What I made, by Sharon

I knit Andrea Morwry's Winter's Beach cardigan , mainly because it was chosen by the Richmond Knitters as one of our Bendigo 2021 Knit-a-long choices, and you all know how much I love a knit-a-long.  The yarn was bought from a destash and smells deliciously sheepy. I could have dyed it, but decided to leave it in the slight natural off white colour it came in. I worried that it would look kind of old-lady rather than classic. I'm still not 100 percent sure if I shouldn't have turned it a very, very pale brown. The pattern was well written with every direction clearly articulated. The only problem I had (repeatedly) was loosing my place in the chart. I don't know how, since I was using highlighter tape, but it happened. I followed the pattern exactly. Even the sleeve and body lengths, which I rarely do, since I ma quite short. The sleeves have 20 centimetres of ribbing, including long fold-over cuffs, and I really like the body length. The only change I made was to ...

 Much as I love it when things are matchy, matchy, sometimes things are just unthemed. I finished my Winter's Beach Cardi . I finished the knitting on it on Sunday, but only got the pockets sewn down tonight. It's currently having its bath. Finished object photos to follow, when it's dry. I started a Surplice Baby Jacket , which is a pattern by Elizabeth Zimmerman that uses some of the same shaping techniques as her Baby Surprise Jacket. It's been a fun knit so far, and will go towards my charity contributions.  I'm still listening to Vicarious, by Rhett C. Bruno. It's a good listen, although I could possibly knit-pick some plot points and it is all a little overblown. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. And I'm reading a NetGalley review copy of Yes Daddy , by Jonathan Park-Ramage.  It is described as a modern gothic, which is accurate, but it's got a lot of other things going on too. It starts at a rape trial, and then goes bac...

In Autumn and Spring I often wear knee high socks around the house, with a comfortable house dress. Warm, and comfortable and woolly and a very special kind of style. Yesterday I put on my Lord of the Isles socks (knit in 2018) and discovered that the soles are wearing thin.  Not to worry, I'll wear my old pair, knit in 2009  and then extensively repaired in 2018 . Except there are holes opening up around the darned areas. I'll be repairing both of these, but I've also queued a knee high sock made, not of jumper yarn but sock yarn. Lets see how well that lasts. 

Yes, I'm talking about knitting bags again. I spend a surprising amount of time looking for the perfect bag. I have bags I LOVE for smaller projects ( Joji & Co 's Box bag for single skein projects, the Hobo for two to three skein projects). But I keep searching for the perfect bag for larger projects. While knitting my Winter's Beach cardigan I kept the project in a heavy drawstring bag from Joji and Co.  When I go to work I shove it in my panniers.  When I'm around the house or walking down to the pub  or going away for the weekend this went tidily into my Pampa Bucket or  Box Slingback .  So you would think I'm done  with buying bags, right? Well, no. Joji put out a collaboration with Stephen West. They called it the Shawl Bag and it's designed for four to five skeins of 4 ply yarn, which is Stephen west shawl, or a jumper for me. It came in such pretty colours  that I couldn't resist... It's quite compact, but has giant gussets. I'm looking...

I am generally a monogamous reader, who has at most - one audio-book and one text book at a time. This week though  I've got three books, all in different categories - and of course a knitting project too.    1) Non-fiction -  Last week I wrote about meditating. Like many people I started with the Headspace App, and now I use Insight Timer to support my practice. I have also done a couple of mindfulness courses through Coursera. So I was happy to receive a free review copy  of  Sitting Comfortably  by Swami Saradananda from NetGalley, as the premise of the book is that being physically uncomfortable can prevent people from meditating, and this book attempts to address that issue. I have mixed feelings about this book - it is very clear and well set out. It runs through how one should sit, and how one can prepare for this. It has clear illustrations. My main issue is I'm not sure who this book is for. The author worries that being physically uncom...

We went to Woodend for the weekend, mainly to do Run the Rock. Long time readers may recall we did the 20 KM option in 2016 .  This year we took the 13.5 kilometre course. I probably trained more for the shorter distance and it was a delight of a run. The weather was cool, the wind was light and the crowd was very friendly. There were compliments from strangers (mainly about my shorts, from Abi and Joseph ) and random chats while flyng down hills. I run very differently now - I have a coach , I run with a power monitor from Stryd , and I went in to this race with a plan. What this meant, in effect, is that this is the first event where I was passing people on the downhills, and not many people were re-passing me. I stuck to the plan, felt good and nailed my predicated time. Other than the run, we relaxed. We stayed in a very cute apartment: this is the only photo I took, because  the bed was king sized and Leon and I are not big people and it was so much bigger than ...

I'm knitting  Winter's Beach Cardigan . it's going quite fast, considering that in l ast week's update  I only had a swatch. The cables are very intuitive, the yarn is sheepy and lovely, and even though I'm still not 100 percent on quite how white it is the cables show up beautifully. I'm reading Dr Jen Gunther's soon to be released book The Menopause Manifesto menopause. I'm 44 years old, and I suppose I should know some of this stuff, and who better to learn from than someone who is all about educating women? When I saw it on NetGalley I requested it so fast I think I sprained a finger. That said, it took me a while to get into it. In 2019 I was diagnosed with "health anxiety" after spending much of that year being convinced I was having a heart attack. Some counselling and A LOT of meditating later, and I'm in a much better place, but  this book talks about cardiovascular disease and related things. Although, it turns out that knowledge...

This was so hard to do. I've got no room in my drawers left, so I went through them, looking for clothes I don't wear anymore.  My Carbeth went to the frog pond. it is one of the jumpers I reach for in winter, but it's rather awful. I ran out of yarn when I made it, so the sleeves were always skimpy, and the collar was short, so it won't fold over and just sticks straight up. Add to that the cream yarn which just looks slightly grubby. I have loads of other warm, snuggly comfy jumpers (I'm thinking particularly of another Kate Davies jumper, Warriston ) which will do the job better. I frogged it and got 200 grams of feltable wool out of it. I'm going to dye it up and make felted slipped for everyone I know, because I love them so much (my felted slippers , although I am quite fond of my family and close friends.) I also frogged Boxy. I loved Boxy when I made it, back in 2018. it hasn't worn that well, and it's looking a bit tired. Also, while I blended...

  I made Leon a pair of socks and it took me 13 days. They are lovely socks, but I whined about them for the last week. They are lovely because; A) The pattern was designed by my friend OzKnitter Jane and it's lovely. The circles down the front are meant to represent roundabouts, and the pattern was easy to memorise and cute. B) The yarn is from our trip to Scotland three years ago , and we bought it directly from Ginger Twist Studio . The colour is "Old Town Cobblestone" and it's a lovely shade of grey. So why the delay? Well, it's 72 stitch sock, but I don't think that was the issue. Despite last weekend being four days long (glorious!) I spent a lot of my crafting time doing other things, including knitting donuts and sorting out some worn out knitwear (Come back Sunday if you want to hear ALL about that). And it was oddly hard to match the first pair to the second. In fact, I think the heels are different lengths, but the legs are the same, (although th...

This week I've just finished the sock I was knitting last week (come back Friday for a full review of that frustrating experience). I've swatched for my next project, Andrea Mowry's Winter's Beach , but have not yet cast on, so here is a picture of my lovely swatch. I'm reading a review copy of The Final Reunion of  Opal and Nev , by Dawnie Walton. It has a similar interview structure to  Daisy Jones and the Six, which makes me wish I had requested the audio-book, rather than the eye-read version. Putting that aside, I am enjoying it. The plot is building up gradually, and there are lots of hints that it is going somewhere, but it's taking it's time to get there. And the big event that is being foreshadowed looks like it's going to ahppen half way through the book, so I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes from here. I'm listening to some non-fiction -   Dead Famous, An Unexpected History of Celebrity, by Greg Jenner.  It's populist ...

Victoria is in a rather unique position in the world - we had quite the outbreak of Covid-19, locked down tight, stayed locked down for 112 days until we eliminated it. Then we got to leave our houses, our suburbs and even our state.  We knew we were locked down until we had achieved effective elimination - 28 days of zero community transmission. On the first zero day, someone decided zero days are donuts days, and now we were refer to any zero day as a donut day .  Needless to say, this has given donuts an almost mythical quality in my mind. In fact, my camera roll is full of photos of donuts, as is my Instagram.  During winter, our premier Daniel Andrews gave daily press conferences. He became a deeply divisive figure, depending on how one felt about the situation. I rather joined the cult of Dan. On the first anniversary of the declaration of the pandemic, he slipped on some stairs, and ended up with broken ribs and a whole lot of other injuries. Meanw...

This is my 13th Baby Surprise Jacket . it's a pattern written for 5-ply (sport weight), but I have always knit it in 4-ply (sock weight) because that's what I have around, and I usually knit jumpers to welcome my friends newborn babies'.   I mentioned earlier that I was going to knit 10 hats for charity and KOGO put out a call for baby jumpers, and specified that they should not be premie sized. So I decided to hold two strands together and use 4mm needles.  It's certainly not small. In fact, weighing in at 270 grams, and being quite large, I would really describe it as a toddler jacket.  The buttons are left over from my 2012 trip to Liberty of London . All in all I love knitting this little jumper, and it never fails to look good, no matter what yarn I use for it. This is my 4th of the promised 10 projects, so it's going to plan quite nicely.