weekends

Camping time!!! Good for the mind, not so good for the body

Posted on October 1, 2015October 1, 2015 by bekswhoknits

It was a long weekend last weekend so we took off to the south all set for a camping weekend.

It was glorious. Sure there were idiots with their generator on til 2am, dogs not on leashes running amuck, loud music and general disruptive behaviour but we were away from the city in the great outdoors and it wasn’t going to spoil those 3 night we planned at Logue Brook Dam (about 2 hours drive from home).
We didn’t stay in the Tourist Park area (too touristy!), but instead drove to the other side of the lake and camped in the National Park. It was more our style of camping.

It’s not quite ‘glamping’ but we do make camping less stressful by having good equipment . We have a pop-up tent and a gazebo for shade, stretcher beds and self inflating mattresses for sleeping, and a solid set of camping chairs and table. The new addition this holiday was a hammock which was lovely and relaxing until the wind started to howl.

I spent my time wisely and finished 3 books and started a 4th.

I finished The Book Thief and tried not to cry. It was gorgeously written, very poignant but ultimately tears were shed.

Wedding Night was on my iPad so it got read while I was working on my knitting. I’d read it before and it was a good bit of fluff to follow a WW2 novel.

I also finished Rilla of Ingleside for the upteenth time. I found new covers for the series on Book Depository which I had to buy.

And I started Shadow Scale (sequel to Seraphina which I raced through and loved!) but I only got about a third of the way through

(This brings my total read books for this year up to 24 meaning I’m likely to meet my challenge of 30 new books. The 24 doesn’t include any books I re-read.)

The Nightvale-esque eye bag is my new knitting project bag. It was purchased in a Cotton On sale where everything I bought (new work shoes, a floppy hat, some more shoes, cat socks, more shoes) was $5.

I googled ‘camping knitting’ before I left. I didn’t really have anything on the needles that I could knit without thinking. I needed the type of knitting that takes your mind off carsickness, can still be done around a campfire, in between scrabble moves, and which isn’t going to result in frogging the next morning.

Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Pi shawl has all the stockinette a camper could ask for. The chapter of the Knitters Almanac with the Pi Shawl recipe has an entire section on camping knitting which put me right in the mood. I have since bought a hard copy of the book, but I found the pattern in an online preview which I print screened and took along with me.

I also finished off a pair of slippers that I needed the foot model to try on. They went to a very happy grandma.

Unfortunately no fish were caught (although not for lack of trying.)
But the early morning trips to the dam weren’t entirely wasted with my brother-in-law doing a spectacular slip into the water. I didn’t see it but apparently it rivalled my less than graceful entry into the hammock the day before.

Ultimately it was a fantastic 4 days, after which I felt relaxed, inspired, and like I’d had a week’s peace and quiet. It has been followed up by a week of Physio appointments and a bucket load of pain killers for my back, but sometimes getting away from it all it totally worth it.

Ahh the serenity….

My weekend in numbers

Posted on March 31, 2014 by bekswhoknits

1 – the number of times I got to pretend it was cold enough to wear my unicorn jumper

2 – Buffy fans made happy with a ‘walk through the fire’ bracelet
10 – geeky bracelets I now have
1 – hour spent searching for lost items
4 – rings found
0 – metal stamping letter Rs found

1 – PlayStation 3 which decided to not read discs any more
9 – hours to transfer all our data off our old PS3 to the new one
1 – heart palpitation when Hewhofishes suggested I could ‘just start over’ in Skyrim
3 – the number of times Hewhofishes pointed a laser pointer from the tv couch to the kitchen couch to annoy me whilst waiting for the data transfer.
1.5 – books in the Grisha series read despite such laser pointer intrusions

55 – points my team beat hewhofishes’ team by
15 – minutes hewhofishes sulked for after his team lost
infinite number of times I thought about rubbing in the fact that my team is better than his team but decided to be the bigger person

12 – episodes of Bobs Burgers watched
4 – quotes I tweeted from the show
2 – confused comments I had back from followers who were unaware I was quoting Bobs Burgers

1 – old but new to me china cabinet was delivered
7 – years my 21st birthday china waited before being unpacked
4 – years my tea cup collection has been waiting for a home that wasn’t constantly under threat of being knocked over.

but by far the biggest and most important number of the weekend
100 – the age of my Great-Nan who celebrated her birthday on Saturday.
6 children, 19 grand-children, 26 great-grand children (me!), and 2 great-great-grandchildren

(Numbers are from my memory and are approximate. It may have been more than 12 episodes of Bobs Burger we watched.)

Dull and uninspired. But not really

Posted on February 11, 2014February 11, 2014 by bekswhoknits

I feel like I haven’t done anything recently.
I’m feeling dull and uninspired about everything.

And then I looked at my camera roll and realised that even though I’ve been in shoulder related hibernation, I’ve been really busy.
In the past 7 days there was the annual superbowl party, the Perth Scorchers won the grand final, and laneway festival.

The time difference for the Super Bowl means that we’re watching the game while everyone else is on their way to work. Always a unique experience.

Then Perth won the Big Bash Final!

There was much wooing.

And then some more wooing at Laneway Festival.
HAIM rocked my socks off, plus frightened rabbits, unknown mortals orchestra, and chvrches made for an awesomesauce day.

And my crazy cat earrings went out of an excursion and of course there was some knitting. Every though my shoulder was a little worse for wear afterwoods.
Totally worth it.

Seriously how cool is this sandcastle!!!

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.

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!

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.

Jewellery for knitting

Posted on July 22, 2013July 21, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I’ve been putting off knitting Parcel for the silliest of reasons. The stitch markers I had were annoying,
A while ago, inspired by knitnrun4sanity’s; jewellery making adventures, I bought some supplies.
It was a half baked scheme which was concocted whilst in Spotlight. Ideas that happen whilst in the shop are usually half baked which means that I don’t actually know what I need, but I want to buy stuff now and not wait to research it properly.

So I bought a starter kit, a plier kit, and some pretty things that caught my eye. My first attempt was so unsuccessful that I gave up.

Now I’ve joined My Sisters Knitter’s knitalong to finish off all those pesky unfinished objects I figured I needed to do something about my stitch marker situation.

So I had a look in my big craft book which wasn’t much help. Well I didn’t have the right tools. The Internet was more useful with this tutorial on stitch markers.

I modified it slightly but I ended up with some stitch markers.

Now I have no excuses not to knit parcel.

Look at me playing wire and stuff.

I may have got a little carried away. I had only planned to make as many as I needed. Instead I used all the round things I had.
I think these mean that I can put Jewelry making basics on my new crafts to try list.

odds and ends

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

I’ve picked up my ten stitch blanket. I’m thinking that when I get to the next corner I might make a video to demonstrate how to turn the corner. I’ve shown it to some one in real life, and have had a few questions.
I’m now half regretting making it in sock weight yarn. Its now over a year old, and looks like its 3 more years away from being a decent size.

I also did some work on my gentle waves afghan. I showed you this in my video blog for Knit & Crochet blog week, but I’ve actually taken some photos now. It took me a few trys to start. I’m not that good at reading crochet instructions yet. But now that it’s established, its pretty mindless. Which was good because I’m still dieing loudly and building blanket forts.

I have managed to watch 6 seasons of 30 rock in 3 weeks from my blanket fort. I now need to find a new sitcom to fill that void. With Arrested Development being a netflix only production, and netflix being unavailable in australia, I was very happy to find a workaround .
Since then I’ve been discovering all that netflix has to offer. (And will quite happily take recommendations!)

I’ve been trying to not spend money on etsy. There are so many lovely things that I want. I think I have about 8 items in my cart that I’m pondering. Metal stamped cuff with yarn trinket? Yes Please!

There was no decent football to watch this weekend, as my team had a bye week. That always feels a bit weird.
So everything is a bit all over the place. But at some point it will all sort itself out again.
But finally I was cleaning out my spam comments and found this gem.

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And last but not least – Knitnrun4sanity, you are the lucky winner of my favourite tea! I’ve emailed you this morning. Please let me know if you didn’t receive the email. Congrats hun!!

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.

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.