What I made, by Sharon

We're preparing for the  Great Ocean Walk a six day, 110km unsupported hike, and I like to be thoughtful about this part of preparations, since if you don't have something you can't get it, but if you bring something you have to carry it. This is why I won't be bringing the Swancho on this trip, even though it is going well: Actually, I don't know if there is six days worth of knitting left it that! I'm taking the light cardigan for my mother that I talked about last week.  As I do all my reading on an e-reader I can take as many books as I need! I used to bike tour before e-readers and I would pick up books as I travelled, and some of them were not good. And I was travelling alone and it was before I knit, so books were important! I'm currently finishing a NetGalley review copy of   Restitution by Tamar Shapiro , a thoughtful story about a family the left East Germany, and the ongoing consequences and choices that led to. Next up is  The Worst Thing I'v...

With the sickness in our house and being away every second weekend, we had a relatively quiet weekend in and around home. On Friday night we went to my parents for dinner and I got my loom back. I did some weaving, including a course in 2014, and was fine not weaving since, but Sri Lanka gave me some ideas, and now I want to make handspun cushions. Warping the loom scares me, but I'll watch some tutorials and I'm sure I'll work it out. Leon and Elise's choir had it's 20-year birthday celebration, so all four of the connected choirs had a performance.   And we started to pack for our next adventure - a six day hike with no opportunities for resupply. Willow wants to come too. 

I mentioned that I had bought some new bobbins from Ackerworks.  I LOVE the bobbins. They are pretty coloured, they spin well and they don't make that weird screeching noise that by original bobbins sometimes made when they spun too fast. This picture shows the bobbin, and also an historic moment when Willow came and sat on my lap. She is a very companionable cat, but not generally a lap sitter. Earlier this week I finished my first project on the new bobbins - a three ply to go as colourwork with my latest spin. I like how it looks, but I only managed to get 105 meters so it's thicker and / or denser than I was planning. I should have just enough yarn for the colourwork on H umulus . Hopefully. Now I'm on to my next spin - Leon's Winter Set 2026. I'm trying for a three ply again, but this time actually spinning finer (hopefully). It's Gotland, so it's a bit hairier than I'm used to and the fibre prep is loose and easy to spin (maybe it's pencil rovi...

After our wonderful long weekend away we can back to a very windy, grey Melbourne. Somewhere along the way my arm has become infected, so now I'm on antibiotics. I'm pretty tired. Luckily the reading and knitting have been very good. I finished  The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón . Can't say I'm glad I bothered! Now I'm reading another older book from my Kobo -   A Family of Strangers by Fiona Lowe .  It's family drama set in small town Tasmania, and I am there for it. I'm about halfway through, and after that I've got two NetGalley review books  The Worst Thing I've Ever Done  by Clare Stephens  and  Restitution  by Tamar Shapiro . In audiobooks I'm listening to the second in the  Gaius Petreius Ruso  series by  Ruth Downie   Terra Incognita . So far, so enjoyable. Comfortingly like the first in the sreies, but different enough to be interesting,  In knitting, I mentioned I was going to start a new project for our w...

  This past weekend we went to Queensland to see Leon's family, catch up with Tony and Ingrid and get some sunshine. The GoldCoast wouldn't be our choice of holiday destination, except for all those things. It's overdeveloped. My mother always called Surfer's Paradise "Sufferer's Paradise", because it's all high buildings and the sun goes behind them and casts shadows on the beach in the afternoon: Anyway, enough of my whinging. It was lovely to see Leon's family (two of his sisters and one of his brothers live there). It was fantastic to see the sun,and sit on the back deck with this view. We even had a pelican come to visit. Crafted Beer Festival  was great. The sun shone, the beer was from different breweries than we get in Victoria, the food was tasty. Tony and Ingrid were their usual cheerful selves.  To top of the trip on Sunday we went out in the boat. Fiona had casually said we would go look for some whales. We saw so many whales. They were...

 I'm not sure when I decided that I needed a plain, boxy, grey cardigan but I was definitely feeling the love for in in March, when I bought the yarn and buttons for it. and then in true knitterly style I bought a different yarn again in July!  In July I bought commercial yarn ( fromThe Australian Wool Store ) and after months of knitting with hand-dyed and hand spun yarns it was actually a pleasure to knit with yarn that was all one colour. No alternating skeins, no different balls being different colours, no run-off when the yarn was washed. I haven't turned against handdyed yarn, but for this project commercial yarn was an absolute pleasure.  I was choosing between a few patterns ( Granit cardigan ,  Champagne Cardigan )  when I realised I love the look of a doubleknit band, so I selected  Step by Step Cardigan by Florence Miller . It was a simple, well written and had an hour and a half accompanying video, which I did not watch. The video did inclu...

I said last week that I wasn't sure what I was going to read next. After I finished   Him by Geoff Ryman  (weird book, I'm still not sure what to make of it) I put my Kobo down. When I picked it up again it was displaying the cover of  The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón,  one of the older books on my Kobo. So I decided to read that. It's quite a dense book - it's by the author of  The Shadow of the Wind , a book I remember loving, but that I also read in about 2009 - and that's all I remember about it. It's a big book (600 pages) so next up might be a while! I'm enjoying this one and trying to be in the moment, rather than always rushing into the future.  I've got a couple of NetGalley review books to read before the end of the month, so it will probably be them,  The Worst Thing I've Ever Done by Clare Stephens   and  Restitution by Tamar Shapiro . they both sound really good, so I'll prbably choose randomly! In ear reading I'm cl...

 This weekend was the middle of three beer festivals in three weeks. Blobfish is a really fun one - all sour and funky beers. There were lots of beers with fruit in them and other interesting flavours. it was also a chance to catch up with Skip and Bee, who came back from an overseas trip three weeks ago, and we hadn't seen yet. Because the event was in the West, we took the opportunity to have lunch at an Ethopian restaurant.  because African migration to Melbourne is relatively recent, there are no African restaurants in the inner south, so it was quite  a treat. Unfortunately I forgot to take the food photo until after we had enjoyed our meal! And finally, this ad, on the street where the beer festival was held:    Nah, I'm looking forward to beer festival number three next week in Queensland.

W elcome to part 26 in a series of non-fiction book reviews, originally based on the idea that the books I request tell you everything you need to know about me. I have, after so many chapters of this series, realised that all these posts say about me is that  this was just a place to put these reviews, but now I can see how broad my non-fiction reading is, and how many interesting, good (and sometimes not-so-good) books and topics I've had a chance to explore. Today we have another book from the Object Lessons series, which is a series of 's hort, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things', a book about the movie Die Hard and one about the musical Sweeney Todd. Metronome (Object Lessons) by Matthew H. Birkhold This might be me, or it might be the subject matter, but after reading this book I didn't feel like metronomes are particularly interesting. that might be because of organisational structure of this book - by theme (Authority, Training...

Last week I said that my winning streak had broken, but I got back on track with some 5 star reads. (I'm still putting a * next to Netgalley review books, rather than explaining in the text what they are). I read the Very Impressive For Your Age  by Eleanor Kirk .* I really enjoyed this one, it was a bit of a quarter-life crisis book. I've read a few of these in the last couple of months, and this one was my favourite. Young women trying to find themselves is a thing. I've been one, and I love reading about that point. Now I've got a bit of a break between review books. I'm reading  Him by Geoff Ryman , a book I got as part of a sci-fi/fantasy bundle.  The description is :  In the village of Nazareth, virgin Maryam and the wife of Yosef barLevi gives birth to a miracle: a little girl. She is named Avigayil, after her grandmother. But as Avigayil grows, it’s clear she believes that she is destined to be someone greater than just the daughter of Maryam. From fighting ...

This weekend we went to Bendigo on the Hop- a beer festival where you go to 10 different venues and drink 20 different beers. We have been and enjoyed this event before -   2024  2023   2022  t he first year 2014 . As well as a fun festival, it's an excuse for a weekend in the country. This year we headed stayed at the Oval Motel - I've got a thing for basic, retro motels and I've walked past the Oval every time I've got to Bendigo. We went up on the Friday afternoon, and had a multi-course degustation dinner with matched wines.  Saturday morning we went for a run - along the rail trail instead of the river, and then headed off on the beer crawl. It was a fun time - the weather was ok (well, not raining at least) people were friendly and the beer was good. At the end of that we headed to where we had planned to go for dinner. They only had a table free for 4, but luckily another couple who had been on the Hop also wanted a table, so we joined forced and had...