Souvenirs from Michael's London trip

Michael returned from his trip to London and Cork on Friday night, and there were many presents hiding in his bag when he arrived home.

The main present he brought home for me was this fabulous shoulder bag from Harrods in the 'Knightsbridge Cats' print...


... which is just the perfect size and shape for carrying my latest knitting projects around with me. :) It's also going to be very practical, as the fabric is covered in PVC to help keep it clean.

And to add to my collection of plushies, I now have a Harrods Grenadier Guard Bear...


... to help keep all the others in line. It's made from the most unbelievably soft fur too.

And of course there were some of Harrods' famous food treats...


There's a selection of teas, some orange, lemon and grapefruit marmalade, some clotted cream shortbread, and some chocolate fudge. The shortbread and fudge are already disappearing fast.

While he was in London, Michael did what most visitors to London do and took in a West End show. Under normal circumstances, Michael really isn't the theatre and show type, but fortunately Monty Python came to the rescue here, in the form of Monty Python's Spamalot, which is described as "A new musical lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail".

And of course he couldn't resist buying a souvenir of the evening from the very aptly named 'Ye Olde Rippe Offe Shoppe' in the foyer...


It's a fearsome Rabbit of Caerbannog hand puppet, complete with fangs just waiting to rip the head off any unsuspecting Knights of the Round Table who dare to approach to closely. ;)

And while this last thing has nothing whatsoever to do with Michael's trip, I'm going to post these links here because they don't really fit into any of the other entries I'm planning to write either.

Anyway... I thought it might be amusing to point people in the direction of Amanda's partner Greg's Wikipedia entry, which of course continues the tradition of not entirely accurate Wikipedia entries admirably by listing his place of birth as some town in Florida which none of us -- including Greg -- have ever heard of, and by getting one of his ring names wrong. But the truly amusing part -- other than the fact that someone I know actually has a Wikipedia entry ;) -- is that if you click on the link within the entry for Mark Hilton, it takes you to the Wikipedia entry for a Republican politician from North Carolina. And judging by the accompanying photograph, I'd say Greg must've been very embarrassed to have lost an AWF Australasian Championship title match to him. ;) Don't you just love random hot links? :D

Presents from Singapore

Michael and the girls went to Singapore for a holiday for nine days at the beginning of the month -- I didn't go with them as I don't handle high humidity levels at all well.

They did bring me back some souvenirs and presents though.


A plush dolphin and Singapore's Merlion mascot, and a fat cat that Amanda chose for me because she really liked the fish it's carrying under its arm. The black and white cat has a little solar cell which powers its tail and makes it wag whenever sunlight falls upon it. And the little pack contains three Lego 'Star Wars' magnets.

They also brought back these for me.


Some photos of the three of them together which they had taken on Sentosa Island in and around the giant Merlion, and the picture in the middle which features each of our Chinese zodiac animals -- the rat is me, by the way. :)

Michael is planning a trip for the two of us to New Zealand later this year, where the climate will be much more compatible with me not collapsing and dying. If anyone has any suggestions as to places we really must be sure to visit while we're there, please let me know. :)

Panda, panda, panda...

... panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda...

So what do you give your daughter after you take her out to a restaurant to celebrate her 21st Birthday and end up food poisoning her?


... panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda...

A giant stack of TarePanda, of course!


I think she likes them... *huge grin*

... panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda, panda...

Christmas!

Just in case anyone was wondering...


... our Christmas tree was decorated in time for Christmas. :)

As it turns out though, we live in quite an interesting street where Christmas decorations are concerned. While our street was never in any danger of competing with the decoration level in Chauvel Street, which is not far from here and attracted bus loads of tourists after it featured in an article in a Sydney newspaper in the lead up to Christmas, there had been some Christmas lighting out there. But that all changed after Christmas Day. By the evening of Boxing Day, the only Christmas lighting in our street were the fairy lights in our trees -- Michael swears there were even suspicious patches of scorched earth out there where Santa may have been burnt in effigy. ;)

Anyway... The fairy lights in our trees will remain illuminated now until at least February -- January is a big month for celebrations here, as both our daughters have January birthdays, and there's Australia Day too at the end of the month.

On the day itself, I received some fabulous presents from my family. :) Among them were some really cute plush toys...


Amanda gave me some more Puffkins -- Quackster the duck, Spike the porcupine, Dinky the yellow dinosaur, Drake the red dinosaur, Pickles the green dinosaur, and Danny the purple dinosaur. Several of them even have the original darker coloured swing tag, so I dread to think what she had to pay for them. Amanda also gave me the giant Jiji cat, which is unbelievably soft and cuddly.

Katherine's present to me was the puppet replica of the Vampire Angel from the 'Smile Time' episode -- she knew she'd done good when I refused to put it down for the rest of the night. :)

I love the detailing which has gone into the Angel puppet replica. Especially the boots...


Aren't they just adorable? :)

And if anyone was worried, all photographs of the Angel puppet replica were taken in the shade and away from direct sunlight. ;)

More cuteness!

I think this may just be one of the cutest things ever...


It's a remote controlled Cat Bus toy which Amanda discovered while she was in Japan, which she brought over with her the other day so we all could have a play with it. I love the unusual way it works too -- the remote control (the brown log shaped object with the green leaf button) projects light on to the floor, and the Cat Bus moves around by following the light spot as you move it around. Loads of fun! :)

And remember the Puffkins I wrote about here? Well, Amanda shares my love for them, and seeing them sitting in my basket on the table next to my desk inspired her to find out which Puffkins might still be available. Several of the Halloween Puffkins caught her eye and were soon topping her list of things she needed to live. ;)

Well, I was lucky enough to locate an online store that happened to still have available for sale the Halloween Puffkins she wanted most. Even more miraculously, they were happy to ship them to Australia! So Amanda is now the proud owner of these...


In the back row, from left to right, there is Brutus the gargoyle, Screech the ghost, Skully the skull, and Ding the bat. And in the front row, there is Smash the pumpkin, Shadow the black cat, and Spinner the spider.

They actually had two Shadows in stock, so I acquired one for myself too. Oddly enough, the two Shadows look very different from one another -- so different I actually had to check the swing tags before I was sure they really were both from the same series. And almost unbelievably, one has just the perfect look for Amanda, while the other was exactly right to join my own little Puffkin family. What are the odds? :)

Cuteness!

I've been asked about my anime plushies, so here are a few more photos.

I really love "Kiki's Delivery Service", and one of my favourite characters is Kiki's black cat, Jiji...


You can't see it in the photo, but there's a little pull cord at the back and Jiji bounces around on the table when the cord is pulled.

I also have some 'InuYasha' plushies. From left to right, there is Kagome, InuYasha, Miroku, and Shippo...


The next photo is a random grouping of characters...


... Pingu (OK, so this one is Swiss claymation rather than Japanese anime ;), but he is cute, and he talks when you squeeze his tummy), Asuka from 'Neon Genesis Evangelion', and Clefairy, my favourite Pokémon -- it's pink, round, and has a thing for moonstones, just like me! ;)

In addition to the anime plushies, I have a small collection of Puffkins. From left to right, there is Gus (the moose), Tasha (the white tiger), Grizwald (the brown bear), Zack (the zebra), Moosletoe (the Christmas moose), and Toby (the killer whale).


These were all gifts from Michael, as he used to bring us all back a few each time he went over to the USA for training -- the only place I've ever seen any of them here in Australia was a little collectables shop on the edge of the Brisbane CBD, which I think is really odd as they're way cuter than Beanie Babies (to be honest, I've never understood why people go crazy over Beanie Babies), and you could find those just about everywhere.

And my lovely Gund bear 'Cabearnet' insisted on getting in on the act and posing for a photo too...


Of course, this entry would not be complete without a photo of Katherine in her Cat Bus costume...


... which won the Saturday Cosplay Competition runner up prize for Best Female Costume at the Animania Festival held here in Sydney a few weekends back. There's a photo of her on stage in her costume here. While you can't see it in the photos, Katherine had even rigged up the eyes of the mice so they glowed with illuminating red lights just like they do on the Cat Bus in the film ('My Neighbor Totoro').

When Katherine originally bought the material to make this costume, I thought she was being a bit ambitious attempting something like this, but it was amazing just how quickly and how well it all came together once she started work on it. :)

The bits that didn't quite fit into the other four entries

Look what Amanda brought us all back from Japan! It's a little plushy Totoro family, and there was one for each of us -- mine is the one on the right, and it came from the actual Studio Ghibli Museum shop too. I can hardly believe how adorable they all are. :)

In spite of the way things are probably looking from all the entries I've written today -- Nothing for over two and a half weeks, and then five entries all at once? Go figure! ;) -- I've actually been making some progress with my knitting, even if it's not quite as much as I would've liked.

My 'Pacific Ocean Stole' has grown quite a lot, and the second skein is disappearing at quite a reasonable rate...


That's more than six pattern repeats finished. We'll just ignore the fact that there are probably another fourteen repeats to go to make it the length I'd like it to be... ;)

A few months back, I posted about the lovely semi-solid dark blue hand-dyed Mollydale Mohair yarn Michael bought me at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. The scarf I've been knitting from it has been in my side bar for quite a while, but I realized the other day that I'd never actually written about it.


Maybe I've been overlooking it due to the problems I had getting it started. ;) For what should have been a simple moss stitch scarf, this project is my current record holder for the most times an individual project has been restarted before the knitted fabric finally looked right. If you didn't know better, you really could be forgiven for thinking I must have only started knitting last week, as only a real novice could have made so many errors of judgement. Maybe I was just having a really off day.

It really shouldn't have been this way, though, as there were similar moss stitch scarves available for sale on the Mollydale stall, and the two lovely ladies there assured me that they had all been knit on 10 mm needles, and that I would be able to reproduce the slightly tighter tension of the scarf I particularly liked (which had been knit by a particularly tight knitter apparently) by knitting mine on 9 mm needles. Well, the needle sizes quoted seemed a bit large to me, but I was prepared to believe that the Mollydale ladies knew their yarn better than I did -- mohair yarns can be quite deceptive, after all. Well, the 9 mm needles produced a fabric which was ludicrously lacy, and going down to 8 mm needles didn't help much either. My initial guess, before the ladies had corrected me, had been that the moss stitch scarves on the Mollydale stall had been knit with 6 mm needles, and the consensus of opinion around me the day I started knitting with the yarn was that the ladies on the Mollydale stall must have been tired by the time I spoke to them (it was very late in the day, and the second last day of the show after all), and they were probably quoting me the needle size for their bulky yarn. So I went with my original gut feeling and cast on using 6 mm needles, which amazingly enough produced a fabric quite similar to the ones I had seen in the scarves on the stall. As I still wanted a scarf more like the one I'd seen which had been knit a bit tighter, I went down to 5.5 mm needles, and finally to the 5.0 mm needles I'm now using. This wasn't the end though, as I still had to tweak the number of stitches to get the width of scarf I wanted, eventually settling on 37 stitches to get a width of 24 cm.

But this wasn't the end either, as when I finally had the tension right and the width right, another problem revealed itself. It soon became apparent that my scarf was going to look like I had taken Tigger...


... and given her an indigo bath. No kidding, it was most strongly resembling an indigo tiger's pelt. Eek!

So it was back to the start once again, this time alternating between the two skeins to break up the colour pools. Success at last, but sadly this is never going to be the take along project I had hoped it would be -- knitting it in public is pretty much out of the question as the yarn stains my fingers too badly for that to be a serious proposition. I'm now filling this gap with my 'Lost In Translation' scarf.

Some new magazines have also found their way to me.


The 'Yarn' magazine is the first issue of my brand new subscription, which arrived on schedule exactly as promised. Well done, once again, Barbara! The magazine is stunning. :) The latest issues of the US 'Creative Knitting' and UK 'Simply Knitting' magazines were an absolute nightmare to find, as none of my local newsagents were deemed worthy enough to carry them by the evil magazine distributors it seems. Even the large newsagents in major shopping centres hadn't received any copies, so I had to travel much further afield to find them. The jury is still out as to whether or not the effort was worth it, but I may be a bit more generously disposed towards them once I get over my annoyance at the trouble I had getting them.

I've also gone ahead and done something potentially reckless. Yes... In a moment of weakness, I signed up for Secret Pal 9. ;) This is the first time I've been brave enough to sign up for one of these, and hopefully I will be up to the challenge of coming up with the perfect gifts to send to my Secret Pal. When there are a few more buttons posted on the Secret Pal 9 blog, I'll add one to my sidebar.

I was also lucky enough to meet Meg at the last get-together at Rubi & Lana. Meg took advantage of the cooler weather that day to wear her green 'Lace Panel Sweater', which I can tell you looks even better in real life than it already does on her blog. :)

Phew! That's going to have to be all for now, and I think I may finally be all caught up on my blog entries. :)

Still negotiating the learning curve

Firstly, thank you very much for the lovely comments my first entry received. :)

Since my last posting, I finally gave in and just went ahead and blocked the 'Flower Basket Shawl' I knit for my Mother for Christmas -- mostly because I was dying to see it in its non-crumpled form and discover how it had actually turned out.

Here it is, post-blocking, relaxing on my lounge...


I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. I hope my Mother likes it when I finally get to give it to her.

Just by the way... That furry blue and grey thing folded up on the arm of the lounge is the throw I knit from 49 skeins of Cleckheaton 'Silky Faux Fur' in a fit of insanity one summer.

Here is a close up of the shawl to show the pattern better...


Project Details:

'Flower Basket Shawl' - 'Fiber Trends' pattern S-2014
Almost 200g of Rubi & Lana 3 ply in a Barbie pink colour that nearly drove me crazy
Addi 3.5mm circular needles
Total number of times rows 25-34 repeated: 18

I've actually got a bit of a backlog of items I've knit for my Mother here. The Strawberry Pattern Scarf in Cleckheaton 'Studio Mohair' I knit for her birthday is still waiting to meet its intended recipient too...


The actual colour of the yarn is darker than it looks in the photo -- as you can see, I'm still working out how to use the digital camera too, and this was the closest I could get to the true colour.

I've made a bit more progress on the 'Lace Modular Shawl', and I'm now on the fourth skein of 'Regal Silk'...


I'm starting to think now about how best to finish the shawl. The designer apparently used a steamer like the one shown below to finish hers, but I'm a little concerned that the steam might over-heat the silk yarn and cause it to lose its beautiful lustre. Any advice?


When I do finish the shawl, the next project I'd like to start on is a bag based on 'Unbiased' from the Fall 2004 issue of 'Knitty', but knit -- hopefully in the round -- using the techniques I've learnt while working on the 'Lace Modular Shawl'. And here is the beautiful, silky soft Recycled Sari Silk yarn I'll be using for this project...


Once again, the colours are actually much deeper and more vibrant in real life than shown here.

Of course, what I'll ACTUALLY be knitting as my next project is the 'Skull Vest' I'm designing *cough* for Katherine, using Rubi & Lana 8 ply wool in black and white. Here is what I've knit of it so far...


Yes, it's a tension square. As you can see, it still needs to be washed and blocked before I can proceed on to the next step and test out fairisle skull pattern I've charted for it.

My take anywhere project used to be a scarf I've been knitting using the 'My So Called Scarf' pattern. At least it WAS my take anywhere project until I decided that I really wasn't all that keen on the way the colours were pooling...


That and the fact that it was becoming apparent that there was a fair bit of variation in the depth of colours between the three hanks of Debbie Bliss 'Maya' yarn I'm using -- as with most of the scarves I knit, I'm knitting mine wider and longer than the original version. So I unravelled it all and started again, this time working from all three hanks together, working one row from each and then changing to the next one in the cycle. The colours are now much better behaved, but unfortunately the need to keep the three large balls of yarn from tangling means it's nowhere near as portable as it once was.

So now it's the project which sits in the basket on the coffee table next to my PC, and gets worked on while I wait for things to happen.


And if you look closely at the basket, you may even spot the final ball of 'Regal Silk', patiently awaiting its turn to join its siblings in the 'Lace Modular Shawl'.

All this working with handpainted yarns has made me want to have a go at dyeing yarn myself.

So far, I've bought some 'Landscapes' and 'Gaywool' dyes, and have started winding some yarn into hanks on a niddy noddy in preparation for my first attempt at dyeing.


Now I just have to get up the nerve to finally give it a go... Eek! I'm thinking that I should perhaps rein in my ambitions just a bit at first, and for my first attempt at dyeing try over-dyeing the Barbie pink 3 ply wool I have left over from my Mother's 'Flower Basket Shawl' with Landscapes 'Bloodwood' dye and see how that goes.

I know this has been quite a marathon entry already, but before I finish up, I have to show off the extremely early Easter present Michael brought me home just after Valentine's Day.


He knows how much I love really dark chocolate, and was worried that by the time Easter actually came around he wouldn't be able to find it in the shops any more. He was even happier with his purchase after it scanned at the checkout as "Bunny & Balls". *grin*

If you're wondering about the plush legs standing on the table behind the box, wonder no more. They belong to the giant Lindt Reindeer Michael won in their Christmas competition.


Isn't it huge? Michael was actually quite disappointed that there doesn't appear to be a similar competition to win a giant plush Lindt bunny for Easter. ;)

OK... I think that's probably more than enough for tonight.

Now if only I knew how to get rid of the extra copies of photos I uploaded to Blogger earlier while I was trying to work out how to get them to display in this posting in the order I wanted... *sigh*

Did I mention I'm still on a learning curve here? ;)