Yarnivorous

G'day all! This admonishment/curse greeted me on the tram the other day: I shall continue to buy tickets for the bus/tram/train. I do not want moths devouring my woollens - moths in my stash would be disastrous! I'm a goody goody suck suck that way anyway - the idea of being hooked off the train for not buying a ticket and then getting a $200 or so fine for not buying a ticket is horrifying to me. Of course I have the wrong attitude - I should be pushing my luck and avoiding paying fares. Instead I believe that my fare helps a little and is The Right Thing To Do. Just like I think taxes are inevitable and should be paid so that everyone gets access to things like healthcare and the dole when they need them. But I'm Australian. What would I know? I have completed the heel turn on the socks 2.25 times. Yep, didn't like one of them so I ripped it out and it is working nicely this time. I really should follow the directions and not make it up out of my head. Soon...

G'day all! The forecast is no better today but this is Melbourne, it is spring and heck we need all the rain we can get. It hasn't really rained since we got here... and the forecast is just nasty not rainy. So here are the Inside Out socks (ooh, they are biassing! Look at them twisting. I guess that is the result of the overspun yarn.) and the Beaumont tam, as they were last night. I am very pleased with the way the two handspuns are coming up on the tam, particularly given one is a sportweight/5 ply and the other no more than fingering/3-4ply and often drops to laceweight. I've been into town twice now ($3.10 Sunday Saver tickets - what a bargain! $3.10 to go anywhere on the Melbourne train, tram and bus system). I went to the Arts centre market yesterday and then popped in to the SnB in South Yarra (normally held at the Wool Baa) and caught up with some peoples. And yesterday I discovered the sepia/my colours function on our camera. Yes the camera is now almost a ...

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! 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! This is a dull post. Sorry! Progress is being made against the second sock. I say against because as always, I would prefer to be knitting something else than a second sock. I have to have the second sock done by Friday night. It is very possible, I just have to pull my finger out and *do* it! The hat has not been touched for a day. I've been busy working on Other Stuff (to be shown in a later post). As I said last time, I've been spinning up a storm. This is a sneak peek at my favourite skein. Normally I would not part with such a happy lurid skein of yarn, but I can get more of the top at Stitches West in a couple of weeks :-) I have to put it and others up on my Etsy store. First comes the editing of the pics, then the measuring of the length of each skein and the weighing. I could work out WPI but I usually eyeball the yarn and say what the yarn thickness is. It all takes time, I do so love all the colours that digital cameras have difficulty capt...

G'day all! I would like to show off the massive progress I've made on Nathan's socks but really? Another 1.5 repeats is not exactly exciting. Instead you get to see some other stuff. Like the red tank I am making for myself. It is a mixture of the Ballet Camisole that used to be on Magknits, now on Ravelry, and Soleil from Knitty. (Yep, too lazy to put the links in. Oh ok, I've added the one for Soleil as I do have the page handy, like one of a thousand tabs on Firefox.) I am knitting it with an 80% cotton 205 wool blend from cascade. I've been working on my Mystery Stole 3. For months it looked just a little further along than this: Then it looked like this (black line to give some idea of where it was before I picked it up last week after it guilted me into doing something about it): And two days ago it had this extra bit on it: It now has even more repeats of the flower motif. We've had some visitors recently: (This devil came in the front door and when ...

G'day all! At the moment I seem to be very wanty. I have a couple of theories about it - one is that DH has been sooooo busy working recently that I've not really seen a lot of him (yes he's often been home but that doesn't mean we can chat and given that he's been on the computer from 10 'til 10, or 11, every day recently and now is at a work love-in for three days...). The other is that well I don't have a car. I've chosen not to get a car cos a) they are expensive = I'd prefer to put the money on the mortgage and buy yarn on occasion and b) I am practising for when we simply cannot afford fuel and alternative transport sources are our options. When I say I don't have a car, people give me this funny look cos only poor people don't have cars, and even many of them still have a car. What sort of weirdo doesn't have a car in California? So I guess I want company and I want validation. And I'd like it if someone followed my lead....

G'day all! Another Anzac Day. April 25. It has already come and gone in the two countries that hold it most dear (that would be Australian and New Zealand - ANZ) but it is still the 25th here. This is the first Anzac Day I've "celebrated" away from Oz. Goodness, guess who forgot to do her minute's silence at 11am? I probably was quiet then but not in deliberation. Last year I wrote a very long post with pictures and quotes from postcards sent back by my Pop (maternal grandfather). This year I have not much to add except reading the coverage and the tales in the local newspaper Back 'Ome gave me a few more reflective moments. All those young men and women going off to places far that they had never dreamed of seeing - it would've been like going to the moon! Anyway it is very odd to be here, where Anzac means nothing. Then again, Americans in Australia would feel the same sort of dislocation when it comes to July 4 and Thanksgiving. Oddly enough...

G'day all! Sarah was interested in what I am making and what I am making it from. Well, here is the front (incomplete!) of the Drops tshirt I am making. It is in Classic Elite Premiere yarn, a 50:50 cotton:tencel blend. I am sure it will pill and not look so pretty in all too short a time but we will try it out. it is very soft against my skin. The contrast (which is not part of the pattern) is a slightly heavier weight - 100% pima cotton called T'ika from Mirasol. The colours are not quite right but I have jiggered them to be within some sort of coo-ee of what they really should be. They are a little greyer/less saturated than shown. So far it has been a pretty easy knit, as long as I remember to cross the cables correctly. 8-D I was knitting it at Nathan's work yesterday and one of his workmates asked me how do I do the cables without a cable needle. This was a guy! I shall have to question him further at some point. I've had to put down the top for me for ...

G'day all! Here is another of the projects I am working on at the moment. See this full bag of Noro Cash Iroha in colourway 103 G? Cost me less than $60 at Stitches! There were a few stalls selling bags of yarn but this was the one that women were going nuts over. It was the place I expected Blue Moon Fiber Arts to be. There were about 50 women all grab-grab-grabbing and a couple of the shop assistants were standing in the middle of the yarn "corral" pulling bags of yarn out from underneath and throwing them on top and tossing bags of yarn to those who requested them. The queue to buy yarn blocked most of the aisle. If you count the number of skeins carefully, you will realise that that is not a full bag. That is because of this: Mmm, lurid Noro with some Fearless Fibers sockyarn held double as a contrast. That is my "swatch." A swatch for a pattern that I can't even find a picture of online, not even on Ravelry. Looks like mine will be the first one...

G'day all! I have a number of projects on the boil at the moment. Ages ago, at the Stitches and Craft Fair in Melbourne nearly 12 months ago (feels like a different life and I guess it was!) I saw a fabulous jacket, all garter stitch knitted up in Noro silk garden I think (I remember it having more silk garden type yarn than kureyon). It was asymmetric and made me think of Jedis. Well I Had To Have One For Me! And I hunted down the book - I had to drive all over town cos the book was discontinued. And there was much rejoicing cos I had driven about 150km to find this danged book, and I got it for about 50c! Hooray! Then I discovered I had already bought it three months earlier at a Christmas sale at my LYS. Ooops. I've remembered that jacket/wrap thing for some time and finally I had the yarn for it - a cashmere/wool blend from a thrift store jumper I unravelled. The yarn is all in greys but I can overdye it. I have some very nifty ideas about how to do that too. (I doubt...

G'day all! So much happening here yet so little. You don't need to know how many more fleeces I've washed since we got back (only three or four). I'm not totally happy with the new wool scour - the guild's supplier of wool scour says they are not making it any more but here use this rancid smelling yellow stuff that is much thinner. I worked out one possible reason why I am not happy with the new scour: See those spots? Each of those is a pH test. From bottom right we have our normal laundry powder, one brand of wool wash, two spots of the old wool scour, another brand of wool wash and the new wool scour. The old wool scour has spots of bright purple in it (which is contamination from the powder I am fairly certain - I had some on my hands) but is mostly green. The other detergents are a lovely royal purple - about as alkaline as it gets. The green spots mean about pH6. I suspect the old scour was hair shampoo - it smelt ok and had a certain shampooey-gloop...