Material Comforts

I’m absolutely positive that the wait to go into a new fabric store is a form of sexual tension. Experience has since told me that the guilt from going in to aforementioned fabric stores and spending lots of money (albeit on beautiful material) is the equivalent of having revenge sex with an ex-boyfriend. Not that that’s ever happened. But I imagine on the scale of Guilt Incurred it comes close.

Japanese prints and Liberty of London cottons. They are so pretty. In the mad lustful frenzy that ensued my breaking of the sexual tension, I played with things that I really should have steered clear of, at least until there is a significant incoming flow of money, rather than just the relentless outgoing that pretty fabric has reduced me to. Oh cottons fair! Ye are cold hearted wenches.

Oh, who am I kidding. I HAVE NEW FABRICS AND THEY ARE EDIBLE. They make me drool at their colours and patterns and potentiality. I will gladly make a nest out of them in which to raise my young. The Fabric Store here has a lot of cheaper designer fabric, but not a very good website. Tessuti Fabrics is here and has the most delicious website and store. Clothfabric here I didn’t find (also I’d already spent too much), but they look like they have some nice earthy fabrics from how the site looks.

So here are my three beautiful fabrics.

And here is the pattern I am planning to make in triplicate with these fabrics. A very beautiful Cynthia Rowley creation. This will be my first sewing project unaided by my lovely Mother. The problem now is to find a sewing machine. But that is a whole other post....

Biting Off More Than I Can Knit

Not content with being a one-knit wonder (har har, see what I did there?), I’ve decided to start TWO new projects.

The first will revisit my dear friend the colour Yellow. This is wool from the same batch as Yellow Hat (ingeniously named, I know), and will be a birthday gift for a girl I’ve never met before. Like that’d stop me hoisting my craft on the unsuspecting mite. The thing is, I’ve heard she has quite a penchant for the 1950s and has Betty Page-black hair. I need no further information. A suitable candidate has been found; her head is mine.

In honour of her penchant, I am going to knit a vintage turban. The pattern is from Ravelry of course, and I am excited to see how well some of the others have turned out. Let’s see how well I can translate 1950s knitting language into the kind of knitting gibberish I speak.

The second project is one I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while. When my friend’s beloved grandmother passed away, my friend gave me all her grandmother’s wool because she knew that I loved to knit. From the immense stash I picked out these balls of wool.

They are going to become an Ice Cream Blanket. The colours of them side by side reminded me of displays of ice cream in those long, rectangular metal buckets.

Mint, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla; yum! I am hungry already. I thought I’d keep this as a fairly mindless knit because of the potential confuzzlement that might be wrought by the turban. I’m using this Super Easy Baby Blanket from Purl Bee as a rough guide. My motto here; when in doubt, garter stitch.

I should suggest that my friend start making babies so I can keep the wool in the family.

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.