Home and Away

Well, life has been exciting for the past week, and I'm not talking about knitting for once. While I know this is my knitting blog, I feel like blogging about my life in general.

I've not been knitting much, even if I have finished a sock (well, almost, seeing as I have never done Kitchener before. Anyone got some advice?). I have done no more work on the pinwheel or the lace since my last post.

Last Friday, my sister got dashed off to Royal North Shore with stroke like symptoms. It turns out she's OK for now, but if she has another event like this, there will be issues. She just needs to keep her fluids up and be careful from here on in.

The weekend was wonderful, with camping and bush walking. I also discovered it is rather difficult to work a lace sock by the light of a campfire.

However, as for Monday. A day I had set aside for knitting and studying... I was the one dashed off to Hornsby hosp. Severe pains in lower left abdomen. Still no explanation. The pain still hasn't gone away, though it is no where near as severe. Hopefully I'll find out what's going on and how to fix it later. I did, however, manage to turn the heel of my sock while I was there. Come rain, hail or nasty tummy pain, I will knit!

As for lack of posts. I've also been without Internet for the past week. We're trying to upgrade, but Telstra, iinet and TPG are all taking their sweet time in sorting it out. With luck, I'll have internet back by tomorrow at the latest. Just now, I'm using the uni computers.


Oooh, the sock! The sock is from the South West Trading Company's tofutsies sock club. They have this nifty system where they release club only colours, to a limited club population, and you sign up to the club through a middleman (in my case, ecoyarns.com.au) and in return they send you a ball of yarn and a pattern every two months for the coming year.

I think it's brilliant! I love my socks! Well, sock for the moment. I'll be able to finished grafting the toe when I get home and cast on for the second one. I'm surprised they went so quickly. The first pair I knitted on these needles took forever! The colour of these ones is pink and charcoal grey. When knitted up, they remind me of a tiger that fell into a vat of pink dye.

Apologies for the rather rambly post. I'm tired and there's been alot going on.

Alpaca yarn, lace and accounting

I have posted about the alpaca I'm spinning up before, and I now have 100 yards of laceweight yarn hanging to dry in my shower! I'm not sure what I'm doing with it as yet, but I have a feeling I can do whatever I like with it, having 300g of the lovely stuff! I'm thinking shawl, but I'm not sure about what style yet.

Also, the bit about this alpaca is it's the first fibre that I'm preparing myself. I got it as 300g of fleece shoved into a ziploc bag. I'm carding it and spinning it from the rolag, and washing it after spinning using woolwash. It's coming up very nicely, though I'd forgotten how long it takes to spin laceweight, but then, all the laceweight spinning I'd done up till now had been on a spindle. But I never got 100 yards of it off a spindle, I always got a tad distracted before then

No photos as yet forthcoming, but the other news is I might be obtaining a decent digital camera soonish!

I've also picked up the alpine lace again since I finished my uni assignment. i'm not quite halfway there yet though.

I have to confess, I enjoyed accounting. It was nice, and neat, and everything had it's place and it was relaxing. I'm liking the same qualities in my lace. Every stitch has it's place in relation to the ones that came before it, the stitches here will make up a rose leaf later, the placement of each stitch culminates in a piece of art

Thus endeth tonight's rambling