Yarnivorous

G'day all! In a rush to the wire, I finished my second pair of Lenore yesterday. I am amazed at how quickly I knitted the foot. I turned the heel on the Scary Formula 1 Bus Ride the other day and then zoomed along the foot. Even the grafting of the toe went smoothly - I usually stick the needle in in the wrong direction at least once. (Doncha love how the foreshortening makes ankles look thick?) (This one makes my ankles look skinny and my feet quite odd) Pattern: Lenore Yarn: umm Hand Artist as I like to call it cos I lost the label and don't know which it is of Fleece Artist or Hand Maiden. The colour is reasonably accurate. I thought the camera would barf out on the red but it didn't. Of course one of these socks isn't really a Lenore at all but we will forgive it. -- In other news, we are about to hit my least favourite time of year. May. I know many people love May (at least in the northern hemisphere) but I don't like it. It is a deathiversary month. ...

G'day all! Last Sunday, I took my first ever knitting class. Yes you heard aright - my first ever knitting class. Why don't I take classes usually? Well many of them cover things I already know how to do and they cost money too. I am cheap (but not easy!) and have learned to do things by figuring them out from written instructions, pictures or even the odd you tube. But this class was going to teach me some stuff about sleeves that I could not easily figure out myself. It was going to show me how to do sleeves from the top down. And I figured that was well worth paying for. I only enrolled on Friday - I figured that since there was one spot left, it was fated that I should do that class. And I did. And it was good and I learned how to do sleeves from the top down. Lorna Miser has spent a fair whack of time working out how to do the sleeve cap from the top down and should benefit from it, so I am not going to say how we did it! The weird blue thing shows the sleeve caps an...

G'day all! I've been wondering what would grease the wheels of social intercourse on this blog. Admittedly being on blogger doesn't help because it doesn't give me your email addy = harder to reply to you cos I have to go find your address (and if you don't have a blog and I don't have your email anyway I'll never reply! And you will be sad, or at least think I am rude). So, without further ado, I give you What is it Monday? (You can click through to Flickr if you want to see a bigger version.) Da ROOLZ: Each week I am going to take a pic, most likely a macro shot, of something. Email me at natiel-three-one-one at gmail dot com (replace likely numbers and symbols with their keyboard equivalents) with your guess. Whoever guesses correctly gets a point. Note that I don't want you to comment with your guess cos then everyone else knows too! Send me an email instead :-) At some point in the future, I will offer the person with the most points a prize,...

Lest we forget. (More on ANZAC Day in past bloggings .)

G'day all! Do you ever wonder if you will ever catch up on all the things that need to be done? This week's theme at Meet Me at Mike's is catching up. Catching up means different things to different people. I managed to catch up with some friends on Thursday night. One is having chemo and is getting a bit bored every second week (the week she doesn't have chemo, ie when she has a little energy). It was lovely to sit and chat and do some crafting (even if I can't count and stuffed up a very very simple lace pattern - silly me!). Could this be the start of a square jumper (sweater)? Another thing I've caught up on is my charity knitting. Yes, the squares for bushfire victims are finally done and sent off! It feels so good to have them gone :-) (I love how wonky they look. They were tedious but the effect is great and I am now thinking maybe I'll do smaller squares, some missing their middles, for an afghan or throw or lap blanket.) For the squares, I c...

G'day all! These blocks are *killing* me! I am knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting - I've been knitting them for nearly 5 hours today, haven't even showered yet and its 1:30! I am making progress on them but oh. my. god. it is slow! Agonisingly slow. Plus somehow I've managed to not to the decreases right and have shifted them in two blocks, and on top of that, the blocks should all have odd numbers of stitches (two don't!) and even further, the number of stitches is different in each and every block! I am nearly out of one colour of yarn but I can deal - I have a totally different colour to introduce when I have to. I might do this totally different colour as a square in the middle of the block, just to do something different. No pics cos I am lazy and also I have to open the door to get good light and I am still in my jammy-jim-jams. OK so not that many people walk past at this time of the day but it will disturb the juncos that have found the m...

G'day all! I had forgotten all about Earth Day being today. Just as well I've been a good girl today! I did a load of clothes washing in cold water (as always - clothes don't seem to suffer for being washed in cold water whilst hot or even warm water seems to make them fade quicker and/or bleed). I also ran a full load of dishes in the dishwasher and as always had the heated dry turned off. I did do some shopping - I trundled off on my bike fully intending to take pics of wildflowers (native or no) on the bike path. I didn't take a single pic of wildflowers - I was too busy riding :-) My aim was the Goodwill on Meridian and Hamilton. It has not been a scene of as many happy finds as Savers but where there is life there is hope and I hadn't been in for a month or so. But today it was truly an op shop - I found Success! One nylon bag of happiness (and a bargain !) One wool and three cashmere pullovers/cardies. The rusty wool is for fulling. And the best thing? ...

G'day all! Good news! (Old pic) Apparently Cheshire came home none the worse for wear. Lord knows where she has been or what she's been up to, but it was Easter and maybe she got locked in someplace she wasn't meant to be. In more good news for those of you more interesting in knitting than rambles, I have finished one Not Lenore sock. (excuse the hair in the pic - it was the best shot of the sock despite the hair.) It is Not a Lenore because I knitted it in the wrong direction (toe up). I might knit the next one top down and do the lace pattern properly. (Ever photographed something thinking it looks fine, only to realise when you are editing pics that there is a lump of really obvious fluff on the item being photographed?) I had Big Plans today for doing a heap of knitting and sewing, but I just remembered that I have a dental appointment this arvo. That will take a fair chunk out of my day. Of course on the bright side, that means I will be sitting in air condition...

G'day all! One of the blogs that I came across after the Black Saturday fires back home is Meet Me at Mike's . Such a creative place! Pip has set up a weekly theme for blog posting and gosh I just have to play along. This week's theme is: Collecting I have pretty much always been a collector. I used to have collections of the tickets from every movie I had ever seen. I took over my brother's stamp collection when he moved out and expanded it four fold (one of my nephews has it now). Books - I love books. Old ID and auto teller cards. Stuff. I've moved on from most of these things now. Mostly. These days I collect yarn (no kidding!!), fleece (I love trying out new types of fleece!), material.... I have a fair range of seed beads and bits and bobs for making jewellery and stitch markers with. I have my button jar (and I actually used some buttons out of it the other day!!!). I still have my books and (knitting) mags. There's a row of African Violets ...

G'day all! We are back from our trip and recovering from driving from U-tah! in two days via a rather circuitous route. There are some mountain ranges that I would like to have a few words with.... We drove over 2000 miles in a week. Doesn't sound like much but it sure cut into my knitting time cos I drove. All. The. Way. So, I got hardly any knitting done - half a sock and the first (ie easy) 25 rows of a top down raglan cardi were my knitting triumphs. I managed to read most of one small book. I read through a book on the southwestern states of the US. We saw gobsmacking scenery. DH and I took over 2500 digipics - that'll take a while to edit out the good ones, which will mostly appear on my travel blog . Now I am back into shopping at the farmers' market, cooking, cleaning, clearing the car out, doing the clothes washing, all that sort of boring stuff. And dying of heat exhaustion. We went from this: (Wednesday, Grand Canyon, embiggen the pics to see more ...

G'day all! We are still on our holiday. Currently we are in Arizona, almost Utah really. We've seen the Big Sur in daylight, two trains on the Tehachapi Loop, Vegas, Hoover Dam, all sorts of weird and wonderful rock formations.... Today we saw the Grand Canyon, well bits of it, in between snow flurries, showers and outright short-lived blizzards. Fantastic, if a little cold. When we left the Grand Canyon and dropped some elevation, the sky cleared and we had half an hour of sun before it set! Weather here is bizarre. Tomorrow we look at Lake Powell, mebbe Bryce Canyon, Zion and travel to Cedar City. Thence homewards via Death Valley. I have to be home by Saturday arvo for Cookie A's booklaunch! Would show off pics but the wireless at our cheap motel is a bit flakey. See you anon!

G'day all! Less grumpy today but no less hungry! Yesterday I finished off my sister's cashmere mitts and sent them off in the mail. I hope she likes them. Details: Pattern - my own. After making quite a number of afterthought fingerless mitts three Christmases ago, I worked out how to make mitts that fit better. My body doesn't like tight stuff and groans a lot if squished, so I worked out a thumb gusset that lets my hand move better. This pair have 1X1 rib with cable crosses that are mirrored on the left and right mitts. Which is left and which is right is up to the wearer to decide. Size - ladies 20cm/8" around the palm, not including thumb. Snug fit. (There are two of them!) Yarn - recycled cashmere taken from laceweight jumpers and plied up to be about a DK weight. Needles - 3.75mm. I even made tips so that if my sister wants to make them warmer, she can sew the tips on to the back of the mitts and flip them over her finger tips if she wants. If I had a littl...

Hey Wholefoods! Yes you! I am talking to you. Over the last most of two years that we have been in the USA, you have provided the mainstay of my gluten-free, dairy-free existence. But recently you have REALLY dropped the ball. For example, your brand of organic, gluten free chips have been repackaged and are no longer gluten free. Your brands of various things used to state what allergens were packaged in the same factories. You no longer supply that information. You don't even say what allergens are in various of the things. You've stopped carrying a number of GF/DF munchy bars but you are carrying even more things like Odwalla bars, which are not gluten free and can be bought pretty much anywhere. I just want a nut-based bar with no fruit and I cannot buy them any longer. I am getting mighty peeved! Unfortunately, the gluten-free world here in the USA is crap. Certainly where I live in San Jose. As far as I can tell, there is not even a chapter of the Coeliac (celiac...

G'day all! I had quite a pleasant day today, making stuff, finishing a couple of things (no pics cos it has been miserable and drizzly today, just after I had decided we would have no more rain this season), writing the patterns down before I forget them, going out to take Nathan a white shirt as he is singing with the church choir now (I got home so late that to get there I'd have to not cook dinner and also drive to the church), dropping into a LYS (well not *very* local but busable), waiting for THIRTY-FIVE minutes for a bus when they run every 15 minutes (I rang the transit agency and they said there isn't a problem which is nice but what happened to the bus that didn't run???) - if I had known that it would be that long between buses, I would've gone into the sewing machine shop to see if they have a darning foot suitable for my machine. I also would've walked the mile and a bit to Savers to do a bit of op shopping. Anyway, I finally got home and checked m...

G'day all! I've been doing a lot of ravelling recently. Probably too much. Anyway, in the Yarnthropology group we were asked: Tell us your story of how you learned to knit/crochet/spin? Was it part of your culture/history? How will you pass along your knowledge? Why do you do what you do? What would you like to see as the future of your craft? Given it is an older topic and possibly of interest to my readers, all half dozen of you ;-), I thought I would write up a reply here rather than on Ravelry. Tell us your story of how you learned to knit/crochet/spin? I learned to knit when I was mebbe 10. I'm not too sure when, but I know I had knitted myself a jumper (sweater) by the time I was 11 or so. Mum taught me, Western style. I learned how to do that slow way - stick the needle into the stitch, wrap the yarn by taking your hand off the needle, pull the new stitch through. I think Mum was surprised by me being able to pick it up at all - I was a very unco child and lef...

G'day all! Last night near sunset I had a sudden madness - I must take pics of my WIPs! Only I forgot one. Anyway, here are some not so good (slightly blurry and wonky colour due to low light) pics of my current WIPs (except for one that fell down the side of the chair - out of sight, out of mind!). The second fingerless mitt almost looks like this first one now. I had forgotten how quick these are to knit up. I just need to do the thumb on the first one and weave in the ends and then do most of the second one. A quick block and then they go off to my sister. I used this cast on (fiddly at first but then QUICK!) and some recycled cashmere I plied up. The colour is a bit wonky even after playing with it. The pattern is one I made up after having made a few Dashings and mucked around with fingerless mitts. It even has a gusset! I had this vision of making a sock with a leaf pattern and a flower at the top. The leaf and flower are on the foot, then a leaf pattern will wrap ar...