of this and that and quite possibly TMI

it's still hot - currently around 36C - and the closest thing to rain in the last several weeks would be the dozen drops that hit my windshield on Monday and evaporated immediately thereafter.
I was coming back from Bendigo at the time, having taken myself off to have the mammies grammed.

Cue portentious doom laden music

I will admit that I've been putting it off ... and off ... and off ... and I'm sure that I'm not alone in that ... but I promised a certain friend that I would get it done and so I have

and I have to tell you
it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I remembered

I kept waiting for that remembered agonising sensation - somewhat like having my tender bits slammed repeatedly in a car door
the eye-watering, take-your-breathe-away pain

and ...

nada
zip
it didn't happen
oh-kay so maybe not precisely the most pleasant five minutes of my life
but bearable


Now some of that is due to the newer style equipment
... maybe
... but equally probable would be the explanation that there is considerably more of me than there used to be.

While I am still not ... ahem ... well endowed in the chest area, at least I don't have to pay the technician a finders fee nowadays!
Stop laughing!
I'm serious!
I was once sooooo flat chested that if I'd had any less bust I would've been concave
They used to have to scrape up every spare millimetre of flesh from my armpits to my elbows just to get enough to squash between those plates.

Anyway
I wasn't slogging around Bendigo in that heat and subjecting my person to medical [wo]man-handling, unless there was some sort of payoff, so I betook myself off to S*******t [ soul deadening big box craft store ] and found some Yarn Bee Down to Earth 50/50 soy/cotton blend on the throw out table for $2 a ball.
The colours in the top layer were not particularly inspiring, but some determined burrowing unearthed a good plain navy. Obviously, I scooped up all that I was able to find [ 13 balls ] plus an unlabelled one in variegated mauve/blue - which I'm pretty sure is Patons Smoothie - for $1 ... which will probably be for prem hats or bootees ... and the soy? there are several somethings in my queue that it would probably suit. We shall have to see!

I also splurged on some pure cotton sheets in cream.
The ongoing heatwave has cured me of any desire that I may have once harboured to sleep on poly cotton blend ! Non-iron or no non-iron, I needs me some cool, cool cotton.

Speaking of which
this is a wee sample made in an unidentified cotton that was part of the Beryl largesse I dragged home from Tassie last October.
It's about 2 or 3 ply [ lacweight or fingering ] with a lovely sheen to it, and I've already used it to make a couple of dozen snowflakes before Christmas.
It crochets up well but I have almost a kilo of it and that represents a lifetimes worth of snowflakes and then some, so I tried a sample of travelling vine lace on 3mm needles. I was thinking shrug or fingerless gloves but it really was too splitty for knitted lace.


Then I did another in the same stitch pattern but in Cleckheaton Bamboo [ 4ply fingering ] on 3.75 and 4mm


I'm more or less following the Posh Wedding Shrug except that this yarn is much, much finer than the recommended worsted and obviously on commensurately smaller needles than the 5.5mms of the original, so there's a bit of maths involved. Not too much... nothing the brain can't cope with in the heat. The bamboo is wonderful stuff to knit with in this weather ... far more pleasant than the pure cotton even, and it just drapes soooooowell. I'm loving it!
It doesn't really solve the problem of what to do with a huge cone of fine cotton, but the bamboo was in the stash too, so I can still feel reasonably virtuous.

and we just won't count those 14 balls from Monday, right?