Teal Yarn Continued

I've still got at least half a dozen balls of this teal 8-ply yarn after completing the blanket. It's a cotton/acrylic. It's surprisingly solid--densely spun. I don't know what I was thinking of making when I bought it, but it looks like I bought enough for a jacket. That never eventuated. Now I'm nearly half way through a cushion cover. I'm using single crochet stitches, so it will be nice and strong. Next I think I'll experiment with a the pattern for a cap which I've had in mind for a while. Meanwhile there are balls of shiny tencel in the box near the armchair also waiting for some creative attention. Thankfully they're not all the exact same colour or I'd be very bored very quickly. As it is, I think it will be a while before I move on from this teal yarn phase.

Enough!

A few days ago I thought I was about half way through this crochet blanket. Now I've declared it finished. In the pic it's folded in half with both fringes on the right-hand side. I'm thinking about doubling the fringes before I tie them off: to make it a bit richer at the edges and to use up just a bit more of the yarns I've collected.

I always find it hard to judge how large to make these blankets. This one will tuck under my feet and come up to my shoulders when I've got the recliner out on the armchair. That seems like a good size to me. My taller friends might wish for a bit more length, but there are at least two more blankets available in the living room, so that will be just fine. Now I get to chose my first project to make with the leftovers.

Life

My friend L sent me this pic last night:It's the nectarine which we vigorously dug from my back garden last week end. I told you she'd gone home to soak it in a reviving concoction of seasol and compost. It looks like that was very effective. We were hoping the flower buds wouldn't drop off. Not only have they hung on, they're literally blooming.

Meanwhile there has been much more digging activity in my back garden. Nothing as cute as the nectarine this week: mainly clumps of dietes. I have decided that if I every need to build an air-raid shelter, I will plant dietes over the top of it. They are among the toughest things I have met. There were eight clumps in my tiny back garden. Five have been dug up and shipped out. One is lying in pieces waiting for a trip to its new home and two are tenaciously holding on. My mission for today is to make them let go. I wish I knew some enthusiastic basket weavers. Failing that I'll have to do a couple of trips to the green dump.

Multiplication Problem

I started this blanket a few weeks ago.I was at the beginning of my big clear out and wanted something cosy to sit with in the armchair while contemplating the changes in my life. I also wanted to use up a couple of boxes of yarn I had in the sewing room. Of course I had to buy a few other yarns to mix up the colours and add some variety. Now I can see a problem emerging: the blanket is probably about half done. I'm thinking of it as a generous lap blanket for one person. But I'm nowhere near halfway through my yarns. I don't seem to be making a dent in either the original yarns I planned to use up, nor the extras I bought to vary the mix. I know I've thrown away a few ball bands, so I must have worked through at least a few balls, but I can't see the hole in the pile where they came from. I'm casting my eyes around the living room, looking for things to transform with crochet. There are a couple of large cushions currently covered in a simple cream fabric. They will have to be the first candidates. Then I have friends who might like a spring scarf in some of these colours . . . Meanwhile I'll keep stitching away in my moments of contemplation and see if the pile gets any smaller.

Waiting Game

I submitted my application to the Sydney Rd, Brunswick traders yesterday. Now I have to sit tight for a couple of weeks to hear the outcome. I don't find it easy to sit tight.
Sitting tight is also on the agenda for my Shed/studio project. I dropped in to the Council offices yesterday to check on the permit process. It's taken a week for the application to make its way into the system: from the actual mailbox to when it appears on the computer. The next step is waiting for allocation to a planner. Once it's allocated it will then be considered. The two week "fast track" process I've been told about is apparently immobilised by the delays in getting the applications to the planners for consideration. Did I say I'm not good at sitting tight. I'll probably make a couple of calls today to see if there's anything else I can do. Not that there aren't plenty of things to be getting on with at home. I must remember to keep calm and breathe slowly. Oh, that's so hard!

Context

My top task for today is to finalise my application for the Sydney Rd Traders' Windows/Frames exhibition. I've based my work on things found in garden sheds and Op shops. The centrepiece is the freeform knitting I've been working on. It's spun and knitted from 20-something year old fleece kept in my friend S's garden shed. Photographing the work was an interesting challenge. I needed to find a space without too many distractions and a perspective from which to take the photo which wouldn't catch me in the mirror. I ended up in my back hallway, taking the photo from outside the door so as to get the distance I needed. This is one of the pics I'm not going to use in the application. You can see all the clutter outside my back door reflected in the mirror behind the chair. I can submit two shots, so the second will be a close up of the knitting. The mirror is a key part of what I want the viewer to see, though. It helps to make the context of the piece part of the story. And since I don't know where this will be displayed, that uncertainty becomes part of the story too. It's been exciting to explore the possibilities as I go along. Now I need an "artist's statement" of less than fifty words. Then to print out my pics and head down to Brunswick to submit the whole thing before lunch time. Hmmm, it must be time for a coffee!

Paper Power

I'm on a mission to make more room in my home. Some things are hard to sort out. Others just require a certain resolution. Take my files, for instance. I got rid of a filing cabinet last year when I had my floors redone. I bought a couple of filing drawers that would fit under the desk in my sewing room. At the time I thought I could simply transfer the files from one place to the other--not a problem. Well there was a problem: the new filing drawers were a smaller size than the old ones. I don't mean that they just had less capacity. The actual files were shorter, so my old hanging files wouldn't fit on the new rails. Suddenly tackling my files was just too hard. They've been stacked in boxes under my desk ever since. This week I've been ruthless. Here's my power tool: A heavy-duty paper shredder and a simple decision that any bills pre-2005 are definitely not required. Nor are dockets for non-tax-deductible items. Four bags of shredded paper later and there's a lot more room to move around here. The shredded paper is used by my favourite pet shop for their animal cages. It seems quite appropriate that some of the old complications of my life should become toilet paper for cute furry beasts.