What I Did On My Weekend

There was assorted housework and coddling of scratchy-throated toddler (who shared it with me).
There was a toddler's teaparty - my small daughter turned 2 on Thursday!

In other news, I finished the Knucks for my son:

There was a Craft Fair in town, so I met up with Penni to go through, and Jen and Kate and Kirra from our snb at lunch, and may have had a little yarn follow me home...
- and some buttons too.

The first two balls have decided to be an Argosy scarf (pic soon, I promise), which I cast on last night in front of Doctor Who (WOOT!! The Doc is back in town!!!)
The sock yarn is going to speak to me after I find out the next SKP08 sock tomorrow. I have not quite finished the toe on my first Berlin, but I think I'll get it done tonight - I did another half-repeat and I think it will be nice now. I worked some more on my Wedge Hat, on my Jet vest, and picked up a long-neglected monkey sock and turned the heel.

And now Miss 2 is a-wailing (I stopped jigging her around upside down), and I must went.





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You read it here first!!!

Penni has declared that (aside from a very small dishcloth number that has already been organised and will cost next to nothing to post):
There Will Be No More Swaps For 6 Months - that's NONE until the 28th JULY!!!!
She has promised to blog it, I scribbled it on my copy of the closest thing I had to hand (my CeCe pattern notes), and there might even be a ticker on her blog someday soon (she didn't quite promise to do that, so go on over and barrack for one, 'mkay?). Too many swaps, too much stressing about contents and postage and waiting for things to arrive...

In Other News:
we KIP'd at our usual bakery, I started on version 2.0 of my bamboo/cotton CeCe, we talked about our new Ravelry Group Tassie Knitters (Ravelry link) and what to do with the Enormous Powers therein .... there was snb goss, knitty world goss, and Penni lent me 6 dvds to see me through the no-tv season! Now, however, 'tis time to start dinner proceedings, put on some washing, change some beds, other household chores etc etc etc.

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Fun with Friends

Yesterday I met up with Penni and Kim-from-Alaska at the Botanical Gardens for a little mid-month KIP. Penni and I had our two charming daughters, so our knitting was interspersed with doling out food and drink, arranging hats, wiping faces and removing important items from fingering proximity! Kim is working on a Swallowtail shawl, and fighting with border charts and stitch numbers and so on, so wish her luck! Penni was working on her Koigu sock, which comes out very pretty... oh and Kim showed us some Jitterbug, too, which she is turning into a wonderful pair of Monkeys! I did not go home with anyone else's lush sock yarn, but the urge to buy a little something special in honour of my birthday is getting hard to resist!
Here are some kitschy patterns Penni is lending me for ideas for the Aussie Tea Cosy swap (a Ravelry-facilitated event, watch the forum boards for the next one!)

Penni brought homemade scones, with some lush jam and cream, of which Miss 1 totally approved!


Penni also brought with her some birthday goodies for me! I am feeling very lucky!!
There's still some chocky left, but not much (I did share a little with the MOMD), and I tested the liquid-holding properties of the gorgeous mug yesterday afternoon - may I say, form and function match perfectly!! And the cloth is very cute (have fiddled with contrast and whatnot to try to make the pattern stand out - it's kind of coral-coloured in real life). It's now my official teacloth!

I was late yesterday morning, however, because as I crossed the backyard, the fence decided to pop apart!

This is the nearly put-back-together panel of fence - the top rail was not properly riveted in at the end (ie not at all), so after all the wind we've been having, it was obviously vibrated far enough out of whack that it just popped off in the next breeze (I'd like to think that it was the sheer power of my presence as I crossed the grass.....) And we got to meet the nice lady over the fence, who liked my miraculously-not-barking dogs! So, an eventful morning!!
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There was Knitting In Public this weekend!

Saturday afternoon was S'n'B, so I jauntily headed off, only 15 minutes late, to collect Penni and head into the city. About 3 blocks from my house I realised that I had not double-checked the directions to Penni's house, and couldn't quite remember the number either - all I had lurking behind my eyeballs was "turn right in front of the Caltex" and "about 300m" :{
But I had confidence in my ability to find her house anyway, and I was already late, and I didn't have me phone so I couldn't call home to get help from the MOMD, so merrily I continued along, found the right street and cruised along in it in as suspicious a manner as is possible in a suburban 4WD wagon. No joy, so around the block and back for a second pass - starting to feel pretty silly... Parked the car (after being looked at funny by the guy putting catalogues in people's mail boxes - the drive-by look as performed by scatty female on a Sat afternoon? weird...) and got out to walk back up the hill in search of a red car like Penni drove last time, or failing that, inspiration! I had an idea that #29 was close, so I knocked on the door and asked the lady, very definitely not a relative of Penni's, whether she knew a Penni who lived around here, has a young baby? She said hm, maybe, there was one living up there (vague wave up and left), but she didn't think that that was the name... So I asked if I could borrow her phone book for a minute, and discovered that Penni's house was number 30!! Furthermore, it was just up and to the left a bit!!!! (You wouldn't believe how difficult it can be to guess street numbers in Hobart - geographic proximity has little relationship with numerical order on opposite sides of the road!!!) So I ran straight back up the 45* angle path, blessing the past year's gym membership with every footfall, and started to dash down to the car so I could take it back up the road to Penni's place, but was halted mid-asphalt by Penni waving at me from her driveway ;P So I confessed my sins, and we sauntered down to the car (it's pretty hilly here, thus the ups and downs), and headed into the city to a trendy place called JamPacked (a cute pun which would take far too long to describe right now), to greet the peeps and get stuck into caffeine, cake and KIP!
At the s'n'b, I displayed my awesome Rock Candy Socks, to much admiration (thank you, thank you!), ordered tea and a brownie (and a truffle - but it was really small), and got out my First Ever Ballband Dishcloth, hoping I only had eight rows to go, so that I could triumphantly cast-off halfway through the s'n'b, and start my next pair of socks (printing out the pattern for which being one of the many reasons I was late). Penni, with painful truthfulness, told me that there are usually 13 brick rows, so I actually had 20 rows to go, not merely eight :P
I was not deterred: I had set myself a limit (a very tiny, barely there limit): no new cast-on till the dishcloth was done!! Then the tea and brownie arrived, and there was sipping and nibbling, there was scintillating conversation (yes Helen, I agree, the current Martha Jones was the chicky who became a CyberWoman in the previous series, and Saturday night's Doctor Who was excellent!!), there was knitting, there was tinking, and at the end of two hours, I had 1 row and the cast-off left to do:
An evening in front of Doctor Who (which was really really exciting so 1 row and casting off 45 stitches took the whole 45 minutes) and I have something pretty to show in the Sunday sunshine:
After Doctor Who I was allowed to start my next pair of socks - any guesses on the pattern? (not you, Penni!)




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Belated KIP blogging

My deepest apologies to my Knitty Peeps Penni and blogfree Jen - we had a bit of a KIP'n'cuppa on Sunday, and I did not immediately blog, and *gasp of horror* I forgot to take the good camera out of my bag and do pics!!!
So, not a good blogging week for me, obviously.
The KIP'n'cuppa was great, though; topics ranged from the unavoidable (what're you knitting?) to the hypothetical (what're you planning to knit?) to the cyberspatial (what knitty stuff have you seen recently on the net?). We also touched on work, family, Web 2.0, Library 2.0, whether any nuns still taught at Penni's workplace, (Jen used to go to school there way back when), why I talk in inches for little measurements (but also mix in a few mm for tiny things), the weather, etc etc etc.
I came home feeling fab after more than an hour of childfree conversation - the glow, despite all that children and showers and dinner and stories and housework could throw at me, lingered for hours....
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