Stay tuned

I have completed my "Raspberry Clapotis", finally! Photos hopefully to be taken and posted tomorrow - I want to take shots outside, and we've finally got a week's worth of rainy weather in our area, thank goodness...

Noro Striped Scarf was cast on at Knit Night last Thursday, and I am LOVING it stupid... the colour changes keep me so excited, and quickly dashing off a row or two when I've got ten minutes to spare is easily done. It's coming along beautifully. Photos tomorrow, hopefully...

Next on the list? I'm trying to decide between having a crack at a Baby Surprise Jacket for Lola-Frog (I've decided to use her actual nickname rather than her 'in utero' name!) or starting WonderBoy's Weasley Sweater, while I get started on the April squares for 2009 in a Blanket...

Three projects running simultaneously - can it be done? Time will tell...

I do love Elizabeth Zimmermann...

I have been immersing myself in all things Zimmermann lately, with her book "Knitting Around", and the DVD set of "Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop" (cheers for the loan, Dianne!). I found her 'Digressions' throughout "Knitting Around" absolutely fascinating. An autobiography of sorts, she details her life growing up the England, studying and travelling through Europe, meeting and marrying her husband and emigrating to settle in the United States and raise their family.

The patterns (if you can call them that - EZ certainly encourages you to think and work patterns out for yourself!) are inspirational, many of the jumpers are seamless as the body and sleeves are knit on dpns or circulars, leaving just a handful of stitches to be grafted, usually in the underarms at the end. It makes me want to cast on immediately for a jumper for Pete, WonderBoy, or both! I actually have the yarn to knit a jumper for WonderBoy and it's next on my list of 'to be knitted', but I am sorely tempted to chuck the pattern and have a crack at EZ's methods...

I already own "Knitting Workshop" as a book; I bought it from Amazon (waay back in the day when the Aussie dollar stood up to the US dollar in a reasonable way - now with the crap exchange rate and the shipping charges, my Amazon wishlist is well out of reach...) purely to get a hold of the 'Baby Surprise Jacket' which is what I thought was a pattern in the book, ready to be followed as written. I couldn't quite grasp the concept of what EZ was getting at, the way there were no instructions, but lots and lots of suggestions and equations. I put the book on my shelf of pattern books and magazines, telling myself I'd get back to it later on, when I could concentrate on it properly. Until I started watching the DVDs.Hearing EZ speak and being able to watch as she demonstrates the knitting really helped me to understand the concepts behind her methods. It wasn't anywhere near as complicated as I thought it was going to be; gauge was the biggest sum to be calculated before starting the project. Just a few careful measurements and multiplication before casting on. So now, after WonderBoy's jumper is completed, a Baby Surprise Jacket for Little One is on the list... the ever-increasing list...

Mad as a March Square...

Quick picture update on the '2009 in a Blanket' KAL... I have completed the three March squares and am all ready to get back to my Raspberry Clapotis! Sounds like some sort of dessert - yum!


Here's the first; the pattern is from 'knitsimple' online, called "Carla's Blanket"... I've enjoyed choosing patterns from this blanket to add to mine...

This one is from my book, "Blankets and Throws to Knit" by Debbie Abrahams. Lots of inspiring squares in there that can be knit as the blanket pattern prescribes, or by picking and choosing individual squares, like I have... The intarsia was a bit of a battle - as all intarsia is for me! - but like all intarsia for me, this was rewarding in its outcome.

And the third, also from Debbie Abrahams book. Not my favourite - it didn't work out quite the way I'd wanted... It's supposed to be done in one colour, with the wavy lines being done in a texturally contrasting purl stitch against the flat knit stitch background. But, for better or for worse, it's done.
Back to Clapotis tomorrow night at Knit Night... it's coming along nicely. I did make the decision to add further repeats of the middle section rows to elongate it, and I'm pleased I did - it's looking very good, and eminently wearable for this winter!

What's the collective noun for a group of knitters?

A stitch of Knitters?

A skein of Knitters, perhaps. If anyone has any clever suggestions, please do suggest them! Incidentally, I looked up 'collective nouns' on Wiki and it turns out that geese in flight are referred to as a skein of geese! Interesting also to note that the collective noun for a group of women is a 'gaggle'. Is someone trying to insinuate something here??!

These women, however, are not geese:

Exciting times

I'm finally joining a Stitch n' Bitch!

I have, among several other knitters and crocheters local to the area, connected on Ravelry and decided to start meeting up for a weekly 'knit night' at a nearby RSL club. I'm very excited, and so pleased that we're also going to get the word out and try to get others to join in, too.

Big, big thanks go out to clovelly (Ravelry), who has gone to all the effort to moderate our Ravelry group, as well as researching and organising everything to make tonight's meetup possible! Hopefully I will be able to post with photos tomorrow.

The One-Hundredth Post, dedicated to...

Alexander Beetle!

I know I'm a couple of days late, but I feel I should publicly wish my darling son a very happy Third Birthday. It's so amazing to look at him and remember how he's gone from this:

... to this:
And it's all just swept by! It's that gradual change thing; you just don't notice till it's happened. I mean, our little bloke isn't a baby anymore. He's always 'my' baby, and I tell him this on a regular basis. He responds with a laugh and "Nah, Mummy - I'm a big boy!" But this year in particular, with the arrival of out Little One, he has really stepped up to the plate and shown just how far he's come in just three (very) short years.

My son:

• Feeds himself successfully (I don't care how old you are, this takes skill!)
• Sleeps happily through the night
• Holds his own on a trampoline with much bigger kids
• Engages in conversation with adults and other children
• Separates without anxiety and enjoy his days a Preschool
• Draws fantastic pictures of people
• Shows an extremely cool appreciation of a range of music. He can identify music from decades past by The Beatles (as a group and as solo artists), Billy Joel, Australian Crawl, and J. Geils Band, right up to music from current musicians, like Mika, Jamie Cullum and Feist. Pete and I are SO proud of this!
• Loves books and reading, and treats his books beautifully
• Loves his new little sister, and treats her with much affection and care
  
• Can identify all four Beatles from pictures, even from all their different eras
• Tells Pete and I on a regular basis that we are 'handsome' and 'beautiful' respectively

He's a happy, loving, reasonably well-adjusted little boy who consistently brings much joy to his whole family. We love you, Xander-Man!

While I'm on the subject of WonderBoy's Birthday, I have to show the fantastic cake that my brother-in-law decorated for the occasion - Ed is amazingly talented at creating gorgeously decorated cakes for his kids, and is now being enlisted to do the cousins' cakes, too! How does he do it? Who knows, but here it is, in all its glory:

The Yellow Submarine!

A realisation...

I have recently made several observations over recent time, and have come to the following conclusions:

This

plus this
equals this:

Either my daughter hates my knitting, and she's only six weeks old, or she's jealous of me and wants her own needles... I swear she can sense, all the way from her cozy bassinette in our room where she's sound asleep, when I've picked up the needles, and bam! Unhappy baby.

She'll learn over time... I'll make sure of it.

A new month, and a Clapotis dilemma...

I have been knitting away furiously at my Clapotis scarf (and am very impressed with the way it's looking right now!) for the last few days. I have to say that knitting this in sock yarn, on 3mm needles does make me feel like I've fallen into one of the black holes that plague knitters. I'm up to the middle section - actually, I've just completed the middle section as the pattern dictates, and I was able to excitedly announce to Pete how pleased I was that I could start on the decreases: "Finally, I can decrease... DECREASE!"... It's all very autumnal here...

Now I'm not so sure. I've held it up, measured the sides, stretched it out a little, measured the sides again and wrapped it around my neck and I'm starting to think that maybe I need to do several more middle section repeats so that I end up with a longer scarf. I have plenty of yarn left (which is another hint to me that I should make it longer), but am lacking a little willpower. My internal dialogue is sounding a little like this:

Sane me: "You know, you're going to want this to be longer. It's not going to wrap around your neck properly."

Impatient me: "Yeah, but... but the pattern says I can decrease now."

Sane me: "You are going to be totally annoyed at yourself when you finish up with a heap of leftover yarn and a scarf that's too short."

Impatient me *whingeing*: "Yeah, but the pattern... the pattern says so!"

Sane me: "Every time you put this scarf on - every time you even look at a top and think 'Hey, my Raspberry Clapotis would look great with that!' - you're going to shudder and remember that you could have had it fit fine if only you'd listened to me in the first place. Let's not go to that place, yeah?"

Impatient me: "Will you look at the calender? It's March already. I'm gonna start the next squares for the Year in a Blanket KAL. So there."