What I made, by Sharon

 Sometimes I struggle with naming these Wednesday posts. At the beginning of 2024 I tried numbering them (1/24, 2/25 etc) I was considering trying that again, but when I went to look for those posts, I discovered that I like all my posts with the silly, best I can find a theme titles. This week I finished  The Bone Harp  by Victoria Goddard ,  and started    Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall .  All my friends have read this romance, and when I found it in Kobo Plus I was quite pleased. I'm enjoying the book, which is also a nice change. Next up is another Kobo Plus book (I've only got another two weeks on my current subscription, and then I'm going to catch up with my NetGalley books).  I've got a few to choose from, mostly romance and women's fiction. I'll decide when I get there. In audio I finished The  Heir Apparent  by Rebecca Armitage  (well read but told in a really repetitious way). I decided that, since I don't seem to be e...

I may have mentioned that Richmond Knitters has chosen the Celeste Sweater by Petit Knits  for our annual Bendigo Sheep show knitalong. I've decided to knit the 8 ply jumper in 4 ply, because I get more wear out of my lighter jumpers. i decided I wanted to make it on easter egg colours. i was sitting on my balcony, pretending to meditate when a tram went past with an ad on the side that summed up the colours I wanted. I didn't grab my phone before the tram had moved on, but i did a google and found the ad: Last week Katie gave me some left over Bendigo yarn in white, and I dyed it up for this project: I'm nor sure if I'm going to go with the four colours above, or sub out one of them for the mint leftovers of the top I just finished. I know the photo if would have looked nicer if I had skeined up the mint, but i certainly don't have time for that!  I'm so chuffed how the colours came out. Here they are with the background colour: Sometimes my dying results can ...

 Every so often I like to pull out the polymer clay. The run up to Christmas is a really fun time for this. I don't decorate (or celebrate Christmas, except in the most secular of ways) but I'll take any excuse to craft! This year I received some 'cookie cutters' which I thought would make perfect ornaments, and rather large earrings. I'm chuffed with how well they work with polymer clay. This is something I was trying with a layer of white over a base of transparent I love these trees - the one s with pink and purple will be earrings for Kris, the rest gifts: I think these gingerbread men look psychotic, but everyone I've shown them to thinks they are cute: And now I'm all polymered out! this weekend I'm going down a different path and am going to dye some yarn.

  Summer has been slow to arrive, but today it is 28 degrees and sunny, and after I finish work I'm going to sit in the sun and read. I'm currently reading  The Bone Harp by Victoria Goddard  , and although I usually find her books quite compelling, I'm finding it hard to keep focussed on this one. I also didn't love my previous read  How to Date Your Dragon  by Molly Harper  which was paranormal shifters. Maybe I need a break from fantasy. I might read  Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall  next. It's available on Kobo Plus, and all my friends read and loved it. I want to have finished my audiobook first  The Heir Apparent  by Rebecca Armitage , which I thought was going to be romance and while it has quite a bit of romance, it's also got quite a lot of family drama. I'm enjoying it, but don't want to eye-reading and earreading books on similar themes. they might not even be that similar, I'm not much of a blub reader, I'm knitting away on...

 I wear shawls all year round, but Elise wears them more like scarves, to stay warm in winter. Still, I was thrilled when she asked me for a new shawl in purple. I bought the yarn in Bendigo and even more thrilled when Joji announced a one skein mystery shawl knitalong.  The MKAL was a lot of fun. Her Ravelry boards are very active, with a lot of chatter (also some people whinging because the mystery shawl has some repeated elements. Unlike another recently finished MKAL, this one hangs together as a finished object. it was a lot of fun to knit. Simple, but just interesting enough keep me going. The weather is going to be quite crap this weekend, so i might give it to Elise now, rather than waiting until autumn. If I do, I'll try to get photos and I'll update this post. if not, I'll get photos next winter! 

 I really couldn't find anything the link my activities this week! After I finished    Empire of the Dawn  I went back and finished    Scary Monsters  by Michelle de Kretser . It felt good to tick it off the list, but that's all I can say about the second half of that book. Then I decided it was time for something lighter, so I read  Autumn Falls  t he first in the romance series I started a couple of weeks ago and  An Occupation of Angels , a Lavie Tidhar book about angels in the cold war. It's even weirder than that sounds! Now I'm reading  How to Date Your Dragon by Molly Harper  a paranormal fantasy included in both Kobo Plus (which I have rejoined) and Audible Plus. I only started it yesterday, but so far it's fun. I'm listening to a NetGalley review copy of    The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage.   Princesses! Royal succession! Family drama! It also has the most perfect narrator. I am enjoying it. In craf...

 I knit with hand-dyed yarn regularly. Sometimes I even dye my own. Earlier this year I was knitting with some natural plant dyed yarn, and it was rubbing off on my hands as I knit.  Eventually when I finished it I washed the finished object. And then i washed it. And washed it again. By the time I got the water to run clear the yarn was a significantly more muted colour. Now I'm knitting a purple shawl for Elise, and I noticed that the same thing is happening. Since I had two skeins of the yarn, and I'll probably only use one for the shawl, I decided to wash the second skein. And that was not the first rinse. it;s currently soaking in hot water and vinegar after three rinses. I really want to get this set enough to use in a colourwork yoke. I'm not feeling too hopeful about that. I know if I dye it myself I make sure the dye is set and any excess removed. I wish professional dyers would do the same.  

 Unsurprisingly I'm still reading   Empire of the Dawn . It's so good (if you like vampires and family and endless, endless bad things happening, which I do!) It's a big book, but it's not dragging at all. I'm near the dénouement, but I kind of never want it to finish, but I need it resolved! I'm going to have the biggest book hangover when I do finish it. I'll be returning to the second half of  Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser , so at least I know my next book will be well written. In audiobooks I finished  Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami . I didn't love it. Now I'm listening to  Persona Non Grata (Gaius Petreius Ruso, #3) by Ruth Downie . It's a relaxing, somewhat silly, cosy mystery series set in the Roman Empire.  In knitting I do have a new project on the needles: Backlit by Stephanie Lotven . This has been in and out of my queue for years - I've bought yarn for it at least three times, and as far back as 2022 . T...

 Today I have three finished items that are gifts, so, while I wrote about them while knitting them, I haven't had the opportunity to show you them on their intended recipients. First up is the Swancho that I knit for Kris, so that Kris, Nat, Katie and I can all match. She looks so cute it it! Then there is the Albizia cardigan for my mother. Practical and pretty, this was a (rather lengthy) very satisfying knitting adventure. It's made out of Holst Garn Supersoft, and while it washes up reasonably soft, i actually ended up with a cut on my tensioning finger from the yarn rubbing on my skin. I'm really pleased with how it fits her , and I think she is too. Then we have a charity jumper and hat, which I knit to try to minimise some of my every growing leftovers. here it is modelled by a bear. Hopefully the bear is smaller than a 9 month old. Also a  bonus pair of socks for my father, because he likes fun socks and complained that I haven't knit him socks for a while, wh...

 So, I did DNF    The Emergency ,  because I hated it. It was kind of wooden, and not very interesting. I got  Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser  from the library and started it. It's a book in two parts which can be read in either order - I remember when it was originally published the paper copies had one part starting on one side of the book - or turn it over and the other part starts from the other side of the book. The first half was very good - I am going through a bit of literary fiction by women stage. Anyway, just before we went away I found out that  Empire of the Dawn  the final volume of Jay Kristoff's E mpire of the Vampire series has come out that very day. Unusually for me, at the end of part one of Scary Monsters I set it aside and starting this amazing 800 page epic finale to this brilliant series. I am loving it - vampires, quests, endless dark, battles, love and so many emotions! After I finish this I'll go back to Scary Mo...

 This weekend we headed up to Marysville to hang out with my parents and run the 10 km in the Marysville Marathon festival. I did the half last year, but this year training did not go to plan, so the 10km it was! we did all our favourite things including walking up to the falls and getting a selfie.  Getting harassed by King parrots parrots. It was my mother's birthday last week, so I finally gave her the cardigan I made for her- and promptly forgot to take photos! Hopefully she'll wear it when I see her this week. It was  a very satisfactory weekend. the run started cold and a little damp, but was cool and delightful. Same falls, different day: We got home mid afternoon, which, after also being away last week was a bit of a relief. I've cleaned the bathroom, hung the washing and now I'm going to flop onto the couch and read the very excellent book I started on the weekend. If you come back on Wednesday, I'll tell you about that, and about what I knit this weekend t...

Last week I said I was going to read   The Emergency  by George Packer,  but we were going away for the weekend  and I didn't want to read dystopian fiction. One of my travelling companions was Bee and she is the romance queen (funny story - Bee didn't read fiction for a good long while and then she fell in love with romance. Now she reads more than anyone I know We have different tastes - she loves first person dual POV, I don't.) So I requested  Silver Sky by Taylor Gray  from NetGalley. It was perfect! Well written, lovable characters, third person. It's the second in a related series and I loved it so much I've bought the first one. (I think its on KU for those of you who subscribe).  Now I've gone back to The Emergency . I'm having mixed feelings - there is a lot of exposition and I'm not finding the main character at all sympathetic. Additionally, things just sort of happen and I can't see why - although that might be because our main chara...

 As has been our tradition for three years now, we spent cup weekend (which is Saturday to Tuesday, for you non-Australians) camping on Dick and Carly's bush block near Pomonal. I only took one photo because I finally got a phone plan that works even in the country and it turns out I don't really want my phone to work in the country, so I had it off for most of the weekend!   The rest of the photos here are stolen from Leon, who also didn't take many. We did all our favourite things- we went on two runs, a little bushwalk and even swam in a lake. We sat around a fire and bullshitted with out mates. Bee and I had a reading circle - which consisted of us sitting and reading.  We got to see how the bush is recovering after catastrophic fires over the last couple of years. We saw all out favourite animals, including loads of kangaroos, yellow tailed black cockatoos, gangang cockatoos and this wallaby with a joey.  We had a ripper of a time.  This is the last ye...

  It's not secret that I'm obsessed with knitting bags. I've managed to limit myself to Joji & Co bags, becasue they are so good. I last posted about buying Joji bags in Jul y , but somehow a new envelope bag made it's way to my house (it's a  better colour in real life!)  it's to replace the previous one , which I had used a lot and also was always a bit too lipstick red, and not quite the right shade of pink I was hoping for. Weirdly, I seem to replace these every two years. At Bendigo this year, Nat brought out her Thread and Maple Needle Binder. I was obsessed! It's funny, because I don't really need any storage - I have a Joji needle binder  in beautiful brown from 2020 and a DPN holder from 2021 in human skin pink.   So, I've been resisting, although I always knew I was going to give in at some point!  Last week I was having a very bad day, and also I got a pay rise, and I gave in and put an order in. I started with the notions page: And so...

Tarragon and Willow didn't interact much, but since he died last Friday she has become even more interactive with us. She's sitting on the couch, which she never did before, and helping with everything. Here she is helping my newly finished cardigan for my mother to dry: Now I'm knitting a quick charity jumper from leftovers. I love using up leftovers. This weekend we're going car camping, and I'm going to cast on a pair of socks for my dad to knit while we sit around a campfire. In reading, I finished  Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson.  It was fine, I guess. Loads of characters, lots of unnecessary details and an unsatisfying ending. Now I'm reading   a NetGalley review copy of  The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell . I'm loving it, even though it is time travel. It's also full of magic, so in my mind its more fantasy than time travel and for some reason I can deal with that! I'm about a third of the way through and looking forward to seeing...