The Knitting Revolutionary

Quiet days...

...in which I play a bit of WoW, play with my birdy, cook stuff, and generally enjoy my time being broke with lots of time on my hands. Being broke is the sucky bit, but the rest of it's pretty nice. Seriously, can you imagine a better way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon? The bikkies were great, white chocolate and raspberries. *purr* The baking dish with the millet it in was less about feeding Phoenix, and more about keeping her out of the cookie dough LOL... how cute can one little birdy get? 

And yes... you must have a glass of wine on hand when you're hanging out and baking, and I've also finished beading up the cute little shrinky dink charms I made. I'll make some more sooner or later, but they're seriously fiddly and time-consuming, so I'll save those for the next dinner party we have. Utterly necessary if you don't want to end up drinking everyone else's spitty bits hehe. How cute is the purple sheep? I was trying to run with a bit of a knitting theme with these ones, so a punk knitter and a sheep was about as far as I got before I started doing little celtic knots and things. :D

Meanwhile, I'm still procrastinating with the finishing on my purple cardi, I have about 7 more beads to sew on, but they take a couple of minutes each and every time I think about it I just cringe. Ah well. *grin* I'll probably frantically sew them on half an hour before I decide I simply must wear it to such-and-such a place/event. Nothing much changes.

And finally, my big exciting news is... I've bought a car! Yay! It's time to finally say goodbye to Frankie, Canberra's Ugliest Motorcycle. Poor little Frankenbike. I hope he gets reincarnated as a nice Ducati or something.

Oh yes. Other issues...

Oh yeah. The other issue...

This one's just a quickie: I'm thinking I might cast on for a Clapotis, like everyone else on the planet. I'm going to use some of my own dyed yarn (shock horror: I don't actually sell it all!) in a 4 ply, on largish needles so it's nice and airy and lofty and yummmmmmy. (very complex and technical terms in use here, I do hope you're keeping up).

I'm not so keen on the way the edges go, however, and the whole "right-side-wrong-side" thing with scarves and shawls annoys me: I like them to be reversible, so it doesn't matter how you arrange them, they still look good.

So I wanted to ask, before I got off my lazy bum and knitted myself a sample: Has anyone out there used the Clapotis pattern in garter stitch? :D I do know that Mary-Helen used 2 strands of finer yarn with gorgeous results for her scarf some time ago, and am also considering this as an option. But I'm intrigued by the garter stitch idea. Anyone done it?

Bah. Dyeing issues.

Ye gods. It's been a whole week since I updated.

Time's a weird thing, and I suppose everyone knows that. But it still freaks me out a bit when I look at the blog and think it's only been a couple of days, and the last entry was dated 8 days ago. Mmm. And I think that was a forward-dated entry, too. LOL. Now you know my evil tricks that make you think I'm updating regularly! Well, I don't! When I've got a big energy spurt, I type several blog entries all at once, and forward date them to periodically pop up on the blog. So it's probably been more like two weeks. Hehe. All the same in the end, really.

Anyway... I'm posting today because I've got a few issues, darlinks, and I'm hoping that my vast readership of about 30 peeps (hehe actually I have no idea any more, but I'm happy) can tap into their vast amount of experience and knowledge (and I'm not being sarcastic any more, you guys are awesome) and give me a little bit of a tip with a couple of things.

First thing is I have a slight issue with my dyeing. I do plenty of rainbow handpainty type dyeing, and this isn't so much of an issue, because this type of dyeing is unpredictable at best, and any inconsistencies are hidden in the colour changes and the sheer variety of shades and colours within and between skeins. And hand-painted skeins should always be alternated between rows anyway, to allow the differences in skeins to be spread throughout the final completed piece of work.

My issue with dyeing is with my flat shades, which I've only really done for myself. The purple stuff that I dyed for my cardigan (which I'm still occasionally attempting to finish with the final 11 beads) had the usual patchy bits within skeins which I rather like, as it gives depth to the colour and an interesting texture to flat bits on the cardi. I mean, some bits within the skeins are darker or lighter. But overall, it comes to a fairly flat colour, with random darker bits throughout. I do hope that makes sense.

But my last lot of dyeing (here pictured being made into a sweet little cabled jumper for moi) was 9 skeins of green, which I did in the same big pot. Some bits were darker and lighter, and I got the same nifty striation effect as I knitted, and all was going swimmingly until I attached the 2nd skein, and discovered that it was lighter. Not lighter in bits, but the whole skein was just lighter overall than the first skein. I've knitted little swatches from most of the skeins, and it appears that I the colour remains consistent throughout the skein, but some skeins are lighter than others. And this doesn't make sense to me, since they were all dyed in the same pot! And if there were darker bits and lighter bits, it would make more sense if half a skein was darker or lighter, but not the whole skeins. Weird.

So I'm hoping someone may have some tips. My theories are that even though I tried to put the skeins into the dyebath as quickly as possible, the first ones were darker because the water was hotter, and the temperature of the dyebath would have dropped as each skein was place into the bath. Second idea is that since I left it simmering on the stove, the skeins at the bottom of the pot got much hotter and took up more dye that the ones at the top of the pot. I did move them and stir them gently, but of course was quite worried that I'd felt them, so didn't do a whole lot of this.

Any ideas, my brilliant and talented friends???

Sock requests

I knitted David's mum a pair of socks for the first Christmas we spent together.

I know this is always something of a dangerous move, beginning a friendship or other relationship (what *do* you call your partner's mother? Margaret, I suppose, is the only option I have) by giving a hand-knit item. Or pair of items. She loved them, things looked good.

Until the other day, when she was on the phone, and told him that she wanted some more.

Um...?!

I detest knitting socks. I knit them for only two reasons: One, if I need a REALLY special present (like that first Christmas) for someone and can't think of anything else, and Two, cos I want some for my own feet, and wanting to wear handknit socks narrowly outweighs the annoyance of having to knit the damn things. I mean, I'd love to knit her socks til the cows came home if I got any shred of enjoyment out of making them, she's nice enough to perhaps think about saying yes, but even with the ulterior motive of buttering up the out-laws (*wink*) I'm just not going to go there.

So, I said, NOOOO! immediately, and told D to let her know that if my own mother isn't getting any more, I'm dreadfully sorry, but she isn't either. *giggle* I knit socks for mum, all three of my sisters, and my ex-MIL, and told them all that one was their quota, end of story. Hee.

I'm not quite sure what his family make of me. His father, at one point last Christmas, noted in a surprised tone "she can actually be charming sometimes, can't she?". They ask every now and again when we're going to get married (*cackle*), and when we plan on having children (*laughs until unconscious*). As for religion, I've quite happily skirted around the issue, and am happy to keep doing so.

And do I have any sockies on the go at the moment? Yeah sort of. I started some of Jussi's yoga socks a looooong time ago, and have just about finished the first. *yawn* I'll get there eventually, I'm sure.

It has its moments...

Despite the fact that I'm struggling a little bit with the new casual job, it does have its moments. Like getting in this morning and seeing a huge roo basking on the grass between a couple of the buildings. He's still there now, some hours later, and I get a warm fuzzy squeaky feeling every time I peek out of my window and look at his furry sun-drenched face.

:D