Take two

I've just spent an hour writing a carefully crafted post
uploading photos
polishing each phrase and sentence

Blogger ate it

I'm tired, it's 2 degrees and I can hear my 'lectric blanket's siren song, so I'm afraid you're getting the bare bones version:

- Nadie and The Boy are back from balmy Queensland and she's probably still complaining about the weather in Victoria as I type ... it was zero degrees last night. She has a point.

- The Boy made sure that I had split fire fodder before they left [ definite future son-in-law points ]

- Sophie, Oakley, MissC and especially Bear are happy that the greycoated invaders have gone back down south

- After complaining bitterly for 5 days, Suki didn't want to go home and took refuge under my bed.

- I didn't end up going to Quilting - tired, sore back, couch, quilt, zzzzz

- the 'black' eye is now mostly yellow

- question for you - should I sew this up as a beanie ? or leave part of the seam open, add some red ties and call it a bonnet?

- another dozen squares to go to South Africa [ that blue and red one in the bottom left corner is cashmere and alpaca - minute leftover balls of beautiful yarns that I couldn't bear to throw out, so this is a perfect use for them ]


- started this yesterday morning:


because if I keep knitting 2ply lace shawls, I'll never make a dint in the stash, but I need to take a break from making squares so this little shoulder warmer seemed like a good way to use up some Moda Vera Arcoboleno from S*******t [ heartless, souless big-box craft chain store ]. It's a wool/acrylic thick and thin singles yarn of the sort that is generally described as looking like handspun ... except that any spinner I know would be embarrassed to produce anything this uneven. It has character and texture and a glorious mix of blues, purples and teal which this night-lit photo doesn't do justice to, and will knit up quickly on 9mm KP Harmony circs

- and the new quilt
I found a good sized piece of this batik at the Op Shop for the princely sum of 50 cents and for a reason that I can't fully verbalise, I could just see wattle in bloom. Why I don't know, because there's no yellow in it and precious little green ...
so out with the gold oil paint
there's no guarantee that this is what it will end up as, but just to give you some sense of the genesis of an idea
bare winter landscape, pieced in tree trunks, and drifts of bright wattle, to make a robe shaped quilt ... perhaps for Ameratsu the japanese goddess of winter
less tree trunks I think
but you get the idea