Knuckle dusters

The mornings can be painfully cold in our little house. While we no longer have to deal with cracks in the walls and slat windows (shudder) we do have a lounge room window that is the size of a wall. People walk past and stare in all day long, possibly because they don't realise that the local drug dealers were the last tenants, and the only addiction I have is yarn.

This week I started a set of Knucks for myself, using the very yummy make make yarn Joex bought me home from her honeymoon last year. I've already made a cowl and I still have 3.5 balls left. This stuff is going to last forever.

I need fingerless gloves rather than fingerless mitts because I'm a sad old lady with arthritis in a few knuckles and they need to stay warm.

I also need to make some fingerless mitts for Knit One Give One. I'll finish mine up and churn out a few pairs for the homeless. I might be cold, but they're freezing in this cold spell.

Meet Dobbin

My Harry Potter lifestyle continues, unabated. Not only am I listening to Stephen Fry's audio recordings (for the gazillionth time) but I'm still creating projects for my classes.

For Muggle Studies this month we needed to make something based off a stamp. Apparently stamps are odd, hence the need for studying. I knew what I wanted to make, so I found a stamp with some koi and got hooking.*

My lovely friend Lea found the pattern and I'm pretty sure she's a genius. Dobbin was a breeze to make, seriously. We're talking two hours, tops, for all of it.

The lovely gemstones in the bottom were a gift from Lea as well, and Dobbin thinks they're beautiful, as do I.

Best if all, I have a no-maintenance pet! If only I had a pony...

In other knitting news, I managed to make a pretty impressive mistake sewing up a customer's jumper.

I managed to sew the back and the front of a raglan together. I'm officially a cretin.

* With a crochet hook. Minds out of the gutters, people!

Nerdy nerd nerd

I finished the shrug for my customer last week. Turn out that she had a ball tucked away somewhere, so I drove over and nabbed it. Two days later she was looking happy and rather blue in her new shrug. I do like happy customers. Only thing better is a happy me, and considering that Spring term for the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup started May 1st I am one highly chuffed lassie.

Here's the deal: each term is made up of three months. Each month you have classes, eight of them, but your minimum requirement is one. There are OWLs, knitting projects that will take 8-12 weeks to do, and there are Missions for the Order of the Phoenix, which take 6-8 weeks. There are Quidditch matches too. To shoot goals, knit/crochet something.

This is a HUGE amount of fun for a Harry Potter junkie, like myself. I was sorted into Slytherin and have weaseled my way into everything. It's just wonderful to have others love what you love and try to combine how much you love everything together. 

So here are my classes so far:

A dragon's tooth mug cozy for History of Magic.

A Falkor-pink bow for Potions.

A ripple mug rug for Charms, based around water. I chose my colors for "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": The water burned like witches oils, all green and blue and white." 

An oddly colored Scottish terrier for Transfiguration.

Lastly, I finished Square 10 for my Sherlock blanket. I'd started it before term began, so any project you finish up during a school month can be turned in at Detention.

See? I told you it was fun!

This is not good

I have 4 rows left of knitting on the TARDIS blue shrug.

That's how much wool I have left.

It really is bigger on the inside, because how else is all the yarn gone?

Tangled up in blue

I am starting to get very VERY tired of this shrug. Hopefully I'll get most of it done this weekend.

I have a new project planned. And it's grey. And I'm still excited.

Which came first?

Not content with basking in the glow of the finished jumper, I also completed another project on Monday.

I started this chicken for Easter and promptly forgot about it. It's using up the yellow cotton from the Jumper Which Shall Not Be Named and was - eventually - a pretty quick hook up.

Now, back to knitting up the impossible shrug band...

Cold Snap

The temperature has dropped dramatically here in Melbourne. Early morning is a struggle to get out of bed, usually because there are two children lying on top of us.

This morning on my walk I felt like Cathy on the moors.

Only thing you need in weather like this is a biiiiig thick jumper, and boy do I have a doozy for you.

My mum started this jumper when she was pregnant with my sister Bronwyn. Next month Bronwyn turns 49. My mother very nicely asked me to finish this jumper a while ago, and I finally got around to it this month.

The jumper needed the ends sewn in on the motif, sleeves picked up and knitted down, and the neckband picked up and knitted. I tried doing the neck last year (before the sleeves) and gave it up.

I finished the jumper last week and the neck was DREADFUL. It stood up oddly and turned me into a salty pirate, curse-wise. I frogged it back, picked up half the stitches between the front decreases and center back and it went much better. I forgot how wide mid-sixties necklines were on jumpers. Very Ann Margaret.

So, 49 years later, it's all done and handed over. My mum is so happy with the end result, and now she's decided to pass it along to Bronwyn's daughter Ashlee. My niece gets cold really easily and as a very pale blonde she's going to look fantastic in it.

Personally, I think I should have kept it.

Future cramping

I've managed quite a bit since Wednesday.

1. Ripped back the neck of the ski jumper again. This jumper is a major thorn in my side, but I really want it done before the end of the month, so I'll try it again.

2. I needed knitting on Wednesday night, as Felix and I were off to see Avengers 2 in Gold Class. Comfy chair + Joss Whedon movie = perfect knitting time. So I whipped up a garter stitch scarf to wear on my dreaded morning walk. Avengers was brilliant, by the way. A comedy with action bits. Awesome.

3. I managed to cut my finger. I think it's a paper cut, not really a big deal, right? Wrong.

This is how I cast on, long tail method. The wool is constantly scraping over the cut at high speeds. It hurts a lot. So it looks like any new projects will have to wait.

4. Good thing too, because I picked up a project from a customer yesterday. It's a little shrug that needs a collar picked up. Shouldn't be too hard. First pick up 300 stitches. Eventually - after 33 rows of rib and increasing - there are 600 stitches. Now knit another 10 rows and cast off.

I'm doomed.

Just do it, already

I dislike exercise. By dislike I mean hate, but I'm still going to do it. Dislike every second of it, but do it all the same. I like my current wardrobe and I'd like to keep wearing it, so exercise has to happen.

Every morning I drop Dot off at school and then drive off to the regarding basin near my house.

It's a lovely walk. Every man and his dog are there, literally as it's the local dog walk, but I can ignore them. The lake usually has a few ducks in it, and the puppies try to attack them, which is highly amusing.

I walk down the path, get to the end and turn 180° and walk back. It's not a particularly challenging walk but as I'm not after a challenge, that's okay.

It's chilly out so I made a set of fingerless mitts to match my hat (while sobbing through "Anne of Green Gables"). Easy pattern, just plain knitting with a thumbhole. Same yarn as my hat, nice and lumpy and woolly and WARM.

Plus they make picking up tv towers easier.

Depths of despair

My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes now. This is a time that tries the soul, but there's no comfort this time.

If you need me, 13 years old Andrea and I will be sitting down this week watching our favourite tv show and unashamedly weeping.

Oh Gil...

It got better

Every Thursday night Felix deserts me heads into the city to nerd up a level play Pathfinder. This usually goes okay here at Casa Crazy, but last night the kidlets took our house name literally.

After the water fights/bathtime, television tilting (thanks for the latest twenty grey hairs, Marcus) and an adorable meltdown from Dot due to the wifi playing up (don't get between my daughter and videos of Kinder Surprises being opened) I finally got everyone into bed.

As I tuck Marcus in I sometimes say what I'm doing, so last night was sheet, doona, rainbow blanket; my little boy sat straight up in bed and reached out to pat the crochet. "I love rainbow blanket!",

Yep, It got a lot better.

Smug satisfaction

There are times when I finish a project and I'm okay with it. It's nothing spectacular, it's wearable, I'm okay with it. Then there are times where I'm pretty bloody chuffed with it, say a really nice cardigan, or fancy socks.

Then there's today.

I have finished Marcus' blanket and it is #@$%ing glorious.

I started this January 31, 2013. It has 36 balls of wool in it. It cost...never mind that bit.

I thought I'd never get it finished, but I did. It was a LOT of work and I'm more than a little proud of it.

But the best part? The bit that made me so happy I could cry? I spread it out on Marcus' bed and called him in to see it.

He  threw his arms out and cried "Oh, it's a rainbow!"

And every thread sewn in, every hand cramp, every second was worth it.

No power in the 'verse can stop me

I had a lovely weekend crippled with a rubbish back so I knitted. Did I work on finishing up projects? Nope, I started a new hat, most of which was worked on during a Gold Class session of "Cinderella".

The pattern is Capucine and the yarn is slubby stuff that was once a shawl but I frogged it back last week. I need a hat for my morning walk (You don't have to like exercise, you just have to do it) and this one covered my ears nicely.

Girl walks down the street in this hat...

...people know she's not afraid of anything.

I want to knit everything

It's autumn and I want to knit everything. The time to plan my autumn/winter wardrobe is upon me and I'm getting itchy fingers.

There's an amazing beret that has to be made asap.

It reads "I heart someone with autism" and "Someone with autism hearts me". I suspect a few friends will be putting in orders, right Jonathan?

I really need fingerless gloves. What? 6am is cold and I'm getting old. Also, I don't have any gloves at all, as I finally threw out my old red ones after ruthlessly saving the 42 nacre buttons they had. Looks like gloves are heading up my list.

Then there's jumpers.

I have the pattern and some lovely cream 10ply from Bendigo for this jumper and it was on my to do list, but then this free pattern appeared from Untangling Knots.

The fact that I have a massive girl crush on the designer, Andi, has nothing to do with it.

You can't blame me.

Three different surfaces

Despite Dot being illl and being not so fabulous myself I managed to knit another square of my Sherlock Holmes afghan.

Mostly knitted while lying in bed watching Season 2 of "Sleepy Hollow " while Felix was tending to the kidlets, poor man.

Mind you, he was absent today while Dot puked. Four times in the morning. I spent most of this morning scrubbing floors. Wooden, lino and carpet.

*sigh*

Well, that's over

Easter is done. Good Friday was spent in the sunshine at the park with the kidlets and all was lovely. Saturday I escaped for OVER 12 HOURS. BLISS.

I spent the day with Joannah and Lea, which Joannah christened "Fleece and Flounce Day" due to a combination of knitting (me), spinning (Joannah) and crochet (all of us) and various costume dramas. I can't thank Felix enough for letting me escape, I really can't. Sheer bliss.

Easter Sunday had a very rude awakening: the sound of Dot being violently unwell. Marcus managed to make it to the family celebrations, but the rest of us just stayed put. It was incredibly unfun, even if Marcus brought home a bucket-load of chocolate.

So another Easter is over and I can pack all of my decorations away, including my finished Easter bunting.

I didn't get a chance to hang it up. Maybe next year.

A timely reminder

I saw the cutest little Easter bunny crochet pattern, and asked Felix if I had time to make it. His reply is my new office poster.

Spoilsport.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

A while back I spent far too much time and money making a summer cotton top that came out ^#$%*. I threw it into a drawer, swore and promptly forgot about it. Last week I was cleaning out said drawer and thought to myself that it was a complete waste of really nice cotton.

So I undid it all and started crocheting bunting for Easter decorating. I'm feeling a lot kinder towards the ^#$%*-house top.

I wish it WAS coffee

You would think that fifteen balls of white yarn would be enough to finish Marcus' crochet blanket, but no, I ran out.

Felix dropped in to Morris & Sons and grabbed me another ball of Chalk and I set off to finish the blanket. It wasn't the same dye lot (not after a year) but c'mon: how bad could the difference be?

In daylight it's dreadful.

It looks like the edge has been dipped in coffee, rinsed and tried to pass itself off as clean.

New plan! Pull back the last row and curl into a ball and sob.

Next, please!

The grey jumper is finished, complete, done, finito. Did I remember to take a photo this time? No, of course not.

Next up we have an adorable baby cardigan. It's thankfully fairly small, and the colour is less depressing than grey.

Mind you, it's beige.