Hat obsessed

I have been too busy knitting hats to post anything to the blog. I think I am hat obsessed. It is pretty funny considering I have never been a beanie wearer.

Here are some of the hats I have made:

Pattern: Hurricane Hat

Yarn: Vanna's Choice

Needles: Knitpicks Options 4mm circs - magic loop

I think I made this an inch shorter, after comparing it with the very first hat that I made. Depending on who I talk to, it either looks good on me or too short and needing to be folded up. I don't like the look of it with a folded brim, so it will be gifted to my niece. Little SennaBear loves trying on things that I make, and the colour looks good on her so it will be one of her Chrissy presents. I love the colour and feel of this yarn, so will use it again. Maybe for a lacey type hat.

Pattern: Spiral Rib Hat

Yarn: Patons Feathersoft 4ply

Needles: Knitpicks Options 4.5mm circs magic loop

The hat is lovely and soft, but it is too soft I think.

Pattern: Pinwheel Beanie
Yarn: Wendy Peter Pan Double Knit

Needles: Knitpicks Options 3.5mm circs, magic loop

I liked this pattern, might try it a bit bigger next time

Pattern: Sweet and Simple Baby Hat

Yarn: Patons Feathersoft 4ply

Needles: Don't remember, but was done magic loop

I am not too happy with this hat. I should have done the i-cord, but wanted to finish it in a hurry. The yarn is definitely not a good one for hats, unless I do premmie size with smaller needles. Feels lovely and soft though.

Pattern: my own, using a combo of hat formulas and just making up numbers.

Yarn: Wendy Classics Courtelle Double Knitting

Needles: 4mm Knitpicks Options

Technique: Magic Loop

I really love this hat. I bought the yarn thinking that it would make a very funky scarf, but it is a bit too bright. It makes for a great hat and sock. These will be gifted to someone having a baby, but it has to be a girl.

Pattern: North Country Cotton Baby Socks

Needles: Knitpicks Options 3.75mm circs

Yarn: Wendy Classics Courtelle Double Knitting

Technique: Magic Loop
I enjoyed making these and will use this pattern again. SennaBear (21months) was the test foot for these, they are a bit too small for her little feet. She insisted that she had to have both socks on, and was very cute walking last night with them on - till she stood on the wood floor and nearly went over. Not a good floor for kids with socks.

My sister asked when I would make her a pair of socks, hmmmm maybe when she has made me a pair? We can learn together. I am currently doing the class sock from Sensational Knitted Socks with the bright yarn. So far I like it, but have learnt that you need to pay attention to the pattern. I hope to have a pair of cuff down socks, and a pair of toe-up socks done for me this Summer.

I will have nearly 3 weeks off work over the Christmas period, because we won't be having any elective surgery (except for a couple of Caesar mornings). Unfortunately I will be on call for most of the break, so will not be doing anything exciting. I hope to be enjoying some fresh vegies from the garden, if they grow super fast.

Wow, looking back over this post I have been busy.

BTW, after that day with the bees I have had no more problems with them inside. I think they may have been attracted to the Dynamic Lifter liquid stuff I put on the garden. If I have a problem with it again I will be giving it away. I have noticed bees outside a few times, maybe they were swarming that day looking for all the seaside daisies I had pulled out of the garden a couple of weeks before - they always seemed to be hovering around them.

Better go do some stuff, am going out for Turkish tonight to celebrate Cathy Miller being in town. It has been organised by the wonderful QM.

Not the bees knees

I have BEES in my HOUSE!!!! I have no idea where they are getting in, but I have killed about 10 of them so far. Mortein doesn't seem to do a good job of killing them dead, just stunning them - the shoe does the job. In the last year I have found two dead bees under the gas heating duct in my bedroom, but hoped that it was just a freaky coincidence that they were sneaking in the door when it was open and dying in my bedroom.

I didn't notice anything flying around today while I was enjoying the day off work. It was only when I was creating the layers of the lasagne that I noticed what I thought were two blowflies hovering around. I thought it was great that they weren't getting too close to the dinner I was making. But then I walked into the laudry and saw what I thought were about 6 flies around the backdoor. Out came the mortein, and I did the rounds of every window and door in the house. Luckily I am in a townhouse with neighbours on each side, otherwise I would have had more windows to patrol.

In the bedroom was a dead bee, that very obviously looked like a bee. That was when I realised that I hadn't been invaded by flies enjoying relief in my house from the 30 degree day, but I had been invaded by BEES. I think once they got in, they just wanted to get back out. What I want to know is WHERE THE DAMN THINGS GOT IN!! The options are: holes in the flyscreen, a small gap I found at the bottom of the sliding door that could let them in, or through the roof. If it is the roof, then they could be coming in through the heating ducts, or the exhaust fan in the bathroom.

I am not very happy, as you can imagine. I had been doing the last rounds of a hat, and anticipating my lasagne that is hopefully going to be cooked soon. Now I am watching where I walk in case I tread on a bee and get stung. I haven't been stung by a bee since I was a kid, but I remember that it hurt heaps. Luckily I am not allergic like my sister. I am hoping the bees came in through a tiny hole in the flyscreen, because I don't like the idea of a swarm in the roof. I have had people in the roof this year, my brother put in insulation in February, and I have had heater guys here a few times doing service and repair of the heater. None of them noticed any problems. While I was on my bee patrol I could see them buzzing all around outside the front and back doors. Tomorrow I will be ringing a pest control person to come and spray my house.

I have had lots of things to write about lately, but not had the time to post. I have some pics to show of what I have been up to, including the stuff I got from the Tapestry Craft (Morris and Sons) sale. Today I had a brilliant idea of yet another project I could start - matching hat and socks for a baby that is on the way. I have only ever done one pair of socks - the baby socks in the magic loop booklet. They turned out ok, but not great. I have been doing magic loop hats, so have been practising that technique. I am glad I haven't had the problems with ladders that I had with the socks I did for my niece when she was born. Anyway, I have no idea what pattern I will use for the hat and socks, but it is something I can do from the stash, and it will also mean that I can make a pair for the Southern Summer of Socks. I might try a hat with cable, since I have never done cables before.

Other things to do in the next week, besides hope that I don't have a beehive in my roof:

• make the bed with the sheets that are sitting freshly washed and dry in the laundry - hopefully with no bees hiding in them
• have yummy sponge cake and lamb roast dinner tomorrow - my Dad's 60th birthday
• go to work
• finish my tax so I get a bill. Etax is useful, but not so great when it tells you that you will get a bill. As you can probably tell, I got to that point and didn't finish entering all the data.
• find where I put all the papers for my tax
• enjoy my Dad's 60th birthday party on the weekend
• get lots of advice from the garden nursery guy that is coming next Monday to help inspire me with my garden. Maybe I will get some plants that don't attract bees
• watch the Melbourne Cup
• Enjoy my four day weekend. I love having the Monday off, with a Public Holiday on the Tuesday

Wish me luck with the bees. I have declared war.

seven random thoughts

Bec tagged me for the seven random thoughts meme, so here we go.

1. This is the first meme that I have been part of. I have been lucky not to be tagged before (that my foggy tired brain can remember) in blogworld. This had been a good thing cos I have trouble writing interesting stuff on my blog.

2. I hate water. Saying I have a phobia for water could be a better way of putting it. I don't like to splash my face with water, or put my face under the shower. The water has to be warm, not just luke warm. I can't go in a car wash, I have tried twice and won't bother trying again. The second time I went in a car wash I had a magazine to distract me, but I still found myself with my hand on the door handle ready to get out when all the water and brushes came at me. I even have trouble being able to walk along the footpath next to the lake. It all stems from childhood, I can remember being pushed in the deep end at Jammo pool as a kid and not being able to get up because a really big person (I was always a tiny little person) had jumped in and I couldn't get up to the air. I was really good at sitting on the side of the pool when we had swimming lessons.

3. I finished first grade Primary School at High School. In October 1980 in Canberra we had a HUGE storm that caused heaps of damage to my school - it got flooded, windows were smashed, and from memory the roof over the library collapsed. Luckily they had finished building a High School in the next suburb, so we finished the school year there. I can still remember putting up Christmas decorations around the classrooms. The High School didn't last long as a school, it closed down in the 90s I think.

4. I can remember when I was a kid I used to have fun sleeping in strange positions in bed, with my head at the foot end of the bed under the blankets, sideways or with my feet up the wall. I used to wake up sometimes having fallen down between the mattress and the wall. I still wake up laying sideways in the bed, with my feet hanging out the side of the bed. Good thing I sleep on my own, don't think any man would appreciate being kicked out of bed, lol.

5. My parents have rented or owned 3 houses in Canberra with the hideous brown cupboards and extra hideous yellow bench tops. I am not sure if that is why I hate yellow, or if it was an itchy yellow jumper that I wore as a kid.

6. My sister and I have the same size feet, and have managed to buy exactly the same sneakers and summer slip on shoes when we weren't in the shop together. We hadn't even seen each others shoes. It has been a real pain when we both take off our summer shoes and get them mixed up - my feet are a bit wider than Cathy's.

7. I have defective hands, they look normal, and usually are except that I can't count to five the same way everyone else does. I raise my fingers in this order: my thumb, index finger, middle, little and then the ring finger. I cannot straighten the ring finger on either hand without doing the little finger first. Or holding the little finger down with the palm of my hand. I have just been doing this to try to explain it, and discovered that I also have to straighten my middle finger as well to fully straighten my ring finger. Bizarre. I have only ever seen/noticed one other person with this defect, the daughter of a friend I went to school with. I should ask one of the Orthopods (bone doctors) at work why this is. Anyone else with this problem?

The seven people I would like to know more about are:
Wendy
Lissa
Olivia
Jo
Shadowlee
Caffiene Fairy
Donyale

Better go to bed, am on call tonight so need to get some sleep in case I get woken up at some ungodly hour and am expected to function.

Remember, add the washing powder.

Next time I decide to quickly put the washing on while my porridge is in the microwave, I WILL add washing powder. I am doing a great job of wasting water today, I will just pretend that we don't have water restrictions here in Canberra. I had planned on getting all my washing for the week done this morning, but have a slight delay while I rewash the sheets, this time using detergent!

I have had a busy week on the work front and the knitting front, as a result I have lots of housework to do today. Luckily, I have the day off work so I can try to achieve stuff. I was making a hat for my Dad for Fathers Day, but ripped it back because it would fit my little head better than his big head. I was doing so well with it, even had perfect gauge. It has now been restarted on 5mm instead of 4.5mm.

My niece turned 3 on Saturday, so we had a really fun party. Pass the Parcel with 3 year olds is hilarious. Lots of my favourite foods were on show, honey joys made with Cornflakes, my Mum's sausage rolls and her egg and bacon savouries, little boys (otherwise known as cocktail frankfurts), as well as the usual fairy bread and a delicious chocolate butterfly cake. Maybe I should have taken note of my sister's tale of the cake, she forgot the eggs and had to take the mix out of the butterfly tin, obviously I take after her when it comes to forgetting essential ingredients like washing powder!

I gave my niece a hat that I made with Lincraft Prism for her birthday. It is such nice yarn to knit with, as long as you take care not to spit the 70% wool, 30% soy combo. It looks and feels scrumptious. For the two seconds that it was on her head, it looked like it was a good fit. It was way too big for her little sister, but looked very cute on her too.
I used the free pattern that they had at Lincraft, but made it using one circular needle instead of two straights. I am well and truly hooked on hats. That is probably a good thing, after seeing the hat I made for me, people at work want me to make matching ones for them. I will experiment with different patterns that I am allowed to produce and sell, and also different yarns. I have bought more Prism in different colours, and will even try to do the Palindrome Hat and Scarf. I have loved these since I saw them, but after trying Prism and then finding versions of Palindromes made from Prism I now know what yarn I will use.

On Saturday I had a great time pruning the garden. I will take photos later of all the bare patches I created! I ripped out all the seaside daisies, and attempted to dig out one of the roses. I have two rose bushes, neither of them have roses that are very suitable for vases, they don't have nice fragrance but they do have a zillion thorns. I didn't really like them last year when I moved in, but like them even less now. They can go and be replaced by something better.

The washing has finished, and the coffee has gone cold so I should get going with the housework. Tonight I will be stitching with the girls, so that should be fun.

Things of blue

On Monday I picked up my quilt from the Caroline Conlan of History in the Making. Unfortunately she doesn't have a website, but if you want her to do any work for you I can give you her number.

The quilt looks beautiful, as you can see. Caroline custom quilted it, and it look spectacular. The actual star part of the quilting was a bit of a challenge, the design we had chosen for the quilt had bits that we thought would work for all parts of the quilt, but the star bits are parallelograms, not the diamonds that were needed for the pattern to work. I think that the design Caroline came up with for this portion worked really well.

Here is a close up of the centre of the quilt. My Mum is in love with feathers, so she kept showing me pictures of similar quilts she found that had feathers on them. Two quilting designs I don't like are feathers and stipples, so I don't think I will ever use them. I am sure feathers would look fine for this quilt, but I reckon this looks better, it is more original.

Don't you just love the design in the lighter part of the quilt? It helps the fabric to stand out. I knew nothing about luminosity when I chose the fabrics for this quilt, but I managed to create a good effect anyway.


It was hard to get a pic showing the quilting on the background fabric, but it is basically three quarters of the section in the light fabric. The border quilting looks a bit like swirls and hearts.


At the moment the quilt is still sitting on my sofa, waiting for me to cut out the binding, as well as remove the excess wadding and backing fabric from the quilt itself. The only problem with having to do that, is that I won't be able to admire it on the sofa while I am working on it.
Thanks again to Mum who offered to pay for a quilt of mine to be quilted when I bought my house, I am pleased I chose this one - if I had to pay for it to be custom quilted it would probably be sitting in a box for another 5 years.

The other scrumptious blue thing that has come into my home in the last couple of weeks is this gorgeous baby alpaca dyed by Donyale. I was inspired by QMs Clapotis that her Mum made for her, and wanted to make a similar but larger version.

The photos don't do justice to the colour, but it is a really nice bluey-grey. I also bought some stitch markers, because they just looked so pretty on the website, but they look even better in real life. The lighting in the bathroom shows off the colour much better than the lounge, but these are the only pics I have.

Speaking of bathrooms, better go do some cleaning before I go out for coffee.

Busy working in my native garden

The last couple of weeks have been so busy I haven't had a lot of time for crafty stuff. I worked out yesterday that my last proper day off was the 17th of August. Last weekend I went to the Canberra division (Zone 7) of the OTA's AGM/seminar day. There were some interesting topics being discussed, and I won a backpack/trolley bag. I think it was a leftover from the state conference earlier this year, but it is really cool. It has loads of pockets, and has wheels and a handle so you can load heaps of stuff into it and push it around if you need to. I sat there and visualised how many pasties I can fit into it to bring home from Adelaide next year. I will add a photo when I get round to taking one.

I spent time last Friday arvo and Sunday morning working in the garden. I have a little patch out the front of my place that had horrible diosmas in it. They were scraggly looking things, that had been badly pruned at some point. I hated looking at them, so had them removed by one of my neighbours. He certainly earned his money that day, a couple of the plants were so deeply stuck in the ground he had to use his car to pull them out!

The soil that was underneath them was mainly clay, I don't think there was anything good about it at all. I started my work trying to improve the dirt, by adding garden mix, compost, dynamic lifter, and potting mix that I removed from three rotten wine barrel planters that were in the backyard. I planted some natives and put down sugar cane mulch so that when it broke down it could add some nutrition to the soil.

Last week the local garden centre had their spring sale, so I bought more bags of compost and mulch, and some more plants (to replace half the plants that had died in the front garden last year). I spent hours digging the compost into the soil, using the garden fork I was able to get at 25% off. It was still really hard work, but much easier than last year. I think when I started on that garden last year it was 100% clay, this year it was much better. Using the fork was a lot easier too, the spade I used last year just got heavier and heavier with the clay.

Here are some pics of the garden, luckily I finished Sunday morning, because I got called in to work after lunch. I did run out of mulch before I was finished, so still have to top up one end of the garden, and inside the courtyard. I made a quick dash with my sister to The Garden to pick up more mulch at lunch time, it is still sitting in the courtyard waiting for me.






Here is a photo of the Correa that I planted in Katie's memory after she died in January. I didn't get any photos while it had more flowers, I have had to hold back some leaves so you can see the one flower that is left. Luckily that is one of the plants that survived. This close up was taken before the mulching, but the Little Cate correa is surrounded now by Cutie Cat Pansies. We had a bit of rain last night so everything should now be doing really well. Hopefully it will all survive.

Gold medal hopes dashed

Just like Susanna Kallur, I can't get past my first hurdle of the Maine Morning Mitts. I am attempting to do them using magic loop with Noro Kureyon yarn, which has great vibrant colours, but is so sticky I am regretting the choice. I have never made mittens before, and made very bad magic loop baby socks for Niece1 3 years ago. I have been putting them off for days, just in case I couldn't get the rhythm of the magic loop and the increases going.

I should have had a bit of a warm-up before the girls came over last night so I could consult WithaQ, a legend in the sport of magic looping. I should know by now that if you don't do the training and the warm-ups you can stumble and fall.

I have cast on about 6 times to do these mitts for the ravelympics, and haven't been able to pass the first round. The first time was the most successful, till I looked at it and had a very loose dodgy looking spot in the cast on. I think I stuffed up an increase. I have been lucky enough to avoid knitting too many things with increases, so still don't have that skill mastered, I can do it but it is a struggle.

My other problem with this is that I can't seem to be able to count. I can't seem to remember if I am up to a M1R or a M1L. The last attempt seemed to be going ok, I even managed to get to the end of the first needle! But then my brain kicked in (as it does when knitting and my logic isn't on the same page as the patterns logic) and I started wondering where I could find the final M1L of the needle. In the pattern it is worked on 3 needles to get the patten repeats even, I am putting 2 repeats on needle 1, and the other on repeat on needle 2. Each pattern repeat ends in p1 followed by M1L. I guess I do the M1L between the needles and end up with it sitting on the next needle.

I am sure I have managed to lose you with my description of this, much as I have managed to lose myself. I have thrown the needles down for the night. I suspect these fingerless mitts are going to be mittenless mitts! I will have another go tomorrow when the brain is fresh, otherwise I will have to wait to consult with the experts for a lesson on basic knitting. These mitts are making the hat I made look easy.

The hat was a resounding success. Even though I am not happy with the seamed part of it, people at work were so impressed some of them want me to make them one. I have to experiment with a couple of different patterns, and work out how much to charge. Once I got past the tricky bit of adjusting the pattern, I really loved knitting the hat. I only frogged that half as much as I have these rotten mitts. If I give up on them for the ravelympics, I will have to move onto my jumper that needs seaming, and about 1000 loose ends woven in.

BTW, I tried to find a good link to the start of Susanna Kallur's 100m hurdle race, but had trouble. We watched it last night and it was devastating to watch. I think she was our favourite in that heat because her hair looked so cool. I don't think she had a good start, her foot looked as sticky as my Noro yarn, and she couldn't get enough height to go over the first hurdle. I guess that is what sport is all about - train your heart out and have it all turn to shit on the day.

Better get to bed so I can try again tomorrow.