It's the end of a perfect day

Talk about a satisfying little project.

Take one t-shirt, never been worn because it is just a little bit annoyingly too short.

Take less than half a ball of soft Patonyle sock yarn in a matching colour.

Swatch one or two edging patterns from a book, pick one and work out how many repeats you need to go around the bottom edge of the t-shirt.

Knit the edging and hit it with a good blast of steam to make it sit nicely.

Hand-stitch it to the hem of the t-shirt. And you're done.

Aside from swatching a different edging option the day before, this was completed in one day (and I didn't spend the whole day knitting) and I wore it the next.

The pattern is Seashore edging from 'The Hamlyn Complete Knitting Course' by Eleanor Van Zandt.

I deliberately chose not to block it hard to its full lacy potential because I wanted to finish it quickly. Then I backwards-justified that decision, thinking that, this being a t-shirt, I'm going to be machine washing it (in a lingerie bag) and the most I will be willing to do is a quick blast of steam from the iron before running for the bus in the morning. I'm hoping the sock yarn will be a good choice to stand up to a fair bit of wear this way.

I hand-stitched it to the wrong side of the hem. Another option, especially with a more lacy edging, and if you wanted a more fancy look (maybe even with contrasting yarn) would be to sew it on the right side, partially overlapping the t-shirt so that the fabric shows through the lace.

Welcome to the beautiful south

As soon as I arrived in Adelaide last Thursday evening, I was informed we had plans to go out for the evening. We were going to see the Northern Lights and then a show by comedy trio The Hound of the Baskervilles at the Garden of Earthly Delights - 'Every Film Ever Made'. Jolly good, says I.

I had no idea what the Northern Lights was. As we approached I saw a hint of coloured light and thought maybe they had coloured some buildings unlikely hues with light - like they sometimes do here in Canberra - the High Court awash with pink and the National Library bright green, or whatever.

Like I said, I had no idea.





This is something else entirely. "Northern Lights" is the work of The Electric Canvas, and consists of elaborate projections on the row of sandstone buildings along North Terrace in Adelaide - the State Library, SA Museum, Art Gallery, Elder Hall, Mitchell Building and Bonython Hall. The images change every few minutes, and you could easily spend an hour or more watching them all change and trying to get non-blurry photos. You can see more of my photos in the Flickr set here.




The event has proved so popular they have extended it beyond the end of the Adelaide Festival to the end of March.

Edited to add:
If you watched the Sunday Arts program on ABC last weekend you would have seen the story on the Northern Lights, and you would also have seen my friend, artist Nöel Skrzypczak being interviewed (and looking gorgeous and sounding brilliant). She has a show on in Melbourne at the moment. We used to walk to school together and now she's on the teevee!

there is definitely something going on upstairs

I got back on Monday night from my annual Adelaide trip for Womadelaide. Unfortunately I came down with a stomach bug on Saturday and missed a lot of the festival. I had to bug out early on Saturday and couldn't go anywhere on Sunday. Oh yeah, I'm fine now, and back to eating with a vengeance. And looking forward to the V-festival. Duran Duran!

I did have a good time on Friday night. The highlight was supercalifragilisticly authentic Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks, with four fiddles. And two piano accordions. Amongst other things.


I do try to sample the variety of music at these festivals, but inevitably I'm drawn to anything with fiddles, and the more the better.

I also loved diva Mavis Staples' show on Friday night, and the part of the Black Arm Band's set that I saw. Don't you love that name for a collective of indigenous Australian musicians?

Giant steps are what you take

This is the Ribbed Wrap Jacket from 'Contemporary Knitting by Jo Sharp'. My first finished garment for me. And it was briefly cold enough to wear it on the weekend!

I picked this pattern for several reasons:
- everything else in that book is completely shapeless
- I was intrigued by the unusual but simple construction. It looked pretty easy to knit and the ribbing should mean not too many fitting issues.
- It uses Jo Sharp Silk Road Aran for the body and Silk Road DK for the collar. I liked the idea of quicker knitting with the aran weight but not being completely wrapped in such warmth - I find lighter jumpers and cardigans much more wearable.
- The wool is absolutely delicious - it has both silk and cashmere in it - and I got it reduced when the Shearing Shed at Manuka was having a moving sale last year (or I wouldn't have got it at all, I am a cheapskate)

I started it last winter, and most of the knitting was done well before Christmas, but then other priorities took over. A couple of reality checks (trying on after tacking in one sleeve) made me think it was going to be too tight in the armholes and maybe across the shoulders. Right down until I had it all sewn together, after blocking the sleeves a bit wider, I still thought it wasn't going to work. It was such a relief to put it on and LOVE IT!

The pattern didn't include any closure. I thought about a shawl pin (and the ribbing means it can be stretched to wrap more), but for now I like it better this way with a button and crocheted loop. Maybe in the dead of winter I will change my mind.

Those who say they love you would never dare

Sister D's felted birthday present was a pair of pears.

The larger one, the container, I wrapped up and gave to her just after her birthday, a couple of weeks ago.

Then I borrowed it back to photograph it. This gave me the perfect opportunity to wrap it up and present it again on Sunday night when we had the long-awaited combined birthday party. She thought she knew exactly what she was opening, so I was sure to have the camera poised to capture her surprised face when she spied the extra pear tucked inside. (The first time around it was a pair of tights packed inside).

Here is the in-progress shot. The smaller one has been stuffed with wadding and waiting to be felted. The larger has been partly felted and then remodelled. I was always intending it to be a container with a lid, which I was going to knit separately. But I overestimated the amount of vertical shrinkage, having made the body too tall. And the opening at the top was too small to be useful, anyway. So I gathered the opening around a piece of icord for the stalk, and cut a new opening in about the middle. Then I felted the two pieces separately.



Cutting it open and re-felting caused it to bloat out into quite a fatty of a pear. (You can see it's still a bit taller and slimmer in this photo). After it was dry, I had to run some thread around the top edge of the lower piece to draw it in enough that the lid could sit on it and not fall in. The perfect pear colours came from a single ball of good old Sean Sheep Armytage, held double with similar colours of plain 8ply.

This project heralds a few firsts for me. It was the first time I have felted something stuffed, and next time need I need to stuff it a bit more - once again I overestimated shrinkage. I also tried out using a sink plunger to supplement my hand felting technique. Turns out to be excellent for getting a bucket full of items started a bit quicker. They still need attention by hand for the final stages.

Finally, I tried needle felting for the first time, to put a subtle red blush and some brown spots on the stuffed pear (after K encouraged me to do a little test piece first). Still, I found it hard to get a really thin subtle layer of reds. I'm still not totally happy with it, but luckily I am not a perfectionist. Room to improve next time.

I've been following the light across my room

I've done a ton of felting lately, much of it inspired by birthdays: a friend's on the weekend (the pink pod with the lid) and both of my sisters in the past couple of weeks.

So this is the mystery piece I showed a glimpse of, pre-felting. I'm really happy with the colours and texture, a little less so with the final shape. It's just a little bit wonky, but, you know, hand made charm and all... The wonkiness is not obvious in these photos, but it is in person, at least to me and K.

I made a couple of little pods to go with it as a set, for E.

Pod plus lid

Big photos, but it's a little one. Maybe 10cm high with the lid on. This is made using the pod pattern, though with a wider opening.

J'aime beaucoup

A little preview of the latest thing to be felted. I'm very taken with this wool in garter stitch (it's the Homemaker Venice from K-mart which I mentioned last post). The colours are so subtle, it might almost be a shame to felt it and blur them.

Both of these photos seem to make the colours even more subtle than they are.



Never mind, I went back for a few more balls, maybe I'll think of something non-felted to do with them.

Only you and I know exactly how it feels

My felting stash had well and truly grown out of its two little boxes and expanded in dribs and drabs in bags around the place. I've been dreaming of having a lovely glass-front cupboard with all the feltable wool arranged in some kind of colour order. I see myself standing in front of this cupboard and choosing colour combinations for the next project, without first bouncing around the house from box to bag and room to room, looking for a certain green or all the different yellows I can find.



I don't have space for new furniture in this house so this is the next best thing, for now. It's just a cheap plastic underbed zipup storage bag. It now contains all my felting stash, arranged loosely by colour, and still with room for a bit more.

I also did a bit of quick testing of some mystery yarns to see if they would felt. I just cut off a few centimetres, wet it with warm-hot water, add a bit of soap and roll it into a ball in the palm of my hand. You can tell within about a minute (this article says 5-10 min but I really don't think you need that long.)



The three above were sucessful, one was even marked machine washable (Homemaker Lifestyle Venice from K-Mart) but I bought it thinking it looked like it should felt, and I was right. The three below, clearly not successful. Well, it's preferably to knitting a whole item and then find it won't felt: that's bloody frustrating. Ask me how I know.





Okay, that up there wasn't actually ALL my felting stash, there is this lot too (much of it received in bulk from the generous Taphophile, some time ago. I have used some of it, but also love the potential of having it sitting there waiting for me.

I've never gone in for those guilty stash-flashing posts. Partly because I didn't think I had that much and I don't feel bad about it. So it turns out I do have quite a lot but it's exciting, not guilt-inducing. I really do get a lot of mileage out of having a nice big range of colours and textures to choose from. And there's no such thing as a useless odd ball, as long as it is feltable.

I'm a natural stasher from way back. I always have many books around that I haven't read yet, ditto comics, and DVDs. I'll never get bored. I did realise today that I have a bit more yarn than I thought. I do love finding bargains and then dreaming up creative ways to use them, but unfortunately I can imagine a lot more than I can ever actually get done. Oh well, today I did rip out a couple of unpromising projects, and found some missing needles, which is satisfying. And I threw out a LOT of old ball bands; why do I have so much trouble getting rid of them? Weird.

Pride's like a knife it can cut deep inside

Ever since I realised that many Australians (in particular indigenous Australians) think of Australia Day as Invasion Day, I've felt uneasy about the day. Mind you, I am a bit contrary at the best of times, pretty uncomfortable with overt displays of patriotism, and very uncomfortable with the binge drinking and hijinks often associated with Australia Day. Not, of course, that that stuff doesn't go on on other public holidays too.

The 26th of January is the official date of the beginning of white settlement in Australia and has been celebrated as a public holiday since the early years of settlement, long before Federation. It cannot be denied that white settlement was not entirely a good thing for the indigenous population, who had lived in this place for tens of thousands of years already.

There has been debate over many years about whether the day should be changed to something more ...neutral? Shared?

Now, thanks to our newly elected Government, there will be a formal apology in Parliament to the stolen generations, this coming Wednesday. This is the culmination of many years of calls for a "sorry day", ever since a national inquiry into the removal of indigenous children from their families resulted in the Bringing Them Home report (1997).

Of course there are hugely mixed feelings about this. Overly simplified, these include, from the right: there's no reason to apologise because nothing happened or at least nothing bad; or it's excessive for today's leaders to apologise for decisions of the past; and it will create financial and other liabilities for the government. (No reparations are being offered to go with this apology). From the left, enthusiastic cheering, or hesitant cheering, or downright disappointment that it's not enough.

It's not for me to say what's enough for the people directly involved. But I am an Australian, and over ten years or so I've realised that I'm not living in quite the country I thought I was in. It was the children overboard affair that drove this home. So I'm quietly, cautiously optimistic about the possiblities for my country under the new government. I reckon I'd be comfortable with the date of Australia Day being changed to 13 February. Not to be a depressing, black armband, memorial day. That would be the obvious argument against it. But wouldn't it be great to think that in a couple of years time, once we see what the fallout from the apology has been, we could reconstruct apology day as something to be proud of as a nation. The day we were willing to just say it, sorry, and get on with finding better, kinder and more caring ways to move on.

Wouldn't that be a bold gesture.