Live in Coburg

I'm off to Coburg Mall this morning to help install the yarnstorming. I spent a couple of hours last night and this morning making up some extra bits of hand-knitting to supplement the great work done by the kids.

This is knitting up close and personal. I use my fingers as the knitting needles, so there's nothing between me and the yarn. The only drawback with this approach is that I am literally attached to the knitting. Where I go, it goes. There's no way to put the knitting down until it's finished. So I was confined to my armchair for the duration of each ball of wool. My record this morning was 100 grams in about 35 minutes. I was hanging out for a cup of coffee and needed to finish before I could put the pot on the stove.

Not to Be

I wasn't too sure about this yarn from the start. I thought the colour combination probably had too much contrast to work well as a marle yarn, but I decided to give it a go anyway. Then somehow I ended up with more yarn on my bobbin than I'd anticipated, so when I went to ply it off using the usual shortcuts I have for samples I ended up with a handful of snarls. At that point I stopped.

Time to step back, take a deep breath and let it sit for a while. Perhaps I can cut it up and card it into a different colour combination.

Too Good to be True?

I bought jeans today. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to buy a size smaller than I'd hoped (and two sizes smaller than I'd feared).

What really made me smile was this:

Now I can defy gravity!

That's such a weight off my mind.

Next I'll be floating over to the sewing machine to take them up a couple of inches, then I'm all set.  

Keeping Up

There are so many little maintenance tasks needed just to keep things going. I've been attending to a few of those today.

My spinning wheel is much happier with a bit of sewing machine oil on the moving parts. And I wove in the loose ends on the big blue granny square. Then, of course there's always laundry, but that doesn't warrant a photo. 

Colour Blending

I've been spinning up these sea greens today.

One hundred grams done and one hundred grams to go. It's a while since I've played with these multi-marle combinations. I used a similar yarn for my recent ruffled garter stitch scarf, but these colours are darker. I have to confess, I couldn't really remember which coloured tops I'd used, so I just had a stab at it. I'm hoping they will match well enough to make a hat to go with the scarf.

Granny to the Max

Installation of the yarn-storming of Coburg Mall for Coburg Carnivale is next weekend. Sussex Neighbourhood House is participating and I've had a small part in preparations. Yesterday I took my contribution up a notch. Sorting through my yarns I came across some bright blue which I knew I couldn't use for its intended purpose. That's because one of the yarns I'd twisted in--with the otherwise lovely silk--is quite harsh. It looks delighfully fluffy, but it's not soft and luscious to the touch. I decided it could go to the yarn-storming. I wound several thicknesses together to make a thicker yarn and got stuck into it with a 5 mm hook. Here's how it looks now.

Since I hadn't planned on making this, it doesn't have a spot allocated to it. I'm guessing it'll come in handy somewhere though. I'll just keep stitching at it until I've run out of yarn and then throw it into the mix. There's the ball I'm currently working on plus one more skein. And it's worked up remarkably quickly. My friend W dropped in for a cuppa this morning and I got several rows done while we chatted away. Most of my other current project require a bit of concentration so this is a welcome change: quick, easy and bright.  

Hot Hat

After the success of the black bunny wristies with blue trim. I decided to try for a matching hat.

I used the bunny yarn alone for the top, by which time--you guessed it--I was tired of plain black already. I added a strand of my hand-dyed lace-weight alpaca for the rest of the crown of the hat. I was pleasantly surprised at how much that little bit of blue lifted the whole thing. The other benefit was that it made for a denser, firmer fabric. Just right for a real hat structure. Then for the brim I dropped out the bunny yarn and used four strands of the alpaca to add the extra "pop" of blue. The whole thing is done in single crochet stitch (or double crochet depending which language you speak). I like the way it's holding its shape and I'm looking forward to how warm it will be now that the colder weather is here. What's more I have enough of both yarns to make a scarf to complete the outfit. More on that anon.