What I made, by Sharon

Another Wednesday and another picture of Leon's jumper. I finished the re-done sleeves on the weekend, and then started the hood. I thought the hood would be quick, because it just has the small cables down the front, which I have memorised, but it's actually not growing fast. I just haven't had a lot of knitting time this week. Monday night was our 13th wedding anniversary and we went to  Entrecôte for fancy French dinner. i took my knitting, but didn't actually do any. Tuesday, as usual, was  trivia, but I didn't bring a jumper and was cold, so i ended up wearing the jumper instead of knitting it! The rest of the week is quieter, so I might make some progress.  There is no finish line for this project - the weather is finally warming up here, so it probably won't get much wear until next autumn anyway, Still, I'm ready to be done! In reading, I'm in-between audio-books. Suggestions are welcomed. I'm eye reading The Language of Spells    by Sarah Pa...

I'v been plugging away on   Leon's  Glenan  jumper. I asked him to try it on so I would have a picture for this post, and I got this: The sleeve was just huge. So I ripped it, and now it looks like this: Grr. Oh well, at least it will look good in the end. All the reading and listening is fresh since last week: I'm eye reading Martha Well's The Cloud Roads .It's well written, and the world building is perfect, but I'm just not sure I care. I don;t know if this is a reflection on my current mood, or on the book. Leon and I just started listening to The House in the Cerulean Sea and it seems really good. The narrator is just right, and so far the plot is kind of sad, but has laugh-out-loud funny moments. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. Tonight is the only night this week that we are home, so progress will continue to be slow! And finally I started listening to a new book by myself, Tell Me Lies .  It's set in Melbourne, and i love a book set i...

I've had two ( glorious , lovely ) weekends away in a row, and now I'm glad to be staying closer to home for the next couple of weeks. I have some stuff to do around the house - some plans and ideas that will hopefully make my knit storage problem go away - I'll let you know how that goes. I'm knitting away on Leon's Glenan   jumper. The pattern is pretty simple once it is set up, so i got a lot more done on the weekend than I expected to. I split for the underarms on Tuesday - and then made a mistake in the cabling, so I'm going to have to rip back 5 rows tonight. I did drop down to fix it, but the tension on the fix is not quite right, so I'd rather rip and reknit. It's a very pleasant knit - interesting but not at all challenging, and the wool, from a local fibre collective, is wonderful. I'm reading The Strangers We Know  by Pip Drysdale. It's a twisty-turny thriller and I'm loving it. For once our female narrator is not unreliable, and s...

This weekend we went to Daylesford with my brother, his wife and kids and my parents to (finish) celebrating my mother's 80th birthday. It was a lovely weekend.  The house we stayed in was right on the lake, and there was a large patio where, when we were not running around doing fun things with the family Leon and I sat and read, and drank tea, (in my case at least) knitted and chatted with some very friendly magpies. We went to a lavender farm, where there was surprise farm animals, including a small flock of alpacas. There was good food and laughter. As well as lots of family time Leon and I went for a run  around the lake - that's two runs in two weeks, if you are keeping count! it feels good to be back, even in such a gentle way. We also popped down to the newly opened brewery for a quick pot. M ainly we just spent time together as a family, and it was lovely. I did  get a surprising amount of knitting done - I'll be back on Wednesday to tell you about that, and also...

I don't know what's going on around here. Normally I knit a big thing and then some smaller projects and then another big project, but for the last bit I have been leaping from giant project to giant project. I spent July knitting a brioche cardigan, September knitting a brioche jumper, October knitting a giant shawl and now I'm knitting a man's hooded jumper that will probably take me until December. In between finishing the brioche jumper and starting the shawl (which was the Twists and Turn MKAL ) I knit one sneaker liner. This took me two days. Then I set it aside, thinking I would finish it in the breaks in the MKAL, but, unlike in previous years, I had no breaks in the MKAL. So last weekend in Marysville I knit the second sock. These are Joji's Flores s ocks. It's the second time I've knit them and I adore them. They just fit so well. Add to that that the multi-colour is my own hand-dyed and this project removed two separate yarns from my stash and  ...

  For some reason I seem to have stopped requesting review books. It wasn't a conscious decision - although I've requested some dreadful books I've also had some treasures, and other books I would never have heard about, or bought. I have six books left in the pile.  I'm currently working my way through Fit Nation   a nd still enjoying it. I'm trying again with The Work Wives , but I am really struggling to get into it. Three points of view and a rather obvious plot.  Cute cover though.   Oh well, win some loose some and since my ratio of books requested to books reviewed is currently 95 percent I'm not too worried.  In knitting, I've just cast on Glenan by Kate Davies. It's a bottom up hoodie that I'm knitting for Leon. It's not going to be a quick project , but I'm already finding it a very satisfying knit. And that's my week in reading and knitting. To read my all my book reviews, and to see everything I knit, you can find me on Rave...

This weekend we took Monday off and went to Marysville, as we often do at the beginning of November, for the Marysville marathon. I had no plans to run this year, but Leon was going to run the full marathon, until he injured his foot a month or so ago. The then he got sick and couldn't run at all! Instead we went out for delicious meals, celebrated my mother's 80th birthday Fended off King Parrots  and took finished item photos of my Twists and Turns shawl at the falls. We met up with Skip and Bee, whose parents have a holiday house in nearby Healsville and went to a lovely brewery in the middle of nowhere. We even did a 5km run to the falls - my first run since March. It felt surprisingly good. We rounded the weekend out with helping to tidy up after the event - mainly stacking large carpet tiles. I learnt to  use a mini manual forklift, which was fun. I finished one knitted thing, which I have not had a chance to take photos of, but I will be back to tell you all about...

I finished Twists and Turns on Thursday - exactly a month after I started it. Although there were some dramas I enjoyed (most of) the process, and I loved the finished object. Looking back, there was one drama for each clue  Clue 1 my stitch count was radically out, clue 2 involved a lot of purling and when I first read about it I was furious (I used a modification so I could knit instead). Clue 3 I knit one repeat too short and had to fix it later and clue 4, when knit according to the pattern looked weird to me, so I did the early finish and love it. In between all the drama was a lot of fun knitting. There were interesting techniques,  like that braid. The yarn ( another drama ) was beautiful and I love the colours. The shape is my absolute favourite - a very long crescent that is not too deep. Mainly though I love the process, knitting along with thousands of other people, seeing the different colours, the changes people make even before they know what the final shawl is g...

I've just finished two novels in a row that were fairly average ( Wish You Were Here by Jodi Piccoult and The Guncle  by  Stephen Rowley ) and I am yet to pick up another non-fiction book. Very unusual, but I am reading Natalie Petrezla's Fit Nation   which is a book about the history of exercise in America. Because Natalie looks at the word through lenses I share (class and gender) I'm finding this book pretty interesting. I first came across the author in the podcast Welcome to Your Fantasy , which I really enjoyed and recommend. I'm knitting the fourth and final clue of Twists and Turns . I've got about 6 rows and the cast off to go - I'm doing the "early cast off" because I think the full thing looks very strange: (photo copy-write Roonel on Ravely). This is a beautiful shawl - with a weird floaty bit that is not to my liking at all. I'm going to include the loops properly in my cast off. Tt's so strange to be that Stephen West just leaves...

Tuesday is a public holiday for a horse race, so I took Monday off too and made it a four day weekend. I didn't have a great many plans - I'm going away the next two weekends, so some quiet time at home sounded perfect. The weekend started with a new yarn festival - She's Crafty. I think it was more popular than the organisers were planning. I got to show Sussana my test knit for her EXP jumper , and got lots of compliments from strangers. It was fun saying "the designer is just over there" and she messaged be afterwards, saying that people has come to buy the pattern after seeing mine, so that was very gratifying. I bought some alplaca fluff to carry along, and some beautiful pink based yarn for a Find Your Fade I'm planning. Then we went to Welcome to Thornbury, a food truck based bar I've wanted to go to since it opened. On the tram afterwards I bumped in Jane, one of my other knitting friends who I haven't seen for ages, and it was delightful to ca...