I haven’t got a lot of knitting done over the past few days, but I did get a little bit done on the Nundle sweater.
But I’ve been in denial.

I’m not happy with it. I prefer the striping the way I’ve done it, but that pale blue stripe is throwing me off, I think. The colours are still not photographing well, (and I took the damn thing all over the house trying to get a good colour picture!), but the pale blue just doesn’t seem to fit in with all the other colours.
The others are all muted sort of shades, and the blue is standing out.
If I just keep knitting, I’m never going to wear the finished item. And the more I look at it, the more I hate it.
So I’m going to rip back to that stripe.
I took a look at the Nundle colour card.

That pic is actually closer to the colours than my pic. Those are all the colours in the kit, except there is the pale blue instead of the Dusky Rose. Why?
So I’ve ordered some Dusky Rose, and I’ll just replace the blue with that. I think it works with the other colours better.
Twinkie has gotten into the habit of inviting her friends around for lunch.
Usually the back door is left open for her to come in and out as she pleases, but this is getting out of hand.

That is a freakin’ pigeon in my kitchen. The rabbit has got the shits now, as the back door is shut. As soon as I open the door, they all want to come inside. I kid you not, there is a queue of pigeons at my back door, waiting to come in and share Twinkies lunch.
And she doesn’t even mind, she just sits there and watches them eat it.
Maybe I need to trade her in for a cat.

I hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day!
Mine was pretty good, although it probably would have been just a bit better if I hadn’t spent the whole weekend in bed, sick.
However, my lovely family took wonderful care of me, and I’m feeling a bit better today 🙂
And I got some gorgeous presents.
Em saved up her own money to buy me this.

A Lush chocolate lip balm. And she made me a card.

Thats my favourite baby pic of Em. Lets have a closer look.

I can’t even tell you why it’s my favourite, it just is. I love the way the picture captured that moment just before the wail. When I went to select the pictures from the photographer, she wanted to throw this one out. No chance, baby!
And my lovely family got me another present.

A polar bear watch! Isn’t it great? I love it!
Next weekend is the Wollongong Stitch n Bitch group’s annual exhibition, “Warm Hearts: Busy Hands”.
It’s being held in The Old Courthouse: Cnr Cliff Road and Harbour Street Wollongong, from 10am – 4pm on Saturday and Sunday of next week, the 20th and 21st of May. You can find a map and directions on how to get there at this site.
If you live in Sydney and have a few hours free next weekend, please come along and have a look.
I’ll be there on Saturday afternoon, and Sharon, Ailsa, Donni, Annie, Tianne, Jussi and Becky will all be there at various times over the weekend, so pop in and say hello. There’ll also be a lot of wonderful knitters who are blogless there, too. We’re generally a pretty friendly bunch.
You can also come just to see if Sharon still has a baby on board or not.
Maybe we should taking bets to pick the date 😉

Em was sick last week, with a throat infection.
Being such a giving child, she gave me her germs, and I’ve spent the last couple of days with a sore throat, coughing, achy and unable to talk.
Needless to say, the housework is suffering, but it’s made for good knitting time!
I started the Savanna jumper, with a few minor changes.

I’ve done ribbing at the bottom, as I’m not overly fond of stocking stitch rolled edges.
And I’ve swapped all the stripe colours around. Yellow is my least favourite colour, so I figured out the dominant colours, then changed the stripes around. Let’s hope it all comes out alright!
This pic is closer to the actual colours, but it still ain’t right.

I really like working with the Nundle wool. The ballband recommends that it be knitted as an 8ply (DK weight), but this pattern calls for 20sts/4″. I think this tension is more suitable to the yarn.

Knitted at this tension, the fabric is nice and firm, not at all airy, and personally, I feel that if it were knitted any tighter it would be a bit too dense.
The yarn itself is yummy. Pure wool, nice and lofty, and minimally processed. You find a lot of vegetable matter in the yarn.


It’s also full of lanolin. Knitting it up, it already feels cosy.
And I guess everyone has heard the wonderful news about the miners. They reached the surface at 6am on Tuesday, their 14th day underground. They were out of hospital by midday, and one of them was even at the pub by 6pm Tuesday night!
Right now, I’m heading back to the lounge with my tissues, my headache tablets and my pillow. And my knitting.

The miners are still underground. Today is the 13th day, I think. However, the horizontal drilling is done, and now they have to drill up for a metre (3 feet) and hopefully they’ll be free.
This morning I went into the city. It’s an hour train ride, and it’s a boring train ride.
But it’s good for sock knitting!

The first beaded sock is well on it’s way down the foot. I was tempted to try it on, but I was getting enough odd looks just for knitting a sock. Imagine the looks I would’ve gotten if I’d taken off my shoes and socks and tried it on.
Maybe I should’ve.
And a pic of me wearing the lacy cardi (Hi Evelyn!). I forgot to get someone to take one over the weekend, so it’s a mirror shot.
First I tried to take it in the bedroom, but I realised having the window behind me made for bad lighting. But see Twinkie down the bottom? (Ignore the dirty mirror!)

Just call her the Artistic Director.
The bathroom mirror shot.

I’m pretty happy with it. It’s knit in 5ply (sportweight) so it’s quite light, just right for inbetween days, when it’s not quite warm enough for a t-shirt.
Did you take time to smell the flowers over the weekend? Twinkie did.

Ssh. Don’t tell her it’s a weed.

Despite the fact that I have the beaded socks on the needles, I’ve been looking through the stash deciding on what to knit next. I’m thinking I might start the “Savannah Jumper” kit I bought from Nundle Wool Mill way back in December 2004.
Here’s a pic of the sweater.

I’ve also been thinking about buying the “Sweater Wizard” software. Has anyone used it? Opinions? It’s quite expensive, and I’d like a few opinions befor I hand over that much money. I did a google search, but I didn’t get a whole lot.
You know sometimes you just have an idea in your head of what you want to knit, and you can’t find a pattern, or your yarn is the wrong weight? I’m far too lazy to work out the math for myself! Thus, I’m considering the software.
The socks are progressing, although I’ve been sewing, and today we were out and about.
We went to the Pet Store again. It’s a rare day that we go to the shopping centre and *don’t* visit the Pet Store, but today Em made a friend.

Emily was far happier than she looked in the picture! The bird is trying to eat her earring. I thought we’d get another budgerigar, but now Em has decided she wants a cockatiel. We didn’t bring this one home, although Em wanted to. Poor Fuzzy has only been gone for 2 months.
And in other news, Cyclone Larry’s presence continues to be felt.
I love bananas, but haven’t had any in a while. While we were in the frut shop, I tried to take a surreptitious picture of the price, but it didn’t work. They were $9.95 a kilo. Ten bucks!! That’s half a ball of sock yarn 😉
And they were tiny little things.

There won’t be any bananas around here for a while!
Luckily for Twinkie, there’s still dried banana chips in her bunny mix.

The Tasmanian miners are still underground, although it’s now hoped that they’ll be out sometime tomorrow morning – tonight will be their 12th night down there.