Finished Objects 2008 - #12

I am a genius. Anyone who thinks differently, see below:


















"Bubbles", from my mum's old Patons book.















A basic Pi shawl, with a feather and fan border, edging picked up and knitted along.















Knitted in Wendy Dennis 4ply Polworth, to celebrate a new baby.















Matisse Reine - isn't that just a beautiful name?











So if you need me, I'll just be over here, basking in my lacy glory...

Finished Objects 2008 - #11

I've been slaving away at my knitting and all I have to show for it is a week of Finished Objects. Excuse me while I beam smugly... *beam*

The first up is the uber-evil Drunken Dad vest.
















As you can see, it's a tad skinnier, and missing a lot of details from the sides. That would be because I cut some off. And by "I cut some off" I mean "Judith ran it through her overlocker while I looked away sobbing".















I added the rib in the round (again, Judith started the neckline and armhole for me) and passed it on to my da, who wanted to know if the knitter was drunk when she was knitting it...

Damn straight, Da, damn straight.

Finished Objects - #10

Eh, voile! Mon béret de Passepartout - N'est-il pas parfait ?


















My beret is beautiful. I feel semi-French and ever so snazzy in it (If I ever say snazzy again - kill me).



















I love the colours, I love the pattern, I love that I finished it in a week (which included running out of wool and shopping for more).
















Oh yeah - this is so getting warn to death!

Awoooooga! Awooooga!

Purple alert! Purple alert! Wendy Dennis has run out of 4ply in white! Disaster!

Carly's little wee Podling is due any second, and I'm cutting it very very close, having only started the edging lace. Then I started running low. Now I'm down to 10g of yarn and all of the edging to go. This is very very bad.

So I called Wendy Dennis and she's out of my yarn for the moment, probably in a few more days it'll be available.

In the meantime, I'm blocking my Passepartout Beret.













Look at the shiny shinyness! That's what happens when you use a circle cut from a silver cake board underneath.

Not likely!

So I had a cunning plan. I would set up a side chart similar to my Work in Progress chart, only this one would show my yarn and how I was using it all up before the big move (September 16th, for anyone interested). I went to Ravelry and downloaded my stash results onto Excel.

I have 155 balls of wool. 155. I don't think my blog has enough room for such a chart.

Much ado about nothing (as expected)

Could I be a bigger drama queen? After a weekend of sooking and refusing to knit anything because "what's the point? No one will like it anyway" and other rants, I decided to call my mum about the socks.

Of course she loves them. She wore them all day yesterday and plans to keep them for good, only to be worn with her brown boots for "going out". "They're green!" she said, with undisguised love in her voice. "They're just lovely and they fit perfectly."

I did ask why there wasn't a great reaction on Friday, and it was pretty much what I thought - a migraine. Her head was killing her and she feels terrible that I was so upset. She also needs a new pair of bedsocks...

I'm feeling better, in measurements of HUGE. I'm now back on track and knitting far too much stuff. Behold the WIP list, and a pic of my latest start-up.















It's the Speckled Beret by Kate Gilbert. I'm knitting it for my May/June project for the "Knitting 19th Century Novels" group on Ravelry. We're reading "Around the World in 80 Days" and I've named this project "Passepartout's Beret".

I might even get this project finished before June...

Why bother, really?

I made my mum a pair of socks for her birthday, which is today. I handed them over. She looked as though she had received a cadaver. Let's explore my knitterly feelings, shall we?









Here we have a run down of my present - I forgot to take pics yet again. Bite me.

We have beautiful yarn from Dyelicious ("Orchid" - just look at those colours!) and a fabulous pattern from Interweave Knits that I had decided on 5 months ago. I ordered the yarn in especially for this present. I even sneakily asked my mum for her opinion on this yarn, and she said how beautiful it was.


I knitted up the socks during work hours (my job has some recompense for the scratches). Let's see how many stitches per sock, shall we...

12, 114.

12, 114. That's 24, 228 for the two.

Is it me? Surely that's an achievement? On 2.5mm needles, no less.

I gave her the sock in a lovely bag, and she pulled them out and just looked at them. I told her the name of the socks and she said "Oh, thank you" in that horrible dull flat voice you use when you hate something. I had the Interweave Knits that the pattern was in (I'm knitting a lovely beret from it) so I opened it to the page (apologies to my sister Fiona who was riffling through it at the time) and said "See? Here's where I got the pattern from." Fiona commented on how different mine were from the picture (I think she was referring to the colourway). Mum looked over her shoulder from where she was putting them away and simply said "I wouldn't have been able to tell."

That's when my brain went "snap" and my heart went "crack". This is the woman who taught me to knit, who never hesitates to ask me to knit something for her friends, who was wearing a feather and fan scarf I had knitted her just today. The socks were perfect, they were hard and beautiful, and soooooo soft and she was so dismissive of them.

If I keep feeling this hurt, I don't think anyone in my family will ever receive anything knitted ever again.

Sorry guys.

Finished Objects - #9

A lovely quick knit finished for a request for my mum, the Rosy Cosy.














This was a pretty quick easy knit, a basic rib piece, with an amazing pattern from The Cabled Guy. The specs were "a little tea cosy for a one-cup teapot, and Auntie Wendy's kitchen is pink and grey". Luckily one of my balls of Sean Sheep Armytage fitted the specs (ball No.7, to be exact) and I had some leftover Zara in pink for the rose on top.













The rose was hard. Really hard. It was worth it, because even my mum thought it was great.
















No idea if Auntie Wendy liked it. I'll find out later. But at least I'm happy :)

(A massive thank you to my sister Bronwyn for taking the pics for me - you rock!)

Stupidmutantknuckles...*sulks*

My right hand has frozen up again. This requires three days with no knitting, and knitting every second day for a week after that.

I have my mum's birthday socks to make by May 2nd, a baby blanket by the 12th (due around then), a baby rabbit twice for more newborns...

This is so unfair.

Let me introduce Felix...

Gentle readers, this is Felix (and a vile hussy named Lily).

















For those who have never met him he's about 6'1", strawberry blonde hair (now a lot shorter) with a Celtic red goatee/moustache combination, very green eyes with an eyebrow piercing to draw the eye, lanky body and a set of black Cons with green and orange laces. He's also been my husband now for one year and one day.

Why Felix? Let's see...

1. He doesn't mind that I've been knitting him his fourth pair of socks since last September, and haven't touched them since.

2. He doesn't think I have enough yarn.

3. He once handed over his credit card to me knowing there was a bin of $1 wool in front of me.

4. He'll sit there, like this,














for an episode of "Family Guy" and one of "American Dad" because he knows how much I wanted to wind off the skein of lace-weight.

5. He doesn't mind me knitting during movies, either at home or out in public. Actually, he encourages it - I suspect he wants all the popcorn to himself.

6. He married me one month after I shaved my hair for charity, and didn't tell me that the only reason my veil stayed on was due to my crew cut sticking up through the holes in the tulle for a whole three weeks.

Then he casually dropped it into conversation while we were surrounded by other people as a protection unit. Clever...

Love you, babe. *mwah*

It just struck me as funny, is all...

Here's my Prime Minister with the newly appointed Govenor-General, Quentin Bryce.















Here's Tintin, intrepid reporter and an awesome read.



















I love ya, K-Rudd, but dude...it's the hair.

Finished Objects - #8

Sometimes I take my knitting for granted, because I've been knitting for a fairly long time (this March saw in my 29th year as a knitter). I assume that everyone knows how easy it can be, how fun, that anyone complaining about "difficult" or "challenging" just wasn't trying hard enough.

Then I made the Kitri Socks.



















They were "challenging". They opened my eyes to new possibilities in knitting and I love them for it. I'd never turned a entirely short-row heel until I made the Kitri Socks. I'd never added on lace sideways until I made the Kitri Socks.

















I love how they opened my eyes to the challenge that knitting can be. They're beautiful, difficult and I have come this close to framing them.















Chantal demanded to see them yesterday and when she was holding them she turned to Felix and asked "How can you not bow down and worship her when she does something like this?!" and the reply was perfect: "Because I know what she went through making them."

Thanks babe.

---

You can make these socks. They are a challenge that you will want to accept, and Lisa Grossman's instructions are brilliant - concise, witty, simplified (for the simple in all of us) and above all clear.






















Thanks for a great pattern Lisa - you rock. Now for the shawl! Oh, you vile temptress!

Little box of happiness

I lost my Amazon virginity today. I placed my order on March 30th and my order arrived today, a good three weeks earlier than they estimated.

I was hysterically giggling with joy and I grabbed the box and headed off to work for an afternoon of drooling.

So....what'd I buy?















"Hand Knit Holidays". It costs $58.95 in Borders and I've wanted it for a very long time.















The impetus for the intial order. US$5.50 - or AUS$48.95 at Dymocks. Hrm, let me think about it...
















Can't find it anywhere (except for Judith's house) so I bought it.

All up? US$52.32. In Oz money it came to $56.88 (at payment time).

So I saved about $90.

*runs away, clutching her new books ands giggling hysterically*

Finished Objects - #7

I love Victoriana. Gimme a great corset, a Psyche knot and ether for childbirth and I'd be set. In keeping with these ideas, I present my stockings.




















They're just lovely (please note an extreme bias here). Being modeled by Martine, my latest acquisition, they really do look great.




















The eyelet effect up the back of the calf is an effective feature, and as it's a four row pattern repeat, very easy to create.














I changed the heel from a flap to short row shaping, as I'd been working one on the Kitri socks and found it soooooo much neater. Recently, I've discovered I'm not as bad at heel flaps as I thought, so there may be more of them in the future.











The lace pattern at the top wasn't my style so I used a different one. I like it better.

The best part? They stay up all on their own. Although, maybe I could weave some velvet ribbon through the eyelets? Hrm....

Back with another one of those sock-blockin' beats!

So this is what I get up to when I knit.














I knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and then ignore it all until I have to block it. It's a disease of sorts.

So here's the end result.


















My Nana's (belated) 90th birthday socks.













My Jo Sharp knee high stockings.









The ever elusive Kitri socks - the missing sock may have been sat on and then missed. It may or it may not. We prefer to not comment in this house.

Give them a day to dry and then they can be posted as finished...finally.

NB: (Best blog title ever)

Crisis!

Okay everyone, brace yourselves. I have some horrendous news...

I've lost a sock.

...

Why is there not widespread panicking going on? Ah, I see. I didn't clarify my statement.

I've lost a Kitri sock. A fully completed Kitri sock.

...

Still nothing.

You do realise that if I can't find it, I can't block it, take photos of it and therefore allow you to feel the love as I do, right?

...

Fine. If you need me, I'll be looking.

But when I find it, it's all mine now.

Easter Bunny...eaters.

Oh, hai!
















We have Andrea.














She is ours! She shall not be returned to her knitting unless we receive 200kg of smoked salmon, a tanker of milk and 50 humans as permanent back scratchers. Oh, and the head of every dog in Melbourne.

In the meantime, look at the sleepy kitty....














Awwwwwwwwww!

And no, Mr Bond.














We expect you to feed us.

Well FINALLY!

I finished my Kitri socks today.

Now for the blocking and photo taking. I think I'm going to buy a leg.

Finished Objects 2008 - #6

About eight months ago I spotted the perfect pattern for my friend Sam - the Scholar Collar. He is an actual scholar - he's studying his doctorate in philosophy at Melbourne Uni, he teaches, he's pretty all round clever (albeit with an unnatural love of Keith David and crystallised ginger).

For Sam's birthday a fortnight ago I made him a very nice SC. Sam is suitably appreciative, and models his present for you here.












Note the book - he wishes he was.

Challenge accepted

As you might remember, I signed up for the Organized Knitting Club 30-Day Challenge which gave me until the weekend to do a bit of a tidy up. I now think signing up in a month when I have waaaaaaayyyyyyy too much knitting to do was a bit silly, but no matter. Here's the before and after shots.

Lounge Corner










Here we have the window corner of the lounge in it's original state.










As you can now see, there's a window ledge with a nice stash basket in front of it. Just so you know, there's exactly two projects in it - I threw three others away.

Stash Wardrobe


























The original mess, both inside and out.












The new improved version! Wiped down, tidied up.













See that list on the inside of the door? That states what's in which box and what I plan to use it for. I also threw out a project from the bottom of the cabinet I'd been keeping aside for five years. What on earth was I thinking?!



















You probably noticed my new holder - it was one of my many bookcases, and I happily admit I outright ripped the idea off from Melinda at Dropped Stitches, because I think it's the best way to see your stash and what you want to do with it. Out of sight, out of mind! To anyone worrying about dust, that's why I wet block.

I never got around to the craft bookcase, or the sewing area, but I still feel pretty good. After all, all of this is gone:













I can see that the move overseas is going to be a lot easier now!