Unusual Tools of the Knitting Trade

When knitting a small object in the round, one could employ the use of double point needles or the Magic Loop method. Both these methods are tried, tested and true. However, in the interests of lateral thinking, thin flexible wire and wire cutters are perfectly capable substitutes as I have found. With a diminishing number of stitches, the end of your ‘needles’ can be clipped shorter and shorter as the work slowly decreases. Not something one can do to laminated birch wood, bamboo or nickel-plated brass. Hah!

Tuneful Tuesday

Five songs that I can't live without. All Australian; not intentionally patriotic! They just happen to be fantastically talented and all from the same country. Also worth a watch for the creativity of their film clips. I <3 Gotye.

I have kindly requested the beautiful S who is the new owner of Yellow Hat to make this next song the national anthem of India.

Big Heavy Stuff are probably the least appreciated of the list. Why I don't know. This song just melts you. Clip is not fantastic, but it was the 90s, man.

Josh Pyke looks like he'd be a great human being. Don't know why. He's just like a shaggy best mate. *Careful of the language in this one, for those easily offended*

Last but not least, the song that was always guaranteed to make me homesick.

Hope you liked :)

FIN: Yellow Hat

Revel! Ravel! Wheeeeee! Now to wait patiently for photos from new owner in Delhi. Knit speed, little parcel!

And just a quick note on how absolutely awesome Completely Cauchy. is. James Joyce in cross stitch. I want this as a hobby. You can't drop a cross stitch! :D

Surreal and Tangled in Brisbane

What better way to escape unemployment and cold weather than go North, to still more unemployment yet slightly better weather? And so to Brisbane I went.

Brisbane never really excited me to be honest. I thought it was far too small to call itself a city. It is really, but that’s actually a really nice thing. I had so much fun wandering around, going into the Gallery of Modern Art and seeing an exhibition on Surrealism, having lunch at the State Library of Queensland, basking in the sunshine by the river, and seeing Saturday markets.

Now for the two best things; first, the City Cat ferry service. I love the water, and this thing travels swift as an eagle. Perhaps that is an exaggeration, but if I could get to work every day like this? Baby I’d be a happy woman. I felt like a dog at a car window with its tongue flapping in the breeze. So much fun!

Second best thing; Only The Most Delicious Rocky Road Ever In The History Of The World. See it here, and scroll down to see the picture. I ate mine too fast to photograph it. Perfect marshmallows, perfect jelly, perfect coconut rough. I would gladly take up concubinage for the person who first created this stuff.

Oh! And how I could I forget. The knitting shop! Tangled Yarns was an absolute revelation. I am used to a shop in Sydney, fantastic yet a little fascist. But Tangled Yarns! She actually said I could sit on their lounges and leaf through their knitting books! Something I thought every major bookseller and newsagency had managed to ban. I sat! I browsed! I didn’t want to leave.

Such a beautiful light-filled shop it is too, and a really broad range of wool. I think that a lot of their yarns and books are imported from America. The brands they had on sale were ones I’d heard mention only on Ravelry; Malabrigo, Madeline Tosh, Berroco. It was like being in Wonderland. I couldn’t find the pattern I’d wanted, but it was from a magazine now four years old. The lady in the shop knew the pattern though; a veritable knitting Rain Man she was. The staff were lovely too; heck, everything was so darn lovely I just couldn’t leave without buying wool. Here it is!

I’d gone in with the intention of picking up some green wool and some purple wool. I have rather too much stuff on Ravelry in different shades of blue. I decided to vary my collection with this delicious green.

And this beautiful purple. No ideas yet for patterns, but I think the green might become a beret in time, and the purple I think would make a lovely infinity scarf.

Lastly I want to add this picture of a sculpture of sorts which was outside the Queensland Art Gallery. I just love it because it seems like a bird from afar, but when you get closer it looks very much like a brick kind of structure. I’m sure there’s a quilt to be made of it somehow.

Lazy Mother-Frogger

I have three wips on, but all the lights are out. My delicious yellow hat has four rows to go- just four! But I just can’t bring myself to finish it for some reason. I don’t want to mess it up again. My newly started maroon hat has one row done. And that was started a week or more back. I am a lazy mother frogger.

The third is the one above. It is a lace scarf using the pattern from this beautiful Que Sera lace cardigan by Kirsten Kapur. Lace was never really on my radar. I am much more of a Cable lover. I just love the texture of them. You know that feeling when you see beautiful cables in a hat or a jumper, and you just want to squish them and rub yourself against them. Dirty I know, but tell me it’s not true.

Compared to cables, lace just seemed a little too bland. Okay, bland is the wrong word. Maybe it was just too subtle for me. I like seeing a cabled woollen jumper from across the room and wanting to run and jump on the person wearing it. I couldn’t be arsed most of the time at squinting at the detail in lace.

I think it changed when I saw this Katharine Hepburn cardigan and fell in love with it. The allusion to the 1940s then obviously spread beyond to Kapur’s lace cardigan; then I saw Herbert Niebling’s work, Estonian lace, and the rest was history.

However, I soon realised upon starting my lace Peacock scarf (so called because of the colours in that beautiful wool and silk blend, sent to me from Toronto) that LACE TAKES FOREVER TO KNIT. I have a short attention span, which is probably why I like knitting hats. I need something relatively quick. Some colour, some movement. Not hours and hours and hours of knitting holes. By this stage in my endless lace scarf, this is what I now think lace knitting is; spending all your time purposefully knitting holes in wool. And knitting holes will clearly only be finished at Forever O’Clock.

I am despairing of it. One day I’m sure I will restart it. I’m also sure that once it is finished and blocked, my knees will go weak for lace again. Not right now though, because not only am I lazy, I’m also a vengeful mother frogger. No Lace For You.

Things That Make Me Want To Go To New York

1. Godzilla (1998): This was the second monster movie I’d seen. The first was King Kong, the 1930s version, which was also set in New York. Needless to say giant creatures seem to like tearing that city up quite a bit. My favourite scene was where the Chrysler Building came a-tumbling down. A morbid fascination really.








2. Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest: The scene in Grand Central Station especially, but also the visit to the UN building. I guess it also has a lot to do with Carey Grant, the stylish minx. You just have to love a man who sends his suit for pressing right after someone tries to kill him with a crop duster. Class.






3. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party: Dave Chappelle is an American national treasure. I’m not American, nor am I qualified to induct him officially as their national treasure, which does sort of mess up the power of my statement. However, I reiterate; the man is awesome. I saw a conversation between him and Maya Angelou on TV by accident one day, and then saw this film. It is such a fantastic film too; the concept is immense, and it may be a cliché to say, but the people are the most interesting thing in it. I love how he pulls different communities together to claim a piece of the city, even if only for a day or so. I especially love the quirky couple with their self-built ‘Broken Angel’ building. I like to think that people who are a bit offbeat are unique to big cities. That’s not to say that smaller towns don’t have them; I just think that their eccentricities would make them outcasts. I think bigger cities accommodate strangeness. They let people be. Not necessarily in a nice way, maybe in a cruel way too, but they are still allowed to be who they are.



4. How I Met Your Mother: Only really for that one episode where they try to find the perfect burger that Marshall stumbled upon one evening. I love food, and I love cities, and I love the idea of a perfect-burger-treasure-hunt. Especially if the place has a red door!

5. Home Alone 2: You can probably tell that most of this list revolves around buildings and interesting human beans. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is full of both! Duncan’s Toy Chest (which is apparently actually in Chicago. Hmph.), Central Park, the Plaza Hotel, the pigeon lady who sees the opera for free, the scary cabby, that house under renovation which is the scene of the sticky, oozy, firey, hurty, laughy, ouchy mayhem.... Absolute classic.

6. Green Card: Oh! To have Andie Macdowell’s apartment! And a Frenchman with a hard past and a musician’s heart! Sigh.

7. Ryan Adams’ song ‘New York’. Also Gene Kelly’s song ‘On The Town’: Basically any young man, fit or scruffy, dancer or singer, pasty or tanned, army, navy, airforce or civilian who sings about New York makes me want to go there. I like to believe it combines city-lust with male-lust. The two most important forms of lust after yarn-lust.



8. Catcher in the Rye: Of Course. Obvious. Is there a person alive who didn’t like this book and didn’t want to be Holden Caulfield?

9. The Babysitter’s Club books: Because Stacey, the one from New York was described as the ‘sophisticated’ one. I wanted to be sophisticated. So I wanted to go to New York. Still applies.

10. Breakfast at Tiffany’s: Holly Golightly. Because she was a weary sophisticate. A Woman Without A Past. Rather, she could reinvent herself and live life fast and loose in stunning dresses with a cat and good wine. Not bad for a country girl.

11. Radio Days, Woody Allen: This was such a beautiful film. It was like listening to small anecdotes from your grandparents. The family is such a beautiful example of the messed up-ed-ness of families, but it also shows how at the end of the day family is always there to love you. They may box your ears, but then they’ll give you a big hug and a glass of milk. Goofy grin inducing film. I wanted to hug everyone I saw after watching it.

Yarngasm

Etsy generally makes me dizzy with glee. However, I saw two sellers recently who have made me post-coital drunk and happy. Hello Sweet Basil Fibreworks and Dye For Wool.

SBFW’s colours are so gloriously natural. There is nothing flashy, the wool just looks down-to-earth but still stunningly beautiful. I can imagine a gruff yet trendy farmer being completely at home in an Aran sweater made from this stuff. Or me. I’d also like it. And I’m neither gruff nor adept at animal husbandry.

DFW’s are just beyond words. The colours! Oh the colours! Can I swim in them? This wool is so delectable, I want it to knit ME. This is the new direction towards which everyone who wants to buy me a birthday/Christmas present shall go. Also please note the awesomeness of the naming of the wool colours. Poisoned blueberry tart? Burnt cinnamon roll? Rotten butter? Yes please.

Oh! Oh! Pass the tissues. Total Etsy Yarngasm.