My first Circular Shawl

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

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

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

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?

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

Happy little vegemite

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

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