|
I have been a-crafting
 I finished spinning some optim and ELxMerino lamb some time ago but never took it off the bobbin. in fact it is still onthe bobbin. I am waiting to finish spinning this before I put on the skeiner and start winding emptying the bobbins.  That's the optim which I dyed myself about 4 or 5 years ago. Yup, it was pre-Alex. It's finally made it from fibre stash to wheel.. now how long will it stay in my yarn stash before it gets knitted?  I was spinning the ELxMerino lamb's fleece to ply with the optim. Unfortunately, it snapped. yes, unfortunate is right because when it snapped, it wound itself into the bobbin and now I can't for the life of me, find the end. I have tried following the outside strands around the bobbin. I hgave tried brushing gently with an old toothbrush. i even tried the suggestion of rubbing a balloon and bringing it near the bobbin so that the static electricity can pull the "loose end" up. The end is not "loose" and I think that's the problem. So I think I will have to break a strand and continue spinning from there. What a pity! There's also been some knitting...   Chris's sister is expecting a little boy at the end of March and aside from a little beanie, I haven't made anything else for him. So I started knitting a blanket. I thought it would be quick, but as it turned out, it was anything BUT quick. I started in September last year, and finished it yesterday. The yarn was thick and soft, but the 9mm needles I was using were unwieldy and awkward. It wa sthe blanket from hell for a while then. I stuffed up the decreases and ended up having to frog back some 40% of the blanket and re-knit. Oh my, I did not want to do that but did not have a choice as the shape was so strange due to the odd decreases. I can finally say I am done. I will NOT be knitting with such HUGE needles again.. no, not ever!! In my next installment, I'll show you what it is like to cook with a toddler! Labels: knitting, spinning
The long overdue post
A lot has happened in the last couple of months. Where do I start? Chris left his old job, and started a new one. There was a bit of uncertainty while he looked for a new job but he found a new one quickly. He wasn't dismissed. He left, in case you're wondering, because things just weren't so pleasant anymore. I am pleased that he seems much happier to go to work now and comes home a happier man. Happy husband/Daddy makes for happy wife/child. I have been busy. The project I am working on didn't go so well once it was in production and I have been working hard, osmetimes late at night supporting users, testing patches, etc. Pretty much doing the things I normally do, and more. That has now calmed down too. Thank goodness. I was not sure I could handle much more stress. In that time I found a white hair. Oh my! I hope it was just stress and not old age. I am not that old yet, am I? I haven't found another, but to be honest, I am not looking that hard either. If you see one (or two or three), please don't tell me. I don't want to know! As for Alex.. well, as you would probably have guessed from the previous post, he is growing up quickly. He likes painting and drawing, and gluing and folding, but not cutting, apparently. There is something about cutting that frustrates him. He hates it and won't do any craft that requires cutting, or so I am told. He is also slightly obsessed with cutting straight lines and gets frustrated when his little fingers can't manage it. That said, he does have a "thing" for straight lines and orderliness. Hmm.. I am nto so sure that this child is related to me after all. Orderliness is what I am not! Aside from work, I have also been very busy knitting and sewing. I found a kit to make this at my local Salvos shop:  It only cost me $9 and the only thing I had to supply aside from thread was the cotton batting inside. Alex loves it and calls it his duck blanket. It really is Mother Goose, but he thinks it's a duck and who am I to argue with toddler wisdom? It was completed in one day and easier than I expected. Don't look too closely, though. The applique work is really dodgy, despite it all having been cut out for me and all I had to do was sew. It's also not bound at the sides like a "real quilt" normally is. I sewed it all together (inside out) leaving a gap and turned it right side out and then top-stitched it. The layers were then tied together with bits of thread. A bit of a cheat but an effective one! My binding skills are crap, despite having watched dozens of tutorials on youtube. I am now working on a shawl (which can be used as a lap blanket).  I am using some handspun Blue-faced leicester (hand-dyed by me, of course) which I had plied with two strands of commercially produced cashmere/silk. Then.. horror of horrors, I ran out and it was still too small for a shawl. So I had to find another yarn to go with it and finally settled on this:  I am way past that point now, having completed about 10 repeats of the pattern. I am basing it on the Kiri Shawl buy Polly Outhwaite, but making it a square instead of a triangle. It's actually working out quite well. I have a gazillion stitches on the needles now though and each round is taking me longer. I think I will give up soon, maybe when I reach twelve repeats of the pattern. I still need to make sure I have enough yarn to finish the edging. I'd hate to run out again and have this look like a scrappy shawl, which it should not be. More recently I have also been dreaming up another simple pattern for a hat. this time it's a girly hat.  It's pretty simple and can be knitted up in a day or two. I took longer because of many interruptions and also feeling the need to concentrate on the shawl, which must be finished and blocked by the end of November as it is a gift for someone very special to Chris and I. I'll have to fine-tune the pattern and get it test-knitted. The yarn I used for this hat is actually a "seconds" lot from my store. the brown part has spots that are darker than the rest, and so it is a "seconds". I actually don't mind that and I think it's not very noticeable, and it goes well with the white/cream spots. I have been spinning too, but don't have that much to show for it. This one I call "Pure Dark Chocolate"  Spun from Bond fleece purchased from Shiloh Wool. It’s deliciously soft, which is, to me, so unusual for Corriedale, but I guess Bond is very special Corriedale. It is bred to have finer fleece than your run-of-the-mill Corriedale. It is approximately 24 to 25 microns and I didn’t think it would spin up so nicely, but it did. It’s going to be a scarf for Alex as he wants a scarf to be “just like you, Mummy”. Then there is this one which I spun for a customer, who is also a friend.  The hand-dyed superfine merino top is from Selah. It's not one of mine. It was a joy to spin as it really is quite soft. I navajo-plied it to keepthe colours together. I would imagine that it would stripe madly across whatever Anna decided to knit with it. I love how bright the colours are. they're not "my colours" but I did enjoy spinning them and just looking at the colours make me happy. The yellow is such a cheerful yellow and the reds and blues are so bright. That's all I have energy for today.. but I do have more to post later. Labels: Alex, Christmas, knitting, life, sewing, spinning
Still alive
Only just barely, though. I got wet in the rain last week and must have caught King Cough. Now King Cough won't leave me alone. I have been sniffling and coughing ever since. We have been indulging in chicken soup and congee, and even some homemade dumplings.  Okay, so I cheated. These are frozen. Homemade, but frozen. I normally make up batches of up to 100 dumplings, freezing them in batches of 10 or 12. I love dumplings, do you? I have also been busy spinning. Here's one of my latest   It's 60g of BFL top which I bought in the US and handdyed myself in mint green with hints of lavender. There's about 140m of it. It's enough for a small lacey scarf or a neckwarmer of some sort I think. I'd love to keep it but it's going to my friend Anne. Vanessa had a stall at the Glebe market a few weeks ago. She was selling some of my stuff. She may be at the Kiribilli market next week with more of my stuff to sell. I know it's Mother's Day weekend, but if don't have other plans, Kiribilli market is always fun. There's lots of bits and pieces to look at. I hope to be there with Chris and Alex if it is not raining. My parents were here visiting. They arrived on the Thursday before Easter and left yesterday. It's been so good to have them here. Alex enjoyed time with his grandparents. It's not often that Alex gets to spend so much time with my parents, so it was a real treat for him to have his grandparents sleeping in the room next to his. They visited the Hunter Valley on their last weekend here and look what they brought home  It's an early birthday present for Chris and me. We were naughty and broke into it early. It's not our birthdays till end of May/start of June, but we have already drunk a third of it. Thanks, Mum and Dad! Labels: food, spinning
Enough to clog your arteries
So I didn't tell you about our deep frying extravanganza a few weeks ago. My sister-in-law was given a deep fryer as a wedding present and we decided to try it out.  Onion rings  Chicken wings  Spring rolls  Wontons (dumplings) Those were SERIOUSLY the best chicken wings I have had in a loooong time. It's my sister-in-law's sister-in-law's recipe. It's sweet, salty, crispy and wonderful all at once. For teh onion rings, Chris found a recipe for beer batter online and we used that. They were good too, but not as good as the wings. Sssshhh.. don't tell Chris that ;) Alex loved the spring rolls. What am I saying? Alex loves spring rolls all the time. He insisted that eh wanted a spring roll that day, so we gave him one. He fells asleep eating it but refused to relinquish his hold on it. When I tried to extract it from his greasy little fist, he batted me away with his free hand and moved the springroll to hide it behind his head.  All this while his eyes were closed!  Yes, that is a springroll he is holding behind his head! All that greasiness makes me queasy just looking at the photos, but I can't help but regret that I didn't indulge in another chicken wing or two! I have been rather busy lately. I have done some spinning and putting the fruits of my labour up for sale on Etsy. This is the latest:  I call it flame thrower. It's a lovely hank of squishiness that is typical of merino wool. The colours don't photograph as well as I would have liked as it is a deep intense read with blue and yellow higghlights. It's not as cherry-ish as the picture shows. I have another hank that is just under 300m in length that will be listed tomorrow or the day after. It's a softly spun skein of single ply yarn from hand-dyed pure Corriedale wool. Recently I participated in a swap on Ravelry. I sent out a skein of handdyed alpaca in girly pink tones. I received these balls of wooly pleasure:  Mmmm.. what shall I make with it? I do have other sewing news but I'll leave that for another day. Labels: Alex, etsy, life, spinning
Spinning only, no knitting
 No knitting done in this house - just some spinning. That's merino wool that you see there. It is for my ISE4 pal. The colours are not as bright as I had hoped but I hope she'll like them. I have spun 50g, and have another 50g to go. Right now I am thinking of either using the yarn as a single or plying it with some mohair - Kidsilk Haze or something similar. So.. why has there been no knitting? My parents are here. They arrived the day after my brother-in-law and his wife left. Chris and I have been busy spending time with them when we are not at work. It's great to have them around. Alex loves his Kungkung and Ahmah* and has spent a lot of time talking to them. A result of spending time with Chris family while his brother was here and then with my parents this past week is a total lack of routine in Alex's life. I have spent the last 2-3 weeks waking up more in the middle of the night than before. This week, we are trying something new. We want to try to make Alex sleep longer at night while we are asleep**. We allow him to nap from about 6 or 7 in the evening and then wake him for a feed sometime between 10 and 11 at night. We feed him and play with him and I am hoping that the activity will reset his internal clock such that he will have a long sleep starting from then. One night he had a 5 hour sleep. That's the best we've had so far. I am hoping that if we persevere, he will eventually sleep 6-8 hours from that night feed onwards and Chris and I will get some decent rest. Wish us luck! We were shocked this morning when we woke up to see Alex's face and body covered in spots. Okay, maybe not "covered" but he had little red spots and I can't work out whether they are bites or something else. They don't seem to bother him and he is not running a temperature. I stripped his bed down and washed all his bed covers, just in case it is a bug of some sort biting him. Over the day, the spots seem to have faded somewhat but they are still there. Poor little tyke. I hope we won't wake up tomorrow to more spots! * Chinese for Grandpa and Grandma ** He normally has a long sleep from about 6pm for a good 5-7 hours, which is not much good to us as we are awake for most of that time. Labels: Alex, ISE4, life, spinning
|
