It's the weather for knitting

Well, getting knitting supplies anyhow. It's been very wintry here. The end of last week had some very cold nights. As in about -3C. That's cold for us, as we are in a temperate climate and it doesn't snow here. Then the nights heated up to around 3C or so, but the days started to get cold. Like a maximum of 11C and yesterday it was about 8C at 3pm. We've had some rain, but we are on water restrictions until the end of July at least. This means that we can't water our gardens except with buckets, and the same for car washing. There are other restrictions for businesses which will probably impact them more than the private restrictions will impact us. Not sure if anyone was likely to be watering their gardens at the moment, but it goes to show you we need a lot more rain to really break the drought. We would prefer normal rain-not like the shocking weather that NSW has been experiencing.

As promised, I have a picture of my ISE4 goodie haul. I've been wearing the scarf, but it has also kindled the desire to knit myself another scarf suitable for wearing outside in the weather we've been having. I've got that couple of balls of the loveliest 80% alpaca/20% wool that is so soft that I'm debating about stitch design. Just need to knit my 7cm on the rug first............ I did finish the beanie for KOGO-although I may have to reknit the last 2 rows as I didn't look at the pattern, and it's got a weird pointy thing happening.

Yesterday was a good day as far as knitting stash went. Interweave Knits Summer Issue finally made it to my local newsagent. Not a huge amount of designs I would want to knit, but it is an interesting read anyhow. I also got some plastic dpns from the local op shop, as well as some interesting buttons (I was also keeping biscornus in mind-I have yet to make one). I also got my Bendigo order which has my Rustic 12ply in Agate for the Central Park Hoodie, as well as a ball of the new Boutique yarn which is 65% wool, 25% Bluefaced Leicester, and 10% mohair in Ruby. Well, the Boutique was on special, and I already had free postage........ Here are some pics of the yarn.

The Ruby is a deeper red than that-around DMC 816 if you happen to think in DMC colours. The Agate reminds me of DMC 451-it has an almost tweedy appearance up close. I think the Ruby will become a scarf-it is only 200 grams, and it feels lovely and soft, but not too fuzzy. I really want to knit a tension square for the hoodie, but that will have to wait for a bit.

Stitching wise, I have been plugging away at my model-it's a very long design (about 560 stitches long) but very narrow-well the part I'm working on is, but using Q-snaps makes it manageable-even if I am having to move them regularly.

I'm off to throw more wood on the fire and get some stitching done. And try not to knit a tension square.............

Phew!

It's been a busy week or so. Actually it's been about 2 weeks since I last posted (that's sounds like I'm in confession lol). Caitlin went on her camp and had a good time-well except for the last couple of hours when she started to feel decidedly seedy. Since the campsite was only about 15 minutes away, the teachers rang me and I took her home. It was pretty good timing as she was able to get over the tummy bug in time for the movie night at the local cinema that we had organised as part of the school's social committee. We had around 140 people turn up (we saw Shrek 3) and supplied supper afterwards which was good but it was a lot of work to organise it and I'm glad it's over.

We also had some visitors from Friday night until Monday morning (we had a long weekend here) at fairly short notice, but luckily they aren't the sort to need a lot of special preparation-it was my Mum & Dad who live around 300km away. It was great to have them up here as we haven't got to catching up with them in the flesh since Christmas.

Luke was also on scout camp during the long weekend-he thoroughly enjoyed himself, and was glad that he didn't have to choose between Shrek and scouts.

Monday night Ron flew up to Brisbane for work and is due back tonight-his plane has been delayed by at least half an hour, but he gets tomorrow off as he had to do some extra night work while he was up there.


My ISE4 package was sent last week-I quickly took a picture before I got it posted off. It's knitted with 4ply Merino Cashmere in "Dark Reds" from The Knittery . It was lovely to knit with and felt so soft. It's just a simple Feather and Fan lace pattern with a garter stitch border as I didn't want anything too busy with the variegated yarn. I also added a pewter figurine (of a goanna), bookmark, and a cute little sheep made of roving. I didn't add any food as I wasn't sure what I could send to the US and I didn't have time to find out ;)



I received my ISE4 parcel-I haven't taken any pictures yet-perhaps tomorrow. You can read all about it here .


I've been stitching on my models. I've had to put the "Flowers"aside for the model I'm stitching for Kirsten from The Gift of Stitching as it is due sooner. Speaking of The Gift of Stitching, if you are a subscriber you will have seen my stitching in the latest issue-the pincushions. It gave me a fright at first because there are pictures of the back of my stitching as well as extreme closeups of the front of some of them. However all the pictures look lovely and Kirsten gave me a lovely mention at the end of the magazine. You can also see the pincushions at Stitches and Spice under the Gift of Stitching kits.


Knitting-wise I haven't done a lot. I'm knitting a beanie for Knit One Give One and have just received the rug from Rugz 4 Kidz which I will be knitting 7cm on before I send it on. These are ideal for picking up and knitting on when I don;t have the time to get my stitching out. I also want to knit up some tension squares for a couple of projects I have in mind for me. Not sure when they would get started though. I also rediscovered a couple of balls of a lovely soft 70% alpaca, 30% wool yarn that would make a lovely scarf for me........... There's also knitting I want to do for the Guardian Angel charity project, fingerless gloves for Luke, a cardigan for Caitlin, socks for me, etc, etc.


Other news-Dr Who is back in 2 weeks time! It will be on Thursday nights though at 8.30 so we will record it and watch it at a later time. I've also discovered some DVDs at my library that I've somehow been oblivious to"-the "Hornblower"series with Ioan Gruffudd. And there is 8 of them. Nothing like a historical swashbuckler with a nice leading man ;) Maybe I can fit in a trip to the library tomorrow?


A special hello to my family lurkers out there! And also thanks to people who stop by and comment.

Rain drops keep falling on my head

Well they would if I was silly enough to stand around in the rain. We've had a lot of rain in the last week or so-around 3 inches, so the ground is getting all nice and soggy. I'm hoping for a little fine weather early next week and the weekend following that, because Caitlin has a school camp, and then Luke has a Scout camp.




I've started a model for Naomi of Stitches and Spice . It's called "Flowers" - you can see it here if you scroll down a bit. I'm stitching it on 32ct Belfast linen in her colourway "Hannah's Rose"-it's under Spice Blend on her website with Gloriana silk in the colourway "Jacaranda"-which is a brown strangely enough. I've got a picture here-not a good one as it's still raining outside, but I wanted something here so I can see my progress. I will be rotating this for some model work I am doing for Kirsten of The Gift of Stitching. I won't be stitching on any of my things until both are done, but I will do some knitting as a break now and again.



Speaking of knitting, I have a couple of FOs to show you. Firstly a pair of socks that I finished early this year sometime-quite a while ago anyhow.



These are knitted with OnLine Supersocke that I got from last year's craft fair, using a pattern on the Patonyle pattern book which I then tinkered with a little. It has 2x2 ribbing at the top, 4x1 ribbing for the leg, calf shaping, and an Eye of Partridge heel. These were much easier to knit than my first socks as I didn't have to work at juggling the dpns. The yarn was nice to work with, and I had a small amount left from the 100g ball.

Next are a pair of bedsocks I knit for Caitlin. I used some Clinker yarn that I picked up at Kmart and dyed using food colouring. It's around a 10 ply I think-I used 5mm needles. Pattern was from Ann Budd's The Knitters Handy Book of Patterns . I did something strange with one of the heels-it was supposed to be a slip stitch heel, but when I was stitching the second heel-noticed the first one looked totally different. Never mind!! I also found that Caitlin has a big foot-I knit the womens small size and they have a bit of room for growth but not much. And she is not quite 9yo. The yarn is fluffing/pilling where she has worn them with slippers but I'm not too fussed-they were cheap to make-and fast!!! I love the knitting with the bulkier yarns.

I'm going to go and stitch for a while before lunchtime-also need to go and block my ISE4 scarf.