Yarnivorous

G'day all! It is a remarkably dull day here in Seattle today.  Seriously dull to the point of wondering who turned off the lights?  Even our new monstrously bright light is struggling to cut through the gloom. Maybe I just moved to Mordor or something.  With sights like this around the place (clearly taken on a non-gloomy day) it is possible Gruesome gibbet Someone has had fun decorating I have had an interesting time recently in the Confucian sense. Two days ago this laptop shut itself down in the middle of a hangout (google video chat).  I have detected a serious disk error!  Goodbye! But it restarted ok and my boss and I had further discussions about it and he decided that either it goes to be fixed or he just gets a new machine (he's making the assumption that it is going to be pricey to work out if it is the hard disk or not) and ships it to me. So yesterday I sat nursemaiding it through a BIOS disk check and a Windows disk check....

G'day all! I hauled out the sewing machine over the last few days and sewed up a little quilt top and backing, ostensibly to practise my free motion quilting. Cute, eh? I had a few difficulties getting the pic as the quilt top and back kept doing this: First though I have to make up quilt sandwiches of scrap material and batting (I don't have much scrap! I use it all and my favoured batting is hard to get here) to practise the quilting. Quilty Pleasures is hosting a free motion quilting tute, or twenty. But colour is the thing and these have plenty of colour. The front is made of some white homespun cut to 5" blocks (aka charms) and a charm pack of Robert Kaufmann Kona square in umm? Classic? (Can't find the label, must be tidying up too much for my own good!). The backing is from my stash of plain homespun, a stash that is still growing as I find more colours that I like. Note there is no yellow or orange. The yellow in my stash got tie dyed accidentally when...

G'day all! Will I ever take more pictures of the things I am making? Will I ever catch up with all the things I want to show and talk about, let alone the stuff I want to do? I've been bad. Yep, I got me more material online. More airmail. Riley Blake "Happier." I am a sucker for little twee designs with bugs and birds and wiggles and stuff. I also have a half metre of the fabric that is on top of the charms and layer cake. Plus I bought some patterns, but I forgot to take pics of two of them. I really should tell you where I bought the fabric too but umm... yeah... found the packaging. Above All Fabric . I spun some lovely BFL/bunny fluff from Ixchelbunny . Go give her some love, she's had a total disaster as her angora rabbit farm has been devastated by calicivirus. Seven years of breeding down the gurgler, her livelihood and many of her little fluffy loves lost. I have no idea what I'll make with the yarn - I am a bit shy of 300m, which is not eno...

G'day all! During the Ravelympics, instead of doing the spinning I said I would, I decided to spin up some of the (dwindling) lump of Andyle moorit (merino? yes merino) and ?tussah silk? that I had in my stash here. I needed to get a wriggle on with a present for a friend. I ended up with 500m from 100g. Not my finest spinning but reasonable. It was fairly hard to draft because the two different fibres work very differently. After all that work, I had a ball of yarn that looked very much like this: Mainly because it is the same yarn, just a little depleted cos I've knitted that much from it since Thursday? Friday? (The colour is off in that shot - it is actually the warmer colour in the skein pic) At first this shawl flew off the needles, in a good way, not the omg, dropped another bunch o stitches way. But then as the pattern was established and it stayed the same, I started to get bored. I was so glad to finish chart A and move on to chart B, but then discovered that t...

G'day again all! Having a slow day today. Yesterday was a Big Day Out (and I did most of the driving), and last night, well it seems that I shouldn't eat food that is spicy, nor should I eat chocolate later in the day! So I am now allowed to cast on for the Winter Olympics. Indeed I could've cast on nearly four hours ago (if I have my timelines correct) but nah. We've got a little time yet and I am busy knitting up squares for an afghan for the family of a friend who is no longer. What are my plans? Well I want to make a Citron out of this handspun (only I will run out of yarn before it is finished). I will call it blood orange though Dh thinks it should be called pink grapefruit. I hate grapefruit though. And a small Aeolian out of this handspun (again, probably don't have enough yarn but I may just replace the nepps with beads just to get me to the end ok) and make a personal footprint sock for DH out of this yarn (and maybe a pair of socks) and make a per...

G'day all! Currently, life seems to be rushing off to appointments interspersed with great periods of nothingness. Admittedly in the nothingness I am doing things like visiting our house and doing weeding and planning and stuff, harrassing the cats, or knitting (Showing longer brim on back of hat) (Sock now completed, second sock started) spinning or reading up on stuff, but I am still in a holding pattern. This time next week we will be back in our own place and getting established there again, learning what the cats' habits are now (and they will have to get used to us again!), finding out what we need to buy, etc etc. I went and saw the head of the study I am a participant in. I signed myself up then discovered that I have another week of heavy duty testing to go through before I can start chemo. Blood tests, gated heart pool study, 12 lead ECG, PET scan, MRI scan, umm what are the other things? More, more, more! Some of the tests are necessary for the chemo, some are f...

G'day all! After a bit of a break (ie I forgot to post anything and also I was away and frantically treadling for the Tour de Fleece*), Wotisit Monday returns! Last time I showed a picture of some fleece all taped up inside its plastic cocoon. A few people guessed correctly but I didn't email anyone, cos it all happened when we were away. Anyways, it is good to have a few people with points on the board! This week's wotisit was spotted at Crater Lake in Oregon. You don't have to go to Crater Lake to see things like it - they are quite common. Honest. Wotisit? Next week I think I should have another little prize draw. Remember to send your guesses to me via email to natielthreeoneone at gmaildotcom. You must email me the guess to get into the draw and surely you want to win something, even only a little thing like some stitchmarkers? *In the 21 days I knew about the Tour de Fleece, I spun nearly 3km of yarn, or well over 7km if you include the original singles. I...

I just cancelled the accommodation and travel to Sock Summit. I now have a bad case of leaky eyes. Sniffle! Here's the results of today's spinning: anon!

G'day all! Today was the Challenge Day in the Tour de Fleece. Just after 9am, I grabbed my trusty wheel and some pre-drafted Miss Babs merino/bamboo in Watermelon. I thought it was 6 oz but it was only 4. Ah well, not quite as challenging then but still more than I've spun in a day for aaaaaaages. By midday we were going pretty well (after some happy distraction looking up facial wounds in WWI - it was my Pop's deathiversary today and he had had a facial wound). We were outside and spinning like a demon in the dappled sun under the birch trees. It was only about 22C/low 70s. Very pleasant. At 2pm I started on the second bobbin. It was all spun up a little after 6pm and ready to ply. I had to unply the first 50m of two ply yarn - it was horrid! This yarn wanted to be navajo or chain plied. So I complied with its plying decision! I ended up with 240m of DK/8ply or so weight yarn and a little 36m skein of coiled cuteness. I was all done by 9:15pm. It took me roughly 8...

G'day all! Just a quick one. I can't type (I kid you not, every second letter I have to go back and correct). I'm still spinning madly, knitting a bit but doing LOTS of spinning. Spinning is good when it is hot. Others would disagree but it is cooler than having a lump of knitting sitting on your lap. My current socks are trying to kick my butt but I am exerting my will upon them. I am even knitting them two at a time! No pics - they are too hard to get a shot of at night. But no such missing out for the spinning! I have the camera sorted for some colours and shots under CFLs, and this is the result: 420m of a nice fingering weight 3 ply merino superwash yarn for socks. Crown Mountain Farm roving in Peggy Sue. It used to look like that. Okey dokey. It's been a loooong weekend, even though it was only two days. Summer has hit with a vengeance and we've even been using the air con! I even drove the car yesterday rather than take the bus (last bus I was on ...

G'day all! My back 'ome friends are having an interesting discussion on shyness. Turns out a number of us are shy. I'm shy sometimes. I get even shyer when I get a case of the guilts for not replying to your lovely comments! Then I get stressed cos I am guilty cos I have not pulled my finger out of my butt and so it goes around.* Speaking of going around, I've been spinning madly for the Tour de Fleece. So far we have: sport weight superwash BFL with sparkly nylon from Spunky Eclectic, enough to make a pair of socks. A hank of fingering weight superwash merino in Peggy Sue from Crown Mountain Farms, enough to make a very long sock or two very short ones (for me) with plenty more spinning to do from the pencil roving. A hank of Dragon Breath from the Lavender Sheep. I had two plies of this but when I plied them against each other, they were yucky. Awful. Worsted yarn barf. So I unplied the WHOLE LOT and navajo/chain plied them. Much better! Oh and the odd thing...

G'day all! Nearly five whole years ago, I decided to start blogging. Today is not my fifth blogiversary, nope, today is my 1000th post! To those of you who have been here since the beginning, a big thank you! (Are any of the two of you still reading this drivel? OK, DH is cos he wants to know what I've been up to! LOL Anyway pipe up and let me know!) To those who have come in somewhere along the way, thanks to you too! Leave a comment and let me know who you are. And to those who aren't reading any longer, well it was nice knowing you! And to those who read but never leave a comment, I can only say I guess it is nice not knowing you! Cos surely you want me to know who you are too? I was going to do a retrospective and show off my favourite projects over the years but I realised that some of the pics are on a server that doesn't exist any longer and I have to dig them up from an old hard disk and load them on Flickr and y'know what? My connection is slow an...