cleverest shawl design ever

How brilliant is this shawl pattern? Very, I tell you.



I love the way the short rows not only ensure the stripes start out narrow and end broad and bold, but that it also means the spine is off centre.



The asymmetry ensures it sits beautifully around the shoulders. It's also enormous and personally I love good wrap coverage in a shawl. I would show you, only it was a thousand degrees when I photographed this and besides being hot and sweaty glowing divinely,* I was wearing gardening shorts and a singlet (no, I don't garden in stupid temperatures but I had done a spot of weeding at the crack of dawn before the mercury rose too high). Not quite shawl couture or conditions.



Quick stats:
Pattern :: Stripe Study (by Veera, knitwear designer extraordinaire)
Yarn :: sock weight, dyed by me
Needles :: 4 mm
Commenced :: July 2011
Completed :: January 2012 (this was my office project, worked on occasionally in my lunch hours and languishing on a shelf at work the rest of the time, hence the long marinating period).

Ravelled here.

Up next, another shawl. Yup. I am totally on a roll.

*My mother always taught me that Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies glow divinely.

and i chopped all my hair off

this year my youngest will begin high school


the lift at the Nicholas Building

this year my eldest shall finish high school


big tall building

this year my middle child may get his L plates



this year my eldest might get his P plates



this year I shall finish my degree



this year my middle child got his first part time job



this year my parents will return to Victoria to live



this year will see some changes for our family too



knitting will continue.


knitted headscarves (pattern: calorimetry) for friends

more summer

socks for extroverts

In the midst of pre-flight Christmas Eve mania, packing, delivering animals to their respective holiday camps, etc I had the foresight to sort through my various knitting projects in search of an appropriate aeroplane project. Finding nothing suitable, I grabbed a no name, inoffensive looking ball of yarn, some bamboo needles (in case of security official unpleasantness) and once we were safely past the bumpy take-off bits, I cast on.



Unfortunately I had not had the foresight to look up the instructions for toe-up socks and teach myself that method once and for all (next pair, I always promise myself). And so it was my usual top-down socks. I must love the adrenalin of never being confident there'll be enough yarn to complete the second sock. I live on the edge, me.



There was enough yarn, happily. Even more happily, the yarn knitted up in a wholly unexpected carnivalesque manner. I don't know if carnivalesque is a word, but it should be if only to describe these socks.

a year of making

My completed knits from 2011. It feels like a humblebrag (thanks, LibraryGirl), but it's always interesting for me to see my knitting statistics from a year. And this is [nominally] a craft blog after all. Apparently.

I see I spent the first half of the year knitting cardigans and jumpers, determined to knit actual garments after my big shawl efforts of 2009 and 2010, but then in the latter half of the year suddenly had the urge to knit shawls again and they became my go to projects once more. There is one shawl missing from that mosaic as it has a half dozen rows to go, but it lives in my office at work and I add to it slowly, despite casting on in July. It will be finished in the next month or so and can go in the 2012 stats.

As for my sewing achievements, I failed to catalogue them properly. I made a doily skirt, and several quilt tops which to my shame I have yet to turn into actual quilts. I also made a number of cushions, some tops, and several pairs of pants which remain unphotographed.

Also, lots of jam, marmalade, soap, bread, meals, and mess.

PS. For those of you more interested in literary news, I updated my 2011 reading log over here.

Happy 2012!

I hope your Christmas was joyous (joyful?), and that 2012 brings you excellent things.



We went north as usual to the mothership where the weather was wild and the beaches were closed due to cyclones and such. Came home to a house that had flooded on Christmas Day and then been shut up in a week of 40 degree heat. I'll pause there and let you recover from the smell you may be imagining right now. Yes, that's the one.

Collected the beasts from the cathouse and doggerel and they have been loving and sleepy respectively, ever since. Should send them away more often.

Today the boys did their annual Swapping of the Bedrooms and now the boot of my car is chock full of bags of stuff to go to the op shop. In other news, for Christmas the mister and I bought each other half a vacuum cleaner which was a necessity, and half an ice cream maker each which was a luxury. I am now stuffed full of the best strawberry ice cream I have ever tasted and our rugs are clean. We are happy. Plans are being made. It will be a scary big year.

My resolutions for 2012? More knitting. More breathing.

What're yours?