Another week, another bazillion things....

 

Time seems to be whizzing past much faster than usual...just gulping up the weeks. 

In the last week, there have been good things, great conversations, random acts of kindness, joy, optimism, new opportunities ....and exactly the opposite of each of these things.   Life's a funny old thing, isn't it?  It's drought and flood... and sometimes it's just like Melbourne weather.

 

 

 

 On the weekend, I went to Canberra to teach at Addicted to Fabric (and took a rather cool pic from the boarding gate) .... and then I only thought to take photos towards the end of the class on Sunday, just before I was due to fly home again.

 

Below, we have another beautifully-made hat by another newbie sewing gal.  Nobody would have guessed that she's only sewn a few square things before... look at those beautifully-sewn curves!

 

I loved seeing hats being worn while equipment was packed up at the end of the day. 

 

This "I'm just going to make a hat for gardening" hat (above) looked way too stylish not to be worn for something more social.

 

This hat (below) was made with fun socialising in mind.  Sewn, finished and trimmed within class-time, it was worn out of the store with sartorial flair!

 

(If you're a little bit inspired by the recent spate of hatty blog posts here, and available to do a class on a week day, you should come along to the Perfect Summer Hats class that I'll be teaching at GJ's.  Learn to make hats in time to whip up a few for summer!)

 

As always - there has been fondling and fiddling with yarn.  In the last week I've finished something that I started in May and nearly finished something I started last week.

 

Having begun this Cardigan Rose about four times before I got it past the armholes - and all the while playing yarn-chicken and being distracted by the girleen's swimming lessons (or whatever fleeting, shiny thing) - I  pretty-much gave up on following the pattern and just made things up after that point.  After a few months, I tired of the project (and too many people commenting on the fact that the yarn matched my hair) and just wanted to finish it...so just kept knitting... ignoring all the mistakes and distracted-while-knitting roughness. 

 

My knitting is so rough in this particular garment, it's almost a waste of this gorgeous yarn.... but it's very soft and snuggly and is full of handmade love.  It's for a gorgeous 1-year old, who won't be criticising my stitch tension.

 

In need of instant gratification and a bit of a cellulosic yarn fix, I pulled out the crochet hook and some Prudence Mapstone tencel loveliness.  I'm making another Summer Lace Tank Top.  I love how quickly this comes together.

 

In other news, I finally have an answer to the question of have I found somewhere to move to when the lease runs out here, which every person and their dog has been asking me for the last month or two.  Last week, I did, and we'll be moving in a few weeks time.  The lease runs out here in mid-November.

 

When I was walking back to the car from the estate agent's office, I saw this in a window of an op-shop.  Just the thing I need for this next stage of balanced, family life....

 

 

Our new home won't have a showroom or classroom, but it has an enormous garden.  The girleen and I have been planning which vegetables we'll be growing this summer.  We're excited.

 

In the last week, I've also been trying to work out which of the showroom bag, hat and garment samples I'll keep and which will have to be sold.  We don't have space for them all and I'll be having a sale as soon as I sort them out.  A brief experiment with eBay didn't inspire me to go down that path again - and turned me off any admin time spent on any other online option - so I'm afraid it'll be in-store only.  Stay tuned for details.

 

And this week is a whole new one.... I wonder what it holds?

A few finishes

With all this book-writing and Quilt Market organisation (and a spot of teaching thrown in) on my part, this poor little blog has been neglected.  So too has my reading and knitting. 

 

The top I began on New Years Day was looking like being a WIP forever, but thanks to interstate flights (and delays with flights), I managed to get a lot of it done last weekend.

 

 

The yarn is a hand-painted linen from Prudence Mapstone (purchased at one of the craft shows last year.... or the year before...?).  The last time I used this yarn was with crochet.  Knitting was a much slower affair, but I wanted the challenge and the opportunity to enjoy working with this luscious yarn for a long time.  (I just hadn't counted on it being over 3 months on the one project!)

 

The pattern is L2 by Lidia Tsymbal, available on Ravelry here. I've bookmarked a few more of the patterns by this designer.  I like her style.

 

The last push to finish this top was my reward - guilt-free knitting in the evening - for finishing the sewing for the new book.  The samples are now all packed up and awaiting international courier pick-up.

And now I'm all inspired by a zillion different knitting patterns and ideas.  Teresa Dair's Mayhem jacket has captured my imagination, and I'm planning to start playing with different sized needles and yarns to create texture. 

I just have to finish a bit more writing and organising first...

Multi-faceted weekend

This past weekend was full of many things, including yarny faces... but more of that later.  Lets go chronologically.

 There was the big decision to crochet the last precious skein of the hand-painted linen yarn into something wearable for summer.  There was the use of a swift (and almost eight hours less untangling than last time) and the winding of a big, beautiful ball... which I think I'll just look at for a bit longer, before working with it.

The rest of Friday evening was spent unpicking dodgey seams, ripping out knitting and re-winding the blue dress into many small balls of yarn (from whence it came).  The dress was so very nearly right, but far from perfect.  I'm going to rework it, and hope that this time I get it closer to just right.

Saturday was hat-making day, which is always fun.  Thanks ladies for a lovely day. (And I hope that you three interstate gals made it back safe and sound.)

Saturday night was party night  - two birthday do's in two separate parts of town.  Lots of friends from different parts of life and lots of discovering the 3 degrees of separation that seem to divide all of us.

 

And despite getting home at a reasonable (read: embarrassingly early) hour, I still managed to have a fantastically long sleep in on Sunday.

 

 
Melbourne turned on one of those glorious spring days that it does so very well.  Blue, blue, blue sky..... perfect cycling weather. 

It was also perfect yarn-bombing weather.

The spirit of the crafting community, and the community of Brunswick shone as brightly as the beautiful yarny blooms.... It's a beautiful memorial for a beautiful young life cut tragically short.

 

 (Ahem... and yes, that would be the Irish tricolour that my girl  and I machine-knitted, up there with the flowers).

Then the afternon slid into a full appreciation of the world's most livable city and old, much-loved friends.  Walks in the sunshine and long, lingering, late lunchy sort of beer-garden behaviour...

 ..which crusied into an evening with different old and much-loved friends and another beer garden...

 

And in between all this, I kept coming back to the blue dress.... Mark II.

 

 New and improved, I hope.

I woke to a Monday morning of things going horribly pear-shaped and inconvenient and generally, pretty annoying.  I'm trying to think of all the lovely weekend memories to help me sail on through the week.

Red, red, red..

Yep.  I'm playing house-model again, poncing about the studio in another knitty viscose dress (and slightly weirdy half-sticky-up hair).

I think I'm getting to grips with this viscose yarn on the knitting machine.  Yesterday, I made this dress as one long rectangle, with a hole in the middle for the neckline.  It's very fluid and RED and feels a bit like a siren dress... even though it's just a rectangle with a few holes in it.

For the knitting machine geeks: It was knit in a fake rib, with every second needle out of work, 90 working stitches, 3 balls of yarn per side (I didn't count rows), with 25 stitches for each shoulder and a quick cast-off-cast-on for the neckline.  Made on Sunday afternoon.  I'll eventually get around to Ravelry with it.

I'm a bit happier with my side seams than I was on the blue version (and would close up the armhole a smidge more if I had a scrap of the yarn left).

 I just have to find a smoother bra and slip arrangement than the one I have right now before I can wear it outside the studio (....she says, posting it up on the internet... ?!).   I kind of figure that I can share it here.  I mean, apart from the psycho-axe-murderers amongst us here in internet-land, we're all girlfriends, non..?  (And I'd actually like some pointers from local girlfriends, if you can recommend a suitable undergarment).

I'm a bit tempted to try a similar thing in different yarns, to get a feel for what the shape (or lack of) can do.... but how many rectangles can a girl ponce about in?

A knitty sort of Sunday

On Sunday, I had a mostly-kid-free day.  My initial thoughts were that there was a lot that I could do to make the most of the time without distraction.  

Instead of doing any sort of catch-up on things, I made a conscious decision to ignore the impulse to do anything that I felt that I should.... and do exactly what I needed to do. 

RELAX... (knit)

 I caught up with lovely friends for coffee and cake and then spent the afternoon with my knitting machine and an audio-book. 

Heaven. 

I could feel my tired, over-stuffed brain defragging.

There was even time to linger in another little slice of (textile) heaven....

 I'm a bit besotted with my new book.  Teresa Dair's design aesthetic is so completely up my alley, I sighed and pored over every one of this book's silky, matt pages.

Yes... I can totally see me swanning about in all of it, too.... feeling fabulous and textural and ever-so-clever because I made it myself...

 Of course, I haven't made any of it yet....
...but that's hardly the point of a gorgeous and inspiring book, is it...?

And until I can justify any more yarn purchases, I won't have any of the amazing Dairing yarn to create the textures needed for the full effect.  In the meantime, I have pure wool.  LOTS of pure wool.

 I took inspiration and went a bit freestyle with this idea....

As I wait for it to dry, instead of blocking it smoothly, I'm stretching and distressing the edges... messing things up a bit.  There is no steel in the yarn to hold the memory of this torture, but it's creating a lovely drapey shape with tendrilly corner bits.

You'll no doubt be treated to much swanning and poncing when I finally get my body into this one. 

I'm looking forward to seeing Teresa ... and her yarn... (WHO SAID THAT?) at Grampians Texture next year.  She'll be teaching workshops there too.

In the meantime, if you don't hear from me, I'll be knitting furiously, to make room in that yarn stash of mine....

Feeling knitty

On the drive up to Sydney last week, I stopped for a rest in Wangaratta, and (...ahem..) chanced across Sackville & Lane's delicious shop.  I'd only ever seen their luscious yarn and fabric range at quilt shows, so it was a bit exciting to visit the source. 

It was particularly nice to snap up a couple of "last ball" bargains (Jo Sharp et al) at $3 a pop.  Ok, so it was THIRTEEN balls at $3 a pop ....and ...ahem...4 balls at $16 each.  Oh, and some new needles (since I'd only packed crochet and wanted to get knitting IMMEDIATELY).
 
 It only then occurred to me that I'm more in love with kitting than with crochet.  I'd packed enough yarn and hooks to see me through the several crochet projects I had planned, but I saw great yarn and wanted to knit it.  So I did. 

This one is absolutely living up to its name.  Baby cashmere, silk, merino... mmmmm.  Sublime.  As my ex-silk-lingerie-designer friend Sarah said, as she dug it out from the overflowing yarny shopping bag, "I want UNDERWEAR made from that!"

Last night, the knitting machine made an appearance.  Three strands of red lace-weight wool (one darker than the others) were wound together and three rectangles of stockingette were brought into being (all in one evening... I LOVE that!).  They are yet to be sewn into something garment-esque.

There were two knitty finishes the week before I left for Sydney, and they are currently winging their way to the USA for two special little girls.  They were all wrapped and ready to post when I remembered - just as I was walking out the door to drive interstate - that I hadn't photographed them.  They had to wait until I got home and took some blog shots. 

This is a teeny-tiny In-Threes Cardi and a Toddler Jumper (dress), made in Bamboozle varigated yarn.  I just adore the way that bamboo yarn looks and feels. 

Of course, I haven't abandoned the hook altogether.  Crochet is still mighty handy when a few strategically-placed flowers are needed on the knitting.

On my iPod this week...

Yeah, yeah... music (a very weirdly eclectic mix).

This week, it's been all about the iPod camera, which I'm still trying to get to grips with (but keep finding myself without any other camera to use).  So it's all low-fi and badly-composed around here. 

 These Shell Purse pics were some of my earlier Instagram experiments.... and I realised today that I forgot to take any other pics of this purse before it went off to be a display model in... ummm... Addicted to Fabric or Bargain Box Mornington... or somewhere.  Time I recorded them on the blog, methinks.

 On Friday, not only did I forget my camera, but I took VIDEOS instead of photos of all the images I thought I was photographing... except this one.  It's the cute little box that my gourmet lunch arrived in at my Treehouse Textiles class.

On Saturday we spent some rare and much-needed family time, and took a day-trip to Castlemaine.  The amazingly colourful Beanie Affair was on in the market building in the town centre.  There were lots tables full of hats to try and buy - knitted, crocheted, felted and sewn - but unfortunately we were not permitted to take photos of them.

 The tassel-making section was another matter altogether.  The local Steiner school brought in HUGE cones of yarn and encouraged involvement.  The wee girl found a spot to get tassel-making and someone to show her how (thanks Jane).

 The proud finish photo is decidedly low-fi.

Since we've been home, a goodly portion of Auntie Wilma's yarn stash has been transformed into woolly tassels, to decorate the house.

There's been a bit of low-fi sewing going on here this weekend, too.  I brought my machine and half of everything I need to finish off some samples for the trade show next weekend.  It's been a comedy of mismatched threads, an absence of the right size/colour zips and a late-night dash to Safeway to get sewing machine needles (...and I was right to follow my instincts about cheap supermarket sewing machine needles and buy two packets of them.  They go blunt faster than they sew!).

Last night, I was wondering why the bag I was making was looking so "home-made"...but I kept on sewing.  This morning, it occurred to me to check the pressure on the presser foot.  Yup - it was still in machine-embroidery mode. Great.  And I have a wonky bag to show for my perserverence. 

Looking forward to a slightly more hi-fi week....

New playground equipment

Or rather, a re-purposed old and scruffy one....

A public holiday meant that I had the choice of a child-free day at work to catch up on things (and a disgruntled family at home), a catch-up on an enormous pile of ironing or doing a spot of knitting under the apple tree.

I had dreams of knitting up a storm (or a pair of socks) today.  Mostly, we made a red hair ribbon from some scrap tencel yarn.  We did it twice - the first being too wide and too short.

 Several weeks ago, I spent an evening or two working through this machine knitted sock in cheap Lincraft sock yarn.   I wasn't in love with the yarn so wasn't willing to put another night or two into the project.  I gave it to my one-legged father-in-law (waste-not-want-not). 

I made some toe-up socks by hand in my bamboo sock yarn, following the same short-row process for toe and heel.  It's been a slow project but I finished them today.  They're dodgey-as (and I tried a new cast-off that looks really rough) but the socks feel beautiful to wear.  I'm completely smitten with this yarn.  Considering that they were meant as a learning project and they're just for wearing about the house, I really don't care about all the little short-row holes and wonkiness. 

Today I made a bamboo yarn sock on the machine - I'm hand-knitting the rib as I write this blog post.  I'll blog them as a finished pair... when they're a finished pair.

And I'm leaving the ironing for another day...

...again.