What I made, by Sharon

 The other day I was mooching around on Ravelry, looking for a two colour, 8 ply cardigan to use up some left over yarn. I was going to use it for Flink , but I really don't need anther thick jumper, and I don't have any heavier cardigans that I love. While I was looking Sussana  (Rav link) put out a testing call for a steeked, two colour, 8 ply cardigan. Perfect. I needed to dye the colours, since one was white and I have a white cardigan and a white jumper, and I struggle to keep my whites white anyway.  The other is from Leon's winter set and I don't really want to match his exactly.  Here's the yarn before the dye.   I decided to try for a light tan for the main colour and a rust red / orange for the contrast colour. These will look very nice in the cardigan, and are a little different from the pinks and purples I've been knitting a lot recently. I'm pretty happy with the colours. I really enjoy Sussana's test knits - as well as being a fabulous des...

 For the last few weeks I've been saying I'm going to read a NetGalley review copy of  What Happened to Nina   by Dervla McTiernan. I've read the prelude and it's all intimate partner violence, and while it's topical, it's also very raw. We've had two women murdered in Ballarat (one by a stranger and one by an ex) and people are marching on the streets in protest of men murdering women and it's all too raw. So, I've set that aside. What I am reading is  Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down. I only started it yesterday, but it's a pretty heavy novel, full of trauma and abuse, but so far I am finding it quite compelling. It's set in Melbourne, and I think we all know how much I love reading books set in my home town. I'm listening to a NetGalley review copy of The Hebrew Teacher by Maya Arad. It's a series of three novellas, and is described as " comedies of manners with an ambitious blend of irony and sensitivity—celebrated Israeli a...

Yes, over the last couple of weeks,as well as knitting away on my Rose cardigan as if I have a deadline, seeing comedy festival shows, my usual social activities, pole classes and having to work for a living I've been playing with my other favourite craft - polymer clay I made earrings for Kris and Katie similar to the last ones I made myself, but in colours to suit them.  Pinks and purples for Kris: Autumn colours for Katie: They are reversible, so it's wearers choice, and you can wear the circles in any combination. I ordered some monstera cutters, and I made light earrings for myself: And heavy ones too: I love the way the heavy ones look, and I also know that lighter earrings are always the ones I reach for. Please excuse the nighttime photos, sometimes done is better than perfect. While I was trying to take these photos I discovered that I can use my Head for earring photos, and I'm pretty happy about that. Next I'm going to make some buttons to match the next ca...

Thank you for your kind comments on last week's post.    I finished    Sweet Danger  a mystery / adventure book written in 1936. The plot just didn't make much sense to me. Now I'm reading a NetGalley review copy of Under a Neon Sun , by Kate Gale. It's a pandemic book, and it's (unintentionally I think) very, very funny. I come from Melbourne the most locked-down city in the world. These Angelinos keep talking about how hard lock-down is, while visiting each other, getting their hair and nails done and having household help come in. The book centres on Mia, a poor orphan navigating the world of the rich and privileged. It's entertaining, and also a terrible indictment on a system with no meaningful safety net. Next up I really am going to read  What Happened to Nina . I seem to have been saying that for weeks.  In audio-books I'm listening to Kristen Hannah's  The Women , a novel about female nurses in the Vietnam war. It's very good, although it...

 In 2011 I made my mother-in-law a tea cosy . She drinks even more tea than we do, so it's had a lot of hard service.  You can't see it well in this picture, but the openings are stained with tea and starting to fall apart. I did attempt a new one for her in 2020, but that disappeared into history. So, when word came to me that she needed a new cosy, I got out my hook and got to it. I found t his basic pattern  and adapted it for her smaller pot. I can't explain what I did, it's crotchet and I free formed it.  I used left overs (of course) and fuzzy alpaca. I think it's quite ugly, but it fits her odd shaped tea pot well, and she seems to like it, which is the point.  I find making tea cosies very satisfying. They have a great return for effort, perform a useful function, are a fun crotchet project and make tea so much better.                                

  Last week I announced that I was going to read  What Happened to Nina   by Dervla McTiernan next. I read the prelude on Friday morning, and then the vet came for her monthly visit to give Princess Daisy her arthritis shot. Unfortunately there were other things going wrong with my 19 year old cat, and that was the end of that. Vale, sweet Princess Daisy, you live on in my heart. Princess Daisy has been with me for a very long time, since she was a kitten and I was a single lady about town, so I was feeling quite fragile. Even though I'm not usually a mood reader, I decided not to read a tense thriller, and settled instead for Charlene Carr's Behind Our Lives .   Charlene's books are like chocolate pudding - delicious and comforting, and this was no exception.  Then Kate Davies announced her new Summer of Mystery club, which includes a book club component. We are reading 10 golden age detective fiction books by  Margery Allingham . Even thought the cl...

  This is part ten in a series of non-fiction book reviews, based on the idea that the books I request tell you everything you need to know about me. Today we have an authorised (uncritical) history of Barbie, comics about anxiety and abandoned houses in Japan. Worry Lines: You're Doing Really Well Given the Circumstances   (Releases 7 May 2024) I am old enough to remember when they started releasing books made up largely of blog posts. Now we've reached the stage of releasing books made up of instagram posts. Worry lines is very cute and has some lovely and sometimes profound things to say, but (with the exception of the introduction) it feels like each page is a direct lift from an insta post. So each page is a self-contained thought, which makes it all a bit hectic. The introduction is great, a whole uplifting story over multiple pages, and shows how much better this could have been if it was an original concept, rather than an instagram account. That said, this would be a ...

 And just in time too, the chill has arrived here.  For Leon's 2024 winter set I decided to knit the Winding Road Hat and Scarf pattern by Teniana Ortuta Designs. I don't really know where I came across the pattern, but it looked interesting, but not so complicated I couldn't knit it in public, because I knew I was knitting the whole set while travelling. Full trip report here if you would like to hear about things other than the knitting. I started the hat before we left, I wanted to check that the needles and yarn worked well together. I'm glad I did, because I decided I liked it better all knit on 4mm needles, so I didn't have to carry extra needles.  I made up a pair of mitts - cast on 36 stitches, 12 rounds plain rib, start a thumb gusset and hat chart at the same time. reverse the pattern for the second one: When we went to The Yarn Trader I bought a "matching" skein of sock yarn, from local dyer  Colagirl Collective .  I finished the mitts before w...

I was numbering these, rather than naming them, but then I went on a three week holiday and now I don't know whether the numbers should refer to my posts for the year, or the number of Wednesdays in the year so I've gone back to my very exciting names for these posts.  The title pretty much says it all - the book I've (nearly) finished and my next two books are all from NetGalley, and I've almost finished one of my famous Non-Fiction Book Review posts (where I review three NetGalley non-fiction books), which will be published on the weekend.  I'm within sight of the end of A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke.  It's got big The Invisible Life of Addi LaRue energy, but is a completely original concept. The central conceit is of a young girl who has an illness / curse so that she cannot stay in the same place for more than two or three days, and she can not go back to anywhere. So she wanders, and she meets people and she learns to survive. Pa...

We got back from our holiday yesterday, and what a gloried and various trip it was. We started with The Warbuton Trail Fest. unfortunately it was a very hot, total fire ban weekend. Leon's run got rerouted, which meant, instead of doing 50kms in the relative flat, he did 46kms, including running up and down Mount Donna Buang. My 14 km run started a bit earlier than planned and was quite pleasant. We spent the rest of the weekend eating and drinking and  and sitting around talking glorious nonsense with some of our favourite people. On the Monday Kris, Leon and I headed for the airport, where were flew to Adelaide to see Fringe Festival shows and go to breweries.  We averaged two shows a day and two breweries, so it was a good time. We had a good mixture of stand-up, circus and musical comedy. As a bonus, Trevor Jones, our favourite cabaret singer, was performing nightly in The Garden of Earthly Delights, so there was singing as well.  Also, Adelaide is mad for strawb...