Yarnivorous

G'day all! Two weeks ago, I posted the final Wotisit. Final for the nonce anyway. Then I said I'd do the draw last Monday. Ahem. Ah well, I've finally been guilted into fixing it up! (Possibly because it means I can avoid the tangerine top for a little longer.) Ever felt guilty for not doing something when you said you would? I do it all the time. Must be more organised! Must fulfill contracts with other. Thinking of musts, I must also harrass the credit union again cos our cheques still haven't arrived and I have bills to pay - at home I can pay everything online or by phone but here many places still only take cheques. I am happy to pay small businesses by cheque cos credit card merchant fees cost a bunch but I do not see why big businesses make me pay by cheque. Only PG&E (gas/power) does online payments but the apartment complex is moving over, thank heavens! Last year one of the factors in choosing this place was online payments but that never happ...

G'day all! Heh. Just realised that my 5th blogiversary passed only 9 days ago! LOL I need to get a better memory, or I should've started blogging on a different, ie more memorable, day! So what have been the highlights of the last 5 years? Welllll, it is nearly five years since DH and I were wed and went to Western Australia for our honeymoon (to see the wildflowers!). We'll be having our fifth anniversary in France! Most likely we'll be in Toulouse. Knitting highlights? Oh gosh. One of the problems with my blog from five years ago is that the server I used then no longer exists. That means either directly uploading pics in blogger, which I know can be a total PITA, or uploading them into flickr and copying across the urls. Either way, it means going back into every blog post, probably a couple of hundred of them, and replacing the pic urls. I am sure you can see why it hasn't happened so far! So there is no point linking back to the posts. Instead, we...

G'day all! The last few days have been totally hectic! In my usual way, I decided to overcommit myself in getting things make for Nathan's birthday. Today is the first day in ages, or so it feels, that I don't have a deadline looming over me. (Nope, only got some stuff to mail and then I have NOTHING that IMMEDIATELY has to be done!) As usual under such circumstances, I feel a bit flat. All that work, now it is done and what do I have to show for it? Umm, well.... This and this and this Want to see more pics? Check my flickr photostream. I'll probably talk about the projects over the next few days a bit more, so maybe you don't want to see all the pics right now. Oh and can anyone tell me why I, an Australian citizen, give one flying farnarkle that Teddy Kennedy died? But it seems that I do. I've spent the morning reading Ravelry threads on it. My goodness, some people are vitriolic! And others are magnaninous. anon! PS am uploading heaps of old pics fro...

G'day all! I've overloaded myself with things to get done this week. Looks like I am taking a little blogging break cos I just haven't got enough hours to do everything (especially when it takes five minutes to sew something badly and half an hour to rip it out again...). I need to announce the winners of Wotisit but I haven't totted up all the numbers yet nor done the random draw. I haven't even sent out the stitch markers from the last prize! My VERY bad indeed. Anyway, I have a sock, a quilt and some spinning to finish up before tomorrow evening. Then I have to knit just under half of the tangerine top for the shop. Then I have to get cracking on nathan's birthday sweater. Oh, for anyone reading this in the south bay area, Nathan's birthday Wednesday night at the Sonoma Chicken Coop on Campbell Ave in downtown Campbell, 7pm. Be there or be someplace else. anon!

G'day all! Today we have had three phone calls on our landline. One from Sears for people who don't live here. One from PG&E (gas and electricity) for people who don't live here. One from a machine with a male voice that said "Due to technical difficulties at our end, your call cannot be taken. Goodbye." Umm, why on earth did it ring us then? We are on a no call list too, so it shouldn't be telemarketers. I just don't grok that one - some company rings us but then can't talk to us. WTF? anon!

G'day all! A while ago, I decided I would keep on going with the next quiltalong, the one following this quilt (which is the baby one, not the bed-sized one which is still awaiting its basting and quilting): The current quiltalong is a zigzag quiltalong. After weeks of toil and trouble and things boiling in the bathroom (currently known as the dragon in the bathroom, aka the iron), I have managed to get the quilt top made. It is about single bed size (aka twin bed in the US, which is not a double bed - that is a double or full). (Do you like the lighting? That is known as the only place I could hang it with good light is the lattice between us and the neighbours, and even with the flash it still has the lattice showing through and you can see various of the seams too.) Now it has to be basted and quilted and bound. Then it will be done. Hooray! I have another half-square triangle quilt to make up. It was meant to be a zigzag similar to the one above. Except some stupid git s...

G'day all! This week I've been a Good Girl. I started the (long overdue) physiotherapy on my ankle. The ankle is doing just fine. But I've pulled a calf muscle and walking is fraught, especially after I've been sitting down for a while. Hopefully it will calm down a little after I saw them again today - they were very unsympathetic and said it was just "tired." If it didn't hurt so much (ie it is most certainly alive) I think I would say it is more than pining for the fjords, mate, it's b*ggered. Anyway, I've got a strength training thing for my legs now... I will have calves and thighs and maybe even ankles of steel after this! I've been knitting on DH's birthday sock and on the shop top but really? Not much more to show. OK, the second sock is almost at the heel. The shop top has half of the front frill. Blah blah blah. I've been working on the zigzag quilt, the one I haven't taken any progress photos of. Ooops. My bad...

G'day all! There has been knitting! Rather bright and lurid knitting, knitting not necessarily in my favourite colours but certainly chirpy colours! Ta-dum! One husbandly sock and the embryonic sock beside it. Note that the colours in the pic are rather dull (honest!). It is a rainbow two ply Zauberball yarn. Or is that Zauerball. Whatever! It is fascinating watching the colours change - 2/3 of the foot of the first sock had an orange ply that then went green. Fascinating. (Why yes, I loved Spock as an adolescent. His attitudes and approach to things still inform mine lord knows how many years later.) The pattern is a simple broken rib and uses one of Cat Bordhi's gusset increases. I've been plugging along with the shop top too. I haven't finished the front properly yet but cast on for a sleeve cos I needed a quick win. Hooray! The sleeves are mid-forearm length and pretty quick to knit up. I'm still not keen on the fair isle/intarsia approach to the po...

G'day all! This is the last wotisit, certainly for now, mebbe forever. I started wotisit some time ago, thinking it would be a bit of fun for me and the people guessing wotisit. It would also get me a few more email addresses for people who read my blog = I could reply to their comments by email. Blogger does not capture email addresses for the people who comment, which makes it hard to email a reply to your comment. Wellllll, I think I've had seven different people enter over the three months or so that I've been running wotisit. I'm not very good at encouraging participation in events. If I had been arranging Sock Summit, two men and their dog would've shown up. (But I must say that the world record attempt? I started that! Me! Others picked up the ball and ran with it - yay dudes! - whilst I was trying to see if it was ok with Steph and Tina, them being my close personal friends and all, NOT!) So I bet you wanna know what last week's wotisit was? Two...

G'day all! If only weekends came with extra weekend! Of course some might argue I have very very very long weekends, that I've had a never ending weekend for the last three years (can you believe it is three years since I last worked full time? I can!). This weekend has been relatively unproductive. I carded up a big bag of fleece to spin. I ironed and ironed and ironed and ironed squares for the quilts I am working on. Oh gods, the ironing! (Technically pressing and sometimes it is pressing!) Very over that part of things. I sewed maybe 20 squares together. I knitted a sleeve of the shop top. I have to tidy up the back and finish the duplicate stitching of the third flower on it. It is almost half done, just as well too cos this is the third week of knitting it and I'm over it. The first of Nathan's birthday socks is done, the toe is complete on the second, now just for the rest of the it 8-) I bought fantastic vegies and stuff at the farmers' market an...

G'day all! A quickie this time. Should I be afraid of tonight's roast chook ? I never thought The Beast would come in the form of a chicken ready to roast but maybe I am wrong! If I don't blog for the next few days, you will know that it really was The Beast. anon!

G'day all! The days are just flying by at the moment. I have more things to do than you could poke sticks at, even if you had a very large number of sticks! I just sat a library page exam. A library page shelves books at the library. Not the world's most high-falutin' job but I've always loved books, love hanging around in libraries and being paid to do what I do quite often (which is put books in the correct order rather than the way they are on the shelf) would be great! Anyway, I show up with a couple of moments to spare (got a phone call at a *very* bad time!) and show my id and hand over my application. There were over FORTY people applying for TWO positions. Two positions of between 8 and 20 hours per week in four hour shifts, positions paying $11.04 an hour. There were school kids, business men and women (well dressed, shiny shoes, sleek hair), accountants (I reckon the guy opposite me was an accountant - note that I put them in a different basket!), house wi...

G'day all! I have nothing new to show you for the nonce (but have a heap of pics for the blog/Etsy - I am going to put pics up here before listing on Etsy to give you a tease). I just had to share that I have my ticket booked to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and things are starting to come together for the Europe trip. This is costing us a bit but only half as much as round the world tickets would! (I really don't get that.) We will be visiting Paris, Toulouse, Lucern, Munchen and various other places in between. We will celebrate our 5th anniversary in France or Switzerland. Even better, the Wollmeise bricks and mortar shop? Only half an hour or so by train from Munchen, where I'll be spending the best part of a week whilst DH is at a conference. (Doh, it has just occurred to me that the place we'll be staying at won't have a kitchenette and I am going to have to take on German food when I have some pretty severe food allergies. Gluten-frei is going to ...

G'day again all! Gotta share these links with you. I randomly came across two articles in the media that discuss the same thing in different contexts - how our poor brains, when faced with disaster, decide to go "la la la, I'm not listening/seeing/thinking about that!" which then means that we do pretty much exactly the wrong thing for the situation. It also explains why we won't do much about climate change. Sci Am has contributed a few fantastic articles: Coeliac disease as a model for auto-immune disease. How do autoimmune diseases (eg rheumatoid arthritis, crohn's disease, type 1 diabetes, coeliac disease, MS) arise? Are chemicals in our environment changing the expression of our genes? Why is that important? (Epigenetics is totally fascinating!) Is perfectionism good or bad ? Nature News has an article suggesting that there are neurons specific for itch but not pain. Gosh I'll be happy if that is true and if there is a drug that can silence ...

G'day all! I have spent the week crafting and running around after a new mobile. (I can't believe how hard it is to get a new mobile - all I want is a cheapish flip phone, not a candy-bar, not a smart phone, just a phone that can make flipping phone calls and receive them!) I regret that I don't have a lot to show for all the work I've been doing. I decided to make DH a jumper (sweater) for his birthday. I have fleece that I dyed in appropriate colours (he wants olive, he's getting sorta olive) and have been blending the fleece with some natural coloured brown fleece, an almost black fleece, some dyed clown barf fleece (using up old dyes, managed to make fluoro yellow!) and a little hand-dyed not by me top. It takes about six hours to flick out and card enough fleece to fill three bobbins, and about the same to spin the yarn and ply it. So far I've managed to spin roughly 600m of yarn. It has taken half my week. I think it will be worth it though. It is going...

G'day all! Running late again - story of my life at the moment. Anyway, a while ago, I posted this pic: and asked you to guess what it is. Quite a few of you guessed correctly or close enough that it makes no odds. It is a post in a car park up at Crater Lake. It gets snowed upon, frozen, thawed, frozen, thawed and it makes the grain go all funny. If you said a stump, well it is really, just a stump especially formed for man's requirements. Here's a pic of Crater Lake, just so you can go "oo, err!" I promised a winner this week, didn't I? Leonie ! Come on down! You have won a set of five stitchmarkers in your fave colours (made to order) or the Cleopatra's Stockings pattern by Yarnissima. Now this week's wotisit may be a mystery to some but I reckon you can guess what it is! Send your guess to me by email (natielthreeoneone atgmaildotcom) with wotisit as the subject (makes it easier for me to find when I am checking I've put all the answers i...

G'day all! I have a new shop WIP. Except after three days, there is very little to show for it. Here you go. See? (After I took that photo, I ripped it back to before the first green row) Now part of the problem is I am an idjit and keep not following the pattern. More annoyingly, I've knitted a very similar pattern to this bit before - I think I keep reverting to that one... Not as if I can't knit it, I'm just not knitting it! The other part is that the designer did not think about how to make this thing knittable and instead just went PRETTY! This is SO COOL! You start off by knitting a sideways band. The sideways band has a fourteen row repeat in it (described as 4 row repeat in the pattern but there's 14 rows listed). Every few rows, there is ONE row of contrast colour. Just one. So you end up with this dangling yarn and also the main colour has to be carried somehow down the back of the contrast rows. Except every second row of contrast colour is a kn...