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.........