A new project

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to win a pattern of my choice in one of my favourite groups on Ravelry. I chose the Happypotamus pattern from the fabulously talented Heidi Bears.

I was very disciplined and forced myself to finish off my shawl before starting a new thing. (Shawl needs to be blocked before it’s suitable for photos and the weather at the moment is not conducive to blocking.)

Anyway, that’s now done and I’ve made a start.

One of them up close.

And the start of a hexagon.

They go pretty fast. I have a total of 5 motifs finished at the moment. I crocheted while playing an Australia version of Monopoly: Squatter. Gorgeous Girl is very taken with the game. We played for an hour and a half before calling it a day. Today was a public holiday and our planned excursion was cancelled due to inclement weather. Thankfully she was happy with lunch out at a fast food restaurant and a game of Squatter.

It makes me happy that the project uses the African Flower hexagon pattern and I’m using South African yarn. I won’t have a lot of time to work on this for the next little while as uni work is keeping me pretty busy, and I’m going to be presenting a paper at a conference in the near future and need to get that polished and organised as well. But this is a good put in a few minutes here and there project.

I agreed to host 12 people for dinner tomorrow for Gorgeous Man’s work, so that is going to keep me busy. I’ve planned a simple menu and Gorgeous Man will help cook, so it shouldn’t be too stressful. With 15 people to feed I’m going to use plastic plates and cups and not be ashamed of that…

What are you working on?

 

 

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Daily Life

I’ve spoken a few times about our trip to school every day. When we moved here at the beginning of 2012 the road in and out of town from where we live was single lane in each direction. Now the road is being up-graded to a two-lane divided road. But while the construction continues traffic is slow.

Today on the way home from school we had to stop for traffic of a different sort.

A group of these cattle had wandered out of their paddock. Yesterday we had to stop in this spot for a flock of sheep. This is  a section of road that hasn’t been worked on yet. Eventually the construction will extend all the way out to here.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your glimpse into my daily drive.

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Dyeing yarn again

On the weekend Gorgeous Girl asked if we could dye some more yarn. I fished around in the stash (starting to run out of white dyeable yarn) and found this wool/acrylic blend in cream.

We did two batches. First a blue and deep purple.

I have to confess that Gorgeous Girl had planned this to be a blue and dark pink. When the pink wasn’t dark enough for her liking I went to add a drop of black food colouring and too much came out. Time to invest in an eyedropper I think.

Still, I think it works. The purple sections are a bit darker than the photo, almost black.

Next up we dyed some pink and purple yarn. The grape KoolAid turned out a bit darker than we expected, so we over-dyed it with some pink food colouring. I’m calling this Dusky Rose.

Another shot.

I think I need to try and find more white or cream wool yarn when I’m in Australia over Christmas so we can continue to play with the dye pots. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and find some unloved yarn in some Op Shops (thrift stores).

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Little finish

Life’s been busy here for the past week. So I only have a little finish to share. Most of this was done in the car (as a passenger), a small hat for charity.

Gorgeous Man says it looks like a flapper’s hat from the 1920s. I knitted a flower to go with it.

I’m really pleased with how this came together. I hope it brings joy to someone.

Gorgeous Girl and I dyed some more yarn today, at her request. At this stage I’m considering one batch a success and one is more ‘meh’ but I’ll make a final assessment once it is dry and re-skeined.

Pictures to follow.

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Playing with yarn

I go a bit mad in our traffic as a passenger if I don’t have anything to do with my hands, it just seems like such a waste of time! So on the way out of the door on Sunday I quickly grabbed a spare ball of yarn from the stash (left over from a pre-Ravelry project) and started crocheting in the car.

A basic baby beanie that will be donated to charity.

I have some lace knitting on the go as well, but that requires too much concentration to do in the car. This shawl:

Pattern is free from Knitty.com. Frost Diamonds. The yarn is much more purple in real life and, because it’s a wool/silk blend, has quite a sheen to it. This yarn was my souvenir to myself from our trip to South America last year.

Another photo because I’m loving how this is turning out.

I have the flu. Sunday and Monday I felt terrible, but have turned the corner today and am starting to feel better.

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Playing with Paper

I think I am fighting off the flu. I feel very ordinary, so let me share with you some  happy paper play I did a while back.

Birthday cards.

A masculine one.

A feminine one.

And a scrapbook page using a very old photo from 1997. I’m thinking, in hindsight, that I should have left the edges of the page bare rather than painting on it…

Hardly seems possible that I’ve been married that long. We got married at the height of the Australian summer, while I have some traditional park/manicured garden photos, we also took some in the Australian bush.

Now if you’ll excuse me I think I’m going to lie back down and have a little nap.

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A little hat

A few weeks ago Gorgeous Girl and I dyed some yarn.

Last week I was in need of an easy car project and so cast on a hat for Gorgeous Girl. A few trips in the car later and it was done.

Complaining about the flash.

I like the way it striped on the top.

I think I’m going to have to break out the dyepots and dye up some more yarn.

 

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