Are we sensing a theme here at all?

One of the presents I received for Christmas this year was this...


I don't know how Amanda did it, but she managed to find me a Luke's coffee cup, which would have to be the perfect gift for a 'Gilmore Girls' fan like myself.

It's probably not obvious from the photo, but this cup is huge! It easily holds 500 ml of coffee, and you definitely need to hold it with two hands.

But that wasn't all.

When I opened my brother's Christmas present to me, this is what I found...


Yes, it's an equally large tea cup.

Are we sensing a theme here at all?

I do love these over-sized cups though, as they remind me of my Dad -- when we were little, my Mum got tired of constantly refilling his tea cup after dinner, and solved the problem by finding a huge 'Father' tea cup for him, which was capable of holding a whole pot's worth of tea in one go.

The other Christmas present I just have to share with everyone is this one...


My whole family loves seeing the photos of Twinkie on Donna's blog, and reading about her adventures, so Michael couldn't resist a calendar which promises us a year of her super-cute relatives...


And just in case anyone is wondering what happened with the 'Henry' scarf I was knitting for my brother for Christmas...

Well, life got in the way once again, and I missed the deadline...


As you can see, it's almost done now (Finally!), and fortunately my brother has been very understanding about the delay. I've actually worked a few more rows since I took this photo, so the end truly is in sight at last.

Much as I love the look of this scarf, it's been a really slow project to knit, due to both the fine yarn and the denseness of the woven transverse herringbone stitch pattern. The yarn I'm using also has an annoying tendency to split, which has slowed things down even more. Despite all this, I will knit this pattern again as I really do love the way it looks.

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

Valentine's Day

Look what Michael gave me for Valentine's Day this year.


A pair of fabulous silver Cicada Wing earrings.

Even though the photo doesn't show it all that well, the beads are actually really sparkly -- I think Michael said they were made of ironstone? For anyone who is interested, I've included the little card with all the details about the artist that accompanied the earrings in the photograph too.

And yes, my blog postings really are lagging this far behind at the moment...

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. :)

Happy Birthday to me! :)

While I was at the 'Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show' last year, I bought myself a Colinette 'Perugino Throw Kit' in the beautiful 'Stillwater' colourway from Sarah Durrant's stand. Sadly, the kit has been left languishing in my stash for the best part of a year, patiently awaiting its turn to fulfil its destiny.

Well, the long wait is finally over...


Isn't it going well! :) And I only have just over one pattern repeat to go before it is finished now. I was worried for a while that the 'Tagliatelli' yarn was going to run out just before the end as it was disappearing at a faster rate than the other yarns, but I'm pretty sure now that there will be enough to make the throw the length I want it to be. :)

I'm actually so happy with the way this throw is turning out that I went ahead and bought this from Sarah Durrant's Colinette stand at the recent 'Craft & Quilt Fair' at Darling Harbour...


Yes, it's a second Colinette 'Perugino Throw Kit', only this time in the 'Skylark' colourway as I thought two identical throws would be a bit boring ;), and both of these colourways will look fabulous with our dark blue lounge.

Working on the throw hasn't been all joy, though. Katherine was somewhat annoyed that my procrastination over how best to proceed with her 'Skull Vest' had left it unstarted despite the increasingly cold weather, and that another project had now been started ahead of it. And as usual she wasn't afraid to let me know exactly how she felt about the situation. So when the constant cry of "Where's my vest?" became too much, I headed back to Rubi & Lana's in search of a little additional yarn, mostly so I could continue swatching without running the risk of not having enough yarn left to actually knit the vest.

I quickly found the yarn on the shelf, but discovered that the yarn I was sold as an 8 ply has now been labelled as a 5 ply. In hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have been totally surprised by this, as I did have problems initially getting the yarn to knit to a standard 8 ply tension. Undaunted by this turn of events, I decided to check out the 'Rubi & Lana' yarn which has now been labelled as the 8 ply as I quite like the quality of the wool Paula chose for her brand, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get both black and white in that weight of yarn.

What to do? What to do?

As the patterns I'm adapting to get the type of vest that Katherine actually wants are from these two Jo Sharp books...


... the obvious thing to do to make things as easy as possible was just to switch to Jo Sharp DK Wool for the vest. It seemed like the easy option when the thought first entered my head. Rubi & Lana's -- where I was still standing at the time, after all -- stocks Jo Sharp DK Wool. Pretty much any LYS in Sydney stocks Jo Sharp DK Wool. How hard could it possibly be to get some black and some white Jo Sharp DK Wool at lunch time on a Saturday?

Harder than you might think!

Rubi & Lana's were out of stock of both the black and the white. *sigh*

So I rang the Turramurra Drapery. They had white Jo Sharp DK Wool, but none of the black. Plus they would be closing shortly.

OK... So I'll try the Hornsby Wool & Craft Nook, I thought. They had plenty of the black available, but were out of stock of the white. Not my day obviously. At least they weren't closing for several hours though.

My best hope of getting the yarn I desperately wanted was going to be to try to get to the Turramurra Drapery before closing time, and then to head on to Hornsby. So that's what I ended up doing.

And here is the end result of all my driving around...


Woohoo! :)

Actually, I may have panicked a bit when I was trying to decide how many skeins of each colour to buy. I suspect at the end of the day there may well be a 'Skull Hat' or two made with the leftover wool.

When I got the yarn home, I started re-knitting the swatches -- it's important to maintain the momentum with projects like this, after all, and after all that running around I was definitely motivated. The fabric of the plain black stocking stitch tension square turned out quite a bit firmer, and a much better weight for the vest I think...


This was the easy part. The real test, of course, would be the fairisle skull pattern swatch I've been avoiding tackling again since the original one turned out to not be all I'd hoped it would be. With much gritting of teeth, I dove in and started work on the new swatch.

Well, it's amazing what you can suddenly discover when you work on something after a bit of a break. I'd read in a few places that it is important to always strand the colours so that one of the colours is always the one stranded above the other colour, which I thought I'd been doing by always having the white yarn in front of the black yarn on the hand I use to hold the yarn. As it turns out, the way I make my stitches results in the strands reversing position on the purl rows if the yarn is held with the same colour in front all the time. So I'm now swapping the position of the yarns around on the hand I hold the yarn with at the end of each row, and the yarn is stranding correctly across the back of the knitting.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, black and white really isn't the best colour choice for a first attempt at fairisle. I'm fairly certain that the stranding problem would have been much more obvious if I'd been working with almost any other colour combination. As it is, the black strands are more or less invisible against the predominantly black background, so it just wasn't immediately obvious that the strands were around the opposite way on the purl rows.

I'm also following the advice I was given by a few people and using both strands to work the edge stitches, which appears to have helped resolve the loose stitch problem I was having.

And here is the final swatch...


I think the most obvious improvement is that the small diamond pattern no longer has a strong resemblance to chicken foot prints ;) -- something that was definitely caused by the alternation of the positioning of the strands on the back. The skulls are also a better shape, and, even more surprisingly, the tension of the blocked swatch now appears to be correct, helped no doubt by the large amount of black in the design.

By the way, the little plastic gadget in the photos is a yarn guide, and has proved to be a sanity saver for me while I've been negotiating the rather steep learning curve of this project, as it keeps the two strands in their correct positions on the hand holding the yarn -- using the two handed method really was never going to be for me.

Time to finally move on to knitting the actual vest.

The vest I'm knitting for Katherine is based on the 'Devon' vest from Jo Sharp's 'Gathering' book, but will be a bit longer in the body and will have the armholes made deeper as Katherine intends to wear her vest over a blouse with very puffy short sleeves. The v-neck is being replaced with one similar to the one from the '1950s V-neck Sweater' in the new 'Knit' Issue 1 book, as Katherine wants a deeper V for the neckline of her vest.

As you can see, the back of the vest is progressing well so far...


Maybe too well, as the time to start work on the scary fairisle front of the vest is approaching way too fast.

As for the original yarn I bought... It looks like either Katherine or Amanda may eventually score themselves a 'Skull Scarf', as I think the drape of the fabric I was getting from the 'Rubi & Lana' wool will work well for a scarf. I doubt I'll be in too much of a rush to knit this though, as fairisle really isn't something I'm enjoying doing. Maybe the scarf will end up simply being striped at the end of the day... ;)

There is one other project I've started recently. It's the 'Basic Black Shawl' from Cheryl Oberle's 'Folk Shawl' book, although I'm substituting ink navy Colourmart lambswool and angora blend laceweight yarn used double for the original black wool.


I haven't knit very much of it so far, but hopefully the final shawl will look something like this...


Today is my birthday, and while I was taking the photos for this entry my two girls came home with a treat for me...


And here is my haul of presents...


I've really been spoiled this year, haven't I! :)

Earlier this month, I had big plans to be part of the WWKIP event at the Sidewalk Cafe near the Sydney Opera House. I actually started knitting my 'Perugino Throw' a few days before as I thought it would be an ideal project to keep me warm while I was knitting it if the weather was cold on the day. I even had everything packed and ready to go the night before -- almost unprecedented preparation for me, as I'm generally more of a throw things together at the last minute kind of person. As it turned out, this was as close as I got to participating in WWKIP Day this year...


... as unfortunately for me, I woke up with a migraine and ended up spending the day hiding from any source of light.

Next time for sure, though! :)

Presents!

Recently, I won a competition run by Knitabulous, and on Monday I received something truly fabulous in the mail...


It's two skeins of Louisa Harding 'Kimono Angora' and a skein of Louisa Harding 'Kimono Ribbon' yarn in the same yummy colourway, all beautifully presented in a perfectly sized box with a red snowflake design on a white background. The accompanying card hasn't come out too clearly in the photo, but it actually has lots of detail which my camera failed to pick up, and co-ordinates beautifully with the yarn.

I really hope that the stunning range of colours in this yarn will show up well on everyone's screens, as they all work so well together. Unfortunately, the luxurious softness of the yarn simply won't photograph, so you'll just have to take my word for that. ;)

Thank you, Knitabulous!!! :)

As a scarf seems to be the obvious thing to make with the yarn -- that, and I really want to make it into something which will be in contact with my skin -- I decided to search the internet for inspiration. Those of you who've seen some of my comments on this blog and elsewhere probably won't be surprised by what follows. ;) As I really love searching for things like this, I'm going to share the results of my searches here.

First up, I found a scarf which was knit in the Railroad Knitting stitch pattern from Sarah Bradberry's website using the 'Kimono Angora', with strands of the 'Kimono Ribbon' woven through the tracks created by the dropped stitches. The end result is simple and stunning, and I really like it, but I just know I'd end up snagging the strands of ribbon yarn whenever I wore it.

Next, I came across a spiral scarf knit with just the 'Kimono Angora' using a pattern featuring short row shaping, and a ruffle scarf which used both yarns. However, as I knit Amanda Blair Brown's 'Ruffles' scarf from the 'Scarf Style' book in red Cleckheaton 'Angora Supreme' last winter, I decided to keep looking.

Then I discovered a scarf knit in 'Kimono Angora' using the Echarpe scarf pattern, but, believe it or not, I knit one of these last winter too, this time to showcase a hank of beautifully hand-dyed yarn I bought from Marta's Yarns, which it did admirably.

So I continued searching, and this time found a couple of Misty Garden scarves, knit from 'Kimono Angora' using Jo Sharp's 'Misty Garden' pattern from the 'Scarf Style' book. This still wasn't quite what I was after, but the rippling pattern of the 'Feather and Fan' stitch seemed to be heading in the right direction, so I started browsing through my copy of this...


... in search of an alternative lacey, rippling wave stitch pattern to use for my scarf. The strongest contenders at the moment are these four stitch patterns...


I'm leaning towards the 'Twisting Vines' pattern at the moment, but I'd love to hear what other people think would work best. Whichever stitch pattern I end up choosing, I'm thinking working the scarf as blocks of eight rows of 'Kimono Angora' separated by smaller blocks in the 'Kimono Ribbon' yarn of either two or four rows -- chosen at random, of course, to echo the random dyed yarn -- would work well. I may even toss a coin to decide how many rows to knit each time I change over to the 'Kimono Ribbon' yarn. ;)

Continuing the theme of 'presents'... Last Sunday was Mother's Day, and I was definitely spoilt by my family...


Michael had given me most of my Mother's Day presents in advance this year -- the fabulous new mobile I wrote about in the previous posting was actually one of them :) -- but, on the day itself, he also gave me the lovely red carnations and the Instant Lottery ticket which can just be seen hiding amongst the flowers. Plus he cooked dinner for us all, and brought some cheesecake home for dessert. :) Katherine gave me the cute 'Wallace & Gromit' soap dish, which I was surprised to find waiting for me on my chair when I went to check my e-mail. Amanda came over to see me, and gave me the Season 1 DVD set of 'Gilmore Girls' -- she even sat down and watched the first four episodes with me before she had to leave -- and three Lindt 'Petits Desserts' chocolate blocks to try -- Yum!

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? ;)