What I made, by Sharon

After 29 weeks of lockdown (with about three weeks in June off) we have now officially not in lockdown. Even though it makes little difference to me yet, it's just the relief. It was a long journey, but we had zero cases on Monday and Tuesday and only 2 today (from a known source) so hopefully it worked.  Shops are open. 105 days without shops was weird and the postal system is rather overwhelmed so everything is talking three weeks to get here. We still have 25km travel limits, and I think I'll be working from home for a while yet but I can get my nails done! Oh the excitement.It was a pretty solid week in reading and knitting too. I made good progress on my socks (or Leon's socks I should say): I'll get them finished today - one of the great joys of working from home is being able to knit out of sight during meetings. The Westknits Slipstravaganza clue was a quick on this week, and I was finished on Sunday night. Little checks followed by adorable triangles. So fun. Yo…

1) We had Friday off - some public holiday that originally had to do with football, but I think got renamed "Thank You Day". Even though I never went more than a ten minute walk from home, I had a lovely long weekend. I sat in four different parks with four different people, catching up and seeing people in real life, including a beer festival in the park.
2) We finished our most recent running cycle with a 5km time trial in the park. It was raining and windy and while my time (25:48) was a little slower than I was aiming for, my power was higher than expected - which is another way of saying I'm fitter than I was, the conditions slowed me down. We're doing another run cycle, and today I emailed my Crossfit gym and suspended / cancelled my membership. I'm just doing too many other things, and it doens't suit my lifestyle right now. Feels very weird, I've been a member of CrossFit St Kilda for 8 years. I suspect I'll be back in a couple of months. 3) I …

We're in week 29 of working from home. After 100 days of lockdown, curfew and travel restrictions we are now allowed 25kms from home and hairdressers are open. No shops, just hairdressers! I really want to get my nails done, I guess that will happen in about ten days. Exciting. As I say every week, being at home more has given me even more time to knit and read (and run and learn handstands). This week I am knitting TWO things. My second pair of sOctober socks: I used the X and O pattern from one of Kate Davies Ten Years in the Making  club patterns - the Tree Tram Tro, which is a slipover I know I won't ever knit. So socks it is. I dyed the yarn myself and I absolutely adore the colour they came out. I can imagine doing a whole jumper for Leon in that beautiful fawn. I'm also racing along with Stephen West's Slipstravaganza MKAL. It's a very cheering pattern, and I am quite happy with how my colours are coming out. Two more clues, such fun. And I can see how it'…

For reasons I can't explain I've recently requested and read 3 short non-fiction books from NetGalley. Two of them were from the Object Lessons Series, which takes ordinary things and tells you all about them.The first one was Fatby Hannah Blank. In this slim volume she covers a lot of ground, from the personal and her relationship to her fat body, the history of fat and the racist past (and present) sexual fetishisation, fat in food and on.The story of fat is told through a political, feminist, economic and gender lens. While I definitly learnt some things there is so much serious material to cover and this is a small book. Each chapter could be an entire PHD, but it serves as an interesting taster.  Second, also from Object Lessons is Gin by Shonna Milliken Humphry. This is a history of gin, told in a breezy, fun way. This is as apolitical as a book can be, in stark contrast with Fat. I enjoyed the history and I certainly learnt a lot about gin. I remember a couple of years a…

I finished my (first) pair of sOctober socks for 2020, the Slippery Slope Socks by General Hogbuffer. They are a great knit - they look so much more complicated than they are, once I got the hang of the pattern they were intuitive and fun. I had to decide between the grey or white for the background, and I'm still not sure I made the right decision. I might make these again sometime I have left over self striping but with the light back ground. Oh, it could be a good way to use up multiple small balls of self striping, since the whole sock only used 25 grams of the contracts colour. And 49 grams of the grey. I ended up with 7 grams left over. Close one!

We're up to day 94 of Stage Four lockdown. But, now we're allowed to see people in the park (not in a private garden or balcony, only in the public park). I met up with my parents in one of our lovely parks on Sunday and my mother asked me what I was knitting. Leon and I started laughing, and he said "it's a mystery", and then I had to explain about MKALs and  how much fun they are. And the Westknits Slipstavagnza MKAL has been (so far) pure gold. Clue one came out on Friday night Melbourne time. I had it finished by Sunday lunchtime, and I went on with my sock. On Monday night I got up to the toe of the Slippery Slope second sock: And then on Tuesday morning I woke up to a bonus clue. I'm about half way through it here: It's been very fun getting surprises that are exciting and enjoyable!I'm still reading Utopia Avenue, but the still is only because it is a fairly long book. I've done a lot of reading and enjoyed it, although there is some mystical…