This is getting silly...

Honestly - I should rename this blog 'the monthly excuse'.
I was all geared up to post on the 14th of July - because I finished a sleeveless pullover the day before (having started it on the 4th of July - ooooh - just occurred to me that it was knitted between American Independence Day and Bastille Day, and since it was done on circulars it should really be called the Revolutionary Pullover. He he he. Jeez that was bad - forgive me: I'm very tired!)
Where was I? Oh yes - so there was I all set to post, having wrested control of the computer from the children, when Jess announced she'd put a bead up her nose. She didn't, of course, announce this to me - she waited until I let her have five minutes on the phone to my sister, and then told her. So we dropped the phone, grabbed the keys and hot-footed it down to the local emergency clinic, where a very nice doctor removed a shiny pink bead from her left nostril. I gave her a good telling off - no so much about the bead per se, but about being so unoriginal - a three year old sticking a bead up her nose is such a cliche!
And since then I've either been too tired, too busy or too far down the queue to be able to get on the computer and post. Jess has discovered the joys of the computer, and if she's not fighting Katie for a turn, they're both fighting their father for a go. And I get to sit and knit, which is nice.
So the pullover...
First the good stuff: I adore adore adore the wool I used - Cleckheaton Vintage Hues (which I vaguely recall raving about the last time I used it [yes I did - here].) And the colours are fabulous - all 1970s oranges and yellows and greens. And I'm ever so proud of myself, because it's the first garment I've knitted entirely on circular needles, the first V-neck I've ever done, and I didn't have a pattern.
The bad news is that I got the tension wrong and it's wider than it was supposed to be - so it sort of sits out around the hips. And then of course the biggie - variegated wool knitted in the round makes stripes and when you divide at the armholes the stripes get wider. I knew that, really. But when I first put it on I was a little taken aback at quite how desperately unflattering it is. The combination of wide horizontal stripes, bulky wool, and one narrow stripe that somehow appeared right in the middle makes my bosom look huger and droopier than ever. So attractive.
Good job really that I don't much care! It's lovely and cosy and warm and I've been wearing it quite happily - I just avoid mirrors while I've got it on.

In other knitting news I started a cardigan for Jess on Monday and finished it today - six days! Yay for huge needles! I say finished, although it hasn't yet got buttons, but I don't have any buttons to sew on and I figure since I still haven't done the buttons on the Sunrise thing...

It's based on Elizabeth Zimmerman's seamless yoke sweater - and it fits beautifully. And I'm three quarters of the way through a jumper for Katie (again EZ's seamless sweater) but that's on 4mm needles so it'll take a little longer.
And now I'm off to bed... Back in September I guess! :)

Winter woes

Boy am I glad June is over! We had the most phenomenal summer here, the kind of summer that you remember from childhood, and that never seems to happen when you're an adult: endless warm, sunny days, month after month. But now winter has kicked in with a vengeance; it's freezing cold and we're having a series of incredible hail storms that are so heavy it looks like it's been snowing in the back garden.

And of course, with the onset of winter, came the onset of winter chills and ills. The very best week went something like this:

Date: Monday

To: absences@katiesschool.co.nz

From: rachelc@home

Subject: Katie, Room 17

Katie will be away from school today due to an ear infection.

Date: Tuesday
To: absences@katiesschool.co.nz
From: rachelc@home
Subject: Katie, Room 17
Katie will be away from school today due to an ear infection and an eye infection.

Date: Wednesday
To: absences@katiesschool.co.nz
From: rachelc@home
Subject: Katie, Room 17
Katie will be away from school today due to an ear infection, an eye infection and a chest infection.

Date: Thursday
To: absences@katiesschool.co.nz
From: rachelc@home
Subject: Katie, Room 17
Katie will be away from school today due to an ear infection, an eye infection, a chest infection and chicken pox.

Now, touch wood, we all seem better.

It didn't help that I had more travel than usual in June - I called it my knit-around-the-North-Island month. I knitted in Northland (where people are apparently not used to seeing knitters in pubs - I think Eclair needs to do some work here!), I knitted in Matakana (where I have inspired a lapsed knitter to pick up the needles), I knitted in Gisborne and I knitted in Rotorua (and I stopped in Te Kauwhata on the way to Rotorua to cast on a sock for my aunt). And yet I don't seem to have terribly much to show for it...

I have finally finished (well, almost) the Sunrise Circle Jacket - I just have to sew the buttons on. Photos as soon as I do!

I made a pinwheel cardigan for Jess. That began as an exercise to see if I could do a pinwheel using the magic loop method (I can). Then it was going to be a blanket. Then I found a fabulous pattern for a cardigan so that's where it wound up. It has the niftiest edging - little loops of I-cord running right around...

And I knitted some little hats which are intended for charity but seem to have been appropriated for the dolls by my uncharitable children.

I'm not sure what I'm knitting now... I seem to still have seventeen things on the go but I'm not sure if any of them will actually evolve into finished objects. Time will tell...

And another month goes by...

Golly - I hadn't realised it was over a month since I blogged AGAIN. Where did April go? When I began this blog I was a stay at home full time mother, and despite the demands of playgroup, kindergarten, housework and children I had so much free time on my hands. Two of my friends who are stay at home mothers have recently started blogs and I think it's an interesting way of staying sane when your most of your daily conversations tend to only be with people under four foot high.

Now, of course, I'm working full time, and blogging slides down the list of things to do. Add to which, my darling Katie has discovered the fine art of emotional blackmail: she stands in front of me with her five year old fists on her hips and says "What's more important? Your girls or your [knitting, computer, book, bath, etc]?" She's good! It works every time.

Despite that I have been knitting (mostly in the car when I should be working). But I have no finished objects to show because I'm just playing - having finally conquered the evil dpns, I decided that I was brave enough to have a go at magic loop knitting.

Well, for heaven's sake. Why did no-one ever tell me how easy and fun this was? All those YEARS I wasted coming to terms with dpns (okay, maybe not years but it sure felt like it) and I needn't have bothered. So I've been starting socks with different cast-ons and whizzing through a few rounds and then frogging them and starting again with a different cast-on, and so on and so on. Just because it's such fun!

So far I have two odd socks finished (both toe-up) and half a mitten (cuff down) and I'm planning another sock. I realise I should be doing the second socks but what the hell... life's too short and I'm thinking of this as a learning exercise rather than a serious sock production line.

In between the magic looping, I'm very slowly working on a lace shawl in that bamboo that's been lurking around for a while now. It's slow because I daren't take it to work with me (my car is such a tip that my knitting tends to get tangled around the junk) and I can't do it when the girls are awake because I wind up going "Shut up shut up shut up shut up I'm counting" which is not great attentive parenting, and leads to the whole hands on hips thing.

I do have one finished object - belatedly. Turns out that the baby's name is James (glad I hadn't totally lost my mind - did I mention that I'd had a serious moment of panic and decided he might be called something else?) and it fits (more or less). I rushed the seaming and it's pretty dodgy but I figure it's not an heirloom - it's a jumper that'll be worn and sicked on and dribbled on and have playdough rubbed into (you all know) so what the hell.. (Also, and this probably doesn't need reiterating, I'm very lazy.)



Now I have to go and prepare for a day of being the willing slave to my two bossy britches - I'm hanging onto the thought that you don't get strong, assertive, confident young women by having quiet, obedient, docile children - and I do want stroppy young women!

Gimme an S!

Finally.....

... another stumpy sock!

Global Warming?

Sometimes it's odd being at the bottom of the world. This morning's paper was full of heat waves in the Mediterranean and I keep reading North American blogs about how it's almost too hot to knit, and yet here, this is what I found at half past six...


That's ICE, which not something we routinely get in Auckland. Brrr....

So I sent Katie off to kindergarten looking like Nanook of the North...

and Jess and I hunkered down in front of the fire while I sewed up the neckwarmer - which I will need today!

This one I'm keeping - I gave away the last two. But today my nose is cold...

Smug mode on

So Monday morning I was a little bored and I picked up the cursed double point needles and figured I'd give it yet another try. And voila...

My first ever sock! It's not a great sock - in fact it's a lumpy, bumpy, and very stumpy sock, but it's a sock! I had to do a little sock achievement dance with the girls, and we all sang 'Mummy can knit socks'. Well, Jess just shouted 'Mama! Sock!' but the thought was there. My partner pointed out that, strictly speaking, I can knit sock and until I do another I can't have that final 's'. Of course, he's right, but I'm not sure that this poor sock will ever get a mate. I figured there was no point in spending hours knitting the leg until I knew whether or not the whole heel thing would work - which is why it's so short. And do I really want a pair of stumpy socks? I may just keep this one as the Lone Sock and start a proper pair. Of course the girls are demanding socks of their own now, so it may be a while before I get to knit some for me.

I finished the neckwarmer (photo eventually - Jess took it away somewhere) and liked it so much that I knit another...

This one is in Cleckheaton's Vintage Hues which is my new favourite wool - I just love the colours. And I love the whole concept of neckwarmers I have to say. Way faster than a scarf, so I don't get bored, way less wool than a scarf, so I can afford to knit with nicer stuff than I would usually. And this one I liked so much I even blocked it! Wonders will never cease! I'm knitting a third one now - not in feather and fan this time - in some fluffy stuff I found on top of the bookshelf. I'm not sure what it is, but I have a feeling there's another ball in my glovebox which might have the band still on it. (Hey, I have small children - I stash my wool anywhere they can't get it!)

The baby thing is proceeding sloooooowly - I'm not sure if I like it or not so I'm not putting much effort in because it may yet get unravelled and changed into something else.

And now it's time to face the laundry mountain... We have a friend arriving to stay on Tuesday and I'm not even sure that there is a bed in the spare room because the laundry may well have eaten it!

Goodbye to all that

So it’s goodbye to the green jersey, which is finally finished; goodbye to university, because the exam and semester are now over; and, it seems, goodbye to my beloved sofa. That’s right – I’m heading back out into the big, wide, working world.
The woman who took over from me at my old job is leaving and they called me to see if I was interested in filling in for three months. So we’ve been negotiating for a couple of weeks. I’m good at negotiating:
Me: Three months is too short to make it worth giving up a semester at university, it’d have to be six months at least.
Them: No, that won’t work.
Me: OK, three months it is.
It’s quite flattering that someone thinks I am still motivated, professional and awake enough to trust with a company car, a company credit card, and the company’s reputation. Mind you, they don’t know that I am the woman who has been known to leap up, get the kids washed, dressed and fed, load them into the car, and drive off to playgroup, only to realise on arriving that I am still in my pyjamas! Okay, it only happened once, but still…
Also, I keep thinking, ‘Hey, isn’t this the job that you left because you found it so hard when you had one child?’ It is.
Anyway, we’ve worked out this incredible schedule for the kids involving kindergarten, daycare, granny, kindy friends’ parents and one lovely university student. So provided no-one gets sick we should be able to manage it - and why would pre-schoolers get sick in winter when they’re at kindy and daycare surrounded by thousands of runny noses and hacking coughs? Oh boy.

On the knitting front the green jersey is finally done – and it fits (more or less). The lacey bits would look better if I’d blocked it but you know, it’s for a 2 year old who is going to spill porridge down the front any morning now, and also I just couldn’t be bothered. (Great attitude to take to work hey!)

I tried to get a nice photo of Jess wearing it, but first she did this:

Then she insisted we take a photo of her tummy (‘Pic tummy NOW!!’)

Then she grabbed Katie so she could be in the picture too.

So here is an empty jersey… and a close up-ish shot of the lace and cables.

At some point in the last manic week, while studying for the exam and 'negotiating' about this job, I started a scarfish kind of thing but forgot to mention it. It's from the book Knit 2 Together by Tracy Ullman and Mel Clark. They call it a neckwarmer, and I've seen similar things called cowls, so who knows. It's like a scarf but it's a big loop you sling over your head. Theirs is done on circular needles, which makes sense, but I tried, I really did, and then I threw the circular needle across the dining room (causing my partner to be extra nice to me because he figured he'd done something wrong - he he he). So mine is being done on straight needles, and in a different yarn (the green one), and I changed it from a 12 stitch repeat of feather and fan to an eighteen stitch repeat. Apart from that it's exactly the same.

The book is one that came home with me from the library while I was 'studying' for my exam. Kept happening, no idea how. I'd head off to the library prepared to settle down with an analysis of the postcolonial discourse utilised in Waitangi tribunal narratives, and their use of heuristic tropes and other such exciting stuff, and I'd come home with a bag full of knitting books. Very strange. Won't it be interesting to see what kind of mark I get?

I've also started something that I'm hoping will grow into a sleeping bag crossed with a cardigan for my friends Grant and Kate's baby, which is due in October. We will see.

There's a new little doodad at the right there, which is from the Aussie and NZ knitters webring - go check them out. There are more and more of us NZ knitting bloggers and I have a great plan. Together we can all write the knitting book that I want to buy, but which doesn't yet exist!

I want (oh how I want) a New Zealand knitting book with NZ inspired designs and motifs - NO INTARSIA KIWIS - classy, subtle things. Like koru cables (I've tried, I can't figure it out), and lace based on silver ferns or kowhai. I thought I might knit a 'brick and tile' sweater with some kind of brick-like pattern on the body, and scallop stitch for the sleeves and yoke. All in one colour - not to look like a house, but vaguely inspired by our vernacular architecture. I know James at Fibre Alive has done some nice stuff with koru motifs - what else is out there? Actually I'm looking at this feather and fan, and thinking if you knit four or five repeats in red, and knitted in gold beads in the fan sections... pohutukawa! It would be a great book, and I'd buy a copy...

What a long post... now I have to go and panic some more about working!

Happy Mother's Day

Here's a little question in honour of Mother's Day, which I believe was supposed to be yesterday...

Q: What's worse than waking at 1am to a little voice saying, 'Mummy, I wet the bed'?

A: Realising that it's your bed she's talking about.

Oh the joys of motherhood are never ending.

Anyway, I haven't been blogging about knitting this week - I've been knitting instead. And... ta da! One cotton dress for the girls' cousin in London. Spotlight had this lovely cotton on sale (which is how I make all my decisions about what to knit) and since it's not cotton season here, Olivia got lucky. Jess was very happy to be the model but I think she thinks it's her dress so there could be tears before bedtime. But then, when are there not tears before bedtime? I'm so pleased with how this turned out that if I get my act together (cue uproarious laughter) I think I'll write the pattern out nicely and post it for the delight and delectation of anyone else who got their hands on some Spotlight cotton.

Alpacas ate my baby

So I ripped out all those pleats and the lace - don't think the wool will ever be usable though. Let's just NOT talk about ripping back MOHAIR okay? At least I know I can do pleats - if I ever decide I just don't have enough stress in my life!

Sometimes, especially after a whole spate of cables, lace, stuff-ups and frustrations, you've just got to go for the thick wool/small child combo... So Jess, as of about an hour ago, has a brand new jersey:



The greyish bit is Patons Inca - 50% wool, 30% acrylic and 20% alpaca, which I used 6.5 mm needles to knit. Forty-four stitches wide - boy that went fast! The cream is something lovely and expensive - I think it was pure wool - that I bought back when I was gainfully employed. The whole thing turned out way better than I'd imagined. And at half past five this morning I learnt how to do lazy daisies (or something? I'm not an embroiderer) and put three little flowers on the front - doesn't everyone do things like this at the crack of dawn?

Need more coffee now...

Rorschach Knitting

The finished garter stitch tunic...



I don't know why we have developed this tipping-the-head-to-one-side-for-photographs thing...




Then Jess had to have a turn (as always) - Yo! Get down you crazy white baby!




The variegated wool made a rorschach blot on the front on the sweater which is kind of fun. So far we've had Rangitoto erupting, a malaysian kite, and a nuclear sub seen from the rear. The nuclear sub was the children's father, who I've been looking sideways at ever since - a nuclear sub? Where did that come from and should we be very worried?

A malaysian kite and Rangitoto (imagine the eruption) - what do you see?

Another day another collar

It's a happy day!

The collar doesn't look as bad as I thought and Katie is thrilled to bits with the whole sweater which is the important thing. I did cast off about forty rows too soon - which means that there aren't enough short rows to make a nice shape at the front, but there aren't so many rows that the sweater eats her head.




Having sorted that I went back to the purple garter stitch one. Here's what knitting with kids is like: Both of these sweaters used 4mm needles and luckily I have two pairs. At some point however, one of the kids swiped one needle and it hasn't been seen since. I think it's probably in their room somewhere but looking for a needle in there is like looking for, well, a needle in a haystack. There could be another child living in that tip and I wouldn't know! [I consider my role in life is to make other mothers feel good about their standards of housework - everyone I know can comfortably look at their houses and say, 'Well, at least it's not as bad as Rachel's!'] So I had the pink sweater on one needle, the purple sweater on one needle, and a third needle, which I guarded jealously, which I alternated between the two. But of course when you're doing short rows, you never reach the end of a row, so I had to finish the pink collar before I could go back to the purple one! (Which might partly explain casting off so soon!)
Anyway, the purple one, with its cowl neck, is now finished but the camera has run out of batteries. C'est la vie. I have enough of each yarn to make matching hats so that's the next project.

Now I have to go and eat chicken biryani - my lovely Bangladeshi friend Asma came over yesterday with a HUGE pot and we'll be living off it for a week.

Another raglan sleeved jersey

Another raglan sleeved jersey is complete! This time for Jess. It was actually finished on Thursday, but I didn't get a photo because Katie drew on Jessie with a purple felt tip and then dropped the pen, sans cap, into the hood (yes, this one has a hood!) of the new jumper. So I had to wash it... and wash it... and wash it. If you look closely at the photo you'll see that it now has yoghurt all down the front but I'm so over handwashing for this week! The hood got away on me a little. I just started knitting it without really working out what I was going to do, and then I started worrying that it would be too small... So Jess now has a hood that she could sit in. We live and learn.
I've begun my third raglan sleeved garment - this time a cardigan for Katie, with stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue and purple - great for using up all those half balls of wool that are tangling themselves around everything in the house.

Baby talk

Jessie, the one year old, has been very vocal lately. We had a spell of 'blah' being the favourite sound which was like living with the radio permanently tuned to parliament; endless streams of 'blah blah blah' interspersed with bouts of shouting. Her latest noise is 'lodle-odle-lo' so Katie (the 3 and a half year old) and I have taken to singing 'High on a hill was a lonely goatherd...', cue 'lodle-odle-lo-odle-o' from Jess.
Katie is also very vocal - constantly. And you know, I have grave concerns about that child sometimes. Today she got an invitation to a party at a house we haven't been to before.
"I went there before I was born," she announced, "when I was a baby koala."
"You were a baby koala?"
"Actually," she said (that being the current favourite word), "did you know, we were all baby koalas before we were born. You were a baby koala before you were born, Jessie was a baby koala before she was born..." and so on through most of the extended family. Where the hell does that come from???

On the knitting front I'm been racing through things lately. The raglan sleeved pink jersey worked and, what's more, fitted. I doubt that the makers of Excel intended that it be used for graphing sweaters, but gee it works well! So I've started another, but I couldn't be bothered doing a proper swatch (when will I learn) and I'm using the wrong sized needles for the wool (when will I learn), so we'll have to wait and see... I've done the front, back and three quarters of one sleeve so it won't be long.


I knitted a hat to go with the pink jumper and made my first pompom for about twenty-five years. It looked great for a few days and then disintegrated (the pompom, not the hat) on the way to kindergarten on Friday. Must practice more...

Gotta love hats and scarves

Feeling very productive this weekend indeed. I finished sewing up the sweater for two year old Molly, finished the revolting scarf (complete with pink fringing - truly a vision!), and I knocked off a woolly hat for the baby. (Must stop calling her a baby, she'll be one on Tuesday). The baby's hat has some dreadlock-like plaits to compensate for her baldness. She looks grumpy in the hat because she's got a cold and she'd just got up from a nap, not because she hates the hat...

Molly's sweater is what I call a 'knitting-with-ADD' piece. The pattern across the bottom I did in (poorly executed) intarsia on the back, and by carrying the wool across on the front. Heaven forbid I should stick to one technique for a whole sweater! There's a pocket on the front because I got bored halfway up and decided to learn how to do pockets. If she'd been any bigger I might have had to throw some cables in...

Well what do you know

O there is great rejoicing and jubilation here. The thneed turned into a poncho at last. And a better poncho than I'd dared to imagine!
In fact it was so nice that the three year old is now insisting that she get one too. Her knitting request list already has a bright pink sweater and a white cardigan with embroidered flowers on it so it'll be a while...
Her other new request is "Mummy can you knit a Snow White dress?" To which I reply, "the question is not can I, but will I, and the answer to that my little chickadee is never in a million years." We are living with a revolting obsession with disney princesses at the moment that is driving me totally and utterly doolally. I'm with the wicked stepmother and the bad fairy - all the simpering princesses should die horrible deaths.