What I made, by Sharon

A couple of years ago I changed jobs, and moved to "an independent statutory authority". I'm not sure how independent we are, the large government department I used to work for pays our salaries, services our IT and I still have access to their intranet. Despite this, I guess you could say I no longer work for them. I certainly moved off-site. The work I do relates directly to the work of my old team. A couple of weeks ago I was on the phone to Jess, a project officer from that team. It started as a work call, but soon devolved into general gossip. "Did you know Olivia is expecting?" she asked. I didn't but "I'll have to knit her something. She always said that she hopes I'm still around when she has a baby".  Yes" said Jess, "But why didn't you knit me anything, when we had Tilly?" Six months ago, Jess's partner had their baby. It didn't really register high on my radar. Still, this long weekend I didn...

In March I felt the urge to sit and spin. It's something that comes upon me every year or so, and this time I found this BFL/silk that my records (but not my memory) tell me I dyed in 2012 .   I split the fibre in two and have been spinning it over the last six months. No real goal, no pressure, just sitting down every so often for a whirl. It helps that this fibre spins so nicely. And before I knew it, I had two bobbins done and plied. it came out 271 meters. And, being me, my first question is 'what am I going to do with it?" I'm not quite sure, but I feel like it pairs very nicely with this handspun . and this Orkney wool. I did a Ravelry search, and found TerryKnits Twist, a three colour shawl from Romi Hill. I think it will work very well, but first I have to knit all the other things!

Re-entry from our holiday wasn't too bad, although it's only Tuesday as I write this. Luckily there is a public holiday on Friday. It's to celebrate the day before a football match, which makes no sense, but I'm not going to say no to a free day off. After the felting of my jumper I started a mini-hot water bottle cover for Sally, my manager. She is knitworthy - every Friday we go out to a coffee meeting and she always asks me what I'm knitting, and notices when I'm wearing something she has seen me knitting. She saw me in the office with my Kate Davies mini hot water bottle , and wanted a mini-hot water bottle. I ordered some on-line because we couldn't find any in person. Turns out there is a size even smaller than the mini-bottles - look how cute it is: So, I've ordered some more, hopefully of the right size, and finished the cover for Sally's. I'm fairly tempted to design a case for the teeny one too, it's just maths, right? ...

We got back last night, and I need to unpack and stuff, but I'm prioritising other things, so we went for a run this morning, and now I'm drinking tea and updating my online life. Brisbane was great, sunny and warm. We were lucky to be there during the Brisbane festival, so there were lots of shows and free jazz and a great vibe, but even without that it's a fun city. Loads of craft breweries and good food and dogs in pubs. Because of what I'd like to call good planing, but was mainly good luck, both Leon and i were reading Boy swallows Universe   by Trent Dalton, a book which is book fantastic in it's own right and set in Brisbane, which is always fun.  There was amazing wildlife in the centre of town, including birds and adorable lizards. I like lizards.  All the while I was knit, knit knitting away on Leon's jumper. The Elizabeth Zimmermann saddle shoulder pattern was great, my gauge swatch didn't lie, the Field of Dreams yarn was beautiful, a...

Remember when I said that my planned pooling on the Sockhead hat was going really well? I spoke too soon, and instead of striping nicely, like it had been, it pooled horribly for about four rows, which basically ruined it for me.  I think the pooling happened when I was knitting at lunchtime at work, while reading. This meant that A. I didn't notice and B. it looks like my gauge was looser, which meant that the colours stacked instead of spiralling. Once I realised what had happened I kept knitting anyway, because I was out and didn't really want to deal with it, but I got less and less happy with it.  I finished it anyway, because that's the sort of thing I do. The first hat used 48 grams, so I had enough yarn for a second hat. As soon as I finished I cast on a second hat, exactly the same, 112 stitches on 3mm needles.  This one worked perfectly the whole way. Stripes, no pooling and look at that beautiful crown. I'll give the first one to KOGO and h...

On Saturday we are flying to Brisbane, Queensland for some much needed warmth and sunshine. Of course, when planning a holiday, my thoughts turn to what I want to knit and read. In preparation I have been "swatching" for Leon's next jumper.  I'm doing an Elizabeth Zimmerman saddle shoulder sweater , because, usually for Leon I have to either design my own or heavily modify a commercial pattern, and I resent paying ten bucks for a pattern that I have to resize. So I started a sleeve as a swatch, finished it, blocked it and started the second one. The yarn, the stunning new colab between Purl Box and Great Ocean Road Woollen Mill is called Field of Dreams , and it is dreamy - polworth ,linen and silk. It knits up very fast, hence my 3 hour sleeve. We are only going for a week, but I'm bringing a second project, just in case.  I abandoned the review book I was reading (full review of Trapeze by Leigh Ansell can be found here ). It feels like an awful thing, ...

I had a plan for the weekend. I was going to to the Melbourne Yarn Festival and buy some yarn, and then I organised lunch nearby for a bunch of the Richmond Knitters. Fun, right? Instead, this happened -  on Friday night I went with Elise to see her mother who was in hospital. They had just decided she was in the "make her comfortable" stage. On Saturday morning she died. Today we buried her. And it's sad, and Elise is so, so, sad. Obviously, no yarn festival for me. But I was reminded, looking around at the funeral, how important our friends are. Elise's friends showed up in droves. She has friends from school, and university and a lot of friends from choir, which is to Elise what the Richmond Knitters are to me. There is no moral to this story, except pat your yarn and tell your friends you love them.

My August just flew by, with a ridiculous number of small projects - a baby jumper, three hats, a cropped jumper for me and and a colourwork cowl. But you are not here to here about all of that, you are here for the socks. There were two pairs this month, a pair of sneaker liners for me,  and a pair of full sized socks, also for me. The full socks were a Rachael Coopey pattern from the book "Harry Potter Knits" or 'Wizarding Knits, as it was called in countries were copy-write is a thing. I bought the book years and years ago, and this is the first thing I knit from it.  They were really fun socks, mirroring each other, and quite fancy, without being difficult. I knit them from Socks that Rock that I redyed myself. I was very happy with the colours, but I was also aware going in to it that the yarn got brighter as it went along. Not surprising, as they were dyed on different base colours. It made me remember how much I love a really tight twist sock yarn. Most ...

Spring! I'm so excited. It's (almost) light when I get up at 6am, and it doesn't get dark until 6pm, and there was a hint of warmth in the air this morning. I know that we will likely have another cold patch before it really warms up, but I'm celebrating every bit of warmth I can. This week I'm reading the next (and final?) Jackson Brodie novel, Big Sk y  partly because Kat finished it last week, and partly because I wanted to read a substantive but not heavy book.  I knew that I will soon be listening to the sequel to The Dry, so it was partly just a decision as to which detective novel I wanted to read first. I am enjoying visiting with Jackson and Julia and other old friends. I love the way Kate Atkinson has characters that populate many of the books of this series - and not just main characters, but bit players too. In audiobooks, I wanted a contrast to detective fiction, so I started Daisy Jones and the Six   by Taylor Jenkins Reid   . I am loving...

I had a few small balls of left over sock yarn of 20 to 60 grams that I thought would be perfect to dye up as minis for my blanket. I wanted some solid or semi solid colours, and I wanted to practice dying in more subtle way - traditionally I have just chucked heaps of dye on, and it's come out fine, but after knitting with some Unicorn Tails , I wanted to try for a subtler semi solid. Before I decided to just use the primary colours and dye a rainbow, mixing as I went. The red I used was a little pinker than I would like, but I decided to use what I had, rather than  buying more. During I'm very pleased with the results. I learnt a lot about colour mixing, particularly in relation to my less successful attempts (orange and browns) and I have 17 new colours to add to the blanket. I'd better get knitting! After