We’re packed, we’re as ready as we’ll ever be, and we’re waiting for the taxi that is due in an hour and a quarter. Twinkie has been delivered to Lara, and the travel blog is ready and waiting for our first post. You can find it at
http://worldtour.avocadia.net/
If I don’t catch up with you beforehand, I’m wishing you all a very happy and safe holiday season, from all of us

To all of you!

Who keeps stealing my days? It’s Tuesday! We fly out the day after tomorrow. And with my usual sense of excellent timing, I’ve come down with a rotten head cold.
I’m already a bad flier. Cross your fingers for me that I’m over the worst of it by Thursday, please!
The beret for Em was a disaster. When will I ever learn to check my gauge? It’s about the right size for a three or four year old, I think. So, back to Buttercup. Which is coming along beautifully. I’m hoping I can finish the second front before we leave.

And my holiday knitting has been prepared.

Yup, that’s it. Two skeins of ShibuiKnits sock yarn in my Loopy Ewe project bag. That’s all I’m taking, along with my Knitpicks Options needle set.
I have plans to collect a little (hee hee) yarn along the way on our trip, and I know I’ll want to knit with my new yarn, so I’m not even going to bother packing any other yarn from home.
And Australian airlines are still in the dark ages. We’re not allowed to knit on flights from Australia, so I won’t need knitting for the long flights.
My other news is that I had a visitor yesterday. A very unwelcome one. I was sitting at my desk, and I could hear little noises. At first, I thought there might be someone out the front, so I checked, but no. The noises continued, and when I turned around, there was a bloody blue tongued lizard in my lounge room.

Apologies for the blurry photos, I was busy screaming down the phone at David, who thought it was the funniest thing he’d heard in a long time.


My yelling must have upset him, because he ran away from me but fortunately, he was heading straight for the back door. (The floor is a mess, ignore that bit!) The pictures got clearer about now, because he was further away from me and headed outside.



I had to take pictures, not only for blog fodder, but to show David that I wasn’t making it up. I was beginning to worry that he wouldn’t find the back door, but he eventually got out.


Twinkie showed no interest whatsoever in the whole shenanigans.

Long time no see Saturday Sky.

Gorgeous Saturday, but it’s gone grey again today. Watch out for next weeks sky, brought to you from another city!
I bought myself a present this week. Jejune, another Australian knitblogger, has opened a Cafepress store called Knitting Art. She paints gorgeous pictures of knitting, and has had them put onto tshirts, mugs, coasters, notebooks, all kinds of wonderful things.
So I got myself a new knitting bag!

The design I got is called “The Pink Shawl”. I was pretty impressed when it showed up, I was expecting just a calico bag, but it’s a nice heavy canvas, and it’s a good size. Here’s the zigzag scarf inside it.

Plenty of room! It has nice long straps too, so it goes over your shoulder easily.
Speaking of the zigzag scarf, I finished it yesterday. Here it is in it’s unblocked state.

I’ve since blocked it, pictures later.
I had a ball and a bit left over of the darker pink, and seeing as Em keeps trying to run off with my Jo Sharp beret, I’ve cast one on for her.

I should be able to finish it before Thursday – just four days to go!!

So now that one of the secret projects has been received, I can reveal it here.
The Opal Prisma was paired together with some blue Opal Uni, and became “Devan” for young Inigo.

I made the six months size, seeing as that will be heading into the winter here. It was a fun knit, and it’s a great way to use up some self striping sock yarn.
This may be the new favourite baby cardi!
Inigo’s mum is the lovely Lara. They’re part of the family now, because Lara is going to be Twinkie’s foster mum while we’re away. Twinkie will have a lovely time as part of Lara’s menagerie. There’s two more bunnies, a cockatoo, chickens, a cat, a baby and now Twink.
Poor Lara! I have no doubt that Twinkie will be the most demanding of the lot.
Speaking of Twinkie, here’s a rare photo of her eating.

And here’s what she’d look like if she were an ears up bunny.

Just doesn’t look right, does it?!?

11 days from now, I’ll be in an airplane, on my way to the United States. No, I can’t shut up about it!
Yesterday, we started preparations in earnest.

One large and one small suitcase each. Seeing as I want to bring home that much yarn, I’m not sure what to do about clothes 😉
I bought something else too.

It has a built in camera. We’ve been having some fun with it.



Yes, very easily amused, thank you for asking!
As you can probably tell, I haven’t had much time to sit still, let alone knit, but there has been a little.
I’ve been working on Em’s scarf, and I really need to get cracking on this if she’s wearing it on holiday.

It’s about 60cm long so far. I sat and wove in a bunch of ends on Friday, and I’m going to try to do them as I go now, because all at once nearly bored me to tears.
When I get tired of zigging and zagging, I’ve been working on Buttercup. I’ve nearly finished the first front.

I’m enjoying this a lot. I do wish I’d done both fronts together, though. I’ll definitely do both sleeves at once, or the second one may never get done!