Me-e-e-e-emorie-e-e-es…
We are in the process of cleaning out the kitchen and family room in preparation for having our linoleum replaced tomorrow. n the course of this cleaning, I found a box full of photos and negatives. Most of them are of Emily and my various nieces and nephews, but some were older photos, school friends, dorky photo booth photos and the like.
And this.

That’s me with Michael Hutchence from INXS, circa 1984.
Sigh. I can’t believe it was 21 years ago – and that I was 13, only a year older than Emily is now. Scary. Mind you, I don’t think I’ll tell Emily that!

A little bit of knitting has been going on. Just a little.
I started a baby shawl in Bendigo Wool 4ply, using this Sirdar pattern.

This is how far I got.

I wasn’t very happy with it. I liked the pattern, but I hated the construction. First you cast on, knit the centre square, cast off the square, then cast on and knit the four borders, then cast them all off, and sew it all together, knit the final border, and sew it on seperately.
Far, far too many cast on and off edges for my liking. As you can see, I started with a provisional cast on. Then I had plans to graft it all together, but the stitch counts didn’t match up. The square has 105sts, the borders each have 91. Madness. And the fabric knit at the gauge they recommended was far too stiff for a baby shawl.
So I’m going to design my own.
Yep. But it’s all a little harder than I expected. Of course, that could have something to do with the little tiny perfectionist streak I have. I started it with the yarn and needles that I intend to use, but I stuffed up the charting. Then I was stuffing up the pattern. This is the very beginning of my shawl.

Nothing too difficult there, yet. I kept going, but I was making too many mistakes, and I had to keep frogging it. (Is it possible to make mistakes if it’s your own design and no one else knows any different?)
So I pulled out some sock yarn with a similar gauge and started the pattern with that, charting it carefully. This way, it doesn’t matter if I have to frog so much that the yarn becomes unusable!
I wanted to chart it, just in case it comes out really nicely, and I want to knit it again some day. Hopefully I’ll get some time to knit some more of it soon!
Here is the start of the pattern in the scrap yarn.

I’m pretty happy with it so far.
The mailman brought me this on Friday.

Meaghan at The Knitted Bunny sent me this Fibreworks lace weight merino/possum blend. It’s gorgeous! I love the colours, and the yarn is so soft. I haven’t knit with possum before, and I don’t know quite what I expected, but I never thought it would be this soft.
My garden is blooming! I have a notorious knack for not being very good with plants. However, we recently planted some rose carpet bushes, and they’re just starting to pop out flowers everywhere.


Aren’t they pretty? Mind you, I can’t take any credit, I’ve just left them alone, and they did all the hard work themselves. 😉

Aah, Life. It’s getting in the way of my knitting!
It’s been raining here. A lot. Sydney is in severe drought right now, so bad that we’re on Level 3 water restrictions. Which basically means that we can’t use water for wasteful purposes, like hosing off driveways, sprinklers and the like. In any case, we’re not used to rain. On Tuesday there was 46mm in Sydney.
Yesterday, I was driving down to the shops, and I braked at the roundabout. I heard water running. I looked over my shoulder, to see water coming from underneath the back seat.
I first thought that my petrol tank had sprung a leak, but I then realised that I couldn’t smell petrol. I got home, opened the boot, and saw that the carpet in the boot was soaking wet. Lifted it up, and the whole spare tyre well was full of water. There is a leak somewhere, and I think I’d better keep the car out of the rain!
I also think I’d better stop buying yarn, and think about that new car we’ve been idly considering.
So I spent a great deal of yesterday bailing out and mopping up the car. The carpets are all wet, and I’ve been leaving the car with everything open, and hoping that we don’t get more rain.
Today we’re off to visit my grandmother.
She’s the one who taught me how to knit, many years ago. My mother (her daughter) was killed in a car accident when I was eight years old, so my siblings and I went to live with my father and stepmother on the other sde of Sydney. Consequently, we didn’t see a lot of her, or other members of that side of the family. I barely know her. However, she had a fall a few weeks back, and has been in hospital. We saw her there a couple of times, but she was sent to a nursing home last week, so we’re going to see her there today.
My Aunt and cousins apparently cleaned out her house. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe we had any right to Grandma’s belongings. My Aunt and cousins are much closer to her than my sister and I. I have very little contact with my cousins, but one of them is close in age to my sister, and they stay in touch. My cousin rang my sister and told her that there was nothing of value in the house, and everything was old and/or dirty, so everything had been bundled up and thrown out.
The more I think about this, the angrier I’m getting. Who decides what is “of value”? It was probably all of value to Gandma, who never got to go home and collect the things that were precious to her. She never got to say goodbye to her dog. We saw my Aunt at the hospital a couple of times, and she just didn’t care. All she could talk about was finding a nursing home. I’m angry to think that they just shipped Grandma off when she wanted to go home.
I can’t believe that there was nothing of value in the house. But I’m not talking about jewellery or knick knacks or appliances.
What happened to her knitting things? Maybe they were only old plastic needles and stuff, but they would have had great value to me. That’s what I associate with my grandma. She taught me to knit, and I would have liked to have some of her “stuff”, cheap crap or not. But they didn’t even ask.
But the thing my sister and I agree on is the photos. I have only three pictures of my mother. My sister has two. So my sister asked my cousin what happened to the photos. No one seems willing to give her an answer. They’re going to ask around for them.
I don’t care about Grandma’s “valuables”. My aunt’s definition of valuables and mine are obviously far different. Nice of her to ask though.
The scarf is done, but due to the crappy weather, it’s unblocked. And I’m out today, so it won’t happen today either.
Let’s hope it doesn’t rain while I’m out with the car!

First off, where does the time go? How can it be December this week? Em gleefully announced on Sunday that it was only four weeks until Christmas. Did I lose 6 months?
Barely any knitting going on, due to all the running around I’ve been doing.
Em had a dancing event on Saturday. Her dance studio was selected to perform some of their dances for a movie currently being made. We got up at an ungodly hour, drove through pouring rain into the city, spent the whole morning being “audience”, then at arpund 4 o’clock, the kids were suddenly thrown into a back room to dance. I think that if they make it into the movie at all, it’ll be a miracle.
We didn’t get home until later than I’d hoped, by which time I was way too tired to drive down to Wollongong for the Stitch n Bitch Christmas do. Not happy!
Sunday morning, seeing as very little in the way of Christmas shopping had been done, we headed out to the local shopping centre. It has recently been expanded, and it was packed. Spent several hours on christmas shopping, then wasted too many hours looking for a dress. Em’s dance concert is coming up, and we’re going to the Ballet, so I needed a nice dress. I couldn’t find anything that was both nice and in my price range. Finally found something in a shop much closer to home. Isn’t it always that way?
It’s such a hectic time of year.
Anyway, I have managed a little bit of knitting, despite a screaming headache for the past two days.
The scarf is growing!

I’ve done 8 repeats now, so the end is in sight. I’m not in a rush to finish it though, because I’ve really enjoyed it.
I don’t think Twinkie liked what we were watching on TV.

She seemed to think that a video would be a better choice! Maybe I should do some dusting 🙂

Four posts in four days. I’m amazing even myself!
The scarf is progressing.

It’s a great knit! I’ve done four of the centre eleven repeats. I’m loving the Kid Seta, and I always like to knit with beads, so this is great fun! Except, as I said the other day, it gets sticky and grabby if you need to tink it.
Here’s another pic of a lorikeet, just to give you an idea of how close you can get to them.

If you sneak up while they’re feeding, this is about as close as you can get. There’s a great place up on the Gold Coast in Queensland, called the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.
They feed the local wild lorikeets twice a day, and the lorikeets are so used to people now that they’ll land on you, looking for food!
Probably no post tomorrow, Em has a dancing event all day. It’s supposed to finish at 4.30, and I’m sincerely hoping it will, so that I can at least make it to the dinner after Wollongong Stitch n Bitch!