I’m home, exhausted and I’m wondering how my time in Bendigo went so fast. It must mean I had a really great time.
I won a prize in the Woolcraft competition! It was for my Paul Klee Sweater pictured above. Competition was really tough this year and I feel very fortunate to have been awarded a third in the Sweater category for 4ply.
The displays of work were beautiful, and I think the best ever in terms of how items were presented.
This year, the Richmond Knitters made garments and accessories from the Pressed Flowers patterns by Amy Christophers. Wearing them altogether, certainly got a lot of attention. It made the weekend super fun too.
We saw the Woolcraft Fashion parade on Saturday morning, it was amazing. We visited the sheep, and even saw a baby lamb on it’s birthday! This is my older sis in the 3rd photo above.
Here are my Bendigo purchases for 2024… the shopping list was thrown out for day 2 at the show. I found it too limiting, by the things I needed, rather than the things that sang to me. So I had a very joyous time, by the looks of things. Now to dream of all the things I can make with these. If you would like to check out all the specifics, I’ve added them to my Ravelry page. And that’s it for another year of the Sheep Show.
Last week I made the decision to not cast on a new sweater in May. The excitement of casting on with reckless abandon, has taken a pause… but only for May! I currently have 3 sweater/cardigan WIPs, and I feel as though that is the most I can cope with at one time.
I’ve been working solidly on my March Sweater, the Pressed Flowers pullover, and I hope to finish it up this month as well as make some good progress on my other 2 WIPs.
I’m now on the rib of the body of my sweater and I’ve divvied up the gradient yarn in 2 for my sleeves; I really hope I have enough, eek…
I’ve also cast-on for some Stephen West socks, Painting Honeycombs, which I’ve been wanting to knit since they were released last year. Using some stash yarn in Patons Patonyle fluro orange, and some mini skeins from advent calendars and left-overs. My friend Jade gifted me this gorgeous honey bee stitch marker, how perfect.
Whilst I was away in Daylesford, a sneaky purchase was made from my favourite self-striping hand dyer Danni of Half-baked hand dyed.
Isn’t it gorgeous… it was sitting by my Painting Bricks sweater WIP when it arrived, and I think it’s a perfect match.
I’m looking forward to getting lots done this month, so the excitement of a new cast-on returns for June.
Happy New Year! I love a fresh new year, planning and goal setting are my favourite things to do as a maker; and it makes perfect sense to do that on the first day of the year.
But before I go ahead, I wanted to share the completed hedgehog ornament with CA and you all. It’s even cuter with a face!
I also completed a small spinning project this week, embarrassingly it’s the first one since I completed my Certificate of Spinning early in 2023.
I am thrilled with it. The fibre is from a Southern Cross Fibre Club, it’s organic merino and the colour name is Tokyo. It is worsted spun, in a fractal spin, it’s come out to a light fingering weight yarn. Perhaps I’ll make a hat with it.
This sudden burst of crafting before the end of the year is due to time off from work. And with just one more week to go before I return to work, I am loving this productivity during staycation, when can I give up work?
In 2024, I hope to read more, be healthier, and to make more in general, but also more specifically I hope to knit more jumpers/sweaters this year. In 2023, my Amina sweater was the only jumper I completed; my wardrobe is crying out for new knits and I intend to fulfil my knitting dreams this year. I have a rough goal of casting on for a new sweater every month, want to join me for the ride?
Starting with the Paul Klee sweater by Midori Hirose. Whilst I thought had my colour sequence sorted, yesterday when I started colouring-in my planning sheet, I discovered I needed 11 rows / 22 colours for my size. I originally had mistakenly thought I only needed 9 rows / 18 colours, because I had just referred to the pattern photograph. Luckily, I was able to come up with the additional colours and sequence from the 24 ball Kate Davies advent calendar. Although I discovered, blue might be her favourite colour, and she is missing a light purple to complete the colour spectrum.
In 2024, I also hope to spin a lot more for pleasure, and to practise the craft, because let’s face it, I don’t want to forget everything I’ve just learned. Becoming a better spinner is not just about the education, I need to do it more often. So with that, I’d love to spin for a jumper, perhaps Andrea Mowry’s Weekender? I do have a lot of beautiful fibre in my stash, so purchasing some fibre for it is not necessary. I’m interested in doing a combo spin perhaps for it, Andrea’s been talking about this on her podcast. I have lots of 100gm lots of different coloured hand-dyed top, which would be fun to combine, or if I can hack it (the boredom), I also have beautifully prepared natural coloured Polwarth top from Tarndie in a jumpers worth of fibre, purchased eons ago.
That’s about all for now, I NEED to pick back up my Nimue crochet blanket, and swatch for Paul Klee. I also have a pile of socks to darn… the list goes on.
With just two days to the New Year, my Amina sweater is FINALLY finished. This would have to be the longest time it’s taken me to knit a single jumper, having cast on for it in June. So for someone who likes completing things on a regular basis, this was torture. Am I happy with it? Why yes, yes I am. Did I learn a lot? Yes, yes I did, would I knit it again? Definitely not!
Every single end has been woven in
Earlier this week, we celebrated Christmas in our usual way; both families on the one day, lots of fun with the kids and lots of food. On Christmas eve, we had a pre-Christmas celebration with some friends, and we had a Kit-Kat constructing competition (not my idea of fun!). Whilst I am a designer, I’ve never been great at constructing things, and one of the competing adult kids is studying architecture! Somehow, the train, Tim and I had built scored first place.
The yarn advents are over and I can’t wait to cast-on some new colour work projects in the new year. First of all I’ll be casting-on for the Paul Klee sweater with Kate Davies’ advent yarns. I spent a delightful morning on Boxing day arrranging and re-arranging colours for this. If all goes to plan, I’ll be casting on for another sweater in February with the My Creative Garage advent, but more on that another time.
My little/big hedgehog decoration is almost complete, I’m just waiting on a delivery of 6mm black beads for it’s eyes, then just a few facial embroidery details and it’s done. I’m pretty novice when it comes to Amigurumi, the arms and feet are different sizes, so don’t look too closely. It will have just a few days on the tree, before it all gets boxed up again for next year. Christmas is over too quickly.
It’s almost a week since we arrived home from Japan, and I’m taking my time to get back to everything. It’s been six years since we visited Japan, and this was our fourth visit.
We were chaperoning Damian’s mum in our first week in Tokyo. We did a couple of arts & crafts classes, Laquer-Makie painting and making Hanako stamps. Carol also undertook a master class with a Sumie master painter.
We wined and dined and had amazing food in Tokyo, we even took Carol to Karaoke! Carol has been once before to Japan many years ago, she said she saw a different side to Japan through our lens 🙂
I also visited Walnut, the Amirisu yarn store on our ‘shopping day’. I had a lovely time whilst Damian and Carol had a cool drink at a cafe around the corner.
After the week, we farewelled Carol and boarded a Shinkansen to Hokkaido. Our first stop was Sapporo for 4 days, and then we backtracked Hakodate for a further 4 days.
We visited the morning (5:50am) fish market with our hotel’s chef in Hakodate, and ate a delicious breakfast from the fish we purchased (cooked and sashimi-ed by the chef of course!). We made friends with the locals and ate delicious food. The hospitality in Hakodate was outstanding.
The thing that has stayed with me from this trip though, is the incredible kindness and helpfulness we received from complete strangers. On a rainy day in Sapporo, we alighted from our streetcar and took shelter at the tram stop, just for a moment so we could work out which direction we were meant to be going in. An older woman who had been on the streetcar with us had got off at the same stop. She had begun to go on her way, but then came back, and offered us her umbrella, the one that she was holding open over herself. Shocked, we of course couldn’t and didn’t accept her offer, she would get wet! and it was too nice an umbrella to give to complete strangers from Australia! I’ll never forget her, she wore a beautiful green hand-knitted beret with a sparkly brooch. I might have been admiring it on the tram. I profusely thanked her as she went on her way again. I don’t think I’ve said ‘thank you’ so often as I have while visiting Japan, everyone is so polite…
For the final five days of our trip we returned to Tokyo. We ate more amazing food, found our favourite Yakitori place in Shimbashi, we tried our hand at Glass-etching and Leather sandal making!
On the day before flying home, we went to the WB Harry Potter Studio Tour. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It was my first taste of Butterbeer, and I much prefer it to real beer.
Now to start dreaming of our next overseas travel and rest.
I’m just back from a wonderful break in Bendigo. The Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo was this weekend, but we headed up earlier on Wednesday to take make it more of a mini break.
We visited the Bendigo Art Gallery, which had a retrospective of 90 years of the Women’s Weekly Magazine. It was a great exhibition, which had a lot of nostalgia, especially for people whose mums made birthday cakes from the Birthday Cake book. My mum made the train for one of my older siblings, and perhaps one or 2 other cakes, perhaps the witch for my older sister? I remember looking through the book, and dreaming about my next birthday cake. I’m not sure I got one? The recorded interview with the cake maker/author of the book was interesting and priceless… just glue the pages of the tip truck cake together… hahaha. There was also a fashion display (it was impressive), and a bit of a crochet and knitting display, not to mention some great historical displays about women.
Friday, show day arrived, and I attended the Women of Wool luncheon once again. I think this year, the organisers did a great job of selecting the speakers. It was great to listen to inspiring, smart women.
I went back to the show on Saturday and I had a great time hanging out with Damian, his mum, friends, and sheep; as well as purchasing some lovely souvenirs of my time in Bendigo. I’m already planning for next year.
After declaring I would not participate in another mystery shawl knit along… Stephen West announced his Surprise Sock Along! How could I not join in? Four weeks for knitting a pair of socks is more my speed, and I’m excited.
Unexpectedly, the very first clue dropped just after work on Thursday. Normally with Stephen West’s MKALs, his clues drop closer to midnight. I took this as a sign to cast-on right away.
The first clue on the right sock is done, and I’m about to cast on my left sock. I’ve decided to do the mirrored instructions for the left sock, because, of course, they’re going to look great mirrored! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Stephen West is a genius. I’ve loved knitting the first sock clue, I’m sure the rest of the sock clues will be as enjoyable.
The beauty of having a yarn stash (that would be me), is that I hadn’t decided on what yarn I was going to use until cast-on evening. The yarn I selected is Patons Patonyle, It is such a great sock yarn. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next…
This long weekend began with the kitchenering of my Richmond Knitters cowl. The colour work pattern was devised by Brent from Carla Meijsen’s Magic Motifs book. Deciphered, the motif says ‘RK2023’ i.e. Richmond Knitters 2023. Each year for the past 5 or so years my knitting group, has agreed to knit a particular pattern to wear to the Sheep and Wool show in Bendigo in July. Normally it’s a jumper, but this year Brent spearheaded the idea to use this colour work pattern and to make whatever we wanted!
The yarn I used is from some deep stash. The pink is Cleckheaton Country and the natural colour was some random yarn I picked up in Maldon (? or some other country town) from a boutique store that was selling garments which were hand-knitted for a label ‘Lorinda Grant’ (I think, this is going back 15-20 years), there was a small basket of balls in natural colours and I thought it made a nice souvenir, I selected 2 balls, the second colour was a mottled medium/dark grey. I’ve blocked the cowl now and it is lovely and soft, I’ll try to have a modelled photo for you next time.
I’m not sure which jumper/s I will be wearing to the sheep festival. But I have finally cast-on for my Amina Sweater by Sylvia Watts-Cherry (Rav link). The yarn was a Christmas gift in 2021, so it is a long awaited for cast on.
The garment is knit in pieces, which is pretty unusual to see now. The front is in Intarsia with drop sleeves. I’m really looking forward to knitting this, I’m finally back to sweater knitting!
I am slowly knocking off some old projects, so it was time to pick up my Nimue crochet blanket. It’s been about a year since I’d worked on it, and I was feeling a bit anxious about whether I still wanted to make the thing! I need not have worried.
I put this project down last year when the realisation of my Spinning Certificate work sunk in. There’s still quite a ways to go, but I’m having fun and it’s interesting without being too challenging so far.
I saw my chance to rearrange some things up in our house this week whilst Damian was away for work. I didn’t have a lot of time, so there was really no time to lose. Tuesday night after work, I began by migrating D’s books into my old yarn shelf which now resides in the hallway. I dusted and wiped things clean, sorting his books in a logical order into his new bookcase; my part-time job as a teenager was a library shelver 2 nights a week at my local library. It was/is so satisfying to shelve books in order. The migration took hours and hours and then on Wednesday night after work, the work on the craft room continued, I was exhausted, but determined to achieve my goal of finally having my own room for craft.
We had grand plans for new shelving, new flooring etc… but at the end of the day I was just desperate to have my craft room space.
I was planning to purchase baskets to fit these new shelves, but after unloading ‘most’ of my yarn into the shelves this weekend, I realised that I liked seeing all of my yarn, baskets would obscure the view, as well as take up valuable shelf space. The plastic is not pretty, but I don’t want to leave my stash unprotected from dust or critters (not that we’ve ever had a moth problem (touch wood). The feeling of seeing all my yarn in one place is a mixture in equal parts of JOY and then OVERWHELM!
The room is still a work in progress. My tetris skills have been sharpened. There’s going to be a few difficult decisions still to be made, and that’s going to take some time. There’s still my craft and knitting books and magazines to be resolved. I want to keep everything, but I know that I’m going to have to make some choices.
When Damian arrived home, I didn’t get into trouble! And he was quite complimentary on how I rearranged things. To be fair, I’ve had a lot of time to think and dream about this craft room, I’m just relieved to finally have this space.
Sonia Knits 