Weekending - Halls Gap THE RETURN

I knew I wanted to get out of Melbourne between Christmas and New Years, but everything was booked out, and sometimes not having a car is annoying, manageable, but annoying. So, I suggested to Skip and Bee that we go somewhere, maybe camping, maybe Halls Gap. Skip's brother lives outside Halls Gap on a property and was going to be away, so we had their house for 2 nights and then one night with them. Perfect. The house was amazing.

Leon and I got to sleep in a self contained room, separate from the man house. It was so cute.

There was a field full of kangaroos and a couple of emus, and a deck perfect for spinning -and I did take my wheel.

I got to collect fresh eggs from the chickens.

Of course we didn't just hang about at the house, although I really could have spent 3 days just reading and spinning and knitting there.

We went trail running, and hiking in the mountains.

We met up with Dick and Carly and their growing family. As well as recently adding a daughter to their family they rescued a mini pony.

So cute. When I went to give the pony a carrot their sheep came and let me pat them. Heaven.

As an aside, Dick and Carly own Raccolto Pizza in Halls Gap, and serve excellent pizza.

I got a lot of knitting done - rather more than expected, and feel very relaxed. I highly recommend Halls Gap for a weekend (or weeklong) escape, and I recommend having friends like Skip and Bee who are always up for an adventure, good company and game for anything (except running, that's a step too far). It was a good time. Relaxing, low pressure, and wonderful to feel "normal" for a while at the end of this crazy year.

Comments

Why Andrea Mowry, why? (A rant and a rather nice finished object)

As mentioned, prior to our hiking trip I suddenly, and rather randomly, decided to knit Andrea Morwy's Traveler Shell . It's basically an open fronted rectangle in a knit purl pattern. The pattern is FOURTEEN pages long. Why is the pattern 14 pages long? Because, instead of explaining the ten row repeat and then putting the shaping on top of that (e.g. decrease while continuing to knit in pattern), she writes out the entire ten row knit purl sequence every time something changes. Additionally, most of the time she starts with even number being the right side and wrong numbers being the right side,which is just plain odd. It's confusing and it's like she wants to keep you looking at the pattern for every row, rathe than following the very intuitive stitch pattern, which I had memorised after one repeat. The instructions for the band just say 'pick up x number of stitches'. No ratios, no acjnowledgement that different bits of the band have different ratios. Afte...

Slowly slowly

I haven’t posted about my actual knitting for a while. This might be because not much has changed since the last time I talked about my knitting. This is the edging of my Village Sweater Wrap: The picture fails to capture how much further there is to go. I'm just past the first arm hole, so just over a third of the way through. It’s 47 stitches of relatively simple lace. I’ve been knitting it since Monday two weeks ago. It’s quite pleasant, and slowly growing but I can’t quite work out why it’s growing so slowly. One reason I know is that the first week I was knitting it during Good Beer Week, so I didn’t take it out and about with me. I knit other things, and when I’m knitting two things it makes everything feel like it takes forever. But the main reason, I think, is that this is just a slow knit for me. I love the needles I’m knitting on ( Karbonz of course) I love the yarn, I love the way the lace looks. So really, what’s the rush? I’m not going to be cold...

Linky Wednesday - the one with the pause

In meditation it's said that the pause between the in breath and the out breath is a gap, a space to rest. Well, I'm in that in-between space for reading, listening and knitting. This is a random photo of a highlight of my week - I filled up my lolly jar. These are just supermarket party mix. During the lockdowns, we sources a great pick-and-mix delivery service, but at some point they started sending from the UK, which is a bit silly. Rachey messaged me a new one she found, and I impulsed purchased a kilo of mixed lollies, and then she sent me a link to the biggest lolly shop in Melbourne, which also delivers sweets by the kilogram, so i think I'm sorted for the rest of the year! In reading I've just finished The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham . It's the second last book in the Summer of Mystery, and I have to admit, having now read nine Margery Allingham books, that they are OK. I wouldn't have read them if they were not connected to this club, but on...

What I made, by Sharon

Search This Blog