Another hot Sydney day today. Too hot to knit, but I did manage to get the test shawl knitted up to the end of my chart over the past few days.

Here's a close up of the newest part.

I'm pleased with it, and the chart seems right now. Now I just have to do the real shawl, and decide on an edging. The baby it is intended for is due in February. Finishing it shouldn't be a problem if we don't have too many of these horrible hot days.

Woolwinder asked what Santa brought Twinkie for Christmas. Behold, she got her favourite gift!

Wrappings and boxes! Nothing makes Twink happier than paper to tear up and boxes to hide in. Except food.
And maybe Em's new iPod.

I'm going to enter rant mode now, but it's knitting related ;)
Emily gave me a belated Christmas present - her germs. I've spent the last two days with a horrible sore throat and a headache. Thanks, Em! ;) But maybe that's what had made me so grumpy and whiny.
I got Knitted Babes for Christmas. I've had it on my wish list for a while, and it's a pretty nice book. I knew Em would like some of the things in it, and I do too. It's a nice book, I finally sat down and spent some time looking through it. Em claims she would like to knit some of the things in it, too. (Which doesn't mean much. She starts a lot of knitted items, but doesn't often follow through on them ;)
All the items are knitted in fingering weight. That's fine, I decided to look around on the 'net for some suitable yarn. The vast majority of fingering weight yarn in Australia is baby yarn, available in a fairly limited range of colours. Of course, I could dye it, and that may be what I have to end up doing. Bendigo makes a nice 4ply (fingering) cotton, but I'd prefer wool.
Anyway, I found something perfect. Knit Picks Palette.
Ideal sized balls (50g), great range of colours, fantastic price.
Rant Mode On.
Knit Picks won't ship to Australia. I'm sure I've had this whine before. It crops up fairly regularly for us Aussies. The reason on the site is " Our primary reason for this is that we are not able to provide our international customers with the same superior service we provide to our North American customers. We have not been able to locate satisfactory shipping options that will work for all 75 countries we were servicing for our other companies."
Garbage! I have been ordering yarn (and other items) from all over the world for years. I have never had a problem with shipping that I can recall. Some places overcharge for shipping, but I have never lost an international parcel.
While I console myself with the idea that Knit Picks are costing themselves a great deal of money by leaving a large proportion of the world out of their company, it still pisses me off.
Of course, I have plenty of fingering weight sock yarn I could use, but it is slightly more expensive than the Palette. If anyone knows of something comparable to the Palette that I can get, could you let me know?
Anyway that's my rant for the day. Oh, and DH just announced that the thermometer still says it's 32C in our living room. At 9pm. Yay.
Oh, and another one! Is it just me, or have the comment spammers been doing overtime for the past few days? I always get spam, but it seems to have exploded of late.
Rant mode off.
For now ;)