domestic bliss

It’s a hard life, but someone’s got to do it

Posted on July 29, 2013August 2, 2013 by bekswhoknits

So the big news is, we’re buying a house!
Well, hopefully.

We’ve found one that we both really like, is in our price range and has ample room for fishing rods and yarn!

We’re putting in the offer today and if everyone crosses their fingers it will be accepted and we’ll both live happily ever after.

I’m not naive enough to think that this will just happen. There’s still mortgages to organise, equity to leverage and a lot of things to work out even before we can consider it a done deal. My previous house buying experience was horrible, complete with smarmy real estate agent, lost paperwork, and months of house hunting. So it can’t be any worse than that.

I don’t want to provide a link to the property in case we do buy it and then the whole Internet has my address, but here’s a little teaser.

I think I could get quite used to this view. It is a very happily situated house.

I’ve also set to work on a cushion for my youngest brother.
He’s moved into a place with some mates, and it’s definitely lacking some homely touches.

So I’ve done one side, and am still to decide what should be on the other.

I don’t know what I’m more excited about, a pantry, not hearing children (or pigs) running above us, or that I will have natural light!
I think the natural light wins.

Tales on a houseboat

Posted on July 2, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Once upon a time, there was a girl called BeksWhoKnits and a boy called HeWhoFishes.

The two of them set off early on Friday morning and drove as the sun came up. And at some point around 9:00 arrived into Walpole.

The stocked up on supplies, and made sure that they had every thing they needed. They weren’t to be coming back to the shore for a while.

Off they set on a houseboat into the inlet. Quite soon the houseboat was transformed into a home where the next 3 nights would be spent.

They reached their first destination. HeWhoFishes set to fishing, BeksWhoKnits to knitting.

The fish weren’t biting from the back of the boat, so HeWhoFishes went off in the dingy to explore further.

Bekswhoknits explored the life of Stephen Fry and made some steady progress on her crocheted blanket.

The talent of reading and knitting was well practiced and she was quite accomplished by the end of the trip at first reading from the iPad and then later balancing actual books.

The days flew by and fish continued to be caught, books continued to be read, and WIPs turned into FOs.

Each day had a new location, and each morning a new sunrise to wake up to.

Even washing the dishes somehow felt easier.

There was talk of rejoining civilisation for a Saturday afternoon, but the wonders of technology meant that football could be watched aboard the boat.

More fish were caught, HeWhoFishes made friends with a pelican named Harold. Beks eyed Harold warily and preferred to remain indoors.

All too soon it was time to return the houseboat. There was talk of sailing into the sunset, but it proved impossible so we returned to the shore and reluctantly made our way back to the city.

The houseboat is a perfect choice when two people wish to do nothing but fish and knit (and read, and embroider, and watch football).

Fish tally
Too many herring to keep count of
20+ Black Brim
10+ Skippy
10 School Whiting
6 Snook / Garfish
1 australian salmon
1 Mullet

Finished Object list
The Fry Chronicles
Revenge Wears Prada
The Colour of Magic
Death Comes to Pemberly
“manners cost nothing” embroidery
teal, black, and grey broken rib cowl
crochet flower
Significant progress on
– vanilla latte pair of socks
– crochet blanket

*gifs and panorama can be clicked to embiggen

I knew I kept things for a reason

Posted on June 20, 2013June 20, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I’ve had these jeans for ages. After a month of wear they developed a tear in the crotch.
And yet for some reason I kept them.
It’s a family trait. We don’t like wasting things and so reusing scraps or repurposing material was something I was brought up to do.

Obviously these pants were waiting for me to have a really stiff neck. I was lieing away, trying to sleep when the idea came to me.
The pant leg is the perfect size for a heat bag, long enough to drape around my neck but not fall off.

The finished product isn’t exactly pretty or well finished, but it is practical.

First start by draping the pant leg around your neck to determine the optimal length.
Cut the pants.

Sew up the leg on one end. Sew about half way along the other opening. You need enough room so you can turn it inside out.
Using a funnel, start filling the tube.

Fill it a bit and then sew it up to create segments. I divided mine into 3 (so I did this bit twice).
Using the sewing machine with rice already in it was tricky, but it did work.

Once it’s all full, sew up the end

I had a great idea to use contrast embroidery thread, before remembering that my hand stitching is pretty terrible.

So it’s not going to win any beauty pageants. But it does the job.
Put it in the microwave for 2 minutes and put on neck.
Heat packs are wonderful things.

It’s Friday!

Posted on June 13, 2013June 14, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Firstly some housekeeping.
I have recently changed my ravelry name. Instead of rainruinedclothes I am now known as bekswhoknits.
It makes my rav name the same as my twitter name plus means I don’t have to explain about rainruinedclothes (Editors lyrics from the song The Big Exit).

I’ve also recently updated my about page. I hadn’t updated my old one since I started this blog and it was out of date, and a little old.
I’ve also been mushy and sappy and given my partner in crime a new code name – HeWhoFishes.
He is such a big part of my real life and a tiny little part of my blog and I want to fix that. Giving him his own persona will hopefully help.

Secondly I have to share a recipe with you. Ian Hewittson is an Australian TV chef who is a bit of a Ron Swanson type.
Hewhofishes and I watched this just before going to bed last night and we were in hysterics.
With the focus of many TV chefs these days being healthy but tasty food, Huey has stayed true to the food he’s been cooking on TV for 20 years.
So for some unknown reason we can’t help but find it amusing when Huey adds a bit more butter, or sprays a mixture of butter, cheese, and breadcrumbs with olive oil spray for good measure.
So this breakfast just spoke to us. The final straw was when he served it with iceberg lettuce and mustard dressing, the mustard dressing including a cup of vegetable oil. And then he called it a ‘light breakfast’
And he is probably the only TV show I know that if you post a stamped self address envelope to their address, they will post you back the recipes. Its a delightful pre-internet concept.

Huey’s Light Breakfast
Brown onion and bacon. Add chopped sausages.
Top with cheese and breadcrumbs, salt and pepper.
Make a indent and break eggs on top.
Add more cheese and breadcrumbs.
Spray with olive oil
Bake in a hot oven for 20minutes or until golden.

Sounds delicious.

On the knitting front, I have had a bad case of cast-on-itis. Where nothing I already have on my needles seems right so in casting on something new. This one in particular I love the yarn, love the pattern, but not the combination. But I don’t know whether to frog or continue.

While I think about that decision I started a crochet cowl.
I don’t know what I’ve done, I think I’ve unintentionally increased on the first row, to create a curve. And I’m not sure if I like it or not.

While I think about that decision I cast on a hat. This I do like.
Although it’s a pain to knit as I’m holding two strands together and haven’t compensated enough with the needle size. So I’m pushing pretty hard on the needles. Hopefully it’s quick enough to finish so it won’t annoy me.

Has anyone got a cure for cast-on-itis? How do you decide if something’s worth frogging and starting again.

How cute is this frogging poster!!! For those curious, when I talk about frogging I’m talking about ripping back my knitting and starting again. Rip it, Rip it – like a frog.

Shh. Its a secret.

Posted on June 8, 2013June 10, 2013 by bekswhoknits

So I’m not going to share the 3 things I finished this week.

They’re all gifts so the recipients should be the first ones to see them. Then I’ll share them with the interwebs.

So instead I’m going to show you a present I made for my best friend’s birthday last year, and didn’t blog about it.
Instead it’s been sitting in drafts for ages.

It would be an understatement to say that midnite moose is my favourite girl in the world.
We woo together, watch sport together, and one night we drank vodka premix straight out of the bag together and dubbed ourself ‘classy bitches’.

There could only be one present to make to sum up our relationship.
A double sided cushion with “Woo” on one side and “we be classy bitches” on the other.

On polkadot fabric naturally.

Stuck in my head – Faker

Posted on June 5, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I have a CD collection. I was given my first CD when I was 12 (Tina Arena – Chains) and since then I’ve accumulated many more.

There are all sorts of CDs in there. Some I play more than others. Some are only there because I hate throwing things away, particularly if I paid good money for them at one point (even more so if I was young and $30 meant a lot more back when I was at school).

I still buy CDs mostly because I really like the album format. I’ll buy a cd, sit down with the album artwork, listen to the music and hear it start to finish.
Plus I like my money were I can see it- on my walls and in my stash.

(It’s metallic silver paint and Ikea CD/DVD racks. One of my favourite things in my apartment)

My Bloke’s CD collection is also quite impressive. Although we haven’t merged the two, we have decided that we’re committed enough to not both buy the same CD. It has been 5 years.

I organise mine alphabetically by artist name then album name (ignoring any ‘the’ prefixes).
My Bloke organises his alphabetically by artist and then in order of album release date earliest to latest.
This argument is expected to last until we’re in retirement.

So my song for this week is my go-to song for whenever I’m tired and at work. After 4 days in bed watching 30 Rock, I am out of my pajamas and a sleepwalking member of society once again.

500 Posts!!! – Giveaway now closed

Posted on June 3, 2013June 10, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I don’t quite know how I got here, but obviously I’ve talked for 500 posts worth.

So I’m celebrating with a tea giveaway.

I have a wonderful tea shop which tempts me on my walk to the train station every day.
And I’m giving some away to a lucky reader.
I’ll ship anywhere so please enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

To enter click on either of the above links and *hopefully* it will all work perfectly.

This is my first time using rafflecopter – hopefully no one will have any problems, but it took quite a bit of work to use it with wordpress.
If any one has any problems, leave me a comment and I’ll try and help. I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible.

So congratulations to me.

And congratulations to knitnrun4sanity – the winner of this giveaway.

Cheers!

(Excuse the bed side table. I have a cough and the sniffles so obviously I’m dieing. But it’s nothing that a day in bed, a 30 rock marathon, and lots and lots of tea won’t cure)
(Seriously I figured out how to get Netflix even though I’m in Australia. I am now on season 3 of 30 rock and have watched all of the new Arrested Development. This streaming thing is pretty awesome.)

If you don’t take pictures did it really happen? (FO 12 & 13)

Posted on May 13, 2013May 13, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I’ve failed as a blogger this week.
Only after I had three packages of knitted goods complete with care instructions all wrapped up in tissue paper did I think about photographing them.

The mittens I already had photos of because I’d blogged about them before, but I’ve just sent two hitchhikers into the wilderness without any proof they were here.

Well that’s not entirely true, but it does leave me at a bit of a blogging loose end.

I do think the hitchhikers were a success. The colours I chose matched what they were wearing when I saw them (always a good sign).

The hand knitting process gives you plenty of time to um and ah over colour choices so I was a little frazzled by the time I had finished.

So in absence of good pictures, I have the ones for my care instructions.
I use the Phonto iPhone/iPad app which makes putting text over photos very easy.
I use that app to make personalized cards too. My mum is always requesting photos of me and my partner so I find a decent photo, add our names to it and put a fridge magnet on the back.
Next time I think I’ll crochet a border for something different.

Stuck in my head – The National (now with cushions)

Posted on May 1, 2013May 8, 2013 by bekswhoknits

If you watched my video from last week you may have noticed I showed you a finished object that I hadn’t blogged about yet.
So this is a little cushion with two different lyrics from The National on either side.
It’s not a standard shape, mostly because I didn’t realise I was going to make it into a cushion when I was embroidering those song lyrics onto scrap fabric.
Fortunately the scraps were big enough and I could turn them into a cushion.

This is cushion #3 in my 13 in 2013 project.

An impulse purchase

Posted on March 25, 2013March 25, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Somehow when I was buying a couch I managed to find one with built in stash storage.
I didn’t know this when I bought it. But somehow all of my works in progress have gradually migrated to this ledge between the couch and the wall.
It was a brilliant solution.
But I lived with someone who (quite understandably) didn’t think this solution was so brilliant. Mostly because I have a habit of going to bed and leaving my knitting on the couch instead of using the ledge.
Which leads to me hogging the couch when I’m not around.