New Projects - inside and out

I have finally gotten around to having a go with Wollmeise.

First I swatched (but not with the colour I was going to use):

To me it feels like cotton to knit with but it came out much softer after washing and blocking.

Deciding on a project was hardest, in the end Raiun won. My project or  Rav Link

Specs:
3.25mm needles
Wollmeise twin in Petit Poison Dark
gauge 6sts/ 8 rows per inch

Things I have learnt:

Provisional Cast On.  A simple figure 8 cast on. You can just see the wonky stitches where the marker is denoting the Cast on row. It took me an hour to get this right, I nearly gave up.Looks ok though, I will try to snug the stitches up later.

 M1P = Make one purl, yep I have never done this before either. Some are a little wonky until I got it right. I bit the bullet and looked it up rather than trying to work it out myself. I couldn't decide whether to pick up the bar from front to back or back to front.

There are a few mistakes right up near the beginning of the sleeve increases. A purl that should have been a knit etc.  This is where I second guessed the designer's plan and changed a knit to a purl because I thought the pattern ribbing would not be correct. So I have learnt to trust the designer in future and just go with the pattern. I will not try to fix it by dropping it down and picking back up because I know what will happen if I drop down 7 rows and can't get back up sounds easy but it's near another lifted increase and I just know i could stuff it up really well so I will live with it. Yes, I can do that, I can live with imperfection, just watch me.
It is actually bugging me a lot but it's such a tiny thing that no-one will see because my hair will be covering it up. So shhh, no-one will know it's there but me.

Outside of the house we have been developing our veggie garden this long weekend.
So far we have planted corn, tomatoes, coloured silverbeet, lettuce, leeks, capsicum, zucchini, carrots and basil.
We also have most of our dwarf fruit trees in. We have 2 apples, 2 nectarines, peach and an orange, we are still looking for a dwarf mandarin. Most trees are full of blossoms.

Here's the resident gardener planting out the ornamentals. The veggie patch is the part covered in pea straw at the back. This is where our big double shed used to be.

We also have the formal ornamental part complete with pot:

I reckon the pot will get blown over in a strong wind gust but we will see. It looks crooked but I keep telling myself that is part of the optical illusion of the pot's design.  Either its that or already on its way over.

Must include a pic of our water feature now that we have pots next to it:

Finally the obligatory kitteh pictures.
They are sneaky, I opened the craft room door to hang up some laundry indoors (didn't want pea straw on the freshly laundered clothes) Kitty snuck in, ignored my stern NO, jumped up on the sofa and immediately snuggled in as if she had been asleep for ages.  Andy soon followed her.

They had swapped places from where they first were, my guess is that Andy went to bite snuggle Kitty so she got up and moved away from him and he took her spot - this happens a lot.

The best part is no more uni until January next year, well one more assignment to submit but it is DONE, just hanging on to it because I always think of other things to add after submitting, yay. I'm taking Summer Semester off this year before I burn out. That leaves just 4 units to go then I will be finished. Two each year as two units are full on practicums, one music which should be easy and an Entreprenurial Professional something or other.

So the next few months will be focusing on making resources for my current class- still working as a School Services Officer in Special Ed, unpacking the many boxes still in the shed, putting my craft room in order (no pictures because it is too messy at the moment) and knitting -can't wait to try out my new garnrollenhalter that came today:

It spins so quietly and effortlessly releases your yarn as you knit. A combined bulk order with a Ravelry group. I had been using this:

from here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Rotating-Yarn-Holder/
This one is noisy as the lazy susan is very rattly. However it did work quite well and the noise was ok after a while. I simply Blu-Tacked a small lazy susan spinner onto the bottom of a CD spindle, nowhere near as complicated as the linked project. It needed the whole spindle to spin and not have the yarn rotating around the stick part causing friction.

So...I have Raiun to complete then on to a Featherweight Cardi in Wollmeise lace (Im Jahr Der Ratte), Ardelise in Bendy (Red Tweed) oh and I must make a Vanadium Bendy Classic 5 ply (Cranberry) and I must make Elfe too though not necessarily in that order. What's on your To Do list?

FO Dark and Stormy

My first finished jumper for 2012 - Dark and Stormy
Specs:
4mm needle
Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 12ply in Midnight Tweed.
Buttons from the Button Bar.

I'm happy with this although there is a bit of pooching at the top of the fronts, but hopefully blocking will help improve the look.
The buttons are just gorgeous, the photo does not do them justice, they have a shimmer that matches the colour of the midnight tweed. The lady in the Button Bar was very helpful and was able to find just the right buttons in a matter of minutes. Definitely well worth the cost in the end they are lovely.

Dark and Stormy progress

This is coming along well. Although I got a little keen last night and kept knitting when I really should have stopped and tried it on to measure sleeve length. I had knitted past the point where I should have started the ribbing. Only had to rip out 15 rows - luckily.

I've given the blog a revamp. Blogger is much more user friendly than it used to be, so easy to customise the widths of the sidebars, change fonts etc, I remember years ago when I just started this blog staying up late at night trying to understand HTML. It was interesting to go back and re-read it and see how things have changed over the years. Maybe I will endeavour to update it more often (even if noone reads it :) )

My Stick Family from WiddlyTinks.com

Long Time No See

Wow, it has been ages since I posted.

A quick update:
Still at uni - 4 units to go = 2years. Doing it really slowly now, motivation has dwindled some after starting about 6 yrs ago. Plus no guarantee of a job after giving up the hours that I have now.

Much has happened in my personal life in short....found the man of my dreams, demolished my old home, built a new one, got engaged and now we all live happily together.

Started knitting again about 3 months ago and currently knitting Dark and Stormy  (Rav Link) have 1.5 sleeves and part of body to go. 

It's finished and it fits!!

I just finished sewing a zipper in my Viking Cabled Central Park Hoody and I looove it!!
Finally something that fits.
I mucked up the zipper 3 times and had to unpick it luckily I only had to unpick one side but gah! so much unpicking.

I am now an expert (self-proclaimed of course) at installing zippers.
Here is what I have learnt:

• Baste it in with two strands of sewing thread with small stitches. Make sure you are lining up the rib on both sides.
• Use a sewing machine to secure it in place permanently - use a medium/long stitch - I didn’t realise my sewing machine, although set to medium, was sewing tiny stitches.
• Remove and tidy up threads.
• Dance around and show the cat, be amazed at your skills.

Anyway it is done, drumroll please...

I blame Ikea

This room has always been a junkroom and the door is kept closed. I have wanted to improve the room by adding some bookshelves but never really had the time. Miss A and I went to Ikea, they had a great bookshelf system on display that might just work in that room. That afternoon, after a few calculations I roped Miss A into helping me clear out the room, it was just going to get a tidy up at that stage. Then maybe we could put the bookshelves in bit by bit over the next few months. It was so cluttered we could take 3 steps inside the door and that was it.

Over 4 days we fixed it up:








Day 1: We cleared it out. After clearing out the room we could see that it was pointless putting in new bookshelves when the carpet was so awful - split and tearing and worn in places, so...we started ripping out the carpet.
.


Day 2: Now it was almost bare it looked better We got some carpet tiles from Bunnings and over the next day they were laid. Then we went back to Ikea to order the bookshelves and came back home to finish laying the tiles. After dumping everything in 3 other rooms it looked so messy that we had to get the back room in order fairly quickly as I couldn't stand having it so messy.









Day 3: We finished the carpeting the night before delivery so we just had to wait for the bookshelves to arrive. We assembled them (that was fun) and put them in the room. The first one took an hour ( and a few melt downs) to put together, the second one took 45 mins and by the third one we had the steps down pat so the rest took 30 mins or less to assemble.





They fit along the long wall round the corner and almost along the length of the short wall.

Day 4: Now we just had to put back in everything we had taken out. Would it all fit? Would it look messy? Would we have more space?



The room looks fantastic, there is room for the rocking chair so Miss A can have a quiet place (so can I ;) )





It all fits, with room to spare! There is heaps of space on top too. I even attached the bookshelves to the walls for stability. Although now I think I need to readjust them as the shelves are together at the tops, but have a half a centimetre gap at the bottom and I fear they are angled toward each other rather than straight. Which means unscrewing them and I know how much fun I had getting those screws in the first time!



Here's the view from the doorway:


Clearly more than 3 steps.

This was a long overdue home improvement, we worked from the time we woke up to the time we collapsed into bed for almost 4 days. My back hurts, my feet are dirty and my hand is numb from the screwing in of many screws and my bank balance has dropped. Like I said...I blame Ikea, but the room now has a nice, fresh feel to it.

Wollmeise Wednesday

Wow, This is a yarn that I have wanted for ages! I can't believe that I managed to actually get some.

It is Wollmeise Poison Nr 5 and I will love it and pet it and call it George



One of these will definitely become an Ishbel.

I also managed to buy some other colours, oops:

Petit Poison


Fliederbusch


Der Letze Versuch


Purple is my favourite colour.
The camera does not capture the beautiful colours of the wollmeise at all, they are lovely.

Christmas has definitely come early.

Spooky

We don't celebrate Halloween in Australia but over the years it is becoming increasingly popular. This year, as a favour for a friend Miss A and I went to the Parents Without Partners (PWOP - there's a whole 'nother post there) Halloween Party.

Of course we had to dress up gah!:

Miss A looking scary as the Grim Reaper and me as Buffy The Vampire Slayer. So easy to do BTVS - wack on a blonde wig and go find Mr Pointy and we're all set. This is the best picture of BTVS although I couldn't work out why the flash wasn't working, it took me ages to work out that my finger was covering it - and I have 6 photos to prove it. I wish I could blame that on the blonde wig but unfortunately my brain has decided not to work properly for a few weeks now.

My friend and her daughter went as a witch and the devil. I can post this pic as it doesn't show her face and I don't like posting pics of others without their permission and if i asked her then she would know about this blog and shhh it's a secret.


They had some activities for the kids like this one:

Miss A and her team had to wrap a small child in toilet paper, you can just see the poor little paper-wrapped boy. They also had an eyeball and spoon race.

It was a good night lots of music and most people made the effort to dress up.

Watch out, she's comin' for you, and you and.....you!

Delights

I was lucky a few weeks ago, I am not often lucky but must have gotten some good karma from somewhere - treat people nicely, have some patience, be kind etc lol.
I managed to catch a Wollmeise update following the steps posted by RoseRed. Here's my first lot of Wollmeise:

L to R we have Fuschia, Aquarius, Hortensie, Rittersporn and 2 Ballerina.

Here they are close up the camera did not capture the colours quite correctly they seem to glow IRL, but it does show the difference in colours especially with Rittersporn.

Fuschia

Aquarius

Hortensie

Rittersporn

Ballerina

I can't get over how tightly twisted the skeins are they are very firm and stick out, not soft and floofy and falling over. I'll see how they go when it's time to wind them into balls.

The knitting goddess shined on me again and I now have some Poison Nr 5 ( along with a few others) on its way here, hopefully this week (it takes only 7 days from when it is marked 'dispatched' ...cool). I have wanted Poison Nr 5 since I saw it being knitted on someone's blog just 2 years ago, and my heart skipped a beat. Will post pictures when it gets here.