I only have two WIPs left!!
And I’m up to the sleeves on one of them!
But I have two left (not including a pair of socks that I intend to frog) because I finished off this beauty.
I even made my bed for the occasion. (Slightly more difficult as HeWhoFishes and I both aren’t good at sharing a blanket. So we have one each. Which pretty much throws the whole making the bed thing out the window. At least it does in my head.)
I haven’t even finished my first jumper and I’m already thinking about another one.
Which is surprising because it’s taken me ages to get to the sleeves and I’m not enjoying knitting them.
But a tweet from a friend asking about knitted hoodies led me down this rabbit hole.
All photos are from ravelry and the photos link to the patterns.
To not knit a sleeve.
I just don’t want to do it. DPNs are awkward and fiddly and I need to concentrate on the cables.
As I’m currently waiting to find out if the offer we put in on my dream house was accepted or not, I’m easily distracted.
A cabled jumper sleeve is not the answer.
So I’ve been embroidering and the simple motion of putting the needle into fabric and pulling it out again is calming and relaxing.
I’m not a complicated embroiderer.
I trace things I find (I have a tumblr dedicated to thingstoembroideroncushions) using paper and pencil onto a fabric flat. Sometimes I even trace directly from my laptop.
I then put the fabric in a hoop and back stitch around what I’ve traced. Occasionally I’ll dot the I’s with a French knot but I’m not too good at those yet. Although wild olive has the best instructions I’ve found.
But that’s enough to do what I want to do.
Which is embroider quotes. And this week I’ve been obsessed with black books quotes.
These are destined to be made into cushions.
I think I need to go over the second one with another colour. It’s not quite visible, but it says “feng shui is 9/10th of the law”.
I’ve also started my most difficult embroidery to date.
But when I found the perfect image on tumblr I just couldn’t resist. Oksoamy drew an awesome illustration for the children’s book that Manny and Bernard write one episode. And so I’ve traced it. (I actually had muscle soreness after doing 5 tracings in one night. Who says crafting isn’t exercise) and am now working my way through all the panels.
(There’s an A3 piece of paper under the fabric if you’re thinking I’m drawing it. I most definitely am not. I also use a pencil because it’s usually all I can find. )
Every Wednesday/Thursday I’ll be blogging about the topic that comes through my email courtesy of Shay & Alissa. If you want to join in the fun, email Whateverwednesdays@yahoo.com to get a heads up on the topic for the week.
top 5 favourite tv shows
There were strict instructions for this one. Which sucks because usually I take a left turn when approaching these topics. Specifically we were told “… that doesn’t mean your top 3, or your top 7, or I don’t watch TV because I’m too cool and do things like art projects, I MEAN YOUR TOP 5 FAVOURITE SHOWS”
Yup message received agonisingly loud and clear.
1) Doctor Who
Surprise surprise.
I first started watching the 4th Doctor and Romana II. And then came the reboot and Eccleston and fantastic. And then David Tennant (swoon) and then tumblr and fangirling and squeeeee!!!!
2) Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Considering I had never watched this until 2 years ago, I am completely hooked and could probably get more of the lyrics from Once More With Feeling correct if I was forced to sing for my supper.
3) Black Books
I will get messages from my brother at 2 am quoting black books.
I have also spent a night, with my bestfriend on the recliner, me and my boyfriend on the couch and him getting black books quotes not just from the tv, but from both of us, with bonus cackling.
4) Parks and Recreation
I have a bracelet which says awesomesauce, so that probably qualifies Parks and Rec to be on this list.
Both April & Andy, and Ben & Leslie tie for cutest couple on television.
Actually this show is just bad ass. All the relationships in the show have
5) Pride & Prejudice the 1994 tv series
This was the first tv show that I ever fangirled over. Wet white shirt Colin Firth.
Mum & I would stock pile the ironing to watch this together. Oddly enough Dad and my two brothers would find something else to do.
And unfortunately this was the biggest gif of wet shirt darcy I could find.
Honourable mentions:
Firefly, Coupling, Downton Abbey, How I Met Your Mother (although just finish already!), Fawlty Towers, Black Adder, Mad Men, 30 Rock…. and i’m going to stop now before I agonise over this post any more.
Here have a video of the doctor who credits in the style of the Buffy credits.
Spotify radio knows me better than any other music service.
All last week I listened to a station based on Deap Valley and I still haven’t stopped. Except to listen to another song which is so bloody catchy I just can’t stop.
Fellow Aussies may know Catcall from the liquorland ad, which is pretty annoying, but uses the start of one of their songs.
It probably would be a good song if I hadn’t heard it every single commercial break during AFL season.
Her song Satellite is also pretty good and that was added to a couple of my playlists last year. But I had pretty much dismissed the rest of the album.
When this song came on, I was hooked.
I have no idea what an Art Star is but the line “my name is acid, I’ll rain on your parade” is pretty badass.
Plus she’s an Australian. I love Aussie music.
Even though I joined the My Sisters Knitter Knitalong to finish off UFOs and I had the specific aim of not casting on anything new, I made something new last week.
Any guesses?
It’s a lower case letter ‘e’ which will be used in a protest banner.
When this campaign popped up in my twitter feed I felt compelled to volunteer. Getting my knitting needles out to do something to show that I don’t want Tony Abbott as our prime minister seemed like the logical thing to do.
Even though mostly my knitting is made with love and care, this was made with spite.
The pozible page sums it up better than I can.
“One day after the Aus media went ape-shit over a pic of Gillard knitting, claiming it undermined her tough image, the Government caved & booted her out of office.
When these media dinosaurs say that knitting cannot go hand in hand with strength, what they are really saying is that anything associated with women, & by extension women themselves, cannot be strong.
WE’RE GONNA SHOW ‘EM HOW TOUGH & DETERMINED KNITTERS CAN BE!
If Abbott is elected he’ll tumble gender equality reforms back to the dark ages, misogyny will be legitimised & women will wind up sticking their knitting needles into their uteruses. To prevent that happening, we’re sticking them in some wool & crafting two rad protest banners.”
This is a man who talks about “women of calibre” (thinks “binders of women”).
His sister is gay and yet he still opposes gay marriage.
He directly opposed RU486 making it almost cost prohibitive for anyone outside of a capital city to have an abortion.
Sanitary pads and tampons are STILL taxed as luxury items.
I’m not super-duper knowledgeable about Australian Politics. But what I do know, makes me scared to be a woman in a Tony Abbott Australia.
If you do have some change to spare, they will take donations from $2.
A protest may not always be effective, but sometimes it’s all we’ve got.
I finished these a while ago but hadn’t posted about them.
The first is my attempt at a crochet cushion cover. I had no pattern and no actual plan, but it turned out ok.
I didn’t weave in the ends properly and so it’s started to fall apart. So it’s out of action until I can fix it.
The second new cushion is made out a band shirt.
I saw placebo when they played at soundwave festival a few years ago.
Black market music was on of those seminal albums of my youth.
So I couldn’t not buy a tshirt.
Only problem was they only had sizes that were too small. I bought it anyway as I had planned to lose weight. 4 years later and it still doesn’t fit and will probably never fit, so it got transformed into a cushion.
It was trickier than I thought mostly because it wasn’t a proper square to begin with.
I somehow managed to wrangle it into a square and sewed up the top. I hand sewed the bottom up in lieu of sewing a zip.
I have so many band shirts that don’t fit me any more, so this will be a great way to display them and put them to good use.
This is cushion 4 & 5 of my 13 in 2013 challenge.
I’ve been practicing with my drop spindle this week and it’s frustrating me.
I still haven’t got the hang of it. I’m pretty sure my technique is terrible because every time I try and draft the drop spindle spins the opposite way to the way it was.
But I have plied some commercial yarns together.
That was quite fun.
I plied a white dk weight, a grey sock weight, and a multi coloured fingering weight together.
The end result was very cool. It looks a lot better than my efforts with merino fleece.
Every Wednesday/Thursday I’ll be blogging about the topic that comes through my email courtesy of Shay & Alissa.
something or someone i take for granted
I’ve always had an overactive imagination. Most books, movies, tv I consume I imagine what life would be like in that world.
I just started watching Breaking Bad and so my thoughts have been about how I would handle cancer, or losing a loved one, or having a drug addiction, losing a house, living on the streets, and struggling to eat.
At any given moment the absolute worst case scenario is flicking through my head. Almost like the flashbacks in Scrubs except in a flash I’ve fallen over, broken my wrist, unable to work, and selling my body for crack.
So I don’t think I take anything for granted.
I know how quickly things can change.
It doesn’t take much for me to imagine this life I have, this life filled with love and comfort to all come crashing down.
And so I am grateful. I am grateful every single morning that I can get out of bed.
I’m young, in love, buying a house, have some amazing friends, a career which not only do I enjoy most days but also pays for bills and yarn.
Even though my family and I don’t always agree on everything they still support me and my choices.
I can vote, own property, have a degree and access to good medical facilities.
I have the internet at my fingertips to teach me how to knit, let me watch doctor who that hasn’t aired in australia yet, and communicate with people from all around the world that I would never have known otherwise.
I have clean air, running water, access to public transport, food in the fridge, and electricity to run the multitude of appliances we probably don’t actually need.
The feeling of gratitude is almost overwhelming.
I’m grateful everytime I go to point out how nice something smells and realise my boyfriend can’t.
I’m grateful every single time my little brother comes off his motorbike and gets back up.
I’m grateful everytime I hang out with the two most important people I have in my life, that they still choose to hang around me and haven’t given up like so many other people.
I don’t think I take anything for granted because I always imagine that the second that I do, it will be gone.
Last time I saw Cold War Kids it was 40 degrees and there was no shade available.
Fortunately Friday night was in winter and inside.
Preshow we watched the football and then the cricket at a nearby pub. We got in, found a good spot, and then they were on!
We perched ourself just behind the VIP area which meant that the sound quality wasn’t the absolute greatest but it meant we could see.
If we wanted to hear it better we had to not see anything.
They played a reasonable length set without too many surprises. Which is annoying when your current favourite song is not a hit, as mine currently is.
polka-dots & sparkles 