Dyeing for the weekend deux

More dyeing fun happened this weekend. I need 2 of these skeins for swaps I am in and since I am new to the whole dyeing thing I will be sad to part with them.

A bit step....... I went outside of my comfort zone and went brown! I am usually a primary colour or cool rich colour kind of gal, but I tried something new and really liked the results.

Pictures speak a thousand words

Finishing off

I am notoriously bad at finishing things at the moment, so I knuckled down over the last few weeks of my school holidays and focused on getting two of my projects finished.

My monkey socks, only took me about 5 months and they should of taken a couple of weeks at most!!! I love the way the yarn changes from deep blue at the top to more aqua blue at the toes, cool effect which I wasn't expecting when I bought the yarn from Helen at Waratah fibres






I also finished my Hey Teach! Cardigan from knitty
I made a few changes to the cardi. I made it a few inches longer, I picked up more stitches around the neck and fronts of the cardi (changed from 24 stitches picked up to nearly 50 on each neck edge), and I left out the waist ribbing. I also knitted this in the round, dividing at the sleeves and knitting the rest flat, which meant the only seaming I had to do was on the sleeves. I am fairly happy with the look of it, but am yet to try it on and get the real picture!


Finishing things feels awesome!
Now I had better do some much needed house work :)

Birthday swap goodness!

Ravensong sent me these beautiful things for my birthday (I love this birthday swap!), they were a few weeks later than she intended by my goodness are they all so so lovely. So worth the wait!!!! And I have to say that the soft green looks great with my blonde hair :)
I love the Ice Queen cowl and the gorgeous lace weight hand-dyed teal yarn, and the peel off mask, which I will use on the week end to pamper myself :)

The holidays are over

Melbourne street art

I got back from a lovely holiday to Melbourne last night. My sister and I did a lot of shopping, went to the tennis and drank champagne in our rooms spa. It was lots of fun!

I have work on Tuesday, and am starting my new job. I am nervous and excited at the same time. I am a bit concerned though as I got an email from the school while I was away saying that a vandal had smashed 4 large windows in what is to be the new staffroom in the building, which is a bit of a concern! As of Tuesday I will be a very busy woman, starting up a new education program is going to be hectic, but I really like to be busy, so it shouldn't be too bad... Fingers crossed.

When I got home I had a number of lovely parcels waiting for me. One of which was my orange swap pressies from Ravelry. My spoiler was Yarngobbler and she did a great job of collecting many pieces of orangy goodness!

I have been spoilt!

I also enjoyed getting together stuff for my swap partner Missfee. A few pieces from the parcel...

Good luck cowl using soya

Crocheted and felted cat toys

J-man testing the cat toys, he liked them!!!

I have finished 11 hours of spinning classes over the last 7 days, and quite a few hours of spinning at home. I have really enjoyed the classes, and I was a little sad that they ended. It was lovely to spend some time with local like-minded knitters, we had a lot of fun.

This is the transition from fleece to yarn (minus pics of the raw fleece)

AND I have finally made some yarn!

The above pictures are of the dirty, raw, greasy, sticky, smelly fleece. It was really quite a fun experience to go through the whole process of combing out the fleece and then spinning it. I did get a bit sick of the greasiness though, and chose not to ply this yarn as I would of needed to spin another bobbins worth, although I do LOVE the colour and it is lovely after in has been scoured. Instead the class was given some Corridale Bond fleece, which was lovely and clean and white so I spun up 2 bobbins worth to learn to ply on. I know I am soft!!!!

My new creations!!!!!

Holidays hah! Busy Busy Busy (aka the longest post in the world)

These holidays have been so busy I haven't even had time to scratch myself, and I've been itchy!

Holiday pressie knitting was a fight to the finish, I ended up staying up until 1pm on Christmas eve finishing off my sisters Noro gloves. Bonus was that she loved them.




Unfortunately my mother had the bright idea of going to my Grannies house on Christmas day, just for the day. after less than 5 hours of sleep I got up at 6am, had breakfast and did presents at Mums half asleep and then had to be on the road by 8am to get to Grans by 11am. We had lunch and then left again at about 4pm. Man was I tired! But it was good to be with family and hang out.

I get over-socialised very easily, so it was a bit difficult for me to be happy and bubbly the whole time over the busy period. Christmas, new years, and my birthday are all in 2 weeks of each other. There were lots of family BBQ's at Grandma's house, dinners with family friends, and catching up with good friends. Nice, but so much at once wears me out! Lee and I were invited to a new years party, but we ended up coming home and starting to paint the house instead, we just couldn't handle any more partying :)

The house looks SOOOOOO much better now, but it was a hard slog. we started out with 2 rollers and some brushes, we didn't even get one side of the house anywhere near finished in 3 whole days of work. After dehydration, sunburn and fatigue we decided to piss off the rollers and buy a paint gun. We broke the paint gun in about an hour..... don't ask me how! So we took it back to Bunnings (love them by the way), and hired a super cool industrial strenght awesome and kickarse paintgun for nearly $200 for over night. We then broke that in an hour too! Oh was I stressed :) Luckily we went back the next morning (at 8am) and had it fixed. The nice guy let us have the spray gun an extra night after a panicked 3pm call from Lee asking them pretty please if we can keep it overnight since it broke earlier. There was also drama with buying extra paint, I went to Magnet Mark (hisssss booooo) and the cocky bastard there mistinted the last 15L can of paint I got him to mix, and he sent me off empty handed to a near by paint shop. they then didn't have the paint we wanted (he tried to give me a different brand.... Ha! I went a bit nuts and screamed in the car, nearly scaring my poor little sister out of the chair). II then had a flash of brilliance and I went back to MM and asked the manager if I could have a 10l and a 4l can for the same price as a 15l, they agreed but in hindsight I should have asked for 2 10l cans the bastards).... I at least got a different guy to do the tinting for me, and the manager came and hovered around while he did it. LOL I hope the other guy got his stupid arse kicked. Any way on the 4th day we managed to do a good coat of paint with the spray gun to the whole rest of the house, well worth the money! My lovely little sis came and helped us, which helped make it more fun and less work.

BEFORE

AFTER

So what do ya think? Its not finished yet....

I have been having fun doing some knitting in my down time (which as been very little unfortunately). I have made good progress on Sylvi, the red cardi I fell in love with earlier, but I have made it in charcoal. I have done the back minus 3 of the flowers, and nearly 1 whole sleeve.


I have also started some pressies for my orange swap pal, which I need to get done before the 19th of Jan, so I have to get cracking. can't spill the beans on this but I will when it has been received!
Swaps are so awesome! I have had one of the best Birthdays ever this year, and I have been spoilt by some lovely people on Ravelry!

Present from Sproutknits

Present from Toffle (she made the bag and the stitch markers!)

And I have 2 more pressies to come! yay! I can't wait until I get to spoil my birthday group back :)

Oh and Lee got me 9 skeins of Malabrigo for my birthday, which I had to cast on with the day I got it to make the Amelia cardigan from the winter Knitty.


I could write even more, but I will save some for later.... need to post more often!

Life's good

Especially when you mention in passing that you want to be festive this year and put up a Christmas tree and you come home after a dull day at work and find THIS...


Sitting innocently in the lounge room! It is so pretty, it is fibre optic and changes colour. Squeal!

I have also recently discovered a new treasure trove The book depository. I have gone a bit nuts actually, I have bought 5 books in the last 2 weeks and 2 have already arrived, A gathering of Lace by Meg Swansen, and Knitting without Tears by EZ. They are both essential knitting library books, and they cost me less than $50 for both. Such as awesome online shop with free shipping. I have also recently added to my book stash from Ravelry destash pages, and other various places. I am loving them all!
There is nothing like spoiling yourself! plus I got a design helpy one as well but it didn't fit in (shame).

I am loving the whole Swap thing at the moment and am participating in the Orange Swap from Ravelrys Australian Swappers group. I have had so much fun shopping, knitting, and making little pressies for my spoiler. It is so much fun that I can see myself becoming quite addicted to swaps. I am saying this and I haven't even gotten a swap pressie yet. Man its gonna be bad arse!

hmmm I wonder what this will be...

Other good stuff.... I found out last week that I got the job that I wanted! I will be working in a college, in an alternate set up for year 9/10 students. This is a great next step for me and I am very excited. plus one of my very good friends will be my direct supervisor when she gets back to work from maternity leave. So very very happy (nice change I must say).

AND... Just found Yarn and Kisses online store, my lovely Lee bought me 9 skeins of Malabrigo for me for my birthday in January. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Plus I go on holidays in 5 more working days, and I get 5 weeks off. I may have to do a bit of work during the holidays, but I am looking forward to my new job so much that I will find doing it fun (I must be sick).

SWEET!