Ramblings... and a squee!

First all, I've just returned from my Monday night stitch n bitch. I have the coolest knitting group in the world!! Not for anything in particularly, but these ladies rock. It make my week to hang out with them. :)

Second, as Lime & Violet would say, I had a 'sqeeeee' today, when I listened to the lovely Heather Ordover on the CraftLit podcast, and she read my email (with my permission naturally) !!
(Episode 39 if you feel like looking it up) I'm feeling very flattered and clever, so that's my brush with celebrity for the decade ;)

Kudos to Heather for a fabulous, intelligent podcast (and that's all her obviously, not because she included me!)

And Kudos to the craftyaction girls. You rock!

Raspy web-links

Yes, I'm so keen on starting Raspy, I'm reading about it all over.

So, as a self-reference and collation of Raspy's online..

• Brooklyn Tweed's fabulous version (sans dropped stitches) that totally caught my eye..
• A knit-along's hints and tips.
• Denim yarn comparisons by the Knitting Wench
• Denim People knit-a-long
• Raspy photos: passionfruit
• Raspy photos: blumunchie
• Piece of Beauty: good hints for keeping edges neat for the dropped stitches
• Streets and YOs: more good modification hints

Of the various changes people have made those that I intend to follow include:

• work in the round
• do one of the alternate (tbl etc) ways of neatening the dropped stitch edges

The one I am seriously considering that I haven't seen is a v-neck rather than the boat neck. Jared at Brooklyn Tweed went for a crew (round) neck, that I will definitely do if not the v-neck. The one thing I don't like about the sweater is the front neckline, which seems to roll a lot and not be as suited for larger busty ladies..

oohhh I hope the book gets here soon!

oh and the diamond stitch top progresses... slowly... about another 4 cm until I split for the arm scythes.

I finally got around to updating the links...

Those of you who use a feed service such as bloglines will actually need to look at the site to see, but I've updated some of my links etc and added a new feature, thanks to a funky little web service called LibraryThing.

Enjoy!

Whooo-hoo! Fastest postage ever!

The yarn arrived. From the UK. Quicker than the book from Australia!?

Can't wait now. Need the book to find out needles etc., so I can't even prepare to knit it...

I think I will be definitely buying from her again.

Okay, it's done! Yarn and pattern ordered

In the process of ordering I found a couple of good online suppliers, and thought I'd share. I can't of course garuntee anything until they arrive, but they seem good value.

For books I went to Fishpond (an Australian bulk book dealer with discounts on some books - including the required-but-elusive Denim People) and postage of $5.95 (that's Australian dollars too!)

For the yarn, I found an ebay seller in the UK who sells a lot of discounted Rowan, (and Debbie Blis and Noro etc etc). Even including postage and exchange rates, it was substantially cheaper than anywhere else online I looked at. Janette's Rare Yarns.

So I'm hoping that it all arrives in time for the March Labour Day Long weekend ! Wheeee!

I shall be knitting Raspy:

I like the wabi-sabi (new but imperfect) thing it has going on and was completely sold by the way people talked about how it wears, how comfortable it is, how it naturally fades over time... and how you can machine wash it with your jeans!

At any rate, despite my deep desire to knit any number of complicated things in wool... I know I won't get as much wear out of them. Maybe I'll do another fair aisle cotton or wool cardigan (in 4ply) later.... as it is relatively cheap on yarn.

When the pink diamond stitch top gets finished. Or should that be if??

Jaywalker Bandwagon? Never heard of it!

I really love how it is turning out. Extra kudos and thanks to Nadine for fab-u-lous yarn!

The cure. (no, not the band)

Sometimes, we all have bad days.

My easiest way to perk me up?

These.

My own hand-dyed, hand-knit socks.

Pathetic, and yet satifying.

My yarn's having an identity crisis....

Remember that hand-dyed blue 3ply yarn from the Royal Show that didn't want to be that entrelac?

Well....

While it seems to be working in a technical sense, it's just too thin (as in thickness, not width) to be a suitable clapotis and I doubt I have enough to make a wrap at any rate. On the plus side, I do like the Clapotis pattern. God knows what it will end up being, I have no idea.

I am, it seems, very much in the mood to start a new project.

I must be. I did a stocktake of my stash.

Man, I have a lot of trash.

I mean that in the literal (a lot of acrylics and novelty odd balls for gift knitting) and more tangential sense (a lot of odd balls in miss-matched yarns and weights of minimal use).

I have one large and one small plastic tubs full of yarn.

Other than enough yarn for 6 pairs of socks (though sadly, none like Clementine's fabulous Cherry Tree Hill). Nice, but ....

Of the yarn in which I have more than one ball of a type I have :

• 3 and a bit balls of purplish-grey Zara (the colour doesn't suit me, and the rest of it became a fabulous felted bag for my mum)
• 10 balls of bright red scarlet Zara (in progress into being knitted into a ribbed jumper for Jasi. Stalled due to it being summer and me waiting a little longer to see just how tall she gets)
• About 12 balls in various ice-cream colours (pink, lime, pale blue, teal, taupe etc) Katia Mississippi. (great yarn but single balls of most colours means its firmly in the baby-gift realm).
• That Anny Blatt scarlet silk. Am considering (still) knitting the top Lupinbunny knitted, but then had a dream a few nights ago where I dreamt the perfect thing to knit with it. Can I remember anything about the dream-top now? Of course not.
  

That's it! Everything else is single balls of yarn. That don't work together.



I think I want to knit Scarlet as my Christmas-gift-money-knit (Adam's other gift to me) but I need to work out what is the cheapest way to get the yarn - online or local ordering.

...

Still deciding. I got all excited by Rogue, and by that Fairaisle jumper from the Winter Vogue Knitting just gone... and many others.

Unfortunately, I can't do that thing I see people doing (and discussing) online where they love a pattern so they run out and but the yarn for it. Money being a little too tight for that, my knitting generally is on a one-project-buy-at-a-time thing.

Not that I always finish quickly. On the needles I have:

• a second sock in a yarn colourway I don't like. I tell myself I should finish and then over-dye them in purple or something.
• Jasmine's red jumper for next winter
• a scarf in a pretty variegated blue .... acrylic... that was the first actual object I ever knitted (but obviously not the first finished).
• the diamond stitch top

[stops and considers] I'm rambling. Will stop now.

Post-Christmas ramblings and photos...

Okay, I promised some photos, right?

My camera is a Canon PowerShot A530. It looks like this:


Well, it does when photographed in a mirror without a flash (sorry bout the blur).
Cool, huh?








I've also been testing out some entrelac (thanks to lupinbunny), but have decided that despite the nice colours of my own hand dyed yarn, the colour repeats are not long enough. See?













Oh, yeah and then there's the new bag :)

(warning: Gratitutous photographing of bag to come)

It looks like this.

It's HUGE inside. (Very tardis like). I'm pretty sure you could get a whole jumper and notions required in there. The little purple bag on the side there is attached with press studs so you can put the smaller stuff in there. It also has a side zippered pocket. Only thing I wish it had was a mobile phone/ipod pocket. But the zippered one does okay for that for me.

The nifty side pocket holds all your smaller stuff - small needles, pens, scissors, calculator etc.

And, I'm back on that diamond stitch top from the Sarah Dallas Vintage Knits book. And again, part of me says...

"4ply cotton on 3mm needles. In the round so it goes extra slow. What were you thinking?!"

There is photos of this, but I think I've hit the cache limit for Blogger. So, another time.

I'm also considering trying to participate in "Project 365". I now have a small, digital camera. I also want to work on something I've long been terrible at. I look terrible in photos. I seem to sabotage myself constantly, probably subconsciously. I don't mean to look awful, after all.

I don't think they'll end up here - I'm a bit hesistant of putting personal photos up. But we'll see how it goes. Maybe you'll get the non-people photos.