Conversation Starter

I was sitting at the hairdresser yesterday afternoon when I received a message from young R: "Could you maybe help me with some sewing repairs?". We were planning a quick catch up and easy tea in the evening. Speaking from experience I sent back, "I'll have a go. Do I need any supplies?" "Yeah, maybe a heavy duty needle . . . it's a hole in a bag." R has just returned from a World Challenge trip to South East Asia. My imagination started to fill in possibilities of what "a hole in a bag" might mean.  I'm always amused and a little bit proud when my friends' children treat me as the "go to" person for fixing things, though sometimes I feel that a magic wand is the required tool rather than any of my textile supplies. I wasn't planning to go home before our catch up. Nor was I sure that I had suitable needles at home. And they're always useful things to have around. Instead of coming home to search my studio, I stopped off at a local fabric store to pick up these:

Either the right needle would be in this aray, or it would be a "magic wand" job. Picking these up resulted in a friendly conversation with a new shop assistant. I came away with requests for information about the various sewing and quilting classes I'm involved with in local Neighbourhood Houses--that's another type of conversation I love.

The repair job turned out to be "doable". The bag was reasonably well made and just one seam had come undone at a wear point. Despite my impressive choice of needles, I ended up repairing the seam in layers. my fingers just don't have the strength of an industrial machine to get through eight thicknesses of bag fabric!

This morning making sure I took the set of needles out of my handbag was a priority. I'm flying interstate in a couple of days. I can just imagine these sharp metal objects showing up at the security screening point. Now there's a conversation I'd rather avoid. 

Hot Off the Needles

I put this fun scarf together last night. Big wool plus big needles made a really quick knit. And the colours had me burning along, watching for the next hot combination. This is one of the "big wools" I'm putting together to go to CCCK. It's a lot like the "fat singles" I made a few days ago, but this one is wool rovings I picked up from a factory clearance. I've spun them very lightly and plied with a hardly there fine yarn. I made a mistake with the plying yarn and it didn't pick up any dye. You'll get an idea of how fine it is by the fact that it hardly shows up in the photo. Since I wasn't going to sell it like that, I decided to use it for a trial run or demo. One skein of big wool makes a generous chunky scarf when knitted on 20 mm needles. That's a good thing. And the shop has lots of 20 mm needles--I checked. Another couple of skeins of fat singles are on my agenda for this weekend. And a bit more of tidying up around the place, so I can enjoy my activities with room to move.