The Finished and the Unfinished.

I liked the idea of a super substantial beanie (double stranded 8 ply, no less) as I thought it might flatter my relatively large and normally non-beanie-flattering-head.  I enjoyed choosing two subtly contrasting yarns from my stash, and the knitting itself was relatively quick and fun, even though it ate up a surprising amount of yarn.  (Thanks for the '75 pattern, Pene!)  I am happy with the result, and have even vaguely considered combining a strand of orange with one of hot pink for my next one, but I'm not sure I want to draw that much attention to myself.  Besides, spring is in the air today.  I can even hear the tinkle of Greensleeves from an ice cream van passing in the next street.

 The finished looks upon the unfinished: that painting isn't going to be up on the wall any time soon....

More of the unfinished: I decided to kill my burgeoning scarf, but I quite like it and will probably end up making it into half a cushion front.
Actually, I could do with a cover for my laptop.
I hope it's warm where you are.

The Finders Keepers

I am very pleased to announce that I will have my first ever stall at The Finders Keepers at The Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton on Friday October 4 from 6 to 10pm, and Saturday October 5 from 10 to 5pm.  I will have an assortment of prints, cards, wooden figures, clocks, cushions and mirrors for sale, and some surprises too.
Please come and say hello!

Relaxing after work

Inspired by Mikey.

Like my melons?

During the five months that I was employed as a props and graphics assistant in the art department for the television show Winners and Losers, I had to make many things.  I cut and pasted pictures into scrapbooks, wrote fake letters, baked strangely shaped cakes, reheated pizzas, fried mountains of eggs and wrapped a lot of presents.  But my proudest moment was learning to carve watermelons in a matter of hours for Callum's 21st birthday, a brilliantly realised 'Full Moon Party' theme which was filmed at the St Kilda Cricket Club last November.  I watched the episode carefully this week, and while my banana 'hash' cake was featured, the melons did not seem to make an appearance.  Never mind.  Like my go at macrame which appeared briefly in the hands of Denise Scott in episode one, I was paid to learn a new skill.  And that makes me feel like a winner.

I've started a new scarf

I can't keep away from knitting for too long.  I am trying to do something different to the usual fair isle with this scarf design.  Unfortunately intarsia (where you work in blocks of colour with separate yarn strands as above) does not have quite the same meditative quality as working fair isle (where you carry all yarns across the entire row to make smaller, and usually repeated, motifs).

Old socks

When I was rather young, I enjoyed collecting and wearing intricately patterned socks.  I still love interesting legwear, but these days more often than not the washing line is filled with plain grey, navy and black socks and tights.