We are presently in the depth of winter, and every year I look forward to the return of spring.
I love winter (July being my birthday month and all - winter means I get presents!). I love the cold and am quite happy wandering around in short sleeves, much to the annoyance of others (I get lots of comments eg "I am getting cold just LOOKING at you"). This year, winter has kind of passed me by. I don't know if it is the new place I have moved into, that it doesn't get cold like the old one (I literally moved 2 doors down, so microclimate-wise it should be the same), or if it is that this year just hasn't been cold. Most mornings on the short walk across the carpark to the office it is only just registering on my 'fresh' scale - a little nippy, but nothing to worry about.
But every year I can't wait for the arrival of spring. The coming of spring for me is heralded by my sighting of the first spring blossom. This year it was a flowering quince when out driving the other day. Now that I have seen one, they are popping up all over the place. I love looking at flowers - the magnolias are in full flush at the moment, and looking glorious, camellias seem to be just finishing, and have seen some azaleas as well (not sure when they are supposed to be flowering, cos what I have seen is pretty scant).
Spring to me is the time of rebirth - I am always reminded of the myth of Persephone, where spring is the time she returns to the earth from the underworld. Every year I hope that I fall in love in spring. It is the perfect time of year for it. The air carries the scent of flowers and the promise of warmer weather. The days get longer and the colours of the world seem brighter as the new, fresh green leaves start to appear on the trees.
I am lucky that where I work is essentially a large parkland, with a lake. I get to go down to the lake often and spend time with nature. There is a small patch of bush near the lake, and in spring all the native flowers come out in bloom. One of my personal favourites is Pittosporum, which has this wonderful heady scent. But this little patch also has other gems such as purple flag, and a couple of years ago I found a delightful ground orchid (nearly trod on it, being my version of discovery).
Spring also means lots of baby birds (I absolutely love ducks and geese - in the pet kind of way, not the eating kind of way - in fact I refuse to eat them, as I would refuse to eat cat or dog). And the lake is home to lots of water birds, which means it gets lots of baby water birds in spring, especially the ducklings, which are so cute. We have some roads running through the site, and I have been known to stand in the middle of the road and stop traffic to allow mummy and daddy duck, and baby ducks, to cross the road unharmed. (I heard from one of my friends the other day that some of his colleagues refer to the 'crazy duck lady' - can't help wonder if it is me they are talking about...)
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Inaugural
Welcome to my first blog entry. It is hard to know where to begin.
Firstly, I plan this to be a blog about what goes on inside my head, stream of concsiousness stuff, but not necessarily all of the time. Sometimes I will have things written in my head before they get to the keypad, other times I will be typing fresh, such as now.
There are a few things I have in mind for the first entry, but as I still hope to have something to say in the future, not all of it might get said.
A little about me - I bake (& cook), sew, knit, read, and work (to pay for all that came before). Some of this blog will talk about these things, especially baking and knitting, which is my current obsession.
It started off a couple of months ago. I finished knitting the sleeves to the aran jumper I had been knitting since 1996 for my now ex-husband (good for me, I get to keep it, and if I ever actually do the finishing bits, it will be gorgeous) (I have read elsewhere that knitting a jumper for your boyfriend is almost like the kiss of death, well, it worked on my husband too...). Time to cast about for a new project, and really wanted to do aran again, but a proper, traditional style one, with traditional patterns. Now, this is when I started the wool (aka yarn) hunt. I live in Australia - do you think I could find a local yarn of 12ply in a natural shade? I spent days scouring the net and came up blank (BTW have since found some but have totally moved on)(and get used to the parentheses - I use them, dashes and ellipses a lot... though you have probably noticed this by now).
I ended up deciding upon a cable sweater by Erika Knight which I decided to do in Rowan Romance. It was a chicken and egg thing - I fell in love with the yarn around the same time I found the book, but took me a while to put the two together in my head.
It was while I was casting about for a pattern for the Romance when I purchased the first copy of the British magazine 'The Knitter'. There was a jumper in there that had some cable, and I planned to do a mish mash of this with an existing pattern I had (I should mention here, just because I took a while to finish my previous project [and I should also mention that I am one of life's great unfinishers - I have an embarressing quantity of patchwork and cross stitch UFOs] that I did in fact have an existing pattern. This had been for a cable jumper that I knitted during immediately prior to the abovementioned aran, and it took me about 2 weeks to knit [much to the astonishment of my family that I actually finished something]) but then again, it was 12 ply (and a very thick one at that) and the cable was really easy (unlike its successor).
So, back to 'The Knitter'. This was all very serendipitous, cos around the same time I had found some Kidsilk Spray in Tea Rose on ebay at a good price (much better than the prices in Australia, even with international postage. Same goes for patchwork fabric - I would love to buy local, and I do when I can, but honestly, by the time you buy it and pay for postage within Australia [or petrol and tolls if you are driving, not that I know of anywhere within driving distance that stocks it, and I live in Sydney, so if you were going to get it anywhere, you would think here would be the place], it can be almost double the cost.) One of the patterns in 'The Knitter' was for (another) Erika Knight - a lacy top in Kidsilk Haze (funnily enough, this too came from Glamour Knits, which is the book from which the Romance pattern was sourced). So I started knitting the lace sweater.
And frogged.
And knitted.
And frogged.
And knitted.
And frogged.
And knitted.
As you can tell, I got off to more than 1 false start. It had been a very long time since I had done anything like a lace pattern in knitting, so the 'yo' versus 'yf' took a bit of getting used to. Anyone who has knitted with Kidsilk Haze or Spray may commiserate on how difficult it is to frog (I know tink everything [even with lifelines I don't frog - I find it too annoying], and for this item I put in lifelines every 6 rows and obsessively check the pattern about 2-3 times per row, just in case). The biggest challenge was going from 14ply on 12mm needles to 2ply on 3.00mm (well, 3.25mm, but more on this in a later blog, possibly). That was funny - I couldn't hold the needles and the yarn in my hands at the same time and actually produce anything.
In addition to learning to knit with smaller yarn and needles, there was a whole vernacular that I had never encountered before - tink? frog? lifeline? the abovementioned yo? - which I discovered when tootling on the net trying to find bits and pieces.
One of these was the website of missalicefaye (and apologies for no links. I am a bit of a novice at the whole web etiquette thing, so not sure if I should link within a blog [and I can say from previous blog reading that etiquette does seem to mutate according to the community {for want of a better word} it engenders ] I am also only just in the infancy stages, as you can tell, so I think for now plain text will do, and I can work on fancy stuff as I go along). Now, I fell in love with her beautifully knitted shawls from minute one (it was actually longer than that - my first recollection of her site, and I don't know how I ended up there, was a picture of the Unst Stole before it was blocked, then relentlessly hunted the site until I worked out what it was - so in fact I actually fell in love with a small mound of white knitted lace).
So, back to the serendipity thing. Everthing kind of formed a confluence, pointing me in the direction of lace knitting. I have become obsessed. I love yarn, I love colour, I love fiddly things I can do with my hands while watching television, I love being able to go online and spend days looking at yarn and deciding what to buy, or what patterns there are out there. I should put in here a hero-worshipping genuflect in the direction of Ravelry (once again, no URL - sorry). You guys totally ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is not only a brilliant resource for knitters (and I do mean brilliant. One of my friends is a prodigious developer, and from him [and my own knowledge of building databases] I have had a small peek into the window of what it takes to build a site such as yours and OMG you have done such fantastic job). In the space of about 3 months I have gone from, well, basically nothing (the aran took so blinking long I don't feel I am qualified to refer to myself as a *knitter*, although I have been able to knit for almost forever, and I did potter around with fancy patterns as a child) to obsessive lace knitter. My stash is impressive (and growing, like my visa bill...) and I have already decided what to do next (today anyway - decision will probably be different tomorrow when I discover a new yarn or pattern...).
Present project is BadCatDesigns 'Summer Sampler Study' in Claudia Silk Lace, Pistachio, for those who are interested. This yarn was originally purchased to make a shawl for my mother, but had a few incidents when transforming from skein to ball ie about 30 hours of unknotting (purchased swift immediatley upon completion of ball, so I never have to go through that again!), so decided to knit this for myself instead with the yarn that is now just a little the worse for all that untangling... (and purchased 2 additional skeins for shawl for mother - I think I got the last 2 in captivity).
Well, this should mark the end of my first blog - I feel I have blathered on for quite long enough. As I predicted, I didn't actually achieve what I set out to talk about, and got seriously side-tracked - I didn't even get to mention my equal obsession with silk, especially silk yarn, and baking, or other things like my cats (yes, another knitter with cats - who'd have thought), books... (more on these in the future, I hope).
Bon Chance
Firstly, I plan this to be a blog about what goes on inside my head, stream of concsiousness stuff, but not necessarily all of the time. Sometimes I will have things written in my head before they get to the keypad, other times I will be typing fresh, such as now.
There are a few things I have in mind for the first entry, but as I still hope to have something to say in the future, not all of it might get said.
A little about me - I bake (& cook), sew, knit, read, and work (to pay for all that came before). Some of this blog will talk about these things, especially baking and knitting, which is my current obsession.
It started off a couple of months ago. I finished knitting the sleeves to the aran jumper I had been knitting since 1996 for my now ex-husband (good for me, I get to keep it, and if I ever actually do the finishing bits, it will be gorgeous) (I have read elsewhere that knitting a jumper for your boyfriend is almost like the kiss of death, well, it worked on my husband too...). Time to cast about for a new project, and really wanted to do aran again, but a proper, traditional style one, with traditional patterns. Now, this is when I started the wool (aka yarn) hunt. I live in Australia - do you think I could find a local yarn of 12ply in a natural shade? I spent days scouring the net and came up blank (BTW have since found some but have totally moved on)(and get used to the parentheses - I use them, dashes and ellipses a lot... though you have probably noticed this by now).
I ended up deciding upon a cable sweater by Erika Knight which I decided to do in Rowan Romance. It was a chicken and egg thing - I fell in love with the yarn around the same time I found the book, but took me a while to put the two together in my head.
It was while I was casting about for a pattern for the Romance when I purchased the first copy of the British magazine 'The Knitter'. There was a jumper in there that had some cable, and I planned to do a mish mash of this with an existing pattern I had (I should mention here, just because I took a while to finish my previous project [and I should also mention that I am one of life's great unfinishers - I have an embarressing quantity of patchwork and cross stitch UFOs] that I did in fact have an existing pattern. This had been for a cable jumper that I knitted during immediately prior to the abovementioned aran, and it took me about 2 weeks to knit [much to the astonishment of my family that I actually finished something]) but then again, it was 12 ply (and a very thick one at that) and the cable was really easy (unlike its successor).
So, back to 'The Knitter'. This was all very serendipitous, cos around the same time I had found some Kidsilk Spray in Tea Rose on ebay at a good price (much better than the prices in Australia, even with international postage. Same goes for patchwork fabric - I would love to buy local, and I do when I can, but honestly, by the time you buy it and pay for postage within Australia [or petrol and tolls if you are driving, not that I know of anywhere within driving distance that stocks it, and I live in Sydney, so if you were going to get it anywhere, you would think here would be the place], it can be almost double the cost.) One of the patterns in 'The Knitter' was for (another) Erika Knight - a lacy top in Kidsilk Haze (funnily enough, this too came from Glamour Knits, which is the book from which the Romance pattern was sourced). So I started knitting the lace sweater.
And frogged.
And knitted.
And frogged.
And knitted.
And frogged.
And knitted.
As you can tell, I got off to more than 1 false start. It had been a very long time since I had done anything like a lace pattern in knitting, so the 'yo' versus 'yf' took a bit of getting used to. Anyone who has knitted with Kidsilk Haze or Spray may commiserate on how difficult it is to frog (I know tink everything [even with lifelines I don't frog - I find it too annoying], and for this item I put in lifelines every 6 rows and obsessively check the pattern about 2-3 times per row, just in case). The biggest challenge was going from 14ply on 12mm needles to 2ply on 3.00mm (well, 3.25mm, but more on this in a later blog, possibly). That was funny - I couldn't hold the needles and the yarn in my hands at the same time and actually produce anything.
In addition to learning to knit with smaller yarn and needles, there was a whole vernacular that I had never encountered before - tink? frog? lifeline? the abovementioned yo? - which I discovered when tootling on the net trying to find bits and pieces.
One of these was the website of missalicefaye (and apologies for no links. I am a bit of a novice at the whole web etiquette thing, so not sure if I should link within a blog [and I can say from previous blog reading that etiquette does seem to mutate according to the community {for want of a better word} it engenders ] I am also only just in the infancy stages, as you can tell, so I think for now plain text will do, and I can work on fancy stuff as I go along). Now, I fell in love with her beautifully knitted shawls from minute one (it was actually longer than that - my first recollection of her site, and I don't know how I ended up there, was a picture of the Unst Stole before it was blocked, then relentlessly hunted the site until I worked out what it was - so in fact I actually fell in love with a small mound of white knitted lace).
So, back to the serendipity thing. Everthing kind of formed a confluence, pointing me in the direction of lace knitting. I have become obsessed. I love yarn, I love colour, I love fiddly things I can do with my hands while watching television, I love being able to go online and spend days looking at yarn and deciding what to buy, or what patterns there are out there. I should put in here a hero-worshipping genuflect in the direction of Ravelry (once again, no URL - sorry). You guys totally ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is not only a brilliant resource for knitters (and I do mean brilliant. One of my friends is a prodigious developer, and from him [and my own knowledge of building databases] I have had a small peek into the window of what it takes to build a site such as yours and OMG you have done such fantastic job). In the space of about 3 months I have gone from, well, basically nothing (the aran took so blinking long I don't feel I am qualified to refer to myself as a *knitter*, although I have been able to knit for almost forever, and I did potter around with fancy patterns as a child) to obsessive lace knitter. My stash is impressive (and growing, like my visa bill...) and I have already decided what to do next (today anyway - decision will probably be different tomorrow when I discover a new yarn or pattern...).
Present project is BadCatDesigns 'Summer Sampler Study' in Claudia Silk Lace, Pistachio, for those who are interested. This yarn was originally purchased to make a shawl for my mother, but had a few incidents when transforming from skein to ball ie about 30 hours of unknotting (purchased swift immediatley upon completion of ball, so I never have to go through that again!), so decided to knit this for myself instead with the yarn that is now just a little the worse for all that untangling... (and purchased 2 additional skeins for shawl for mother - I think I got the last 2 in captivity).
Well, this should mark the end of my first blog - I feel I have blathered on for quite long enough. As I predicted, I didn't actually achieve what I set out to talk about, and got seriously side-tracked - I didn't even get to mention my equal obsession with silk, especially silk yarn, and baking, or other things like my cats (yes, another knitter with cats - who'd have thought), books... (more on these in the future, I hope).
Bon Chance
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