Pretty playthings

I sew up other people's knitting, and sometimes it's a grind. Sew up shoulders, pick up and knit a neckline, set in sleeves, get halfway and swear, re-set sleeves, sew up, steam, etc etc. I still love the end result, but it's not all that exciting.

Other times...

Look at this shawl. Look at it. Isn't it beautiful? A lovely knitter in Adelaide sent it to me to have the border sewn on to the center piece, and have it all blocked out. It was bliss from beginning to end, it really was. Lace is great fun to pin out and make whimpering puppy noises over, but it takes ages to knit and the commitment needed for this sort of shawl is absolute.

I told my customer that she wasn't allowed to use the phrase "I'm just a knitter" anymore. If you can create something like this, you're an artist.

Too much stash...

I have had a horror of a week. HORROR. Marcus managed to stay home on the first day back with a fever, went to school on Tuesday and Wednesday and by that night had been diagnosed with croup and prescribed steroids. No school for the rest of the week. Then Dot caught it. Our little poppet has never had croup and she's sleeping badly, almost choking every night. It's heartbreaking, it really is.

Still, I promised stash and stash I have. To answer the question: was a 5.5 hour drive really worth it? Oh hell yes! Chantal and I left at stupid o'clock and we still weren't the first there!

The sale was held at the back of the mill and while it was cold and early it was full of very desperate knitters, ourselves included. There were boxes of yarn everywhere and we threw ourselves into rummaging. Sadly, it was mostly acrylic. Now, acrylic has it's place in other knitter's stashes but I don't like it. It burns my hands when I knit with it, and I always swore I'd never go lower than 75% natural fiber in a yarn, no matter what.

Meet what.

This yarn was in a massive cardboard box and I took one look at the glorious orange and grey combination and said "Oooooooooo, gimme!". I grabbed every ball I could find in that colour and then saw the next desirable one.

Isn't it GORGEOUS?!? I saw, I coveted, I grabbed every ball they had. This may not sound too bad, until you learn that the two colours added up to 52 balls of 50% wool, 50% acrylic. Only 37 metres per ball, too.

Oops.

I stuffed a bag full and went back to rummaging, which is how I found the three ply Dreamtime. If you can resist baby yarn in 100% wool, you're a stronger knitter than I. I bought four packets of ten balls. It was $5 a packet, could you say no?!?

Then we discovered the center of the room. The Danger Zone.

Rowan. $40 a pack of 10 balls. Oh sweet baby Jesus, the whole trip was worth it for that.

I grabbed a packet of Siena 4ply to make this cardigan, because I can look adorable, dammit!

Then Chantal bought me a packet of Felted Tweed as petrol money. I love Chantal. Who needs petrol when you can have yarn, right?

So for about 12 hours I was giddily happy, followed by Marcus with a fever at 4am.

Reality sucks, but hey...

I'm getting closer to swimming in the stuff.

Incoming Mega Haul

I seem to have no time to knit for myself.

I'm finishing up a teeny little baby cardigan, then two pick ups this Sunday morning will keep me busy, along with a baby shawl that needs to be sewn up, blocked and shipped back to Adelaide!

However...tomorrow Chantal and I are heading to Wangaratta. To the Australian Country Spinners mill. They make Patons, Cleakheaton, Panda and Shepherd yarns.

They're having a sale.

$1 a ball. 50¢ a pattern.

I'm going to go MENTAL.

Age is relative

What a fabulous weekend I've had: knitting dropped off, knitting picked up, knitting finished, well almost done. I'm just sewing it up now.

The jumper is for an 80 year old who chose the colour and her daughter is a bit hesitant. Bright grass green? At that age? I agreed.

Hot pink with nipple clamp attachments. Much more suitable.

Now I'm just making work for myself

I delivered two baby tops this morning, one jumper and one cardigan. Both completely adorable, both requiring more work than one would think.

The cardigan hadn't been finished entirely, so I spent an episode of "Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries" knitting up the fronts, then joining the seams with faggoting, then miss stitching the borders and sewing up all the seams. About 3 hours all up. For a baby cardigan.

The jumper was a breeze, I thought, and proceded to steam the pieces pre-sewing up.

...wait a minute...

The stitch was split rows earlier, and the knitter didn't notice. I did, because I can spot a mistake from 5 metres away. I could just leave it, after all she didn't notice it, did she?

Yeah, right. That'll be the day. Rows dropped, picked back up. All shiny, cap'n.

More work

Hey Andrea, how's the knitting going?

Pretty good. I haven't had time to even look at my own stuff, but I'm busy making other people happy, which is nice.

Will you get to do any of your own knitting soon?

Hehehehe... Oh, you're serious? Well, I'm heading off to the sale at Wangaratta next Saturday with Chantal, where we shall spend a small fortune on yarn. I have a station wagon, so I'm thinking if I put the back seat down, we can fill it up to the brim.

The weekend after that is Bendigo. THE Bendigo. The one where we spend a big fortune. Chantal again, I'm the passenger so I'll be knitting (finally!) and this time's going to be far far worse...

...why? Felix didn't say you could buy a sheep, did he?

I wish. No, I have a new toy.

Meet Lynette. The very sexeh Joex lent her to me. Something about the first taste being free... Anyway, I'll need to buy fibre for spinning, obviously. Lots and lots of it. More than three bags full.

Do you have room for that?

...did Felix send you?

*beep*

Sorry, Andrea can't discuss her own knitting right now as she's sewing up other people's knitting...

...such as mohair cardigans...

...extra squishy jumpers...

...and learning new ways to join up teeny little baby cardigans.

Slacker day

For the record, I have not improved, health-wise.

So today finds me in bed, watching Season 4 of "Supernatural" and working on a jumper for a customer with awkwardly large needles and keeping Felix active with constant tea and food requests.

Holy heckmonkeys, I could eat everything! Stupid cold & flu tablets.

Guest Post

Andrea's not feeling too good, so she asked me to write a post for her.

Unfortunately for her, I know next to nothing about knitting.

So...umm...

Andrea knits a lot, doesn't she?  She's pretty good at it, too.  Won awards for it and everything.  It's odd, but every time I tell her how good her knitting looks, she tells me that it's easy, and that she could teach me one day, if I wanted.  Then I take one look at some of the things she's done, and then I give her the Look.  You know, the look that most of you have most likely cultivated to use on a friend or partner (or a child), to convey a polite but firm, "Really?  Are you kidding me?"

Like this christening shawl that she's knitting at the moment.  As I started this post, she was talking about how fascinating it was, how you knit the front, and then go back and knit the lace that becomes the top and the edge.  She's been talking about it on and off for most of the last few days, lamenting on how the increasing is going to take ages, and thanks to eight-and-a-bit years of husbandly osmosis, I understand about 70% of what she's talking about - not enough to have a clear picture in my head, but enough to carry a conversation without sounding like a complete goose.  I think Andrea's developed the same skill in relation to my enthusiastic retelling of the computer games that I play.

And then she shows me the product-in-progress.

And then she wonders why I give her the Look.

- Felix

Brain? Not working so well

Hello again, I hope you all went out and enjoyed World Wide Knit in Public Day on Saturday. I myself hung out at Armory in a group organised by What Jane Knits and had lovely time, staring down everyone who wanted to gawp at us. I resisted partaking in World Gin Day, being a sad teetotaler now; I do make fewer mistakes these days.

I did actually finish my finger less gloves and they’re lovely and warm. I really did need some.

Unfortunately, when foraging for my beanie on Saturday I found my Hands of Cerise finger less gloves I made.

How did I forget that I already had finger less gloves?! 

Happy Knitting Weekend!

Isn't it lovely when a fellow knitter gives you a long weekend to celebrate her birthday by knitting?

Nice one, your Majesty!

Sadly, I've had to put my own knitting aside as I have to knit and sew up three jumpers for customers, with a double pick up tomorrow. Winter is here, and the knitters are calling.

Stripes

I had a Finishing Touch drop off on Friday and one yesterday as well, so my weekend was somewhat taken up with buttonholes and sleeves and adorable widdle baby cardigans. The challenge was stripes.

Matching stripes is a mild fixation of mine. It can be incredibly frustrating when it goes wrong and deliriously wonderful when it goes right.

The Monday drop off had textured stripes to match at the side and sleeve seams, and somewhat on the sleeve caps - you can't match them but you can get pretty close. I was very happy with this cardigan, and so was the customer.

The Friday drop off was a garter stripe jumper. So many stripes to match. SO MANY.

I absolutely nailed it. I am giddily happy with these stripes. Deliriously wonderful doesn't cover this one. The customer was very happy with this jumper and I was beaming.

This wasn't a smug satisfaction piece, more of a golden glow. I am well chuffed.

(Man, I really need a new ironing board cover.)

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.