Yarnivorous

G'day all! Gosh this waiting game gets peeving after a while! MiL's plane was supposed to touch down about 2:30 and it is now nearly 6pm. Hooray! They just arrived! (That was 3.5 hours ago) But I am getting plenty of knitting on a shop model done (and having spent 10 minutes looking for it online I discover that the Nashua Knits website does not have the "Natural Focus" book on it and noone on Ravelry has knitted this cardi, or at least they have not admitted to it. It is a very pretty cardi in Ecologie Cotton - it has both lace and "cables." When I've gotten a bit more done, you'll see it. :-) I've been putting more Yosemite pics on Flickr, for those that will. I've not tagged/etc them in the main but that will happen! (I'm natiel3 there.) Photos one day, honest! anon!

G'day all! I should have lots to show and tell today after a week MIA but you know what? Nada! I have pics of stuff but no time to edit them and show them off. I have been dyeing things and doing a little spinning and stuff but my MiL is arriving on Monday and I am in panic tidy/clean mode. Plus DH had a melt down and I am knitting a shop model plus had to do HOURS of swatches for a class I ran today (blocking. LOL. I know how to block but I am naughty and only block lace - the rest gets washed and that's good enough!). We bought an inflatable bed today along with a new keyboard for Nathan (did you know if someone is cranky enough, they can break a keyboard in half?). I found a bamboo scrubbing brush - I've been looking for a scrubbing brush that won't haunt generations to come or delight future archaeologists mining our rubbish dumps. So exciting, eh? LOL My little bike trailer was full with all the boxes plus another smaller fan cos the 20" fan is very n...

G'day again all! OK, I am ready to do battle with the Flickr beast. Can't believe that I didn't grok it before but well that is life! Here are the socks being coy, from the side: And from all sorts of angles including closeups! Sorry to those on dial-up.... The cast off will have to be blogged separately cos I knitted the second one at a knitting meetup and forgot to take pictures as I went. Doh! I'll have to re-create it for you. I'm told it is unewesual and diffrent and mebbe even noice! Details: Toe up version of the Kaibashira sock ( Notions , Ravelry ). I knitted it to the pattern, four less stitches on the sole and then increased sort of in pattern for the gusset. I did my now standard variant on Cat Bordhi's heel-tecture, which is similar to my variant on the Beaudelaire heel created by Cookie A. I played around with the placement of the pattern around the heel shaping - I really wanted to have just one garter row on either side of it but alas my...

fo_kai_back Originally uploaded by natiel3 Oh dear - how tedious! Do I really have to blog one pic at a time using Flickr? Surely not! But the socks are pretty

G'day all! So you are still waiting for pics of Yosemite. Hopefully I can distract you with pics of The Most Beautiful Socks in the World! It is easy to tell when I am enamoured of a project. I take LOTS of pics of the finished item and then I foist them onto you! (That is assuming I can work out how to get Flickr pics here - should be easy but I am not grokking it cos I can't figure out how to get the right size pic here. Let's see if this works - I am used to writing my own html code to get pics up not having blogger do it for me) Well I get a link but no pic in the preview! What is with that? It looks ok except for the javascript (about which I have no clue whatsoever!). 'Scuse - I'll try posting instead and see what it says. Nope, that ain't working on my machine! Maybe I'll get rid of the javascript, see if that works now... Nope! How about I try writing the html myself, see if that works... but what a pain! Nope, that ain't working either. ...

G'day all! I am such a naughty blogger! It is Thursday and I haven't blogged since last week, before we went to Yosemite! Bet you are waiting for the pics too... I am a naughty slacker cos I will have to use Flickr as my image host from tomorrow onwards. This means working out how to link to it and seeing if the pics turn out nicely. ie I have a learning curve to go through. If I get enthused, I might even redo old blog posts so that I can get stuff off my old image host. (It keeps filling up - it is a shared resource and someone keeps finding a few spare kb and enthusiastically filling them with stuff. This means DH doesn't get his mail = cranky DH.) So without further ado, I give you Ainsley! Or at least her fleece. Ainsley is a corriedale ewe from Serenity Farms . She has had twins these last two springs. Her fleece is quite dark with grey hairs through it. It was finer last year but is more typically corrie this year. I've washed it all up and put it awa...

G'day all! I have a little traffic jam of pictures now, so I have to get a blog post or two out. I've been working on this sock pattern . I *heart* it. (Gosh I hate saying I *heart* something but in this case...) Here's the toe. At this point I fell in lerv with this sock. Embarrassing but true. It is such girly stuff, the colours, the pattern. Every now and then I remember that I love mermaid colours. The yarn is from Ellen's Halfpint Farm. BTW, the whole sock is done and the second one is begun but you have to wait to see it. I am as always doing the sock toe up, even though the pattern is top down. I have done a very unusual treatment at the top of the sock. It is waaaaay funky, but you have to wait to see it when I've finished the pair. I am being a bit slow on getting the second sock done as I am trying to make a heap of stitchmarkers to sell and getting a whole chunk of Blue Moon's Sheep 2 Shoe spun up (as is my current habit, I am doing it fine...

G'day all! I need to reduce the size of my stash. Last year I stocked up on sweaters at the thrift shop, thinking we would have a long, cold winter and that they would keep me occupied and in plenty of yarn. Well plenty of yarn is right, but since we've to San Jose I won't need a quarter of what I have. Also I've worked out that certain blends disagree with me, like those with lots of angora. They make me sneeze. So I am going to start getting rid of some of the recycled yarn I have. It is mostly wool/nylon/etc blend, silk/angora/nylon/wool and angora/nylon/wool. It may have KNOTS in it. It may need another wash and a little intimate time with a tin to help unkink it. It is cheap yarn but I usually don't knot short lengths together for spit splicing later on (unless it is cashmere and I am keeping the remaining cashmere!). If I haven't listed the approx length of the yarn, it is because I am lazy and don't want to count it all, or even a representa...

G'day all! So I am trawling the innernet looking for a pattern for a baby jumper. It just so happens that the yarnharlot today asked what is everyone's favourite baby sweater. How conweenient! So I am trawling through the links and looking stuff up on ravelry and ME WANT! (Ravelry link and pattern link). Stuff the baby I want one for ME! (OK, I'm a geek. And a nerd.) Speaking of which, what do you think makes a kid go off the rails? I was a pathetically nerdy kid with no self esteem yet I always wore the things I liked, not necessarily what was fashionable (actually, same deal these days) and always resisted peer pressure. Funny sort of lack of self-confidence, wouldn't you say? Just cos other people did stuff didn't mean I had to. Quite often, I'd push the other way instead and do the dorky things. I was overprotected and quite possibly spoilt. It never occurred to me to rebel. Did you ever rebel? Do you regret having rebelled or not rebelled? Od...

G'day all! Mesa got a parcel! Mmmm, Posh Yarn (Emily), a wrap for the evenings here (I'm told the sea breeze will work all summer and I am really hoping it does, otherwise it will be unbearably warm), a pretty candle and some stitch holders! (Maybe now I'll stop using my Denise set as stitch holders?). From the lovely Dreamcatcher . Gosh it is good to have friends :-) I just wish we had more moulah so I could send more parcels. But that is up to me at this stage - gotta find a job! I am also looking at selling stuff on Etsy or on my old yarn site, which hasn't been updated for a year now - I still have pics of yarn and fibre I dyed before I left Oz to put up but considering I split the boxes of yarn and tops between my friends, I can't find out who has what cos they don't know either.... I also got some fleece a couple of days ago - must download pics, assuming I haven't lost the camera cable again. I rode to a mall yesterday and discovered that a shoe...

G'day all! In the last month, I have knitted one pair of socks, two single socks and 1.01 pairs of socks. You've seen the pink socks but you didn't see these singletons. This panda silk sock nearly killed me. TOO MANY STITCHES and rounds. OK it is the holy blessed sock touched by the Yarnharlot herself but this sock is going to wait for a LOOOONG time before it gets any form of mate. I hated every stitch after the first 50 rounds. At least it is a summerweight sock so I got to make it short. This second sock of a "pair" of maizy socks was an experiment. I set up a nice pattern on the first sock waaaaay back in ?January? and it came out all lacy . This sock I took up to Tahoe and got bored with trying to reinvent the pattern without having the other sock with me, so I did whatever I felt like. It ended up with a lot of holes in the leg from double yarn overs and k&p into the yarnover on the next round. In other news, in 20 days my MiL and AiL will be her...

G'day all! I got this from mrspao . Blame her ;-) 1. We love the dresses, Lynne! , 2. That's a BIG Noise from a Lil lamb..:O))) , 3. Old Barn on Snuggs Road in Norwood, NC , 4. Little Girl in Turquoise Sea , 5. Puss in Boots and Gingy , 6. Apples Banana Smiley , 7. Ben Venue Gloaming , 8. Daring Bakers: January Challenge: Lemon Meringue Pie , 9. Tree Goddess , 10. Sign of Life II , 11. Multi-Dimensional night view , 12. IMG_3847 Here are the rules: a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. b. Using only the first page of results, pick an image. c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker. (You might also want to copy and paste the URLs to acknowledge the pics too!) The Questions: 1. What is your first name? 2. What is your favorite food? 3. What high school did you go to? 4. What is your favorite color? 5. Who is your celebrity crush? 6. Favorite drink? 7. Dream vacation? 8. Favorite dessert? 9. What you want to be whe...

G'day all! I discovered something recently. OK, I discovered lots of things - that is what life is all about! But I discovered something about my knitting. I learned to knit from my Mum. I presume she learned to knit from her Aunty Mae. I knit in what I thought was a typical "western" or English style. Apparently I don't. I throw the yarn but I never take my hand off the needle to do so. I hold the needle between thumb and middle+ring fingers of my right hand (hand over the top, not like a pencil) and I flick the yarn around the needle with my index finger. My pinkie provides the tensioning. I guess this is why continental knitting isn't that much quicker for me. It also explains why I can knit a jumper in a week even with baulky needles. I don't take my hand off the right hand needle. I just flick my way along a row. I don't need to watch my knitting when I do garter stitch, stocking stitch or ribbing or moss. Simple patterns I can feel my way ...

G'day all! I have been very slack getting pics of the Drops tshirt (81-6) for you. Indeed, I don't know if this one counts at all, but at least you can see it is wearable! (Scuse any colour problems - I cannot get it slightly right whilst using the laptop) (I didn't realise that I am that funny pink colour that kids use for skin tone. Well now I do know!) I'm playing dead - legs in the air, etc. I might even get better pics for you ;-) I have started editing the gazillions of pics from Tahoe (there's over 800 in the local album, never fear I won't be putting *that* many up but I do have about a hundred that I reckon are nifty. Be warned if you are on dial-up - don't look at Victorian, On the Move (my travels blog) :-) anon!

G'day all! So here we were, planning our trip to Colorado in a couple of weekends, working out how much it will cost and when the train runs and then we find out.... The train is NOT running through the Rockies when we want/have to go! It is being diverted around the Rockies and through southern Wyoming. DANG AND BLAST IT! The trip through the Rockies is apparently spectacular. Nathan google-earthed it last night and it goes through a lot of canyons, including canyons that cars don't access. We had been looking forward to this ever since it became obvious that we had to move to California. Amtrak says that the temporary route is also spectacular with wide vistas and access to places that are rarely seen from trains but we want to go through the Colorado Rockies. *pout* Mutter grumble. Looks like I am missing out on Estes Park AGAIN! Last year I missed it by a week after our visas took two weeks not two days to process. Plus we wanted to catch up with friends and see the...

G'day all! Still no knitting pics. Lots of knitting happening. I want a shopping trolley so's I don't have to ride to the shops every single time. I want something like this . But the US doesn't like the idea of walking to the shops - one must drive and therefore the only little shopping jeeps that are available are crufty folding ones (either fabric or metal and given that I've seen a number of homeless women pushing the powder-coated or bright chrome metal laundry carts, as they are marketed here, I don't really want one of them cos then the cops will pull me up too and say I'm a vagrant or some crap). If I lived in Australia I could use the one there, or buy a really pretty one cos they had heaps of pretty ones a year ago. If I lived in the UK, I could buy a pretty one there too. But cos I live in the USA and it is too advanced for this walking to the shops bizzo, I can't get one here. (OK, I could buy this one but I don't like the plaid on ...

NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH! You HAVE been warned! G'day all! Potato skins are not digestible by humans. (Do I have to spell it out for you how I found out?) anon! (Real knitting content soon, once I find the camera and take some pics and wrangle the uploader to work, particularly the Ravelry stuff with flickr....)