What I made, by Sharon

Until last month I described myself as a monogamous knitter, and that worked for me. While I have been knitting on my Beeswax Shawl at home I have been knitting simple things while out and about. This actually worked really well - I'm knitting a pair of simple socks as my public project:  while I keep moving through the second half of the shawl The socks are Andrea Mowry's Tuka Honey , to keep the bee theme going! In reading I used to be monogamous too. Then I added audiobooks into the mix, and now I've also got a non-fiction book going! Currently I'm reading   Chilco by  Daniela Catrileo  a NetGalley review book about colonialism, belonging and  set  in (I think) South America, as a change from the same topics in Australia! I keep on requesting short non-fiction from Bloomsbury press, mainly the Object Lessons series, so over the next few weeks I'm going to read (and review) some of them, starting with Videotape  and then reading Cat .  Next up ...

On Friday I went to visit my mother who is in hospital with a DVT. She's been in for a week, hopefully getting out tomorrow. it was good to see her, because she seems fine - fed up with the whole thing, rather than looking weak and fragile and old. Then on Saturday Helen, Elise, Leon and I took the train to Ballarat to go to the Obsidian dark been festival. There were 36 beers and in theory you could try all of them. I got to 16 of them. It was in a beautiful historic building, and we all had a good, and tasty time.  Afterward, Helen and Elise  headed back to Melbourne and we went to Leon's parents place. It was Kathy's birthday on Sunday, so Kerry and Fiona had flown in from the Gold Coast. we had a lovely evening, and it was fun to see the siblings in their childhood home. Kizz headed up on Sunday - unfortunately we had already headed home, but I eft the knits I made for him, and he sent this photo: All up a very satisfactory weekend, with family and good friends and lots...

Since 2019 the  Richmond Knitters have select a pattern or a theme, and those of use who feel like it, knit it. This year we chose Wool and Honey , a jumper I first saw in Bendigo a long time ago. I loved it from when i first saw it, but it's garter stitch in the round, which is a hard no from me. It also runs the seam down the back, with a visible jog. To prevent this, and also because I was knitting with hand-dyed yarn,  I alternated skeins until the split for the underarms, and then knit it flat. There are aspects of this jumper than I'm doubtful about, most of which are not Andrea Mowry's fault: The sizing. i made the small, which is my usual size in Andrea Mowry's patterns. I spent a lot of time deciding between the small and the extra small. When I split for the sleeves, I added an extra ten stitches to each sleeve from the body stitches. The seaming. i don't mind the act of seaming, but I really struggled to make these seams nice, and, despite redoing them, t...

 I had a really great weekend, and was too tired to write a post about it! We celebrated Leon's birthday, and went out for Sri Lankan food and then saw Hades Town. Excellent. The reading has been up and down. I read (and finished in three days)  T heory and Practice , an excellent coming of age (and lots of other things too) book set in my home suburb. Loved it. Now I'm reading a NetGalley review book  Rumoured by Kelly Mancaruso,   I love a face cover. Unfortunately the book itself is a bit all over the place - half way through it went form third person narration to first person, and then back. I think  it's meant to be edgy, but it just feels weird. So far the "twists" are more like slow bends, and I don't really care what happens to anyone, because I'm too aware of the form - in between the narration there are tweets and article and interviews. Unfortunate these tend to repeat what we already know, so it's a bit tedious. Next up is  Odin's Spear...

 It started with me asking Sonia if she was willing to share the files for the Richmond Knitters logo she designed years ago. Being a generous person, she said yes, and I got some stickers made. Also a t-shirt or two. Then I found out that Stickermule will make quality stickers out of anything, including crappy photos. They magically clean them up, and even shape them. THEN i found out that they make sample packs of 10 stickers. I may have lots my mind a little. I'm sticking stickers everywhere. I'm handing them out to friends. the only thing that is slowing me down is that the free postage takes a month or so, so i made a rule that I can only have one set of stickers in transit at a time. Unless they have a good special, then it's all on for young and old. This is not a sponsored post, I'm just sharing my latest obsession!

 Yep, it's looking a lot like last week.   I'm still reading the NetGalley Review book -  The Last Apartment in Istanbul  by Defne Suman.  It normally wouldn't take me over a week to read a 400 page book. This is a good book - it's well written, and covers interesting topics, including life in an apartment building in Istanbul during COVID lockdowns, the persecution of Greeks in Turkey, gentrification  and mental health. Unfortunate I'm finding it a bit of a slog, it feels like it goes over the same information repeatedly. I've nearly finished, and then I'll read  T heory and Practice , by Michelle de Kretser, as planned.  I'm still knitting  Wool & Honey,  just the end of the second sleeve to go.  Excuse the terrible photo. I took them this morning, just after I discovered that Tarragon had peed himself in his sleep, on the couch. I wanted to get the photos done and get out for a run before work, but first I had to clean u...