My mum is a legend.

I don't mean like 'the tooth fairy' or even 'hydra' or whatever.

I mean a saves-my-ass-by-crocheting legend.

[Translation: She came over tonight, was sympathetic to my knitting catastrophe, (while my man smiled knowingly while I explained the depths of pain), played with my daugher while I resewed the back in (correctly this time), gave my daughter a bath while I cooked dinner and then after dinner crocheted all the edging - including extra reinforcing around the neckline to make sure it sat flat on me.]

I bow down to her ability to be wonderful, supportive and the crocheter that I can't be, at the time I really needed her to be.

Mum, you're a legend.

Tomorrow, I seam in the sleeves, sew in the loose ends and on the button I shall purchase.

With luck, Saturday the finished cardi goes with me to Canberra. Wish me luck.

p.s. thank you so much to the supportive comments in my time of knitting grief. Much appreciated!

Slapped down by the knitting gods

Oh god.

Last night I felt so sick about it, I didn't even post the misery.

I am on a tight time schedule, as I am flying out interstate on Saturday. I REALLY want to take the cardigan with me, nay, I need it to go over a dress for a formal thing I have.

Last night I seamed up the body of the cardigan and the lace edging (ie everything bar the sleeves). As I packed it away, I noticed something was not quite right.

After much examination, I realised what it was.

I seamed the back panel inside out.

It was easy to miss, the different is subtle. So subtle, I could have left it you say?

Possibly. I considered it. Seaming it had taken my whole evening. I went to bed, feeling quite sick at the thought. I didn't even know if you could
unseamed Rowan Kidsilk Haze lace.

I slept on it and woke obsessing over the mistake. I didn't know how I was going to get through a whole work day worrying about whether I'd be able to fix it or whether it was ruined forever.

Then. Brief moment of hope. I got up early, got ready in record time and sat down with it and a cup of coffee.

It's apart again. It's painstaking. I stopped every time to make sure I was only pulling on the seam thread, and not the lace. But it's done. I can seam it over again now.

Who knows, maybe one day I'll do a tutorial on un-seaming lace mohair. But not today, today is just mixed unwellness and relief.

Arrrgh Matey! We be tempted by pirate socks!

I'm kinda busy, and not a big sock knitter, or a mad-argyle lover, or skully-lover, but the combination has me tempted.

Who's interested in an Argh!-a-Long?

Dyed Like Me.

I had the best time today, with the Dye-O-Rama thanks to Clementine, our organiser (thanks Clem!) and Amber, our kind host (Thanks Amber!)

I enjoyed it terribly, found it wonderfully addictive. Came home immediately wanting to do more :)

My attempts shown below. I'm happy with them, but hopefully others will post theirs too, some were SO beautiful.

:)
Thanks all for a really nice afternoon.

Finished the lace base border!

Yay me!!

As seen here, modelled by the fronts and back of my yet-to be sewn cardi! Very pleased, as am very very keen to have it done for Saturday, when I fly out to Canberra (brrr!) for work and visiting a darling friend of mine :) (Hey Alex!)

I also found a more portable way of doing the edging, as shown on the left. It's a laminated copy of the instructions, with one row to one line. Much easier to read than the pattern, a lot more hardy, and the post-it keeps my place easy in case of "oh, there's the bus" stuffing-of-knitting-into-bag..

I also had a wonderful day at Amber's house, as organised by Clementine (thanks Clem!) dying yarn for the first time. Man, talk about addictive! I came home all full of thoughts about how to get a good colour selection of KoolAid and if our thoughts on citric acid + food dye would work as well... photos of my attempts at the SnB page here.

Nearly there on the Vogue lace cardigan - second sleeve finished

Yes, it's true. I finished the second sleeve on the bus ride home today.

See it thus:

Very happy with the progress..

It's also being tracked in craftyaction, just so as you know..

I bought a book.

Well, I'm not (to date) much of a Yarn Harlot enthusiast.

That said, when I saw Knitting Rules! at a Dymocks, I picked it up.

I am such a knit geek, I relate to practically everything! I am struggling not to gorge myself and just read the rest in one sitting.

I do that with books. I can read a novel in a day if I am not careful. It's bloody expensive!

Anyway, I've enjoyed it terribly much. Funny, amusing and useful - who would have thought?!

The yarn arrived!

Okay very happy - my darling man picked up my yarn from post office on Friday and so I got back into knitting the Vogue Lace Cardi's last sleeve !! Yay me!

I got about 2 inches of it done during our Friday night D&D game :)

2 weeks until I fly. My darling mum agreed today to do the crochet edging for me.

I recognise that crochet is something I need to learn how to do. But I also decided that learning on my Kidsilk Haze is probably not the best option.

One sleeve, a bunch of lace edging and some seaming until I can wear my burgundy lace goodness :) :)

My ipod was cold - ipod cosy/cozy

Yeah, I know, it's such a knit-geek cliche.

But, once I had ordered my own piece of white tech-geek-toy, it was inevitable.

Here it is. I think it might need a button or something for the bottom, though it doesn't seem to want to fall out or anything.

It's basically a tube, knit flat, then when I got to the top, I three needle bind off the middle stitches so I could access the Hold button on one side, and let the headphone jack stick out the other. You can see that in the side view picture.





In other news, my package of Kidsilk Haze was supposed to be here today, but apparently the postie didn't use the doorbell, so my man didn't hear him arrive :( Hence, it'll have to be picked up tomorrow from the post office - no more lace cardigan til the weekend...

Finished sleeve #1.. But how much yarn?

Well, I'm making good progress on the Lace Cardigan. You can see I've finished the first sleeve. Excuse the feet.

This leaves me with this much yarn

Which now leaves me trying to figure out. I need to knit another sleeve, seam everything and knit the very pretty lace edging for the sleeves and bottom of the cardi. So. Is this one skein or two? Now, normally I'd just get two and shash the second into a gift later. But at $26 a skein, this is not the most attractive option. I've used three skeins so far (including the one shown) but I'm really not sure. I thought maybe I could get the two and the remainder could become a lacy scarf for Christmas maybe for someone.

I had thought also I might seam the main cardigan and do the edging for the bottom and see how much yarn that took, but am now thinking maybe I just buy both and do the gift thing.



I've also started Missy-moo's new jumper. This time I had decided to knit a ribbed jumper in the round, so that it should fit her a bit longer, since it will stretch. I haven't decided if it will be raglan or not, but probably not, given the ribbing. I'll figure it out when I am closer to the underarms and thus have to decide. I'm knitting it in a very bright red Zara. Most pretty..

see? I don't have a pattern or anything, just a bunch of measurements and notes in my knitting journal. I know what I think I want - round neck, not too high all over ribbed for comfort and fit. Let's hope she likes it! Colour is beautiful.

(On a side note, you'll see that I am learning to photograph on simpler backgrounds for colour balance.)

Anyway, I'm done. Off to Mum's for Sunday roast. Bye all..

Felting.. and a new scarf

Okay, I promised I would post with pictures, so here they are. Last weekend I did some felting practice. After reading some web articles to get some recommended yarns, I ran off to buy some. What a drama that was! After being told by a rather brusque woman in Lincraft that you could only felt wool before it was made into yarn (who look at me dubiously and snobbishly when I said that yes, you could and I had done so already), I tried Spotlight.

There, I bought some of their cheap name brand 100% wool yarn - Harvest Pure Wool. The label said "Cool hand wash". This felted slightly, but certainly not evenly or well, and that was after two full washes. That's the purple one on the left. I tried two different gauges, the first was way too tight, the second felted, but not really very well.

After a bit more reading, I tracked down EVENTUALLY some Holiday yarn in Kmart.

I couldn't decide between the light leaf green and the red some bought some of both. Which turned out to be a good thing since as you can see, the red felted really well, but the light green not at all! After all that, I eventually decided the end fabric was really too thick to make an ipod cover after all. If anyone can recommend something to make it a bit thinner, I'd be grateful!

Oh well, they were all very cheap, and I'll use them for teddy jumpers or something. Maybe I'll take them for the Anglicare knit-in on the 12th of July and make some charity blanket squares - at least I know they are both warm and non-felting!!

Did I mention I needed a scarf?

My mother found funny that with all the knitting, no scarf, but the morning busstop wait has left me very cold, so i decided I needed (at least) one scarf. I really wanted to buy some Rowan Ribbon Twist to do this : http://www.thewoolshack.com/patterns.htm?action=display&PatternID=2189&BackText=Ribbon%20Twist%20Collection Which I absolutely adore.. but the money (but mostly that noone open had it) prevented that.

Thus, I bought some Spotlight knock-off similar and just knitted this :

Which is very warm and I like quite a bit. It did seem to shed slightly, I might wash it gently today to see if I can stop it doing that.

Here is another picture, me wearing it this time.. The colours are a bit more 'right' in this second one.

Bad picture, but hey..

So that's me, for now. I shall post more later, maybe tomorrow where I shall wax lyrical about the new work cardigan I want to make, how the Vogue Cardi goes, and similar things... bye...