More Fibre goodness

I don't know that I ever actually explained to you how I ended up spending a large portion of Easter at the Bendigo Showgrounds, but in a nutshell the story goes like this:

The denizens of Emu Creek, otherwise known as Pete-and-Brenda, are keen Chrysanthemum growers as well as their more usual guise of gurus of all things goaty.
Anyway, a year, or so, ago they decided that Bendigo really needed a Goat Show. I mean really, really, reallly [ no arguments from me ] and the easiest way to do it without headaches over venues and public liability insurance and the rest, was to create a goat sub-group in the local Chrysanthemum Club and ride along as part of the long-standing Easter Chryssie show at the Prince Of Wales Showgrounds - better known to readers of any knitting blog based in Oz as the home of the Australian Wool & Sheep Show. [ prize for most run-on and parenthetical sentence of the month ]
As is often the case, someone who fully intended to be there, selling her spinning wheels, fibre and yarns, had to bow out fairly late in the piece, and all the advertising mentioned spinning, so a spinner there had to be, even if she was only there to demo... and guess who is the only spinner that Pete-and-Brenda could call to mind ???
Yes
got it in one

And actually, now that I've written that, ONE advertisement came out touting the presence of " sinners" as I found out on the Saturday when one smartypants enquired " Are you one of them sinners I was reading about?"

Anyway
this is the alpaca/ kid angora singles that I managed to get spun over the two days of constant interruptions - like having to go pet sweet, snuggly caprines and camelids
this is how it looked on Sunday night when I plied it with a Corriedale-cross singles that was hanging around begging to be used


and the plied, wetted-and-whacked end product

Those lumpy bumpy bits all seemed to happen when I was trying to answer questions

as did any and all yarn breakages

any perfect spinning occurred when I was not being scrutinised

of course

and we will not even begin to discuss the subject of how one copes with the discovery [ beginning of day 2 ] that one has left the [ absolutely vital ] orifice hook sitting in yesterday's bag on the coffee table 50 kilometres away !!!!

Goat Showy Goodness Now With Added Alpaca

All roads lead to Bendigo

Last October I was able to cross yet another life ambition off The List when I achieved near immortality by having a goat named after me

"Self" I thought at the time, " It doesn't get any better than this" [ which my family and friends would probably tell you says volumes about my life ]
Self agreed with me, but it turns out that both of us were completely incorrect.

It turns out that leading your namesake into the judging ring at the inaugural Bendigo Goat Show is pretty nifty too


and even better is when she wins Best Anglo-Nubian Doe in her age group [ narrowly beating out another of PND's doelings, Ms Hannah ]

and, cheesy grin notwithstanding, if you click for big, you can read what it says on my shirt

Almost lost for words

chris found this on line

I can't decide whether it's so twee that it's cute [ maybe with a white 'beard' as an elf ]

or whether it's just ...

oh, heck, you decide :)

finished object

Castlemaine State Festival 2011 ; the final washup

So here's the thing

Pretty much every day for the last week and a half, I've composed mental blog posts... mostly in the car ... or under the shower.

They were witty and polished.
Moving even.
They would have really made you want to jump on a bus/train/plane and get yourself up/down/over here ... if I had, in point of fact, actually got as far as the keyboard,
but alack
and alas even
there was just sooooo much going on, that just didn't happen.
as you may have noticed

there was:
mass dancing in the streets at the Opening Ceremony
marvelous pieces of theatre to be seen/heard/enjoyed in venues both traditional and decidedly not.*
wonderful exhibitions by just about every practising artist in the area
fabulous concerts [ the standout for Nadie and I had to be Toronto-based Klezmer band ' Beyond The Pale' and their Beyond Mozart concert

... the divine Wolfgang Amadeus played on electric mandolin, violin, clarinet, piano accordion and bass ... some of it in Balkan 7/8 time !!!! ]

singing ... in the street outside the Castlemaine Fruit & Veg with the Peace Choir
singing ... at the railway station [ at 6 am ] with the Chat Warblers
singing ... with a cast of what seemed like thousands in the IGA Supermarket [ and apparently we were on ABC Radio too but I missed it ]
some seriously frocked-up** singing ... with soloists from Victorian opera conducted by Richard Gill in a sing-your-own Mozart to Mayhem concert.

Surprisingly, I have almost no voice left, and and seriously need to buy shares in whichever pharmaceutical company makes Strepsils.

Oh, and I mustn't forget that David got involved too

and then there was the all-day closing party yesterday
but I'm all tuckered out so I'm going to leave that for tomorrow


* down a Goldmine

**frocked up: the condition of being very, very dressed up for an occasion such as The Opera or The Ballet.
In the case of my friend Janey, it meant swapping her habitual checked-work-shirt-and -jeans for a pristine white-shirt-and-jeans.

Some of us who did frock up as directed, scored double pass tickets to a Victorian Opera production in Melbourne later in the year.

spot the Catsmum

Forget Where's Wally? ... can you find moi in this group of pajama-clad ladies warbling at the Castlemaine Train Station at 6-flipping-AM on Monday ?

OCD queen

I swear I had today's post all planned out.

It was all about the evolution of an idea

I was going to explain to you all how a really simple freebie headband pattern lead to a beret
[ that I haven't shown you yet, despite the fact that it was finished halfway through last year ] which lead to some wristwarmers
[ that I also haven't shown you because they're not sewn up ]
which lead to the leggies that I kinda slipped into the last post
and then to the current project ... which I was confident would be entirely finished, ends sewn in and photographable by tonight

except

in the long established tradition of best laid plans 'o mice, men and Catsmums going aft aglay

just as I was casting off, I noticed a row count error

90 rows back

and yes
I nearly said something less than ladylike
and yes
I did pull it all out
and yes
I have started again

but that will be a post for another day

this week

Nadie and I spent some quality time with Bear at the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens

I made a new bit of garden ... which has been subsequently rearranged several times by the cats

so I've temporarily given up my landscaping attempts until the irresistible attraction of newly turned earth wears off

I also designed and knitted some legwarmers for The Girl


Nadie made sushi for the WIP [works in progress] day that we had yesterday

and we marked Earth Hour 2011 appropriately [ Nadie and The Boy playing cards by candlelight ]

gorgeous little visitor

MissC is sulking because Nadie 'stole' her Bearded Dragon

do or do not ... there is no try

Why is it that as soon as I say ... well, okay,write ... that I'm going to tell you something in particular in the next post, other stuff intervenes ?

In this case, like a whole bunch of other bloggers, I have found myself just overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the continuing disasters in Japan.

It seems insensitive to blithely witter on about my latest knitting / gardening / singing, etc in the face of yet another horrendous natural occurrence

again

First it was floods in Queensland, and then in New South Wales and Victoria.

Then the horrors of Christchurch

and now Japan

so do I blog about my inconsequential stuff or don't I ?

Today as I trawled through my favourite blogs, and read about Bell's newest gorgeous shawl, and Sheepish Annie's ongoing battles with her students, I realised that reading ... and writing ... about the normal stuff is one way of dealing with the overwhelmingly big stuff.

So
as promised

the backstory to my Zen Shawl:

back in October of 2008, I was working on a pair of Broadripple socks for Nadie.
I'd already made a couple of pairs for myself and just loved - and still love - the pattern.
I had decided to dye some cream sock yarn with a totally random [ and the key word here would be 'unmeasured' ] mix of blues, purples and hot pink.
It turned out just as I wanted. So far so good
... until ... I ran out of yarn with just the toe of the second sock left to do.

Cut to frenzied gnashing of teeth

Granted I could have just unpicked the toe of the first sock and given both of them a contrasting toe. That trick has gotten many a savvy knitter out of a tight spot before this ... but did I consider that ?
Nope
Never even crossed my mind for a second.
Instead I attempted to duplicate the 'random' dye job.

First attempt: came out as a pretty but very pastel version.
Second attempt: surprisingly close.

If you look at the photo in the link above, you can see that one toe is ever so slightly paler than the rest, but as the person for whom they were made was happy, I decided not to listen to the OCD side of my brain, and to quit while I was ahead. Said socks were duly finished four days after I started them.

The full ball of attempt 1 and the almost full one of attempt 2 were relegated to the sock wool tub where they lived in complete harmony with all the other sock wool candidates for a couple of years.

until
October 23rd 2010

I was about to catch a train down to Melbourne to spend the evening-before-her-wedding with my darling girl.
As I headed for the door, bag in hand, 'She who must be obeyed' [ aka my BFF Beryl ] yelled "Take your knitting. You'll need something to keep you calm tomorrow morning!!"

far be it from me to argue with SWMBO

but what to take ?
the then current - and still unfinished - project was far too complicated.
I needed to start something new...
I needed to find yarn, pattern and needles ... like right NOW

Snap decision: lace, but something I could do with my brain in neutral. It pretty much had to be another a Forest Canopy Shawl
but what yarn ?

okay, that stuff leftover from Nadie's socks is pretty and I can dye a couple more balls darker for the border later

needles? these 4mm KPs will have to do. They're already screwed together. I don't have time to fiddle around changing the ends.

I cast on going down in the train and got a couple of repeats done

and of course this brings us to the next morning. Nadie's wedding day.
Amidst the chaos of hair and makeup people, I sat in my oh-so-elegant white, fluffy dressing gown, knitting fine lace

I only had to pull out a little bit when I lost the plot for a few stitches [ but I didn't tell you that ]

and that whole 'keep you calm ' premise ?
It actually worked.


Specs:

pattern - Forest Canopy Shawl by Susan Lawrence [ ravlink]
yarn - Arlaan Arwetta [ ebay purchase ] originally cream
needles - KP Options 4mm
yardage - 760m or 830 yds [ 4 balls ]
mods - 7 extra repeats of the diamond pattern and 8 extra eyelet rows in the border

and in case you missed it the photo is here

dum dum dum dum

... another one* bites the dust**



* unfinished object finished
**with apologies to Queen

edit:
I started this one back in October and just finished it this week. There's a story attached. I'll try to get back to you with that tomorrow.

The Great Muckleford Cat Rescue of 2011

Time - just after lunch this afternoon
Place - the BIIIIG tree directly in front of the house

The predicament - look closely at the centre top of the photo


that is the younger grandkitten, Suki, precariously perched - and extremely unhappy about it - almost 20 feet up a gumtree

Point the first: only Nadie and I were home at the time.
Point the second: my ladder is only 10 feet long ... and that's measuring total length to the top step upon which no sane person would stand.
Point the third: I am not good with rickety ladders.

While I went to the shed and lugged down the sturdier of the ladders, Nadie managed to entice Suki down about a foot, but have any of you ever tried to get a feisty feline to come headfirst down a sloping branch when she's 16 -18 feet off the ground and terrified ?

Did I perhaps mention that ladders and I are not friends ?

Anyway, I inched my way to the second top step, wrapped one arm around the trunk [ all the while telling the Man Upstairs that I would take it kindly if there were no Wolf Spiders lurking in the immediate vicinity ] then stretched as far as I could in any kind of safety and discovered that I was about two inches too short.

Deeeeep breath
Cautious realignment of my stranglehold on the trunk

and ...
managed to get a couple of fingers around Suki's fore-paw ... which she promptly and firmly dug even deeper into the bark that she was hanging onto like Grim Death.
After readjusting my own death grip on the tree, and several failed attempts, I caught hold of her paw again [ and remember that at this point I was balanced on the top of a ladder at full stretch, holding an overweight chat by ONE FLAMING FOOT.

I suppressed the momentary vision of myself scratched to ribbons, heaved and ended up wearing a Suki collar.

Poor baby was so stressed, she didn't even manage a decent hiss, let alone any claw work on my quivering carcass.

Result:
Suki, Nadie and I have all survived her little expedition [ even if my knees did go all wibbly wobbly once I was back on terra firma ! ]

This is becoming a habit

Part the first
Once again I've managed to go a whole week between postings ... and it's not like there's been nothing to blog about either ... but I think that certain things are conspiring to keep me from posting:
Of course the most obvious one is just the general upheaval of normal patterns that is the inevitable consequence of trying to amalgamate two separate households but we are getting there.

Mind you, there are definite benefits

All this cupboard reorganisation and rationalisation means that I've rediscovered a whole bunch of stuff that I'd forgotten I owned:
Things that I'd hung onto "just because I had the room" have been re-appraised and, where necessary, sent ruthlessly to the Op Shop.
That poor guy who works in Receiving at the local Thrift Store winces when he sees my car pull up.

Then there's the stuff I hadn't really thought about ... like the fact that Chris & Nadie would be hauling up the contents of their pantry.

Suddenly we had TWO huge tins of Milo to find a home for, two large jars of Vegemite, two sacks of Basmati rice [ and jasmine rice, and arborio rice and ... ]
and so began the Great Pantry Tidy of '11.
Past-Use-By-Dated groceries have been hunted down and terminated
Oh, I feel so virtuous

but all this virtuosity takes a toll on a Catsmum

hence the non-bloggage

part the second [with no attempt at a segue ]

about a week ago I did actually get as far as scribbling down a list of some of the stuff that I could share with you.
So with some additions from this week - and absolutely no expansions or explanations - here's the list:

garlic porcupine meatballs

feather and fan shrug [ which did make it into a post ]

ebook reader

weird weird weather [ okay, so I lied about no explanations. It's the first week of March. If the previous 6 years were anything to go by, it should be peak bushfire season. Instead we've had more rain, and mornings hovering only a handfull of degrees above zero ]


Fred-the-duck MIA

Lonely George. Tuesday. 4 degrees.

garden

Viva Verdi Concert

humungous blisters

cat politics

Bear and Chris

Flourless Almond Orange Cake

Chat Warblers

Peace Choir

Zumba

Purls Palace closes

WiiFit

WIP Day:

Bear-based yarn tensioning device


visitors

presents

any or all of the above may now form the basis of forthcoming Blogfodder if so desired. just ask okay ?

She's ba-aaack !

Quilting Mojo is still MIA, but as her sibling Ms K. Mojo [ known as Knit to her friends ] has returned to the fold, can QM be far away ?

Mind you, Ms Knit is severely displeased with me.

She expected to return to piles of finished woollies
and
what did she find ?
nothing!
not a scrap!

By the time she had finished castigating me for the pathetic lack of sticks-and-string related activity, my membership in the Knitterly ranks was in serious danger of being stripped from my wilting shoulders. Oh the shame !
There was no help for it.
I had to re-establish my credentials asap.

A quick rummage in the depths of the UFO basket under the coffee table produced a vaguely familiar bit of feather-and-fan. I seem to remember starting it around New Years with the nebulous intention of it being some sort of trans-seasonal long sleeved shrug for Nadie.
When I actually got around to showing her what I'd started, she was somewhat less than enamoured with the colour [ a subdued sort of bluey, mauvy grey] and it ended up in time out.

So now it's going to be for me

The yarn is an aran weight Patons cotton blend that I originally bought - cheaply - at the local supermarket, and then added to when I found some more balls of the same dyelot going for a song at the Salvo Op Shop [ Thrift store ].

No pattern as such: two identical panels of feather and fan with garter stitch border and a segue into stocking stitch for the back[s] and then joined centre back with kitchener stitch.

I could've also just seamed the two pieces together, or done a three needle cast-off ... or I could've just done it all in one continuous piece with the lace at either end and trusted that no-one would actually notice that the pattern on one sleeve was upside down.

anyway for those who care about the specs

yarn - Patons Washed Haze Aran
needles - 6mm KP Harmony

No promises about how long it will take me to sew up the sleeve/side seams.
Can't rush these things.

evidence...

Natal congratulations

Hippo Birdy
two ewes
Hippo Birdy
two ewes
Hippo Birdy deeeeeear Nadie
Hippo Birdy
twooooooooooooooooo ewes


Hard to believe that my 'baby' is 29 today !

Nadie circa 1990

so here's the thing

what with
the alternating floods and heatwave[s]
the running to and fro to Melbourne to get Nadie-and-The-Boy packed up and moved in here
the running to and fro to Melbourne because MIL collapsed and got dragged off to 'ospital the day after Nadie-and-The-Boy moved up here
the packing/unpacking/rationalising of two households worth of goods and chattels

all coming hot on the heels of the Great Annual Post Christmas Take-Down and Pack Away [ which was somewhat more prolonged and involved than expected due to the fact that some of my usual storage spaces were about to be repurposed for storage of the above mentioned goods and chattels ]

and let us not forget the garden ... repeated flooding rains after 15 years of drought equals rampant and unprecedented growth equals [happy] hours of pruning and weeding,

and then, naturally, Nadie and I had to spend some quality time sitting-and-contemplating-the-results-with-book-and-companion-animals



net result:
I have not touched anything involving needle or hook for over a month
[gasp]

and Bear would like you to know that he is still adorable

Ms Spiny Spider had just finished mending the storm damage to her web when Nadie decided to show us what her top side looks like. You may remember the recent pic of her nether regions

... and now that I read that sentence again, it does occur to me that it is, perhaps, open to more than one interpretation ... erm ...

Obviously, I'm referring to the arachnid she's nether regions, not those belonging to my darling daughter

Is it safe to come out yet ?

After innumerable trips up and down the Highway, and with the help of a few good men ... and women ... Nadie and The Boy, and their goods, chattels and livestock [ aka the grandkittens Sumi and Suki ] are here.

Not quite what you'd call squared away yet.
That's still a work in progress