Knitting...

Most of the weekend was spent knitting, apart from going to SoFoody with Mum, Dad and Mike to celebrate Mike's new status as a Permanent Resident. I finished my Ice Queen shawl, but haven't managed to take a photo of the finished product that I'm happy with. I also want to reblock it, as it's still a little short.

On Saturday morning, I got out some of my yarn to enter into my stash on Ravelry. I didn't get around to putting all of the yarn back in its cupboard (I know, I was lazy). So when I woke up on Sunday morning, I found that Mal had been rather busy during the night. My baby wool went from this:



To this:



Two hours later, my ball of wool has been saved, but now requires a little washing :-)

I then started my shawl on Saturday night. I'm using Alpaca instead of Mohair, and the wool is a plain colour, rather than a print or variegated, but I'm impatient and I wanted to start straight away. The Wool Inn didn't have enough skeins of variegated yarns in any nice colours, and their mohair was going to be too expensive for the number of balls I would need. So alpaca it is. It's the first pattern with a cable I've ever tried, and only the second pattern where I've followed a chart. It's knitted up quite nicely so far... Until I looked at the picture again and realised I was missing a couple of cables. After deciding that I knew Chart A off by heart (only 8 stitches - how hard can it be?) I didn't look at it again. Completely forgetting that every 6th row of Chart A is a cable... So once I got to 31 rows, I'd missed 16 cables. Not something that can be easily rectified, especially as half of them are on the edge of the row. So I "frogged" it, and I'm starting again. At least I noticed when it was only 4 inches long, and not 44 inches.


Good Cable


Bad Cable


Lastly, when I finally got around to putting away all my yarn to prevent Mal from getting to it... I knocked a remote control for a toy glider off the top of a cupboard, which fell 4 feet before hitting me in the head, At 11:30 at night, right as I was getting ready for bed. Since I couldn't focus on anything close to my face and my hands were tingly, Mike and I took a trip to the hospital, just in case. A nurse looked at me, then we waited 4 hours before giving up (if anything was going to go wrong, it would have already, right?) then went back to the GP the next day. All is good, I just have headaches on and off at the moment, and can't look at a computer screen for very long. So I've taken my first sick day already, even though I've only been working again for 2 weeks. Oh well, things happen.


The stupid heavy remote.

Still alive and kicking.

Ok, so I decided it's about time I started blogging (again). I've been working again for a week now. All seems to be going ok so far. The kids are pretty cool, the staff are pretty cool and I've managed to stay awake on the drive home. Haven't really talked much yet about work to anyone - still trying to figure out who is who, where things are, how things work. Once I've grounded myself a little, I'm sure no-one will be able to shut me up!
In other news, I've picked up my knitting again. I got really excited when I found out about Ravelry, and my invite finally arrived yesterday! This weekend will be spent taking and uploading photos, entering new projects, digging up all my knitting needles and crochet hooks, so I'll finally know exactly what I have. Plus all the bits and pieces of yarn that I have laying around...
At the moment, I'm halfway through knitting a cowl I found on Knitty.com. Since it can get pretty darn cold in Katoomba, it should come in useful over the next few weeks. I'm planning on wearing it as a scarf, and as a cowl when it gets colder. Already, the fog rolls in and out all day half the time. It's very weird.