no place like home…

i was sorely tempted to click my heels together a few times over the last week in some vain hope i would be magically whisked away to where i really wanted to be, which was not in perth. but i had to make do with more mundane means of transportation and wait for the plane to come and get me back

im not going to bore you with the work talk. it wasnt always what i expected but i did get some really valuable insights and it was very worthwhile. perth i found disorienting, i dont know why, just the way the sun was never where i thought it should be, and the light was different, and the city centre itself, well, not really a city.

it really did feel like a big country town clinging to the edge of the earth desperately trying not to slide off, with the desert pushing in from the east in waves of heat, even at the end of winter. but it was totally and utterly redeemed by the magnificence that was the swan river. stunning, in all directions.

i worked pretty hard while i was there, lots of long meetings, and notes and paper writing at night, so i didnt get to explore much, but i did have the wednesday off and i figured out the train timetable (oh, on that note, they have an oystercard-type system, tag on tag off. it was awesome. how hard can it be sydney transport?!), to get myself out of town a bit. my first stop was calico and ivy down at mosman park.

(sorry, i completely neglected to get a decent photo). of course i have been to the excellent shop of the same name in balmain where i was superbly attended to by the wonderful donna, and i was equally impressed with their perth store. it was a bit bigger than the balmain store and probably had a bit more yarn, but i think the balmain store has more fabric. it was a very similar aesthetic anyway, and the service was great. i did have an upper limit on the budget, so i couldnt really afford a whole garments worth of kid classic, for example, but i made do with these: one ball of kid silk haze, in the most divine pearly silver. just for a simple drop stitch scarf. im not 100% about me and mohair but i just couldnt resist. just one, to experiment with.

two skeins of koigu, in a mushroomy colour, as a replacement for the spud & chloe (which i think is ruined. let us not speak of it further).

and four balls of a lovely rowan baby alpaca that id not seen before. its so incredibly soft, and im thinking a hat and a mittens for next winter.

im really happy with all of these, a nice variety without blowing the budget. happy again, me and my little brown paper bag jumped back on the train and headed down to fremantle. that was an interesting place. i was met with this statue outside the train station.

which i think is kind of symbolic really. its a wild and crazy part of the world down there. it wouldnt take much for the dingoes to reclaim it. i went for a very long walk here, trying to get as close to the ocean as i could, but its a port town, and a really busy big one, so most of the waterfront is taken up with boats. lots and lots of boats. there was a nice sandy track that looked promising, i went through a tunnel cut into the sandstone under the round house

and came out on bathers beach

gorgeous. the water is the most astonishing blue here, and the way the sun shimmers, as though its reflecting all that red desert light back onto the ocean, it was really beautiful.

i walked as far as i could around the small inner harbour wall on one side,

and then the other,

right to the very end. you can see rottnest island from here (its that kind of white smudge on the horizon),

but thats it, the rest of the waterfront is built up with docks. i stopped at the fish markets and had freshly bbq-ed WA prawns for lunch,

then sat in the lovely park across the road and knitted for a while, before checking out the shops in the ‘cappuccino strip’ (seriously, australia, there must be a better way to do tourism than copy the gold coast model), then back to the waterfront to catch a large boat back up the swan river.

this was a nice trip but also frustrating. the pilot was also commentating, and she was an ignorant white aussie who gave the passengers no sense of australian history apart from the dollar value of the ugly mansions lining the swan.

i wanted to get up and yell at her that there were people here 40 000 years ago and these stupid mansions are built on their land with dollars made by ripping minerals out of their soil, but you cant talk about that kind of stuff here apparently without someone calling you a greeny or a commie (not that i care, considering im both). so instead i let the breeze ruffle my hair and thought nice peaceful thoughts as we played chicken with some sailors

‘my boat’s bigger than your boat’ appears to be the main rule of the waterway in WA. which really is my main impression of the place – a gussied up gold town teetering on the edge of chaos and anarchy. any minute now its gonna blow.

i was glad to get the hell out of dodge and back home to my loved ones, furry and otherwise. and there will be no more of those adventures this year, and a whole heap more knitting.

cant wait to catch up with people soon, and thank you for the lovely comments last time, they really helped.

k xx

the week that was

its been a big week. a few milestones passed and hurdles climbed. the most interesting is that this week marked two years since i moved into this house. of course, i didnt just move into a new house. i started a whole new life. these kinds of milestones always make me pensive, and because i dont want to drown in an ocean of sad ive not been thinking or feeling much, just trying to get through the days. it hasnt always been a great two years, but its been productive. ive learnt a lot, grown a lot. knitted a lot. watched a lot of buffy. she saves my arse. a lot. ive been round a lot of people this week but havent felt like ive got much to say. what is there to say really? you get on with life or you go under.

it helps that im so busy at work, with the ‘death’ of ERA and an interesting new project working with  nsw police on alcohol and sexual assault in the pipeline. and in the big news, my position was made permanent this week. this doesnt mean i will be in that position permanently (there are always plans afoot to move me into something bigger and better but i’ll believe that when i see it) but it does mean whatever happens, im safe and secure. it means i can start thinking long term, including ‘talking to bank managers’ type long term. the little communist in me hates the idea of becoming a property owner, but as a 42 year old single childless female (with no intention of changing that status. ever.) im also a realist. i took a small step and joined a health fund. thats enough excitement for one week surely?

despite the ‘pensive’, i have had a great weekend of socialising, starting friday night with meeting jp at the sydney film festival.

we saw ‘sleeping beauty’, a new australian film. i put my knitting away before it started.

i really wish i hadnt. good lord, what a load of self-indulgent pretentious TRIPE. i get the theme, i get the whole ‘disconnected young female’ thing, but is that really a story worth telling? and if you are going to tell it, then for gods sake tell it in such a way that doesnt make half the audience burst into hysterical (and relieved) laughter when its finished. i applaud emily browning, she did a great job, but that movie is a prime example of why novelists should not be allowed to make films. and i can say that because i was once a novelist who tried to make films and i sucked. at least i know it. it was a great fun night though, but i abandoned jp during the film-makers Q&A to go spend the night at missfee’s house. and what a lovely little house it is, and what wonderful hosts are fee, matt and po and tom. it was lovely to spend some one on one time with the mr and mrs sock victim. and also, i saw fee’s stash. im not allowed to say anything about that. oh i wish i could. but i wont.

saturday morning it was raining in fee’s backyard,

but it stopped by the time we got to bourke st bakery for coffee and croissant, followed by second breakfast at the book kitchen with a few others

followed by knitters guild meeting in surry hills

followed by some knitting in public

at a coffee and a yarn in newtown.

it was so much fun spending all this time with people i love and who are so easy to be around. even so, by about 3 oclock i was exhausted, and drove home to a dinner of vegemite toast and hot milo. i was asleep by 10 and slept right through until 730, a big sleep for me. then i headed up to the southern highlands to poke around in antique and patchwork stores and have a pub lunch and buy lollys with some of my favourite people.

so lovely to see them, and are little ones not good for the soul? then it was a drive down macquarie pass in the pouring rain,

and i felt like crashing out straight away, but instead i played with my own stash for a little while. thanks to missfee and the webs sale, i added some more silky wool to my garment stash

this is going to be a summer solstice-meets-adrift. then i decided that some of my nice yarn needed to come out of hiding and warm up my lounge room.

i moved the harry potter box set to make way for some STR, koigu, wollmeise, knitabulous, bluesky, jade sapphire, madtosh, lornas laces and frogtree, among others. its makes me smile to look at it.

less smile worthy is the ENDLESS hell of sleeveland, i am still on sleeve one of greenfield, but if i got off the computer i might actually get it finished today. so on that note….

k xx

parity parcels

for most of my adult life, the australian dollar has, in terms of international purchasing, been worth significantly less than its face value. i remember the whole ‘floating’ thing, and our colonial currency being worth about 30 pence and 65 US cents, on average. not anymore. since the whole GFC thing, the australian dollar has steadily improved, so that its now well past parity with the US dollar. i make no apologies for being happy about this, i know its not good news for everyone, but for too long we have been at the mercy of the protected american market, and our retailers have been able to profiteer with severely inflated prices. not any more.

i have no qualms about buying overseas, although i will support particular stores here where i can. i wont be supporting the australian publishing industry as much as i used to, thats for sure. since my visit to america where i paid no more than $15 for new release paperbacks that i would pay $32 for here, i have been in revolt. i know there are all sorts of reasons why they say they charge more here, some are valid, but i think ive paid my dues. i’ve spent many thousands of dollars locally stocking my book shelves over the years, but as my reading tastes have changed, so have my purchasing practices.

for example, here are my bookshelves. they’re sorted by ‘genre’ loosely, as in history and politics, contemporary fiction and classics.

the biggest bookshelf  (the one in the middle) is the contemporary fiction, and thats the one im adding to most now. i like to go back to the classics every so often, but to be honest, there’s usually too many long words, and im just not up to it anymore. also, ive kind of read them all. these days im looking for stuff thats a whole lot lighter. still well written, but im not such a snob about the content. trashy vampire novels are great, as are those wonderful swedish crime books:

and just last week i succumbed to the latest craze and ordered the ‘songs of fire and ice’ (game of thrones) series:

this is coming to tv, and i always like to read the books first. this box set cost me $19 on amazon, and i paid extra for expedited shipping. even so, the box arrived on my door step for $35. one single volume of this series would cost at least $22 in an actual book store here. im not good with maths, but i do know value when i see it!

i have also indulged in a little bit of yarny parity-parceling. with fellow local SnB partners in crime, a large order was placed to jimmy beans. we had to wait a bit for some things to come in from suppliers, but when they did, the box was here almost overnight.

oh so much yarn. i focused mostly on the madeline tosh, i wanted more of the sock because its just so lovely, and i opted for ‘thunderstorm’ and ‘byzantine’

the byzantine is a lot deeper coloured than it shows here, rusty red shot through with magenta. mmm. i also wanted enough merino light to make an austin hoodie, and my preferred colour was ‘ink’, but they didnt have any in stock, so i opted for ‘stovepipe’ and JBs was kind enough to let me know that one skein of the six was considerably lighter than the others and did i want to order more in. i figured if they were ordering more in, i might as well get my preferred colour, so asked for 6 ink instead, and im pretty sure that was the right decision!

it is an amazingly dark blue, like its been left soaking in a bucket of indigo. in the merino light, there are shots of brilliant blue through it.

amazzing. im having trouble not casting on with it now. but i have a self-imposed knitting deadline. i have to go to melbourne in two weeks for a few days, for work. i hear its kind of cold down there now! i really need a new black cardigan to take, so i thought i should just work on greenfield, but it became obvious yesterday that it still wouldnt be done in time. im just going to have to bite the bullet and buy one in the meantime. but i do think i can finish a new shawl, so i have transferred all attention to the stripe study shawl. i even bought it to work today and am going to have a proper lunch hour not at my desk!

its amazing how quickly things grow when you work on them more!

i am looking forward to having something striking and modern looking to wear to my important meetings, and im looking forward to having a whole lot more madeline tosh draped around my person this year.

i guess i should stop buying stuff and just knit it, right?

k xx

a good yarn

unlike hearts, a good yarn these days is not hard to find.* in fact we are spoiled for choice, especially with that interwebs thing. having said that, i am not a huge fan of most locally made product, BWM and ACS leave me cold these days with their poor colour choices and reliance on harsh fibres or novelty acrylic based products (and it makes me cross to say this, because we produce the best merino in the world and we get sold shit from local mills and have to buy the good stuff back from overseas). and it is sometimes frustrating that there arent more local stores stocking the top shelf international stuff – it is sometimes nicer to be able to smoosh in person – but ive never felt deprived in that way. like i said, there’s the internet. but that has changed since i went to america.

oh my god. the yarn stores. even the not so great ones (yarn company, downtown yarns, im looking at you), were still better than most of what we have here. and cheap! lordy. it’s made me a bit cross really, given we have complete dollar parity, to see koigu priced in the $20 range ($12 at purl) and mad tosh sock in the $30s ($24 at knitty city). but what i really loved was discovering WALLS of yarn that we just dont see here. the best place for this was a little store above a greek restaurant just up from dupont circle in washington DC called looped yarn works.

it was there that i encountered my current favourite yarn, berroco ultra alpaca light.

i’ve seen the ads for berroco in the magazines, and they always seem to have nice patterns, but ive just never thought of ordering any. most of the other big names someone’s bought back from somewhere, and we’ve fondled, so its safe to order online, but i didnt know anything about berroco until i saw it. at looped, there was a whole wall of it, all sorts of different kinds of fibre blends, in the most amazing spectrum of good vibrant solid colours. i zoomed straight in on the alpaca light. its perfect for our conditions, not quite a DK but light and lofty.

smooth with a slight halo, warm without weighing a tonne. its knitting up so beautifully, i divided greenfields for the arm holes on tuesday night and got to try it on. perfect (unlike this photo).

and did i mention the price?

yes that does say $5.80 a skein. they’re not long skeins, but i bought 10 on the spot and have since ordered 4 more, which is way more than i will need for greenfield (better to be safe than sorry right?), but im still looking at a $70 cardigan. For. The. Win. so far i have used less than 3 balls, and i wound up some more last night.

see that swift? that is my current knitting pride and joy. its  from Sweden, is so easy to put up and down, is beautifully made and an absolute joy to use. it was an amazingly generous christmas gift from knitabulous (well, she says she broke my blue plastic one i lent her, but she still didnt need to replace it with this beauty. of course, im glad she did!).

its so nice to have nice knitterly things. im a bit of a top shelf girl like that. maybe for americans berroco isnt all that top shelf, but i cant recommend this particular yarn highly enough. its almost enough to make you want to go live there. almost 🙂

k xx

*feargal sharkey ear worm anyone?

usa part the first: the smooshy…

im back, although i dont feel quite like i have fully arrived. i managed to pick up a throat infection thing on the last day (my poor sister got it pretty soon after we got there, so at least i cant complain about that!) and i am very severely jet lagged and not thinking clearly.

ive decided to break my posts about the trip into 3 separate topic areas, and am starting today with the post about the yarn and the yarn stores, because i know thats what the knitters really want, and also its the easiest for me to talk about! so we will go through them in the order that i visisted them, from the west coast to ‘back east’, and i give you my opinions as a personal point of view only, with my own rather particular likes and needs.

first of all, a general statement about yarns and yarn stores in america. it was winter. and it was really cold. so a lot of the yarn stores had seasonal stock in. also, they need heavier yarns than us most of the time, so i found a LOT of chunky, worsted and DK yarns. for sock yarns, koigu was ubiquitious, and i know we can get it online, but there is nothing quite like seeing it in the flesh. i had a hard time resisting. also, what a store says it has on its website does not actually reflect what is in the store! (they seem to run their online businesses as a slightly seperate enterprise). and finally, i shopped fairly selfishly. i had taken only one formal pre paid order from george, and i really wanted to get her what she wanted, given the recent visit to pfaffenhoffen, but even with much research and pre-departure communication, her order was hard to fill. mostly because she had used the stores’ websites for resarch, but what they actually had on offer was something different.  other less formal requests met with even less success, so i tried to pick up gifts for people, but mostly, i really wanted to just spend my hard earned money on myself. in case you didnt know, ive had a crap year in some regards, and unmitigated yarny self indulgence seemed well earned. not all of what you are about to see is for me, and i wish i could have got something for ‘everyone’ but i didnt, and im not saying what here is for me or for someone else, but some people might get a nice little surprise in the post this week, thats all im saying.

first stop, imagiknit in san francisco.

we scheduled this in for our second day on the way up the hill to haight-ashbury. i had heard good things and i wasnt disappointed. a lovely, two roomed store, high ceilings, plenty of room and SO MUCH YARN! definitely the biggest collection of yarn in one store in that i saw. it was hard to be confronted by so much so early, i didnt want to go too hard to early and have nothing left for DC or NYC, so i was very frugal. i had made a list for myself of what i was looking for (enough grey something for a leaving cardigan, and special sock yarn from everywhere), so i tried not to get overwhelmed, and the staff were very helpful and friendly. even so, i came away from here with three things, some claudias hand painted sock yarn, some mal sock in ravelry red, and some dream in colour smooshy sock yarn (pretty heavy sock yarn) in a lovely grey flecked with chocolate:

onward and upward, and across the snow covered interior to washington DC where after the conference was done (more on that later), we spent saturday morning wandering up dupont circle, and dropped into looped. id been planning on going to stitch DC, but that was in the opposite direction, and im sure its very good, but gee im glad i found looped.

firstly, what a great location, above this restaurant on connecticut avenue, and running the entire length of the building, so two rooms, joined by a hallway. the hallway was where you entered, with the luxury yarns and knick knacks (including some of that elusive highlighting tape). the front room had a lounge in it where my sister seated herself, and the walls were covered in floor to ceiling shelves of DK and worsted yarns, and the back room was the socks and lace weights. it was the front room that grabbed my attention here, almost the entire range of cascade 220 and the lovely berrocco alpaca which i had not seen before. i liked that about this shop, not a huge range of names, but a complete set within a range, if you know what i mean, so you could see all the colours. what i did see here was the cascade alpace lace, which was on my to-get list for george, but i was worried about carrying too much and was sure id be able to get that in NY. hmmm. in retrospect, i wish i had spent a lot more time and money here! this is what i got:

10 skeins of berrocco ultralight alpaca in black, an impulse buy for a cardigan. its so light and smooshy i couldnt resist. blue sky alpaca silk for a pigeon hat (ok so that ones for me), some grey frogtree pediboo sock yarn (merino bamboo), some red berocco ultralight alpaca (can this stuff get any softer?!) and some shibui sock yarn. they only had a few of these, and i didnt see it again, so i wish i had got more. ditto on the berrocco ultralight, i am going to be buying more of that online for sure.

then it was a little hop skip and a jump over to the Big Apple (with a slight detour via philadelphia, but more about that in another post!). we were in the city a whole day before i got to a yarn store, with the first stop being string on our way to the guggenheim.

this was an interesting experience. high end yarn shopping, like a personal boutique. and oh, the cashmere. not a huge range here, but thats because they specialise, and boy do they specialise. and it doesnt come cheap. i couldnt afford more than the bare minimum here, even with the help of jody’s gift voucher (and a very nice sales assistant who gave me the ‘kit discount’ for the classica even tho i wasnt buying it in the kit). so i got $160 worth for $125. but yes, i did just say $160 for 4 balls of yarn.

2 balls of string classica cashmere (about the same as sublime in weight and twist i think) and the thing i really wanted, some koigu cashmere, only available at string. im hoping 2 skeins will get me a skinny scarf! i cant begin to tell you how soft this is. you know jade sapphire cashmere? well its softer. speaking of which, our third day in NYC took us to a soho and a little store called Purl.

its a lovely store to be in, so attractive, and well set out, and so warm after the freezing ice laden wind outside, but i was surprised. they seemed to have only 4 or 5 main brands (im sure they had more, but these guys dominated). that is, madeline tosh, koigu, malabrigo and jade sapphire (no lacey lamb, only the cashmere) and they had very good ranges in all of them, but i asked about cascade alpaca and was told ‘we only have blue sky alpaca’. well of course you do. the one shelf of ‘shelter’ was stripped bare (there goes that gift idea), but the jade sapphire was a sight to behold, every colour in the mongolian cashmere in 2 and 4 ply, and the cashmere silk, which i hadnt seen before. i got me some of that, along with a koigu silk/merino blend id never seen before either (mori):

very yummy. i was very pleased at least to see my sister got some things here, a gorgeous little stencil book for a friend and a yard (not a meter) of really cute ‘little red riding hood’ fabric. the fabrics here were really something else. makes us look like amateurs.

and then the thursday we went our seperate ways for a few hours, my sister venturing over to queens to buy some roller derby skates, and me headed uptown to knitty city. i had kind of been saving myself for here, on donnas advice, and im glad i did.

the shop was a mess really but a lovely warm friendly and colourful one (no one seems to want to put labels on the shelves in this country), so it took me a while to figure out what was where, but the staff were really helpful. they had lots of different cascades but only a few colours in each range, so they helped me with the colour charts trying to pick the colours that were closest to the ones that george had ordered. i managed to settle on some lovely blue cascade alpaca lace for her, and that has already made its way down to her, so i cant show it here. but never fear, i did not leave empty handed:

here is a sample of the rest of what i bought, and i say a sample for a reason:

see that grey on the left there? thats madeline tosh pashmina in ‘vintage frame’. there is only one skein there, and there were only 2 on the shelf, but the staff and i had decided it was the best substitute for the yarn recommended for leaving, and they were sure they had more downstairs, so they went to look, and yes they did. so i got 7 of them. just to be safe. that was my own big self indulgent purchase and i dont regret it for an instant. other purchases was some ‘spudd and chloe’ sock yarn, its actually made by blue sky aplacas, and is a wool silk blend, its lovely and soft and shiny and i bought 2 to make long socks with. there is some plain old koigu sock yarn, and another skein of pashmina in ‘briar’. for something.

so, if you are headed to the US for yarn shopping anytime in the future, my advice is to have your project ideas in your head (without projects, yarn buying overwhelm would surely follow), but be ready to swap yarns depending on what they actually DO have. save up for knitty city and string. and dont forget the koigu!

more tomorrow.

k xx

missing no more

yesterday i drove down to canberra and back in a day for a govt policy meeting. when i got home, exhausted and brain dead, i was informed that ‘a pick up card from the post office came for you today but ive lost it’. needless to say, said card was quickly found again, because i had a feeling i knew what it was, and i was right. i left work at 4 today and scurried to the post office, where i found this

look at that. the word AIRMAIL scratched out! the postage paid was certainly enough to cover airmail, so i dont know who thought it was ok, somewhere along the line, to decide to send it by boat, but by boat it came. i eagerly ripped off the beautifully wrapped and taped brown paper, cut through miles more of tape, and lo and behold:

chocolate! german chocolate, including my favourite, mozart kugeln, only not in kugeln form!

oh, and yes, there was some wool in there too

squeeeee! that, my friends, is the long awaited wollmeise.

colours and yarns, from left to right are: nobodys perfect (twin) ( i think this is actually midnight); blaue tinte (merino), jutltmonte (merino), ruby thursday (twin) maus ault (lace garn) and merlot (lace garn). george (under instruction to get 2 twin, 2 merino, and 2 lace, in combinations of red, blue or grey) was worried that the jultmonte wasnt my thing but its just perfect, a lovely complex deep burnt maroon that will make a lovely shawl. and the maus ault, oh, how i have wanted that colour for the longest time. they are just perfect, and i am so incredibly lucky that george went to all that trouble to get them for me.

thing is, the timing is a little problematic. we are madly packing to head off to melbourne tomorrow morning  at 5am (with three dogs, in the car, a 10 hour trip), for the australian national flyball championships, and wont be back till monday night. i am a bit underexcited, every nationals there is always some drama, and im just not up to it again, but we have a new team and they are a lot of fun, so hopefully it will run smoothly, and possum will have a good time.

but really, all i want to do is stay home and play with my wollmeise! welcome home precious’.

k xx

the sad story of the missing wollmeise

once upon a time, an unassuming aussie girl married a german prince. they settled happily in australia, but every couple of years she travelled back to germany to visit with the prince’s family in their quaint little village. everytime she returned, the girl bought with her strange bundles of balls of wool, mostly from a company called regia, and because of this she soon became known lovingly as the german fibre whore.

on a recent trip, our heroine decided to stray further afield from the green pastures of regia sock yarn, and travelled to a little village in lower germany called pfaffenhoffen to visit the legendary queen claudia in her castle of iron and wool. our heroine had a list of things to buy from the german fibre queen, including 6 skeins of various colours for her friend drk. there was much to and froing, much angst about colour choices, and finally the following items were acquired on my behalf:

2 skeins of lace, merlot and maus ault

and 4 skeins of sock and merino. our heroine, under instruction from me, posted these items, partly so theyd get here quick, and partly because i didnt want to weigh down her own baggage. the sad story is, they are yet to arrive. its been well over 6 weeks since they were posted. this little postcard was mailed on the same day (10 Sept) and from the same place,

and it sits on my mantlepiece, mocking me. a monty-pythonesque conversation with australia post (me: ‘a friend posted me a parcel and it hasnt arrived’. them: ‘we cant track stuff but if you give us the article number we can track it’. me: ‘1)make up your mind and 2)how can i give you the article number of something that i didnt post???’) ended with the assumption that given freight constraints on aircraft these days, its likely to have gone seamail. hello? 21st century anyone?

anyway, its not here, and i was sad. until yesterday that is. not because it arrived, because it hasnt, but because my dear beloved germanfibrewhore friend sent me a package:

it contained one of her own skeins of merlot lace that she bought at the same time (plus some yummy german choccies).

she knew i was pining, and was itching to start something lacy and wollmeisy, so she has forfeited her own on my behalf (i will give her my merlot when it finally arrives). thank you george, youre the best! the colours in this merlot are amazing, though for the life of me i cant get it to photograph properly.

but you who have seen it know of what i speak. and even though i havent finished the lily on the valley scarf (i have only the 16 row border to do now) i couldnt help but spend a good hour winding it up into a ball last night:

very careful and very slow i was, but i neednt have worried, not a single knot, not a single tangle. (let me just say that again. 1700 yards of lace weight and no knots. 50g of jo sharp DK, two knots. screw you jo sharp). it made the hugest yarn cake:

in the most mouth watering colour.

its going to be a girasole. i shall cast on tonight. but lest you think i am a fickle fibrewhore as well, im still thinking of those six skeins, out there somewhere, maybe sitting on a tarmac, or lost in a warehouse, or bobbing up and down on the vast pacific ocean.

my poor lost little wollmeise.

k xx

dancing and drifting

its been a hectic week here, so much going on at work, we have a new associate dean research and hes all gung ho and full of ideas that it becomes my job to implement, im moving offices, my minion is doing a great job, my own research projects are getting bigger than ben hur, and we’ve booked the flights to the US (weeeeee!!!) and then theres socialising and flyball training and knitting and, well, its just exhausting!

last night i fought through the haze of weariness and went to The Theatre (you must say that with a posh pommy accent) to see Bangarra Dance Theatre perform their new show ‘of earth and sky’ at the illawarra performing arts centre:

i havent seen these guys for a few years, and i was really looking forward to it. they did not disappoint. the first act was called ‘riley’ and it was a set of pieces influenced by the beautiful photos of indigenous artist micheal riley.

these were amazing contemporary dance pieces, stark lighting, syncopated music, very haunting, especially the womens bible piece. the second act was the ‘earth’ part, called ‘artefacts’ inspired by the indigenous artefact collection at the south australian museum (or gallery, i cant remember which), but the point here was to demonstrate the way that indigenous ‘objects’ that we see only in museums, actually relate to a still-living culture and practice. so it opened with this beautiful possum skin coat coming to life, out of its dusty cabinet, and moved on to celebrate the items of everyday mens and womens work. interestingly, there was a piece called ‘weaving’ that was about the amazing pandanas mats that indigenous women make, (bells saw them making beautiful baskets recently)

at the end of this piece a beautiful gigantic set of ribbons was raised to the ceiling so that it hung down on the stage, like the strands of pandanas, and the men and women performed a beautiful piece together that used the symbolism of weaving to demonstrate men and women working together (well, thats what i thought it was about anyway!). it was just wonderful, if you get a chance to see bangarra, make sure you do.

i didnt take any knitting with me, partly because i didnt think i would have time, and partly because i am kind of in between things. i have nearly finished a pair of socks, and have a few more repeats on the lily of the valley scarf to go. but i havent done much on either of them because i have been swatching. yes, swatching. damn you liz gemmell and all your talk about no-knitting-shortcuts. i did her workshop at guild a little while ago, and a lot of what she talked about has stayed with me, so the first thing i did when i got home after last weekends guild was swatch the madeline tosh merino light

to see what it would look like, and what gauge might be so i could work out what to knit with it! this is pretty close to the colour

and im thinking some kind of sleeveless or short sleeved a-line top, like buttercup, or elvira. i cant decide. i have decided not to decide right now though, because im thinking it might be more practical for me to work on adrift, for which i have also been swatching.

its lightweight (3ply baby wool) but would make a good layering item in new york (should i say that again do you think? that im going to new york??!!!). and its red.

boy is it red. my only problem here is i have to cast on 200 and something stitches. eeep. i should force myself to do it this weekend though, or it will never get done. and my sister wants a hat and some socks to take to the US, and i was thinking of a hat for myself too, and look its september, and the magnolia is now nearly fully covered in leaves

and where the hell did that year go?!

k xx

once a month, on a friday

i have developed a little routine. it involves using my flexi-day from work and getting on a train

finding the right seat,

knitting and listening to music (the temper trap‘s ‘conditions’ being my new favourite album)

for the nearly two hour trip north along the coast and the spectacular view across the pacific:

through the royal national park,

into sydneys southern suburbs

and towards the city.

from there, i head even further north to stay over at rosered’s place, where i play with the bay-bee

and do some cooking. this week i made char sui pork for dinner, while rosered did a heap of baking for morning tea at knitters guild on saturday.

i am very much enjoying the new guild venue over at surry hills library

its a beautiful big light and airy room,

and this week it was full of the usual great people showing off their latest amazing array of handknits (and strangely, some crochet!). i forgot to get pix of that sorry. then its out to crown street,

in search of sustenance with wonderful knitty friends

(organic eggs and ham at bird cow fish. yummo). this little trip may also have resulted in some accidental stash acquistion:

madeline tosh merino light in a gorgeous deep dark green called moorland. my phone camera does this colour no justice at all because im not usually into green but everyone agreed this one would suit me, and i couldnt really resist. i have 1200m here and im thinking of some kind of layering, swingy tee or tank.  my current thoughts are tending towards resizing sage remedy for 4ply, or something like elvira. thoughts or suggestions anyone?

then its home again via central underground (track work on the country lines again)

to crash in front of three football games last night, two rugby league finals and the rugby union test. i do so love september! speaking of which, spring really has arrived, with the wisteria bursting into flower suddenly

and the magnolia in all its glory.

i just want to finish on some amateur philosophising. the thing i like most about travelling up to guild meetings once a month is the people. ive talked before about the joys of knitters as friends, and of course, there are plenty of people who knit that i am not friends with, and that i dont need to befriend either. but this last couple of weeks, i have been reminded yet again of the power of the People Like Us. we are not perfect, and we have disagreements, and irritate each other. sometimes we even hurt each other, as humans are want to do, but i have been reminded yet again of how much these kinds of friendships are worth fighting for. how lucky we are to have each other.

k xx

(note: sorry about dodgy picture qualities, both digital cameras have no batteries at the moment, so these are all phone camera pix!)

talking shop

yesterday i went up to sydney for a conference at which i was presenting a 10 minute paper. i just need to have a little whine about that. 10 minutes plus 5 minutes questions. have you ever tried to explain a 2 year multi-discipline project in 10 minutes? it was a bit of a debacle. i had a carefully planned presentation and i ended up having to whip through it and look really half arsed. there were 4 simultaneous streams, and i dont understand why you wouldnt just make that into a 2 day conference, so that everyone could go to more and have more time to talk and discuss.

3 hours travel for 10 minutes. and the train on the way up was packed,

and i had to sit on the stairs and try and knit (another tension square for saturdays workshop)

but the venue was nice

and there were other compensations. that is, the venue was kind of close to a rather famous street in newtown, which has a lot of attractions at the moment for the crafty minded person. first stop was the newly opening ‘granny square’:

which is going to be totally amazing when its fully stocked. i really like the thinking here, some good new stuff that you cant get easily elsewhere, and that caters to the more fussy yarn buyer amongst us, including some wonderful hand dyed yarns and cotton you can usually only buy online, as well as a great selection from the expanding morris and sons line. i was quite taken with the new ‘estate’ 8 ply but i didnt buy any. i did buy something, i’ll show you what a bit later. anyway, its a great space and i cant wait to see it again when its fully functioning.

i may have met up with some other knitters, and we wandered down to the other end of king st, where i needed to pop into this little store:

lucky i knew what i was after, or i could have got seriously lost in there. then we repaired to lunch:

and were joined by missfee and her stunning manu. some people may have bought more yarn here:

not me, largely because the yarn i did like was pear tree supersoft, which i had already picked up 10 skeins of in bendigo for less than half the price! i do have a bit of loot to show:

not bad for a 10 minute conference paper.

k xx

(photos are all from phone camera so apologies for dodgy quality!)