What I'm working on

Well of course I am working on my Koru mitts pattern, I've refined the knitting bit to where I am happy with it and am now carefully (procrastinatingly) writing it up and creating the chart. Ok so this is the part that I absolutely hate about writing a pattern. I know how I worked that thumbhole, but explaining it so someone else from another culture can figure it out from a couple of sentences? this is the part I have trouble with.

Perhaps I am too much of a perfectionist, I want my patterns to be written in such a way that no one ever feels the need they have to contact me to clarify what I meant.. and then of course I get a bit disappointed that no one ever has contacted me to ask about something in a pattern, because then I've never had the opportunity to show the world what an awesome designer I am because I have such brilliant ongoing support for my patterns. Of course the moment someone does ask me, I will be so mortified that I sent out a less then perfect set of instructions that I will immediately be editing it all. I'm too hard on myself, I just cannot win against me.

I was a little bit ( yes just a teeeeeny bit) naughty a few weeks ago and spent some of the power bill moneys on a small amount of naturally dyed lace weight yarn from Renaissance Dyeing I was intrigued with the way the colours work together and being able to get just a little bit of each appealed to me. I bought the Elizabethan range , colours that were in use in the 16th century. I've always had a fascination for natural dyeing, I've used onion skins and lichen in the past but I wasn't a fan of the mordants, I now prefer to stick to the safer and easier acid dyes and leave the natural process to others.



So here is my small collection of lovely yarns, I plan to knit something in stranded colourwork. I've swatched on 1mm needles, and on 1.5 mm needles and sadly, as I feared, I need to go to 1.25mm to get a fabric that I am happy with. I don't have any 1.25mm needles (le sigh) So until I can get the power bill paid and ferret away enough money to buy some, the project is on hold. Sometimes living in New Zealand can be a pain, when you have to pay expensive international shipping on even the smallest items.

In other news, my replacement signature needles arrived recently too. I was gifted a set of circulars for my birthday last year, but the cable on them had started to split a little after knitting half a shawl, one of the connector cups was a bit sharp and was cutting through the nylon. They were awesome about replacing the needles, I will definitely buy from them in future if funds allow.



The new set has the new cable, and it looks great, it is a lot more flexible then the older version that I had and I am looking forward to casting something on. I think maybe another Morlynn shawl if I can find a nice combination in my stash. I enjoyed knitting this one.



I'm also in the finishing phase of getting my womens refuge hat pattern up for sale. Need a good kick in the backside to tidy up the text and take some more photos of the finished hats

I think that is all I have on the go right now, this afternoon it will probably be a different list.. you know how it is.

I do NOT have a virus

So tonight we get yet another scammer phone call alerting me to the horrifying fact that there is a virus on my windows powered computer!!!11!!!! oh noes

Yet another call, because this is the fourth one. Yes four times now in the last two months we've been rung by the technician department at Microsoft.. well actually the last one was from the Technician at the Technology department of Technological Technologies. But the gist of the conversation is always the same. This was the latest

Scammer: "Hello, is this the owner of this phone number?"

Me: pause.. "um yes?"

Scammer: "I'm a Technician at the Technology department of Technological Technologies and.."

Me: (interupting) "Oh! are you ringing about the virus on my computer?"

Scammer: "Yes yes, that is what we are ringing up to fix" ..( they didn't catch that I already knew what it was about? )

Me: "Oh thank god, I was really worried, what do I need to do to fix it?"

Scammer: "Ok good, you need to go turn your computer on and log in"

Me: "Uh huh" (tapping the space bar to make it sound like I am typing things) "Ok now what do I need to do?"

Scammer" : Ok you need to go to the start icon at the bottom, can you see it?"

Me: "Uhm no, where should it be? what am I looking for, do you think the virus already ate it? Omg!"

Scammer: "Um"

Me: "Oh it's ok, I found a different way to turn things on, what do I do to fix this now?"

Scammer: "Ok you need to click on run and tell me what you see in there"

Me: "Uh, I can't see anything? what should I be looking for? "

This went back and forth for a time, me playing dumb, asking them what it is that I should be seeing, and them asking me to read out exactly what I see in the box.

Me: "This is getting frustrating, I really don't know what you are trying to get me to do! I have only had this computer since 1983 and never had virus trouble until now. I'm really worried about how to fix it up!"

Scammer: "What computer do you have?"

Me: "It's a commodore 64, I cannot afford to buy a new one so I really need to know how to fix this"

Scammer: "One moment.." (I think I actually might have confused her because she consulted with someone else)

By this time I decided I was getting annoyed, and an ad came on TV showing what was coming up in the news and I suddenly got really angry that while my country was dealing with a tragedy, scammers were still trying to take advantage of people who don't know any better. So I let rip and told her exactly what I thought of their pathetic attempts to rip people off and take advantage of others. I used many four letter expletives.

Next one that rings me up to tell me my Windows computer has a virus will be told. "Oh no! and I just gave it away to that lovely Nigerian official who needed a computer to email his dear mother back in South Africa so she could transfer funds out of the country. I hope I haven't accidentally infected their network with a virus! he was such a sweet boy too.

The quiet times in life

Starting this with some pretty, last nights sunset. I so badly need a camera that does scenic shots as amazingly as my current one does macro






It's been over a week since the big quake hit Christchurch, and while life must go on, I have noticed the entire country seemed more subdued. Forums centered around New Zealand folk are fairly quiet, it seems as if we are all more aware of just how trivial our usual everyday chatter is.

We had a reasonable jolt here in Wellington the other night it definitely put all of us on alert and I have been going through our emergency supplies making sure things are up to date and batteries functioning etc. I also added a couple of balls of yarn, a few excess circs and vanilla sock instructions to the two containers we keep.. you know, just in case.

It really has been a time of reflection on what is important to me in my life, just what would I grab? the photos? the heirloom china? the various bits and pieces I've discovered in junk shops over the years? I was pondering this, would I make my way to the bedroom to unearth my trollbeads collection? or rescue my cashmere merino sock yarn from the lounge. Maybe I would make a dive for the tin in drawer that keeps all the important documents safe. Or perhaps the CD that store old photographs. Nope, at the end of the day,while I am slightly sentimental, I've realised just how practical I really am. My thing I would spend a few moments searching for (if I had the time) is the tramping boots that usually lurk somewhere in my bedroom. I think I need to go find them and make sure they are somewhere easily got to, so I can move my must rescue at all costs item along to being one of the more sentimental options.

So on to quake, I'm not going to mention stats or talk about quake drama, there are enough people already doing that. When I first got news of it and settled down to watch the tv, I felt the need to do something to help out, sending parcels of food down is a waste of resources and time and creates issues. They needed/need money but I don't have much spare in my weekly budget. What I do have however are designing skills, I already have two knitting patterns I have self published and sell via Ravelry so I decided to donate 100% profits from those sales to the quake fund until the end of march.

Then I started hearing more about the womens refuge center, and how after the dust settles families are still pushed to the limits emotionally, parents become stressed to the point of passing that snapping point. And sometimes the best thing for a mother is to just get out of dodge with her children in tow. So I designed a hat specially to raise money for womens refuge in New Zealand. Not only will 100% of the profits from it be going to the womens refuge in Christchurch until the end of march, but as an ongoing fundraiser I will be donating the profits from the sale of this pattern to womens refuge NZ.



The pattern is named "Kids Play" and is written for three sizes from toddler through to large child/adult. It will be available on Ravelry in the next few days as I tidy up some of the rough edges in my writing.