On the way home from the pub

Hard to capture in a photo... but there was a halo around the moon tonight as we strolled home from the local. "Caused by ice particles in the upper atmosphere" Mr Purl informs me.

A heel!!

What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning! Learning to turn a heel! (ok that's not sarcasm... it was seriously fun... and kind of magic) I still don't think I've got my head around the whole thing... but I did it anyway!! Thanks Ms Spider!!

We got our very own mini-skein of hand dyed wool (!!!) to practise turning a heel. So I left the workshop with my very own pretty purple heel. I'm thinking of hanging it on my wall :)

He he... I know it's been done... but he looked as excited about my new-found sock skills as I was!

Ms Spider was impressively organised (she had another word for it) and had put together a booklet with sock diagrams and explanations as well as patterns! I went straight home and started my green turtle-walk socks!! (and after one false start where I didn't read the pattern properly - sorry Miss - I'm going well!!) It took quite a long time to explain to Mr Purl that no, I'm not going to attach the chunky purple heel to the fine green socks... ah well... at least he's interested!

The K1B1 exhibition was such a lovely setting to have a workshop... surounded by so many inspirational knitted objects! And it was great to have everyone there to help each other out. Big thanx to Bells for helping me get my head around the cast-on and knitting in the round on double pointed needles. Fortunately no-one seemed to think I was too crazy for attempting my first sock, first lace pattern and first knitting on dpns all at the same time!!! So-far I'm having fun. Check back in a few weeks!!

In other news... we successfully cleaned out our complete disaster of a garage on Saturday. It felt like one of those 'your life on your lawn' TV shows. Completely embarrassing to see how much junk we've accumulated! I tried to take a photo of the fallout... both of our camera batteries were too flat. I tried to take one with my phone. It's battery was too flat. I think someone up there is telling me "this really is too embarassing to show anyone. Really. You'll regret it". So... there is no evidence save the large pile of junk sitting at the side of the house waiting to go to the tip. We sealed-up the hole where we thought the possums were getting in... swept out all the possum poo... cheked there were no possums trapped in there, and shut it up for the night. Sunday morning we expectantly opened the garage door.... only to see that once again the whole floor was covered in possum poo. I'd love to know just how many possums are using our garage as their toilet. Surely one (or 2 or 3) possums can't produce that much poo in one night. Worse than the poo is the wee... but I won't go into that. So... time to call the landlords to fix it up. (was too embarassed to up til now lest they see the state of the garage!!)

Fluoro

Here's an ugly-looking photo of the shrug-in-progress. It's not as fluoro as it looks in the photo... damn flash! I'll try and get a better one if I'm actually home while the sun's out one of these days! Thanx for the kind words about the bike incident! It's not so much the missing bike that's upsetting us... more just the fact that it happened.

I'm really looking forward to Ms Spider's sock workshop on Sunday! Can't wait! I knit a little swatch out of the green wool I got from the markets and it looks so lovely! Yay!

The white stuff

Sunday was a magical day at the snow. The sun was shining, the snow was sparkling, the trees were encrusted... and I had tennis raquets strapped to my feet! (actually, modern snow shoes don't even remotely resemble tennis raquets... but it sounds more fun than saying I had rectangular bits of plastic strapped to my feet!)

We snowshoed (or "snowshod"??) up South Ramshead, right at the end of the Ramshead Range (kind of near Kosciusko). It wasn't as strenous as I pictured 800m of elevation gain in 2km to be!! Maybe the glittery, soft snow made up for the gradient of the slope!

I lamented to Mr. Purl that I'd forgotten my knitting and how cool it would be to have knit a row of Mum's shrug at the top of the mountain. He told me I was obsessed (!)

This is the trig-point at the top of the mountain... complete with windblown-snow-sculpture worthy of any art gallery (or perhaps any un-heated art gallery).

The view from the top... where I think the snow kind of resembles that marshmallow-in-a-jar stuff... It was pretty windy on top of the mountain, but we sat up there and ate our lunch anyway. The view was unbeatable!

Back at the bottom of the hill (this sign must be about 1.5m tall)!!!

Hooray for snow! (probably good I feel that way, as we're probably going to get some tonight!!!)

Wish I could have gotten a photo of the crazy frost this morning! It was -6 celcius when we rode to work!! Man... bring on Summer!

I'll post a progress pic of mum's shrug tonight hopefully... I'm up to the crochet fringe bit!!

On a sad note... if anyone sees this bike around town (it's blue now, but pretty hard to mistake), could you let me know? One of our mates was riding it home after our ride on Friday night... and a carload of guys beat him up (with a metal bar!) and nicked the bike. He's OK... luckily he was wearing a motorbike helmet - so the metal bar mostly damaged the helmet instead of his head... but it makes me sad that a few stupid people can affect how safe we (or I anyway) feel riding alone around Canberra. Plus, countless hours of work and love went into this bike... so it's owner would love to get it back.

What a night!

Wow. It's been a great (if long) night! Knit1Blog1 is fantastic!! I'm so impressed with all the beautiful work, and particularly with how well it's displayed. So many of these garments are absolute works of art, but I think sometimes we don't think of them like that, so it's so lovely to have them displayed as artworks! My favourite pieces would have to be Bells purple monkey socks, and Spidey's gorgeous green cashmere shawl with the tiny beads (which she assured us we could touch as much as we liked!) Was nice to see some familiar faces there from my first night at SnB! Thanx for the wool and needles advice Spidey!! Knitting on 2.75mm needles will be a new experience for me... but then I see the Sherpa's tiny little cabled cushions, and I feel better!

Then I went on to Gorman House to kill time while waiting for Rat Patrol to make their way into town. There was some really interesting art going on there... including this:

Looks like fun. That's spreadable marshmallow from a jar that the weet-bix are stuck together with!!

Then once I'd finally caught up with the rest of the bikes (who hadn't made it more than a km from our house in four hours!) we dropped past the Merry Muse, then a random house party... and then home. Craziness!

(That's my little bike at the front)

Once again... I'm in danger of losing a digit to frostbite, so time for bed!!

Brain Dump

Well... after three weeks of excitingly having the net at home... our modem broke!! But now it's had a stay at the hospital and is back, and working (more or less!)... so I'm very excited to be able to update my blog!! It's been such an awesome couple of weeks knitting-wise, that it was very frustrating not to be able to blog about it!!!

I've finally taken some photos of Mr Purls scarf!

It may not seem like much... grey... garter stitch throughout... but it is definitely the longest (time-wise, but also length-wise!) project I've made, so it felt like quite an acheivement for me to finish it!! This scarf was started in Keith, South Australia when I was working over there... some of it was knit on Lady Musgrave Island on the Great Barrier Reef (where he rewarded me for all the knitting by proposing!!)... lots of it was knit at our Knit n Talk Sh!t nights (to the point where I'm sure all the girls were sick of seeing it!) and now it's finished!! Mr Purl was so keen to wear it that he snatched it up before I even had a chance to weave the loose ends in, so wore it around for a while looking quite shabby (they're tidy now tho). It's quite a treat to have knitted him something that he loves and wears all the time... it makes the boring-ness of the grey wool and never-ending garter stitch worth it!! (there's a lot of love in that scarf! - including a little stockinette love heart at the end - the only bit that was slightly more exciting to knit!!)

K and I had a lovely time at SnB last Thursday. It was great to meet the people behind the wonderful blogs!! I was amazed by the gorgeous projects everyone was making! Very inspirational :)

Then of course, as everyone else has already talked about... Sunday was the Creative Fibres day at the Old Bus Depot Markets. Wow. I couldn't stop smiling. There was just sooo much beautiful yarn... hand dyed, some handspun... some where they knew the name of the sheep it came from!

It was a very sensuous experience... you really just had to touch it all!!! And then there was the un-spun fleece that was so gorgeous I started wishing I knew how to spin!! I was very restrained tho and set myself a $50 limit (which I amazingly managed to stick to!) So now I have some gorgeous new wool - and new projects to come-up with!!

I was also quite restrained in not buying only purple wool... because I figured, I have to use some of this wool to make things for other people, and I can't assume that everyone likes purple as much as I do!!

This one's a lovely angora blend... soooo soft!! I had fun winding these two into balls at S's house the other night... my first time!! It somehow doesn't look like as much wool once it's in a ball. But it's satisfyingly solid!!

I've started catching the bus to work some days instead of riding... to give myself more knitting time! :) Mum's shrug is amost up to the crochet-lace-fringing bit!! I'm loving it, and also very excited about starting my next project. I'm not yet at the stage where I feel confident enough in my completing abilities to have more than one project on the go at a time! (soon though. I am going to need small, manageable bus projects...)

This is my attempt to photograph the cold as I headed to the bus stop (happily only a few steps from my front door!!) this morning.

Brrr... the days are getting longer, but I don't think they're getting warmer. If only we could transport Canberra and all the people and places in it down to the coast!! Hehe... maybe with global warming, the coast will come to us! (Dahahoo wrote an awesome song about this called 'When the Ice Melts'). I'm extremely grateful for my brand new, ridiculously puffy down jacket!! It's like a doona you can wear!!

In non-knitting news... Mr Purl and I have decided to delay our wedding until next Spring (which amusingly will be after the honeymoon!). We figured with the festival and how much I'm going to be away with work, it would be easier not trying to plan a wedding for April! Much better to be relaxed and actually enjoy the planning part as well as the actual day!

I'm hoping to make it to the Knit1Blog1 opening tonight!! So exciting :)