Knitting by Zen

UPDATE: here’s what’s left!

Prices are suggested only - please, make me an offer and help me clean out this part of my stash. I’ll be doing books soon, and then commercial yarns. Please pm me any questions you have.Postage is $5 up to 500g, and $10 up to 3kg, and then above that by discussion.

Summary photos are here.

• Baby yarn 200g $12.50 (4 ply machine washable wool): orange and white, dyed in an interesting way so that one end of the skein is lots of orange, then it goes into a pale orange and lots of white in the middle, then back to more orange at the end. You can kind of see this effect in the wound ball.cake here

• Aran weight cashmere / wool blend! Pinky red colours - so soft! 200g. $17.50

• 75% wool / 20% mohair / 5% alpaca, 200g skeins, Lollypop Pink, Purple Pleasure (L-R skein #3 in this photo) and Flushed Cheeks (pale red). 8ply ish yarn. Lovely when knit but again - extra to a dyeing order so I have no need for it. $15 each.

• 50:50 mohair and wool 200g skeins, 8 ply: 1x Raspberry Tea, 1x Purely Purple, and 1x Kissed Lips. $15 a skein. Roughly 400m per skein. (L-R skein #1, #2 and #4!)

• Alpaca / wool blend, flecked underneath and sunset colours on top, NOT machine washable, $12.50 for 200g skein 8ply

• My Knitting Journal (a gorgeous book version of Ravelry - great for someone who’s not on the internet) $10

• Knitting Handbook (Viv Foster) $10

The local knitting guild here is something I no longer have much to do with. I say "much" as some of my friends and mentors hang out there so I do occassionally go and hang with them, and "no longer" as I was a part of it last year, but for the most part I find it pointless and I already have a knit’n'natter that I go to each week usually.

Wednesday nights, Everest Cafe, 5:30pm - 9pm. 

So I have braved two meetings in the past few months for various reasons, and it reminds me of why I’m not a part of it. Jokingly, today I nutted out the kind of Guild I would *like* to be a part of:

• Friendly and welcoming
• Egalitarian and co-operative
• Organised and forward-thinking
• One where I can learn, and I can teach
• Craft-centred rather than people-centred
• No garments made of feather yarn allowed
• Responsive and accountable in what it takes to be in the guild (so some level of prestige in being there!)

I also want to be finished uni, engaged to my lovely partner, the best midwife possible and comfortably rich .

Here are some photos from some of the crazy knitters I hang out with:

Lucy and me: Lucy isn’t crazy. Yet.  

Me and V and our awkward head angle:

Me and Mel:

Mel’s stand:  

Garments that need no caption (oh how I wish You Knit What?? was still around - you’d have had to see it up close in its slightly fluffy feather yarn glory to understand, and to also see that my camera was very kind to the purple and orange eye-popping one!):

V is happy to have yarn and is not afraid to sniff, weigh, and threaten with it:

And then there were the cupcakes, and I kid you not, the cacti:  

I received my new colour card from Bendigo Woollen Mills today. It’s always exciting to get tactile items from the mill - especially when I buy lots of stuff from them! I have to say though that I’m kind of confused. Do I keep my cards for cotton and the boutique-y kind of yarns still? Are they being phased out?

And what is *with* the colour selection for the new yarns? There are a very large number of shades of pink, purple and red but one yellow (insipid, pastel kind of corn colour), a smattering of greens (and *wail* my favourite shade has been discontinued!!!!! Venetian in Classic), two somewhat-oranges (or is it 3? The Butternut looks like flesh…) and a couple of blues.

It’s also hard to see what colours are new - the last colour card I had had the new colours underlined. I will have to take to my new one with a pen I guess. It is interesting to see that the bulk of the selection is Classic (much more sensible to be able to machine-wash ones woollens, yes?).

I love BWM, don’t get me wrong. Love that it’s Aussie wool and that it’s made in Australia. I buy a lot from there to make lots of garments, and for stashing and for presents But yeesh - what is with the pattern selection? There is not a single one there that makes me think "yep that’s for me". They all look like somethng my mother would make. There is nothing wrong with that except my mother no longer knits. There are LOTS of Australian knitwear designers around the place who could quite happily design clothes but ya know - even updating the shots would go a long way to encouraging the new, younger, hip ‘n’ happenin’ crowd to get into them. I know that BWM doesn’t make lots of $$ from their patterns but it’s a good way to showcase them. And I’d like to think that at 28 I’m no longer the odd one out in being a knitter.

Here are the socks that I’m knitting. I may out myself by doing this but I need to reassure my swap partner that I am knitting her socks! I’ve gotten 1/3rd of the way down the leg now, with TV last night and a meeting today:

I also wore a very cool skirt today, and great socks:

Zaria thought they were cool too:

And - I got a package in the mail from my lovely swap partner, who dyed and knit the socks herself!!!!!

So my pal upstream has sent me her package and I’m in love with the whole thing! I seem to have an orange thing and monkey thing at the moment, and especially for magnets, so I am ABSOLUTELY thrilled!

Contents of package:

- very pretty monkey bear
- monkey socks in Yarn Lust "Heartbreaker" on merino, bamboo and nylon
- in Yarn Lust "Crushed Grapes" on superwash merino
- "Thanksgiving" on suri alpaca sock yarn from A Time to Dye
- 2 skeins of Knit Picks Gloss in "Pumpkin" - merino/silk combination
- 14g of gorgeously red 2/26 cashmere from Habu Textiles
- Ghirardelli chocolates
- monkey stamps, magnets, pens and stitch markers
- Twisted Flowers sock pattern
- and a GORGEOUS monkey card, which is ironic because I am a Monkey-year baby and that was part of why I went in for this swap.

Off to study some more! 

It’s been a long month, so here’s some top headlines:

1. YARN FOR SALE!! I have 11 8 skeins of yarn for sale at the moment, and in fact at least one of them is a double up, so if you bid on it you may end up getting a skein anyway.

2. I am getting the dye pot out tomorrow hopefully. It’s exciting to have orders to dye for, and plans for colours. I have a heap of REALLY exotic yarns (cashmere, mohair, silk etc) to dye up and sell and I’m excited to see how they go.

3. I knat a scarf for someone! She says she loves it too:

The scarf is knit for 45cm in cables, and then the remaining 100cm in a very simple "lace" stitch… To do the scarf, cast on 54 st (I used 8ply wool on 6mm needles) and knit 3 rows, then k3, (k1p1) 8 times, C16F, (k1p1) 8 times, k3. Knit another 7 rows. Then k3, C16F, (k1p1) 8 times, C16F, k3. Repeat until you are sick to death of cabling and wishing it wasn’t 30C when you were trying to knit it.

At this point you, like me, may decide to do something a tad more sensible than continue with the cables as it is about to get a lot warmer here. So the idea is that there is enough cabling to go around the neck, and then the lofty lacy part to get the length up, but without making your neck melt! To do this, I did a double decrease (slip 1, k2tog, psso), with a single decrease in the middle stitches of the row because there are 54 stitches in the row, which is not divisible by three! I then switched to 12mm needles (hah! You thought it was something exciting!!!) and I continued on my merry way.

The white splotch is a fantastic "From the knitting needles of Em" lable from a previous swap pal by the way.

4. I am now a Tupperware demonstrator. I think that makes me insane.

5. Some of my yarn has sold at One Planet Yarns! I am so excited about this for two reasons - firstly, I have $$ coming to me (which makes a big change for my student-inspired budget) and because it means people love my yarns!

6. I forget sometimes that knitters are people too. I know knitters from lots of walks of life, knitters who are older than me and even a few that are younger than me. I am surprised though when I come across knitters who are bigoted, racist, sexist or just plain obnoxious. I sometimes forget that being a knitter doesn’t *always* make you a nice person.

7. I’ve been dyeing yarn for my friend Mel as well:

For a change, these photos are crap. They were taken on an ugly table under false lights and don’t do the yarn justice in the slightest! The top yarn for example is emerald green, not a shade of blah. *sigh* 

8. I’m knitting another scarf:

It’s the Dayflower Scarf pattern and it’s lovely!

Last of all - Zaria says "I has a flava"