tow two jobs

I started working at another school library two weeks ago and I am tired! I work Mondays and Wednesdays at a public primary school’s library and Thursdays and Fridays at a private Prep-Year 12 school’s library. I love, love both of my jobs. I think I have finally found what makes my heart sing in happiness (other than ACA the hubby of course!) I am seriously considering getting a degree in Library Studies, maybe a masters? I love the kids books. I love recommending books to the kids. And just the thought that I might be contributing to their love of reading makes me happy. The downside is working with small children is exhausting and working with the older students is maddening. But the positives over ride my annoyances and I look forward to going to the library each day.
I haven’t been knitting as much as I would like sadly. In the evenings by the time ACA and I get the dinner ready, pray the evening prayer (namaz) I am ready to crash. I finished a pair of gift mitts for one of the library assistants I work with. The pattern is the ever famous fetching.

I think I need to make myself a pair!
I started a new pair of socks from one of my favourite sock books, Knitting socks with hand painted yarn. The pattern is called “Copper Penny.” I am using Sundara sock yarn in the “Deadly Nightshade” colourway. I am starting the gusset increases now, yay heel turn here I come!

I really like my new project bag. I got it from an op-shop this week.
Speaking of Sundara, my final shipment of the Seasons Club arrived. Look how beautiful,

The colourway is called “Black Cherry.” It’s aran weight and blend of 50% silk and 50% wool. I am sad because there isn’t enough yarn there for me to make myself something nice to wear. I am either going to try to trade it for something else or put up a request on Ravelry to see if anybody wants to sell me a skein or two (an unlikely story as Snape would say).
I have been dyeing yarn. It requires less brain power than knitting!

This is 8 ply yarn. I am calling it “Korkunc Karpuz” meaning “Scary Watermelon”

I dyed 6 balls of Patons Soft Haze. I don’t have a snappy name for them.

This is Cleckheaton Country 8 Ply yarn. I am thinking of making a February Baby Sweater with it.

I called this one “Bak Yesil Yesil” named after a song in an old Turkish movie. I dyed this yarn so it goes gradually from light green to dark green. I thought it would make a neat Baby Surprise Jacket, but we’ll see.

I dyed two other yarns for the Sock Swap I have organised for the ravelry group. I am keeping it under wraps until I mail it out to my partner.

It’s sleepy time!

tow butterfly wing

The butterfly wing shawl for me is finally complete! I started crocheting this back in November when my friend Mel gifted me a skein of laceweight yarn she dyed herself for me. After playing around with couple of different stitches I’ve decided to go with the butterfly wing shawl pattern. I mostly worked on this shawl when I attended lectures in the mosque on Wednesdays. It’s the perfect pattern to keep my hands busy while I am listening to the teacher. I started out with 4.0 mm (G) hook and gradually increased hook size all the way to 6.5 mm (K) hook. This gave the shawl a beautiful drape as it got more airy and open towards the end.

I am planning on wearing it like this.

This is the back.

This shows the stitches better.

And here’s the shawl taking flight!

I have been winding yarn cakes back into skeins so I can dye them. I decided that the yarns look so much prettier when they are in skeins. I spent an afternoon doing just that. There were a couple of yarns I’ve purchased from destashes that came in yarn cakes and I turned them into skeins
This is the yarn cake I’ve received.

An action shot of the cake becoming to a skein

And voila! Look how pretty! If I named this yarn I would have called it “Fawkes” named after Dumbledore’s pet Phoenix.

It’s easy to make skeins with the swift my father-in-law made for me. I put my finger into the very middle of the swift and just spin it until I ran out of yarn. I’ve became very, very good at tying figure 8’s around the skeins so that they won’t get tangled.
Here are the skeins I’ve made sitting pretty!

The yarns from top the bottom are:
Electric Fiber Arts Hanspun in Sandstone colourway.
Fleece Artist Merino 2/6 I got this from a destash at Ravelry. This colourway was for a yarn club
Honey and Mint. Handspun just for me by a Ravelry swap partner.
Bizyhands Handspun Straightaway colourway

I am continuing my adventures in yarn dyeing. I enjoy the process of dyeing immensely. This one was another overdye. I’ve received 2 balls of Moda Vera sock yarn as a part of the Magic Yarn Ball swap. I turned the ball in to a skein so I can dye it.

After a session on the stove with lots of dye and vinegar this is what I came up with

And this is how it knits up

I named it “morcivert” This needs a bit of explaining, I’ll do my best. “Mor” means purple in Turkish. And “lacivert” means navy blue. Put the two words together you get “morcivert.” It’s not a real colour. Whenever I asked my dad what colour I should colour something he would say “morcivert” to tease me. If morcivert was a colour I think it would look like the yarn I’ve dyed. Bits of blue and bits of purple existing together.
And here’s a yarn from Sundara. The dyer lady has amazing colour sense and does magical things to the yarns she dyes. This one is called “Night Blossom”

It’s very dark purpley-brown with highlights of light purple and creams through out. I haven’t decided what to make them into yet, but I know they’ll be pretty!
I bought yarn from the stitches and craft show I went to last month. I just got around to photographing it,

It’s 4 skeins of Super Soft Merino in 4 ply goodness known as Pear Tree Yarn. The colourway is called “Damson” (that’s Mürdüm Eriği for the Turkish speakers. Hi mum & Alex!) I have paid an arm and a leg for them in anticipation of my stimulus payment! The seller gave me a discount for flashing my Ravelry badge!

I am happy to report the leaking tap has been fixed! ACA the husband extraordinaire hard at work

Love my handyman! It is hard to believe in June we are going to be married for two years. Two happiest years of my life, I can assure you that!
ACA and I met on the internet when I was living in the US, and him in Australia. Because of that we spent a lot of our time away from each other. From the time we met in August ‘06 to the time I’ve moved to Australia October ‘07 we had spent a total of 6 weeks together. Two weeks when we got engaged in February ‘07, and four weeks after we got married and had our honeymoon in June ‘07. I missed him like crazy especially while I was waiting in Turkey waiting for my spouse visa to arrive so I can move to Australia. This was the song I’ve listened to many, many, many times on the occasions I’ve felt the saddest. The band is Snow Patrol. I’ve been a fan ever since I’ve heard the song “Run” on the radio. The song is called “Set Fire to the Third Bar”

I’m miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold ground
I, I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
– Snow Patrol

Hermoine says hi!

tow favourite colour

I think it’s pretty obvious my favourite colour is from the blog title! I am happy to report that the favourite colours swap was a smashing success! The interesting twist we learned later that we were paired up with the person we were sending it to. See in the swaps I’ve been you only know who you are sending to, not who is sending you a swap. So we weren’t aware that the moderators of the swap put a twist in and paired us to have direct swaps without knowing about it. Fun!
My swap partner was Kristen and she sent me the awesomest blue swap package. Look!

Uuuh, what could be in the packages?

The notebook, the pen and the scisors are all from Smiggle. It’s a store I like going in to but never bought anything for myself from there before. The notebook cover does funny things to your eyes as you look at it! The yarn is silvery blue Tofutsies –a new yarn for me to try! And the highlight was the branching out scarf made for me in beautiful blue KPPPM!

I am happy to report my swap partner, again Kristen liked what I’ve sent her! With her permission I took these photos from her flickr page,

The socks fit!

And the additional goodies. The tea wallet was custom made by lulli on etsy. She did a fantastic job, I high recommend her!
On the other swap front the Juno shawl is coming along great!

It looks like I will need more yarn than I have to complete it and my kind swap partner offered to spin some more so I can finish the project. Crafty people are the best!
The colours in the yarn is amazing. You can not get beautiful variety of shades and hues with machine spun yarn. This photo shows the colours a bit better

Hmm, maybe I’ll get a nicer camera for my birthday!
I got a question about the yarn I’ve dyed. Heh, didn’t think anyone would be interested in the details honestly! I didn’t have a clear plan in mind. I wanted to play with the icing coloring my mom sent over from America. I read that black icing breaks into interesting colours when you pour in vinegar. I wanted to try that. I soaked the yarn in water with a splash of vinegar for a couple of hours. I think it takes the dye much quicker if you soak it for a long time. I put in 8 cups of water into a pot and dissolved 1/4 teaspoon of Wilton’s icing dye in black in it. I plopped the yarn in the water and turned on the heat to low. I poked it around periodically to make sure it was taking in the dye. I also poured in a cup of vinegar for a good measure after a while. The dye went clear rather quickly and I didn’t like the colour too much.It was murky dark green. I dissolved 1/4 teaspoon of Kelly Green of Wilton’s icing dye and poured that in to the pot. I had Queen’s food colouring at home so I poured in a bit of that yellow and mixed that in. I also poured red food colouring but I poured it just to the top bit of the yarn so I can have it in certain spots. And once again waited for the dye to be absorbed and water to turn clear. To sum it up, I was experimenting and got lucky!

tow Ormanda

The long awaited package from mom arrived last week. Every couple of months my lovely mother puts together a package of assorted goodies from US and sends it my way. I’ve been living in Australia for the past year and half and having packages from home is great! If I haven’t mentioned it before I’ve moved here because I got married to the most amazing man on earth and he just happened to be in Australia! I really dislike shopping so my mother kindly shops for me and mails them to me, sad I know! She just has amazing taste in clothes (I don’t) and she finds incredible bargains. Even with the weak Australian dollar the clothing turns out to be a bargain.
In this package she also sent me Kool Aid and Wilton’s icing dyes. I’ve been wanting to get into dying yarn and Kool Aid is hard to come by here. Being the awesome mom she is, she sent me 45 packets of assorted flavours and sent me a 12 pack of Wilton’s icing dyes.
Last night I’ve dyed this yarn. To be more accurate I overdyed it because it was already dyed a pale yellow with flecks of pink.

I am very, very pleased with how it turned out

Ignore the blue yarn, that was to tie off the sections of the hank.
Another side because it’s pretty

I named the colour “Ormanda” (Turkish for “in the forest”). I think I will knit it up to the Forest Canopy shawl.

Yesterday the tap in the laundry decided to drip. I stuck a bucket under it but the “drip, drip, drip” was driving us insane. I remembered something I read somewhere ages ago. You can tie a length of string to the tap and the drops follow through the string and drop gently and quietly.

It worked! (Note to mom, that’s the LAUNDRY sink ok? Love you mom!) Now I just have to get ACA to fix it!