tow hearts on her toes

One of my dear friends back in states had a baby girl V back in May. I of course mailed over a package filled with cardigans and wee hats. Now I am putting together a second package to send over. Her mother asked if I could knit V some socks because the normal socks make her feet clammy. Auntie Kelebek to the rescue!

It is another pattern from New Pathways for Sock knitters. The original pattern had three hearts on it but since this sock is only 4 inches long I only did one heart. The yarn is Rowan 4 ply soft and a wee bit of Jitterbug for the darker blue heart bit.

I find knitting baby socks immensely satisfying. They are so cute. I mean seriously think how tiny a foot must be to fit into a four inch sock! And they get done in a flash. I will also be making V a cardigan. I will use the Helena pattern because the last one I did turned out adorable!

tow procrastinator

A wise person once quipped that procrastinators are the leaders of tomorrow. I agree, but I want to break out of the cycle of putting things off and let things add up and fixing everything at once. I thought about this when I noticed my blog entries were few but very long. I put of writing the blog entry for so long I end up with massive posts trying to cover everything. It might stem from my annoying desire for everything to be perfect so I leave things off until I know that I can get it done properly. I want to get better at getting tasks done as they arise instead of putting it off until all the tasks mountain up and I have to do them all at once. Here’s to hoping writing smaller entries more frequently!
Look who arrived last week,

No, she’s not mine but I wish she was. Say Masallah with me and look how cute and perfect she is! She is the daughter of a friend. I’ve been waiting for her to arrive for the last three months or so!
I made this doll for her,

The doll’s name is Aliye! I also made a blanket for her, but I didn’t get a good photo of it before I gave it to her. Ins I’ll try to get one with the baby on it!

I finished the arrowneights. I almost ran out of Wollmeise yarn and I was worried because Wollmeise is very hard to get a hold of. But a friend from Ravelry came to rescue and I was able to complete them.

Insert the usual complaint about camera not capturing the colours properly. It’s actually a brilliant shade of blue with some teal mixed in.

The pattern has you ending with 5 rows of stockinette followed by a YO, K2tog row and another 5 rows of stockinette. The rows with the yarn overs gives you a nice place to fold the edge down. The instructions said not to bind of but sew it down, but I bound of anyway. Then I threaded elastic through the gap left by folding the seam down (just like the hem of a waist band of a skirt).

This worked great. I have worn the socks a couple of times and they don’t slide down one bit.

The next sock project was for a swap at the Australian Knitters group. The theme of the swap was Favourite Colour and my partner liked red. I decided to knit her a pair of socks. The pattern is Vinnland socks from the anti craft website.
I chose Dream in Color -Smooshy yarn for the socks.

The colour way is called “In Vino Veritas.” That’s latin for “in wine there’s truth” I wouldn’t know I don’t drink, ever! I decided the call the socks “veritaserum” after the truth potion in Harry Potter

Nice huh? I am hoping the swap partner will provide some photos of the sock on her feet so I can update the photos.
I loved working with this yarn. It’s true to its name. It IS smooshy! The pattern turned out beautiful as well. I did get a bit tired of the repeat of the pattern, 16 row repeat and each row was patterned and I couldn’t memorize it!
Here’s the work in progress shot,

I colour the charts which makes it easier for me to see what kind of decrease or increase I am doing. SSK gets coloured blue, K2tog gets coloured pink etc. I kind of went overboard and coloured the entire chart this time! I found the clipboard the pattern is on at K-mart. It is very handy because of the sliding ruler thing. I just slide the ruler up as I finish each row, no need for post it notes (my old method of keeping track of rows) or highlighters. I also find it helpful to place the clipboard on the bookstand so I can knit without having to look down constantly.

The other swap I was in it was the magic yarn ball swap. This is where you get small goodies and wrap them all into a magical yarn ball. As the person knits or crochets from it they get the presents! This was the one I’ve sent out

I can’t reveal the contents yet because my swap partner hasn’t started crocheting it yet.

And this was the one I’ve received,

That’s handspun merino, silk and alpaca blend you are looking at! My swap partner spun it for me. It’s 16 WPI which makes it 4 ply! She suggested I turn it into socks but it is too gorgeous to be worn on my feet. I am making it into a Juno shawl. Here’s what it looks like so far,

I had to unwrap my ball because it was huge and it was tangled in some places and I am impatient! Look at all the goodies I got,

Awesome! See the little sheepy? That was for ACA! Here’s Shaun the sheep with the rest of his friends Irfan and Mojo,

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Melbourne stitches and craft show. I got to meet up with a bunch of ladies that I met online through ravelry. Get this, one of the ladies I’ve met and had lunch with was my magic yarn ball swap partner! I have to admire her self control for not blurting out that she was my super secret swap partner. Overall I was disapointed with the yarn content of the show, but I sure enjoyed the company of friends!

Those were some serious needles!

I wanted to take this one home! It was $150, and I left it where it was.

I made three squares to send to the Friendship Blankets Bushfire relief. They are 30 cm by 30 cm’s. This picture was taken before they were blocked. I can assure you they blocked into squares! Blocking is magical!

Plain double crochet, worked back and forth.

Stared with a circle and worked in to a circle, worked in the round

And a knit one worked diagonally.

I started a butterfly wing shawl for me worked from 2 ply lace weight yarn dyed for me by my friend Mel months ago. (whoa over run sentences much?!) I usually work on it when I go to the lecture at the Mosque on wednesdays. I am happy with the way it’s coming along. I stared with a 4 mm crochet hook and kept increasing the hook size. I am using a 6.5 mm hook now.

A couple more rows and it’s done!
I wanted to share a tip regarding crochet. when I put my project into the project bag I usually leave the hook on the loop and wrap the yarn around the hook a few times. The yarn does find a way of getting unwound and then frogging itself. What I do now is this

I slip a stitch marker through the loop and that’s it! It’s a bit like putting the stitches on a holder when I am knitting, but the beauty of crochet is there is only one loop to worry about!

Now on to a completely different subject,
I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before but I hold an Bachelors (Honours) degree in Journalism. I graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006. For one reason or another I have not persuaded my major but chose to work on the library field instead. I am still not thinking about becoming a journalist but I got an offer to write a freelance article for an Islamic magazine. I thought about it and decided this was something I can do. What I am looking at is the help of the Muslim community to the bushfire victims. The media coverage of this is sorely lacking and I wanted to change that. One of the places I’ve visited was Balha’s sweets. this company donated 10% of their profits from March 14th to March 20th to IISNA which donated them to Redcross. I stopped by to interview the owners and didn’t leave without sampling the offerings,

YUM!

tow heatwave

It’s strange to be writing about a heatwave in the middle of February but do keep in mind I live in Australia now. I am hearing about minus 30, 40 temperatures back in Wisconsin and I am thinking I wouldn’t mind a blast of freezing wind now. We had four days in a row of 40+ (that’s 100+ in F). Then we had a “cool change” which brought the temperatures down to 35, that’s 95 degrees F. Tomorrow we are expecting 43C (110 F) and for some crazy reason Sunday’s forecast is a pleasant 26C (78F). I am praying that the AC will survive long enough to help us survive the Saturday.
This is how Hermoine spent the heatwave

She would lay down like this in the spot the AC blows at and not move for hours. I know there is a LOL cat joke here somewhere but I can’t think of one!
I have been obsessively knitting a pair of knee high socks. Almost all my handknit or otherwise socks are ankle high. But I had this lovely blue skein of Wollmeise that comes in 150 g hanks and I knew it had to be something special.
Look how pretty blue it is

The colourway is called vergissmeinnicht which is the Forget-me-not flower.

Just starting out on January 16 th.

After turning the heel

Work in progress
And this is what it looks like now

Yup that’s a mailing tube that’s “wearing” the sock. It is hard enough to photograph my own feet without breaking my leg! I started increasing for the calf. There is a pretty design that goes on the calf, which is another reason why I keep on knitting because it is interesting.

I am just starting the calf pattern so there isn’t much to see. I love the heel turn, I am becoming quiete the pro at that!
I only have one FO to show.

These are butterfly button slippers. They are made out of cotton yarn so they keep my feet nice and cool.

Love the butterfly button!
I bought a book called “Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn” I love sock knitting so most books I buy are on socks. Though I did buy Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan after borrowing it from the library and realising that I would wear half the patterns there!
The sock book divides handpainted yarns to three categories, “Nearly Solids” “Wild Multi” and “Muted Multi” I love playing with my sock yarn stash so I took out the sock yarn bin and separated my sock yarn into those categories.

I love my sock yarns! Top left are the nearly solids, top right are the wild multi’s and the middle are the muted multis.
Back in November 2007 I had declared our house an official Turk’s house because of the permanent placement of the tea kettle on our stove like this

I had my friend Jess point out that we can’t become an official Turkish household without having doilys around. I remedied that situation last weekend by putting this on top of our coffee table

Neither ACA nor I mind it because it is actually functional and very pretty. I promised him that the rest of the house will stay doily free.

I put a plastic table cloth on top to protect to lace. Look how pretty it is,

That’s some impressive crocheting (not by me though)!
UPDATE: My mum confirmed that this was the table cloth my lovely grandmother crocheted for me. May Allah rest her soul.
Now I am used to seeing Christmas items start coming out late October around here. But this is just too much,

I snapped this at the grocery store last weekend. Easter is on April 12th! Can we at least wait till there are 2 months to go till Easter?!
We bought this in the same shopping trip

Yup that’s 825 grams (that’s 1.8 pounds!) of Corn Flake goodness. Neither ACA nor I eat cereal. So why did we end up with a kilo of cereal in our already cramped kitchen? It was on sale! I wanted to buy some corn flakes to use as coating to fry chicken. I sensibly grabbed a small box that was 2.99. On the way to the registers ACA spotted this monster pack for 3.29. Yes it is very, very cheap but I don’t need to feed an army with cornflakes. I just need a few grams to coat chicken! We also won a reading timer from the package. ACA was also happy about that.
I am impressed with my new phone’s camera abilities. It has a 5 megapixel camera that takes really good pictures. Here’s my new phone Taco,

It’s actually Samsung Tocco (F480) but I like calling it Taco. It is an awesome phone. It’s fully touch optimized and it has haptic feedback that gives you a little vibration when you press the virtual buttons. The camera is amazing and the call quality is fantastic. I’ve been having fun playing with the widgets!
Lastly a shout out to my (not so little anymore) brother. He will be taking Honors English, Honors Biology, Honors Advanced Algebra and Trig, Honors German, and AP Politics! And I thought I was the nerd of the family! Good job bro, keep it up!!

tow 3 socks, 2 hats, 1 cardi, 1 toy, and a cat

I often write on my blog in my mind, the catch is of course that I have to type it here for others to read!
I was hoping to start this post by talking about the new job I was hired for, unfortunately I got the news that I didn’t make the cut. I made it to the second round with the 10 finalists of which they were going to hire 5-7 people. I thought I had a pretty good chance, but no. I have prayed and have others pray for me to ask Allah to grant this job to me if it is the khayr meaning “good” for me, and to take it away if it is not. Since I got so close to getting the job, yet didn’t make it I will accept this coming from God. I am just not looking forward to starting the whole cycle of job hunting again. It would be a lot easier if I knew what the heck I wanted do!
I started exercising! This was not intented as a new years resolution, it just happened to fall to this date. We bought our first Elliptical machine (cross trainer) about a month back. Unfortunately both ACA and I were too close to the maximum weight limit so the machine drove us both crazy. It was just too flimsy. So we returned that one and bought a much more sturdier machine with nearly twice the weight limit. We had some problems with that as well but it was fixed once they replaced some of the joints (turns out some of the units were faulty!). I joined the “exerstashers” group on Ravelry. I actually decided to pay myself a set amount for each workout before I got the invite to the group. That felt a bit strange! I “pay” myself a dollar for each workout. I will be using this money to buy sock yarn. This way I can curb my sock yarn buying habit and build a habit of exercising!
The Digitessa socks ain’t happening, yet. I am just too loose of a knitter to get the right gauge. I use 2.25 mm needles, and I think I will have to cave in and buy 2.00 mm needles so I can knit a bit tighter. While the digitessa awaits I finished a couple of socks.

These are the Sea Shore Socks. The yarn was dyed just for me by a friend! Yes I made two of them, I just don’t have a good photo of the pair together. I make all my socks two at a time anyway!

This was the third pattern I used for this yarn. The first one I hated the pattern so I ripped it back. The second one I got as far as half way through the gusset increases when I realised it is not supposed to pucker up like this…

So, rip rip rip and I started over with a tried and true pattern of coriolis socks with a thick band. I am pleased with how they turned out. Though I was hoping for something more whoa from this yarn as I bought it so lovingly. It’s not the yarn, it’s me!

And this is the newest pair I finished.

I called it “Salty Waves” because the colour way of the sock was Salty Dog. I knew Jitterbug was notorious for its lack of yardage, I just didn’t believe it until I made a pair. I almost always have 30-40 gr left from the socks I make. Mostly because I don’t like them too long and I am a loose knitter. I barely had anything left after finishing these socks and they are not very tall. I learned cabling without a cable needle for these socks and I love it!
I was also busy knitting baby things for Jess’ upcoming baby and for another friend. I made this shrug for Jess baby and the hat to go with it.

I love it but I won’t be making another one of these unless it’s for my own far away future baby. I really dislike seaming, it’s so much effort (and yes this comes from the woman who knits socks on 2.25 mm needles). But look how cute it turned out!
And this is the hat,

I can only imagine how it would look around the baby’s head!

And this is the other hat I made from the same pattern. The hat is posing on our cross trainer!

It needs to be blocked because the brim insists on curling upwards!

I also made a toy for another friends baby. Apparently I can’t count so the points came out all different lengths!

I don’t think the baby will mind!

I started working on a new shawl. I looked around for a long time to find a pattern good enough for my precious Wollmeise lace weight and I know this is it! It’s from the Victorian Lace today. It has a knitted on border, which scares me a bit but I am all for learning new skills!

Well the photo is to give you an idea. It’s much prettier in person!

I made this yesterday while watching TV.

We keep the salt and pepper grinder shaker things on the living room table because thats where we eat. And the black pepper insists on spilling on the table cloth. ACA put a plate under it to fix the problem but I think my solution is prettier. The bottom is a crocheted hexagonish circle and the rest is knit. I like it!

Hermoine decided that the spot I take photos of finished objects is the perfect place for her to nap. I snapped her photo then moved her away from the spot. Everything I own is covered in cat hair anyway, there is no need to pre-hair my knit/crochet items before they are even worn for the first time!

tow orange you blue

I finished the Ocean Toes socks! This is my favourite pair of socks I’ve ever made. I will be wearing them to Eid (Bayram, a Muslim Holiday) when we go to visit people.

I will be participating in a KAL to knit these beauties. I bought the kit a while back but only got this far

I am hoping by participating in a knit along I will finally be able to knit them.
I got other wollmeise goodies to show. I was able to catch the last update and bought two of my desired colourways, vergissmeinnicht and Blue Suzanne (dark).

Such pretty yarn. I don’t know which one to knit first.
I tried my hand at dying my own yarn. I was sent some blank yarn and blue food colouring in one of the swaps I was in. I only had blue so I made blue yarn

I think it turned out pretty good for first try.

I went to the Handweavers & Spinners Guild of Victoria’s sale on Saturday. It was difficult tearing myself away from all the pretty handspun yarn. I wanted to take it all home with me! Here’s a blurry photo of what I ended up with,

I got the newest issue of the Yarn magazine, an issue of the Mon Tricot, some bargain yarn on a cone, two skeins of hand spun alpaca, and a skein of orange-blue handspun. The orange and blue yarn was so squishy I had to cast on right away.

I get cold in the morning so I wanted a hat for myself. I present to you “orange you blue” hat

I had yarn left over so I made a smaller hat in the same pattern.

As I mentioned earlier my friend Jess is having a baby, yay! We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet so I made a teddy bear hat that will fit a boy or a girl. I don’t have a baby that can model for me, so I put the Tickle me Elmo on modeling duty

I think it will look approximately bazillion times cuter on a baby!
I made another job application on the weekend, I do want this job rather badly. Lets hope for the best!

tow Tahoe Shawl

It’s done!
What a saga this shawl became. I wanted to knit lace for ages and when I saw someone destashing this beauty I knew I had to buy it.

The yarn is from Lorna’s Laces. It’s called “Helen’s Lace” and the colourway is Tahoe. It is a sumptuous blend of 50% silk and 50% merino. I got the yarn back in April. I have never wound a yarn from a hank into a ball before! And I did not know how long it would take to wind over 1200 yards of laceweight yarn. ACA gave up on me not too long after I asked him to hold out the yarn. I tried putting it on a chair, I even tipped the chair over trying to get it to cooperate

That didn’t work! I found that I could drape it over one of my yarn bins flipped upside down and wind the yarn while I was standing up.

That did work! I wind my yarns this way now. Father in law did promise to make me a swift but this method works fine for now.
After I got the ball all wound up it was a matter of finding the right project for it. After two false starts I settled on the Queen Anne’s Lace Shawl. It was difficult getting started but once I got over the few rounds things started moving smoothly.

This was taken back in July.
After this I started knitting socks so the project stalled. I picked it up every once in a while knitted a few rounds and put it down. I had stitches come of the needles on three occasions (all three my fault) so there were quite a few dropped stitches. At the begining of this month I decided to finished the shawl! I did not do all the rounds the pattern dictated because I was getting tired of knitting it. Also I noticed the shawl was getting huge –unblocked. I can not believe how long it took me to cast off all those stitches, 512 to be exact. I don’t think I will be making another circular shawl anytime soon. It starts out nice and small and morphs into a monster halfway through!
Here’s the back of the shawl

And here’s the front

I took a photo of the shawl fresh of the needles. I am just amazed at what a difference blocking makes. From this

To this

Now what to cast on next?

tow more swaps, a picnic and egames expo

I had a busy weekend! On Saturday ACA, me and the bro in law went to the egames expo. I thought I would have some fun, but it turned out to be great fun! I had to stop ACA from spending our savings on various gaming equipment! They had a false fire alarm in the middle of the expo so we had to evacuate, good thing I had my knitting handy!

You can see in the photo the “Bizy Pattern” socks. I have finished the socks on Sunday.

I am very pleased with how they turned out. I love handspun yarn!
On Sunday there was a picnic organised through Ravelry. I took the train all by myself for the first time! There was a service distruption where we had to get off the train, go on busses, get of the busses and go back on the train, but I didn’t panic at all! I had such a good time at the picnic. It was so much fun meeting people that I only knew online.

I do like how I am the only one posing!

And here I am looking through the 101 Designer One Skein Wonders. I have purchased a copy of the book for myself. Do notice my awesome YARRRN shirt! ACA bought it for me at the egames expo. It’s hard to tell in the photo but there is a knitting needle and a crochet hook forming the symbol! You can see a better picture here
We were asked to bring a handmade toy (if we can) to the picnic so I made this little guy.

His name is Oswald the Oddball!
I also received a pressie at the picnic. A knitting machine tool came with my wool winder and I mailed that out to Gusseting and she went and handyed this beautiful patonyle yarn for me!

My long awaited parcel from the 100 gr challenge swap arrived on Tuesday! It was so worth the wait. Look at what I got,

To quote what I wrote on Ravelry
“The popup butterfly card is all sorts of awesome, it’s going straight on the fridge as soon as I figure out how to keep it open with magnets. Look at my project bag, blue butterflies –can you get any more perfect for me?! And the wrist strap goes in and locks so I can keep it on my wrist and knit while travelling! I already popped in the sock I am working in it. Yummy chocolates, I made sure they survived the photo shoot, now half of them are safe in my tummy. Who says you can’t have chocies for breakfast?! The stitch markers are so yummy. They look like jelly candies!!
And of course Pièce de résistance, the Anastasia Socks!

I can’t believe somebody made socks for me, insane!
That wasn’t the only package that arrived on Tuesday. I was once again RAOK’ed!!! A total random act of kindness arrived at my doorstep from an awesome raveler.

The book is called Contemporary Knitting by Jo Sharp. I haven’t looked through all of it yet but I love what I see. If I am ever going to cure my fear of cables I gotta do something I love! She sent me shiny butterfly buttons in a pretty turquoise box and butterfly stitch markers! A Harry Potter notepad which shall be housed next to my first edition book of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone. A chocolate that I never tried before, yay for new things! And six little cakes of different socks from different dyers. I am so tempted to sit and make gauge swatches all day with them. And, and and a whole skein of the softest yummiest handspun BFL yarn. It’s so nice to squish, it’ll be a while before I make something with it because I love squishing it!
– Again quoting myself from my ravelry post
I have finally cast off on the Tahoe shawl I was working on. I actually cut it short because I just did not want to work on it anymore! It’s blocking now I will take photos of it later.
Right now I am working on another butterfly wing shawl for myself using the yarn my friend dyed for me.

I am enjoying watching how the colours pool into each other as I crochet.
I also started on a new pair of socks as well, gotta take a photo of that later as well. It’s sleepy time!

tow dervish

My yarn winder is here, my yarn winder is here! I’ve been chasing a reasonably priced ball winder on ebay for ages. And this time I wasn’t outbid! When it arrived a couple of days ago I spend an entire afternoon winding left over balls of wool into purdy little cakes. Like these

I named the ball winder “dervish” because the motion of it reminds me of the whirling dervishes in Turkey. It even has a long white cap!

My father-in-law has promised to make a swift so I can use it to make the skeins into cakes as well. Though I like storing my yarn in their original skeins so I’ll only ball it when I am going to use it immediately.
Speaking of pretty yarn in skeins, my Wollmeise order arrived the same day! Look how pretty!

I was so happy to finally catch an update, an update with lace weight to boot! These skeins are huge, 300 gr each! I have projects in mind for the two of them, but I think I will end up trading the green one. It’s just too green for my taste.
I am also the proud owner of four handspun yarns! I bought them from a Ravelry destash. I never used handspun yarn before so I am very excited to make things out of them. I forgot to take a group photo of the yarns and I am too lazy to go dig them out of my stash so I did a quick (albeit bad!) collage on photoshop.

Lovely aren’t they? And if anybody is laying awake wondering what my stash looks like, well here it is!

The top bin holds my sock yarn, the middle one lace weight yarn and all else goes to the bottom bin. I also moved the yarn I bought to make sweaters to one of the back rooms. They were just taking up space because it’s too hot to make sweaters right now. I will move them to the front bins when I am going to make a sweater. So here’s the “hidden stash”

Don’t look at home next to the computer parts of ACA?
I took out the bins to organise them and to get the odd and left over balls wound on Dervish. Hermoine loved the new hiding opportunities this provided.

Can you find her?
I have one finished object to share. I made a scarf for a friend. It needed to be done quickly because I need to mail it out next week along with the other swap stuff. I am always amazed what a difference blocking makes.
Unblocked (also in progress)

And after blocking (using my awesome blocking wires!)

Nice huh? I named it the cherry scarf.
Yesterday ACA finally got around to fixing our bed. The bottom wood planks were not screwed on so the long woods kept sliding off and falling to the ground. After he finished fixing it we left the mattress off because we needed to flip the mattress later. We took a break to eat dinner. Hermoine came in from her daily night stroll of the neighbourhood. From the corner of my eye I saw her go into the bedroom. When she didn’t come out for a long time I went to check up on her.

She managed to squeeze herself underneath the wooden planks, but she couldn’t come back out. Laughing I called ACA to help to get her out. We needed her to move to the other end of the bed to where there was a larger gap.

She was mildly interested in ACA’s hand but not enough to get her crawling to the other end of the bed. She didn’t have enough room to stand up so she had dig her claws into the carpet and slide her body forward –commando style! I went and got her favourite toy to lure her to slide.

It worked! Once she came to the end I gently held on to her neck and guided her out. Crazy kitty!

Still love her to bits!

kelebek