Yarnivorous

G'day all! I can tell I am a stress head at present. I can't focus on anything for more than about 10 minutes. I have not finished my pair of socks for the month, for the first time in over a year, maybe 18 months. OK, I only have to do another 5 rounds or so of ribbing on one and the leg of the other but I don't think I have time to finish them. We are into serious packing now. I have not yet booked sea freight for our stuff. I have a pretty good idea of how many boxes we are looking at so I reckon by the end of tomorrow I can get a couple more quotes from places that seemed reasonable. (If that is a repeat, please excuse me. It is from 9 days ago when we drove up to SF to get a drum carder and then drove around a lot not quite in circles) I can also tell I am stressed because I am shopping madly. Sometimes it is real shopping, sometimes it is online virtual window shopping. I want so many new fabric lines that I am seeing online that it isn't funny. I want th...

G'day all! Straight up, if you are not into fleece and spinning, this is a dull post. Go play somewhere else, cos it is also picture heavy. I have a *heap* of stuff I want to destash before going back to Australia. Most of this came with me to the USA. Not all. Some of it I can take back with me (but why? I can get more there :-) but I thought it would be nice to share around. Well with a little greenback action to grease the wheels of destashing... Most of the undyed fleece has been flicked and is basically ready to spin. Some hasn't. Scroll down, gentle reader, and see what lusciousness tempts you! Or what luridness, cos I have some of that too. LOL Note that I can't send unprocessed fleece overseas (ie out of the USA). Processed top is fine. I take greenbacks (from locals) and Paypal (at natielthreeoneoneatgmaildotcom). If I have to post the items, I will have to charge postage as well. Oh and colours will vary from monitor to monitor. Oh and it has all b...

G'day all! Thanksgiving is wrapping up here in the US - we are as far east as any mainland state (Hawaii has a little more to go!). We've had a very quiet turkey day cos I have Nathan's cold and he was busy coughing yet another lung up. We were to go to friends but well.... I'd prefer they didn't get the cold! I hope those that celebrate US Thanksgiving had a lovely day and those who don't? A far better day than me! LOL What am I thankful for? Friends who bring a care package around for us to eat on turkey day :-) A roof over my head New opportunities and ones seized in the past Autumn leaves Bucket of things but another time. However I suffer a distinct lack of gratitude to DH for this cold, to sitting down on an open plastic box ( ouch ) and to people who think that their car is "compact." Tomorrow is Black Friday, when the US goes nuts buying stuff. It is like the Boxing Day sales in Australia. I have to go out into it. Argh, but I need some ...

G'day all! Spent a busy day getting more organised here. I have to work out what I want to keep and what is going by Friday. (Hope the various shipping companies are open on Friday - a lot of people have four days off over Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving is tomorrow!). I got rid of a heap of stuff today - various items of clothing that I know I won't wear again and stuff I had stashed from the op shops for my fabric projects, a box of jigsaws, scraps of material - some went to the op shop (clothing and jigsaws) and some went to the recycle bin (material scraps - don't say I should keep them! I have enough *good* material to keep!). I bought some space bags and vacuumed down my winter clothes (leaving out a few items suitable for a Californian autumn) and some yarn and various clothes I want to keep but can't put in the suitcase. I now have a 3/4 empty closet and two spare plastic tubs. Next I need to reduce the fleece stash. I haven't gotten pics of the...

G'day all! I'm a bit busy at the moment. It seems that not only do I have the majority of the crap to sort through here and figure out what to dispose of, I am also responsible for feeding DH and entertaining him and doing all the cleaning. OK so he has a bad cough that then turned into a cold so I don't want him near most things anyway but sheesh, he must be getting better cos he is bored witless and doesn't want to do anything. He says he has ennui. He wants to retire and grow plants. He had an interview on Friday, an interview that apparently went very well but if they want us they will have to pull out all the stops and make a good offer. I'm going to have a bit of fleece to dispose of. I rented a drum carder and it is very good but I quite frankly am not going to card the 30-odd pounds of wool I have here before we leave. I could've hired the electric drum carder, which is very fast but weighs 20-odd kilos... I can only send fleece within the States ...

G'day all! We are back in San Jose. It is interesting being back cos it seems I am starting to disengage. Whilst I live here, it isn't home any more. Nowhere is home (but Home is Melbourne). I've been having a lovely time riding around taking pics of the autumnal foliage - it is certainly Fall here. The days (so far) have been brightly sunny and crisp (rather like the leaves, actually). These are the autumn days that I love - the sunny ones when the air is a little cool (not frosty cos this is the Bay area and frosts are not common here, not this close to the bay) and the light is oh so clear. The light on the autumn leaves is delightful! But I am aware that it is very likely to be my last hoorah here, so I am trying to take advantage of it. I've visited some favourite shops and bought a bit (ahem!) of quilting material (well I had to - Rowan fabrics in Oz are some hideous price, but $10.50 a yard plus tax is a bit cheaper... even after paying for shipping it hom...

G'day all! We are going back to yesterday tomorrow. Yep, we are off to the States to pack up our stuff and move home. I really hope they will let us in. So we cross the dateline, which means we are in today, not tomorrow, for a while and then tomorrow will dawn for the second time. Golly it is confusing doing that! Then when we come back we will lose a whole day! If we leave on Saturday, we basically lose Sunday and arrive on Monday. Anyway, no new knitting to show off. I have been knitting on stuff but I don't seem to be making measurable progress even though it is clear that I am (12 row repeats are easy to count!). I have to shove it in the suitcase we are borrowing. Hope the wheel doesn't fall off this suitcase. It is deucedly inconvenient to have one less wheel than the case should have. It's going to be sad, sorting out my US life and packing it for shipping or packing it for our friend who is moving to SF after Christmas or putting it on Craigslist or on ...

They have taken away all the interesting and useful stuff on Google maps (like the measuring tool) and now want me to make a my map. Plus they added a my map to MY account that is in German! Like umm, sorry dudes but I don't do German! GRRR! And because it is google, there is no way to contact them directly.

G'day all! How things change. I've been sitting on News. Yep. OK, only for two days (oooh, just realised that it is Friday the 13th!) but that is a long time to sit on News. We will be returning to Australia before Christmas. For good. Well at least for the time being. We got our new visas on Monday. Hooray! Thank you US consulate for such quick processing :-) But on Wednesday, we got a phone call. Nathan's boss called up and said that Nathan had lost his job . (The boss lost his as well). So no job = no visa. All that work for nuthin'! But all our current stuff is in the US! The car, our day to day living stuff, my craft stuff, Nathan's hobby stuff, etc, etc. Plants. (And I was looking forward to being back and getting life back to normal. A big fat HAH to that!) So we go in on tourist visas and get rid of our stuff or box it up to send it home and come back home. This is good (Home! Christmas! Yay!) and bad (didn't finish things off in the US a...

to laugh at the next door neighbour cos they can't back down their driveway? Even after 20 years of living in the one place. They drive a small car. The driveway does a dogleg at the bottom. It has trees and shrubs on either side. There's always a lot of backing and filling. The other day they hooked the bumper skin off their bumper bar. They backed too close to a tree on one side of the driveway and to get away from it turned the wheel hard. Of course then the nose of the car pointed towards the tree and the bumper skin got hooked. The more noise it made, the harder they backed until they hooked it right off. If they had just gone straight, they would've been fine. Made their little car look a right mess with its bumper dragging on the ground. I guess I can only laugh if I know I would've done it differently!

G'day all! The other day I finished off my variant of Jared Flood's Beaumont tam/beanie. Here it is in all its unblocked glory. I knitted mine out of handspun (the purple is dyed by me targhee roving, the white is some Polwarth I think cos it is very soft). I started this in France, knitted more in Switzerland and finished it off just in time for some rather warm days in Oz. I love the way the top makes me think of a starfish or some other radially asymmetric critter. I am contemplating sending it to a friend who loved the colours. I am just not sure it will be warm enough for her in winter! She will experience much colder temps than those I am used to in either California or Melbourne. Did you know it is almost impossible to take pics of the back of your own head (without a mirror or a tripod)? I took so many shots with only a corner of the tam in the shot. Now for the important stuff. Yarn! Sock yarn. Sockulator . Mmm. This one is pretty thick. I'd knit it on n...