Posts Tagged ‘tehshiny’

The times, they are a changin’

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Life has been a bit of a rollercoaster over the last 8 weeks.

monsta

The Monster is still without arms, legs or facial features.

cardiganus-interruptus

The pretzel cardigan remains about 10 rows and a button band away from completion.

beddy-byes

The bed frame is still taking up most of the downstairs hall, and is still held together by spit and hope….

hope-and-spit

eco-system

The mini eco-system that is the back garden is still flourishing, and the neighbours’ adorable black cat comes to visit and play in it on a very regular basis.

…..so what exactly has changed in the two months I’ve left unblogged?

Lots.

I’ve been doing everything other than blogging, because I’ve been run off my feet on a regular basis. I might not have a proper job, but you’d never know it. I’ve even had to splash out on a proper filofax to keep track of things.

The end of June was mostly spent dealing with tax bits, which I’m still dealing with and am not going to bore you with. By the time my mother’s birthday rolled around in July, things were in full swing. She had her first break out of the rut in two years, and came to Dublin with my dad for a couple of days. As soon as that was over, it was into gaming high season for one of the many gaming groups I’m involved with.

vanessa-olden

All very glamourous, but rather exhausting.

From there, I moved rapidly on to working on a short movie…

belvo-set

digging

…then got my dig on. Indiana Jones, eat your heart out!

Myself and Husbeast are working on a show at the moment as well; the last couple of weeks have been mostly filled with propmaking, painting sets and sewing costumes. It’s awesomely good fun. I’ve missed being involved in theatre and film so much since my dad got sick, and I’m finally starting to make my way back in to it.

I haven’t entirely abandoned my yarny goodness, even though it has been entirely moved to the back burner for the last while. It’s on the way back with a vengence. Have to either fit more hours in the day, or learn to survive on far less sleep in order to cram everything in - that’s the tricky bit.

In an effort to get some mindless knitting going (as nothing complicated should be attempted when sleep depped or stressed) I started my Christmas present for my mother.

tablerunner

It’s the  Adobe table runner from Summer’s Interweave Knits. Amazingly simple, and will look fab when finished and blocked. My mother’s dining table is about two feet longer than I had realised though, so I need to put in some serious time on this yet. The yarn is some indigo dyed fingering weight cotton that I picked up from Avoca. I had been trying to come up with a way to use it, and had my lightbulb moment on flicking through IK. The slight downside is the milage.  Even after finishing this runner, I’ll have enough left for an entire set of placemats and coasters for her birthday next year…..and still have most of a kilo of the stuff left. It’s not making my stash knitdown any easier, I’ll tell ya!

Yup, the stash knitdown. Seeing as I have a yarn budget of precisely zero at the moment, I’ve been reassessing my stash. Some is going to be sold off, because I have a lot of pretty things that I bought in a moment of weakness and will most likely never get around to knitting. The rest is finally going to be worked through, a piece at a time.  I have the yarn to make a central park hoodie for almost three years, but haven’t even downloaded the pattern yet!

Am I the only one to have the bag of yarn for some jumper or cardigan or other lurking in the stash for years? With the pattern picked out, and all the right sized needles ready to go? I may not be crazy lady with cats, but I sure seem to be “crazy lady with RowanSpun”…

Water of life

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

We woke up on Sunday morning to sun and glorious blue skies. After some quick consulting with the all-knowing Google, we decided to take a road trip.

The weather was perfect for driving, and as we were heading to the midlands and not the beach, most of the traffic was going in the other direction. We were even in such a good mood that when the googlemap directions turned out to have been written by blind monkeys and were abandoned in favour of my internal satnav, we were still smiling.

It was a day on which there were many reasons to smile.

The first day this year that the birkies have been worn outside without risk of frostbite, for one!

sandals

Wow…I need a pedicure.

The drive (eventually) brought us to what is traditionally known as “culchieland” by those in Dublin….and by a lot of people outside it as well. County Offaly has been the butt end of jokes for countless years. Most involve sheep or having an extra finger/toe.      Our current Taoiseach (Prime minister) is known as BIFFO (Big Ignorant F***er From Offaly).  It’s quite a gorgeous place though, for all the slagging off we give it. 40 shades of green doesn’t even come close. It’s also home to one of the last remaining distilleries in Ireland.

Yes, dear readers, I drove all the way to see whiskey on my sunny Sunday.

more-posing

Not that there were many objections from HusBeast, who even deigned to pose for a photo.

The Tullamore Dew distillery was in the building behind him for most of it’s life, but was recently moved out in favour of this “modernisation” malarkey. The building has been turned into a heritage centre, and while it’s very much geared up for TransAtlantic tourists, it was an interesting way to spend an hour or so. There are displays about the history of the town, whiskey making, and some nice bits of old kit

bottlefiller

like this bottlefiller, which was manned by an amazingly creepy looking waxwork of a bottlefiller operator.

At the end of our wander around, we headed downstairs to the bar that’s not really a bar. It used to be a working bar at some stage in the past, and now sits empty and forlorn looking in between busloads of tourists. We had a sample of Tullamore Dew, which is not my favourite whiskey by a long shot, I must admit. It’s good in cocktails and fab in Irish coffees, but I prefer my whiskey without an umbrella in it. Irish mist has been associated with big hair and shoulderpads and other pinnacles of 80’s fashion in my head since childhood, and it turns out that it’s actually a nice drink too.

Naturally, we had to take home a souvenier. Ahem.

whiskeypost

It’s a bottle of Heritage, which is their special distillation. When it’s gone, it’s gone  - that kind of deeley. No idea what it tastes like, as the nearest pub didn’t actually have any Tullamore Dew at all. Not the smartest marketing strategy, I feel.

Since then, I’ve mostly been knitting. The Tangled Yoke is flying along.

tangled-yoke-part-one

Flying for me, at least. The body section is done, sleeve one is done, and sleeve two is coming along nicely. Once that’s finished, it’s on to the slightly complicated part. This is actually the first Interweave Knits pattern that I’ve knitted (as opposed to queuing and never getting around to knitting) and I’m getting into the swing of their pattern-writing style nicely.

If that wasn’t enough, I’ve also had the dyepot going. I’ve posted off a custom order today, and I’ve been working on something new to boot. Here’s a sneek preview

new-kits

More to come soon!

Lions and tigers and bears…oh my!

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

Well, something like that anyway.

The lions were off being lions and were distinctly not cooperating for the camera. Bloody celebrities.

The bears were cute as all hell and I’d like to take one home.

redpanda

Yes, technically the is a bear. A red panda bear!

The tigers, much like the lions, were off sleeping and being far less pose-y than is necessary for blogginess. Durn cats.

The day at the zoo was fab. It’s so much removed from the last trip I made there when I was 12 - it was really like a different place. Huge open areas for animals, and plenty of places for them to hide from the bad weather when it arrives. Or cameras, in our case. We had a picnic lunch with a rather fabulous guest

pretties

…and naturally had to stop off at the city farm, where the pigs were sleepy

piggies

but the sheep were more than helpful.

sheeps

Yes, I realise that this makes me a massive knitting nerd, because I went to the zoo and saw sheep. Personally I found it more than a little disturbing that a “city farm” has become part of the zoo because some people have never seen a sheep up close. Or a cow. Or a pig.

I am a firm believer in knowing where your food comes from, especially if that food has a face. I die a little inside when stories about kids thinking that hamburgers come from McDonalds or Tesco and are shocked when it has to be explained to them that actually, it’s a bit of a cow (though given the meat content of a lot of sausages and burgers, not that much. Urgh.)

But I digress.

My “welcome to the umemployed club” paperwork arrived this week, which was strange. Even though I knew it was coming, it made things all the more real. This reality was added to in bright technicolour when I spent most of Thursday in the social welfare office, sitting around and waiting to be seen by someone who would tell me that I didn’t need to fill out an AB form, but an aB form and could I go back to the end of the queue. After three hours of sitting around feeling like I was in the waiting room from BeetleJuice, I was starting to despair in humanity and the Irish Government. Surely if these offices are that understaffed in every major town in the country, they could, oh, I don’t know……hire some of the huuuuuuge numbers of people who are standing around twiddling their thumbs to do some of the work?

The upcoming elections here are going to be epic. Absolutely epic.

Other things I’ve been doing over the last week or two (other than blogging…..no biscuit): cleaning. Lots of cleaning. Huge amounts of decluttering. Quite a bit of knitting.

shrug-folded

It’s another One Skein Wonder, in my own organic merino. ‘Cos I may as well get some squishy for myself!

I’ve also taken up the Tangled Yoke again, and it’s going fabulously well. I didn’t manage to get the photo off the camera before the battery died though, so that will have to wait til my next post.

I’ve been doing some dyeing as well, both custom orders and some new skeins for the store, which will be going up this evening. Here’s a sneeky preview

cathbad-2

A strange, up-and-down sort of fortnight, overall. I’m not sure if things like “getting all (yes, all!) of the neverending laundry finished” and “going dust bunny hunting under the bed” count as being blogworthy though. While I’m feeling rather accomplished about tackling these tasks that I’ve been putting off for an embarassingly long amount of time, they hardly rank as exciting.

Well, maybe just a little…

*hic*

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

I had planned on posting some shiny new piccies today, but we managed to leave the camera on in the bag last night and completely drain the battery. The first “d’oh” in a series, no doubt.

BSJ continues apace. I’m now at the bit where I need to start working on bits in the middle, rather than entire lines. I think I’ll just be bringing a sock to Tipperary tomorrow.

Or later today, as it is at this stage. We had friends over this evening for gaming (I ran old skool AD&D) and dinner and I’ve consumed most of a bottle of epic-ly good red at this stage. I’m wrecked tired ( and just a little smashed, if I’m honest), but much fun was had by all. The thought of having to get up in just over five hours and drive a hundred miles is not making me a happy camper, but I’ll deal with that in five hours, I guess.

I’ve had a few really encouraging emails and even a few custom orders, so between that and coding the website I should have a busy week ahead.

I’m also loving Apple so hard right now. I’ve been having problems with my shuffle for a few weeks, and having exhausted all my options I rang their tech support line yesterday. They said they’d send me a new shuffle, free of charge, and all I have to do is send my defective one back. I was expecting it to arrive early next week and was completely shocked when it arrived by UPS before lunch today. Best customer service ever. I’ve also gained a gig in the process, as my defective shuffle is only one gig, and the replacement is a 2gb. Awe-fracking-some.

Time for some sleep now methinks. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Begosh and bego….*smash*

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

While I am endlessly proud of my country and her history, today is an important day for many reasons. One is that I have a beer beside me, my Tangled Yoke in the works and it’s not even the weekend. Second is that this is the biggest day in the year for my “For the love of KnitPicks, please stop calling it “St. Patty’s Day” ” campaign.

It’s going better this year than last. I’ll clock that up as a minor success. Then again, I’ve been avoiding the Oirish stuff like the plague today.

Being the vaguely productive type, I’ve got some more goodies up on the shop now. Laceweight in baby alpaca. I may cry when I have to hand it over to customers. It’s one of the squishiest, most edible things I’ve ever made. I might even have to keep a skein for myself to make some long underwear out of or something.

My STR socks have not only been finished, but I’m wearing them! Today is just not a day for shoes. I had them on for an hour this morning as we went to the bottle bank and that’s enough of that, thanks much.

image054

I love them to death. The colours are perfect for me, they’re really comfy, and for a change they’re for me and not HusBeast or someone else. Bwah ha ha haaaa.

Tangled Yoke is coming along. It takes aaaages to knit a single row, as it’s all in one piece, but there’s enough done now so that I feel I have more to show than a rather large cast on.

image057

I’m not even half way through the first ball of Felted Tweed yet, so I am slightly optimistic that I’ll get through it without having to turn up at the door of This Is Knit in tears five minutes before they close on some Saturday evening, begging them for one more skein. Of any colour at all.

Anyway, it being the day that’s in it, I’m going to stop typing, put my laptop away, and go beat the bejaaaaaaysus out of Darth Vader with a lightsabre. Did I mention how much Lego Star Wars on the Wii rocks? Cos it really does.

image058

Lá fhéile Pádraig shona do gach éinne. Sláinte!

Overkill, much?

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

I’ve officially hit max capacity on projects. I’m at 4 WIPs now, which is the most I think I’ve had on the go since I first learned to knit. While I realise that some people have more WIPs than finished projects to their names, I am normally very strict at keeping my project basket as free as possible.

It’s possibly a form of OCD or something. Personally I think it’s a reflection of the fact that I get distracted by teh shiny quite easily (some would say that I actively launch myself in that direction on a regular basis) and if I didn’t make myself either finish or frog projects, then I’d be living in a house of WIPs and not much else.

Honestly, one of them needs to be frogged. I started some megaboots socks a full eight weeks ago on the train home, and have progressed no further than the toe. It’s progress, and in the right direction, but there’s not a hope in hell of me getting them done any time soon, and I swear they really are taunting me from the WIP basket.

The handbag project is, as usual, socks. My STR socks are still moving along, but they really only get attention on the train to and from work. Unless I fall asleep. I’ve about an inch to go before I get to rib away to my hearts content.

heathered-retro

This cheeky little minx is the Retro Redux shrug from Lace Style. It’s mostly true to the pattern, though I couldn’t resist a little fidgeting with it, as is my way. I’m up to the end of the first “arm” and the next needle size up. Which I don’t have.

Argh.

I’m starting to think that this thing does not want to be knitted. By me, at least. I was in my LYS on Saturday and picked up some needles for another project, and forgot the 6mm needles that I needed for this. I did a mad five-minutes-before-closing dash there again this week and picked up my sixes. Knitting away last night, smug as a….smug thing, I got to the next line of the pattern that advised me to move on to my largest needles. You know, the 6.5mm ones that I don’t actually possess?

Did I get stressed? No. Did I wonder how I got to this point in my life without a set of 6.5mm needles? Nuh uh.  Did I hurl my project across the room, questioning the parentage of everyone in the room in the process? Nope!

I did what any knitter in the same situation would do.

I cast on another project.

tangled-yoke-start

Two hours later I had what essentially amounts to a yarn pretzel.

The second smallest size of Eunny Jang’s Tangled Yoke cardigan requires a 269 stitch cast on. While this will be awesome for the lack of sewing at the end, I nearly went blind and insane in the process. It seems that I lose my ability to count when tired and/or stressed. First attempt I had 267 stitches. That had to go. Second attempt I was clever. I got HusBeast to hold both ends of the circ while I, looking like someone who should clearly be on meds, went along the cable and counted each stitch. Twice.

I’m going to completely ignore the fact that it took me an average time of 35 minutes to a row by the time I got passed the epic casting on and reached the stage in the photo above.

Now that there’s some actual fabric (all one inch of it) it’s a much easier beast to tame. I’m even feeling brave enough to take it to SnB this evening. In a pub.

Perhaps a lifeline might be a good idea….

A little light larceny in the morning

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

I am still camera-less, almost a year after my cybershot was lifted by some toerag in the Louvre. We’re hoping to replace it when we get HusBeast’s tax back, but I’ve been making do with my less-than-optimal camera phone of late.

Which is why when the opportunity to point to someone elses piccies arises, I take the chance. My etsy shop is still brand spanking new, and I realise that some of the photos aren’t great. I didn’t realise how not-great until some good lighting and photography at Saturday mornings stitch and bitch made me go “oooooh”.

I bring you Márta

marta

…from GaietyGirl Fibre Arts.

There’s an assortment of other yarn in the background. This particular skein (along with the yummy cookie) is courtesy of KneeHigh and TeaandCakes on Ravelry, as is this fab pile up piccie..

yarnpile

More photos of our various shenannigans are over at the Dublin Knit Collective page.

The fun bit about the next picture is that it’s my yarn! These are Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang, as knitted up by the lovely MorningSprite.

mebh

The purple yarn is my sock (fingering) weight, and the colourway is Mébh.

It’s just so cool to see piccies of things that I’ve made up in the wild, as it were! It more than makes up for the exhausting weekend (though I did get to see Watchmen) and the late night last night (due to gaming) and the 700+ spam messages that I had to clear out of the blog this morning.

I’m currently downing coffee like it’s going out of style in an attempt to stay awake, but for the first time in a long, long while, I’m feeling that wonderful flutter of confidence in myself and my plans for the future.

Bloom where you’re planted

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

Today is an overcast, blah sort of day in Dublin. The walk from the train station to the office found me feeling overtired and a little sorry for myself (insomnia, how I hate you) but things improved from there, I’m happy to say.

flytrap

My flytrap flowered!! The office has been an insect-free zone for a while now, but it’s still doing well.  If I was feeling particularly philosophical today, I’m sure I’d find a lesson in that somewhere…

The unofficial theme of today seems to be flora. Not all of it faring as well as my pot plant though.

tree

I mean, seriously…

who doesn’t chuck out their (real) Christmas tree until it’s almost March? I can be a total lazy packrat myself, but that seems just a little excessive to me. It did give me a giggle and a WTF moment, so that’s an upside I guess.

The theme of sorting out my stash is continuing (despite little progress in the actual knitting department over the last day or so) and there are a few things that I’m at a complete loss as to a use.

Elann laceweight

Elann laceweight

This stuff, for starters.

It’s Elann baby lace merino. Wonderfully squishable.  Some of my longtime readers may remember me doing a race to the finish (which I swore blind I wouldn’t let happen) to get it knitted up into wraps for my bridesmaids last year.

It was my first laceweight purchase, and I totally underestimated the huge amount of yardage you get with even one 50g ball. I have about two and a half skeins (1372m/ 1500yds, for the record) left over out of my four skein order, and I have no idea what to do with it. I contemplated the Fountain Pen Shawl from the Spring edition of Interweave Knits. Given that it’s black laceweight, I fear that I may go blind and mad if I attempt it. Am I being silly? Or is there some project out there that would be perfect in this yarn that I’ve missed?

Speaking of IK…I’ve been a subscriber for a couple of years now, and in general I find that the Fall edition is my favourite in the year, while the copy that drops through my letterbox in Spring is probably not going to contain anything that I’d knit for myself. For my personal taste, I just find that it has in the past been the weaker of the four magazines.

Not so this time! There are several patterns that I’m absolutely itching to cast on (Connie Chang Chinchio, you rock my fricking socks off) and the big colourwork piece that I normally bypass even got a proper read through.

There have been some unhappy rumblings in the IK subscriber camp for a while now, and it seems that they have really taken reader feedback on board. If only all publications did - I’m really delighted!

I’ll be flicking through my copy some more as I sit with a needle in my arm this evening. I’ve had 4 text messages from the IBTS over the last week asking for blood donors to go in urgently and to bring a friend if possible. They need 300 more donors to make their quota for this week, so if you’re an Irish reader and you are physically able to give blood, I really encourage you to think about it heading in.

After that, it’s Guinness time!


Flying distractions

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

I am a total sucker for The Shiny ™.

For example, while shopping on Saturday I came across these beauties:

Pretty, ain’t they?

Pretty onions, rosé onions, to be precise.  Now I do like onions, and eat them a couple of times a week at least. Usually in a curry or pasta dish where they’re not the main event. Not enough to really justify buying a 2kg string of them.

Yet there they are…hanging off the handle of a press in my kitchen. (You can even see a bag of Java Republic coffee on the bread bin behind them).  It’s not like I can even do something like make a pot of French onion soup to use them all at once. HusBeast hates onions, unless they’re hidden well in something like a stew or bolognaise. Presenting him with a bowl of onion soup and telling him that it’s dinner could take more convincing than even I am capable of.

Still, they are very pretty.

I must confess, the string of temptation is not the only shiny thing that has caught my attention this week.

Socks.

Socks that are distinctly not STR socks.

Yesterday evening I found myself in a strange situation. I had finished my peach tree socks on the way to work, and had an empty project bag (and needles) to bring home. In an amazing coincidence, just before I left work I reached in to my desk drawer to grab something, and found a ball of Lana Grossa MegaBoots sock yarn.

I’m sure some of you are knitters of iron constitution. I’m sure that many, if not all of you, would have been able to sit through a 40 minute train journey knowing that in your bag was a set of sock needles and a new ball of yarn, and yet have been able to resist the siren call.

I am not that knitter.

I am weak and fickle, it seems. Weak and fickle, and making good progress on sock one of the new pair.

I’ll be good…someday.