... a-n-d again

Outside it's blowing a gale.
As with quite a bit of this week, there have been various levels of precipitation ... aah ... precipitating.
There are two happy ducks
and four very grumpy goats

inside
one small dawg who won't go out to do what a dawg's gotta do, unless I can absolutely, hand-on-my-heart guarantee him that he won't get wet

and three cats who are perfectly willing and able to use a litter box.

There has been a certain level of feline gloating about that last fact, and nasturtiums have been cast in Bear's general direction concerning his lack of manliness ... er... dogliness

and the tweaking of the wedding quilt continues:

Today was spent making minute changes and taking about 50 substantially identical photographs but I'll take pity on you all - here's the most recent:

I'll even tempt the Fates and suggest that I have now made all the necessary blocks [ including all the ones that didn't survive the cull ], stitched the sashiko, and am into the hand-appliqueing of assorted waves.

Yup. I know who I'm voting for

According to today's Sydney Morning Herald:

"The ABC has rejected pleas from the Greens to be allowed to broadcast a striking yet fake election advertisement that was created for the broadcaster.

The party confirmed they want to use an advertisement created by agency Republic of Everyone that featured on the Gruen Nation last night.

But the ABC will not allow it be used during the campaign, stating it owns the rights and the "ABC can't provide one side's advertising"."

for my overseas friends:
we have a federal election in just over a week
this is NOT a paid political ad - it's actually from a satirical show on advertising and media [ The Gruen Nation ] that aired last night.

Edit:
Originally I had the YouTube footage embedded but for some reason it was not showing the full screen. You can access it direct on YouTube through the link above. Sorry 'bout that, but it's well worth a watch.

spot the difference ?

Yup
Wedding quilt again

a few more blocks
some more tweaking
and
[ even though there are still a handfull of blocks to do ]
and because I wanted to go the quilt group today - and didn't exactly feel like taking the whole quilt down off the wall - I've started the hand applique ... which meant that I first had to join some of the blocks together to have something to applique on to


totally gratuitous cat-who-wishes-Mum-would-move-her-stuff-off-my-best-napping-spot

getting there

a lot of 'tweaking' going on - only the most careful inspection would reveal differences between this and the last several versions ... but I know !

I haven't actually given you any specs, but you could probably tell that this will be a reasonably big quilt.
The design brief - such as it was - from my DD was " One of your Japanese one-of-a-kind quilts, purple, teal, navy, with cranes, sashiko, Mount Fuji and a Tori gate"

Unfortunately Mount Fuji declined to be included,
but I think we can safely say that the rest is to code.

Each of the blocks is 6" finished, and there will be a border - understated navy - of 6-8" around what you see here, so ... assuming my maths skills haven't totally deserted me ... that's a finished size of 96" -100" square [ 2.4 -2.5m ] before quilting, to finish an inch or so smaller.

Not that this is remotely close to being finished.

I've only done [ most of ] the blocks.

Still got to join all those squares together.


and while we're on the subject, I can't keep calling this The Wedding Quilt. It needs a name, and I've already used the ones which spring to [my] mind, so I'm open to suggestions.

Love Song

I found this while trawling YouTube for possible wedding songs for Nadie and The Boy and I just had to share it with all of you [ and as a way of finding it again myself ]
I love that touch of Leonard Cohen in his voice.

progress shot

All's well that ends well

I'll keep this one brief because the eye drops haven't fully worn off yet [ after 3 hours ] and I'm finding the monitor a bit glarey

Basically the Opthalmologist says that the vitreous in my right eye is shrinking and pulling away from the retina - that pulling action being what causes the electric flashes I've been experiencing since last friday.
It's very common in old fogies, and can definitely be a cause for alarm if the retina tears or ruptures during this process of pulling away ... but mine is fine.

Touch wood.

My vision isn't/shouldn't be affected, and I'll just have to put up with the flashes and pressure on the eyeball for a week or two until the process is complete.

Huge sigh of relief!
Obviously I was told that if the situation changes [ worsens ] then I'm to call 'em immediately but there doesn't seem to be any real reason to expect that to happen
so it's all good

True to her word Tara ran me from her place to the Clinic, waited [ with knitting ] until I was done, then back to hers for a cuppa while I waited for the drops to subside enough to drive.

so now the agenda is dinner, a cuppa, and tellie with knitting - which I can do on autopilot because it's just stocking stitch.

more 'splaining and a blogiversary

so following on from yesterday's post:

David has stopped throwing up everything in sight, has managed a couple of small, bland meals [ if two wheet-bix, and two slices of toast-and-a-scrape-of-vegemite can be called meals ]
He's managed to stay out of bed all day too [ armchair, a blanket, tellie and the fire ] so we are cautiously optimistic, although he'll be staying home tomorrow just to be sure.
This gastro has landed several locals in hospital, including at least one of David's mates, so call me an overprotective mum if you like but I'm taking no chances.

The Doctor visit this arvo has resulted in an immediate appointment with the Opthalmology Clinic up in Bendy tomorrow, so I had to call in some favours with HACCS at the Shire to get Carer coverage on such short notice, but they were pretty good about it and rearranged rosters to free up David's preferred Carer [ps this NEVER happens!!! ]

Given that I'll have those lovely drops in, and we don't have a clue about the time frame, the ever thoughtful Tara has suggested that I park at hers, she'll run me to the Clinic and wait-with-travel-knitting, and then I can visit Chez FiestyWench until the drops wear off enough to drive home 50 km in safety.

I haz gooood frenz :)

I have to say the flickering actinic flashes are quite unnerving ... but not enough to stop me from:

knitting
this is Brangian, which has been in my queue ever since Bells blogged about hers. Seeing it up close and personal a couple of weeks ago at the Wool & Sheep show just served to totally reinforce that desire.
Not that this is anything like Bell's delicate cashmere version. Ooooh no!
This is a solid, sturdy, 8ply [DK ] Brangian which will keep me warm if I ever again get stuck for an extended period in a b****y freezing bus terminal.


yarn: BWM Luxury 8ply cream, dyed in a mix of Landscapes Barossa and Currawong. The yarn for the border was dyed only with Currawong [black ] and I really love that subtle change.

needles: 5mm KP Options
Modifications: 3 repeats of unchart 2, 1 of unchart 3.
Loved doing this even with the added distraction of the flashing lights, and would certainly do it again
July 29 - August 2

spinning
the Merino/ Soy [80/20] that I bought from lovely Mandie of EGMTK at the Wool & Sheep Show. This stuff is lush, shiny, soft ... I'm loving it. probably going to end up as a 2ply about sport weight
[ which we Aussies call 5ply, so a 2ply 5ply ? meh ... bit too confusing
I'll just stick to calling it sport ]

then there was the working on Nadie & The Boy's queen sized wedding quilt
coming along quite nicely I think
so that's about it for my 4th Blogiversary post ... Happy Blogiversary to me !

let me'splain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up ...

Yes, know I sort of promised an update on the weekend ... mea culpa ... but I'm sure you'll all forgive me [ she says, smiling winsomely ]

Basically the last several days have involved:

migraine

weird flickering visual disturbance which was initially put down to migraine-related aura but is now on Day 5, so I'm off to the Doc tomorrow, always provided I can sort out some care arrangement for young David who has been throwing up everything in sight except Gastrolyte since Saturday, and is obviously not going to be well enough to be sent to his Day Placement.

To his credit, Dave has mostly managed to make it to the bathroom, but so far I'm on the third set of sheets/quilt/pillowcases, and have lost count of how many times I've had to scrub the walls in the loo.

The joys of motherhood

So it's currently very quiet round here, what with The Boy spending most of his time in bed.

Good knitting-and-spinning time
equally good quilting time [ and I'll show you all of that in the next post because this is already running on a bit and I'm not finished yet. Not by a long shot. ]

A quiet week - for whatever reason - has a lot of appeal, because the totally yarny insanity of the Wool & Sheep Show [ as already documented ], was followed a week later by the even more insane Quilt & Craft Show at Jeff's Shed.

summing up:
drove down in Tara's new vehicle - berry noice! [Tara seen here in a moment of yarn-fondling]

As planned, we met up with my DD [ seen here with my quilting /knitty friend Luz ]

and knitting friends [ Jackie, Sam with Tara ]

It goes without saying - in the middle of winter - that lots of layers are de rigeur for this sort of outing ... and shawls. Shawls are a must.
Jackie's is Travelling Woman,[ free rav download ] Tara's is an Icarus in baby alpaca, and I was wearing the latest iteration of the Forest Canopy

Of course Nadie and I spent quite some time admiring the Vic Quilter's Annual Quilt Show
[ usually the only reason for attending, because I am not good with large unruly mobs and really hate -with-a-passion the whole business of fighting the crowds around the craft show side of it ]

While Nadie voyaged off in search of wedding related bead supplies, and notwithstanding my crowd-induced discomfort, I girded up my loins, and checked out all the sewing machine vendors, before plonking down a deposit on a Husquvarna Emerald for Nadie
[ and the three Pfaff staffers earn a huge razzie for totally ignoring me for 10 full minutes while they mostly socialised with the booth next door. I was NOT quiet about the reason for my displeasure as I - and my money - left ]

Fast forward to the end of our time at the Show: apart from The Girl's sewing machine, I'd only bought one skein of Collinette and two FQs of Japanese fabric ... umm ... well ... that is, until I saw a Christmas-goodies stand on the way out, and blew the rest of my budget.
Nadie's comment was " I thought you were pretty restrained actually. You could've bought half that stand! "

Train out to Nadie's for tea, and modelling of the newly presented scarf and beanie in Melbourne Storm colours, which she wore to the match that night. [ they won ]I was supposed to be going back into town and the Opera [ Handel. Julius Caesar] when the kids headed off to the footy, but was so tired I opted to just go home

big mistake
BIGBIGBIG mistake
Vline, had cancelled a bunch of country trains due to track work, replacing them with a partial Coach service and then train from Sunbury. I won't bore you with the details of the trip, other than to say that what should have been less than a 2 hour train journey became over 4 hours, much of it spent waiting in freezing conditions in a cavernous bus terminal

the week since has been spent
knitting Nadie some gauntlets to match the beanie & scarf combo
matching Storm Beanie for The Boy [ Nadie's Boy that is ]
knitting myself a warmer shawl-for-waiting-in-bus-terminals
pedicuring four very unco-operative goats
wrestling with rocks and recycled fence posts and several barrow loads of dirt to create a new garden bed, sited to take advantage of the overflow pipe from the roof


Reasonably gratuitous Bear included for scale

and I've just realised tomorrow is my 4th Blogiversary

Ruby here ...

Mu-u-u-u-m wants me to tell you:
that this last week's been very, very full, mostly pretty damn good, and she WILL try to do a catch up post over the weekend
but
basically ... well ... she's totally and completely exhausted

so all you're getting is a picture of my newly pedicured toes

don't I look just maa-a-a-ah-velous ?

what you can do with 6 days

Do you remember that gorgeous yarn I bought last Friday ?
It's all grown up:


I'm going to wear it to the big Quilt & Craft show @ Jeff's Shed*, down in Melbourne tomorrow [ just so I can show it to Nadie,Tara, and Luz ]

pattern: yes it's another Forest Canopy Shawl [ Susan Lawrence]
needles: 5.5mm KP Options
yarn: EGMTK Sock [ no idea what the colour is called ] 610 metres
mods: 18 repeats of the main pattern and an extra repeat in the border
finished size: 78" x 40"



* Jeff's Shed is actually The Melbourne Convention Centre or somesuch but everyone [ including the Street Directory ] calls it Jeff's Shed after the State Premier at the time it was built.

FO and totally gratuitous animals

Last week, I'd finished the Lara Pinwheel Cardi and promised visual proof, but it's taken me until today to get a halfway reasonable photo of it.

It was duly 'christened' on Thursday night at choir, followed by a second outing at the Sheep & Wool Show, and, despite numerous compliments coupled with requests to "turn round so that I can look at the back", etc., not one photo where you could actually see the garment.

So I was finally forced to resort - as so often in the past - to layering it on over mum's wedding dress on the mannequin in the loungeroom.
Of course I didn't think to do it in nice, clear daylight, so the colour is a bit washed out


but at least let's you see a bit of the detail. Dark dark charcoal is so hard to capture digitally. The last one is truer for depth of colour [ if you can call charcoal a colour ]

Pattern:
Lara Pinwheel Jacket [ freebie ]
Needles:
KP Harmony 5mm and 3.5mm crochet hook for edging
Yarn:
Body - BWM Rustic 5 ply in Graphite [ sadly discontinued ]
Crochet edging BWM Rustic 8ply in Graphite

mods:
made the sleeves slightly longer, and left of most of the rows of crochet arcs in the border - too 'froofy' for me

I'm not convinced that a swing jacket with cutaway front is really suited to a middle-aged, overweight Catsmum but people seemed to luuurve the back!!

and:
totally unrelated and completely gratuitous Rosie and Bear

Well, I guess that explains the cat hair !

Wool & Sheep part 2: the people

Please don't all collectively keel over with shock, but I have none of the semi-mandatory Fibre Festival pics of assorted unbearably cute ovine & camelid species.

In fact there was absolutely no interaction with assorted fleece -bearing livestock this time round at all
none
nada
niente
zip
zilch
zero

just totally ran out of time I'm afraid

and the reason ?
just too many people I needed to hug / chat with / buy stuff from / have coffee with
wherever one looked there were small groups foregathering - frequently in the middle of the road - mostly sporting Ravelry badges
I wonder what the appropriate collective noun would be for a group of Ravellers ?
A rave of Ravellers perhaps ? or a ravelling ?

I'm afraid the cute-and-fleecy didn't get a look-in

Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. When you read you begin with ...
[ Okay. I'm back! Slight detour into Sound of Music territory there ]
Anyway WE started of the morning at The Flower Shed where I left most of my yarn/fibre budget in the hands of Mandie from Ewe Give me The Knits

There was time for a hug with the giant green bunny [ Charlie from IxchelBunny - she who was the recipient of the great big blanket 'o love ]

A little later, while the fashion show went on largely ignored - at least by me - Jeanette and I had coffee / chai with the lovely Bells, seen here wearing her Coraline cardi
and Brangian shawl

... mmmm cashmere

and DrK [ aka Kylie ] wearing Ysolda Teague's Rose Red Beret made by ... guess who ? ... RoseRed ... appropriate, yes ? ]

Also at the table with us: Bells' friends, the delightful Knitabulous [ Ailsa - on the left ] in her Ishbel beret, and Randomknits [Donna ] wearing a beautiful "Gretel" beret by Ysolda Teague that you totally can't see in this photo and "Aran Scarf" by Veronica Manno. Right at the end as they got up to leave the table - and after this photo was taken - they both pulled on truly amazing gloves. Luckily for you lot, there are details on both their blogs.



True to form, Bells whipped out the current travelling knitting:

her aptly named Bendigo socks.
In a moment of shockingly unprecedented short-sightedness, I had signally failed to come likewise prepared ... bad Catsmum ... bad ... bad ... bad !
I was so much in danger of withdrawal symptoms that I had to come home and cast on a new shawl straight away
but that's a post for another day

and in a postscript to yesterday, Tara has kindly offered to pick up a lambieskin for Noah tomorrow.
Her blood's worth bottling!

A new definition

Today saw us - finally - at THE Australian Wool & Sheep Show at Spendigo.
You probably don't remember but I didn't manage to get there last year so was doubly eager in the run up this week:

We came
We saw
We purchased

veni vidi visa
and then, less than half an hour after I got home, #1 son rang and suggested that new grandson Noah could do with a sheepskin

A new definition of poor timing ?

sort of catch up and some old family pics

sorry
I am aware that I haven't posted since the weekend
it's been a busy week
- spinning with the TDF
- a break from the above when I decided that there was an outside chance that I could, just possibly, drag the Lara Pinwheel cardi out of time-out and get it finished to wear to the Wool & Sheep Show at Spendigo tomorrow
knitting
knitting
knitting
crochet
crochet
crochet
[ I knew that I had to finish yesterday if there was going to be any chance of it drying enough to wear by Friday ... finished 11.45 pm last night, wet blocked it before I went to bed and the result is currently luxuriating in front of the fire ... and yes, there will be photos later when it's dry, and the ends are woven in. No I didn't do that first. I wanted to get the beggar blocked and on the path to drying before I hit the sack.]

-physio appointment for the wonky hip [ second one happening in half an hour so this has to be brief ... and let me just say that if you must do painful exercises it is made slightly more bearable and/or embarrassing when the new physio is young, male and super-cute ]

- oh, and there was the dropping of about 10 kilos [ that's 22 pounds ] worth of log onto my foot when the woodpile collapsed somewhat unexpectedly, and - seriously - if I hadn't had wellies on, I suspect I could currently be sporting a plaster cast right now instead of just an interestingly blued foot.

There was some other stuff in there as well

F'rinstance there was a celebratory natal-day cofffee & chat & handing over of pressie [ another Yarn Harlot book ] for Ms Jeanette

There was a flying visit including lunch-and-fondling-of-Spendigo-goodies at Ms Tara's. This was extended to include tickles and cuddles with the resident kidlets.

- I n connection with the visit Chez MacGrath, I vaguely recall staging a pre-emptive strike on the magic-back-room-of-special-discounts at BWM ahead of the scheduled plundering by the voracious hoardes* which is probably already in progress.

The rest is a blur of TDF fuel sleep deprivation

so in lieu of the photos I haven't taken yet of finished object and newly augmented stash,
here are some old family pics which will only be of interest to the rest of my family but tough. That's all I've got for you :)

I think this was possibly my first day of school

[ with my BIG cousin Stephen who was a whole year older ]

This is big cousin Stephen's baby brother, Andrew in my doll pram - so I would have been just hitting 8. From memory the shabby, much washed, much loved, and nearly-grown-out-of dress was red.

and that's a selection of the grandkids with Marnie [ my wonderful English maternal grandmother ] my mum to the left with my brother Bill [3] in front of her, Auntie Judy kneeling with her youngest, my cousin Randal [2], his sister Janis [3] in front of me, and that's Andrew again on Marnie's knee.

** voracious hoardes = fellow yarnies in town for the Wool & Sheep

only 5 more sleeps to go

After an unplanned 2 day hiatus from spinning and knitting , caused [ as my nearest and dearest and FB friends already know ] by an argument with a serrated bread knife ] I'm back - slowly and carefully - spinning along with the TDF.
I'd normally have to characterise the cut as completely inconsequential, piffling, barely worth a couple of bandaids, except that - due purely to placement - it clearly did have a consequence this time ... no spinning or knitting for enough days that I was in serious danger of slipping into a decline.
Luckily I was well supplied with plenty of mags and books, TrueBlood and Dr Who DVDs and a whole menagerie of small, warm, furry, bodies, all eager to share my unexpectedly vacant lap in front of a roaring fire
and
the finger has now mostly healed [ except where I keep knocking it open again ]
so
while knitting may have to wait a while longer, today has seen:

a plethora of plying [ which for the uninitiated, means taking the two full bobbins, and sending them on another journey with the wheel spinning backwards, so that they twist around each other into 'proper' yarn ]

followed by a slew of skeining,

a welter of washing and whacking,

and the resultant 442 metres of sacred alpaca

is currently warming its backside by the fire

and if you're puzzling over how any of the above relates to the post title, puzzle no longer:
Australian Wool & Sheep Show
Bendigo,
this coming Friday [ and Saturday and Sunday ]

and to give you the teeniest sense of what that means
here's a couple that I prepared earlier

It's a hard old life ...

being a quilter's cat

2nd verse ...

... same as the first!
and gratuitous cute cat [ who just happens to be reasonably colour co-ordinated to my sacred alpaca ]Ms Sophie had a fairly nasty epileptic episode yesterday, and is getting plenty of mummy cuddles as compensation

and some more

Some more quilts that is

I could show you more TDF spinning, but it looks remarkably like the photos in yesterday's post, except that there's a bit more on the bobbins
or I could show you a whole bunch of the knitting that you haven't seen, but there's plenty of time for that later

so you're getting more of the back catalogue of quilts:

this first one [ which hangs in my blue-and-white kitchen ] was designed for an Australian Patchwork & Quilting Yearbook many years ago

and no, this next one isn't the same as the one I showed you 3 posts ago. It's her non-identical twin sister.This one was made first - for my BFF-in-Tasmania's 60th birthday - and then I made the other for myself to remember it - and her -by


and a couple more of the Japanese themed ones: