Plodding away

There has been knitting. Quite a bit, actually. Fancy, my Kidsilk Haze jumper has sort of stalled. Mainly because there's been travel knitting, and public knitting, and Fancy isn't really suited to either.

Over the long weekend two weeks ago, we went to Bundaberg for the in-laws family reunion. This involved a flight to Brisbane, then a 4 hour drive to Bundaberg. Lots of knitting. We flew up on Friday night, visited Tangled Yarns on Saturday morning, where I finally got to meet Nathalie.

Nathalie and I started communicating back when I first started the blog, over seven years ago. It was great to finally meet her!
Then we drove up to Bundaberg. On Thursday, I started a new sample for the shop, and took it along as my travel knitting. I chose Blossom by Martin Storey (from Rowan Miniature Classics), a sweet little baby bolero. On Monday, we started to drive home.

It was a nightmare. Long story short, our flight was cancelled. Tiger Airways grounded it's entire fleet due to the Chilean Volcanic ash cloud. Despite the fact that the volcanic ash was nowhere near Sydney nor Brisbane. However, the flight cancellation was not made clear until 2pm or so in the afternoon. It's a 12 hour drive from Sydney to Brisbane. 16 hours from Bundaberg to Sydney.

There was flooding rain on the North Coast. Nightmare. Worse still, I ran out of yarn. I was trying to pack light, and hadn't planned for extended travel. So most of the drive home was sans knitting. I know, disaster.

If I'd had the yarn, I would have finished the knitting! However, the knitting is now done, and the bolero is in the process of being constructed.

Instead of doing the little lace trim, I'm going to trim the edge in Liberty Bias Binding. Yum.

I'd finished the knitting on the little bolero before WWKIP day, and Fancy wasn't going to cut it for knitting in company, so I started something else.

Smoulder by Kim Hargreaves for Em. I'm using Drops Kid Silk instead of Kidsilk Haze, because I had it in the stash, a swap gift from BlueADT Knits. Yarn held doule, one 4mm needle and one 7mm needle. Moving along nice and quickly!

In the past week or so, I also finished my first ever quilt!

It's a gift for my very new nephew. Very, very simple, just strips around a centre rectangle, but I'm pleased with it, and my sister seemed to be, too. All that handquilting nearly did me in, too. I always swore I'd never quilt, but all that fabric I get to look at all day long in the shop finally sucked me in.

I don't think it'll ever come close to knitting, though!

I have awesome friends.

I have awesome friends. Really, really awesome friends.

Yesterday was WWKIP day in Sydney. For a while, Ailsa, Kylie, Shelley (All the way from New Zealand!) and I had planned a night out the night before, staying in a flash hotel in the city, then brunch before the big event.

I also had a significant birthday a couple of weeks ago. 39 and 12 months, I've taken to telling people. Lots of people asked me how I was going to celebrate, but I'd planned nothing. There was a variety of reasons. This year has been kind of crazy, and I'm still not completely settled in to our new routines. I also wasn't really enamoured of the idea of celebrating that particular birthday. I was kind of keen on the idea of staying at 39 forever. But as we are all too sadly aware, it doesn't work that way.

So the day passed kind of quietly, (but lovely!) with lots of well wishes from all of my lovely friends, a few gifts, but no celebration. And I was more than fine with that.

Little did I know that Ailsa had other plans. Totally, completely unbeknownst to me, she'd contacted some of the knitters attending WWKIP day, and invited them along to brunch. Yum Cha at Sky Phoenix. For 14 of my lovely, awesome, fantastic friends.

And much as I wasn't really enamoured of the idea of celebrating this birthday, I'm glad Ailsa organised it. It was wonderful, and I love you all for attending and making it so special.

Here is a video that Kris shot on her iPhone, by putting it on the Lazy Susan, and sending it around the table.

Awesome friends. The best.

And then I got to meet up with even more of them at WWKIP day! Sadly, I neglected to get my camera out, except to take one picture of DrK, after some of us had decamped to the balcony.

It was a lovely afternoon, but dry. No alcohol allowed at this year's venue. So after it was over at 4pm, some of us stopped at the bar outside Customs House Library to slake our thirst. Here, I finally remembered to pull out the shiny new camera I gave myself for my birthday!

Somehow, all the pictures I took missed Jussi, who'd also come all the way from New Zealand. I love her. Really, I've missed her since she went back and it was so good to see her again. So here's a pic of Ailsa, Jussi and myself that I took on the phone.

Thank you to everyone who came to my breakfast, and to those who couldn't make it, I don't love you any less - I have made some phenomenal friends through the knitting community, and I'm grateful for every one of you!

Stripey Mitts

A super quick flyby post! The little stripey mitts were well received this week, although it may have been more about having her picture taken!

They fit quite well, which I consider an achievement, as it was a total guess on my part!

Soecs:
Pattern: Basic Mittens Pattern from Ann Budd's Knitters Handy Book of Patterns
Yarn: Rowan DK leftovers in Cypress and Geranium
Needles: 3.25mm DPNS.
Mods: A few. Obviously, I didn't do a full mitten. I stopped so they'd be fingerless mitts. The pattern book gives the pattern for round numbers only. (5sts per inch, 6sts per inch, etc). I was working in DK, and my gauge was 5.5sts per inch. Miss P is kinda tiny tho, so I used the 2-3 years pattern at the 5sts per inch, and it came out a little bigger. Worked like a charm!
And it used up leftovers beautifully - maybe 20g total, and a couple of hours knitting time, max.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. I love this book, always have, it's such a nifty resource for the basics, mittens, gloves, hats etc.

And they look so cute! (That face helps though!)