Building

My, what a while it's been. Lots have things have happened since I last made a post, and lots of things haven't.

I have my own place now, and the whirlwind of the past few months has begun to subside, leaving the space to build up peace and pretties around me. Yes, the house is a mess, the dishes are piling up and the rain's meant no washing's gotten dry in a week, and yet;

Socks are being knitted

Yarn is being dyed

And kitties are being loved (this is my baby girl Stella)

Lazy Weekend

So, it turns out I didn't get much done yesterday on the knitting front. I knitted in the car (even got to claim the front seat and make dad sit in the back so I didn't stab the dog) but didn't have a chance until that evening, and by that point I was so exhausted I just slept.

I did get the ribbing done

And earlier in the week I made myself a little bag to put it all in

Also on the needles (the same needles actually, which is why the sock is on waste yarn) is a fun wee knit that I'm testing, using this

I'm hoping that if I power through the rest of today, I can get the first part of the knit done and blocking before the week starts and classes with it, they do have a habit of sucking up lots of time and energy.

Just a little touch of fate

Sometimes, life takes you it. It comes at you full force and sideways and sends you flying and all you can do is hold on for dear life and hope that when you land you'll be some semblance of okay. Sometimes it happens.

Truth is though, it's much easier for life to knock you down when you're standing on one foot with your arms full of homework, unfinished knitting and dirty washing.

I have five days at work starting tomorrow, which is more than I've done in a long time, and I have decided to make sure that my feet are firmly on the ground and that I have done everything I can to stop things going wrong. I have clean clothes, put in their own special drawer to stop that awful early morning rush for pants. I know where my shoes are. I'm going to make a stirfry to take for lunch. Most stunningly, my room is tidy. Spotless.

With all that sorted, I can happily potter about with my yarn and show off my recent additions. I warn you now, they are numerous.

Some of this arrived in the mail, but most of it's from the yarn sale I fell into.

These two have buddied up and decided to be a shawl. I'm quite happy with that plan.

This is a truly delicious yarn from AppleTreeKnits. Merino/Silk fingering in 'New Growth'.

Rebekah and I also found a hank of Merino/Cashmere that we plan to dye.

There's also some blue-green scrummyness that you can see is already on it's way to being a shawl, but I can't seem to upload the closeup of that, so more when I've made some progress.

Polymer clay hooks + cases

I have been having rather a lot of fun with colour in the last few days, first off, I grabbed some of my crochet hooks, some polymer clay and made these:

  

And then of course, they wouldn't fit back in the case that they came in, and knowing that I'm prone to losing my hooks unless they're in a case, I had to make one for them!

I am quite proud of my little creations, and have been using the hooks as much as possible. In fact, I picked up some insanely cheap yarn at an opshop today that I have great plans for!

Sun-shiny

Fact of the day: My favourite colour is orange.

Second fact of the day: Nice orange yarn is near-on impossible to find in NZ.

The solution to this problem?

A ball of cream yarn, some food colouring and a bit of bravery.

I dyed my own wool! It was a really fun process, not to mention easy and safe. I used this tutorial, I wasn't expecting fantastic results, it just seemed too easy, but the yarn speaks for itself:



It's actually more orange than red, but the colour saturation is something to be marveled at. I apologise for the slightly odd quality of the photo, winter's set in and finding decent light for photos is getting harder. I also forgot to take a picture of it in it's skein-y glory before Ma whipped up these neat dino spikes.

I've also used it in an owl hat that I'll post when it's finished, and there's still some left over. One thing's for certain, this sun-shiny yarn is brightening up my dull winter days.