Category Archives: Photography

Pattern: One Skein Wonder from Glampyre
Yarn: My handspun, hand dyed merino, very soft. I dyed the top, spun it up and navajo plyed. I was delighted to find it knit to gauge.
Needles: 5mm Circs for body and 3.75mm circs for ribbing and moss stitch sleeve detail.
Comments: This was a very fast knit for me, I reckon it took me about 6 hours all up, and I’m not a superfast knitter by any standards. The worst bit was picking up stitches for the ribbing, I did pick up too many and I think this has been one of the factors in why the ribbing isn’t as ‘pulled in’ as I would like. I also should have used 3.5mm circs, but I don’t have any.

I’ll be away for a week, attending the Geelong Textile Fibre Forum YAY!. I’ve been looking forward to this for 6 months.

Today is AFL Grand Final Day. A great excuse to eat savloys LOL Continue reading →

Kiri Shawl – FINISHED!!

Pattern: Kiri (12 repeats of chart 2) from All Tangled Up
Needles: 5mm Circs. I used a 7mm straight needle to cast off.
Finished size: I haven’t measured, but it is wider than my wing span so I’d say it is around 170cm wide and it reaches down past my bottom, so it is a nice size
Yarn: My handspun 2 ply from a locally grown merino cross fleece. Spun in the grease.
Comments: This was a fun knit, and as a relatively new knitter (since January 05) by far my largest project yet. I highly recommend using a much larger needle and the pattern’s instructions for casting off, this way you will get enough stretch to get the points on the edge (the points in the photo aren’t showing up too well because I wore it yesterday and they tended to curl.)

And, I found this cluster of pods on our walk tonight.

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Kiri is finished and blocking. No full shot photos til then, but here’s a glamour shot to tide you over.

Another day, another gallery opening. Geez life is tough LOL. Cowwarr Art Space is hosting a travelling exhibition of works by Jim Thalassoudis. His paintings are of the sky; cloud formations, dramatic sunsets and bushfire affected heavens. I enjoyed the works immensely.

I also had the chance to meet Stephen Gallagher who I mentioned yesterday. I am sad to say I had a go at him about his lack of web presence, sorry about that Stephen. He tells me he is going to create some larger scale works using bigger mesh. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with!

Stephen informed me of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria called Everlasting – The Flower in Fashion and Textiles 26 August 2005 – 2 April 2005. Sounds like Riscy and I will need to plan another Melbourne weekend excursion.

And to round this post out, here is a photo I took this afternoon of a Four O’Clock* folding up for the night:

This is what Riscy’s mum calls them. I think they are californian poppies though. Continue reading →

Well, to motivate myself to finish Kiri, I’ve purchased the One Skein Wonder pattern from Glampyre. I’m not sure whether it will flatter me (busty as I am), but I’m keen to give it a shot. My first knitted item with sleeves.

I swatched the yarn I want to use, and it appears I’m right on gauge, pretty remarkable given this is one of my handspun yarns, this gauge stuff is all new to me!

We went to a marvelous gallery opening last night at the Latrobe Regional Gallery*. It was quite an extravaganza with three exhibitions opening at once and tonnes of people.

Contemporary Leftovers – Rehgan De Mather
Unstrung – The Bead in Contemporary Art
Bushwaters, gums and gardens. A close look – Marilyn Close.

I was very impressed by De Mather. I’d seen some earlier work before but his new stuff is much more compelling. His use of texture and layers really sucked me in and I plan to go back for a second look.

Unstrung was a group exhibition curated by the Director of the Latrobe Regional Gallery – Louise Tagart. I particularly enjoyed the peices by Anna Davern, vessels with delicate, organic protusions like growths or tendrils reaching out.

Also wonderful, was a vase made of steel mesh embellished with beads and embroidery by Stephen Gallagher. (Article and Link)
And suprising, was Neon Beads by Patricia Harper, a string of neon beads, you can see it at this link, third photo down.

And to draw this little review to a close, I’l like to say that bush and landscape painting is not all bad news. Marilyn Close has opened my eyes to how wonderful it can be, her ability to capture the bush, textures of bark, light in a garden. Quite wonderful.

*For the sake of disclosure I must add that I am a community rep on the LRG advisory committee. Continue reading →

An unfortunate mistake required the heartstopping decision to take Kiri off the needle. But every cloud has a silver lining ’cause this allowed the opportunity to get a preview 🙂

I only took her back 4 rows, but given the number of stitches at this stage (last repeat before I launch onto the border) I have been set back a considerable amount… I don’t think I’m gonna have her finished by Friday.

I’ve made more mistakes in this repeat than I have since I started on the second chart. I can’t work it out. I shouldn’t knit when tired is probably a good lesson though.

We had our second meeting with our architect today regarding the renovations. Scary stuff, but so far it is all sounding good. He will get back to us in 2-3 weeks with some concepts. My work mates made fun off me because we are getting an architect to do this for us when we are theoretically capable of doing it ourselves (y’know, being engineers and all). But, it would take us 5 years to get this project finished because we are too absorbed with other stuff and frankly our relationship will be all the better because we have chosen NOT to do this on our own. Believe me. Continue reading →

Proof:

This is all a bit experimental so it doesn’t sit perfectly flat, but I think I can fix that with a bit of thoughtful blocking 🙂

The Paynesville Spin In went well. There must have been about 50 people there including two men, David from our guild and another guy from Phillip Island who spins for his wife. I think David took up spinning to keep up the yarn for his wife too, he tells us she was the fastest knitter he ever saw, he has bought in some of her work and it is beautiful.

The Spin In was held in St Peters by the Sea Anglican church, a beautiful location. I wish I’d taken my camera. A funny thing, I was spinning away and two ladies approached me and asked why the thread doesn’t break, I said that I was putting twist into the fibre and that makes it strong enough. Then one of them said, ‘how do you get the twist in?’ I was polite, but holy crap! I’m sitting there with a spinning wheel at a spinning guild event.
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Ta Daaaa!!

Wave and Shell by Laurie Osborne. The yarn was spun from beautiful Silk and Merino tops dyed by TreeTops Colour Harmonies. It is a very light, but warm little scarf. The pattern is for a shawl, but I cut out a repeat and used thinner needles.

I started the Kiri Shawl last night. I’m on the last row of the first chart, but at 12:30 last night, about two hours past my bedtime, I had to put it aside in frustration, just couldn’t make it work. I’m confident that I’ll fix it though 🙂

Tomorrow we head up to Mount Buller for some skiing. The season hasn’t been great apparently, but the weather turned nasty last night, and we are assured of good snow cover for the weekend. I’m taking my spinning wheel with me to demonstrate spinning to my friend Carol (and Lynne if she’s interested), should be fun! Continue reading →

I tried dyeing some wool yesterday with some fibre reactive dyes (Procion), but I mustn’t have used enough vinegar as a most promising orange and green mix ended up a washed out yellow and pale green 🙁 I’m going to overdye.

In fact I was going to do it tonight, but I’ve been watching a DVD of an old (1967) TV show called The Prisoner. I’d never heard of it before, but I’ve been sucked in good and proper (thanks Frank!). Continue reading →

The navajo plied, continental knitted ear warmers are finished ready for my snowfield adventures in a few weekends.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but damn, it’s hard to get a good photo of a hat on your own head.

The navajo plyed wool was wonderful. I’m going to ply this way for the big jumper (sweater) project. I’ve gotta start dyeing some wool so I can start spinning.

Continental knitting started off slowly but got faster the more I knitted. I’m not sure if its faster than my conventional knitting technique though. I’ll definitely practice more. The main thing I noticed is that I have a lot of trouble keeping tension with my left hand.

When knitting right handed I wrap the yarn once around my little finger and carry it over my index finger. This doesn’t work with my left hand, the little finger wont cooperate and the yarn is too loose, especially when purling. I’ve settled on a wrap around the hand then a wrap around the little finger, but it’s a bit too tight and my hand gets sore from flexing to let the yarn through.

Last night I had an interesting sewing experience. A lady at work is going to the Darwin Races next week and a big group of her friends are going to wear the same loud, tropical style shirt. It was very unflattering on her. Well, I seem to be the resident expert in all things fabric and even though I don’t know much about sewing clothes I was roped into reconstructing the shirt. I worked completely freestyle, just pinning darts while she wore the shirt and sewing them up freehand. And holy cow, it worked. I had that thing fitting like a glove by the end of the night. LOL

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Well it’s two sleeps really if you count our overnight flight (will I sleep??)

Excitement is reaching fever pitch, I’ve got two weeks off work (Yay!!) and I’m not packed for Fiji, not one bit, but I’ve got all tommorow morning to get organised. I’ll be packing a heap of these though:

I dyed 4 tshirts especially for our kayaking trip 🙂 I’ll be totally cool on the high seas!

Earlier this week I finished this scarf, knitted from my hand dyed, handspun yarn 🙂

I’ll be back in the blogging saddle on Monday 20 June. So see ya then. Continue reading →