Our heater at home is broken once again.

You may recall it was broken at the start of this winter season (it also broke down at the start of last season, but I digress). After a month of waiting for the repair man to come out, it was fixed, the repairs were not cheap. So you can understand our frustration when not 2 months later, it is broken again. But worse than that, now we are in the depths of the season. With customer service from the repairer being ‘rather poor’ on top of our ‘feed-up-ed-ness’ of laying out more money. We’re getting a new one!

I’m trying to think of the positives.

1. In the 2 evenings without heating, I have slept surprisingly well! No waking up at 2am and no tossing and turning to get back to sleep. Which leads us to believe we need to turn off the vents in our bedroom, so that we do sleep in a completely cold room. Simple.

2. Damian has worn his hand-knitted chunky hoody. He’s had to. And now he’s open to having a jumper knit for him by me, yay! Except he’d prefer a finer gauge, so that it would be worn more often… boo.

3. I need to update our blanket stash! Most of my hand knit blankies, don’t seem to be long enough.

See you again when things are a bit warmer.

 

Today was Marilyn’s 2nd birthday party. But more importantly, I got to hand over the stripy cardigan I knit for her. It was a great relief to me once my sister dressed her in it. I think it looks great on her and I’m so glad I persevered and ripped out all the ugly colours.

Is it really only 3 weeks to the Bendigo Show?

In my blog post about Tarndie last week, I failed to mention the stash enhancement that occurred over the duration of the weekend. It didn’t help that I went away with a bunch of ‘enablers’. On top of having the onsite wool store, Janet had also brought along lots of great sock yarns from a store that was/has closed down. All of these acquisitions have been added to my Ravelry page in the interests of full disclosure (to myself), my wool shelf is now more than ever, bursting at the seams. Oh what fun! Luckily the recent destashing of unloved yarn has provided me with some room under the bed. How convenient.

 

I stayed at Tarndwarncoort last weekend. It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! 

For a number of years when I’ve purchased yarn and fibre from Wendy Dennis (at the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show), I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to stay in the big old homestead, the birthplace of Polwarth sheep; I recall seeing the flyers about staying in the homestead at Bendigo, but never followed up on it. My chance came when I was invited to attend with other knitters and one spinner from SnB Melbourne.

Here I am totally blessed out on our ‘farm walk’, there are sheep in the distance, they saw us coming!

The Homestead (not pictured here, because I didn’t take a photo before my camera ran out of battery), was directly opposite the on-site WoolShop. Handy huh?

Us wandering around with our tour guide Janet.

Sheeps, keeping their distance.

So many interesting things to see, an enjoyable walk around the Dennis sheep property.

The dining room is magnificent. It was the back drop to our Saturday evening dinner.

Photos of food, or it didn’t happen.

It was also Winter Solstice night.

And after dinner the table was cleared and some knitting began around the dining room table. I was spinning some Polwarth fibre dyed by Wendy on my Little Gem in the front windows of the dining room. An amazing evening in an amazing room filled with so much family history.

I would love to visit again, maybe the Richmond Knitters might be interested?

 

After what felt like a productive week last week, this week wasn’t so much.

I have almost completed Marilyn’s next cardigan, Tulip, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I was excited about this project in the beginning but now I’m not so. As someone who is working through her stash, or at least trying to keep her head above water, I try to use ‘stash yarn’ as much as possible; particularly when it comes to kids knits… let’s be honest they grow out of them much too quickly to outlay money for ‘nice’ yarn. But ‘nice’ yarn from stash is FREE ha ha.

So I cast-on Tulip in some Patons Merino Deluxe last weekend, and I thought I would use lots of different colours from the range in my stash, using small amounts of colour is not going to compromise quantities for future large projects (famous last words).

After a few days of knitting and then arriving home from Knit night on Monday night, I stood back and took stock of my project sitting on my knitting chair. A feeling of dread began to filter in. I think I’ve used too many dull colours, this is meant to be a fun, girly cardigan. It was starting to look seriously bad. I decided to leave out the project and come at it with fresh eyes on Tuesday morning… by Tuesday evening I hadn’t changed my mind on the direction of the colours. So I pulled out about 2 hours of knitting. Knowing how often I would be seeing Marilyn wearing this cardigan, I couldn’t stand the thought.

So I ripped it out, not all the way, I felt I had to remove the dirty green and gray colours; then maybe, maybe it would be ok.

I don’t think I’ve ever ripped out ‘perfectly good’ knitting before. But colour is SO important. Why make something you don’t love? I’m happier with it now, but the colours still don’t feel perfect to me. I’ve seen too many beautiful rainbow coloured Tulip cardigans, to be less critical of my own efforts.

I’m just finishing off the applied i-cord tie around the neckline, then I’m in sleeve-land, I’m hoping I’ll feel more than MEH for the cardigan once it’s completed.

I’m participating in the Little Dipper Yarns KAL so hopefully there will be a cast-on at knit nite tomorrow night, I’m so behind!

I have been promising myself to knit a colleague some fingerless mitts for at least a year now, or at least since last winter. You see, she lives a fair way out, and it’s much colder out there. This is all the inspiration a knitter needs to spring to action.

They were super quick to whip up, but as I was knitting, I was getting mitt envy, from myself and from Damian. Yes, Damian wants another pair of mitts with half fingers. Oh and they have to be hand-spun. It’s a good thing they are speedy, because I absolutely hate having to sew up all the gaps between the fingers. I could do without that.

Back to knitting, this long-weekend isn’t over yet.

 

This long weekend has been long anticipated, well ever since the last long weekend. Sadly in Victoria, there won’t be another public holiday until Cup Day in November and then it’s only a long weekend if you take the Monday off.

I finished knitting my Minestrone socks for the Stranded in Oz sock club on Thursday night. It’s kind of a modified version. I had little patience with the twisted stitches, so I kind of gave up on them after the first 2 repeats. Nevertheless I’m still happy with them; they don’t look as awesome as they would have looked had I persisted, but I’m glad I switched course. I knit for fun dammit!

The Little Dipper Yarns KAL began this week, so I’ll be casting-on for my first colour affection at some point this weekend. But before I do that I’m hoping to pump out some fingerless gloves for an appreciative work colleague. I could get them done in a day right? I also need to cast-on for Marilyn’s Tulip cardigan, knit a hot-water bottle cover for me (because everyone has made one lately). Cast-on my honey cowl, because I’m dying for another cowl accessory to wear to work and I’m generally cold. Cold I am, thankfully the heating at home has been repaired.

So if you need me, I’ll be knitting.

Dear blog readers,

I’m still here. It’s been a hell-of-a-month. For those that don’t know me in real life or haven’t heard, we had to let our cat, Purl go a few weeks ago. It’s the first time I can write those words without cracking up into tears. She meant a lot to me.

So, what have I been doing?

Not a lot of anything. Making plans, making changes, cherishing my family and friends.

A girly weekend to Hepburn Springs came at a most opportune time. And as promised over and over again, I took along my 20-year-old hexagon patchwork and apart from some Vanilla socks for car knitting, I took nothing else.

For the uninitiated I should let you know the scope of my hexagon patchwork quilt project. It began as my big idea for a project between my school break from high school to uni. It is a very large quilt, spanning the size of a queen bed, to the floor. There are 40 patches by 46 rows of patches. That’s 1840 patches. Each of the patches have been sewn into rows except for the last 6 rows. I’m up to sewing my 12th row. Here’s where you come in: I need you to keep tabs on me.

I recalled that sewing a row, not taking that long. By my memory estimation, I would say 2-3 hours tops. This estimation was seriously revised by the end of the weekend. Having arrived in Hepburn I began sewing where I left off (however long ago) at half-way between row 7 and 8. I optimistically brought along the whole project, all the rows including the last 6 that hadn’t been sewn together. This was quickly revised to a goal of having 15 rows sewn over the course of the weekend. Leaving on Sunday afternoon I was nearing toward the end of row 10. I think. I have since sewn row 11 to 10. And now I’m starting a new separate section, sewing rows 12 to 13. The plan is to sew about 4 rows together, then attach it to the larger piece as I go. Sewing directly to the larger piece for the next 42 seams, is not my idea of fun.

So there you have it. A row a week, that’s do-able. Perhaps this quilt or quilt top (let’s not get ahead of ourselves) will be ready for it’s 21st party this summer.