and sleeping bags marching out DH's nose, across the pillows and up my nose). Nooooooo! I've been so good to them recently and they go and get all snotty on me, literally. It is really annoying cos we have hired a car for the weekend and the altitude changes, well, it is like going up in a plane. No fun! Plus tonight my lovely kitchen knife decided that cutting up cauliflower was not fulfilling enough and neatly skewered the pad of my right index finger! It extracted its tithe of blood I can say! NOOOOOO! Not my main drafting finger! Not my main mouse finger! Not the finger that deals with 7 or so keys on the keyboard. Not the finger that does the yarn throwing! Not the finger that steadies the knife I use at dinner time! It does throb a bit. Nice clean wound all taped up now with a b...

G'day all! I've been a busy little (big) bee recently. Until today that is. Today things are stopping a bit due to DH's generosity with the cold he picked up (though I did wash some fleece, do two loads of washing, start hemming some material to cover our disgusting old but free desk with, finish ripping a sweater, start tidying up some in earnest... umm other stuff too....) So here's something I made up to go in the Lambspun teddy bear auction later this year. He is all knitted with that double knitting technique (knit one, yarn in front, slip as if to purl, yarn in back, knit one, etc etc), except for the head. And the gut where there are two knits for each slip on the front only. Yep, if they were only going to supply me with green and gold yarn (being Australian colours - green for the gums and yellow for the wattle), my bear had to have a beer gut. It isn't part of the pattern but teddies are supposed to be well rounded *unlike one of the poor skinny thing...

G'day all! Our Stuff arrived today! Hooray I have a ballwinder and skeinholder and lazy kate again! I'm totally underwhelmed by the packing of our Stuff. It was all just dumped into boxes, including the loose mugs/cups and crockery. Crikey! I sorta assumed that fragile stuff would be packed nicely but nope, it was packed exactly as we had put it into boxes and bags to make it easily moveable from our place to Nathan's parents. Plus they put a bag of books on top of Nathan's Akubra hat. It now looks like an elephant sat on it. Amazingly, everything seems to be in the requisite number of pieces, if occasionally a little flattened. On a different note, DH is going to be away for the last week(days) of August. Anyone local want to help entertain me? I'm going to be here on my lonesome with only a bike as my means of conveying myself places. I hear there is an SnB on Monday evenings, a Lambspun thing on Tuesday evenings, anything else? Knitting and spinning f...

G'day all! Feeling a bit better today. Not perfect mind but better. I was having a think about why I crave certain things when I have a gut wobble. Potassium I reckon is the key. I want foods with potassium in them, so I want orange juice and chippies (preferably oven fries but crisps will do in a pinch). Now everything I've read says that I should not have anything fatty or sugary, yet what do I head straight for? Fatty or sugary. Interesting, isn't it. So I thought I should show you a few of the things I've been up to recently in the way of knitting and spinning. Washcloths. Three out of the five I've made (of the other two, one is in hard use in the bathroom, another is wandering in a pile of clean washing somewhere and will reappear when the moon is in the right sign, etc, etc). I am really enjoying making these. They are quick and easy and quite brainless. Don't ask me which pattern I am using - I just looked at some pics of other peoples' was...