real life

busy little bumblebee

Posted on December 9, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Just a quick little update – December is going to be a very quiet month.
But I am working on a guest post for the endearing her name was greta.

In the meantime, I’m deep into Christmas knitting (some times it feels like a lost cause), busy with my new job (which is really awesome and challenging and I’m enjoying it thoroughly), and trying to fit the endless social engagements into my calendar.
As well as the more homely calendar items such as the carrots should be ready tomorrow!

But I am still around. You can always find me on twitter or instagram.
And I look forward to coming back refreshed and ready to blog in 2012.

I’ll probably still post photos of Future of the Left and Gotye in the next few days though.

Last week recap

Posted on November 22, 2011November 22, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Because its been a while, and this is why.

There were two mid week gigs. So last week I saw Portishead (amazing), and the national, (fantastic). Knitting group in Monday and finished a sock during the week.
Dinner and movies with friends.
Strata meeting for the apartment block I live in. Watched the entire first series of game of thrones.
Best friends birthday drinks.
And found out my start date for my new job.
And I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting some stuff.

This weekend isnt going to be much better. Quiz night, work Christmas party, brother in laws birthday, and Cold Chisel. and then start the new job Monday morning.

I think I’m trying to fit too much in.
So to keep this space ticking over I’ll be posting photos of exploits without commentary.

Hope you’re all enjoying the summer/lead up to Christmas too!!!

When only biscuits will do

Posted on November 8, 2011November 8, 2011 by bekswhoknits

a basic biscuit recipe with three variations.

The first one has chai latte tea in it.
I only had chai tea bags so I tried to dilute it as much as possible.

The second ones have a hershey’s kiss on top of them.

The third ones have choc mint flavoring. Well choc mint drinking chocolate, and lots of it to flavour it.

I have no idea what we’re having for dinner but we have biscuits.

Here’s my amended recipe for chocolate mint biscuits

Ingredients
125g butter, softened
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, at room temperature
2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 tablespoons chocolate mint powder
1 tablespoon milk

Method
Preheat oven to 180°C. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper.
Using an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and vanilla in a small bowl until pale and creamy. Add egg and mix until well combined. Sift flour and baking powder over butter mixture. Add milk, chocolate mint powder, and stir until just combined.

Spoon onto baking trays.
Place a Hershey’s Kiss on top of of each biscuit. Alternatively squish top of biscuit with a fork.

Cook in oven for 12-15 minutes.

Enjoy with a hot cup of tea. Or mug of hot chocolate mint drink for extra indulgence.

blogging for confidence

Posted on November 7, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Allow me to be all introspective for a post. I was doing my usual blog reading / blog discover this morning and I kept stumbling across similar themes. Blogging for confidence particularly struck a nerve. Since this blog has just turned 1 (happy blogday to me!) it was a topic that I wanted to explore and write about.

I have always been the shy girl. The girl in the corner who dressed a little bit differently and thought about different things.
The girl who felt like Daria except not as smart. The loner in the corner of the library.
The girl who dressed in all black and read Anne Rice novels, when no one else was reading about vampires.
I wore headphones as shoelaces and got in trouble for wearing (fake) doc martins instead of school shoes.
I’ve had pink hair, purple hair, green, blue, and even tried polka-dots once. I’ve gone from a shaved head to nipple length hair and every style in between.
I always preferred to set myself apart. In my own head it was easier to accept that people didn’t like me because I wore too much eyeliner than they just plain didn’t like me.
I have struggled with my mental health. There have been some terrifying lows which I shall never forget.
High School was not easy.

It made my stronger, but I constantly look back and wonder why I had such a hard time.
Therapy helped.
But what has really helped is blogging.

Writing about things helps me stay on track. It helps me be a “proper grown up”.

It helps me get some perspective and some purpose.
There’s a strength I get from blogging.
It gets me out of the house. It gets me looking at the world in different ways.
I appreciate the beauty of things more.

If I was left to my own devices I could quite contently never achieve anything. I could sleep for days, never communicating, never seeing sunlight, living in my own little world with no one to bother me.
But that’s not good for me. I’m sometimes not the best company for myself.
So blogging, even if it’s just what I ate, what I wore, what I knitted, what I listened to, it makes me think about what I’m doing.

It makes me live.
And I’m very grateful for that.

This is why I blog.
Blogging has definitely got me out of my comfort zone, doing things that I never would have done before.
Hell, it turned me into a knitter.
I guess that’s why I relate so much to this challenge. Because I know how much blogging has helped me.

I may just try one or two of these challenges.

Dinner, a show, & a parking fine

Posted on November 2, 2011November 3, 2011 by bekswhoknits

It’s cricket season. Yay! I love cricket. For those un-aussies among us cricket is like baseball except over 5 days. 5 days of sport is glorious.

So the Sheffield Shield is our local competition, and free entry means we can catch a couple of hours after work.
After the games play (we’re kinda losing on day two) we starting heading back home but it was peak hour and annoying, so we stopped in East Perth for dinner.

It was close and it had started raining so we stopped at local Italian place Antico Caffe. Tempted by the sign ‘free beer with pizza’.

The waitress was adorable, and very attentive.

The food took a little while to come out (exactly the time it took for me to drink a glass of wine), but when it came out it was pretty delicious.

I had a pizza with chickem, potato, and bacon which went down a treat.
But I should have ordered what the Mister had, chicken stuffed with prawns in a white wine sauce with potatos.
Which was “like his three favourite meals combined to make one super meal”.
The free beer (an italian beer we’d never heard of) wasn’t too bad to begin with, but the end verdict was we’ll pay for beer next time.

We had probably the best seats in the house, as we were looking outside to the intersection and all the people who were stuck in the rain. Including a pizza delivery guy who was supremely lost.
We watched as he crossed the street three times, asked a random stranger where he was, and took at least 18 minutes between us noticing him and him driving away again.

I can never eat a full pizza so I’m always happy when I can doggy bag it (it made a great lunch).
So we left on a bit of a high until we realised that we had a parking fine.
Silly me was trying to escape the rain and didn’t put enough money in the machine.

So it ended up being an expensive dinner, but it wasn’t as bad as all the other reviews on Urbanspoon have made it out to be.

The menu definitely had enough things to try that we wouldn’t mind going back.

Dinner at the Scotto

Posted on November 1, 2011November 1, 2011 by bekswhoknits

We had to get out of the apartment. Last night there was a disturbance resulting in a lot of yelling and screaming, 3 cars of slashed tyres, and a broken window.
None of it affecting us except the yelling, but as tensions were running high in the complex we wanted to have dinner somewhere.

I’m without a car at the moment (my sister in law is borrowing mine due to writing hers off [not her fault] and be not needing a car to get to work whereas she does) so I have no other way to get to the local knitting stitch n bitch.

So I convinced (using that word very loosely) the Mister to have dinner at the Flying Scotsman and then drop me off at the Queens.

I had been craving fish all day so I had the Cider Battered Fish & Chips, and Mr had the ribs.

It’s always good portion sizes and really hit the spot.
I could then knit the night away and forget all my troubles.

Sweet and savory muffins

Posted on October 25, 2011October 24, 2011 by bekswhoknits

the cheese, bacon, and zucchini

And the blueberry or mixed berry

I really don’t like dentists

Posted on October 13, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Almost as much as I don’t like… Well that simile didn’t work.

So I had a frenectomy. Which is an incision to separate the gum which is pulling down my gum from my teeth.
So I haven’t really been on solids. Or be able to talk.

But I can knit.

So I finished a scarf. Finished a minion.
Made some pea and ham soup.
Figured out how to eat just the fluffy bit of a croissant.
And went to my local second hand book store.
And ate a lot of porridge.
So all in all it’s kinda ok. Just can’t talk – which is kinda helpless in my job.

FO – an unoriginal hat and a minion hat.

Posted on October 13, 2011October 11, 2011 by bekswhoknits

I think I picked a decent pattern to get my head around cables. This is the unoriginal hat
Ah the difficulty. It probably didn’t help that I didn’t have a set of 5 double-pointed needles. So I combined two sets of DPNs, 4 15cm metal ones and 1 30cm bamboo one.

It made for an interesting knitting process. Although, I was very surprised at how quick it was. I was able to knock it off in a day. I struggled a bit with the cables and it probably stretches a bit too much on my big head, but I’m still happy with it.
The yarn is Moda Vera Ella. It only used about half a ball, which was useful because i’d used a ball and a half for a cowl which is currently blocking.

But the end result was pretty good.
Just a little small for my big head.

slowly, sewly.

Posted on September 30, 2011September 30, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Well disaster’s probably a bit strong. I can probably save it, but I have to do a crash course in dress design before I would even attempt looking at this again.

I think I mentioned that I had a feeling that I had bit off more than I could chew? Well guess what! I bit off more than I could chew.

Some shaky seams, some terrible measuring, a wonky zipper, and a very low waisted garment means that it’s not going to be finished for a very long time. But I’ll post some unfinished pictures anyway.

Did I mention how terrible the lighting is in my apartment

the waist is in completely the wrong spot for me

So without further ado, here are 5 things I learnt about sewing.
Also titled, things Sparkles should have researched better or looked up along the way.

1) Basting means sewing it first and then unpicking it. Not just sewing the seam twice. It’s very difficult to press flat when you have two seams.
2) When transferring a pattern to fabric you actually cut out the triangles. That and transfer all the marks, even if you don’t know what they mean at the start of the pattern it generally becomes clear half way through.
Things like ease, I now know that’s important.
3) Cut slowly. Actually, do everything slower. You know how much you hate making mistakes and unpicking things, so just slow down.
4) When sewing something with lining make sure that the lining and the real fabric are the same size. Measure, measure, measure. You’re dating a carpenter, you’d think you would have picked this up by now.
5) If you think it doesn’t look right, don’t worry. You haven’t got the skills to write a pattern, so trust that companies that manufacture these things for a living know what they’re talking about.

I think my next project will be one that comes with step-by-step instructions, with actual photos, not a diagrams and a schematic.

But I had a lot of fun making my so-called dress.