What I made, by Sharon

I finished my second pair of socks for sOctober this week. I used the   Tree Tram Tro   cable pattern from Kate Davies Ten Years in the Making Club. She used the X O cable pttern on a slipover, which I knew I would not make, so I put it on socks. I also dyed the yarn myself and LOVE how it came out. It turns out if you use small amount of dark colours, you get light colours, and they don't look washed out, they look perfect. I'm also happy with how the sock came out. I continued the ribbing onto the heel and the toe, just for the fun of it. Princess Daisy wanted to be in the photo shoot, and who am I to argue with my favourite cat? So that's a wrap on sOctober this year. Just two pairs, but I've also knit most of a giant Stephen West MKAL shawl. The last clue is due to drop tonight, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where that ends. Have a good weekend!  

 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

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. Photo courtesy of  http://cgs327.blogspot.com/ 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 suspec

  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

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 Fat by 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 o

Juniper loves a photoshoot. 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 mys

Once of my favourite things is finishing things and sending them out into the world, but there is always the question of whether they will fit (or suit!). I was worried about the fit of the tea cosy I made my mother-in-law . When she got it she sent me a photo: Perfect. I'm so happy with how that came out. I wasn't really worried about the fit of the last (or any) baby set I made, because even when I make thing marked "newborn" they seem to fit sooner or later. Tara sent me this picture of Harrison wearing them. Apparently he has just grown into the them. Perfect timing, since we are having some chilly spring weather before it warms up. I also "finished" some sock yarn for Leon, for his sOctober socks. I'm pleased with the colour. And I unfinished the vest that got eaten by bugs . Elise asked for a replacement hot water bottle cover (her's has worn through. Used regularly since 2014, so that's not too bad.) I'm considering dying this, throwi

The weather is grey, the shops are still shut and I'm in a blah mood today. I don't love blogging when I feel down, because on days like today I'm all "everything is terrible and we're never getting out and what's even the point." I think of these as "even if I won Tattslotto" because sometimes when I want to cheer up I think about what I would do with a million dollars. One time, I was all "even if I won Tattslotto it wouldn't change anything. Sob". Which is rather a reflection of my privilege, also true, because  we're not going more than 5kms from home for the next two weeks no matter what our finances are doing.  But this week's knitting and reading are going well. I cast on a pair of socks on the first of October - the Slippery Slope socks by General Hoffburger. It's a really fun pattern, and a great way to use up some unfinished balls.  It's going to be pretty tight on the background grey - I thought I was goi

When I started Flax Light , a friend pointed out that there were no shortrows to raise the back of the neck. i added them in by wrapping the m all  the way around the front. I feel like some of my "turning"stitches (I use German short rows) are quite visible. Since then they have released instruction to how to add short rows, where they add them on the back only after the raglan shaping. Both ways work, I think.  There were a few things in that I don't love about this jumper. While it fits, I was definitly aiming for a larger size.  I found knitting it a bit tedious - even though it only took me two weeks with a break in the middle to work on the tea cozy . There is a time for simple projects in endless mid grey - and that time might be when I'm on holidays, or when I'm going to lots of different places, when I'm busy and knitting in public a lot. This is not t hat time, this is the time for bright colours and complicated projects.  There are a few things I do

We recently discovered that we had an infestation of carpet beetles. Loads of them. It was horrific. We found a couple of individual holes in things, they looked like this: Like s omeone had snipped a single thread. And then Leon started looking for the nest, and discovered it. What happened was, when we moved in three years ago Leon popped his old backpacking backpack under the bed. We usually take our hiking packs away with us, because we make hiking part of every trip these days. The cats had been sleeping on it, and it was covered in cat hair. It looks like the carpet beetle babies were living off those and a sheep skin we had under there. Leon spent a lot of time cleaning it out and vacuuming. We inspected all our knitwear and the only thing that was chewed up was a vest that Leon doesn't really wear. I wanted to re-use the wool, but when I tried to pull it out, I could not make it unravel. it's not felted or anything, it just wont go. Really odd. Anyway, it looks like w