one sleep and a sneak peak...

it is raining today, for our last day in The Gong. seems fitting somehow, as i am a little sad today.

but also excited. here is a sneak peak of our new backyard....

i may have mentioned the 'lots of grass' thing before.

we were up there yesterday pottering around - lots of work to do but lots to look forward to. you will not BELIEVE the new knitting corner!

but more on that to follow.

i did get the bulk of Lily finished yesterday, and now just have to pick up and knit on the front band and tie and then try and block it a bit. no sneak peak of that, but i will say that i am pretty pleased with it. 'loving myself sick right now' as i heard someone say once :)

we have lots to do today and tomorrow and probably no internets for a day or two, so there will be a short break in transmission but i will return from a different part of the world soon.

k xx

five sleeps...

today i thought i would post some pics of what we are leaving behind in five sleeps time. the scenic photos are courtesy of trent.

if you walk across the road and look south this is what you see. thats wollongong in the distance.

if you look north you can see people like this:

if you turn around and look back towards our house you see this:

we are behind the little blue shack, which is the only original house left in this street, built by friends of ours parents, before there was even a street here and they used a bobcat to push the sand away so they could get in the front door. the mcmansions are 'progress' apparently. personally i think they suck.

if you go down the driveway beside the blue house, you can see our house (currently a mess):

as you can see, we have no grass. this is about to change dramatically. when i post pix of the new house you will see what i mean. i do love living here and often take the beauty and the beach for granted, but in summer its a tourist nightmare, no dogs on the beach and its a fight to park your own car. i wont miss that.

in knitting news, lily needs only another couple of inches of length and the front band and tie knitted on. possibly by the end of the weekend?

even though i have to finish thuja first, and have some ranco and cherry tree hill to be getting on with, i picked up some of this to replace the grey lichen rib socks that i felted:

kate doesnt have any more of the grey 5 ply left. i can not recommend this wool highly enough. grown on the southern highlands, processed organically, no dyes (apparently sheep come in this colour). look at it up close:

scrummy.

did i mention five more sleeps....

k xx

seven sleeps....

i should apologise for the rant. trent said he didnt like it because he thought i should be happy about the move, which of course i am, and im not one to rain on anyones parade, but ranting made me feel better. and really, it was all because of that bloody tape cutter that kept scraping my knuckles and making me bleed. packing shouldnt make you bleed.

anyway we got heaps done over the weekend, including cleaning the kitchen in all those hard to reach places (good lord, what goes ON behind the stove when you're not looking?!). we crashed early last night and i missed the closing ceremony, but like rosered, there have been lots of 'lympics highlights for me. i always get addicted to the 'lympics, and end up all teary about sports i normally couldnt give a toss about!

of course i love the underdog stories, and the hard luck stories, i do really think anna meares should have got to carry the flag at the closing, because who the hell comes back from a broken neck 7 months ago to cycle like a demon losing only to the world champ? i love that pole vaulting guy, steve hooker, and that young diver, micheal mitchum, watching him cry made me cry!

but the real highlight for me was the BMX. i know, its a travesty and probably not an olympic sport, but there was something so much fun about 30 year old guys with ear piercings on tiny bikes crashing out and claiming 'that was rad dude'. i think i liked the subversiveness of it, so anti-establishment!

and the low light of course was losing to england too often. nothing worse than an ego-inflated pom doing better than the colonists at sport.

but at least the wallabies beat the boks.

and there are only seven more sleeps to go and i really am very excited!

k xx

not happy jan

i am not happy about packing. this is just a fraction of what we have done.

i am not happy about fighting with this stupid instrument that is supposed to make taping easier but doesnt.

i am not happy that i cant reach the decorative tea-making things that have been on a shelf for a year and now need a jack hammer to get the dust off them, and that i have to wait till trents finished washing the outside windows to get him to reach them so i can wash and dry them all, which is why im in here blogging not packing.

i am not happy that the car battery just died and will cost $175 to replace which is NOT in my moving budget.

i am not happy that knitting corner is packed away, and that the lily cardigan is so close to being finished why arent i sitting there finishing it?!

and i am not happy that i am enduring this torture while others hang out in groovy caffs in The Can, and i miss them and wish i had never left.

oh im sure there will be new knitting groups, and new adventures and it will all be worth it in the end but right now im just jack of it.

thats a rant and i dont care.

kxx

up down turn around please dont let me hit the ground

i have been listening to new order on my ipod while riding my bike this morning. new order lyrics dont have quite the same zing for blog post titles as smiths lyrics really do they, although they are excellent songs for bike riding, especially the 10 minute version of confusion.

god i am such an 80s tragic. i still wear my converse sneakers nearly every day. i still listen to new order and the smiths and simple minds. i suspect this whole turning 40 thing doesnt quite agree. for example, on the weekend i bought cute japanese girly bling for my phone. it was red. it matches my hello kitty watch. sigh.

anyway, i have goodies to show. firstly, the lovely little bit crafty jen sent me this last week for a blog comment competition:

it is so lovely, trent thought it couldnt be hand made! it came with a gorgeous book, perfect for knitting days!

thank you jen xx

and the postie also brought a large parcel while i was at work yesterday. when he told me it had arrived i told trent it was probably my sunnyboy. he asked if he should put it in the freezer. funny. not:

two of them remain unopened as they are being gifted, but the sunnyboy is already in use!

and i was totally thrilled to find the needle book came with two shiny new needles in it! how thoughtful is that. i stuck my own in there too:

i think i want more of these. more of everything.

todays tasks are pack up what i can of this office, and do more of my nursing research. i have a meeting scheduled in three weeks to go over my latest findings. i just havent found anything yet....aaaaagh

k xx

what happened...

this weekend? the bunnies beat the sea eagles and i was there. with a sea eagles fan. vengeance was mine this weekend.

to thuja? number two got started at said game. i had sworn off all other forms of knitting until lily was complete but given i managed to felt a perfectly good pair of lichen rib socks, i owe Him another pair. immediately.

to lily? as donni has already pointed out, blogging a garment is boring. it has grown somewhat. thats all i'll say.

to knitting corner?

obviously it hasnt been dusted properly in a while. but this is where it is now:

my life, surrounded by boxes.

k xx

this is...a work in progress

this is my first time with the 'this is' meme. i was going to do the 'where i live' one but thats about to change and the new place is more photogenic, so that can wait.

and, like the clever caffeine fairie, once i would only have been able to think about the pensky as my work in progress.

but now i am free to work on bigger things, like the Lily cardigan.

it is made from touch yarns (new zealand) possum/merino blend, and is lovely and soft and drapey - i cant wait to wear it.

despite the fact that i seem to have been talking about it forever, and despite the fact that it looks like i am not getting anywhere, in reality, it is not that far off finished. it just needs a whole lot more stocking stitch. the hard part is done, sleeves finished etc, now its just getting it to as long as i want and then doing the bands for the tie at the front.

i estimate another week, depending on how much the rest of my life gets in the way with annoying things like packing boxes. grrrrr.

k xx

why do i constantly smile at people i would much rather....

i have been checking out drewzel's blog this morning while i am supposed to be writing a history of nursing research in the british royal college of nursing, and i came across a part of her blog about things she likes, and i saw this cartoon, which i have linked to rather than putting the picture, because its SOOO funny and so relevant and you just have to check out the rest of his cartoons and we all need something else to do today rather than what we are doing, right, unless of course you are home knitting - er, resting....(hope you are feeling better bells).

k xx

ps another way to procrastinate from work (as opposed to pensky-procrastination which just took the form of knitting or daytime tv watching) is to finally figure out how to subscribe to bloglines. well der! where have i been for the last 2 years?!

oh has the world changed or have i changed

anyone getting tired of smiths lyrics yet? i'll just say that i didnt start it so you cant blame me...

seriously tho, there are some major changes afoot, in fact the last 6 months have basically just been one change after another, and a lot of it has been a change in the way i see things, and a change in what i consider important in my life.

what has been most interesting is watching how other people react to my changes. i am lucky to have as many good people in my life as i do who only want shiny happy things for us, people who have been unwavering in their support over the last year or so and who i hope i get the chance to support in like manner when required.

but of course there are some (not anyone reading this) who see the changes only in terms of how they affect themselves, as though what i do is about them personally.

it has always been hard for me to move on from people, sometimes i dont do it very well, but as i have gotten older i realise that moving on from people is what happens in life. you dont have to say goodbye and that be it, never speak again, but you dont have to live in someones pocket to still be friends.

the best friends i have now are the ones who understand that life changes and you might not talk very often, but that doesnt mean you dont think or care about each other, and when you get together there is no recrimination, no guilt, no making anyone out to be a bad friend, just catching up. maybe its because those people also have things happening in their own life, and dont need to focus on how i am living mine.

i say all this because we are on the move again. a big move. like, a really really big life changing move.

on monday september one, we leave the Gong never to return. i do love it here, with our little shack by the sea, and the easy laid back kind of life, but there is so much else on offer its impossible to refuse. i cant give too many details publically, but 'the gods' (in whatever form they might take) are currently smiling on us, and we are headed back to sydney - to a very nice part thereof, and a very large piece of land, where i will be able to grow tomatoes and have my chooks again, and where the dogs will have more room to run in than they know what to do with.

it is on the outskirts of the city, but still close to everything, and while some may think we are moving a long way, when you travel two hours to get to work from here, thirty minutes from there will be a luxury!

so things turn to chaos here again as the packing starts, and now i am working i dont have to do it all myself (yay) so posting may get erratic but i think there may be some finished objects at least to show soon, eg two pairs of socks and a cardigan i might get to wear this season:

trent thought it was funny to point that one arm was longer than the other and he could get me a pair of scissors if i needed, but those of us who read bells' blog know that its not funny at all.

k xx

freedom and discipine

well i managed to get out of one of my teaching days without annoying anyone - there was a ready substitute and an understanding course co-ordinator, so no harm done. the sense of relief is huge, now i just have two hours of australian history on monday afternoons with a much more manageable 50 students. i feel free!

this leaves two days a week now to work on publications and the other research job, so i still need to be disciplined with my time but teaching is such a mental drain, i think i am much better off without it.

speaking of discipline, some of that was required in relation to knitting. i have this little thing where because i was disciplined to within an inch of my life as a child, i still, at nearly 40, feel the need to rebel whereever possible, even if it is counter-productive to myself. like, not getting any knitting finished.

so i decided that socks were car and small space knitting, the shawl was good outdoor knitting (nice big stitches, big needles, easy pattern) and the cardigan, if i had any hope of wearing it this year, needed to become the night time knitting project. if i didnt submit to boring rounds of stocking stitch it would not get finished, so just submit and get it over with.

hence, a lot of the shawl got done this weekend at herding practice (there are some pics at trents flickr, i think there is one or two of me and poss, its been a while and we had fun - trent even hopped back in the ring with jem who is a much improved herder!) and i am going to run out of wool before thats big enough (necessitating an order from nundle at some point in the future).

and lo and behold, last night, sleeve one of lily was complete:



because its stocking stitch its curling up a lot so i have pinned out the sleeve so you can see the picot edge:

the yarn, a possum/merino blend is so soft and lucsious and the possum gives it this silvery haze, its gorgeous. i want to wear it NOW!

but i must be disciplined and do the washing up first. oh, and the other sleeve. and the body. and block it. but you know what i mean....

k xx

i was looking for a job and then i found a job....

(and heaven knows im miserable now... as the song goes). like knitabulous, i have been inspired by quiltingmicks idea of using the smiths lyrics for post titles.

i am not actually miserable, but some decisions have been made around the job thing, like opting out of some of the teaching because of the ridiculous conditions now being offered by your nations' institutions of higher learning (did you know i am now expected to teach 25-28 first years in one class and do all that extra marking and extra consultation with NO commensurate pay increase). i dont think so.

also, we have found out that we are in fact on the move to the far nothern suburbs of old sydney town sometime in the next month, and with the two days at UNSW i just cant manage the travel down here twice a week. so i will be putting some noses out of joint by withdrawing right now, but i am afraid i care more for my own nose, so to speak. i have plenty of other work to be getting on with (incl some interesting new prospects which could include a trip to wales UK in the new year) and i need time to do it in.

what made me miserable about work today was that just now trent and i were out in the car and there were people on the radio talking about the knit-in at the abc studio in ultimo and trent asked me why i wasnt there. i wailed that i didnt even know it was happening because i had NO TIME TO KNIT anymore. its true. i have not touched lily in ages and have managed only a centrimetre or two on the madder rib sock one, and have not cast on thuja two. as for the second shawl, aaagh dont even ask....

plus, like i said the other day, i have been a bit obsessed with socks, mostly cos its cold and i obviously dont have enough of them:


and here is a pic of the little detail on the madder rib heel i wanted to show you, it is just what she calls a 'german' heel, and all it is is two purls and two knits at both end of the heel flap rows but it has made a lovely effect and has inspired me to try developing the feature in my own sock design (more to be revealed):

(btw, i apologise if the pics are really big, i am on the laptop and dont have my usual image-tweaking software).

meanwhile in the mail today i got some little goodies. i put in some custom orders at buttontreelane for a slightly larger project bag for the shawl and in her infinite wisdom msquilting-clever-mick decided i would like this one (modelling assistance from miss possum):

and you might remember i brought some lovely japanese fabric at the craft and quilt show and i am so inept with the whole sewing thing it was easier to ask QM to make the kind of bag i was after rather than stuff around with a sewing machine and probly break it. this is how it turned out, and it fits the lily cardigan in there with ease:

so now i have a whole collection of project bags:

the two little ones from amanda are perfect for sock yarn in balls but not yarn cakes, and now i have three from QM. woot.

thats kostya in the background by the way, totally unimpressed by the whole thing.

now i had better get back to the work-that-could-take-me-to-wales thing.

k xx