New Do

Posted on April 13, 2005 by

BEFORE

AFTER

I’ve gone with a fringe. It’s very radical as I had various awful fringes in the 80’s and early 90’s, the horrors of my Nan putting stickytape across my fringe to get a straight cut, the spikes, the mullet-like do’s, teased, sprayed… you get the idea.

I also tried a new hairdresser, it’s out of town, but I’m definitely going back! It is twice as expensive to my old place, but way cheaper than my last hairdo which I had done in Melbourne.

I’m busting to show you progress on the quilt I’m making, but I’ve decided I should wait ’til I’ve had another session on it. I don’t want to jinx it too early.

I’m thinking of making up another bag on the weekend as I’ll be headed up to Omeo for work next week and that’s where the shop is that expressed an interest in selling them. I sort of went off the idea as they have been getting more and more time consuming. But I can’t resist taking opportunities, I never know where they might take me, sometimes it’s a bad thing, but mostly good 🙂

NOW If you’ve made it all the way down this post, I’ll reward you with the revelation of my ***GUILTY PLEASURE***… Romance Novels, the Harlequin Mills & Boon kind. I was given a big garbage bag full of them when I was about 13 years old, addiction took hold pretty fast. I even repented of them a few times (back when I was a christian LOL), but I couldn’t give them up. I’m now an occasional binger, but I try to mix it up with more serious stuff.

You’d reckon that a steady diet of these books in my teens would have lead me to a life of marriage, children, subservience etc, but it is totally the opposite, and I can’t figure it out. I do remember reading one about an engineer who met her man on the the Appalachian Trail (you can imagine how this Tasmanian pronounced that one!), maybe that’s what lead me to finding out about engineering. Plenty of the women were pretty feisty too, but they are always tamed by marriage and I’ve known for a very long time that I don’t want to be married.

Posted in Knitting | 4 Comments

Beanie, Sans Pattern

Posted on April 12, 2005 by

I’ve nearly recovered from Sunday’s gardening. Riscy came home with pizza so I didn’t starve to death after all.

I also finished this beanie. It’s made from my homespun yarn which is a mixture of merino and an angora/alpaca blend.

This is a small beanie, It would probably fit a child better as it looks almost like a scull cap on me LOL

I didn’t use a pattern for this beanie (thus turning out smaller than expected) I just knitted up about 4cm of ribbing, then about 3cm of stocking stitch (which was the fatal flaw, I should have knitted about 8-10cm). I also decreased in a zig zag fashion. This was to disguise an error I made, but it turned out pretty cool :-).

I cast on for another one last night as I am determined to knit a decent beanie if it is the last thing I do.

Posted in Photography | 1 Comment

Today

Posted on April 10, 2005 by

Before I start this very long blog post, I thought I’d show you the painting I did last night:


Cockatiel

Today started out so good. I got up at about 7:30, read some blogs, ate some porridge, had a cup of peppermint tea.

The morning was glorious, so I headed out in my night shirt and slip on sandles and pruned back all the plants (roses and Salvias) that we wanted to transplant into the new beds.

Then I went inside, had a shower, woke Riscy up and headed off to the quilt exhibition and to get some manure for the garden.

I was an hour early for the exhibition, but they let me in anyway 🙂 My quilts looked like they had just come out of their bags, they looked ‘not flat’. Oh well, I wasn’t too stressed. Almost everything else was very country and beginner level stuff.

My trip to the garden centre was very fruitful, normally I wander around and buy very little, but today lots of stuff jumped into my basket, including a beautiful orange chrysanthemum.

Headed home. Riscy had already started digging up the roses, it was also started to get very hot and the temperature did get over 30 deg C (around 90F), which isn’t great for plants in shock.

We worked pretty steadily ’til noon, then I popped down to get some lunch as we had nothing in the house.

Riscy got called into work. I knitted ’til he rang me at about 3pm to remind me that the plants would need to be planted out otherwise they would die in the heat and that we have about 5 loads of washing to do.

Feeling guilty I headed out to do everything. Very soon after that a big storm hit, it was very windy, very wet and I worked in it until 6 this evening. I got all the beds raked, all the plants planted (7 mature roses, 2 salvias and about 40 potted plants), manure spread, lucerne hay distributed. All whilst soaked to the skin.

I’m glad everything is done, but I’m really tired now. The dog is very dirty and sitting on the couch, Riscy isn’t home yet, there is still no food in the house, the washing isn’t done. Whhhaaaaaaa 🙁

If you got this far, thanks for reading.

Posted in Books | 2 Comments

Flight

Posted on April 9, 2005 by

A big hello to you from the back seat of the little plane I flew in this morning:

New Plantations in the Strzelecki Ranges

The flight went well. Although it was a beautiful cloudless sky, there was a lot of smoke in the air due to various bushfires/burnoffs around the area, not least of which being the fire at Wilsons Promontory.

It was a treat to see a plan view of the Latrobe Valley with it’s power stations, coal mines and paper mill. The townships were very interesting to see too. We headed over the Strzelecki Ranges towards the coast, where we could see the new (controversial) wind farms and the coastline off in the distance.

The plane we were on was very tiny(4 seats), and very old. But I felt pretty safe the whole time. It’d be wonderful to have a licence and access to a plane so we could pop over to Tasmania whenever we felt like it. (If money were no object, of course!!).

Posted in Spinning | 1 Comment

When Taking your Knitting to Work Really Pays off

Posted on April 8, 2005 by

Sorry this site was offline for a while today. There must have been a power outage which turned my computer/server off.

Now, onto the story. I took my knitting to work today as I was out in the field again and I knew I would have a 15 minutes to fill in after lunch.

So yes I did get a nice 15 minutes in. Then I continued on with the rest of my working day.

I was rushing back up the freeway trying to get back to Traralgon by 5pm so I could drop my quilts off for the show this weekend. Murphy’s Law kicked in and I got a flat tyre. After calling Roadside Assistance to come out and change the bloody thing I climbed up the batter with my knitting and happily amused myself ’til the guy turned up and whilst he was working.

I almost wished he didn’t work so quickly. It was very, very pleasant.

We’re off to a BBQ tonight. Tommorow morning we are taking a 1/2 hour joy flight, then we will be working like trojans in the garden for the rest of the weekend. We’ve hired a rotary hoe to help us make the new garden beds (the ground is very hard and dry at the moment).

Posted in Photography | Leave a comment

Hanging Sleeves SUCK!

Posted on April 7, 2005 by

What possessed me to enter two quilts into the local show??? I’m sewing hanging sleeves every night, and it is terrible. Way more tedious than sewing the bindings on by hand…. AND I’ve lost 2 needles.

The good thing to come out of it is that I’ll now be more likely to hang one of the quilts on a wall as was intended when I made it.

Check out this photo, about 2-3 minutes into our evening walk the other day I noticed the low sun shining on this tree. Riscy ran home to get the camera, and this is the best photo out of the lot. I’d say this is a tree which existed here prior to suburbanisation.

Taken by Riscy on our evening walk

I spent my lunch hour with the spinners and hand weavers guild yesterday. They were knitting outside under a tree when I arrived, it was beautiful weather. I’m a bit jealous as they are headed off to a spin in at Leongatha today and next week I think they are going to Langwarrin. I’ll be stuck at work.

The one and only bloke in the group showed me how I could spin wool with a pencil and we discussed Navajo plying, which I’m thinking about trying with the merino I’m spinning at the moment.

Posted in Knitting | 2 Comments

Lookee lookee!!!!

Posted on April 4, 2005 by

Before I launch into photos of the very exciting delivery I got today from TreeTops Colour I want to tell you that using my sewing machine is not as fool proof as I imagined. I taught Riscy to use the machine on the weekend and now I’m in the market for a new bobbin case. Perhaps freemotion quilting was too ambitious for his first sewing experience since grade 7. I think I can still sew ok with it, but it is damaged.

OK, without further ado, I’ll launch into photo yum yum:

250g of Merino Top in heaps of colours. I think I’ll spin this into a wild veriagated extravaganza. I don’t have a project in mind for the finished product.


ORANGE – I love orange 🙂 I’ve got 250g of this stuff. I’m thinking I’ll knit a big generous scarf and a matching hat.


Silk Silk Silk. I love this stuff, I hope it spins up as well as I think it will. I’ve got some beautiful grey merino that I might ply with it. I don’t have a project in mind, but I’m hoping to spin it very finely so maybe I can try my hand at lace.

I also got 1kg of beautiful undyed merino tops so I can dye some myself. It’s gonna sit for a while so I can spin the beautiful colours I’ve got already.

And some skeins I plied on the weekend.

The yellowy, off white is plyed with mainly green and at the end of the skein there is a veriagated red from some left overs I had laying around. I think I’ll knit this into a beanie.


A very light greeny yellow plyed with a yellowy, off white merino. I think I’ll knit this into a mobius scarf.


I also plied up a skein of the angora/alpaca verigated single with the light yellowy merino. I’ve already rolled it into a ball and I attempted to cast on about five times last night. And bloody hell I’m a bad knitter. My ambitions far outstrip my abilities. But I will persist. I want to use this yarn I’m spinning!

Posted in Linocut | Leave a comment

About the Bag

Posted on April 2, 2005 by

Just a quick note in response to some comments about the bag I made for Sophie.

Karoda, it is not coincidence that the surface has a ‘road map’ feel. I use maps all the time in my job as a road engineer, and sometimes I wonder if I should have gone into cartography because I love maps of all kinds (I thought about becoming a surveyor for the same reason). I’ve been mulling over how I could make a piece which gives the feel of topography or the feel of a map. I like what I did with the bag and now I’m working on making a larger piece and taking it further.

Lisa asked about my technique. Its reverse applique, raw edge (so Sophie may have to give it an occasional haircut). I layered 2 fabrics together over the batting (I love Matilda’s Own). I stiched a loose grid over the fabric (including the wavy lines) Then I started to cut out the negative shapes. The tricky part for me was working out when to stop cutting. The quilting is my favourite part, I suppose it borders on embroidery and sometimes that’s how I describe it.

Construction of actual bag was time consuming. When I started making them, I had a simple way of making the bags, but now I’ve got more complex with the 3D construction. And this is from someone who vowed less than 4 months ago that I would never make a quilted bag as I HATED them. LOL!

Posted in Knitting | 1 Comment

Sophie’s Bag

Posted on April 1, 2005 by

Check out this fantastic Blog: Daily Dose of Imagery. When I grow up I want to be a photographer like this guy. I’ve just got to start taking photos consistently. Riscy and I have been talking about setting up a joint photography blog, I’ll let you know when we have it set up.

Sophie’s bag is in the mail and she would like to see it on my blog before she even gets it!! 🙂

So, Sophie, I hope you like it. It is my favourite bag so far and it was hard to give away.

Tonight, I’m going to continue spinning the mohair angora fibre I started last weekend. I hope to ply it with some black alpaca fibre that Bev gave me on Tuesday. I hope there’ll be enough, otherwise I might have to beg her for some more 🙂

Sometimes I wonder about my job. Today I found myself driving at very slow speeds on the fast lane shoulder of the Princes Freeway (Gippsland). I did have a little flashing light and I was using the hazard lights, but I didn’t feel great about it. Half the time I diverged into the median, it’s been pretty dry here this month so there wasn’t too much chance of getting bogged. We got all our initial scoping work done today though, so hopefully there will only be a few quick site visits to finish off our project.

Posted in Knitting | 4 Comments