Finally its finished

Its finished, Squeeeee after 2 months of knit, frog , knit and luckily before New Years so this is the last completed project for 2007.

All I've got is a photograph

Ten days ago Mr Wombat and I ventured out of our home in the hills and drove down to a shopping centre in Carrum Downs. I needed to post out a parcel so went straight into the post office to post it. About 15 minutes later we decided to leave and headed out to the car. When we got to where the car was parked, the car had been stolen, this was devastating in itself as we had traveled some 50km away from our home (and we have no trains in our little part of the world unless you call a steam train transport) we also don't have a second car on the road yet and so we were facing a very tough time without transport. On top of this, I had brought along my yarn the Paradiso Gembrook (I had intended to show a friend that I had learnt to spin) which I left in the car. I was shattered.
We finally started to head towards Mr Wombats work where we could pick up a company car to use whilst we sorted ourselves out, but this particular day was a day that Melbourne experienced four seasons in one day (something Melbourne is famous for).

As we got off the train, the heavens opened and torrential rain literally poured from the sky, and within minutes Mr Wombat and I had been drenched to the skin.

After finally getting home (some 4 hours later) we discovered that lightning had knocked out our power, phone and Internet. Power was quickly restored, but a phone call (via public phone) to the phone company said that because of the storms our phone would not be restored until after the weekend, now for us this was bad bad news, because not only is it our link to the outside world I live in a high fire risk area and without the phone if there was a fire I could not alert people to the fact there was a fire and I would be in danger of not being able to escape.

Luckily the weather over the weekend was mild and so the fire danger was minimal. The following Monday, I waited all day, but no telephone man showed and so Monday night I rang the phone people again.

I was told because of the storm damage in the area there was a huge workload for the phone company and my phone fixing had been deferred until a later date (Jan 8th was the date they said ) now normally I would have waited, but I really really felt that this was dangerous to me and the other residents in my neighborhood fire is our biggest threat as there are huge areas of natural bush surrounding us and said so to the phone rep.

Finally after much arguing and pleading from me, the phone rep agreed to send out a technician to see if he could fix the phone line.

So 24 hours later a technician turned up to check the phone, five minutes later we had phone and Internet connection (the high winds of the storm had loosened the connections) and we had contact with the outside world.

We immediately rang the police to find out if our car had been found (it had) and currently its in the police holding yard (yay) don't know if the car is damaged (the police said the car doesn't look damaged) and they also say that nothing is missing from the car so I'm hoping my yarn is still in the car we will have to wait for the police holding yards to be open after the New Year holidays before we can retrieve the car. I am hoping that 2008 turns out to be a better year for Mr Wombat and myself as 2007 had been one long horrible year for us.
Roll on 2008!

Yaaaaaarn

I am proud to announce the arrival of my first batch of proper yarn, her name is Gembrook Paradiso and she has the honor of becoming a pair of fingerless mitts for myself!

Fibre was purchased from Ewe Give me the Knits and let me tell you this fibre was unreal to work with so smooth and it just flowed through my fingers, making it a absolute dream to work with. Mandie also has a magical touch with the colorways its extremely hard to decide what colorway to buy - I want them all.........

Ice Cream

Well as a result of my experimenting yesterday, I got this. The plying was ok, could have done it a bit tighter (I didn't use any tension whilst plying) and so therefore its a little loose. But I am sort of pleased with the result sorta looks like a big dollop of ice cream.

I have already started spinning up another batch, I concentrating on trying to spin evenly without the big lumps that seem to creep in every now and again and I seem to have improved slightly I will spin what I have left of this "raw fleece" hopefully this time there will be enough yarn for me to knit something out of it. I guess time will tell.

(Ps Forgive the crappy pic, batteries are dead in camera so I have used the phone camera, My camera tends to eat batteries faster than I can buy them and I am sick to death of buying batteries every second day!)

Bunka You!

I have some weird and wonderful things in my stash, and I was hunting for some gold thread I had to experiment plying with, when I came across a shoebox given to me by a friend. Inside this shoebox were lots of threads wound onto bobbins and these needles that looked like medieval torture tools. Curiosity got the better of me and I looked up the name of the thread Bunka, turns out is a Japanese type of embroidery. Now I'm not the sewing type of girl, I don't like doing embroidery the closest I have done would be cross-stitch, and that was pretty basic, my sister on the other hand was a queen at cross stitch and I have some beautiful cross-stitch that she had done.

The reason I brought this up was because the thread that is used in Bunka is a chain like thread and you sort of pull on the end of the thread and it unravels like knitting and I think would be good for plying with my yarn that I have on the bobbin at present without adding thickness to the yarn. I'm not sure what to do about the needles I would like to pass them on to someone who has a use for them but I don't know if this type of embroidery is done any more.

Yummy Fibre

This came in the mail yesterday, isn't it beautiful? Fibre is from an Aussie online shop called Ewe Give me the Knits. I had a hard time trying to decide what I wanted cause the truth be known I wanted it all. I would really like to jump in and start using it, but to do it justice I should keep practising, its just too beautiful for me (as a novice) to try right now but I am practising -in between pats and cuddles of my new aquisition .......its just so yummy and delicious!

My first yarn

Well, she isn't perfect, but here she is in all her glory and I am a proud mummy of my very first homespun skein of yarn, I finally plucked up the courage this morning to try my hand at plying and the result is the pic above. There's probably not enough to make anything, but she will take pride of place in my stash (next to the Jojoland Harmony) and I will admire her for her uniqueness as my first ever homespun
Welcome to my stash sweetie!

Look mum I can spin

I have been remiss in keeping up with the blog, unfortunately real life sticks its nose in and just won't leave me alone!

I have been rather busy in my time away from my blog, I finally plucked up enough courage to try and get a handle on this spinning business, I washed some of the fleece that I had been given with the spinning wheel and tried it out.

Whats pictured here is the result of my labor, not bad for a complete novice!

I have been gathering information on spinning for a couple of weeks, I have a friend that spins and she has been giving me advice (by telephone) and I have been looking at online resources to help me. Whilst I have an abundance of information to help me its been difficult not having someone on hand who can teach me, so a lot of learning is done by trial and error. I think Im getting the hang of it, I had thought that controlling the thickness of the fibre would be my main problem but thats not been the case I have more problems working out the tension more than anything else (although I seem to be making laceweight thickness rather than a bulky yarn-not a problem since thats what I wanted it for) I haven't attempted plying yet, I think I need to do some more research on that topic but so far I am very happy with my progress.... after all a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.........

Fire Season

Its spring, and its been unusually warm for this time of year. Already we have had a couple of hot days and the authorities have been warning that this year it will be particularly hard as a lot of bush has died off leaving lots of dry flammable material to burn. The area I live in the Dandenongs has also been highlighted as a high fire danger risk area, and yesterday as if to emphasise the danger I watched as a tractor cut a fire track through the bush behind the block, so if there was fire the fire trucks could use these tracks to get to the fire.
The fire season is particularly worrying for me, I am alone in the house most of the day, and I do not have a registered vehicle ( I have a car its just not registered yet). This will not stop me though, I have the battery charged on the car and if fire threatens I will use this to leave, I will not stay to protect the property, I figure that the contents of the house are replaceable I and my puppy dogs aren't.

The only problem I have deciding, is what I should take with me, being a knitter, my yarn is very precious to me and a lot of my patterns also and so with that in mind here is my list of items that I have prepacked in case of emergency

Spare clothes
Jewellery
dogs (scully and gypsy are not packed)
Lace weight yarn ( yes jojoland will come with me)
Knitting Needles
computer box
important papers (eg patterns and birth certs)
photos

Its a hard decision to make but it has to be done whilst living in the bush is a wonderful thing bush fires are fearsome foes and added to that is the stupid firebugs who take delight in setting such fires. In my opinion arsonists are mass murderers, the number of wildlife and livestock that perish in such fires unmeasured, but a life is a life whether it be animal or human and in my opinion, arsonists are one of the lowest life forms on the planet.

You may remember a couple of weeks ago I posted a pic of an echidna that was running around my yard, today I discovered the reason why she was so large.

Meet echidna junior, (nicknamed eddy).Eddy comes out around four pm daily, and wanders around the yard looking for food. Totally oblivious to any danger (indeed I was 2ft away when I took this pic) and concentrating totally on foraging he is a delight to watch.
Mind you, I think that he has good armouring, can you imagine trying to bite something like that? He/she is really cute though don't ya think?

Note: stupid spellcheck doesn't know what an echidna is!

Newest Member of De Family

Meet my new addition to the family. She's a Sheridan MacArthur, born and bred in Australia, she came complete with a spare bobbin holder and a bag of fleece.

You may remember in an earlier post, I had a mystery spinning wheel with no manufacturers stamp and no indication of who had made her, well thanks to some wonderful members of Ravelry (who shall remain nameless, as I have forgotten -but thanks guys you rock!) it was identified as an early model Ashford Indian Country Spinner, was used to spin Country, or chunky yarn and not at all suitable to spin lace weight which is what I want to do.

I rang a friend Nellie, who also spins and she happened to have the Sheridan sitting in the corner being unloved and she suggested we do a swap as she wanted to spin chunky yarns and the Indian would suit her needs, so as a result we have adopted Sherry into our home.

Sherry needs a bit of a clean, but otherwise she is beautiful, and I am now really keen to be shown how to spin, I am probably going to have to teach myself, although I think I will have a lot of help from my Internet friends I can't wait.......

November Already

I have been AFK (away from keyboard) for over a week so I thought I had better do some posting, the week has been very quiet, I celebrated my birthday on Oct 29th and although my son could not visit he did phone me to wish me happy returns for the day. We have also had some very high winds which uprooted trees and snapped branches off trees and leaving a destruction trail through the trees of the hills, this was followed by torrential rain, which although helped ease some of the drought stricken areas also caused major flooding in other areas of the state.
My frog pond is again brimming with water, and in the evening I can hear the distinct croaking of frogs which means they are also happy with the amount of water in the pond. I did spend a little time clearing some of the leaf and branches that had fallen into the pond so now they have a nice clean environment for the time being.

In knitting news, I finally succumbed to temptation and cast on for Leda's Dream. I'm using some of my stash of Jojoland Harmony lace weight, which is so soft and just so yummy and the colors just sooo delicious that I have trouble with stopping and cuddling and yes stroking the yarn I cannot get enough. I am slightly anxious with the beginning, it is a provisional cast on and I am worried I may loose some of my stitches they are soooooo small.

The big ugly white line thru the knitting is my lifeline - I have made too many mistakes in knitting not to put one of these in, I don't know how many projects I have frogged completely because I didn't have a lifeline in, now I would rather be cautious, instead of rash, - guess that's age creeping in..................sigh!

Too Many Distractions

I had hoped to put up some photo's of my finished stole but I haven't finished it as I have had some distractions (namely Ravelry) so I have not done much knitting.

So I thought I would put up some local scenery and tell you a little about the area in which I live.

The picture at the left is a creek that runs along the back of the property it in fact forms one of the borders that separates us from Mr 50 Acres, who lives next door (he earned that nickname when he first introduced himself and told me within 2 sentences that he owned 50 acres) this creek starts a couple of km up the road from a natural spring and it winds its way towards the Silvan water catchments. It forms a waterfall just over the border and whilst you are in the garden you can hear the water falling down through the rocks, and its a beautiful sound.

To find this waterfall, you must walk through a wood with trails leading off in every direction, and its not human trails you are following, you are following the tracks of the wallabies, deer, wombats and other wild creatures that use these tracks to get to the water. I am fortunate to be able to watch kookaburra's on hot days using the creek to find frogs and diving from branches above the creek into the water to find these tasty morsels of food.

Although the drought is in evidence everywhere, this at least is one place where water still flows and I am a very lucky lucky girl to be able to see the beauty of Australia in my own backyard.

The walking pin-cushion

This little fellow appeared in my garden today, enjoying the spring weather. its an Echidna, and when he heard me coming he quickly buried his head so he couldn't see me......obviously forgot that he had a body to hide as well, maybe he can get rid of some of the 2 inch ants that walk around here

Sort of looks like a tree stump doesn't he?

Love Is...............

Jojoland Harmony (880mtres per 50g) aka Yarntreehouse Yarns on Ebay. Cobweb weight lace yarn Colour Co5

Pattern from my falling apart copy of Harmony Guide to Knitting Stitches called falling leaves and knitted on 3mm needles. Although its very fine to work with I just love this yarn, makes me want to hold it, pet it, squeeze it and just love it....... and its all mine mine mine! Bwahahahah :)

A Lunchtime visitor.

This little fellow is one of the regular visitors to my house, He is a King Parrot, and his plummage is neon orange, with green, this little fellow pops in and stays a couple of hours feeding. I also get Eastern Rosella's with bright red and blue feathers, another visitor is a little bright eyed blue tit, that absolutely loves his own reflection. My favorite of course, is the king parrot who comes up to my window to call me when he wants some food and who now lets me hand feed him........its a simple pleasure but its good!

No Parking here

I wanted to show you the differences between knitting through the back loop as opposed to knitting through the front and so I dragged out a doll I had been working on late last year, but had put down because I had made a mistake and didn't want to fix it.

Turns out that I couldn't fix it but that wasnt too bad I only had to reknit the body, so I dragged out the yarn and started knitting. Then I compared what I had knitted from months ago with my newly knitted piece. The piece on the left is the one I knitted months ago, tension is loose, stitches are huge (big enough to park a truck in!). Now the piece on the right, stitches are even, tension is good, and the garage space has been taken out of the stitches. I much prefer the look of the right hand piece, so I think I'm going to keep on knitting through the front, it may give me the prod I need to get back into knitting things like cardigans and sweaters, something I sort of gave up on because my gauge never seemed to be accurate, it must be harder to get a good tension through the back loop, maybe because you don't have as good a control over the yarn feeding to the stitch, whereas through the front loop you do.

The doll by the way is The Mad Hatter by Alan Dart part of a series of The Alice in Wonderland Story and no he is not finished yet, but I will get to him once I finished this er, um (mumble) lace pattern...........!

The Mojo is back

I took a break from knitting for a couple of days, my recent problems with my stitches had soured my enthusiasm somewhat, but I'm stubborn, I don't like being beaten and so I sat down and did some swatches, and then I did some more swatches, I practised my new knit stitch (its so pretty!) I practised my leaning decreases, I researched different stitches, and finally came up with my solutions to the problems I had.
Today I cast on for Leda's Dream and managed to knit the first rows of the chart without a problem (and my knitting is looking neat rather than untidy as it used to do yay!) In my research I was rather surprised to find that knitting through the back stitch actually uses more yarn than knitting through the front I didn't think that there would be a difference but apparently there is!

I did eventually find a group called gnittink-for-lefties and they gave me some valuable pointers to help with left handed knitting and they are a wonderful bunch of people over 300 members all happy to share their knowledge. I'm also into Kal's that are ongoing at the moment, well one starts tonight the other started last week, I haven't cast on yet preferring to wait for a little while to see if I like the patterns and whether I will have to mirror-image the patterns (if there is any short-rows in the pattern I will have to reverse the patt) I didnt reverse the chart for MS3 and ran into a big brick wall when they began the wing...

Finally I am still waiting for my invite from Ravelry Im 845 in the queue, and am hoping I will be in either Sunday or Monday, I have heard a lot about ravelry and am curious to see what its all about, I think the idea of a whole bunch of knitters in one place is great so I can't wait to see it all.

Just don't call me backwards.....

I am left-handed, and so have a few difficulties to overcome when I knit lace. (I knit from right to left i.e my knitting piece is held in my right hand and I use the left hand to create the new stitch) A lace chart means I must mirror image the chart, and change the symbol meanings. For left and right decreases for a regular knitter the symbol for a k2tog is / which is the way they are knitting (from left to right) I on the other hand am knitting from the opposite direction and if I want the decrease to lean the same way I would knit a sl1,k1, psso this would create the same stitch as for a regular knitter. (if I was to knit the k2tog as stated in the pattern my stitch would come out as \) I have also discovered that knitting 2tog thru the back loop will also create a stitch going in the same direction as if I knitted thru the front loop which makes it a hell of a lot easier when doing the k2togs!

Why am I telling you this, because I'm tired as being told I'm a lost cause cause I knit "backward" I read the same way I knit, in fact a page is laid out like I knit you read it left to right not right to left I'm tired of prospective knitters being told they must learn to knit this way, chances are people who are told that won't take up knitting as a recreation.

In order to cater to the "backwards" knitter as far as I can see, it would take a chart mirror- imaged and the decrease and increase symbols swapped but apparently publishers don't know how to edit (the obvious question I have is what the $%^&* are they doing publishing then!!!!)
Whilst it may have been difficult in the past to cater for "backward" knitters, in the computer day and age it seems ludicrous that left-handers are not catered for and that information for the left-handers is scarce, I have seen several videos of people knitting backward and there is a lot of mis-information, no "experts"for the lefties. There is information for reverse knitting (which is knitting left and right handed this has the effect of not having to purl as in circular knitting)
I have attempted to knit right-handed and I can do it verrrry slooowly but contorting my right hand into the positions that are required for knitting right handed are more pain than my fingers can bear).
I don't class myself as an expert, heavens there's a lot I don' know still about knitting but my difficulty is increased when I have to stop and interpret patterns to suit my left-handedness and I am paying the same price for my patterns as right handers shouldn't my needs be catered for in the same way?

So just who is backward me...... or the publishers?

Living in the Bush

I live in the hills of Melbourne in an area classed as the Dandenong Ranges. The landscape of this area is mostly bush, with houses scattered throughout the hills, its a beautiful place to live with lots of wildlife and at night its a very dark place to be.

The drawbacks of living in such an area are few, if you are without transport (like me) you are stuck without much face to face contact with humans and most of your communication is with the telephone or the internet.

Mostly Im quite happy and content with this, as it allows me to concentrate on what I like doing, which is knitting, but I do take breaks from this and enjoy the beautiful scenery around me.

This morning I was walking around my front garden and came across a wallaby. Now this wallaby had obviously tried to cross the road in front of my property, and had (I think) been hit by a car, it had managed to jump a few more feet but had died once it got into my garden.

Now being new at country living, I didnt know what to do, so rang my next door neighbor (ringing my neighbor is a lot quicker than going to see her) and asked what do I do? Maria my neighbor suggested that I ring the wildlife rescue people and see if they would help.

I rang the wildlife people, and the conversation sort of went like this

Me: I have a dead wallaby in my yard what should I do?

them: is it a male or female?

Me: How do I tell if its male or female?

Them: Lift its leg and look, if there are testicles its a male if none its a female. (well duh!)

Me: But its dead what difference does it make if its male or female?

Them: If its female there may be a joey in its pouch, if you see no testicles look for the pouch and see if theres a joey in the pouch......we may be able to save the joey.

Me: you want me to stick my hand into a dead animal to see if theres a baby?

them: Yes

Now I won't go into details, but needless to say it was a female and I dry retched for an hour after I did as I was requested. If I could have boiled my hand to get the germs off I would have. I didnt find any way of diposing of the animal apart from digging a big hole myself and dragging the poor wallaby into it. Well the deed has been done lets hope she now rests in peace.

An Old Dog and New Tricks

After my gob smacking, soul destroying discovery yesterday, I quickly evaluated my situation. Should I give up knitting altogether and direct my attention to other hobbies? Should I delete all the projects of my knitting online so others cannot see the glaring problem that I so blissfully ignored? The conclusion I came to was no...my work isn't that bad, sure it has a slight twist but 20 years of knitting and all I had in comments have been nice about the twist that appears within my knitted pieces I haven't had a negative comment at all, so they will stay.

Last night I got back on the horse that threw me and began some practise swatches. Some observations I have about stitch that I'm re-learning, the tension is better in my knitting, my stitches are more even and better defined, and the stitch is just as easy as knitting thru the back, though I do have to watch myself as mindless as swatch knitting is sometimes when your attention is not on your knitting you tend to slip back into bad habits. They say it takes three weeks to form a bad habit, I wonder how long it will be before I break this 20year old bad habit.

Oh Magoo you've done it again

Did you ever see the cartoon of Mr Magoo? Mr Magoo was a bumbling man with very poor eyesight who kept getting things wrong due to such eyesight. At the end of every cartoon he would say to himself Oh Magoo you've done it again. Well that's how I feel. As I have mentioned before, I taught myself to knit and have continued on from there. Now as I broaden my horizons I have started learning different methods of doing things and exploring some of the techniques that I see and hear about on the Internet.
This morning, I decided to investigate the leaning stitches that are produced when you do the two different types i.e K2tog and the sl1 K1 method I had used this method in a number of items and was puzzled because both those stitches when I did them didn't look any different at all -why was this so? Was being a left-handed knitter the reason?
Suddenly the light bulb came on! I always knit into the back of the stitch! I don't knit into the front! So in the great words of that American Icon Homer Simpson

DOH!

Now you might want to try this for yourself to see, but if you knit thru the back like I do/did this has the same effect for a sl1k1, k2tog, it also has the effect of "twisting" the stitch, I thought as did my mother that was because I was left handed, now a swatch later knitting thru the front and doing the k2tog, sl1k1, I can see how this works......

The Mystery Spinning Wheel

I got this given to me about 3 months ago, straight away I sent an email to a friend of mine, spinning lilac for advice on the wheel.

Spinning lilac, told me the machine was probably dry and to clean off all the dust that had accumulated and to give it some linseed oil and polish off with some beeswax. I followed her advice and the result is the lovely wheel you see here. But the mystery remains, although I have scoured the Internet far and wide I cannot find out what it is called, or who the manufacturer is. I have seen one before, er before I got this one but I never got a chance to ask about it now I wish I had, I think its used mainly for chunky yarns or country yarns but I'm not sure, I am waiting to visit a friend who will show me how to use it, I have a rough idea but want an expert to show me how to do it properly

Organization

I decided to go through my yarn stash in the hope of being able to catergorize it into the different plys and I started gathering (yes my stash is all over the house) the lace weight yarn I had in order to do a couple of mystery stole knitalongs starting very soon. My lace stash is looking very small whereas my DK weight yarn fills approx 12 plastic tubs. My excuse for the amount of DK weight yarn is that most of the yarn was on sale and magpie that I am I just could not resist and I will use it one day. Sadly though my lace stash needs an immediate injection of company, wonder if it would like some Bendigo 2ply for company.......?

Valuable Resource - The knitting Community

When I first started surfing the net, one of my first encounters with the knitting community was thru a newsgroup called rcty. Members of this newsgroup lived in various communities across the world and posted comments and helpful advice to people with knitting dilemmas, all advice was given freely and sometimes quite humourously. Socks were often a hot topic, and I was a little surprised to see how much sock knitting was going on. I had never used dpns although I knew what they were (having some in my knitting needle collection) I had never understood their use and felt I had enough trouble with using two never mind three or four at a time.
But all this talk of sock knitting got me curious, and I decided to give it a try.
I googled sock knitting and found several sites that could help me and sat down to try. Within two hours of my first picking up dpns I was knitting my first sock WOO HOO.
Since then my knitting skills have increased further, and I am no longer afraid of dpns, and Im all for exploring the world of knitting, in the future after I have finished my lace love affair, I intend to explore the world of illusion knitting, and journey to the far galaxy's of instaria, and fair isle, with a few pitstops into knitting KALS and groups, I know that I will meet and befreind all types of people and Im really looking forward to it.

Oh no not another knitting blog

Yes, if your asking it is another knitters blog, about the trials and errors of a left handed knitter in a right handed world.

I first started crocheting whilst I was a girl, being left handed meant that it was impossible for my right handed mother to teach me. We did try, with mirrors but I kept watching her hands rather than the mirror and it only confused me further still.

Determined not to let this stop me, I used my second greatest love, to help me which is reading. I found a left handed instruction book from the library and studied it with great zeal, in the end I had the rudiments down and I was on my way.

For years, I knitted jumpers, scarves and blankets, never giving much thought to what I was doing, just pleased I was able to create something out of yarn. But as time went on I found myself inexplicably drawn to yarn, I found myself unable to walk past yarn shops without going in and buying on impulse, yarn that seemed to talk to me and call out to me "knit me, make me into something beautiful"

As a result of this I ended up with a yarn stash with packets of wool stashed away awaiting that perfect project that would give life to the beautiful yarn and start its life as a piece of wearable art.

Well that was the plan, but at the moment I have a fixation and its hard to shake and the fixation is lace not just any lace but the lace you get in stoles and wraps and such. This fixation has lasted for the last year and at the moment I cannot see an end to it cause I love lace, so the stash is going to have to wait (I would like to remind the stash that good things come to those that wait- so please stop shouting at me)