six and a half stitches

Today Wool, Tomorrow Gold

Let me introduce you to Hoshi.

She's a sexy little thing, yes?
See, Hoshi is cool for 2 reasons.
1. She's a chick
2. She's a costwold chick from the US of A and she belongs to the wonderful Cari.

Hoshi is very intelligent. She sends Cari emails regularly, and she has the forsight to get a haircut once a year and send her locks to Cari to spin. If that isn't devotion, I don't know what is.

My cats are in awe of Hoshi. They are intrigued by this pretty little thing. See,

Their claws have carressed the packaging, and they have growled as they tore the bag to shreds. I think it was pure lust, but I can't rule out their instinct that the inert bag was prey and might attack us all through the night, and therefore had to be 'taken care of'. I had to do something with Hoshi, for fear she would be licked to death, or growled to within an inch of her life.

Or, at least, I attempted to do something with this, but the spinners amongst you will be squirming at this point and swearing away under your beathe at the heathen amongst you.

It's very uneven, and parts are overspun. I could lie and say this was totally deliberate (there you go again, swearing away and hiding your heads in your hands), but it wasn't, but I think I can get away with it on this one. It's my second attempt. The first attempt will just leave you laughing your heads off.

And the third attempt will convince you that I should never touch a drop spindle ever again. I have affectionately called this one Cat Spew. Forgive me Cari, your name for it was much more eloquent, but this one was a real suck to spin, kept breaking and my carefully crafted ability to put colour together failed me entirely on this one. It perhaps wasn't helped by the fact I was trying to make dinner at the time.

This is addictive stuff though. Mesmerising. And I wanna do more.

With Spring Time Comes Blossom

I've been warbling on about Noro Blossom for a few weeks now, and given my husband thinks we are now a wholesaler for Noro, I thought I should show you what I'm actually doing with it in case you all thought I was just stockpiling it in case of a world shortage of the stuff. Or something. Blossom is going to be Eloise from the Noro Knits book. I've started the back, and I'm not happy.

I have reservations. It's very, very pink, and bright, and there's a lot of colour in there, and as you can see it's striping quite a lot. The ribbing gives way to reverse stocking stitch in about 5cms time, and I'm going to continue to then and see how that works, and then make my mind up. I keep having these doubts that this is the right pattern for the wool, or whether I shouldn't use it sparingly and have some solid colour with it to break it down, or whether it shouldn't be looser and more drapey. I just don't know. And then this* keeps looking at me,

and I think, maybe I should do something more subdued for a while, or maybe I'm doing Blossom an injustice, or maybe I should take a break and work on Butterfly or Gloria in the two Noro colours (38-right and 203-left), or Baltic Sea Stole in the Lornas Lace (conveniently the colourway is called Baltic Sea)...The angst of it all.

*see, no pink!

Spring Time

It's spring time here, and there's some weird weather stuff happening. I hate the wind. It makes me very agitated and restless and can really make me sad, which isn't such a good thing at the moment. So I'm going to start with some things which have made me smile this week. First, this selection of needles from the Bower. I figure one can never have too many sock needles, and they makes cute presents with wool.

Then this - the sky today

And finally my first sock. Now, at last, I can call myself a real knitter.

As you can see, I went for the abstract arty shot, and the bulbous thing at the top doesn't really exist. It's really a very normal sock. Honest.

The Book Of Wool

And the Lord said, 'Behold unto you, an Angel shall appear, and she shall be disguised so as not to draw attention to her doing'. And the people gasped, sure a miracle was upon them. And they did scurry here and there to find this Angel, until one amongst them cried out. For unto them had appeared a package, wrapped in brown and padded, and many did sigh and stare in wonderment, until the Lord did speak again to them.

'To you this Angel appears, to offer friendship, and guidance, in things unknown. Yay though thou shalt be afraid of its contents, it shall bring happiness and joy to all who seek to cherish the word of the wool'. And there was much murmuring of agreement amongst the people. And the most brave amongst them did open the package with trembling hand, and did exclaim loudly as they saw what the Angel had bought upon them.

'Hallelujah!' they cried and did spread their arms upwards to the Lord in thanks. For what lay before them were riches beyond their dreams, and they knew not what to give thanks for first.

And they did grow excited at what they could do with these,

And so they talked amongst themselves till they were tired and hungry, and the Lord did return unto them and say 'Though shalt covet thine wool and look upon it as a jewel, spin it till it shines like gold, and make wonderous things with it. Then thou shalt go forward onto this earth and buy more wool top and roving to spin more, and dye to bring colour to your world, and soon the earth will be filled with colourful balls of wool and it will be a glory to behold. Take the candle and give light to your room so you may work late, and take this CD and groove while you work, and it shall make light work and your fingers nimble as you spin'

And the people did stop their eating and drop to the ground and pray for the Angel.
Praise be to the Angel.
Amen.

Little Packages of Fun

I'm waiting for the Noro Knits book to arrive so I can start Eloise, but in the meantime I have a few little projects being done, which just kick along in the background.

The hat is from a Monkeysuits pattern, the sock is Opal and I'm following the pattern that was sent with the yarn, and the last one is a Velvet Rabbit out of Rowan Fine Chenille. The hat is actually for a friend's child, and would look something like this:

I still have to put some little buttons on the corners of the hat.

Cyril's Done His Job Said His Driver...

We'd better slow down.

It's been raining here an awful lot, which is fantastic for the gardens, but not so fantastic when you have a young child, and Thomas The Tank Engine is on high rotation on the video. Yes!! It was Thomas the Tank Engine. I'm suprised no-one got the rest of it though. I wanted to give the Kureyon away!!!!! I'll have to come up with something better...

Every few months, we meet up with the In-Laws at Berrima so they can have 'quality time with the grandchild' because they don't like driving through Sydney. Today we met and did the family thing. Which isn't the point of the post at all.

This is

So, you went to Berrima and bought a paper bag.....

Have faith dear grasshopper.
Yes, but what's more exciting is what is inside the paper bag

Let's see.....that's a number of patterns, some notebooks from a beautiful bookbinding store, a hell of a lot of fabric swatches - mainly Amy Butler, and some calico, 3 balls of wool which you will note are not pink , and more patterns.

Some of it I can't show up close, because it would spoil the fun for some people, but I can show you this

The fabric will be put to good use on this

and variations of the same for various friends having babies. The rest will be put to use on some Amy Butler patterns.

On Friday I finally wound my way up to Virginia Farm Woolworks and had a great natter to Jenny about wool. I've talked the very patient and amused (bemused??) husband into buying me a drop spindle for christmas, and I can't very well have a spindle and not have some wool can I????

Yes there's a lot of wool, yes it will take me the rest of my life to spin it, no I do not think I have a problem with overcommitting, just yet.

Shivers cried Percy, That Made My Axles Tingle

10 Points to whoever can name that line.
2 balls of Noro Kureyon to whoever can quote the next line.

I was thinking today about something the Secret Pal I spoil asked me recently. We were doing a bit of a swap of information, and she asked me what my favourite word was. This threw me a little bit, because I've never been asked this before. And suddenly I felt pressured to come up with a Great Word. A favourite word should have aesthetics in tone, feel good to write or type, have a nice combination of letters, be specific in its use and have a sense of power in isolation.

I don't really have a favourite word, but I do have words I favour from week to week. At the moment my husband favours Rambunctious, and devises ways to use it every day, at least once, particularly when there is an audience. This week my favourite words are Higgledy Piddledy.

8 Point Stitch Markers and a Bonus

Ribbet, ribbet,

Thanks Carolyn and I'm particularly taken with the bonus 'A' that was sent too! Clapotis will love you forever.

Exposing Myself To The World

Lara no longer hugs the needles or slithers across my fingers as I knit. Now she envelopes me and drapes luxuriously across my shoulders like a little silky mist. ahhhhhhhhhhh. Loveliness. And so versatile too.

Open:

Shut:

And she thinks the japanese printed chopstick is just the bees knees.

Do you want the low down on the pattern and all the technical stuff? Yes? ok. The pattern is easy, and straight forward to knit. Somewhere along the line, having followed the pattern to the letter, my arms got very long, and that would need to be adjusted if I did another one. And I had to alter as I went because my gauge was off, but not by enough to change needles (why would I want to do that, I fly in the face of swatching and getting gauge because I like to live dangerously). There's a lot of ends to weave in at the end. 15 balls of wool leaves a lot of ends. God help me if I knit any of the patterns with 30 balls of wool. The wool is just lovely, but don't wear black underneath it or lean on a black chair because it FLUFFS everywhere. I'm still waiting for it to pill...

Now I do declare there's a bag of Blossom making eyes at me from the corner of the room.

Blossom

I got way too overexcited at Wendy's site and her Noro projects, and decided to try Noro Blossom. I've got the Noro Knits book coming and will be doing Eloise in this.

Its Blossom #6 and it's the most luscious shades of pinks, reds and a hint of green. It's really soft and quite fluffy. Yep, it's the closest I'm getting to frou frou.

Also planned are Gloria and Butterfly, but maybe not till next winter, although I've ordered the yarn now from Wool Needlework.

And here's a little picture of the rowan yarn from Nicole (my battery went flat last night so it missed out on yesterdays post).

Todays artwork is titled: Mummy Can We Spread The Cat Food Everywhere

The mail man gave me a slightly odd look today. I'm sure he's dying to know what is in these soft packages which keep arriving. He's going to be mighty dissapointed. Unless he's into knitting. My back still hurts and I wouldn't be suprised if I had broken the bone. On top of all that, somewhere along the line this week I've lost a beloved purse with about $40 in it. Luckily no credit cards or important stuff, but the cash makes a difference. Particularly when you've been out buying Blossom...