FIBRE ALIVE

I Get Weak - Belinda Carlisle

It's been a funny old week for me... some good things and some not so good things.

For the most part I'm able to take the good with the bad but sometimes I end up tipping the balance and for the past couple of weeks I seem to have been a little bit down in the dumps and tend to be dwelling on the negatives more than the positives in my life. I guess it came down to committing myself to a few too many things again and I got tired and run down... and unfortunately for me I tend to lose a bit of perspective when I get like that.

Then this past week I made the mistake of weighing myself and discovered that I was only a couple of pounds away from my all time highest weight... again. Just call me a human yo-yo but my weight does seem to go up and down with my moods. So what did I do??? I chastised myself and then soothed myself with... a block of chocolate... and then chastised myself again... but resisted soothing myself with yet more chocolate.

Then Jazz the cat appeared to be off his food... not just being fussy like he can be... he wouldn't even eat any raw mince or his all time favourite treat... ham. I took him to the vet yesterday and now I feel like a dreadful pet parent because Jazz has had to be sent to the pet hospital in Masterton. The poor little man was dehydrated, underweight, had sunken eyes, a rotten tooth and has possible kidney disease. I was also taken aback when the vet described Jazz as a geriatric cat. He's ten years old now but I tend to still see him as an over grown kitten who loves to play with wool and claw all my knitting projects.

I was so upset after I had to leave him there at the vet clinic that I walked to the supermarket and bought a LARGE block of chocolate and ate it all... and didn't even bother to chastise myself. Fingers crossed that if his treatment goes well we should be able to bring Jazz home sometime during the week.

To say that I'm not feeling overly good about myself at the moment is a bit of an understatement.

So what do I do when I get depressed??? I usually indulge in a completely unneccesary spot of retail therapy... and this time I bought myself five pairs of face furniture... otherwise known as prescription eye glasses. A friend (Hi Sharee!) put me onto an online provider of glasses and I had been putting off looking at the website for no other reason than I didn't think I needed any new glasses... or rather that I couldn't afford any new glasses. But when I did look I was completely amazed at the pricing and I purchased all these glasses complete with prescription lenses for less than the cost of my last pair I had bought locally... and that pair had been half the price of my previous Ted Baker or Gucci frames only.

So here's a photo of me wearing the most 'architectural' framed glasses I've ever contemplated wearing... I like them so much I even managed a half smile in the photo. I also seem to at last be starting to fall in love with the colour orange. I have two friends (Hi Kent and Dee!) who are huge devotees of the colour and proactively try to convert people to the colour so I guess it might also be a case of osmosis.

I'm also wearing the scarf I finished in Hamilton while I was visiting my Mother. At this stage it's going to end up being a gift as part of a facebook promise I made at the start of the year.

And I bought a couple of new tea towels, both Irish linen and at a ridiculous price... but then I feel my life is quite ridiculous some days. I bought this particular one because it made me smile and it reminded me of my trip to Northern Ireland three years ago.

Don't worry about me though... I'm not on a total downer. Last night I went to a dinner held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the company I work for. Ian was away for the weekend and I wasn't really all that keen on attending but I'm so glad that I did. I ended up having a really good time... perhaps that was due to the wine that seemed to keep disappearing from my glass... and the delicious meal which was provided... or perhaps that's just another sign of my moderation issues! But I'm very pleased I went and I came home in a much better frame of mind as a result.

And of course knitting generally keeps my mood up and here is this weeks knitting output... three baby socks, cabled strips for a knitted quilt project and another scarf half finished.

It's such a beautiful day outside today that it's now time for me to shut down the laptop and sit in the sun and knit away the afternoon... the vitamin D boost I'll get is bound to keep me in a better mood for the start of the working week.

I'll give you an update on Jazz in a few days time.

Front Page News - Little Feat

A few weeks ago I mentioned that another designer had selected my Merino Mania yarn to use in a pattern... well... it was actually selected for three patterns... plus another colourway was featured on the cover!!!

Can you tell that I'm excited!!!!

Here is a sneaky peak at the other designs featuring my hand dyed yarn...

...In the harmony colourway...

...In the Festival colourway...

...In the Nightfalls colourway...

Great designs... in a great book... featuring great New Zealand yarns... life is good!

The designer is Belinda Too and one of her main objectives is to showcase quality New Zealand yarns alongside her own designs. This is her second published book and it follows on from the success of her first book which featured sock designs. The book is released this week and I'm sure that it will be a success. (I'll have copies for sale in the store next week). You can find out more about Belinda and her designs on her website Blendy Knits

Belinda is about to kick off a book launch tour so if you'd like to be one of the first people to see the book... and some of the featured yarns... check out these dates   

October 28th - Wellington - Paramount Theatre - 4.30pm - 8.30pm

October 29th - Wellington - Craft 2.0 - Chafers Dock - 10.00am - 4.00pm

October 30th - Auckland - Kraftbomb - Grey Lynn Community Centre - 11.00am - 2.00pm

And now for a very cute commercial which aired on New Zealand television a few months ago and always brought a smile to my face every time I saw it. It also came in second place in the annual Fair Go Ad Awards which screened on TV tonight.

  

You're My Inspiration - Chicago

Sometimes I have lots of design ideas floating around in my head when I sit down to start knitting, usually some ridiculously complicated pattern which ends up getting lost in translation between my brain and my fingers. Sometimes I like to take things a bit more easy and have some mindless simple knitting... simple and mindless would be a great way to describe myself some days!... and sometimes I like someone else to take the lead.

This week I decided to let Ian be my muse and provide me with some inspiration... hmmm a muse usually conjures up an image of a gorgeous creature scantily clad in a small amount of chiffon lying on a couch with beguiling eyes... hmmm yes I think that sums up Ian! 

Anyways I'm going off on a tangent again... we were going to knit our contributions for the latest friendship quilt for the Friday Night Sock Club and I sorted through my stash (although Ian considers it his too by way of matrimonial property) for some yarn for us to use. Originally I was going to teach Ian how to do cables but he decided he didn't want to learn anything new and while I was finishing off another project he started his square. He opted for simple but effective garter stitch stripes. When I saw his finished square I decided to do the same and used one of the colours he had so that they would be similar yet different but would balance each other nicely in the quilt. It was a wonderfully simple and quick knit for me... just what I needed on Sunday evening. Mine is on the left and Ian's is on the right.

Ian then got to work on a spot of Christmas knitting for one of our special friends... Renata who used to be our flatmate all those years ago when we lived in Wellington. It's a variation on the bactus scarf... seven rows knit followed by one row of purl and you increase by one stitch every eight rows until the midway point and from there you then decrease by one stitch every eight rows. It creates a very trendy looking scarf shaped like an elongated triangle.

Ian had knitted the same pattern in the same yarn previously and Renata loved it when she saw it and requested that Ian knit her one just like it. The yarn is a four ply merino sock yarn from Knitsch and the colourway is called 'Chelsea' which has this bold almost cobalt blue contrasted with a deep navy blue.

I was looking for a new project to get started on too and thought hmmm... I wanted to play on another variation on bactus myself but in double knit yarn and with multiple colours. So this photo shows my progress so far. I'll be using three colours of a merino Dk weight which I've dyed myself. I'm alternating two colours every two rows and will use the solid chocolate colour for the whole scarf but the variegated colour I'm using for contrast I'll only use up until the halfway point. From that point on I'll be using a caramel variegated colour for the contrast. Again it's a great simple and almost mindless knitting apart from remembering to do the increase every 8th row. I'm quite liking how it's working out so far and I should have it finished on the weekend but I'm not at all sure what will happen to it after that... it could become a gift or it may just get added to my existing scarf collection.

I'm catching the night bus up to Hamilton on Friday to spend a couple of days with my Mother and help her get to grips with her very first laptop. This is the very first computer she has ever used but already she's got herself a gmail account and is on facebook so I guess she's on her way nicely but I think I'll pack some extra knitting to keep myself calm... just in case. Either way I'm sure we'll still love each other after the weekend!

Now what was I saying earlier about my muse Ian... I'm sure there's some chiffon in my studio somewhere... "Ian ... honey... are you still on the couch???..."

Video Killed The Radio Star - Part Three

Sub-titled 'Don't Stop The Dance' - Bryan Ferry

 

It's amazing what people can do with a bit of modelling clay and some stop motion animation. Yes... the yarn in that knitting video was all created from modelling clay! I loved the 'no tears' colour changes which didn't result in any ends to sew in. The yarn certainly danced across the needles... just as any yarn should. My thanks to Claire Chapman for originally posting the clip.

Wow.. it's sunday already and I don't know where the week went. I was busy at work and for non work related reasons. I'm on the work social club committee and part of what we do is prepare a morning tea treat when a staff member has a birthday. That sounds nice... except that I also volunteer to bake a cake as well and... we had three birthdays last week as well as a shared morning tea on Friday as part of pink ribbon day.

For Monday I baked a chocolate and pear cake, for Wednesday Ian made ginger slice for me and for Thursday a lumberjack cake. For Friday it had to be a pink offering so I decided to make Belgium biscuits. For those of you who have never heard of them they are a type of spiced cookie which you sandwich together with strawberry jam and then ice the top with a pink icing. Well mine have always had pink icing, a colleague insisted that her Grandmother made them with white icing and sprinkled red jelly crystals over the icing.

So I did a split batch, some with white icing and some with pink icing. As I had some left over jelly crystals I also made up a few tumblers of jelly... with slices of banana in them... like Mum used to make for my birthdays when I was little. Sadly there is no rest for the wicked as we have another two birthdays next week and one person is leaving so... that's three morning teas next week. I baked a banana cake this afternoon and I'll ice it with lemon icing tomorrow morning... carrot cake on wednesday and I'm still undecided as to what to take on Thursday. What are your favourite tasty morning tea treats?

So I was looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend...

So let me see what have I done... I dyed more yarn, I caked yarn, I skeined yarn, I labeled yarn, I knitted sample baby socks, I photographed yarn, I added more rectangles to my sock yarn blanket, I posted a couple of gifts overseas, I vacumed, I baked, I cuddled the cat, Ian got jealous so I had to cuddle him too, I caught up on e-mails, I read a few blogs, listened to a pod cast, gave Ian a haircut... and took a little time in the sun this afternoon.

The blossom trees are out in bloom so they are a delight to look at including this one in our back yard.

Although I'm a little worried that the bark on it's trunk is starting to split... I haven't seen this particular tree do this before. The bark is beautiful because it has a sheen to it like silk.

I'd love to say that it will be an early night for me but the Rugby World Cup semi final featuring the All Blacks versus Australia is on tonight and I'll be staying up to watch it. Go the AB's!!!

I saw this show of support for the All Blacks on the way to Carterton... I never knew that hay could look so happy!   

 

As I Remember Him - Portia Nelson

Some say that time is a healer... they may be right but sometimes time is guilty of just allowing us to forget. One thing I can’t forget is the passing of my Father and I still find it hard to believe that he has been gone for two and a half years now.

One day earlier this year I was dyeing some yarn and one of the colours just reminded me of Dad. Don’t ask me why, perhaps the blues reminded me of his eyes, perhaps it was because it was sock yarn and I was thinking back to the socks I had knitted for him... either way I ended up calling the colourway ‘Douglas’ after him. I’ve put a skein of it away in my stash and every time I look at it I smile because it sparks off memories that I have of Dad. One day I’ll get around to knitting it up into  a pair of socks for me... perhaps I'll call that pattern Douglas too! Watch this space.

Some of you might remember the tribute to him which I wrote and blogged back then, for those who are interested here is the link...

I mention it again now because towards the end of it I said that I wanted to acknowledge his involvement in the sport of woodchopping by sponsoring an event at the Gisborne Agricultural and Pastoral (A&P) Show. I wasn’t able to make it happen in 2009 for various reasons but I did make it happen last year. I've made a commitment to the Gisborne A & P Association to provide sponsorship money for a five year period in return for one of the woodchopping events to be renamed the Doug Herbison Memorial. So this time last year Ian and I travelled up to Gisborne to go to the A&P Show and watch the woodchopping competition. I hadn’t been back to Gisborne for well over twenty years so it was quite amazing to see what had changed in the small coastal city... and the things that hadn’t changed at all.

 

We drove out to the village of Te Karaka where we lived for three years when I went to primary school... speaking of which here is the school I went to from 1976 – 1979.

... and the beautiful little church across the road... 

And this is the property we lived in. We rented the house off the local council for the princely sum of $5.00 per week... but that was big money back then... ten times my weekly pocket money. We also leased a paddock behind the property and cut the grass to make hay which we sold... it was also where our pet goat, Shelly, was safely away from Mum’s delicious flower gardens. It looks quite overgrown now but what was so nice to see was that a few of the trees were actually ones that we had planted.

 

Back in those days our telephone number only had three digits, Te Karaka 696, and we only had reception for one television channel... in black and white. My how things have changed... for the better?

We moved from Te Karaka into Gisborne when my parents bought the lease on a corner store there. Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly in the best part of town but it was in the days before weekend trading, EFT POS and big supermarkets. Mum and Dad worked extremely hard and the business was very successful while we were there. This is what the shop looked like when we drove by.

 Walking through the city was very interesting... the old shops I used to go to were still there... Muirs Bookstore, Colliers Menswear, Bramwells Pharmacy. I couldn’t resist making a purchase in each store and was even more surprised that Colliers Menswear used the same printed paper bags from twenty years ago. I’m assuming they must have bought in bulk way back then.

Anyway back to the A&P show and the woodchopping... despite some completely atrocious weather in the lead up the show the sun came out to shine and add proof to the claim that Gisborne is indeed the first city in the world to greet the sun each day by nature of New Zealand being in the first time zone and Gisborne being the easternmost city of the North Island.

So here a few pictures from the woodchopping.

 

I was amazed that some of the competitors in Dad’s memorial event were actually his contemporaries he used to compete against. It was great to see them still competing against younger men and still enjoying the sport. Woodchopping is always a spectacular crowd pleaser.

 

I couldn’t resist having a look at some of the home exhibits, carefully displayed behind animal fencing, I used to enter the knitting categories when I was little but I can’t for the life of me remember if I won anything or not.

This was in the dressed doll category... I wondered if the seamstress was channelling Liberace at the time. Spooky is a very good word to use...

Then there were the sheep... it is an A&P show after all...

And I found the wool class winners quite interesting too... not to mention a great trophy for this category.

I’ve been talking about last year so you’re probably wondering what’s happening this year, well... 

The 2011 Gisborne A&P show is on this weekend! Unfortunately I’m not able to travel up for it this year but I have sent the sponsorship money through to the A&P association to ensure that Dad’s memorial event can take place again this year.

So if you feel like seeing the country come to town and you’re going to be on the East Coast this weekend pop on down to the show. I can guarantee that you'll have a great day.  

Video Killed The Radio Star - Part Two

Sub-titled 'Felize Navidad' by Celine Dion

Can you believe that it's October already?!? Which means that if you're a knitter contemplating knitting gifts for Christmas... you're running out of time! I always set out with great plans of knitting multiple different projects for friends and family as Christmas gifts but the reality is that I never seem to have time to get them finished... well ok... perhaps my time management isn't all that great at this time of the year either.

Last year I took the easy way out and sent a few of my Knitter friends a skein of yarn each that I had dyed and given a Christmasey name... this year I'm not so sure. I've got a few Christmas craft markets coming up so I might be kept busy just getting yarn dyed and ready for those.

I found the following video on Youtube and thought it was appropriate to this time of year... if you're a knitter... working out what people want you to knit... and a royalist. Thanks go to Franklin Habit for originally posting the video.

 

Personally I rarely give people a choice... if I'm knitting something for them they get what I decide to knit them...  and I expect them to be grateful! :-)

Speaking of knitting with a Christmas theme... In my last post I gave you a bit of a teaser for one of my knitting projects... it was something I was knitting as part of swap for a group I moderate on Ravelry... Well I finished it last night while I was watching the Rugby World Cup quarter final matches. I thought there was some unintentional humour in knitting an 'athletic' support while watching athlete's on TV.

 
After knitting the waistband I had to hand sew it over the elastic. Let me remind you that as a Knitter I love to knit... I do not love to hand sew... anything.

 
... and then I added a rib section onto the edge of the pouch to allow for the full 3D effect. I used the double knitting technique to make the pouch reversible.

 
... as you can see! I also stitched a red bead on one of the reindeer so that you could tell which one was Rudolph.

 
...oopps Rudolph changed places... he must be versatile.

 
... so here is the finished jock strap! The reindeer image I used is called 'Fornicating Deer' by Ann Rutten but I've chosen to call this the 'Happy Humping Reindeer' jock strap. It really is a quirky Christmas gift... with a twist. I just hope that Nigel, the recipient, likes it!

Bad Boys - Inner Circle

What does it mean to be a Bad Boy these days?

I don’t think my past behavior has marked me out to be considered a Bad Boy… my only brush with the law was as a kid was when I was caught shoplifting… except I wasn’t actually shoplifting. I had shoplifted a teeny tiny toy gun to go with my Han Solo Star Wars action figurine the day before. I can’t even remember what happened to the original which came with the figurine in the first place… but I got such a case of the guilts that night that I went back to the store after school the next day and got caught trying to put the gun back into the packet I had previously opened!

There ended my life of crime… and I have to confess that at the time, when it came to cartoons, I was always more of a fan of Scrooge Mc Duck than I was the Beagle Boys... but given my thwarted attempt at shoplifting perhaps I was just as bumbling as the Beagle Boys! So I learned then, at the tender age of ten, that crime doesn’t pay… especially when it makes your parents angry... or in my parents case... incandescently angry! 

Um..perhaps I just lied… I think some of my clothes and hairstyles in the 1980’s at times would have easily been considered fashion crimes... and I have been responsible for a few parking tickets and a couple of speed camera fines... see I'm not a total goody good.

So I guess you’re wondering where this abstract line of thought has come from??? Well a few weeks back I had a bit of a chuckle when I read the following news story…

Don't needle prisoners

So quite clearly, even if I had turned to a life of crime it wouldn’t have been to the detriment of my knitting. I think it’s great that the prisoners are getting time while inside to do something constructive to benefit the community.

I was also chuckling because this is one of my knitting bags…

  

 Franklin Habit designed it a few years back after a woman saw him knitting in public and actually asked him if he had learned to knit in prison. Every time I have the bag with me in public it gets comments and when they ask me if it’s true I just smile and neither confirm nor deny.

 The tote bag is still available for purchase from his store on café press... if you’d like people to guess about your colourful, or otherwise, origins in knitting.

I'll leave you with a sneaky peak at my latest knitting project...

 
 
Yes that's right... it's going to say Feliz Navidad... which means it's going to be a Christmasey gift. If I don't have too many distractions this week I should have it all finished sometime this weekend when all will be revealed. Well... not all will be revealed... but you'll understand what I mean when you see the finished project.

Video Killed The Radio Star - Part One

Sub-title... 'Joy Ride' by Roxette

Perhaps it's because I'm a guy but... I have a thing for fast cars. Not that you could call either of our cars a sports model but at least my little Ford KA is red... and we all know that red cars do go faster!

Here's a clip of a very sporty Ferrari... I'm not sure how fast it goes... it's red... and it got my motor running... because it's knitted!

 

I wouldn't mind going for a Joy ride in it!

In my previous post I mentioned that a designer had used two colourways of my Fibre Alive Merino Mania yarn in a design featured in Knitty... well... I forgot to say that it wasn't the first time a designer had used my yarn in a pattern.

An up and coming New Zealand designer by the name of Gabriella Henry of Sweetp Designs recently launched a pattern featuring Merino Mania on Ravelry called 'Faultline'. It's a very special design for a very special cause.

 
Gabriella and her family were living in Christchurch when the major earthquakes struck and continued living there through a very stressful nine months of aftershocks. Ultimately the family decided to move away from Christchurch and pick up the pieces of their lives and start afresh in the North Island of New Zealand.

But as they say... 'You can take the girl out of Christchurch , but you can't take Christchurch out of the girl!' Gabriella designed this shawl as a tribute to Christchurch and is donating 25% of the proceeds of each sale to the New Zealand Red Cross and their Christchurch relief effort... which of course is ongoing. Faultline was released on the first anniversary of the first earthquake and is a beautiful design and a wonderful personal response by a designer to what was a disastrous event for Christchurch and the greater Canterbury region.

The pattern is available on ravelry as a download for US$4.00

So it's a three for one special offer... by purchasing the pattern you get to pay tribute to Christchurch in a fibrous way... you get to acknowledge an up and coming New Zealand designer... and you end up donating to a very needy and trustworthy cause.

Go on... do it... you know you want to!