Woolie wombat

2010-11-29T18:03:00.000-08:00

Left-hand-Turn

Sunday, October 3, 2010
Down the track
Well its a bit further down the track since I first started this blog then abandoned, but life as I often say seems to just carry you away and in my case this is how it has been.

Its funny how life can take a sudden twist whether for the worst or better and I'm not sure in my case which one that is. Certainly I'm living in a much better place than I ever imagined but the journey itself was very interesting to say the least.

Lets go back a bit, the last post from me I was living in Cockatoo, a little town about an hour and a half from Melbourne, Australia. The house we had was a pleasant little house but it was a little too small for us and we had quite a few possessions stored in our front room that we couldn't find room for.

Now I haven't discussed my family history here and its a bit like that proverbial skeleton in the closet some dark secrets that the family never discuss but here am I broadcasting to - well the world but I figure if I talk about it here I may help someone else who is dealing with the same type of problems and help them understand what the hell is going on....(and maybe get some idea's on how to handle my dilemma's that crop up)

My parents divorced when I was five and as lots of divorces go it was messy and as a result the family which consisted of myself, my sister and father and mother ended up in different places I was with my mother and my sister was with my father (my sister eventually ran away from my father at the age of 12 and came to live with us). Both parents commenced getting on with their lives which meant in their case remarrying and having more children. My mother had two more children both boys and my father married a lady who had two children already and then had a further two children a boy and a girl.

After my sister ran away and came to live with us all communication between father and us his daughters ceased and whilst we knew where they lived we did not try to contact them preferring to begin anew...

Advance 30 years and I am a 30+ woman seeking answers and wondering what the father I never knew was like so I began the search of finding him, I find him ,visit, meet my half brother and sister and from then a regular contact by phone began...

Forward another 10 or so years and I'm caring for my sister who is dying of terminal cancer and I persuade my dad to come down and visit and say the last goodbyes as she won't ever see him again and he leaves to go back home...

Another five year passes and whilst sporadic contact is kept by phone I continue on with my style of life and he grows older and lives alone...he gets sick, is taken in by my half sister and he seems content. Then came a series of phone calls to me where it was obvious something was wrong but he didn't know what it was - he was unhappy and seemed confused. Finally one day he said he would like to come for a holiday and it was agreed that I would come and pick him up - then silence....

At the time it didn't worry me to much dad hadn't been a great communicator and I assumed he had forgotten what he wanted to do and something more important had come along but his confusion worried me a bit so a week or two later I rang to check on him...the phone had been disconnected - this set off alarm bells with me as he hadn't mentioned having problems with the phone and he had promised to get back to me so I rang the police station in his area and asked them to do a welfare check on him.

Police went out and found him ok and rang me to let me know..apparently he had forgotten to pay bill (no big deal) he promised to pay bill and contact me so I waited... Finally he rang and when I questioned him about bill he said no something was wrong with phone but it was all ok now and when did I want to pick him up for a visit?

Arrangements were made and I finally went to pick him up. I found him living in the backyard of my half-sisters ex-husbands house in 3 little workman portable type units and when I walked into his lounge/bedroom part of the unit I was assailed by a stench of a combination of mould, urine and cat feces he proudly showed me around we walked outside to another portable and he showed me his separate little kitchen with inch thick grease coating the benches and out of date food and old unwashed dishes piled high in kitchen sink and went to show me his other little portable toilet and shower from what I had seen it was enough...I grabbed his bag and his cat and took him to the car.

Ok I think I really have told you enough for today, even this post is a bit like war and peace but still I just needed to write it down whether you read the lot is your option I make no excuses

A New Year and a New Beginning

2010-01-24T03:29:00.001-08:00

I have been rather remiss in my blogging, and I have decided that this year I am going to try and at least write in the blog once a week (yes I know I'm already behind) so with that in mind Ive changed the blogs colors and am hoping this will be an incentive for me to blog a little bit more often...we will have to see how it goes....

Tomorrow I'm off to Torquay Hubs has managed to snag himself a ewe beaut Ute and we are off to pick it up tomorrow I hope to get some pics of the wonderful town of Torquay. Anyway enough blather will hopefully be back tomorrow with some lovely pics of Torquay!

Simple solutions

2008-09-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

Ive been having a problem with my plying...not the plying itself but the yarn being fed to the wheel, my little upright lazy kate tended to spin a little too freely allowing my yarn to gather around the spoke and causing the yarn to snag and snarl, then a comment by someone recently talking about lazy kates made me stop and think........

By turning the lazy kate on its side I stopped the freewheeling bobbins....such a simple solution and works brilliantly!

2008-08-28T16:55:00.000-07:00

Hello again!
Im back after an extremely looooong abscence in which much has happened. Now where to start is the tricky bit but we'll start with the Internet which is now adsl, after about 3 months of the internet being slow, dropping out and tying up the phone we had had enough and decided to get adsl cable internet and I haven't looked back.

Next on the list is my car. Yay! after months of sitting in the yard and looking like a dumped vehicle it has been mechanically checked, had all its bits that needed renewing renewed and has even done a long drive away to Bendigo to check out the local Sheep and Wool show(more about this later)

Now for some rather *cough* big news in my time away from the blog I got married! Yep I know my blog says Im already married but that wasn't "official" and so my partner Andy and I formalized this by getting a celebrant and a very small gathering of people to officially witness the occasion nothing big as Andy and I are not the "big event" type of people. It was a lovely day and both Andy and I are extremely happy how it all turned out.

Now Im not sure if I mentioned this but if you remember way way back when I first started posting I had got myself a wheel given to me by Mr 50 Acres which I swapped for a little Sheridan Wheel (Sherry as she is known) Sherry and I have had a happy partnership and have gotten to know each other very well. Now Sherry's former owner contacted me a couple of months ago she unfortunately had a bad hip and was unable to spin anymore and was wondering if I wanted the wheel back, I said yes and got the country spinner back.

I didn't really have a use for the country spinner and I mentioned this wheel to Mandie of Ewe give Me the Knits she offered to swap the country spinner with a ashford double drive which I jumped at the chance of (I had the ashie in mind for another freind of mine Neekie but unfortunately she didn't have the space) but anyways in due course the Ashford has arrived and has taken up residence in my Craft Room. Her name is Brandy and she is a wonderful quiet spinner and Im proud to be her new owner.

The last new member of the household is my carder. Calvin Bruce Carder the First, with spinning rapidly taking over as my preferred choice Calvin has become one of my beloved making some beautiful batts and giving order to my fibres which seem to have been hoarded and crammed into every avail spot I can find..... No pix today as Im being lazy and I've got some carding I want to be doing (housework? Whats that?)Back later............

Random Act of Kindness

2008-03-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

I have been the lucky recipient of a random act of kindness (RAK) this is a lovely gift I received last week from a member of a group I joined on Ravelry last week. Isn't it gorgeous? Pictured is two lovely skeins of lace weight yarn and some of my favorite munchies roll ups and some yummy chocolate, there was more but unfortunately I couldn't resist and the chocolate was eaten very quickly as I prepared the gifts for their photo shoot. The idea of the group was to gift items that people wanted and send anonymously (or not) and to give the recipients a lovely surprise in the mail -something totally different from the usual bills that usually come in the mail, and I was happy to open my mail last week and find these gifts. So to my lovely Rak'r I'd like to say thanks for my gift, I will use the yarn to make a shawl/stole and every time I wear it will think of the wonderful person whose heart is so generous that she is able to share such lovely yarn with me.

In other news, hubcap has finally decided to sell his car, although this car is old, it has duel fuel and its quite obvious from the amount of enquires about it that this is one of its main selling points with the price of gas nowdays people are looking for an alternative way of cutting fuel costs. Hubcap is sad to see the girl go (I for one am not, for the last 6 months this car has quite a bit of money for parts and such forth) and I am looking forward to my own car getting back on the road - after almost a year being housebound it will be lovely to be able to get out and about and not rely on hubcap to do jobs that I normally do. I do understand what hubs is going through the car has been very reliable over the years but the time has come, and it will nice to finally have a car on the road that we can both use.

Dial-up is a PITA

2008-03-01T17:39:00.000-08:00

I have been ignoring my blog, not because I haven't had anything to write but because I am on dial-up and dial up is an extreme PITA. I can be online and suddenly dial up will cut out, as a result my phone bill has been rocketing up in charges, which delays my return to ADSL grrr.

Still I have managed to keep busy, my father who lives in an area where sheep farming is prominent, managed to get hold of some yummy 22 micron fleece for me and it sits in my laundry awaiting a time when I can clean it and prepare it for spinning. This fleece unlike the fleece I received several weeks ago, is fairly clean, with no sheep dags attached and Im looking forward to spinning it, I have made a rule to myself to not touch this fleece though until I have finished processing Cyril (sheeps name) Cyril obviously enjoyed rolling in his own poo going by the condition of his fleece and some of it has rather licorice looking bits attached and is NOT enjoyable at all to clean. Cyril though is giving me the opportunity of practising my spinning without the fear of totally stuffing it up and I hope by the time I have finished spinning the fibre I will be able to spin laceweight then I will be able to spin some of the fibre I have also got from EGMTK (photo above) I really like the way that EGMTK is so easy to spin, unlike my efforts at carding, where I tend to end up with lumps in my spun up fibre. I suppose my carding equipment leaves much to be desired, I have something similar to a carding brush but its a singular item and using that in conjunction with a very old and tattered dog brush is not doing much for the fibre. On the knitting front I have begun another circular shawl this time in a cream 4ply and am about half-way through, hopefully if I can stay away from ravelry and the OTF chat room I may finish it this month. I have also borrowed Victoria Lace Today from the library and am keen to try some of the beautiful stoles and wraps that are in the book - good reason to finish my shawl FAST- hehe

My first Circular Shawl

2008-02-15T15:04:00.000-08:00

Its been a few days since I last blogged, the reason being the shawl that you see in the pic. I cast on for this on Feb 1 and it has taken me two weeks to finish this project. Its the first circular shawl I have ever done, what has put me off doing circular shawls is the number of stitches you use to cast on - six little stitches joined in a circle -impossible for my fingers but a wise freind Zephyrama gave me an alternative cast on using crochet which worked a treat after that it was plain sailing. The longest part of the shawl was working the border that took me a couple of days to do but it was worth the effort. I am happy with the way it turned out.

A little purse

2008-01-31T19:17:00.000-08:00

Well the month has flown by rather fast, and I realise that I havent posted to my blog for two weeks so here I am giving you an update of what I have been doing. I have finally unpacked and am in the new residence, though I still don't know where I have put a lot of stuff its obviously going to take me a little while to get used to the new place. The biggest challenge at the moment is getting used to having neighbours again - all whom seem to have dogs(barking ones). I of course have two of my own, but they have been brought up NOT to bark at every little movement, whilst the dogs around us seem to bark at birds, leaves and even the dark. I am used to being able to get up and walk outside in my dressing gown here if I do that my neighbour is usually the very first person that I see and my dressing gown is not the most glamorous item in my wardrobe.
I did not knit for the first 17 days of the new year, I have been given a fleece and I have been busy cleaning it and carding it ready to spin. I am only a third of the way through washing and carding and so far I have three bins full of fleece waiting to be spun and I am not looking forward to cleaning the rest of the fleece its so labour intensive. The little purse in the pic is what I managed to finish in knitting, the pattern comes from the book A Gathering of Lace by Meg Swansen and there are some beautiful patterns in this book. I really want to do another pattern in the book The Hexagonal Purse, but this is knit in the round and starts with 6 itty bitty stitches on dpns which are joined and knit in the round, for the life of me I just cannot join those itty bitty stitches into the round, I drop the needles, twist the yarn or just plain drop stitches, Ive tried everything I could think of -nothing works so if anyone has any ideas Im all ears

Four seasons in one day

2008-01-11T00:41:00.000-08:00

Victoria has always had the reputation of having four seasons in one day, and today it lived up to its reputation. First we had extremely hot weather 41 degrees in the morning, then at lunch time a cool change came through and with it a thunderstorm, not alarming in itself but when you live surrounded by natural bush a lightning strike can strike fear and start bushfires, as was the case today. Yes we had our first bushfire in our neighborhood, about 5 km away but enough to alarm our little community especially with the wild winds that had been gusting all day.
Luckily our rangers were onto the fire pretty pronto, and managed to put the fire out without loss of property or lives. On top of this we are also moving, only about 6km away and into a more suburban area but it is still a high fire danger area, (in fact there was a fire yesterday in the area but was quickly contained -got to love the CFA )
One of my neighbors Maria, rang and told me of the fire (she was at work and heard the reports from the rangers) and she had already rung her kids who were at home and told them to leave and rang me to tell me the same, I wasn't home but she left messages detailing the fire and told me it may be time to activate my fire plan - my fire plan consisted of leaving as quickly as I could but first I had to unhitch the goat so the goat could also escape if fire threatened, I would hate to have the poor animal die because it couldn't escape but luckily that never had to eventuate.

Moving is such a horrendous job and each time I move I vow never to move again, but circumstances often force me to move and each time I do it seems to get worse, I am again vowing to go through my possessions and remove the extra things that I keep and this time I am again making that vow - do I really need to keep all the extra curtains and blankets that I keep but never use? Already the new house has one room of boxes and I dread what I know is inevitable -unpacking the same damm boxes that I packed last week and the week before - I hate moving. (sigh)

Welcome to my nightmare

2008-01-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

This morning, I opened the bedroom door to find a humungus huntsman waiting to come in. I quickly found a jar and placed it over him and slid a piece of paper under the jar so I didn't have to touch him. I WAS going to release him outside but then discovered the whole house had been invaded by a total of 5 of these monsters.

Then I noticed something strange in the jar where I had put two of the spiders, there were worms in the jar with the spiders loooong skinny worms.

Needless to say I am totally grossed out and I think the jar will be going straight into the bin, and I will be dosing the family (dogs included) with worm medicine, I don't know if these worms infect humans but I'm not taking the risk. I think I also will be investing in some boxes of spider spray a whole truck worth should be enough!

Um please explain?

2008-01-04T18:06:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, the model ain't happy about it either I think!

Happy little vegemite

2008-01-03T03:41:00.000-08:00

Well after days of fingernail biting and pacing the floor I am very happy to say I have got my yarn back. Today finally the police yards were open and we were able to pick up our car. First thing I looked for was my yarn and it was there still in a plastic bag that I had put it in. No damage was done to the car, in fact not much gas was used since the car was driven only 2 blocks from the shopping centre from which it was stolen, the police actually told us who they thought had stolen the car and asked us to go thru the car and see if anything was taken.

The only thing missing was a 17 year old cordless drill, and I believe the police were going to search the suspects home and this was the ammunition that would prove the suspects guilt.

I am just glad that we have back our car, and my yarn and just want to put the whole horrible experience behind us. Already 2008 seems a lot brighter I hope it continues that way for us.

Finally its finished

2007-12-31T19:03:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-15T18:57:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-11T18:39:00.000-08:00

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!

2007-12-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-07T20:02:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-03T19:56:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-13T18:56:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-11-09T15:19:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-07T20:48:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-05T21:45:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

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...............

2007-10-16T18:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-14T23:03:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

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.....

2007-09-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-28T18:49:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-11T21:31:00.000-07:00

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)