I’m a big fan of two at a time, magic loop, toe up socks.
So much so I think I need an acronym as I write that phrase so often. TAATMLTUS doesn’t really have a ring to it.
When I figured out this was my preferred knitting project I treated myself to a set of Addi Turbos 2.5mm 80cm.
I’ve found even though I prefer bamboo for most other projects, I prefer metal for socks. I have quite a collection of bamboo circulars either in hat length or magic loop length in most sizes. I bought them from eBay when I first started knitting and didn’t really know what I needed.
My addi is slightly bent. But I haven’t knit a pair of socks on anything else since I bought it.
I know how many stitches I need and adapt sock patterns to my needles.
This apparently is how they want to be photographed.
It’s pretty amazing that they’re free! It’s probably so that I can get to work on my mascot project as soon as I finish my deadline knitting.
Day 5 4KCBWDAY5
And now for something completely different….
This was so much fun. I didn’t think it was going to be, but thank you Knitting And Crochet Blog Week (I still have difficulty saying that) for getting me out of my comfort zone and in front of a camera. This was actually quite scary, not to make, but uploading it for all of you to see (although I do take comfort that it probably won’t be found by anyone but other knitters who are mostly non-judgemental).
So say hi to me and my couch!!
My first ever vlog, where I find out just how often I say ‘pretty!’, that the train noise is actually pretty loud (I’m so used to it), and I really do have a short attention span.
Hello my name is Bek and I have pink and teal hair. (Hi Bek!)
I don’t think I’ll be too surprised when I actually look in my stash to see that I like a lot of the same colours.
Black, charcoal, grey, and white are staples. Plus tardis blue (and other variations), Port Adelaide teal, pale sunshine yellow, and every shade of pink that catches my eye.
I know that I’m going through a green phase at the moment too.
I’m not very discriminate when it comes to colour.
I am one of the .2% of females who are colour blind. Which does pose a bit of a problem when it comes to buying yarn.
I’ve tended to steer away from picking colours to match each other. If my bloke isn’t with me in the shop (yarn shopping isn’t his favourite past time- just as fishing lure shopping isn’t mine) I stick to self striping yarn, or basic combinations like my last white, black, and blue blanket.
I find etsy shopping easier because there’s less decisions to make holding up yarns and asking strangers if these two colours look the way I think they look.
I can see colours if I concentrate. But I can’t tell a red or green traffic light from a difference. Telling the difference between shades has always been a problem too. I remember getting in trouble at primary school for using a blue pencil when I should have used a purple one (they looked the same to me). I remember getting in trouble at high school for wasting time searching for a red cricket ball in brown leafs. Once again I couldn’t see the difference. I still have to concentrate watching cricket or else I lose the red ball in the green grass (depending on the shades of course).
It probably influences my photography more than my knitting, because I think I’m getting the colours right but they could be completely different. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t make much of a difference.
The first yarn I ever bought was a pink splitty yarn.
This is my latest yarn haul from yarnvszombies. I’ve signed up for a yarn club (my first one) which will be fun this year.
And then there’s my football team colours. I will have feminine football merchandise even if I have to make it myself.
I’m interrupting Knitting and Crochet Blog Week to continue with my usual Wednesday blog series, Stuck In My Head.
I’ve been blogging for as long as I can remember, and in every one there was always music. Music is such a constant in my life. CDs take up more space in my house than yarn (true fact), and its very rare for my ticket wallet to be empty.
So my Stuck In My Head project started as a way to try out my music journalist skills (turns out I have none), and has developed into choosing a song (or two) to represent each week of the year.
At the end of the year I have a nostalgic playlist which takes me down memory lane revisiting bands I’ve seen, conversations I’ve had, or what mood I was in that week.
If you follow me on twitter you’ll know that Sunday was In The Pines, Perth’s local music festival. Set at the gorgeous Somerville Auditorium, this year celebrated 20 years of In The Pines with a great lineup looking back on the past 20 years of Perth’s local music scene.
The line up included some bands who reformed just for the occasion as well as some new favourites. I walked away with 2 CDs which is always a good sign.
Our local community radio station RTRfm puts on the event, which I went to for the first time last year and had a blast.
So Timothy Nelson & The Infidels were one of the bands where, as soon as this song played I had that ‘aha’ moment. It seems like this song had been following me around for 2 weeks before In The Pines and now I finally know who it’s by.
It certainly tested my ability to knit and dance at the same time.
I have a thing for flow charts and process mapping.
It’s something that I really enjoy and I’ve always think I’ve been good at finding ways to make things more efficient and (I’m trying not to say cutting out non-value adding tasks but I think I’ve outed myself as a bit of a geek anyway so hell) removing non-value adding tasks.
I like to say laziness is the mother of all invention.
So putting together a flowchart to illustrate my knitting project decision making process seemed like a no brainier.
And I’ve now rambled on which probably defeats the purpose of creating an Infographic.
It’s a wonder I get anything done at all!!!
If I was doing a process analysis on that one I think there’s a lot of non-value added activity there.
But that’s half the fun.
Think of a bee
You are it’s knees
You waft through me like a summers breeze
Can I come round on Tuesday please
– a Bernard Black poem
Black and yellow stripes bore me. I’m not a Richmond fan, nor am I an extra from flight of the bumblebees.
So picking a pattern to match my house animal I thought would be difficult.
Starting where I usually start, I typed in “bee” into ravelry. (I wonder if they’ve noticed an increase in certain house animal search terms over the last few days. I also wonder how many results Manatee brings up. 9. Nine whole patterns.)
After browsing for a while, favouriting a few patterns, looking at what’s in my stash I usually gravitate towards socks.
Eventually my search screen looks a bit like this.
Hopefully one will take my fancy. In this case I found it.
I check the pattern notes, see if there are any red flags, before downloading it to my iPad and having a good read of the pattern.
It’s one has a couple of new techniques which I’m looking forward to trying out. The stitch pattern is really pretty, plus it has a provisional cast on which I haven’t tried before.
Plus I have sock yarn which is perfect! I am actively resisting not casting on immediately! But more on that tomorrow.
This exercise has become a little torturous. Now I have a gorgeous pattern which I can’t cast on until I finish my Mother’s Day Hitchhiker.
Aawwwwe.
It’s I’d why I can’t look at ravelry while I have a deadline project.
This year I’m not on holiday (boo) like I was during last year’s Knitting and Crochet Blog Week so I get to participate (yay!).
I am so excited to be participating in the fantastic initiative which is Knitting and Crochet Blogging Week.
For those who don’t know what’s going on (like I did last year, I had no idea it was even a thing until I noticed knitting bloggers mysteriously blogging about the same thing at the same time) Knitting and Crochet Blog Week is a week of posting, where every day is about a different topic. The topics are decided here, and some of them are taking me out of my comfort zone, as well as making me think creatively about knitting.
I still think the best part is reading what other people have to say on the same subject.
Day 1 (4KCBWDAY1) is deciding which of the 4 houses I fit in to.
I could quite easily be a peacock because, well, look at my hair, clearly I’m attracted to bright colours. I drool over brightly coloured yarns on etsy, and day dream about tardis blue, pale sunshine yellow, and every shade of pink.
My Manatee side is me relaxed whilst taking comfort in what I’m creating. Its curling up on the couch with my favourite crocheted blanket, needles gently clicking in my hands.
The curious part of me which wanted to learn knitting in the first place is definitely House Monkey. My Monkey side also keeps me learning new things, trying new patterns, and taking me out of my comfort zone.
But they’re all just parts of me. I’m a Peacock in the Summer, a Manatee in the Winter, and a Monkey when restlessness strikes. I’m always a Bee.
I feel unproductive whenever I don’t have needles in my hand, and I often drift off to sleep visualising the last stitch pattern I was working on. (If you were wondering, rib stitch is particularly calming to visualise, more so than actually knitting it.)
I’ve demonstrated that I’m poly-WIP-erous on many occasions, just as a Bee should be.
Knitting is a way to improve my patience and attention span. Though I still gravitate to quick projects, particularly if one gets too boring.
I think I managed to keep my foray into crochet a blogging secret! But there were a few attempts before I felt I could make a blanket.
See? Terrible.
It wasn’t until it clicked that I needed to crochet in the gaps (rather than in the stitches like knitting) that I made a bit of progress.
Having a go at crocheting a block don’t work so well either.
But really I can make block fabric with knitting. What I really wanted to do was granny squares.
So after a bit of practicing is finally clicked.
I spent a lot of the night balancing my needlecraft book on my lap, swearing and cursing.
But I cracked it.
Well I’ve cracked one pattern. The pattern for these squares is the same as my big one.
They’re so pretty. I can see more crochet in my future!
(I never thought I’d say that!)
For my lovely blog readers who are not from Australia, you may be wondering what on earth that video I posted yesterday was all about. Or what are the events leading up to a group of burly gentlemen standing in a circle singing (I use that term loosely) an old show tune and throwing around powerade.
Allow me to explain a few things about a sport I love, Australian Rules Football.
Apart from being one of the greatest sporting codes in the world (cricket is a close second, nearly equal first), it has it’s own set of quirks which I think make it pretty special, which aren’t found in a lot of other sports.
The Banner
Slogans are chosen and thought up, and each week the cheer squad will craft together a banner from sticky tape and crepe paper.
Then all of that hard work is promptly destroyed by the players running through it before the game.
Last year I was part of the crew to hold up the banner which was really awesome, but it’s a pretty strange tradition.
Here’s a video celebrating a players 100 games achievement.
The Crowd
With the record crowd numbers up at the 100 thousand marks, the crowds can be deafening.
But we don’t have set cheers, or songs to chant.
The only thing close to a coherent cheer is when the crowd come together to yell “ball!!” in an attempt to convince the umpire to pay a ‘holding the ball’ free kick.
This phenomenon even happens in pubs where yelling is very unlikely to influence an umpires decision, but we like to think we can try.
We also yell out players names like “Breust” and “Dew” so it sounds like we’re booing our own team.
The Point For Trying
You get six points for kicking the ball through the two big sticks, and 1 point if you hit the post or get it through the shorter sticks.
If we gave out points for difficulty, some of these would be more than 6 points.
The Human Step Ladder
When you don’t have quite enough players to go out and play a full game, it usually turns into step ladder practice or ‘king of the pack’, where one person kicks the ball to everyone else and they all try to catch it.
Kind of like the bouquet toss at a wedding.
Invariably someone will try and emulate the boys on TV and try and use a smaller kid as a step ladder.
The video explains the high flying mark, and why Mum’s everywhere don’t want their kids playing AFL.
The Song
After the burly gentlemen have run through crepe paper, had the crowd pretend to be expert umpires, been given points for trying, and used each other as step ladders, one team wins and one team loses. (Except if it’s a drawn grand final when we come back and play the following week. Seriously that happened once.)
After one team wins they all stand in a circle and sing a song. (See yesterday’s post.)
Each club has a song, and which songs are good and bad is a subject best left for Internet comment sections and arguments with strangers in pubs.
I (unsurprisingly) love my team’s song. I think it’s perfect for pub singing and fist pumping.
These are just some of the reasons I love Australia’s game. I plan social engagements around football games, will share a football opinion with anyone who listens, and I will judge you on what your football team is.
And just in case you think that this all sounds a bit namby pamby, I’ll leave you with a video which demonstrates just how tough these guys are (and without any padding, shin guards, or even cups!)
A week ago I hadn’t even heard of this song.
However a fortunate twitter conversation with @weareaustralia (australia’s curated twitter account) led me down a rabbit hole to find this song.
It tells the charming story of Johnny and Flo who have a regular Sunday outing to go “rowing”.
But best of all, it’s also the song which the Richmond club song is based on (but more on that tomorrow.)
Please compare and contrast the two versions.
And as always, here’s the full ‘Stuck In My Head 2013’ playlist.
polka-dots & sparkles 