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.

Weekend cruising

The man has been dreaming of cruises the last few days. He dragged me out of bed at SIX THIRTY on saturday to go see the Queen Elizabeth II coming into Wellington harbour. It was rather lovely to watch it/her slide in over calm waters and I must admit to feeling a slight bit of pride that the harbour managed to behave nicely weather wise.



But now he is talking about cashing in the savings and us heading out on a cruise.. lots of knitting time for me I guess? We looked up the website and he was rather excitedly telling me we could get a room for $35k per head on some three month cruise. I checked it and he was misreading the $350k as $35k.... perhaps a trip across the harbour on the ferry instead.

On Sunday we were up early again, hubby wanted to go for a drive up the coast. We drove up as far as Levin, stopping in Otaki on the way to take a wander around a small craft market. It was fairly much the usual fare, handmade soaps, cheap jewelry, pink acrylic baby knits, jars of jams and pickles, secondhand tools and kitchenwares and plants propogated in yohurt pottles. There was one highlight for me, the pitcher plant man, he had this extraordinary table loaded with pitcher plants in all shades from deep red through to lime green. I find them absolutely fascinating to look at and will definitely return to buy some when I am a little more flush with cash. I should have taken photos, next time I will.

We checked out a few real estate windows, kind of half heartedly really. We've always had the dream of buying a home on a bit of land, keeping chooks and a good sized garden and maybe some pigs. But I think I am just too much of a town type person, I loves me my amenities. I need libraries, shops, activities, beaches, public transport. If I won the lotto would it be crazy and bought out my neighbours for too good to refuse prices, and got rid of their houses so I can play farms without moving? We could have all the work done while we're away on our $350k cruise and return home to our farmlet.

Weekend over and now it is time to get back to serious business. Today I sit down at the computer and make an entirely heroic effort to type up my pattern and NOT distract myself by playing games and reading ravelry posts.

I've knit up a couple of mitts now, and I'm happy with the stitches, I just need to find a way to write up the maybe quirky things that I do when I make stuff. Like when I am picking up stitches to work thumbs, or sleeves in a top down raglan. I always pick up 2-4 extras and then knit two together at key places to get back to the number I am supposed to have. This helps eliminate holes and reduces the pull on the stitches that are right at the apex(?) of the gusset. But how to explain that in just a few words, I hate knitting patterns that become mini novels.

And just to prove I did indeed knit a pair.



And this one is evidence of my usual problem.. knitting only one.



I am definitely going to get onto that pattern today, there are already people asking if they can test knit it for me. Such positive response to something I made! It's brilliant and I love feeling like I did something right, but there is a small grey cloud hanging over it, I always find that I get a bit stressed worrying that the pattern won't live up to peoples expectations. Should I multi size it or will they all be satisfied with one size doesn't quite fit all? will they be able to knit something that looks like mine?

Hairy men and Fairy bread

My son turned 21 on Wednesday. Sadly we didn't have much free cash around to celibrate with a meal out or something fancy, so we did the good old fashioned kiwi birthday party fare.

The menu was, cheerios (not the cereal! cocktail sized saveloys) chippies (potato crisps?) and dip, the dip made from a packet of dried onion soup and reduced cream. Sausage rolls and other small finger sized savory pies, rainbow jellies made in tall glasses and plenty of ice cream, lamingtons with freshly whipped cream and a chocolate cake decorated with M&Ms and of course the fairy bread. I'm not sure if people in lands far over the seas have experienced the culinary delight of fairy bread, mostly they seem slightly confused and a bit amused at the idea of putting cake sprinkles all over bread. I wonder if it is a very kiwi childhood treat, or where exactly the idea of it has come from.

recipe: you need lovely soft fresh squishy sliced bread, and soft spreadable room temperature butter (or margerine), spread a thin but even coating over teh slice. Trim the crusts away, fairies never eat crusts, they go out to the birds on the back lawn instead, or you can use cookie cutters to cut the bread into fun shapes. Now you need to get the pieces coated with an even layer of hundreds and thousands.. not sure what they are called in alternate universes, but here in kiwiland they are "hundreds and thousands" I pour mine into a shallow bowl and then just drop the bread shapes in butter side down and give the bowl a gentle swish. The rainbow balls stick to the butter just fine without too much hassle and then I just fish them out and place them on a plate.

And now, in my best TV chef voice, here's some I made earlier!



They're a favorite of the menfolk in my life. My now fifty year old hubby is highly upset if a birthday goes by without fairy bread gracing the table. In fact I actually buy large catering type bags of them at Moore Wilsons, they work out at about $8 for a huge 1.5kg bag vs the $2 or so for a small plastic pottle from the supermarket cake decorating section.

I did take pictures of my mitts finished and a pair at last, but I wasn't happy with the focus and the composition of the pics and the lighting wasn't the best. So I will amuse you with pictures of my knitting bits and pieces instead.

The small tin was one of the extras in a sock club I belonged to when finances were a little flusher, it came filled with jelly belly beans! mhmmm. The middle sized one was from guterman it comes with four reels of thread inside it and is just a perfect size for mostly anything of use. And the green one is a pencil tin from smiggle, the metal on it is little too thin and dents far too easily, a shame really because it is a good size and shape for knitterly things.



And the view inside.



In the smiggle tin I have my sock sized circulars and crochet hook and a needle sizer that is positively ancient, one of these days I will get one of those lovely little anodized aluminum pendant needle sizers.

In the thread tin I keep a tiny torch, this is just in case I need to read a pettern line in a powercut, I can knit in the dark but not read!. I have a small victorinox swiss army knife, the scissors are great for snipping ends, and the nail file is really useful for smoothing down any nails that get a bit catchy on yarn when you're knitting. I have some cable end buttons that I never use. And cable needles, created from broken circs. I whittled the broken ends down to a point (with the swiss army knife!) and then sanded smooth. I have a magnet in there to hold the tapestry needles and I used to have a small tape measure until fiddle fingers McCoy (not certain which one) fiddled one to many times and broke it.

The smallest tin holds my stitch markers, I keep a small polishes magnetic rock on there, it's really strong! and as a bonus the magnets help hold the tins together in my knitting bag so they are easy to find.

it's a Meh day

Well today was supposed to be a blog about finishing mitts, yay!, my sons 21st birthday (yesterday) fairy bread, chocolate cake and pattern writings. But I'm just in such a blergh mood that I really don't feel up to writing of the joys of tiny brightly coloured sugar crystals decorating light and fluffy bread.

for a while I've been feeling quite disjointed from my local knitting group. All through last year I kept offering to host the knit nights and felt like I was just brushed aside, you see I don't drive, so getting to the meetups was difficult for me. I used to post in the thread weekly asking if anyone was going and able to offer me a lift, but people stopped responding to that so I stopped asking. I still sometimes manage to make it to a meet up, but they are often held in ridiculously difficult places to get to, and often because I've not been going every week I feel so out of the loop I wonder why I went.

I look back when I first started attending, and many of the women whose company I enjoyed stopped turning up last year. And the ones wo do still go just seem kind of distant to me. Sometimes I feel like maybe my presence there is an interruption in their usual social clique, I'm not sure if they mean it to be that way, but I'm not feeling particularly welcome or included any longer. I think the real blerghness comes from discovering there has been a top secret 'other' knitting group going on all this time. I suppose I'm just not cool enough for either.. hence the sad feelings.

Oh well, life just happens, and I'm reminded that even us growed up persons can have social issues, maybe it's all just silly misunderstandings, or maybe it isn't. But the big girl thing to do is get over it, smile and go make new friends who might be more on the same wavelength as I am. I'm going to try an figure out a way to get into town on sundays to meet up with the Wellington group at the botanical gardens. Neutral territory sounds good to me, and if it is all just too awful and awkward, there is always the begonia house to go take photographs in, or the rose gardens to take a wander around. I need something, some kind of contact with the outside world, being at home all the time and dealing with so many demanding situations takes its toll, and it is just so nice to get out and have a touch of normal from time to time, even if the normal is a bunch of yarn crazed knitters.

I'll finish this off with some prettiness from my last visit to the begonia house, because it makes me feel happy

this pond is full of guppies, my kids used to think they were there specially for children to catch



Red things which I do know the name off but can't for the life of me recall what it is right now



The hiroshima peace garden, it is a lovely quiet corner of the gardens which is often passed by, I enjoy taking time out to sit here



Bolton st cemetary which is next to the gardens and full of much of Wellingtons early pioneer settler history/bones



Orchids are so much more well behaved subjects then children or pets. If I could do it all over, I think I might adopt an orchid

Playing yarn chicken!

This is the fun game, the part where we are shopping for yarn and make the decision that we can scrape by with just enough yarn, rather then purchasing another ball that might not get used. I think this is probably what started off my adventures with colourwork, I was about 12 years old, and buying yarn to knit myself a jumper with my birthday money and the lovely lady at the LYS suggested I buy not one, but TWO extra 50gr balls in the same shade lot... just in case. I was mortified that my project was suddenly going to cost more then I had budgeted for and decided to buy one of each colour and knit stripes instead. I figured that if I ran out then it'd be easy enough to find scraps from my mothers stash, or buy a new ball of something else and throw that into the mix. And so it began.

I wonder if you took all the extra balls of yarn that people bought to be sure they had 'enough' in the right dye lot, and piled them all together. How high would the mountain reach? How much of a yarn manufacturers, or resale outlets profits are gained from yarn that will never see use because it is the long forgotten orphan at the bottom of the basket, a leftover from a project that has long since been worn out, felted, caught on a twig and pulled or just given over to the cat to line its bed. A ball in all its pristine newness, with a ballband that might be a little tatty from storage but otherwise still readable. I'm not talking about the sweater loads of stash people have ferreted away for 'some day' but just the leftovers that they were persuaded to buy by well intentioned shop keepers.. I guess that is what charity afghans are for huh, to consume all those overflows.. if we only ever bough just enough then there'd be no charity afghans!

Anyways, back to playing chicken. I forgot to weigh my yarn before I started knitting my mitts. Now there are a few things I 'know' about the yarn I have. I know it came in 25 gr skeins. And I know that after knitting one finished mitt, plus the lace part of the second mitt that I now have 12.4 grams of the chalk left, and 23.3 grams of the lichen left. Uh oh.. can I assume that the lichen weighed in at more then 25 grams? I'm pretty certain there is no way I knit that much from 1.7 grams of yarn... so does this mean there is a good chance the chalk weighed in at over 25 grams too? The lace section for the second mitt weighs 2.6grams. I can't weigh the finished mitt yet, since it is still a bit damp from blocking, but from where I sit now it is looking like I might be cutting it really fine with the chalk. I did knit a tiny test swatch in the two colours that weighs 1.4grams. So that is on hand if I need to frog it. And there is about three meters that I wound off the ball to see how the yarn poofed up after washing. I think I will need luck on this one!

As a taster, here is the first one completed. I can't decide if I will be bothered to write up the pattern so other peopel can understand it, or just keep it for myself. I kind of unvented the cast off, since all the kids had the computers at the time so I just played about and made up something that worked.