Knitting Needle Holder

I made a roll to keep knitting needles in.
Some of them at least...

Layered pretty floral with vintage heavier turquoise and some white and turquoise striped cotton materials and sewed then RS together, then turned them trough so the long strip was lined.
Then, sewed some channels on the turquoise side, and stamped sizes onto vintage belt lining, cut it into squares and vliso-fixed each one to a channel.
It is all tied up with lovely tape measure binding that S4 gave me for Christmas last year.

Here are some little photos of the progress:

How much better, eh!


I was inspired by the roll I made for my lovely pens and pencils (again - SOME of them!!)

Wristies and sockies

Just after Mum's Big Oh birthday my baby sister fell out of a car in an awkward moment and broke both her wrists (crawling out the back of a 4WD and her jeans hem caught on the tow-ball).
Here she is drinking gin at our nephew's wedding:

Ten weeks later she is still in strife with them, needs surgery (cos the hospital she went to didn't apparently do the right thing. The hospital AT WHICH SHE NURSES. So if they can fuck up the brokenness of someone they know and care about, what happens to strangers???? Just wonderin'.)

So I made her a pair of little wristies to cheer her up and protect her wrists and to tell her I love her heaps:

The bright multi-coloured wool is a soft and cuddly soy/wool mix, the turquoise is 8 ply pure  wool. Despite what it looks like it is really a 2Purl 2Plain rib, and with a picot cast-off (how smartie pants am I getting with my knitting, eh!)

I also made wristies for The Sweetheart to wear in his freezing cold office:

Is Opal sock wool, all ribbed to be stretchy and snuggly.

And lacy socks for my all singing, all dancing Bollywood Princess Parvyn Kaur Singh (Google her name - there are thousands of links to all sorts of delightful youtube sites, and to her songs. She is gorgeous!)
I added ribbons through the eyelets just for fun.

The lacy pattern is an easybubs "P5, K4tog, (YO, K1) 6 times, K4 tog, P5 (should still be 22 stitches - or whatever you started with!). Then, K three rows. Rep". You can do any number of purl stitches to fill in the side of the rows. I did the soles in Continental knitting so they would be thicker, and added an extra fine thread into the toes and heels. Two at a time, toe up - THIS is the method I used but there are lots of vids and pages showing how to do it. So much easier than one at a time, and really doesn't seem to take that much longer. Also, essential for lacy socks cos then the patterns are matching...

The Doona Solution

For years I have climbed inside the doona cover and then grasped the bottom corners of the doona and backed out, turning the doona cover inside out with the doona inside. And after a shake it is all beautifully flat and ready to sleep under.

I don't know why I thought of this - but it started cos I dyed a heap of ratty white (ish) t-shirts denim/indigo blue and am (still) cutting them into spiral strips with the long term plan of knitting something with the ensuing yarn. There were about 15 t-shirts so it is a lot of cutting.

BUT THEN!!!!!

What if I sewed a loop of the t-shirt yarn to those two bottom corners of the doona, and two long strings (actually one sewn in the centre to make two) to the inside bottom corners of the doona cover then all I would have to do is tie the long strings to the loops, flap the lot and instantly the doona is inside doona cover!!!

So I did it:

Easy as. and yes, it is a slightly grubby doona, but it is old, and it is way too cold and wet to worry about washing it now. I shall do that when summer comes around again...

(Obviously before I dyed the t-shirts., too)

PS - this is for you, Hayden so you wont ever have to struggle with your doona and cover ever again!

Hussif

I made a hussif for S4 to take to Germany with him. It has little pockets for press studs, elastic, velcro dots, and whatever, and cute little cylinders to hold the tiny reels of thread, and buttons sewn on individually so he can cut them off as needed, pins, needles (already threaded...), safety pins.

Felt on the inside, and pretty Phasgogale Dreaming (tiny flying possum creatures) Aussie material on the outside to remind him of home.

That gorgeous tape measure tape? He and his girlie gave me that for my birthday present last year (along with lots of other treasures). Appropriate ties for this hussif I reckon!

Knitting and Skiting

I have had fun whipping up a pair of socks for S4. 

He headed off on Valentine's Day to study in Germany for a semester. 

He is about to start 3rd year Electrical Engineering,and is off to some Uni near Stuttgart who thinks he is a wonderful student. He is on exchange which means he can still get all the Government allowances that he gets when studying here, but he also won a scholarship (for "Academic Excellence"!). He has just had a week in England to catch up with friends from when he was working and living there with the Gorgeous Clancye. She isn't going, she has to stay here. This will be the longest they have ever been apart. Hard for them both I reckon.

The background is the jumper I am knitting for The Sweetheart. 

Last year I got to the armholes on both the back and front before it all got way too heavy for my poor belly. Will finish it in time for this winter...

Painting

I started this picture last year.

And then got too blaaah to add more to it.

It is a canvas that I added words to with cheap sticky letters (from the Cheap Shop) and then painted over.

The letters are going to be turquoise (in the same way that the canvas is "orange". (It is reds and pinks and yellows and golds!*). Getting there...

There are some shapes in the blanks spots - map of Australia, butterfly, heart, bow, flowers - that will be highlighted. Maybe even gold leafed. I will see what it needs when I get to it.

I also painted up a star that S4 made years ago and which has been stuck out in the garden since forever. Time for a change...

You can see where the turquoise and orange thing is heading with the background paintings. I didn't do them. The face is a print that S4 got from his father as an 18th birthday present (apparently he has (umm had) the original at his place until S4 "got his own place" or some such...). It looks like my tall fiddle playing mate Andrew Clermont. 

And the RH painting is by an Iranian refugee who sells his work on The Esplanade Sunday Market. It is fabulous, I love the perspective, the painting within a painting.     

There is a glimpse of the cream/gold painting that I did on 10/10/10 with 3 sets of ten hearts, three Xs, 10/10/10 etc. It is a bit obscure I think. Last time someone looked at it I had to explain it and I shouldn't have to do that with paintings...

* I discovered 7 different tubes and jars of golds - not counting the box of gold leaf - when I consolidated my paints...

Nicky Epstein

I have been reading a wonderful blog based in the book "Knitting On Top Of The World", called - appropriately enough - Knitting On Top Of The World Knitathon.

Lovely knitting, Mary has set out to reproduce every garment in the book. A HUGE feat given that I reckon Nicky Epstein had more than a few test knitteres running  up all the patterns in her book...
Have a look at Mary's site - she has created lovely garments.
And last month she had a give-away, a copy of the book signed by Nicky Epstein, the genius knitter-designer herself!!!

AND I WON THE BOOK!!!!!!



Here it is, snuggled on my couch with some of my knitting - the Sock Yarn Blanket, socks, Bare Bear's clothes. the jumper for The Sweetheart, some other doll clothes, and the tiny fine knitted bedspread for the doll's house bed (with tiny dollies in bed, too).

It is chockers with wonderful patterns based on different techniques from 50 or so countries. Everything from those tiny islands north of Scotland that make Skye - and the Mallee - look like Gardens of Eden! to South America, Japan, Middle East - all over. And everything from socks for feet to hats (and jumpers) for heads and all areas in between. Fabulous!!!!
Now to save up for some of the wools - the garments are all knitted with yarns that I should have to mortgage my house to be able to afford!!!

By the way - the koala in the photo was given to my by my Mum's Uncle Shig. Uncle Shig (Cedric) Bayliss was a tanner, saddler and whip maker in Tumut from the 1920s to his death in the 1970s (or maybe 80s - will have to check the Family Tree).
He would go out in summer and shoot kangaroos and feral cats, and then spend winter tanning them and doing his leatherwork. He is in The Stockman's Hall of Fame for his talents.
He made a stockwhip that was 60' long. At the handle end it was as thick as an arm. He used to walk out along the road dragging it behind him to be able to crack it. When he got too old to be able to crack it he took it up the back to the woodheap and chopped it up.

And the teddy - Bare Bear - was also given to me when I was born. He used to have fur but when I was three I dropped him in the copper when Mum was doing the washing and all his fur fell out. And that is why he is Bare Bear...

"Knitting On Top Of the World" is available from all good book shops - in Oz if I am not buying in person from Stoneman's Bookroom in Castlemaine I use The Nile which is another Aussie on-line bookshop. With free postage, too.                                          

Balcony decking and house history

When I bought my home nine years ago it was really a BIG MESS.
The Draughtsman who came to look at the place prior to drawing up plans for renovations got out of his car and just said "Bloody hell! Get a bulldozer in"!!!!!

It didn't have any of this turquoise weatherboard upstairs, nor lovely wide veranda. Instead, there was a slopy (and sloppy!) roof made from bits of corrugated iron the bloke (who started building this.
In 1967...) had scavenged from the tip.
And bush poles holding up a veranda that was head height - for him, head-bashing height for me - and only about a metre deep.

Holding up the iron roof were a couple of rafters that were each made of two shorter beams just nailed together. So a bit saggy.
And then no ceiling, just silver insulating foil that was orange from the smoke from his pot-belly stove.
That didn't have a chimney...
The room below was 16' x 32', with brick floors. Mostly.
There were some patches of dirt...
Probably for his 11 dogs to dig in...

The rest of the house was 32' wide and 40' long.
It is built of a mixture of mud bricks and rammed earth for the walls. And gaps, The bloke was not very tall, so instead of buying a ladder he left gaps between the tops of the walls and the roof...
There were four small rooms, each 10' square, along the south side (which is the cold side of the house in Australia, like the north side of a house in the Northern Hemisphere) - a laundry, bathroom, junk room, and pantry.

The house is an Alistair Knox design - famous for wonderful mud brick house solar passive designs that were ahead of their time in the 1960s. More information is here and here on this amazing man and his designs.
However - HOWEVER!!!! - the builder of mine was not really a builder. He started, as I said, in 1967 - I found receipts - and in 2002 it was still far from finished! (Not just receipts, but all sorts of stuff - all his bills, wedding TELEGRAMS and cards, piles of newspapers, junk, crap and all sorts of shit. And that was just for starters...)

So I really got a bargain - the Draughtsman was right - it really was a bulldozer renovation. I paid land value for the whole kit and caboodle, so got what I paid for...

We took 10 or 12 tip truck loads of rubbish to the tip, as well as having a huge bonfire, that burnt for 2 weeks. We SHOVELLED dirt out of the place.
S4 used to say "This house has nothing but potential" and "This is the only house where you wipe your feet as you leave".

The floor is red bricks laid directly onto sand. In some places he added builder's plastic down first, in others - zilch!
And in other areas there were large areas of dirt he hadn't got around to bricking.
The floor along the western end is mushy concrete, where he didn't add enough cement to the mix, so it is all flaking and dusty.
The floor in the laundry and junk room we ripped up and laid more bricks.
The bathroom floor was mostly easy - it had proper leveller under the vinyl. But only sand

under the leveller... So that came up, too and we laid bricks there, too.
The pantry floor had a great pit in the centre of it, and a hole to the outside world at the bottom of the wall. And holes in the ceiling. I think his idea was to fill the pit with water (and breed mosquitoes) and use it as a cool room. We filled the pit and the wall hole in. And laid more bricks.
He had a generator (which he took with him) and the front door was piled to the ceiling with blown up appliances.

All of which just needed a replacement fuse. He didn't know about $4 fuses, and went out and spent $$$ on another microwave/toaster/TV/whatever. The wiring was also bits he seemed to have scavenged from the tip. Short lengths of electric wire joined, not with proper little box joiners (cos they cost $$$), but with plumbers tape...

You are all probably crying now, so I wont dwell any more on what was!!!! Now, there is an upstairs with French doors facing South, East and North with little balconies

out of each, over the veranda roof.

Ever since I ran out of money back in 2004, and then got sick in 2005 (so no money AND no energy), nothing much more has been done to the house after the initial reno frenzy.
A few months ago, The Sweetheart and I decked the North and South balconies - the East one was done years ago. And we were so clever and worked so well together and it all is such a lovely feeling to be able to walk out onto the balcony instead of balancing on the joists!The upstairs is 16' x 32' - like the downstairs. It

is now my studio - at the North end, and my bedroom at the South, looking out to thousands of acres of State Forest. I only have 5 acres, but the Forest backs right onto my fence so I may as well have a Million Wild Acres!!!


The top photos are the South balcony, and these ones down here are the North balcony. You can see the roof to the rest of the house is higher than the veranda.
This is because there is also a mezzanine - The Shelf which runs along the south side and east-ish side of the big room. The living area has lovely almost double story space, and has wonderful acoustics. Not to mention a great balcony rail to hang quilts over.  You may be able to just catch a glimpse on the right of the bottom quilt photo of one of the big posts holding up the roof. They came from Victoria Dock in Melbourne and are over 100 years old.

Here is a bit of rock art S4 did - lots of lovely sandstone around here, just waiting to be used. Lots of rock walls in kit form...









And this is some of the lovely wattle that flowers through most of winter. There are four or five different ones around here which start flowering in June and carry on right through to September. Lovely splash of gold amongst the green of winter.

Clever tiny bows

 

I made tiny bows using a tutorial I found online, but a video is an easier way of learning to make them. 

If you can get over those nails...her's, not mine. French nails should only have a sliver of white on them otherwise they look a bit scary. And what do all the books say about 'file to an oval'???  Check out mine - they are perfect (hahaha)...

Here is the video:

And then I added them to undies so they look cute.
And so you don't put them on backwards (tho these are gs so you would probably notice pretty quickly if they were on backwards...).

I sent them to my SIL cos she has a skinnier bum than I do, but they were also too small for her. (Whew).

SILK ribbon, too.
Very cute.
Another one of my great grandmother's forks put to good use!