mondays

my weekend in numbers – FO 25

Posted on November 18, 2013 by bekswhoknits

12 – the number of sleeps remaining in our apartment.

2 – the number of invisible zips I sewed
1 – pair of shorts I successfully shortened
1 – curtain I was meant to sew up but that is lost somewhere in the abyss that it the spare room.
4 – the amount of times I couldn’t find where I left the scissors
5 – how many pairs of scissors I put away after I had finished.

48 – the number of stitches to cast on with DK weight yarn on
3.25 – mm needles for a pair of socks
3 – days it took these socks from start to finish
8 – the number of times I oohed and ahhed at the way the hand dyed yarn was knitting up
20billion – the actual number of times I marveled at my hand dyed yarn.

5 – the number of fat quarters I bought at Spotlight
0 – how many balls of yarn I didn’t buy because none of it took my fancy

2 – the number of friends who have birthdays in the next 2 weeks
2 – the number of presents I have finished for said birthdays

16* – the number of Bobs Burger episodes I watched on the weekend
7* – the number of Leverage episodes I watched
6* – the number of Parks & Recreation episodes watched.

3 – the number of bands I saw on Friday night
1 – the number of songs that I knew well enough to sing along to.

4 – the number of tacos I ate last night
0 – the number of tacos I made for myself

3 – the number of mosquito bites that I can’t stop scratching.

*I don’t know exactly how many episodes I watched. These numbers are estimated guesses.

FO#24 – Elementary Watson socks

Posted on November 15, 2013November 15, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I have been killing it at being an adult this week. My giant to-do list is getting shorter, our new house is now insured, our apartment is one step closer to being rented out, and in a surprise twist almost all of my Christmas shopping is done.

Mums pressie has been done for ages, the family over east just needs wrapping, and a pair of socks for Dad came off the needles this week.

Although technically they are a birthday present. There are 3 December birthdays in my family which I tend to include as part of Christmas shopping.

The pattern is elementary Watson. It’s cables like this that make me wish I was attracted to solid sock yarn.
The pattern does get lost in the self striping, but it’s still there.

I particularly liked the fleegel heel. I think I’ll be using that again in the near future.
And as usual these are toe up, two at a time, magic looped on my trusty 2.5mm Addi Turbos.

This is sock number 7 this year! I have to get shuffle on if I’m going to make 12. Methinks slightly larger needles for the next pair.

Wolf & Cub

Posted on October 30, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Wolf and cub kicked some rock and roll ass on Saturday night.

We got there as doors opened and enjoyed the almost-summer air with a few cold bevvies. Amps wasn’t sad and lonely for long.

The first support was nothing amazing, but doctopus who were up second were pretty cool.
Not enough men rock pigtails quite like the doctopus bassist.
And not enough lead guitarists play from lieing down on the stage.
AND not enough Aussie bands have songs dedicated to ice hockey and Wayne Gretsky (hello Canadia!)

Even though wolf & cub only have on drummer / drum kit on stage these days, they totally make up for it.
I think they may have a chance of breaking into the hottest 100 this year.

We probably would have bought tshirts anyway (you can never have too many band shirts), but as the band members were manning the merch stand we had a chat, a couple of pics, and walked away with a signed poster.

All round tops evening watching a tops band and listening to some tops tunes live.

Of Skyrim and Villagers

Posted on October 23, 2013October 22, 2013 by bekswhoknits

There’s been a lot of paper-rock-scissors in out household recently.

Grand Theft Auto 5, Skyrim, and Final Fantasy XIII-2 have recently come into our possession. I still haven’t finished Final Fantasy XIII and I also know that there’s a new Gran Turismo coming out soon. So playstation time is in high demand.

One night when HeWhoFishes was (wait for it) out fishing, I spent a Friday night playing Skyrim and listening to Villagers.

And something about this song in particular reminds me of the that game.
Like the two fit together somehow if that makes any sense at all.

I like games with quests and dragons and adventure and somehow Villagers has captured all that with a song.

Because I love my little brother

Posted on August 30, 2013August 30, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I made him a cushion.

Because my family don’t understand presents without a reason it’s a “housewarming” present.

Even though he moved into his new place about a year ago.

I love my little brother.
Every so often I will get a text message just with a quote from a TV show we both like.

His text tone is from futurama. “The alien mother ship is in orbit here. If we can hit that bullseye the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Check mate.”

Even that just makes me laugh.
He calls me little sis because I’m only 5’10” and he’s over 6″.
I call him my little brother because he’s 5 years younger.

So I figured the best way to celebrate this relationship is with quotes on a cushion.
One side is from black books “feng shui is nine tenths of the law”.
The other is from doctor who (in case the tardis didn’t give it away).

My middle brother may not be the TV geek that my little brother and I am, but his two little ones had birthdays last week and I couldn’t let that pass without sending off some knitted gifts.

You can’t really go wrong with a hat and a scarf.

Now I just need to figure out what to do for Father’s Day!
I’m trying to track down some handkerchiefs to embroider with little success. If all else fails chocolate coated sultanas always go down a treat.

This is another cushion for my 13 in 2013 project.

A loss, a cold, and some more embroidery

Posted on August 26, 2013August 26, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Saturday was both good and bad. I got to see my team live, and hold out the banner for them to run through. But we got absolutely thrashed.
Then with five minutes to go a cheer rang out when another games result went in our favour so we are playing finals for the first time in 5 years!!!
HeWhoFishes has never seen finals-Bek so this could be interesting. It’s like football-Bek but a bit more extreme and with more yelling / crying / drinking.

Sunday I didn’t go more than 2 meters away from a box of tissues.
With no voice (half football yelling / half cold) I invented a code so the other half knew when I wanted another cup of tea.
It involved throwing things and miming a cup of tea. And was surprisingly effective. I think he still felt bad for bursting out into raucous laughter every time he heard me speak.

I worked a little more on my black books embroidery. And I spent quite a bit of time surfing through Wild Olive.
If you’ve never visited her blog before, she does all sorts of really cool embroidery and makes the most adorable printables. (How cute are these pencils!)
She has taught me how to do french knots, and I now know how to do laisy daisies and chains.

I made an embroidery needle book which now lives next to my scissors and my brand new stitch marker holder (thanks again Keri!).
I also went through and put all of my embroidery floss onto cardboard.
This is about as organised as I am ever going to be!

Of chvrches and wolf & cub

Posted on August 21, 2013August 21, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I recall seeing wolf & cub with about 15 other people at v fest 08 (or 09 my memory is hazy).
They were playing at the same time as Madness and The Kills.
I was running around like a mad thing between three stages.

And so I listened to their album a bit that year and had since forgotten about them.

Until I was skimming through the triple j playlist and saw that they had a new song out. So I added it to a playlist and it hasn’t left my head since.

I did almost the same thing with chvrches. As they’re highly tipped for laneway and there’s been a bit of buzz about them I thought I’d give them a listen. I wasn’t all that interested.
But again skimming through the triple j playlist I listened to Guns and have been hooked.

Serious ear worms both of them.
And the best part of looking at the triple j playlist is you still stay in touch with what other people are listening to, without hearing the songs you don’t want to listen to. Or the songs that they play 5 times a day.

Stuck in my head – Catcall

Posted on August 14, 2013 by bekswhoknits

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.

Cold War Kids

Posted on August 7, 2013 by bekswhoknits

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.

Procrastination

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

My knitting monogomy is making me multicraftural.

Because I’ve been working on the same knitting projects I want to branch out in other crafts.

The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that when I made all those pretty stitch markers, there were also some earrings in the photo.

I didn’t draw attention to them because I had intended a pair to be a surprise for my best friend who was overseas at the time but is an avid reader of my blog (despite not being a knitter).
But she’s back now and I’m seeing her tonight (we’re seeing Cold War Kids!!) so I’m going to spoil the surprise.

So MidnightMoose I have a pair of earrings waiting for you. As always you’re allowed to hate them and you’re really more of a product tester because I’m really not sure of my jewelry making skills just yet.

But I can’t just give her a pair of earrings. Not when there’s jumper instructions to decipher and understand.

So I grabbed some photo paper, my new scallop edged scissors (typo bargain!), a silver paint pen, some washi tape, and a needle.

Put them all together and you get a wonky earrings set.

Maybe next time I’ll use a ruler too.