A bleurgy Thursday

Woke up, threw up, went back to sleep. Repeat literally ad nauseum.

So, no knitting today. Well, okay I started my da's golf cap, but nothing much was done. Tomorrow, hopefully.

A rocking Wednesday

Ladies and gentleman, here they are... the hottest, sexiest girls in "melancholy indie guitar" today...

WE'VE GOT OVARIES!!! (crowd goes wild as if at a David Cassidy concert)

Finally! It's taken far too long, but they're done. I shall hand them over to Petria tomorrow night and pray she doesn't hate them.


Just look at that luxurious hair...

(I'd like to point out a girl actually died due to a David Cassidy concert. See? Riotous fun times.)

A shiny Tuesday

Early to bed, early to rise etc etc. Late to bed, late to rise, lay around knitting is much better I think. Today is semi-triumphant as I have finally finished Petria.

(author pauses as applause, accolades and flowers are showered upon her)

Anyone who knows Petria will know that she has far sleeker, sexier hair, but there is no chance of me styling this doll's hair to look like her. If she wants it layered more, she owns scissors.

Julia, in the meantime, looks somewhat bedraggled. Her hair is not even an outline as yet, and as I now know that Petria's hair took four hours from start to finish, I'm not is a big hurry to finish. Soon. I still have finish Da's doll by Sunday...

A very large thank you goes out to Jodi for my beautiful stich markers. These are perfect for the decreases in my red jumper (once I get up to the arm joins). Jodi, you rock.

Monday. Meh.

It started out ever so nicely. Lots to do, lunch with my nan - Happy 90th Nan! - and went downhill from there.

These dolls are driving me crazy. I can't work on anything else until they're done and I keep thinking that will never happen. This is how much hair I managed to create tonight. Three hours work - half a head of hair.

First you take a strand of Jo Sharp DK Cotton, split it in half so that you have two lots of six strands, then use your 0.75mm crochet hook to start pulling the hair through each stitch.

It is time consuming and tedious and I hate it with a fiery passion that makes me think of burning the dolls at a home-made stake. Or the microwave. I'm not fussy.

A pleasant Sunday

I got a bit of knitting done today. I had family party to attend - my nan's 90th - which was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it immensely and escaped as soon as I could. After I got home I needed a nap, followed by a bath, then - finally - knitting.



I started working on Julia's neck which is a tedious knit in the round, just as Petria's was, and I got bored very very quickly. Luckily, there's always more to do. Including estimating the worth of these dolls...

40¢. Per doll. Technically. I wanted them to be able to stand with some assistance, so I put a 20¢ coin in the bottom of the shoe for Petria's doll. Not only handy but shiny too.

Then came the hair. Oh dear Heavenly Father, the hair. All that you see here is the outside line that delineates the hairline. This took me over half an hour. I'm currently trying to work out what is worse - that I've ony managed to achieve an outline in half an hour, that there's the rest of the head to do, or that I have a whole other doll to play hairdresser with.

Tough call.

A very satisfactory Saturday

Today was a nice slow knitting day. Got up late, had a very healthy breakfast of coffee and a large jammy biscuit - thanks greatly to Chantal - and sat down to knit the Petria doll a head. The pattern is pretty simple but 5 stitches per needle is never fun. The true fun started when I got to stuff the doll itself.

All you really need is a chopstick, stuffing and a warped sense of mind. Hence, the bust - I couldn't find anything round to stuff up there, so I rolled up some stuffing into little hard balls and shoved them up there. Petria will be happy that she has boobs. I can pretty much guarantee that.

I was about to start the shoes when my boyfriend arrived earlier than expected and ended my knitting session abruptly. I shall have to continue tomorrow night after my nan's surprise 90th birthday party.

Look - boobs!

A wonderful Friday

2:50am - done.

Plans 1 and 2

Here's the list of knitting I need to finish up (in the order listed):

1. Petria’s dolls
2. Dad’s present
3. Red jumper
4. Orange shrug
5. Intarsia cardigan
6. Day of the Dead dolls
7. Rug

And here's what I plan to make after that because I already have the yarn put aside (no particular order):

1. Kirsten’s skirt
2. Blue/green cardigan
3. Gloves from Rowan
4. Glove puppets
5. Friendship cuffs
6. Silver necklaces
7. Brown two yarn jumper
8. Raspberry top
9. Hexagon Top

See? I have plans.

An ak-tacular Thursday

Knitting? Knitting...hrm, lt's see... Isn't that what I'm meant to be doing? Oh yes, it is! Silly Andrea...

A day wasted on minutae. Filling in at ak for about four hours, with Divine J, Linda and Jodi all providing the best part of said four hours. Arriving home with plans to knit only to discover my boyfriend had dropped round after uni for a few hours. Knitting? Not a chance, I crave hugs.

I took my knitting to the V.E. (other other job) to work on, but it's Thursday. Many, many orders and the need to erase some internet viewing files. All 6000 odd of them. Ooops.

Therefore the only knitting accomplished today was the sewing in of the argyle ends. That's it. That's all she wrote, folks. There's always tomorrow, and I know that I am definately going to have Petria's dolls finished by Saturday night to take round to give her. I have plans.

An ordinary Wednesday

My knitting was not a joy to me today. I sat, watched four episodes if Firefly and attempted to finish the dolls for Petria. And after 4 hours had I finished? Of course not - I'm up to the sewing up stage which always takes twice as long as you estimate.

I think the Turkish pants for the Julia doll are a bit silly, but in a cool way. The reason for the heigh discrepency? Petria's 5 foot high and Julia is closer to 6. See? It all makes sense now.

As for my remaining task - the argyle jumper - I still haven't finished sewing the ends in (please see previous statement re sewing). I started, but being easily distracted, failed to finish. However I did manage to knit along the back up to the armholes, so all is not lost. I plan to finish that off at ak tomorrow morning while I'm working.

A very moody Tuesday

Late to bed, early to rise, makes a knitter... cranky, dark circled and so desperate to find coffee she will buy it at McDonalds - bleurgh. I shudder to think exactly what they are filtering it through.

I had an early doctor's appointment which depressed me no end (don't they always?) but the drive afforded me a lot of time to knit away at my bedsock. You put the car into neutral at red lights with the hand brake on and knit away. I do not advocate knitting while the vehicle is in motion, steering with one's knees. Do not ask me how I know this - do as I say, not as I do.

The end result? One neatly finished pair of bedsocks for my mum. The viewers with sharper eyes will note that the rib at the top of the socks is not the same length, due to me knitting these socks 6 months or so apart. SSS, I'm afraid, plus a myriad of other reasons.I also ran out of yarn just as I started to graft the toes together - I had to use a different yarn. However this is my very first pair of socks and I'm stupidly proud of them. Really. Even though I want to re-knit the first one (will you just look at that heel? - awful!).

The rest of my day included lunch with my wonderful boyfriend and attempting to sew up these rock dolls for Petria. It's harder than I thought it woud be. There is a need for a strong wire frame inside the pieces, and I wrapped padding around it. My sewing machine needle does not like wire and snapped, flying into my face - no injuries other than to my intelligence.

I still need to finish knitting half the darn things and I may have already told Petria and Julia I'd finished them. Sins will out. Such as avarice:

Rowan have created a Kidsilk ballgown.
It will be mine, oh yes! It will be mine...

In the meantime, I managed to knit about 10 rows of the back of my argyle vest during knitting group tonight. No, I still haven't sewn the ends in yet . Tomorrow, sometime.

I have a plan for tomorrow - banking and cleaning in the morning, knitting in the afternoon. I may even clean the stash cupboard. Maybe. If someone will lend me a canary.

Any given Monday

It's almost unbelievable, but I actually accomplished what I set out to do today.

I sat down and knitted my design for a doll's argyle jumper for my da's Father's Day present. I'm actually stunned. The front of the design is entirely finished. Now I just need to work on the back, which being plain red should knit up nice and fast, add grey ribbing for the neck and armholes and I'm done. The sheer extravagance of knitting 1.5ply Belisa cashmere for a doll's jumper still has not sunk in, but I'll think about it afterwards.


The other thing I really need to do is sew in all the ends. I'd been sewing them in as I went but the minute I got to the division, it became a case of "meh". I sewed away all the ends on the left front after I finished that side, and have only to stitch in the right side now. I learnt my lesson of sewing in ends after the Nicky Epstein bag incident that shall remain as a permanent record of how not to wait until the entire project is finished until you sew the ends in. Nice pattern though. As you can see, I'm not brilliant at sewing ends away neatly and surreptitiously - but if they don't show through the front, I'll be happy. This is my first ever argyle project and it is being knitted on 2.5mm needles, so I will be kinder to myself.

I managed to watch the end of "Emma" and knit away merrily at my mum's bedsock. This is how much bedsock you can knit whilst watching most of "Emma" and two episodes of "Wesley: The Vampire Anthology". I'll hopefully finish it off tomorrow (doctor's appointment first thing followed by another day of slack knitting).

Tomorrow's knitting? My mum's bedsock, most likely to the remainder of the "Wesley" dvd, but even more importantly - I must must MUST finish the rock god dolls my darling Petria needs for her music video. No dolls, no We've Got Ovaries releases. The wire stuffing is probably going to kill me.

An atypical Sunday

A very unusual day in that I managed to get work done. As in finished.

First off was my teacosy, from J's old Rowan mag.

It took me a while to knit it, but as you get closer to the end, you tend to speed up somewhat I find. Unfortunately, when I finished the second side is when I discovered that I didn't have the right navy cotton to sew it up (yes, it was machine stitched. There was never a chance of me hand sewing this).

I like the look that the alternating colourways gives me. The yarn used is Jo Sharp Silkroad Tweed DK, green being Beanshoot, purple being Festival and navy being Serpentine. The lining is Kaffe Fassett "Autumn Roses" and was surprisingly fun to use. I've never been a fan of the showier prints from Rowan, but this one seemed to set my work off nicely.

I also managed to hem the bottom of my Liberty pyjama pants I made, set a zip into a skirt and finish sewing all the ends into my black rib jumper.

I adore this jumper. It's knitted in SouthWest Trading Co Soy Silk Phoenix in black and it was a joy, nay, a beautiful dream to knit with. It glided off my needles like water and I loved knitting with it.

The pattern is from Rowan's "It's a Tape Thing" and was heaps of fun to knit - any pattern that includes "k1, drop 1, k1" is fine by me. I actually knitted most of this jumper during the Great Vic Bike Ride last year, so you can guess why I'm glad to finally finish it - 8 months afterwards.







Today's challenge? I need to finish knitting the front of an argyle vest for my da for his Father's Day present, and finish watching "Emma", the Gwyneth Paltrow version.
Now, knitting argyle during a dvd doesn't work all that well,

so as part of my "Finish all those stupid unfinished projects, darn it!" plan, I'll start the second sock in my alpaca bed socks. They were for me until I grafted the toes too soon. Fit my mum perfectly she was happy to say.

(You best know that I've knitted two rows of my argyle while I waited for the pics to upoad)