in the bag

we all know that its just not knitting without the right accessories. hence, i am a little obsessed about project bags. i have a few of them, all different sizes, but recently ran into a problem because i am usually only working on one large item at a time. that one item was cobblestone, and it had my large custom made project bag all to itself. until recently. until i decided to start a second lily cardigan. they have been sharing the bag but it was not a happy marriage. and then this morning i discovered a little coffee shop in mona vale that sells little knick-knacky things, including these ecosilk bags:

they are fantastic colours, made from parachute silk, so they are actually really tough and fully washable, and you can tie the handles together. they are meant to be shopping bags but i think it will do just fine for a project bag. lily is happy.

cobblestone may have a bag to itself but it is not otherwise a happy project. look closely:

i was knitting merrily along on it the other night and felt something rough in my hand, looked down and found this:

really bad form. not happy jo sharp.

k xx

a walk around the block

whats this you ask? two posts in two days? if you answered 'oh kylie's working from home, she must be procrastinating' you answered correctly. go to the top of the class.

seriously, i am done with grant application software.

i did have a good start to the day tho, and i thought i would share it. you have seen lots of pictures of the amazing view over the back yard, so i thought i would take you on my walk around the block this morning.

possum and i set off around 720am, me in my new shoes:

these are adidas runners ( i think i might have heard of that brand before - ha ha injoke). i got them on special for $80. they are so white they glow. they have a silver bit on them that might make me go faster. i plan to be wearing them a lot around london, so they need to get worn in first.

we start by negotiating the driveway:

and then turn right onto the main road that links our village with the next one. then there is just bushland:

we walk up here for a while, trying to avoid the people in large expensive 4 wheel drives doing significantly more than the speed limit. there are lots of horsey people around here. i am not a big fan of horsey people, but i do like horses - this place is next door:

then we turn left:

and go down a hill where there are more horsey places and a very cloudy sky:

we turn left again at a cross roads and head down this hill:

we had 80 mm of rain here on sunday, and the ground is very mushy and there are mini waterfalls running under the road:

then we go up this very steep hill:

i already have a sore calf muscle. this doesnt help, but it gets the heart racing. then we turn left again into my favourite street around here, but i took a photo while walking so its blurry. der.

i love the canopy of overhanging trees. there is another small hill here which used to hurt but doesnt anymore (a good sign), and then we turn left one more time back onto the main road and into the home stretch. we are the second set of bins on the right (try squinting):

then we turn right into the driveway:


and we're all glad to be home, about 40 minutes later. its a big block.

k xx

plus ca change

despite my scepticism, it appears as though something like autumn is on the way after all. there are brown leaves skipping across the road and a few nights this week have required a small doona. mornings have a certain crispness about them as well. i think we will feel the cooler months a lot more where we live now, and i am looking forward to that.

but something feels weird about seasonal change this year. i think i am feeling the inevitability of it, that despite all our efforts to the contrary time continues to slip through our fingers, the one thing about life on earth that humanity can not control. i used to feel like i had lots of it, and, like most kids, couldnt wait to be grown up. now i would gladly slow things down. a lot. not that i am grown up (growing up appears to be a never ending process of continually coming to terms with how much you cant control!), its just that it seems sometimes as though i am waiting for the next thing to happen, rather than just living. this feeling has become more pronounced with a full time job where weekends have become precious commodities and i say things like 'thank god its friday'. lots of times over the past 10 years i didnt even know what day of the week it was! now i have calendars and diaries and meetings planned months in advance and its very weird.

as a sign of the changing seasons, the tomato plants started to wither up and die. admittedly it wasnt just the weather, although extreme flucations in temperature probably didnt help. i watered these buggers religiously but i think the nutrients in the soil were still deficient, despite the frequent addition of worm wee:

so i pulled them all out over the weekend and am going to plant more sturdy herbs, rather than vegetables, in these pots. i think vegies need more room for root systems. i did harvest plenty of fruit tho, a lot of which will be ripening on the kitchen window sill:

and now the pots will look like this for a while till i get back from england and can tend to them properly again:


speaking of england, less than 2 weeks to go. our workshop for the conference is nearly all planned, and i found out last week that some people i have written about in another paper will be there, so i am making plans to interview them as well. meanwhile i will be doing some running around this week getting the bits and pieces i need to be able to drive a car through wales to that very important factory. i am excited about going, but i must confess that i really dont travel all that well. the plane thing is fine, i quite like flying, but i do get freaked out being in big cities i dont know. london looks kind of scary. at least this time i wont have to deal with the language thing. it was ok in italy because i can speak it a bit and the italians are mostly nice people who will try and work out how to communicate. the less said about communicating in amsterdam the better as i have nothing nice to say and will likely offend someone. mostly tho, i just like being at home. i miss my boy and my puppies, and i dont like being in new places alone when i would rather share the joy and excitement with someone. and i feel guilty for going overseas three times without him. but we are planning a big trip to the US later this year, so i will try and not have too much fun this time around. i cant lie about looking forward to the potential stash enhancement, however!

on the knitting front, i have been working mostly on lily and the victorian ruby, of which i have now finished the first border and have changed direction to knit the body. when i ripped it back and restarted at a certain row, something wrong happened that i didnt notice till it was too late, but i can block it out so im letting it slide (thats one thing that never changes, n'est pas?):


and lily grows slowly:


last night while watching 'lost in austen' (yes please), i put all the bits on their separate waste yarns ready to start sleeves etc and then remembered reading how someone, knitting something like this, figured out how to continue with the body and to come back and do sleeves later. advice please!

meanwhile, i have to redye my hair because weird grey bits are sticking out everywhere again (ok, i dont HAVE to, i CHOSE to) and i have upgraded my skin cream to the 'firming' kind. sigh. in other (french) words, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose*.

k xx

* the more things change, the more they stay the same

mixed bag

rant\. this weekend just gone we drove to canberra for the royal show. i usually look forward to it even tho we have had some bad experiences there before in relation to the flyball comp, which is what we go for. after the weekend we just had i am pretty sure the canberra royal is cursed for us. the spot where they put the flyball is also the spot used for camping during that other canberra cultural highlight, summernats. hence, given the lack of rain in that part of the world at that time of year, it is sometimes a bit of a rough patch. this year it was a dust bowl. saturday was hot (36) and windy. dust got in everything, including my knitting.

after a while of scraping through the dirt possum started limping and then we saw that she had scraped the skin off her dew claw pad. poor baby. we taped her up but it didnt help and she ran a lot slower so we lost races we would normally win. we ended up having to pull her out so she wouldnt get hurt worse, and we finished only third when we were pretty sure of a first or second. we did one good time, but if they dont fix that surface for next year i think we wont go. the bad part of the weekend was made worse by the fact that we, the flyballers, were not given parking permits into the exhibitors part of the showground and would have had to pay show rates for parking. this didnt apply to people doing agility, or with the pretty show dogs. (what is it with the human race, that people always have to JUDGE someone else, and what they do, as not worthy somehow?) so we parked out on the street and came back to find a window smashed and the car broken into. we lost important stuff we probly shouldnt have left in the car, and yet again i am left wondering at the complete deadshits human beings can be at times. especially canberra bogans.

i also had the joy of having some idiot woman from some other club competing in the flyball yell at me for not 'stewarding' (ie help out in the ring during racing). i dont run a dog, i just help my husbands team. i am not even a member of the afa. i dont need to steward if i dont want to. and i dont want to. right now, i dont want to go near flyball ever again because of stupid people like her, and the bad losers in other teams, and the internal politics that continues to leave a very bad taste in my mouth.

i understand that humans are just human, you get them in a group and all kinds of weird shit happens. but i am getting downright annoyed at being dragged into squabbles that have nothing to do with me (and not just in flyball), at being told lies and manipulated and played because other people need to make themselves feel better, or need to feel like victims in this world. i dont care if not everyone likes me, i probably dont like them either, but seriously, build a bridge people, and leave me out of it. /rant.

there were goodies to be had at the canberra show however, i just didnt get a chance to take pictures. like bells, i enjoyed the german sausage, but i thought the numbers were down and some of the usual selling points werent there (eg, no opal lady). i am pretty sure tho that i got teary when i saw the beautiful things in glass cabinets that my clever friends had made that now wore ribbons, and i made a resolution to work really carefully on something of my own to enter in a show next year. im pretty sure someone else agreed to do the same, yes?! it was very inspiring, and im very proud to know the people who made such lovely things. we had a lovely dinner together with other lovely friends and partners after the show, even though i nearly fell asleep in my chocolate mousse parfait, but i enjoyed my mini impromptu snb, and am thankful for the help i got with the ruby problem i have.

the ruby problem you ask? here it is and see if you can spot it:

no its not a test. apart from a problem in the very early rows that i was willing to let slide, i had a pattern reading problem, so that instead of doing chart a rows 1-46 then rows 15-58, i did chart a rows 1-58 all at once. woops. i had to rip it back a bit, and i thought i had fixed it but i hadnt. you know when you look at something and think about something so hard and so long it just blurs? i couldnt for the life of me see what i needed to do. jane saw the problem in about 5 seconds flat. i have now ripped it back again and restarted from row 15 again, and i think there might be a minor hang over problem that you will get when you rip lace with no lifeline, but i can live with it. i now have only 4 works in progress

(gratuitious shot of lovely lily in zara there), including nearly finishing the second of the vatican pie socks (colinette, how do i love thee, let me count the ways). speaking of which i have been trying in vain to figure out how to work in a day trip up to llanfaire caereinion to hang out at the colinette factory during the very important conference i am going to in cardiff, but its in the middle of nowhere, with no direct train line, and i dont have an international drivers licence with which to hire a car....sigh. i shall have to make do with yarn stores in london (only 3 weeks to go!!). its a hard life....

k xx

ETA: sorry about the rant, i am not very good at self-censorship! its not aimed at anyone in particular, just the world in general :)

long not so lacy summer

in two days they tell me summer is over for another year, but i remain a sceptic. the australian climate has no respect for european calendar systems. i have known it to be damn hot at easter. we have had a minor reprieve with some rain and cloud but we are off to canberra this weekend for the flyball comp at the canberra royal (and to catch up with people and to see clever knitted things in the show), and i know it will be stinking and if there is hell on earth to me, its canberra in summer. at a flyball comp. but there will be compensations, im sure.

the point of this rant about summer is that its over, which means the 'long lacy summer' is over. i have been a bad KAL-er, as i always am, because life (and other knitting) seems to get in the way. i have made very little progress on the myrtle leaf shawl that bells and i started on australia day:

its a difficult knit in terms of concentration factor and i havent been up to it with the new job and working out timetables etc. and then there was lily. i did really itch to do some lace lately so i went back to victorian ruby which has a rest row, and a knit one at that. nice.

this yarn is jade sapphire cashmere and is the most beautiful thing i have ever held, i wish i could explain how soft it is.

but i did finish one lacy thing this long summer, and its a gift. it was went to be a christmas present for george, it was finished a couple of weeks ago and finally got blocked this week. it is just lovely:
it is not perfect, and my blocking leaves something to be desired, but this yarn (knittery slim socks in merlot) has lent itself quite well to the idea of being a scarf instead of socks. it has a lovely silky touch to it that works really well with the fantastic pattern that is the 'weldons wide and handsome border' from victorian lace today.

speaking of socks, my IK Spring arrived yesterday and i was flicking through some kind of nice patterns (probably nothing i will make) when i saw the most interesting thing in the magazine - an ad. not just any old ad tho, oh no, it was an ad for a book, a whole book of cookie a sock patterns.

it comes out in april. i am sooo there.

k xx

back...and baking

that was a long and tiring week. im glad its over. i dont like being away from home really. i did get nearly a whole paper written, it just needs some polishing, but its pretty close. i didnt get a lot of knitting done really, just a few rows on lily here and there. but there was a lovely little parcel waiting for me when i got home...


ok, it wasnt so little. it contained rather a lot of malabrigo:

the green is for renee and the rest is for me.

these 4 skeins of lace weight are in paris night colourway and are for the shetland tea shawl from 'a gathering of lace' if i ever manage to finish the myrtle leaf, or the victorian ruby. (i am a bit obsessed with lily at the moment but am missing the lace, i might do some today). the paris night colours are perfect, not quite black, or grey, or blue, or purple, but little bits of all of them at the same time. scrummy.

and two more velvet grapes in worsted to go with the 4 i got for my birthday. this is enough now to make a leisl for me. if i ever finish lily, and trents cobblestone! so much knitting, so little time.

oh, and whats that in the background? sam norton knight tackling my yarn, as the waratahs beat the chiefs. two from two, happy about that.

anyway, all this yarn fondling made me want to do some baking, so i set up the ingredients in the kitchen and set to work:

the result was 5 cakes:

2 of the velvet grapes for leisl, one socks that rock in atomic for the blackrose socks (i only have one pair of socks that are nearly finished on the needles, must remedy that situation!), plus the koigu for plain socks, and one skein of the paris night just to see what it looked like. delicious!

k xx

away from home

this week i am away from home, but only down the road. well, 2 hours down the road, but i am staying here for the week because i am in a 'writing for publication' workshop and there is homewrok to do and its pretty heavy going, so i didnt think i could cope with the driving AND thinking. today was day 2 and it has taken me this long to figure out how to get the laptop connected to the uni wireless network. sheesh. anyway, here i am, eating my healthy choice microwave meal, reading papers about factors that influence nursing as a career choice and making mind maps:

its raining here still, and its lovely really. this is such a gorgeous campus, here is the view from my window (i am staying at the unilodge).

oh, and i might be knitting a bit. i cast on lily mark two in the filatura di crosa zara and its motoring along:

i love this pattern, so easy. no sewing. this might be a record knit for me, timewise. and did i mention i am in love with the zara? i may never knit with anything else again....

and before i left i managed to finish the second of bells' christmas monkey socks. the colours are not great here as it was cloudy but the cherry tree hill sock yarn in serengeti is MADE for monkeys. voila:

i must end with an apology. i am not much of a blogger at the moment, obviously rather sporadic in the posting, but not great on the commenting either. a full time job may well add to the bank balance (not sure, havent been paid yet) but it definitely detracts from important blogging time. you are in my thoughts tho.

k xx

when looks deceive

there is nothing quite like the joy of home grown tomatoes:

there is also nothing quite like the horror at home grown tomatoes gone wrong - grubs did this i think:

and too much rain did this:

bugger.

dont get me wrong, im not complaining about the rain, it started a couple of days ago and has been pretty constant on and off since. they are getting some of it down in the fires, and things are looking a bit greener and a bit less scary around here. the temp has dropped considerably too. i am grateful for that but the extremes are a little off-putting. it just seems very unpredictable. its freaking me out. as a kid growing up in the 70s i remember lying awake at night in real fear of the nuclear bomb. these days i am glad i dont have kids to raise in a world that sits on the brink of environmental and ecological disaster. it would be too freaky.

on the not-so-freaky side, i have started another version of the lily cardigan. i made one of these last year in a lovely possum-merino blend and it was beautiful, until i washed it, at which point the sleeves grew by about another half length and the picot edges curled up making the whole thing about half a foot shorter than it should be. ok so i exaggerate a little, but ever since i have been determined to make another one in a more structured yarn, minus the *cough* slight variations *cough cough* in the first one.

so i bought some zara specially, and swatched it two nights ago. i swatched it on 3.5mm needles because they were what i had spare (even tho the pattern says 3.75mm) and despite rather vigourous wet blocking my swatch refused to be 4x4 inches.

sigh. i do have a 3.75mm addi turbo but the cable in it really shits me because it is badly kinked, but i cast on with it last night anyway. there is a lot more room in the stitches, i can tell already it will be closer to gauge.

this is good because it means i dont have to alter the pattern or stitch count. my only concern is that its going to make a fabric that is a little bulkier than i was hoping for. i know what youre going to say. swatch it again on the right size needle. no FREAKY way. too impatient. sorry.

k xx

world on fire...

all the news here is about the fires in victoria and its hard to not have that put things in perspective. bells has already written most eloquently on the subject. it does however make me think about all sorts of things, about white settlement of a land mass that regularly sets itself on fire to regenerate, and our complete and utter refusal to accept that fact. about our modern capitalist insistence on being individually comfortable, in cars, with air conditioning, no matter the cost. and it reminds me of a book i read recently, cormac mccarthy's the road, (about to be a movie) which is the scariest thing i have read in a long time, the most utterly distressing and compelling book ive ever come across, about a world destroyed by fire and what happens to humanity in the aftermath. its a very telling tale, but its a lesson i fear we we will never learn.

despite the southerly that came last night i woke up in a sweat and got up to turn fans on. i looked outside and could see the peats ridge fire buring in the distance.

its a good 60kms north of us but it has been burning all weekend and the smoke has smeared the horizon:

while the smell of burning eucalyptus fills the air. its a strange sensation, and its one i associate entirely with summer in australia. so why are we never prepared?

anyway, we spent most of the weekend in our luxurious pool thanking our lucky stars that we have a pool. trent and the dogs slept a bit:

yesterday evening we cooked chicken on the bbq and sat looking over our yard and the miles of bushland only a hundred metres away and talked about what to do when the fire comes our way, as it inevitably will. dogs. laptop. run. oh, and ring the insurance company and check our coverage.

it has been so hot i have not managed to get much knitting done. when i am tired i find knitting acts like a soporific so its been slow going this week. another repeat on myrtle. approaching the toe on monkey number two:

and back to work already. i have one more week of working two part time jobs, before starting the new one full time officially next monday. my first week is a full on writing workshop. good lord, what have i done?!

k xx

the idea of perfection

as a self- taught and mathematically-challenged knitter, i have grown used to the fact that my knitting is not now and will never be perfect. every project i have ever embarked upon has been frogged or carries some degree of mistake (the kind that you point out to other knitters just in case they spot it and look at each other with raised eyebrows and pursed lips and mutter something about lifelines, which is also the kind of mistake that most NORMAL people would not notice and think that whatever you make is lovely and clever and special). i am not by nature a perfectionist, not since i left the prison-house that was the childhood home, where everything had to be just so, and from which i rebelled into 'that'll do'. and usually, it will do.

this does not mean that i dont strive to do things properly, and when it comes to knitting, i try pretty hard to get it right. there isnt much point in knitting lace and stuffing it up and knitting along anyway, cos its not going to look much like the pretty pictures in vlt that way. and if i was going to do that, i wouldnt bother with lace for a start.

but i am bothering with lace, and often lace bothers me. it is the sort of knitting that i do with my tongue out and tension gathering in my shoulders, forgetting to breath as i go. you would think then that i would confine myself to knitting lace with a rest/purl row. oh noooo that would be SENSIBLE! instead i decide to embark on the myrtle leaf shawl with bells. of course, hers is going great guns, growing by the minute, and i feel an urge to keep up with her. but i cant, and i wont, for a number of reasons. firstly, i frogged it three times. there was just something about the chart i wasnt reading properly. secondly, it can not be knit at night time, its too hard to tell where you're at, and black 2 ply silk is NOT for tinking. thirdly, it can not be knit with other people around. it requires full concentration, i have to count every stitch, double check everything as i go, remember to breath. so its slow going. i have done one full repeat of the main chart. there are 40 repeats required. so its going to be a long-term committment this one. but i dont care, i love it! look, see:

you know what? its perfect! there is not ONE single error in this repeat. i love that about it. its my goal to knit the rest of it, one repeat at a time, with no mistakes. just so i can have one piece of knitting that is perfect. and that piece really should be a black silk shawl. so bells will finish before me, but we will both have something beautiful at the end!

there is a bit of near-perfection in the air today. its hot, again, of course, so i cleaned the pool and went in:


i thought of you all as i splashed around on my pool noodle. i may even have giggled to myself :)

i have had to restake my cherry tomatoes as they are growing like wild things.

they are so delicious that they dont even make it upstairs, whenever i pick one i just pop it in my mouth and go all mushy at the rich sweet home grown tomato flavour. best thing in the world.

oh, apart from perfect yarn! i have some of that too. knitting camp weekend also meant some stash enhancement, in the form of some pink koigu that i bought myself and bells delivered:


(yes i just noticed that one skein is slightly lighter than the other. i dont care, its koigu).

and some gorgeous blue koigu that donni gave me. what fantastic colours:

mmmmm koigu. and now i am home alone for quite a few hours with just myrtle to keep me company. does it get any more perfect? i think not....

k xx