Blogtoberfest

If you were around blogland this time a year ago, you might recall that a bunch of bloggers took part in a fun group event called Blogtoberfest.

Blogtoberfest involves the rather daunting task of blogging daily for the month of October and anyone can sign up. It's run by Cathie over at Tinnie Girl. She wrote about it here and here.

By signing up for Blogtoberfest you agree to:

• spend a fair whack of each day in October writing blog posts
• spend all of October worrying that you won't have anything to post about
• spend all of October worrying that your posts aren't interesting enough
• spend all of October scouting around for material for daily blog posts.

Or to frame it more positively you agree to:

• really give yourself permission to spend time on daily blog posts
• sink your teeth into posting stuff you never thought you'd write about
• come up with ways to keep yourself interested and motivated - after that the interest by other people is just a flow on effect
• find yourself looking with fresh eyes at the world as each moment of each day may contain an image or a conversation or an idea that can be shaped into a blog post.

For me, the two times I've tried daily blogging for a month, I've found it both exhausting and exhilarating. It's pretty challenging to come up with fresh material every day and not just rely on filler. Filler happens, but I love the challenge of trying to keep it fresh.

This year though I'm going to try a little experiment. I might include a little guest posting. I've had one offer already.

I look forward to giving it a go. I almost didn't. It seemed like such a big thing to take on but I love not knowing where each day is going to take me. I plan to veer off the knitting talk path a little more if the desire strikes me.

So go sign up if you're keen. The other big, fun part of Blogtoberfest, is being part of the journey with other bloggers.

And now I'd better stop and conserve my writing energy for October 1!

Bells

A darn good toy

What's that you've got Alice? Some sort of toy? (And yes this is a gratuitous way of working Alice into a knitting post!)



It looks like a mushroom and as we discovered a few seconds after this photo was taken, is an excellent teething implement!

Actually what it really is is a Darning Mushroom and RoseRed gave it to me last weekend along with the lovely socks I posted about a few days ago. I'd seen one before but long before I ever knew I have a need to use one. RoseRed did a good thing, because it just so happens that I have no fewer than three pairs of socks that are in dire need of repair.

Sure, we could all use The Yarn Harlot's method of sock darning, which is, apparently, to hold a holey pair of socks over a bin and say, 'darn it'. But I'm not so keen on that method when it comes to special socks. My first ever red koigu socks, made from yarn that was a gift from RoseRed, were the first casualties in my sock drawer and I just felt devastated at the thought of losing them.

Two more pairs of socks followed, remarkably quickly, and all on the ball of the foot, which suggests to me there is something about the way I walk that they should all wear out there. One was my much loved, but comparatively little worn yellow Pomatomus socks which I only made in January this year and actually never wear with shoes. I must be very hard on my socks.

RoseRed also got a darning mushroom and today she posted about how she used hers. Once Alice goes and stops playing with it (no teeth marks, don't worry RoseRed!) I'll give it a go. I found a good post on Knitty which has some excellent pictures. I'm keen to get my much loved sock back into their usual high rotation.

We've had Alice for the whole day today and because of the blustering, freezing wind we've stayed indoors and made our own entertainment. Like smiling. Who isn't entertained by a million dollar smile like this?

Bells

Rosebuds and Tulips

On the weekend when I saw RoseRed at Berry, she gifted me with some secret socks she'd been working on for my birthday. My birthday was some months ago now but all the best things are worth waiting for and this was in fact part two of my birthday present. That's truly a case of extending the joy, don't you think?

So, here is my gift. They are Rosebud socks and you can read about how RoseRed suffered for her art here. And suffer she did. The yarn got twisted up in the winding process and took four hours to detangle! Is that friendship or what?



I thought the socks looked lovely against my little bed of yellow tulips, which, as of this moment may no longer exist as it's blowing a gale outside!



The pattern was designed by Aussie knitter and one half of Knitting Inspirations Ann Lim, and the yarn is Handmaiden Casbah which I have never encountered before and which I can tell you is truly gorgeous on my feet.

It's the famed MCN - Merino, Cashmere, Nylon blend. Swoon. Seriously. Luxury sock yarn in the extreme.

And get this - the colour is called Wine. No wonder she thought of me when choosing to knit it up for me!



And don't they look cute with my new shoes? They're crocs - who knew you could get Crocs that were so cute?

There was another little something in with this gift but it requires a whole other post. I'll save it for next time.

Bells

A Town Called Berry

It's nice to go away for a little weekend break. It's especially nice to go away with a few close girlfriends and just hang out. This was a weekend long in the planning, driven mainly by one member of the group, George, who has routinely been either in labour or caught up with kid stuff and unable to join in other fun things like knitting camp etc. So a weekend was planned and excecuted very, very well. There are some nice photos and a run down over on Dr K's blog.

Berry was the town we chose. It's a tiny little town nestled amongst some very green and pretty hills, which you'll have to just imagine since I got very lazy on the weekend and took virtually no photos. Trust me, it's every bit as scenic and adorable as you could imagine it to be. Sean and I spent a weekend there last year, around this time, so I knew what I was in for. Actually there are a few photos from last year's trip I can recycle. This one gives you an idea of the landscape around Berry.



It's your typical small Australian town that has turned to small, folksey business in order to survive. Bed and breakfasts, antique shops, excellent restaurants, bakeries and cafes.

And a wool shop. OK, a yarn shop. Somehow calling it a wool shop sits more comfortably with my sense of old time Australia. I grew up calling such places wool shops because in the 70s and 80s, that's pretty much what they sold. Wool. And haberdashery in general. I still feel most at home in those old shops with their packets of fine Australian fare, Patons, Cleckheaton, that sort of thing.

More on that in a moment.

There was a fabulous garden at the 1860 cottage George found for us to stay in where I found some fun things to photograph.

Like the scarecrow who I think had seen better days.



I dubbed him Worzel Gummage.

We found asparagus growing in the garden. A small, developing patch so we left most of it in tact, but I got to eat this spear later on. Fresh asparagus out of the garden - my first time!



Just one photo of me posing cheesily in the garden. It seemed like a good idea at the time!



And pretty, pretty bluebells. It was that kind of garden. Little points of discovery and interest around every lush corner.



Do you want to know what five obsessed knitters talk about all weekend? Go on, have a guess.

Ravelry. I think we talked about that more than anything else, or at least it felt like it. Who knew that a knitting site could sustain so much interest and conversation. Thank God there were a couple of iphones there on the weekend so that we could easily check Ravelry for the patterns we were talking about. I'm not sure how we'd have coped! (Joke)

So let's get down the really important stuff. The stash. Sew n Tell in Berry is a very classy shop. It's got the good stuff. And it's amazingly well priced in some instances. I think I was quite restrained in terms of volume. I aimed high this time and I did not disappoint myself. Note the purple Kidsilk Haze. I've never owned that before. I just want to stroke it all the time and listen to it purring!



1. Cascade 220, 2. Kidsilk Haze, 3. Rowan Cotton, 4. Noro Iroha

And to continue the purple theme, which was not intentional, it just happened, here's the Wollmeise I bought from RoseRed who is the kind of person who has Wollmeise to burn, I mean, destash.



I saved up for all this stuff and loved every single moment of choosing it all. I decided, when I looked at it all and my other stash at home that really, it's like a collection now. A collection I'm increasingly proud of and besotted with. And I know I'll enjoy knitting with it.

So all in all a very happy weekend. And just maybe, the idea was born in Berry of a chick-lit novel with a handsome sheep farmer and a heroine who loves to knit. Or something. It's fun to dream about it any rate. Who knows maybe I'll even write it!

Bells

Alice Gets a New Dress

You'll have to forgive the less than stellar quality of these photos. I had my camera with me but left the memory card at home, so no high quality shots were taken at lunch yesterday.

Instead, we have iphone shots which can be good, but only if the lighting is right. At Wagamama in town, it's not so good. It's a good thing my subject was so photogenic!



This is the Little Sister's Dress pattern which I first saw when Olivia made it and then made it again. It's impossible not to fall in love with the simple, pretty design.



The yarn is Pear Tree yarns in 4ply and the colour, a rather vivid pink, is called Gallah, most fitting really when you see it matches almost exactly the colour of the bird it's named after.



I made the six month size which is still quite long for her, and roomy around the arms, so it'll grow with her in a way that means she'll be wearing it like a short tunic or top six - tweleve months from now.

I'd use this yarn again in a heart beat. It's so deliciously soft. It made the dress lovely to work on, even in the fairly boring stocking stitch part which did seem to go on for rather a long time. And she's starting to move around a bit now so I'll be curious to see how this goes in allowing mobility. If it gets worn out around the knees, I don't mind. These things are meant to be worn and loved.

For the first time in months, I have nothing on the needles for Alice. With the weather warming up, it's probably not necessary. But I can start thinking about next year!

Bells

Persistence pays off

As I mentioned in my last post, I was really struggling with the border of my Myrtle Leaf shawl. If you don't know this pattern, or the book it comes from, here is an image from the book, Victorian Lace Today.


It's a long shawl. By the time I finished the forty leaf pattern repeats, it was, unstretched, taller than me (I'm short, but that's still a hell of a lot of black lace by anyone's standards!). But the body of the pattern was not the end of it. Oh no, not by a long shot.

What follows the main body of the knitting is what some have called the arduous task of knitting on the Willow border. I didn't read the instructions for it until I was ready to do it and with the benefit of hindsight, 6:30am on a Sunday morning when I was not in the most happy or confident of moods was probably an unwise time to try and come to terms with something that seemed a bit daunting.

But with fresh eyes and more than a few helpful comments, plus email discussion with a couple of helpful people, I made it. Last night, I sat at the dining room table, under good light, with the lap top beside me, the book open in front of me and I gave it a go. Here's what it looks like now.



The verticle line of large holes is where the border connects to the body. The border is only eight stitches wide, and the wrong side rows are just purl rows, so once you get going it flies along nicely. I'd like for this not to drag on for an eternity, so I'm going to plug away as consistently as time and alertness allow.

I'm not sure I know what was so hard now. It's true there are a few lines in the instructions that seem kind of odd and unhelpful. I wish Jane Sowerby didn't write that this was unorthodox border because it's not, in essence, that different to the border I learned to do through Elizabeth Zimmermann. I expected it, after that statement, to be radically different and it wasn't. Not really.

Now that I can do it, I wonder what I made all the fuss over, but I suppose that's what learning is all about. What was difficult soon becomes commonplace and easy. Or easier.

All I need to do now is knit the thing.

Bells

FO: Shetland Triangle Shawl II

In spite of the unseasonally warm weather this weekend, I took my brand spanking new Shetland Triangle Shawl out and about. There may not be many days cold enough to wear her this year, so I thought I'd better make the most of it.

First of all, she came on a little jaunt with blogless EssiMay over to Tuggeranong yesterday afternoon to Stitch n Bitch at Coffee Guru.



In that photo I'm knitting Branching Out in my new favourite yarn - Malabrigo Silky Merino. Oh my. More on that later!

She came along to the Belconnen Markets this morning where I worked on my toe up knee hi socks over a coffee while Sean took photos.



All in all, I'd say she's perfect. There's a very good reason why I've made the Shetland Triangle Shawl twice. It's a simple and effective pattern. The first one, made from vibrant red Wollmeise, is glorious because of the colour and the size (it's quite huge).

This one is slightly smaller at only ten repeats and just over one skein of Socks that Rock (lightweight). And I think the stand out feature of this one is that the colour (called Winter Solstice) is both delicate and striking. With subtle variegation it's light enough to show off the leafy lace pattern.

It's pretty much an instant gratification shawl. A bit over two weeks is all it took, and it would be less if project monogamy was something I was capable of.

Speaking of shawls, I have completed the body of my black Myrtle Leaf Shawl and I spent two hours this morning trying to fathom the instructions in Victorian Lace Today for knitting on the Willow border. TWO HOURS! Who has that much time to just throw down the toilet? I almost threw the shawl across the room in disgust. I have knitted on a border before, but not in the way the instructions say to and not in black cobweb lace.

All advice gratefully received, in this instance. I have researched blogs, Ravelry forums and have read the instructions again and again. To no avail. Has anyone who's made it or understands complex knitted on borders know how to explain it in as plain a manner as possible? Unlike the Shetland Triangle, I don't think I'll ever make Myrtle again!

Bells

Of Shawls and Babies and Jumpers

There's a really nice ending to the story about John and his jumper that needed rescuing from certain death.

We arranged to meet on Wednesday outside my building and when I showed him the repair job, he was very pleased. Delighted, in fact. Two unexpected things occured after that.

He offered me money. Not a specified amount. Rather, he asked how much he owed me but I didn't want to take any money. He'd already brought me a coffee. That was enough, really. For 15-30 mins work and about a metre of green wool I already had in my stash? I would have felt silly. If perhaps it had been an arduous task that had taken me hours, then I'd say we'd have been talking a dollar amount, but not for that.

Unexpected thing number two was that he asked what book I would recommend for someone wanting to learn to knit. I recalled at once that my own re-entry to knitting came through Stitch N Bitch but I thought I'd ask him who was wanting to learn before I recommended that.

"How about an old bloke like me? I want to learn!" he said. Still, the only book I could think of, on the spot was Stitch n Bitch. So I told him to overlook the name and check it out. He thanked me and we parted ways. Yes, I suppose I could offer to teach him but somehow it didn't seem right.

Later that night I sent him a text saying I thought that the website Knitting Help probably a better option. I hope he follows it up. What would you have recommended? I was really stumped.

* * *
Last night I tried out blocking wires for the first time. Here's a photo I snapped quickly before work of the shetland triangle drying on the mats we bought from Bunnings last weekend. Sean picked them up becuase he thought they'd be good exercise mats. I misunderstood and thought he was suggesting blocking mats. Turns out we were both right!



They're awkward and I'm not sure I got it right, particuarly as I had to use two across the top of the shawl. What will it be like when I have to block the Myrtle shawl which is now, unblocked, taller than I am? I may go back to using cotton. It's definitely quicker than using a gazillion pins, but I'm not convinced I got the level of tension I wanted. I'll see how it goes on the weekend but maybe I'll re block it.

Also, this was my favourite photo this week. Me and sweet little Alice. She and her mum come for lunch most weeks. We have sushi and a coffee and Alice flirts with people sitting nearby. She also gives the best cuddles you can imagine. I think six months must be a very cuddly age.



This week i figured out she has teeth. Sharp ones! I love that she gets to wear her handknits when she comes out on our still rather cold days.

Bells

ps I'm thinking I'll probably run A Long Lacy Summer again this year, starting in November. Stay tuned!

The Knitting MacGyver

Picture this.

I am sitting at work one afternoon in August. I am probably bored. My mobile phone rings and it's a number I don't know.

I am always suspicious of numbers I don't know.

A male voice I don't recognise asks for me by name. First and second name. Again, I'm suspicious but what follows is a rather odd but harmless request.

His name is John. He was given my number at a local yarn shop - Cassidy's or The Shearing Shed, I can't remember which - and how they had my number is still a mystery but I think they may have found me via the listing for the Canberra Stitch n Bitch group.

What I hear him describe is worrying and at first I panic. He has a jumper and it needs repairing. He doesn't know any knitters and hopes a local knitter can help. He describes a sister who could knit but who died and no one else who could help. Against my better judgement, I say yes, imagining the worst. I have visions of jagged edged holes, unravelled stitches, a nightmare. Perhaps helping him out will earn me good seats in Knitting Heaven.

Some weeks pass before our schedules are simultaneously free and when the time comes to meet him, Sean suggests I take a friend. Because, you know, men who call knitters for help with their unravelling jumpers are probably also deranged.

You never know.

A knitterly friend, Anthea, who works in my department and doesn't need much in the way of persuasion to get out of the office comes along with me. The arranged meeting place is a cafe near work and Anthea carries her knitting (she walks and knits!) so that he will recognise us.

We are met at the door by a waitress who says, 'Is one of you Helen?' I say yes. She points me in the direction of John who is at a table waiting. Very quickly it's easy to tell he is not deranged. At least not at first glance. He is a rather good looking silver-haired man in a suit who orders coffees for both of us and proceeds to explain his dilemma.

He has a large, heavy bottle green aran jumper that was bought for him in Ireland and as the problem is revealed, I know I will be fine. Anthea and I declare it an entirely salvageable piece and after a few more minutes of very nice chatting, John departs and leaves us to our coffee and knitting.

This afternoon, I set out to fix the jumper, turning myself into, as Kylie called me when I told her what I had to, The Knitting MacGyver. Truth be told, there was nothing very challenging about this fix-it job but I thought it was worth showing what I had to do.

Here is the jumper with the hole up near the neck.


You can see there's a hole in the purl section beside the cable. My fears of moth-eaten jagged holes were so much worse than this.

About 10cm or 4inches below the hole, I located a stitch just hanging out on its own, like this was an ok thing for a stitch to be doing. I grabbed it with a crochet hook.



Using the crochet hook, I picked up each horizontal bar of the ladder, working my way up towards the hole. Here, I've reached the hole.



For reasons beyond my understanding, there was no obvious place to hook the stitch once I reached the hole so I just worked right across the hole, picking up the first horizontal bar on the far side of the hole.

After that came the fairly dodgy sewing stage. Naturally enough I didn't have any yarn of the same shade, but the green of the jumper is flecked green and so some Bendigo yarn I had to hand matched a few of the flecks. Here is my carefully done but ultimately still fairly unprofessional job of securing it all down.

So that's the reverse side. Here's the front side - which on the jumper is the left shoulder blade.



See, with all the green flecking, I think the front is about as good as I could reasonably get it. Sean could only see it once I pointed it out (or so he said!).

So there you go. When strange men call you at work and ask if you can fix a much loved jumper, there's no need to be afraid. Or so it seems.

The proof of this pudding will be John's reaction when I give him his jumper some time this week. It really wasn't wearable as it was - that stray stitch was just going to keep slipping down the length of the body if somebody didn't intervene. I'm kind of pleased I got to help him out. I feel like I undertook a spot of community service.

Bells

Viral Knits

This week, in a fit of crazed startitis, I cast on a new shawl. Not just any old shawl, but a pattern I've meant to make for a long time.

This is the Swallowtail Shawl, just one of Evelyn Clark's many wonderful lace patterns and for the longest time, I've put it off because I had this crazy idea it was hard. Well pfft. It's not. Admittedly I haven't hit the nupps yet, and I'm not sure I'll include them, but so far, piece of cake. Even in Madil Kid Seta which will no doubt be a bitch to undo if I have to.



Note the absence of lifelines. I like to live dangerously.

Sure it's a viral knit (a popular knit as opposed to a virulent strain of head lice!). Lace lovers everywhere have made it but this doesn't detract from the pattern's worth at all, in my view.

So I was thinking about viral knits - those patterns that everyone seems to be knitting. If you show up at an event where two or more knitters are gathered, you're going to see multiple versions of those oh so popular knits. Some people find that disturbing. They don't want to make what everyone makes. I get why they might feel that way. We all have our ways of distinguishing ourselves.

I personally like to avoid, as a matter of personal taste, the music that 'everyone' is listening to or the latest reality tv that 'everyone' is watching but sometimes, something that's very popular seeps through all the garbage that's out there and I end up loving it - like Buffy. But mostly I don't get on those bandwagons. Knitting is different. If there's a pattern that 'everyone' is knitting, chances are I will at least consider it.

Personally, I've made loads of the most viral knits, like the ubiquitous Clapotis. Haven't heard of it? Which rock have you been living under? Here's mine, made well past the point where everyone was making them. Better late to the party than never huh?



I've also made Monkey socks, at least three times. I think maybe four. These are the ones I made for RoseRed for Christmas.



Why have I made this pattern so many times? Because it's a damn good pattern. That's why it's viral. It's simple but not boring. It's versatile. It works with many different kinds of sock yarn and the results are fabulous. For me, it was a great transition from plain socks to patterned. I know it's been the same for lots of knitters.

Also, I made the pi blanket, by Elizabeth Zimmermann. A gazillion knitters jumped on board with this one and I made it twice.



Oh and then there were the Fetchings. Four pairs at last count. I've just realised that several of my favourite viral knits have come from Knitty. I often think I haven't made much from Knitty but I think I ought to revisit that idea. It looks like I've made more than I think.



I love all of items things I've made, no matter how much they have been knit by others. Yes, they've been knit by thousands and thousands of knitters, but those knitters didn't knit these versions. I did! They're mine and that's all that matters!

I get kind of cranky when I hear people bemoan the popular patterns, as if it means that to knit them means you haven't had an original thought since 1993. Even if you knit the pattern without modifications, by choosing a colour you like, perhaps substituting a yarn you prefer, you have made it yours. It's unique.

Even RoseRed and I have both made, at the same time, February Lady Sweaters from red Cascade 220, but we made our own versions with the buttons we chose, the length of our sleeves or the body. I'm sure we'd probably avoid wearing them to the same event, but otherwise, we celebrated our shared good taste rather than whining about each other's lack of originality. Again, it's a good pattern. That's why it's popular.

Sometimes a pattern just captures the imagination of knitters everywhere. Ysolda Teague must be loving that her simple little Ishbel shawl is so amazingly popular as well she should. There's something exciting about stuff that works and let's face it, the internet has made our knitting such a shared activity now and I'm loving all the shared creativity and happiness.

There are many, many more viral knits in my future, I'm sure of it and every single one of them will be uniquely mine, just as yours will be uniquely yours. Let's celebrate the shared creativity!

Bells

Show me the way to get back to the garden

I had that Tori Amos lyric floating through my head this afternoon as I grabbed a few unexpected moments of daylight and flew around my garden to capture the blooms that have appeared over the last few days.



I was thinking about 'getting back to the garden' because the first day of Spring was luminous in Canberra and I was heading home to meet our landscaper who is devising plans for us. These plans will help us build and shape a garden structure that is more than a few disparate beds. We'll have a retaining wall and a deck and pergola and all sorts of good things.

It's exciting because I have really neglected the garden, as evidence by these yellow flowers which exist purely as a result of our neglect.



They are just one of the Bok Choy plants that we never got to harvesting. I figure I'm just going to let the plants do what they want and who knows, maybe they'll self sew, although by the time that happens we'll hopefully have a whole new garden with new plants and new structures. Still, I like the Bok Choy flowers!



As it turned out, our landscaper didn't make it this evening, but for a little while it was nice to hang out in daylight and dream of how much fun it will be to have an outdoor space of our own making in a few months' time.

Just quickly, there is a Grand Plan under way over at RoseRed's place. A Grand Plan of the yarn-y variety. I'll give you a clue, if you're a yarn lover; it involves A LOT of Wollmeise. And a whole lot of new projects. She's either crazy or amazing - I think she's a little bit of both.

Her Grand Plan is to cast on a new Wollmeise project every day for the first seven days of September. Just because. And while I don't have an abundance of Wollmeise, I do have an abundance of yarn and bucketloads of ideas so maybe, just maybe, I'll play along too.

Bells