Thought for today:

Just something I read in the magazine that came with our Sunday paper, quoted from an article by Julia Baird, called 'The Maternal Dilemma':

"It would be a shame to lose reverence for those gentle, maddening months after a child is born, when you are in a sleep-drained reverie, stitched to a baby's rhythms and sweet suckling; when you watch them unfurl, watch their eyes focus on the world, their lips curl into smiles, their startled limbs jerk and then grow strong. When you delight in the life you have created, it becomes a lot less important to get your own life back the very next day."

No major point to be made; I just like the words. It comes pretty close to how I feel watching my baby (both babies) while breastfeeding.

June Squares Ahoy!

The June squares for Lola-Frog's 2009 blanket are complete:We've got a rather 'red-toned' theme going this month!

I'm keeping this as a quick post, as we're getting ready to do the tourist thing in our home town with Maja, a lovely friend from Slovenija, who's with us for a few days. We're going to visit Fitzroy Falls, the Illawarra Fly, Centennial Vineyards, and... The Robertson Pie Shop!

I do also have a completed hat; a lovely green 'Meret' by Woolly Wormhead - but I haven't managed to get a photo of it on yet! Maybe today...

Tell me this ain't funny

What you are seeing here is our cat, Luna, looking thrilled with her new headgear. Usually Mr Potato Head wears this hat, till WonderBoy liberated it, trying it on every member of the family. Luna won hands down as looking best in it.

3x Thursday... AND photos!

Wow, I am SO following everyone else on the Internet. Innovator? Me? Hell, no.

Firstly, a meme from this site: Three questions posed every Thursday. I thought I'd give it a try, see what emerges from this. Doesn't work? I'll ditch it!

1. What's the weather like today? Describe it.

Really strange weather today. Quite misty, then nice and sunshiny, followed by heavy cloud and rain. Repeat.

2. Did you/are you going to do anything productive (sure, it's relative) today? What did you/are you up to?

Since it's five minutes to eleven o'clock Thursday night, I'm going to answer this in the past tense. I think I did well today: a couple of loads of washing, dinner in the slow cooker by 10.30am (beef and red wine casserole) and WonderBoy and I spent 'quality time' together making a banana cake. Oh, and I finished Lola-Frog's third June square. Haven't woven the ends in, but it's off the needles. Success!

3. Do you need to make some phone calls or send some emails to people that you haven't heard from lately? If so, who? Here's your reminder to do it!

No, strangely! I usually take three days to remember to call or email someone, but today I'm up to date. Hurrah! No, wait... I'm still trying to get through to someone at Sunbeam; our slushie maker seems to have carked it during its second outing, and I'd like an explanation-shash-replacement. Not my fault I haven't spoken to them yet though, I keep getting the recorded message that all their operators are too busy to deal with my call. Cheers, guys.

And now, as promised: photos, taken last weekend on WonderBoy's very special outing to the Galston Valley Miniature Railway. He had such a fantastic time, but I'm not sure who was more excited, WonderBoy or his Poppy (my dad)...

...here they are together on WonderBoy's first train ride!

My sister, Lucy, Pete and my darling Lola-Frog.WonderBoy enjoying a ride with my sister, Sarah, and her boyfriend, Shane.The whistles on the steam trains are pretty loud!

World Wide Knit In Public Day 2009

Ah, this day comes again, and again, we knit.

I'm pleased to say that I was joined by three other intrepid knitters to brave the cold outdoors at a local cafe today. Sadly, no other people from our group were able to make it - maybe more next year!

Somewhat annoyingly, anyone we tried to offer a coffee-cup-cozy to looked at us like we were trying to offer them illicit drugs, and everyone else just looked frightened. *Sigh* We really must have a long way to go to convert the muggles. We raised like, thirty dollars for Youth Off The Streets, so well - I suppose it's thirty dollars that they didn't have this morning!

In other news, WonderBoy and I looked out the window this evening and noticed that it was really, really orange. WonderBoy was quite excited about the whole thing, so we went out onto the driveway to take some video and photos:

I want yarn these colours. I don't know what I'd knit with it, but I want it:
WonderBoy got right into it. It was all well cool.
You should see what we're getting up to tomorrow - it's going to be so exciting!

Stuff I like this week...

A big mug of hot chocolate: Always good before going to the gym.
Opening my first birthday present at 12.20am - hey, it was technically my birthday then! I can't wait to try making some of these little dresses for Lola-Frog!'Yes, Minister' and 'Yes, Prime Minister': I'm getting right back into these series; Pete bought me the complete collection for Christmas last year since I like to have half-hour TV shows ready to watch while breastfeeding. Best quotes?

"Politician's logic: We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do it."

"A somewhat unorthodox procedure means The act of a gibbering idiot."

Hacker: "Do we ever get our own way with the French?"

Humphrey: "Sometimes."

Hacker: "When was the last time?"

Humphrey: "Battle of Waterloo, 1853."

My new Noro Striped Scarf: Yes, I was that crazy lady draping a scarf on a lilac tree outside this morning wearing Cookie Monster pyjamas. Wanna make something of it?White dudes dancing: I love this filmclip so much, I showed it to WonderBoy yesterday and he laughed himself silly. I always found Christopher Walken to be somewhat scary, but not after seeing 'Weapon of Choice'. Or 'Hairspray', for that matter...Being lucky enough to be spoilt for choice: Will I cast on Woolly Wormhead's 'Meret' for myself? Will I cast on another baby-sized 'Unoriginal Hat' by Yarn Harlot for a friend's bub? Will I cast on Lola-Frog's third June square?

James May's Plasticine garden in this year's Chelsea Garden Show in London. I think what i like best about it was the outcry it caused in the Establishment. But Stephen Fry liked it, and that's good enough for me. Top Gear UK, and by extension, James May totally rock.My lovely new Fetchings: Thank you so much, Barb! They're lovely and soft and beautifully warm to wear - I'll be sporting them tomorrow for the World Wide Knit In Public!

The Weasley Sweater, and other completed works

WonderBoy's Weasley Sweater (say that ten times fast!) has been complete for a couple of weeks now, but I have had so little time online except to check my Facebook, I just haven't got round to blogging properly! I don't like blogging if I can't put a little time into each post.

We've been really busy at KnitNight these last few weeks, preparing for World Wide Knit in Public Day, which is the day after tomorrow. We decided to set ourselves up in a cafe, outdoors in a local plaza for as much 'publicity' as possible. It's going to be cold, but we figure it'll mean we can wear as many of our lovely warm handknits as possible! As part of our knitting in public, we're going to use the opportunity to collect some money for a very worthwhile charity, Father Chris Riley's Youth Off The Streets. We have knit dozens of wee coffee-cup-cozies to give out in exchange for each donation we receive, so we've been knitting away madly on these as well.

But I digress. Here we go - photos!
He really does like it, despite the face! He's very much a three year old, and loves hamming it up for photos...He wore it to Preschool the day this was taken, and when he strolled in to greet his teachers, he pulled the hem right out in front of himself, announcing, "Look! I've got X for Xander! Mummy knitted it for me!"

Bless his little heart.

And here's Miss Lola-Frog, sporting her very own 'Not So Original Hat', just like Mummy's. Bless her giant head, she grew out of that beret-slash-bakers' hat in about a week (if I'm honest to myself, I do know that it never really did fit her!).

I used the Yarn Harlot's 'Not So Original Hat' pattern, altering the cables very slightly (I think I decreased it by about eight stitches and four rows) to make it small enough to fit her. It's knit in Patons Inca, on two 7mm circular needles - very handy for hats for little ones, as you can try the hat on more effectively as you're knitting it...
Doesn't she just look thrilled with it!?

Dyeing to show you

Wow. That was a big weekend. Apart from the huge family celebration for our nephew's First Holy Communion and Confirmation, I had a really really big Saturday, dyeing several skeins of cotton yarn that my Mum found at the charity shop she volunteers at.

To refresh everyone's memories, here's what the yarn looked like pre-dyeing:It's something I've never seen or heard of before, called Cleckheaton 'Panama' (it's DK weight), and it's really very soft and has a lovely sheen to it.

I unwound and washed each ball of cotton, then painstakingly tied it all end-to-end and made possibly the world's longest skein of yarn. No kidding - I stretched it around the backs of two chairs placed about six metres away from each other at opposite ends of the room!

I then prepared and placed the dyes in a circle so that if colours bled into each other, they'd complement each other, and arranged roughly the same amount of cotton in each dye bucket:Sadly, I made the mistake of believing my washing machine when it said it had a 'delicate' cycle... I was up till 1:45am unwinding this mess!But, it was worth it. I love love love those beautiful bright sari-type colours! I have plans for a little summer dress/pinafore for Lola-Frog with this, and I hope that the stripes it knits into (the colours are in approximate chunks of just over a metre each) don't look too clowny...I also had four and a bit skeins of a four-ply knit and crochet cotton, called Patons 'Gem' - again, never seen or heard of it before!

I really couldn't be stuffed unwinding and skeining this stuff, so on a whim, I soaked each ball and squeezed the water out, then dropped them into dye buckets...

They looked quite dark when they came out,but once the excess dye was squeezed out and the cotton was rinsed and washed, the colours had a much more pastel quality to them, with a lovely toned difference as the balls were unwound. Darker on the outside, fading to paler yarn from the inside. I'm not sure if this faded look was a result of not washing the yarn before dyeing, or if it's just the way the yarn is, due to commercial processing, but I still like it. It's a nice contrast to the 8-ply bright rainbow colours...I love using my ball winder and swift! I got halfway through winding this one:(I love how dropping this ball into the red dye resulted in a kind of peachy-orange colour!) when I realised I'd have to pull from the outside if I wanted to use the darker cotton first.

So, a quick unwind and rewind later...
So (she said, feeling quite pleased with herself!) there are almost all the results of my dye escapades. I say almost, cause I also bunged in a few tied-up shirts and baby onesies into the dye buckets. I love to tie-dye. I love the unpredictability of it, and the unusual results you can get. There's something terribly exciting about undoing a tie-dyed article from the washing machine to discover how it went! I'll take some photos and add them tomorrow.