What I made, by Sharon

We're 3 and a half weeks into Stage Four lockdown, and things are feeling alright. It still feels weird knowing I'm not allowed to go out after 8pm, but since everything is shut, why would I. I'm shopping up a storm on-line, and am redecorating my living room. Come back on Friday and I'll have that finished and have some photos too. I'm very excited. The knitting is going quite well too. I finished the body of the dress yesterday, and started on the first sleeve. I'm still not sure how long I'm going to make it, probably all the way to the wrist. I started reading on my new Kindle . I'm not yet sold  - the battery life for the first charge was way shorter than it should have been. I'll get that sorted out and then do a full review. I'm reading The Broken Kingdoms the second book in N.K. Jemison's Inheritance trilogy. It focuses on different characters  than the first in the series, and the action is  a bit faster. Still gloriously full of god...

  A little while ago Helen Razor's book Total Propaganda - Basic Marxist Brainwashing   came up on NetGalley, and I said "yes please". For those of you who don't know, when I was at school Helen Razor used to host a breakfast show on JJJ. I was dating a guy who had the station as his alarm on his clock radio, remember them. I hated it. She was ranty - way too ranty for 7am! Anyway, since that far-off time Helen has been around in various parts of the media, and since I've got an interest in different, fairer, more just ways we could organise our economic system, I requested and received this book. I'm not sure why it is being re-released, quite a lot of the focus is from 4 years ago, with the American election and in Australia Kevin Rudd's apolology. It does not seem to have been updated. Unsurprisingly, it's ranty, but that's one of it's strengths. It's main weakness is that of modern Marxism itself - it sees Marx as the answer and the onl...

Like half of Melbourne, after we went into Stage 4 I went on a shopping spree. One of the things I bought was a new Kindle - I upgraded to the  Kindle Oasis . It's very pretty, although I haven't started reading on it. I'm going through a tropical bird stage, so I love the cover, but it doesn't have auto sleep / wake, so I don't think I'll keep it for long. Well loved Voyage on top, new Oasis in the pretty cover underneath. It was easy to move all my books onto it except a romance book called Reel Love by Julie A Richman, so I'll read that and then switch devices. The reason I couldn't move it is because it comes from the Romance Read of the Month Club  . They send an email with a book description each month, and if you like it, you download it. I rarely read them, but this one appealed. Anyway, if you read romance, I recommend because it's free. They occasionally send other promos, but it's not spammy at all. The knitting is going very well, I...

Last week was a rollercoaster of emotions. On Friday night our head Crossfit coach posted some stuff on his personal Facebook, and then shared it to  to the Crossfit group. It was nonsense that we don't agree with, including that "the government should set an acceptable mortality rate and tell us the plan out of here" and that he doesn't believe in lockdowns. Even though we knew he felt this way, these are not our values, and we don't want to be associated with a group who espouses those values. We believe in acting as a society to protect everyone, and that people are real and important and that "the economy" is a construct, and a flawed one at best. On Saturday morning he had removed it from the group. We emailed him on Sunday night, and by Monday morning he had also removed it from his personal feed. Exhausting. Then on Wednesday the tradies on my building site had a radio. It wasn't loud, but it rumbled up through the walls all day. The walls are...

It feels like I finished this a really long time ago. it has taken me two weeks to show you the finished jumper - and it only took a week to knit! I'm not sure why the delay. This is Elizabeth Zimmerman's Seamless Yoke Sweater .  Now that I've got the hang of how  she writes her patterns, they seem so simple and straighforward. I remember the first one I knit though. So stressful. This was extremely relaxing. I wasn't sure that a plain yoke would be nice, but I just love how it looks. This was knit in stunning yarn from the Great Ocean Road Woolen mill, and the pattern really lets the yarn shine. It was a quick (very quick, it only took a week) and very pleasant knit. I'm really happy with the fit, and Leon seems very happy wearing it through this coldest part of winter. A bit of a win all around. I loved the yarn so much I might make Leon's winter set out of it. Minimally processed, maximimumly local and just delicious. We walked down to St Kilda Beach on a gr...

  Things are up and down around here. Some days are better than others. Hearing that New Zealand had it's first cases of Covid for 109 days made me feel pretty bleak. We're fighting really hard to contain this this, and it's just going on and I want to cry.  To combat the never ending time-is-not passing feeling that lockdown can produce, I decided to cast on something a little bit more complicated: The Ancasta Dress . Cables for days! I know it looks tiny in the photo, but I think it's just because it's scrunched up on the needles. I tried it on today and it seems fine. It has so far been a pleasure to knit, and it's coming together pretty quickly - although it's a cabled dress, so I imagine we will be here for a while. I'm also reading a really good book,  The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K.Jemison. It's high fantasy - Gods and magic and inheritances. I'm loving it, being transported to a very different, and not really more pleasant place. I...

Like everyone else, I have become even more domestic during this strange period in our lives. We have always made our own bread, and our own pasta. I've always had a couple of plants around. In the last three months though - I brought in my outdoor plant, because of the renos and it thrived. Then one day when I was sad, I went to Pop Wilder and bought this little beauty, but Princess Daisy kept trying to eat it. So planted some grass for her. Did you know you can grow grass hydoponically? Easy as. When NetGalley had both The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook by  Lucy Vaserfirer  and Houseplant Party by  Lisa Eldred Steinkopf I said "yes please" pretty fast, even though I knew it meant I would be dealing with the nightmare that is Adobe Digital Editions. Which turned out not to be a problem, since NetGalley now has it's own app and it works much better for me. Houseplant Party is a lovely book. fairly simple, so perfect for a relatively inexperienced...