Monday, February 27, 2012

It's raining, it's pouring... (and 2011 FO#17)

For the past two days it has rained and rained and rained.  This has a direct impact on my life in two ways. Firstly, my lovely Lucy, who in every other circumstance doesn't even notice when she's being sprayed with water (rendering the spray bottle I bought to discipline her when she was a kitten completely useless and leading to the undisciplined boss-of-the-house cat we have now), hates being rained on with a passion.  This means that she runs outside, gets rained on, runs back inside and then wetly sits on me.  Once she is dry, back outside, only to be rained on, come back inside and sit on me some more.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Awesome.

Secondly, given my recent experiences with walking through puddles of water, it takes a massive effort of will for me to go outside. I know I'm being silly and I know that I have walked in the rain for my whole entire life without any damage beyond ugly frizzy hair (I live in Melbourne, for god's sake!), but without a compelling reason (such as running out of wine), it's still easier for me to stay indoors than go outside.  I am becoming more neurotic the older I get - it's cute and quirky, right? Right?!?

So, to lift the wintry gloom found in Melbourne on this summer's day, here's a few photos I took last week.

I'm part of a group on Ravelry called Will Work For Yarn. Basically, a request is placed for a particular item to be knitted or crocheted.  The proposer supplies the yarn and the pattern, and in return 'pays' the knitter/crocheter with an equivalent amount of the same type of yarn or negotiated equivalent. I've never been involved in the process because I'm such a slow knitter that it's never been worth my while, but a few weeks ago a project was offered that involved a shawl that I wanted to knit but not keep in a yarn that I covet and want more off with a very generous timeframe for completion - I was in! The yarn arrived last week (the green is mine, the purple is the yarn for the shawl to be knit) and I'm really looking forward to getting started on this project.


While I was taking photos of my pretty new yarn, I thought it would be a good idea to finally photograph one of the projects I completed as part of my Christmas present-athon. For the record, it was completed before Christmas, but one of my sisters was away for Christmas so we had our family do a week early, which meant it wasn't gifted.  Oh well.


It's a Herbivore made in Patonyle (grey and black).  I love this pattern! Plus it is an example of how buying more yarn (the black) means you can finally use up yarn that's been in the stash for years (the grey yarn).  This project was a massive win.


What about me? Why do you take photos of wool and scarves when you could be taking photos of me?  Stupid human.

Sorry Lucy. I'll do better  next time :)

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

I'm ba-aa-aack!

I started January with the best of intentions. I wanted to catch up with all the knitting, blogging and photographing I didn't get done last year.  Little did I know I would spend at least half of the month without a computer on which to do any of the blogging, photographing or categorising I wanted to do.

I'm finally back on line and here's a potted summary of what I've been working on:

A baby blanket:


And a Peppermint Lounge Hat for be, because even though it's the middle of summer it's the middle of summer in Melbourne, which means I alternate days of wearing almost nothing at all with days of wearing hats, scarves and woollen socks.  Oh, for the want of a temperate climate a number of hats were born.


Oh, and by the way?


Lucy's not particularly happy about me disturbing her nap.  It's a hard life, being a cat.  It requires a lot of sleeping all of the time.