The week after Christmas

The week that I love the most in all the year is the seven days between Christmas and New Year.
Here in New Zealand it is a time for relaxing and having fun in the sun with friends and family.

Actually there wasn't much sun in the afternoon on Boxing Day, but it was lovely for swimming and flying kites.

Although sometimes we are busy making hay, this year it was all finished on Christmas Eve.

Today after a delicious afternoon picking berries, I came home to have a quiet hour before dinner.

I cast on 26 stitches to make a border for a blanket made out of odds and ends .

I will show a proper photo later on when it is all completed.

I have knitted lengths of handspun yarn, lots of handspun scraps from previous projects, a bit like a patchwork quilt, and have knitted them together to make a cosy blanket. Too hot to spend a lot of time on this, but it is OK if I put the blanket on the table and not on my lap.

For a newborn

The above little vest is the subtle colour of Pearl Lavender ( which funnily enough is also the name of a resene paint that I rather like ).

It looks white in the picture, but I can assure you i'ts definitely not.

You might remember that a couple of months ago I was experimenting with some flower and plant dyeing, using my book Eco Colour by India Flint as a guide and I produced this very subtle colour with these purple pansies.

After picking the fresh flowers I popped them into a little plastic bag and put them into the freezer. Once frozen I put them into a small muslin bag and poured a little warm water over them to defrost them and squeezing gently to release the colour. I didn't add a mordant, but I am happy with the result, and I think I will wrap this wee vest in some tissue and put it aside for the new baby coming in February.

It's about time there was a newborn in the family again !

Shades of the ocean

The other day I found myself stuck inside on a rainy afternoon with two children. We had had enough Snakes and Ladders and a certain little boy thought that perhaps we could watch "Finding Nemo". They had both seen it before, but I hadn't and I was quite startled to watch at the very beginning of the movie little Nemo's mum and all his brothers and sisters being killed, leaving just him and his Dad.

I thought that it was quite a sad thing for little ones to see, but they were totally unpertubed, and took great delight to watch from time to time my reaction to the exciting , and scary bits in the film.

I guess I just have to harden up !
While all the action was happening under the water with Nemo and his friends I was spinning rapidly and yesterday produced this skein which will go in my etsy shop. It is 80 %merino and 20% silk and has turned out to be a luxurious skein of loveliness.

A Knitting Story

I have just spent a few rainy days at the end of the school holidays with five of my grandchildren.

We had so much fun, and it became a special time for me with one little girl who asked if I would show her how to knit.

I don't have a photo of Keira knitting...she was tucked into my side sitting on the sofa, her little hands dwarfed by my larger ones and her wee feet crossed at the ankles, every inch of her concentrating very hard. If I had a pic, it would be very cute !

Keira is four, and I started her off with ten stitiches on a pair of doublepointed needles with a knob of blue tack stuck on the end of each one...that was all I had with me at the time.

Her cousin Esmae is seven and has been knitting for a while now... here she is providing us with inspiration.

I managed to find time to cast off on a pinwheel blanket I have made for Esmae's new brother or sister that we are all looking forward to meeting in February.

.

After two miscarriages earlier I thought I would wait this time before mentioning the exciting news !

I have made several of these blankets before and have found them to be excellent for wrapping a newborn in...and the mum too, when she is feeding in the early hours of the morning.

I handspun some angora rabbit /merino mix and dyed the wool before I knitted it up in the pinwheel design that you can find here.

Nearly There

Two or three more hours and this could be finished, but with all the wonderful spring activity

happening outside in the garden, I am waiting for a quiet evening to knit the last little bit.

The tulips and other spring flowers are here for such a short time that I find myself outside with the intention of just wandering around admiring the blooms, but instead

I have a trowel in my hand and am running from one spot to the other with buckets of mulch, packets of seed, and a huge weeding bag.

Yesterday I had visitors coming over for supper, and I was in the garden thinking I will just do this little bit and then go inside, but changed my mind, and was down amongst the veges planting runner bean seeds when the sun went down,

and it didn't matter at all !

A lovely diversion

I always look forward to receiving Interweave Knits in my letterbox, and on Saturday morning when it arrived I knew what I had to do.

Sort through my stash and see if I could find a substitute yarn to make this;

I LOVE it, and didn't have to battle too long with my sensible self, who said in a very little voice "but what about all the other knitting that you haven't finished"."Ha , yes, what about that then ?"

No, my naughty, spur of the moment self decided to cast on as soon as possible.


I am using a 4ply soft Alpaca yarn instead of the yarn specified in the pattern, Road to China light,
which is a blend of alpaca, cashmere, camel and silk and far and away out of my price range.

The Inca wool comes from the trip I made to Norway last year, when I stood in a shop in Oslo as it was about to close, and randomly chose a few balls of my favorite colours. I shall use that as the fair isle pattern on the yoke, and for the main colour I had some 4 ply alpaca from a local shop here.

So, this sweater has been my very lovely diversion this week, but I shall share some pics of the Spring surprises also.

Hyacinths, and our beautiful plum tree.

I also enjoyed listening to Kathryn Williams and Neill MacColl, and this Come With Me is my favourite. Their CD Two is beautiful...take a listen and have yourself a lovely diversion today !

1/4 done

I have just spent a very pleasant hour or two, sitting in the spring sunshine and sewing together the first six panels of the Heirloom Cabled Afghan. Hurray, I am a quarter through this lovely blanket, and so far have enjoyed the process very much. I am spinning the wool as I go, and there is lots happening in each panel with the cables to make it interesting to work on.

I carefully blocked each of the six pieces as I finished knitting, and today I was so pleased that I had. It was very easy to sew together, each piece fitted perfectly to it's neighbour and I used mattress stitch to avoid seams.

I think I am about a 1/4 through this throw as well on the loom. I have used a chocolate brown 4 ply warp, and am using two different merino/alpaca blends in oatmeal and a grey/brown, both DK weight, and every now and then I am throwing in a shuttle or two of bright orange tussah silk. The weave is a twill, and its shaping up to be very tweedy looking....uummm I think I rather like it.

Grey tones

I am looking out my window this morning, it is grey outside and raining. The fire has gone out in the kitchen and I am feeling fed-up...well, a bit uptight if the truth is told.
I am tired, my shoulders are tense and I have a large red sore patch on my neck where my violin has been resting.

I have just watched a gigantic red removal truck carefully ascending the narrow, steep driveway of my neighbours and realise that they must have finally sold their house. It is not a nice day to be packing and relocating. They have lived there for about fifteen years ...it will be quite a change for them to move into town.

Two more rehearsals until the concert and I shall be glad when Sunday is here. Last night I looked at the faces of all my friends in the orchestra, musicians I have played with for many years and thought that everyone looked tired and tense. No one looked as if they were enjoying it immensely. I hope it will be different tonight.
I am very glad that I am not in a professional orchestra although the pay might be quite nice !

I am weary of playing the difficult passages over and over.

Time for a tea break and some knitting of cables I think.

Meeting for Music

Our town is having a Winter Festival right now. Two weeks of shows, productions and concerts every night. There are lots of gigs to choose from and it pays to book early in case of missing something really memorable.

Our orchestra (N.S.O.)is performing this Saturday night. We have been rehearsing for several weeks now and the next three days are going to be intense with practising every spare moment and rehearsals with our conductor every night and Sat. morning.

We are playing Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and Dvorak's Cello Concerto and it is stirring music indeed.

The music seems to get right inside me. I fall asleep each night with it playing relentlessly in my head, and I hear the other voices of the clarinet entry and the flute, then the horns and the lower strings. It is quite strange the way this happens because I know that when the concert is over and we start rehearsing for the next one then this music will be forgotten and the new one will take over, and then several months later, I might be driving along in the car and hear some music on the radio and think " oh, we've played that ...what is it ?? "

At the moment though I am having a big love affair with this music.

I sleep fitfully the week prior to a concert and try to have a little rest in the afternoons so I can be alert for the evening rehearsal.

I might do some more work on this.

I want to start panel four, and it will be complicated enough to dispel the music in my head and replace it with "slip 2 to the back, purl three"....and so on.

A week of

Spinning the fleece

and obsessively, (yes, that is the word I have to use) knitting my way through panel one and halfway through panel two. There was rather a lot of unravelling going on too this week, but it is all fixed now.

Inspiration

I have fallen in love with this beautiful afghan in Issue number three of The Knitter. It is knitted with aran - weight yarn and is made up of 24 rectangular panels of different dimensions, from thick Celtic Knot designs to more delicate twisted cabling.

When I saw this yesterday in my friend's copy of The Knitter, I decided to spin the wool for the first panel to see if I could achieve the gauge needed.

I haven't spun anything this thick for many years, and I rather liked the speed with which I obtained the first ball to start me off.

The rain is belting down outside, the fire is stoked up and the dogs are asleep, their little bodies stretched out in front of it's glow. I have a freshly made muffin and a cup of tea all ready.....now where did I put that cable needle ?

Reflections

Reflections

on the

knitting of socks.

Yesterday I received a request from the newlyweds for some knitted socks. I was very happy to oblige and went to find my needles and some sock wool immediately. Even though I have several much larger knitting projects on hand, I am always ready to put those on hold whilst I knit another pair of socks.

A sock on four little needles sits quite contentedly in a messy handbag and can be very useful to allay the nerves whilst waiting at the dentist. They come in handy when the husband decides to take a quick stop at a farm machinery place and spends more than an hour discussing the merits of John Deere tractors.

Hand knitted socks are the perfect gift for a special person when you want to show them they are loved and thought of, and they last longer than a bunch of flowers.

They are also the perfect project to be knitting when you happen to be watching a particularly romantic movie like " love actually", "you've got mail" or "message in a bottle" of which I have seen recently and sniffed my way through all three.

The knitting of them can be quite addictive !

Noro striped scarf

My much photographed Noro scarf. I am still not happy with these pics, I don't seem to be able to capture the true colours, but it is the best I can do.

Thank you for all your lovely comments on Alexander and Kristin's wedding. The weekend passed so quickly and now I am home again and back into the routine of "samedayness", I am enjoying recollecting some of those special moments in Hamilton with the family, and having a chuckle over some of those moments !

A Noro Scarf

I found some Noro silk garden yarn the other day ( when I was cleaning out my studio) and I thought it would make a nice scarf like this one. I am a little disappointed with the photos ..the colours are so much brighter than what you are seeing !

The scarf has a couple more hours of knitting to be done and then it is finished, so I will endeavour to take more photos in another light, next week.

On a rather more exciting note...our son Alexander is getting married on Saturday ( Anzac Day) in Hamilton, so no more knitting for me today. I am off to pack our bags...........more on this topic later.