What I made, by Sharon

I finished the Caitlin Hunter shawl Teroldego, named after a grape variety. I used Stranded in Oz club yarns, and the Catharsis I bought from Purl Box. It's a much more subtle colour combination than I usually use in my three colour shawls but I love it. I was on a video call with Elise the day after I finished it and she said" I'm sure I've seen that shawl before, but I need to tell you again how I love the colours". Compliments! My complaints are that the shawl is knit in stocking stitch. This means that it had a right side and a wrong side. It also has a little bit of colourwork - again creating a right side / wrong side issue. The pattern was written with a ONE STITCH garter edge. I increased it to 2, but it still curls. The designer knew it would curl - she describes this as "fashionable". I like my knits to stay flat.    All in all I enjoyed the knitting of it, and it is a wearable, pretty scarf / shawl. I'm all ready planning my...

This week brings me some great projects and a lot of gratitude. We are finishing week three of an (allegedly) six week stay at home order, and masks are now mandatory when out of the house. (As an aside, the poor tradies on my building have to wear masks, and they are. I cannot imagine doing physical labour in a mask). It's cold and grey and winter. But the upside is, I don't have time to be bored, I have time consuming hobbies. I'm not going to run out of yoga to do, or yarn to dye  or books to read or projects to knit. And it's been a good week in both knitting and reading. I started a jumper for Leon on Saturday, and I'm up to the joining the sleeves bit. 5mm needles for the win! The yarn is lush, a merino alpaca blend I bought at the Great Ocean Road Woolen Mill in that brief time we were allowed out. It's thick and warm and  delicious. I'm listening to Poorna Bell's Chase the Rainbow .  It's the memoir of her life with a clinically depr...

On Saturday I did some practice dying on minis. I was practicing rainbow and speckles. I wasn't sure about the  speckles until we (Leon actually) balled them up. They look completely  different and so pretty: I was very happy with my attempts at rainbow.  Happy enough that on Sunday I gathered up my courage to dye the yarn for the Tracery Vest.  I've wanted to make this since I first saw it, but I want to steek it, and I couldn't find the colours I wanted in non-superwash yarn. So I've dyed them myself. I'm quite happy with these, although I did learn a lot. Despite the fact that I dyed them together (as in on each other, not next to each other) they are far from identical. Also, while all the colours of the rainbow are here the red spectrum dominates and there is almost no discrete blue or yellow. The colours actually look quite different in real ife, and I suspect will look even more different when reskeined and knitted. I'm excited to knit with it...

On Tuesday, Elise and I planned to meet at the local shops, so I could hand over her teapot and cosy. On Tuesday morning, 5am, I was lying in bed, partly awake and I started to worry. That's a lie. I was awake at 5 in the morning, I was already worrying. But I started to worry, specifically, about Elise's tea pot. Yes, I've knit a cosy, but her pot is glass, and it's going to loose a lot of heat through the bottom. It needs a coaster. So I crocheted  a coaster, with the left over yarn. I didn't block it, I didn't have time. I haven't seen Elise for a month or so, and in the current, increasing lock down I won't be seeing her again for a while yet, so I wanted to hand it over. It was such a pleasure to see her (masked) face and to give her something I made with my own hand. Sending my love into the word in the form of crafting is my superpower.   

This has been a good week to hunker down and enjoy indoor activities, since winter (and COVID) are really digging in. Mask making has been taking up quite a bit of my weekend crafting time, but I've had plenty of time to keep plugging away at my Teroldego shawl . I've only got about 8 rows to go. I love my colours, but being stocking stitch some of it was a bit of a drag. I'm close enough to finished that I am entering the "what should I knit next" stage of things, which is always a joy and a delight. Reading was a bit odd this week.  Elizabeth Strout's   Amy and Isabelle   is a fine  read - if a little disturbing. It's about a 14 year old who is being groomed by her maths teacher, amongst many other things. It's not an especially long book and yet I'm not even half way through. I just haven't been reading much. I did listen to massive amounts of audio this week though.  Zero Day Code  was a fabulous and compelling listen. I finishe...

I spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning making masks. I set up a little factory and just churned them out. Which was lucky, I guess, because on Sunday afternoon it was announced that masks are now mandatory.  I'm going down to the post office later to buy some envelopes to mail some of them off to other people. I suspect there will be more mask making next weekend. 

My undyed sock yarn arrived a week or so ago, and it's a lot! According the the website it's 338 meters per 100 grams , so this is just over 5 kilometres of yarn! I thought at that yardage it would be on the thicker side, but it's not. It's just normal, ordinary merino / nylon sock yarn. The cone says it's Patonyle, but that doesn't match that yardage. Mysterious.  I started skeining it up immediately, because that's a task that feels tedious when I just want to dye the yarn!   Some mini skeins for practice and my sock yarn blanket , and the rest for some jumpers I've got planned for Leon and for me. I'm going to work on dying more subtly, and mixing colours, rather than just smacking on as many full strength colours as possible, which is my usual, very enjoyable way of doing things! But the next thing I'm going to dye is rainbow yarn for the Tracey  vest, so that will be about colour mixing, but will not be about subtly.  I was ...

The Covid numbers continue to rise, the lockdown continues to be boring, the sun is shining and it's Wednesday, which means I'm joining Kat and the Unravellers to blog about what we've been reading and crafting this week. And it's been a pretty good week in both reading and knitting. I've continued with the Teroldego Shawl . It's a lot less contrasty than many people's , or what I would usually choose, but I like it.  What I didn't realise when choosing the pattern is that it is stocking stitch. Other than not loving to pearl long stretches, I think that this shawl is not going to properly double sided. I find that odd. Anyway, I've just finished the very long swathe of stripes, and now it's onward to some lace! I started Elizabeth Strout's   Amy and Isabelle a couple of days ago. I couldn't work out what I wanted to read, so I went for this because it was the oldest book on my Kindle. I'm enjoying it so far, family drama s...

As the pandemic "second wave": rages on in Melbourne, and we are locked down again for the next six weeks. the recommendation is shifting to wearing masks. I have mixed feelings about the mask thing -  because scientists don't seem to agree on the benefits, people don't seem to wear masks properly and in some places it seems to have been applied like a panacea. Friends of mine in America put a picture on Facebook of them at a brewery, with their masks around their necks. So many questions about that. Anyway, my city is locked down again, Daniel Andrews our Premier has said to wear masks and Leon and I will be wearing them, when we can't social distance, which is on my weekly shopping trip. As an aside, I say I go to the shops weekly, but I reckon it's more like three times a week, and we get fruit, vegetables and half out meat delivered. Why am I at the shops so much? Maybe because it's my only adventure. Since all  masks instantly sold out - of course ...

Sleeve length is a weird thing. I've had a few (read MANY) jumpers whose sleeves seemed fine when they were done,and then a little while later I realise they are too short.    With Birkin I deliberately knit them long, and for Sorrel I went even longer. They are long enough that i can fold them and they hit where I like my sleeves. And yet, if I don't fold them, they end up in the same place, or even higher! It's all a bit weird, the amazing shrinking sleeves. Anyway, Sorrel: I like it. The combination of mohair, cashmere and silk is warm and fuzzy, cozy and delicious.We took these photos on a tiny bit of remnant forest near our house that we didn't even know existed before lockdown, and the trees and light bring so much joy.  I have to say, looking at some of these pictures, I was a bit worried about my figure: Leon says it's not the most flattering jumper I've ever knit. I added waist shaping, but clearly not enough.  While the hat is a ...

The balcony renovations are finished. My barbecue is coming back tonight (we sent it to my parents while it was being renovated). We got new balcony furniture, and it all looks and feels really nice. And the sun is shining. Which is good, because starting at midnight tonight, we're back in stage three lockdown. We only got out of it three weeks ago, and it didn't go well. My parents are coming over for dinner tonight, and as well as the barbecue they are printing some knitting patterns for me.  Speaking of knitting - I started Teroldego by Caitlan Hunter.    I'm using yarn by "local" dyers - The Purl Box in regional Victoria, and Stranded in Oz in Adelaide. I don't know how local anything feels when you can't go there. The other States have done much better than Victoria, and they have shut their borders to us. The army is "helping". Anyway, they are beautiful yarns, and the pattern is, so far, quite fun. I finished An Excess Male ...

I would have thought that by now I would have the prefect hat for me. I've knit enough of them. But none of them are perfect. Beeswax is just the wrong length, Sockhead looks amazing but doesn't do well in really cold weather, Knitting Season is pretty, but too busy for some of my outfits. Latu was my last attempt at perfection and it was pretty good, but now I've gone off the colour ... on and on and on.   When I finished Sorrel I decided to use the dip stitches and make a matching hat. I made it top down, and used the Sorrel charts and gave it a slight slouch - which you can't see in these photos, because I'm blocking it and focussing on smoothing out the crown and not stretching out the ribbing. The colour is good, the size seems good. Once it is fully dried I'll get some pictures of both the hat and the jumper and we'll pass judgement then, but right now I am quite hopeful that I have made a perfect (for now) hat. 

Three weeks ago I finished the Sou'wester Socks  for Leon. I finished them on Friday, and on the weekend we went to the beach and took photos. And then I forgot to blog them or put them on Ravely! Must be my busy social life. These are, in typical Rachel Coopey style, quite wonderful. They are mirrored and asymmetrical but still manage to have simple charts.  As an added bonus, I knit them in the exact same yarn as the pattern called for, right down to the colour. It is Wendy Roam , and Katie destashed it about a year ago. This also means I have finished the Pretty Feet book. I wonder what theme my next block of sock knitting should have...

The balcony is finished! The scaffolding is almost down, and it looks really nice. They are putting scaffolding up on the bedroom side of the flat, but I won't be looking at it all day. Hearing the work, maybe, but I won't be doing a blow by blow account of that part of the renovations here. I never actually meant to do weekly updates of it, but nothing else was happening in my life for the last 13 weeks! Not a lot continues to happen. Leon and I have sore throats, running noses and a cough, so we go tested yesterday. It's very unlikely to be COVID, since the outbreaks here are happening on the other side of town, but we do have to self isolate until the test results come back. I'm reading Modern Lovers by Emma Straub. It was literally the oldest book in my Goodreads "To Be Read" list. It's a multi-generational family and friends drama. The fun part is that the drama is all actually quite low key. The characters are relatable and the New York settin...