Hereditary sweet tooth

After a very stressful day at work yesterday, I was very relieved to be getting today off.

And what does one do with a day off in the shopping capital of Australia? Well, firstly one goes looking for yarn stores then in finding said yarns stores closed, one goes looking for clothes...

.. and comes home with chocolate.

But in my defense, it's Green & Blacks... GREEN AND BLACKS PEOPLE. And I found it in Oxfam of all places, it's the first time I've seen it anywhere in Australia. I also found this little funky stacking toy for Little Man.




Notice a certain little hand sneaking off with the Green & Blacks? The boy has never even tasted chocolate yet he is strangley drawn to it. May have something to do with the white chocolate Lindt balls I consumed while I was pregnant. I only got lots of movement from him while eating the good stuff, he's got expensive taste my son has. And yes you are all too old for him.



The Opal socks are coming along. See the lovely view they have from our balcony?
I swatched for the Bulky Cabled Sweater the other night and found that it was about 2cm too narrow. Might go up a couple of needle sizes cause I'd really like to use the Silk Road Ultra (mainly cause it means I don't have to Invoke the Wrath of the other half by buying more yarn as I already have 3 balls of it here. Oh, do I need about 6 balls? Well what do you know...)

I've just looked down onto the floor and found my Denise's scattered all over it... deep breaths, calming deep breaths...

Four seasons in one day

We are braving the weather in sunny/rainy/stormy/windy/can't figure the hell out what kinda weather I want to be Melbourne. I am blown away (bwahaha) everytime I come down here by the freaky temperament that Mother Nature has in this city.

Not a huge amount of knitting has been done, being that I couldn't knit on the plane (DAMN YOU QANTAS AND AUSTRALIAN CUSTOMS PEOPLE IN GENERAL, opps sorry I feel better now. I won't, however, be feeling better after 24 hours on a plane next year and NO KNITTING) and due to work I have been only getting some knitting done in the evenings. So the Opal socks are coming along, they'd be coming along better if I had remembered to pack the pattern...

I also brought down my Jo Sharp Silk Road Ultra to cast on for Stefanie's Bulky Cabled Sweater. It is still sitting in the bag, but I'm hoping to swatch for it tomorrow night. I'm also hoping to check out some yarn stores, chances of that are pretty slim but I'm going to try my hardest to find a moment. I know there is a new-ish store somewhere in the city, not Marta's but something else. I can't find any info on it anywhere but I seem to remember being told about it on my knitting yahoo group. Anyone??

No pics today, but tomorrow my sock might make take in the water views from our balcony (of the docks, but at least it's water).

Treats for ME!

Well last night I came home to a FAB surprise - my Knitty SP package had arrived!!
Ooooooohhhhh!!!! Treats galore!!!!

I got some gorgeous handspun in 'Fire Engine' from Handpainted Yarn
Stitch markers made with a Scrabble piece (with a 'T' on them of course!)
A ball of flecky blue Plymouth Wildflower DK and a pattern for toddler socks
A little toy sheep for Little Man
A cute little soap with a frog on it
and Stickies in the shape of a T!!

I LURVE it all, can't wait to get started on the socks and now just have to figure out what I might make with the handspun. Mmmmm, so purty!! THANK YOU SP!!! YOU ROCK!!

Not much knitting being done at the moment, just a whole lotta work. But I do have this morning Little Man and DH free as they have driven off to our nations capital (Sydney is not the capital like everyone thinks it is, it's actually Canberra, the place where not much is happening. The story goes that Sydney and Melbourne were fighting over being the capital and the decision couldn't be made so they made it smack bang in the middle of the 2 cities. Or at least that's the story I know, considering Canberra is only 3 hour drive away and Melbourne is about 14 I think I may be wrong...). They're off to check out a car to buy so I have 5 hours of do whatever I like time. Hmmm, maybe some spinning, might sit down and watch Knitty Gritty (cause someone forgot to tape it for me last night while I was at work) (thank god for cable TV and it's love of repeating things over and over). Do you think I can keep myself busy enough to get out of cleaning the house?

Oh of course I almost forgot, spinning!


Better eh? I'm chuffed with it, I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. Can't wait to ply it, then I might have to dye it (hey that rhymes!).

Off to battle with these socks with the heel shaped toe...

Mmmmm, cables

Just a quickie tonight - I meant to mention in my last post that the fab Stefanie has posted my favourite cardigan from her last lot of designs. Ohh I likey alot. I wonder if the jo sharp silk road ultra that I got cheap would be good for it, the gauge is 13.5 sts but that's on a 7mm. I reckon it might be close on an 8. Mmmmmm, yummy.

I had spinning class yesterday and came out with a fairly nice lot of single ply if I do say so myself. I'm now onto the second bobbin so I can ply it together, can't wait to see how it turns out. Pics in the next day or so when I get 2 seconds to stop and relax.

Socks are coming along well, up to the toe shaping. But this pattern is a bit funky - it says to do the toe shaping the same as the heel. Huh? I have images of toes with big heel looking lumps on it. Aye aye aye, I'm so confused.

Give me an A!

It's done! Wendy's Girlfriend's School Spirit Sweater for Little Man is done!
It's big on him which is great - by the time he gets to wear it next year (a bit earlier than usual when we are in Europe in March) it will fit him perfectly. It was done in 3 and a bit balls of Katia Diana (50% acrylic/19% polymide/18% rayon and 13% angora) and was a super quick knit. It was my first top down and I LOVED that. As mentioned before I HATE WITH A PASSION seaming/finishing/weaving/anything to do with a needle and thread, so having to do a minimum of that suits me down to the ground. Still gotta find a letter to go on the front, I checked out Lincraft the other day but as usual they had diddly squat in the way of anything useful.
Sorry about the blur in the blue jumper - trying to get a toddler to stand still for more than 2 seconds is like asking a bear to do it's business elsewhere.



Also sorry for the HUGE pics, damn blogger is not playing today.

I'm hoping to get to spinning class tomorrow. It will be my first time, but also my last for a few weeks as next Monday I'm off to Melbourne for a couple of weeks of sitting in the Flemington carpark looking at horses on TV screens (and hopefully with a day off to check out Melbourne LYSs!! Suggestions people! I have no clue what you guys have down there). And then this Saturday is a Knitting morning and I'm really hoping I can get to that too.

So now I can get back to the neglected Opal socks and hopefully finish them off before I go away (or maybe I could take them down there. Hmmm, what to do next. You know me and my End Of Project Confusion...)

The Divine Miss D

Loving the Denises'. LOVING.

Well, maybe not hugely. Don't get me wrong they are FAB. I just have one teeny tiny thing that irks me. The cord? Could be a little thinner. You know when you are used to a nice thin cord that usually is on a circular, the cord on the Denises' is a bit too thick for my liking. You have to push it a little bit more that usual. I guess cause I'm a fairly tight knitter (I have gotten better, when I was young you had to have big muscles to move those babies along the needle, now they slide nicely) the sts are hugging the cord just a tad.

But other than that, LOVING.


As you can see, Girlfriends School Spirit Sweater (for a Boyfriend called Little Man) (oh that sounds a bit saucy) (really it's very harmless) is coming along great guns, well as great guns as it can with only a half hour of knitting a day if I'm lucky. The Greatness of Denises has come into play with this knit; I found in the increasing that it was all getting a bit squishy on the 16" cord. Solution? Add some more length to the cord until I get to putting the armholes on spare yarn and then take the extra length off again when I don't need it anymore. GENIUS.

Except for one small moment when I hadn't secured my cord properly (it was being hard to twist on so I thought, 'oh, it'll be ok, it feels pretty snug'... until I pulled a little bit too hard and pulled it right off... tense moment of holding breath and threading free sts back onto cord. I tell ya, the old heart was getting a work out.
And I must say I'm also LOVING the top down design of this sweater. No seaming, easy to knit, no seaming, easy to read instructions, great design, and did I mention NO SEAMING?



And here's some Needle Porn just for Rachael.


Oh and the new LYS that I mentioned that Donyale wishes me to divulge. Rubi and Lana in Gordon. (waves to Pamela and Celia see you in a couple of weeks!)

Because I'm worth it

Crap week at work = new set of Denise needles.

Too much work and not enough knitting makes for unhappy Taryn, so this morning after searching all over for another circular I bit the bullet and got me some Denise's. Mmmmmm, feel that snap in, circular, interchangeable goodness.

So now I can crack on with Wendy's School Spirit Sweater for Little Man - I picked up some Katia Diana at a bargain price of $2.99 a ball (sometimes Lincraft comes up with the goods, even if they do come in a tangled mess).



One of the places I stopped at today was a fairly new LYS that Celia told me about, oooooh it was so purty. I flicked through Rowan Mag 37 while I was there and fell in love with version 2 of this, isn't it just gorgeous? I love you Ms Rowan, even if you do send me broke. Luckily all I would have to do if I decide to knit it is buy the mag as I already have COUNTLESS (um, about 9) balls of Kid Silk Haze just sitting about being petted, er I mean doing nothing. And the yarn in the store, OMG SO nice. They even have their own line, which was so DIVINE I could have snapped up half a dozen balls right there and then. But after the $85 set of Denise's, I think I had done my dash for the day. They even have a knitting morning there every other Saturday - YAY!! other knitters!! In real life and all!!

...maybe next week...



The socks are coming along great, just past the heel shaping now (I took this pic a few days ago), it's looking good.

So all in all I'm feeling a bit better now about doing stuff, I seem to have made it out of my Pattern Confusion rut, maybe all I needed was a whole week of thinking time, uh I mean work.

Four meals and a wedding

And thankfully no funerals...

It all started on Saturday night. The Groom and Best Men (yes two of them) were staying here on the eve before the Grooms wedding. So we order some takeaway (Thai) and settle in for a night of calming Grooms' nerves and watching a bit of tv (Best Man number 1 chooses motogp - oh yay for me).
About 10.30 I'm feeling pretty tired so I toddle off to bed, thinking I also feel a bit queasy. DH (Best Man number 2) comes in about 1/2 hr later saying, 'hmmm, I feel a bit queasy too"...

2 hours later we find out the cause of said queasiness - food poisoning. Cue many trips to the toilet throughout the night clutching stomachs and moaning.

7 hours (and no sleep) later, we get up to find we are still really under the weather. But we will soldier on, we must (and more importantly DH must) be there for the Groom. Thankfully Best Man number 1 and Groom are unaffected (thoughts of what Bride might do if he weren't swim through my foggy head and it ain't pretty). With nothing but a slice of dry toast to keep us going, we get ourselves going and drive off to the ceremony in the 30C heat (black suits + hot weather + food poisoning = disaster).

Half way through ceremony, DH unceremoniously runs off himself to expel contents of his stomach... Needless to say, we never made it to the reception.

Today we find out that Best Man number 1 was visiting the toilet in much the same manner as we did a few hours after the reception.

I think I might burn that Thai food menu.

On to more pleasant thoughts, I'm chugging away on the Opal socks, just doing a basic pattern since I haven't used Opal before and wanted to see it without any other fanciness to distract from the pattern.



Wendy has come up trumps with her fab Girlfriend's School Spirit Sweater.It solves all my problems about what to make for Little Man - I might do it in a wool/cotton blend so he can take it away with us on our holiday in Europe. But then, I still have to make the decision about what type of yarn and ALSO what colour. Eee gads, that kind of hard thinking will take me almost a week.

I'm also loving the gorgeous new knits over at Glampyre especially the red one, the third one and the yummy chunky cable green one. I hope she puts patterns up for them before I find MORE things I want to knit (does it ever end?) (and would I be happy if it did?)