Monthly Archives: April 2012

half measures

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in friends, knitting, personal, yarn

≈ 9 Comments

its a bit of ‘in-between’ days here right now. the weather seems to be attempting to resuscitate the summer we really didnt have, but i think it should just give up, it was cloudy and grey on saturday (perfect beach walking weather)

and is again today. i deliberately just took miss possum to the beach on saturday. i need to get used to it just being me and her for a while (i have a new puppy ordered – a working border collie (as opposed to a show one) – but it wont be available until late in the year). next saturday the human male moves out, and a week after that the two canine males go to join him. its not like i wont see any of them ever again, we have regular meet ups planned and sometimes the dogs will come back here for weekends. and i can go see them whenever i want, they’re not going far. but it will be funny with just me and my girl here. i think people are right, i am kind of nesting, and it helps that winter is coming (thank you george r r martin for changing the significance of that phrase for me for the rest of my life). i am a bit sad about the impending changes but i know it will be ok. i have lots of other good stuff happening i need to focus on, like choir rehearsal tonight, which will be the first time we sing with the orchestra before sundays performance. i may have picked up some tickets to see his purpleness in concert (turns out a whole heap of knitters are also fans, so its going to be quite a night!)

and theres lots of interesting things at work happening (kicked a few big goals last week in terms of recognition for the current project/s and discussions about future career direction). also, now that the guild exhibition is over i have time to knit again! i am desperate to finish something that i can wear soon, once the wind turns southerly here and comes in over the ocean, well you need to be well wrapped. i remembered that i was nearly halfway through the celes scarf, in the most beautiful bluesky alpaca silk, so i pulled it out and got back to work

i finished the first half and am well on my way with the second

these two halves get grafted together then you knit on the border. if i just stick with this for a while it will be finished soon, and then i can move on to other things. i am trying to work from my list and stick to projects and yarn already assigned but i may have been distracted over the weekend by some shiny things:

the sundara on the left is ‘petite sock’ in the special ‘red roses’ colourway. there is over 800  yards there, so thats looking like something other than socks! or socks plus other things. it feels almost too good for socks. the mad tosh eyre light in the middle is in ‘raspberry’ and ‘tart’ (my favourite colour of hers) and im thinking scarves, but they might go in the stash for a bit, and the two lovely dark skeins on the right are some knitabulous supertwist merino. im thinking that will be a windward.

what am i doing buying more yarn, i hear you ask? well the sundara has been on order for a while and just arrived this week, and the other beauties came to me via a destash party held on the weekend.

i managed to sell about as much as i bought, so it doesnt really count does it? i also made cupcakes for said party. red velvet ones to be precise.

i wanted to make them from scratch, i havent done any baking in a long time given the house is mostly a flour and sugar free zone these days. but i figure if you’re going to splurge you might as well do it properly.

they were fantastic.

i used the recipe from the magnolia bakery in NYC. why is this significant? one, its the worlds best cupcake shop. two, i was going to be there in june but now am not. yes its very sad, but ive had to cancel the NYC part of my american june trip. it was just going to be too expensive and i have other things i want to do this year (staying debt free being one of them) and there didnt seem to be much point in being in NYC if none of my friends could come and i would be scrimping on money the whole time. so i am still going to baltimore for a week but it will be mostly conference time now. see how sensible and grown up im being?

but really, in keeping with the title of todays post, im mostly only interested in doing things properly these days. i didnt buy any yarn on the weekend just for the sake of it, i stuck with things i knew i really liked and would wear. im not buying any yarn for garments over a 6 ply for me anymore, i know they just dont look right. and if i make a mistake in my knitting now, i rip it out. near enough used to be good enough for me, but its not anymore. im finding this attitude drifting through to my work as well. the more responsibility i get given, the more confident i get, and the more i want to do things right.

i feel like i owe that to myself, these days.

kxx

tidying up

15 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in personal, yarn

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

if i ever did take the plunge and move on from here, there is one thing i would miss very badly, and its my cute little house. even though its not in a great location (busy road), it still makes me happy everytime i walk in the door. i’ve been doing little bits and pieces to it lately, partly i think because my house mate looks like moving out soon. see how i dropped that in real casual? its not really casual. it has the potential to be traumatic, given that, as some of you know, my housemate is actually my ex partner, who i’ve lived in a house (of some kind or other) with for the last 18 years, give or take a few months before we actually moved in together, and the three months when we split up and i moved down here on my own nearly 3 years ago. he moved back in with me, as friends, to go back to uni, and now he has a new partner and they’re looking at houses. i dont really want to think about how that makes me feel – sometimes really sad, and other times, most times, like im happy for him and happy for him to go. especially when he comes home and critiques the way i did the washing up. and we’re not even together anymore. sheesh.

but anyway, i am looking forward to having my own space, and you know i think thats what part of the last post, and the feeling in the country, has been about, just really wanting my own space. maybe my desire to move away wont be so strong when i have my whole house back. at any rate, i am enjoying pottering around and making the house feel a bit more like me.

like, for example, doing something about my yellow-walled bedroom. i posted about this a while ago too, after a trip to ikea.so  after guild yesterday, my ikea-enabling-pixie and i dropped into the big swedish warehouse

and i picked up a few things i had my eye on last time for my bedroom. remember what it looked like before?

now it looks like this.

just a subtle shift, but the extra colour from the new cushion and quilt cover really lifts it, as does putting the two cards i have been hoarding from my visit to the victoria and albert museum a few years ago, in boxes on the wall.

see, i put a bird on it!! i think the cushion in particular does exactly what i want, tie the bits of red, blue and yellow together without looking like a circus tent.

and hello ikea bargain corner, i picked up the little bed side table for only $69. i had originally wanted the red one but they were all out, then we saw the black one in the bargain section, and it was all mine. and assembled! i think the black actually works really well under that rothko print.

and this morning, i picked up a pot plant for a corner of the lounge room.

that corner was empty before, and one little thing like a plant has made a big difference. and yes, that is new  yarn on the table.

its actually this:

holst garn wool cotton from suzy hausfrau in shades of blue and grey. i think it will be a ‘colour affection’ shawl, but first i need to finish that celes scarf in the gorgeous red bluesky aplaca silk before it gets any colder.

and further on the moving/job front, after an initial stress head meltdown, i had a good week at work with a few things happening that reaffirmed how important i am to my boss. over coffee with missfee yesterday morning before guild, with the help of the sugar bowl and salt shaker, i worked out a strategy for how to position myself in the coming changes. if it doesnt work out in either of my two preferred options, then i know it will be time to move on.

in the meantime, im slowcooking my first bourbignon of the season.

oh i love autumn.

kxx

can you frog your life?

11 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in dogs, personal, travel

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

,

its been a big week. the guild display was all set up in time with everything just right.

i went up and ‘personned’ the stall on opening day and since then i’ve left it to others to have a turn. im happy with how it turned out, would have done a few things differently, and wont be volunteering for anything like it again for a while! i think sometimes the quickest way to kill your love of your hobby is to get involved with the ‘back end’ or organising of it. i wouldnt want that to happen to my love of knitting!

on good friday i got in the car with my dog and drove a long way north. i stayed in a cute caravan park that had chickens

and a shady spot for knitting

and then i spent the rest of the easter weekend under this shed

herding sheep with my dog

and knitting some more

possum and i had a great time. we improved a lot over the weekend. i’m working up to trialling again in september, although just thinking about it makes me nervous. there will be more trips away between now and then to get it right.

while i was there i thought a lot about how peaceful it was surrounded by the big open spaces with the autumn trees

the cool crisp sunrise

and the spectacular sunset.

i thought about how this showground was entirely different to the one i’d just left behind

and how i really really didnt want to come back to the city. an old phd mate who is working now at the uni near where we were came to say hi. i spent a while talking to him and his lovely wife about city vs country, academia vs life, stress vs contentment. we talked about some possible job openings in the next year or so. things are changing where i work now. i dont know how they will play out for me, i dont know whether i want to be a part of it. and i really dont want to live here anymore. being in wollongong, working where i am, it was a mixture of chance and forced circumstance. i dont feel like i had a lot of choice. but now i realise i can choose any path i want, its up to me.

people probably think im crazy but i spent my last 5 years of high school living up north. i miss it, even if its a long way from anywhere

i miss the wide open space and the really cold winters

i mostly just miss the peace and quiet. so im seriously thinking about frogging my life, as rosered put it.

not right now though. right now i just need to go and knit for a while!

k xx

show time!

02 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in knitting

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

,

despite the fact that i am organising and running a massive all day workshop at work on wednesday with a visiting american academic, almost all of my time and head space for the last couple of days have been consumed by the organising for the sydney royal easter show ‘fabulous fibres’ feature display. the knitters guild are one of three guilds to be featured, and we really only have one quarter of the large display area to cover, but it turns out organising 84 volunteers over 2 weeks,

as well as the display items and related infrastructure, new signage and brochures, and the actual display itself, takes quite a lot of work! but we’ve  had a great team of helpers, especially ailsa with the roster and ticketing and jane with gathering items from the archives and helping with set up on saturday, as did alison and then zena on sunday and a wonderful graphic designer beth who’s come up with fantastic new signage and brochures. and then of course there’s the actual putting it all together, which happened over the weekend, thanks largely to missfee.

this involved getting up to sydney very early saturday, picking up fee, stopping for coffee, picking up a quilting frame, strapping it to the roof of the car, getting inside the showground and tipping everything out on the display area and trying a few different combinations then making a list of all the things we still needed. fee went off to work while i did some shopping, then i headed back to roseredville where i tried to knit but ended up playing with matchbox cars instead.

then it was back out there sunday morning in a futile search for coffee (this wasnt it)

and time for a bit of knitting

then back to work with fee and zena climbing all over things and moving things around and a whole heap of bunting.

i cant show you more than this right now

but as zena said ‘everything is better with bunting’. so true.

i was exhausted yesterday when i got home, i only managed a few rows on the cardigan i am desperate to finish before it gets any cooler (but probably wont)

and then this morning i woke up at 430am worrying about all the things we used in the display and all the things i should have asked people for and how are people going to react when they see what we didnt use!

so now i think i just need a cup of tea and some knitting time and then choir rehearsal tonight to try and unwind a bit. opening day is thursday and i will be out there for the day before i disappear up to uralla to play with sheep for easter.

i’ll let you know how the display was received when i get back.

or maybe we’ll just never speak of it again!

k xx

 

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 304 other followers