Thursday In All Its Warm Sunny Glory

What a difference half a day can make! Here in Melbourne it is now sunny and absolutely gorgeous. I had a beautiful healthy lunch with the scrumdiddlyumptious Wafflehouse, a walk in the sun, and on the way back to work we passed a bookshop having a 20% off sale. Of course we were forced to go in. And look around. I may have purchased a couple of books. It's hard to tell.

My copy of Big Girl Knits arrived the other night, and I am placing an order this afternoon for some beeyootiful dark red aran weight yarn to knit one of the jackets. Also some black laceweight may have crept into the order. Ahem.

I also got my first package from my Secret Pal - pics to follow - a beautiful little bag she commissioned someone (details to follow!) to make for me, as well as a postcard from Sweden!

And a couple of yarn purchases have been delivered today.

On an afternoon like this, it's impossible not to count my blessings.

I love you guys!

Thursday, in All its Dark Cold Glory

It's cold! And dark! And I have to go to work today!

Oh, it was good to get that off my chest!

Good thing for the day: I posted! Woooo!
Bad thing for the day: I got a package and a postcard from my secret pal but I forgot to take photos of it! Bad me.

In Which I Shamelessly Indulge Myself

Today I went on a girl's shopping trip to this wondrous place!

Where I took delivery of the Wondrous Corset of Magnificence, panelled with the Stunning Brocade of Silvery Goodness, and

The purple leather laceup wristband of Ooooh, Pretty!

And the black Hand Tooled Leather Wristband of Dragony Irresistability.

My credit card hates me. But, strangely, I am happy!

Freaky Friday

This photo courtesy of Lulu and my Crap Camera Skills. I actually like this photo, the effect is kind of cool!

Lulu graciously accepts your lovely compliments on the Fat Fluffy Paws of Death. She would like you to know that she wields them judiciously amongst the other cats to inspire terror and keep them in an appropriate state of awed wariness.

And thankyou for the compliments on my cables! I was scared to try them, but it turns out all those other knitters are right - they are actually easy. I think part of the attraction of cables is that they look so much more complicated than they actually are. Of course, me being me, these simple little cables have immediately led to the firm belief that I can cable anytime, anywhere.....

Look! Photos!

The Fluffy Fat Paws of Death, up close and personal.


Cables!! I did cables!!
The Fat Fluffy Ear of Death asserting its dominance over the measly Green Cables of Achievement.

Sorry!

Sorry guys! Still getting over being sick, and much much to do at work...
Normal blogging will resume shortly. There has been knitting. I did cables. Ooooooh! There, I knew that would recapture your interest!!

Just a Quick One

Thoughts and good wishes and prayers needed! Purplexity's oldest furbaby Purple is going under the knife today - she has an ulcerated cornea, and it's looking quite serious. Purple has also now joined the elite rank of cats who have cost their owner AUD$1000 in one go.

Please send good thoughts to Purple and to her very worried (and broke!) mum Purplexity.

Purple is a sweetie, who does not deserve nasty painful eye problems. I hate it when there is a problem which cannot be solved with yarn!

Nervous Meiko, Or Who Would Have Thought Roleplayers Could Make So Much Noise??

Meiko is nervous of visitors. Especially loud roleplaying ones, so she's been hiding in here with me and the computer, twitching her ears at the noise and peering at me imperiously over the edge of my monitor.

Still sick. But I have a huge workload at the moment, mainly consisting of a huge lastminutepanicpanicpanicdoitnownownow thingy. Which in practical terms boils down to me, a pen, and 400+ pages of densely written material needing to be painstakingly checked. While my head is full of concrete, my nose is blocked solid, and I keep getting giddy just sitting at the keyboard. Yay. But it has to be done, and I'd rather do it than have to deal with the problems which would be caused by letting this sucker go out as is. It's taken me a week so far. I hope to have the actual checking done sometime tomorrow, after which I can start writing it up. While my intray piles higher and higher, urgent emails go unread, and the only thing keeping me going is the wonderful, wonderful lady at the cafe downstairs who makes an awesome cinnamon latte. WHY did I not know of these wondrous creations before???

Oh man, it's hard to relax and rest at home while I'm thinking about all the work that still needs to be done! If I'm EXTREMELY lucky, I'll be all caught up after a week or so......

And enough with the self-pity!

Look what I found!

Sock Yarn! Select Great Arondirack and scroll down to the Soxie yarns... Black Violet... *drool*

A Great New Sock Yarn Club! This one looks way cool, doesn't charge extra for international postage (they're based in the UK), and is cheap to boot!

Check out the Sock Hop Yarn on the right of this page. Instant. Lust. Found by way of Wendy's blog.

Good thing for the day: The fact that Large Skinny Cinnamon Lattes Exist and Are Plentiful.
Bad thing for the day: Urgle. But too much work to allow at-home urgling.

Sick

Urgle.........

He Who Wouldst Be King

I am fierce

But I have a fuzzy belly

Can I be King now? Please?

This is Macbeth, Purplexity's cat (follow the link on my sidebar for more photos of her beautiful furkids). Macbeth is big and fluffy. Macbeth's tail is, bar none, the biggest fluffiest tail I've ever seen on a domestic cat. Ain't he handsome??

I was on my way back to the office from lunch the other day, when I saw something very cool: a guy (late teens, early twenties?) in his bicycle courier gear sitting on the steps of Old Treasury House and knitting himself a beanie. I startled him very much by stopping to have a look, and he told me how the other couriers give him so much shit for knitting. Then we discussed how good Addi Turbos were (he was using them), and I told him how cool it was that he was knitting. He said "Oh, Thankyou!!!!!" and I went on my way, leaving behind me a much happier knitter!

Good thing for the day: My friend E2 has replaced the temp from hell at work and she is a total goddess. I have never had to tell her anything twice, and by the end of day three I was happy to teach her stuff I would never have tried to force the temp to understand. And she doesn't make mistakes. I feel so spoiled!

Bad thing for the day: Dave has considerately given me his cold. So nice of him. It's difficult to achieve customer service divahood when what's coming out of your mouth sounds like someone stepped on a frog!

In Which I Bludgeon Blogger Into Submission

Soft soft soft! This is undyed pure wool from Wendy Dennis - this lot cost a total of about AUD$35. Bargain. I plan to dye this interesting colours and knit a shawl.


This is hand dyed 8 ply (DK), again from Wendy Dennis. Not sure what I'm going to make with this, but it called to me and it would have been cruel to leave it there.

I have no idea who these two are from. But, pretty colours, and enough for a pair of socks.

These are from the same vendor as the above sock yarn - these are both laceweight skeins, and the colours are actually more vibrant in person than the picture shows.


And two great big hanks of Wendy Dennis' dyed 4ply (I think this would be about a sportweight). I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these either, but I know she's going to be at the Bendigo Sheep & Wool Fair next month, so I'm tempted to see if she has more in similar colours and get enough for a soft jumper or something. I absolutely love the plummy eggplanty colours!

So there you have it! The mighty haul from Sunday. Horrifyingly, this was all snagged in a very short space of time, as the hall quickly got very full and I'm not so good in crowds of people! I did manage a lightning meetup with ChocolateTrudi and Yarnivorous, though. It was good to see others with the same glazed look I get in the presence of so much yarn......mmmm....yarn......

I also bought a couple of books, but I will chronicle them tomorrow, as the hour is late and my camera battery is dead. Also, The Evil Chocolate Trudi has taken delivery of the Evil Sock Yarn she ordered from overseas. She Made Me Buy It Oh Yes She Did.

Foiled! Foiled I Tell You!

I have many luscious pictures of the loot from the Handknitter's Guild expo on Sunday, but Blogger has decreed that they shall not be posted today.

So you'll have to wait until tomorrow! Bwaaahahahaha!!!

EDIT: Carrie has rightly pointed out that teasing descriptions of the above loot are in order. So, I got:

2 big hanks of plummy/eggplanty coloured four-ply (sportweight?) pure wool from Wendy Dennis (I shall post a link tomorrow when I am not guiltily blogging from work)

2 big hanks of undyed pure fingering weight wool - again from Wendy Dennis. Sooooo sooooooft.

1 hank of DK hand dyed by Wendy Dennis (I had to be forcibly removed from the vicinity in the end) in pinks, magentas, blues, and greens

2 skeins of luridly dyed laceweight - so cheap! Don't know the name of the purveyor, though.

2 small skeins of sockish weight yarn, pretty colours, cheap, see above entry.

2 books from Artisan Books which I've been wanting for a long time.

The long-suffering Dave wandered around behind me, carrying purchases without a squeak of complaint.

Still Here!

Still here, just busy and tired!

Have shown no willpower whatsoever and have started two more projects since my last post. My task for this weekend is to document what I have in stash, what WIP's I have, and where everything is. Like anyone, I enjoy having a bountiful stash, but it's a bit out of control and starting to cause me more stress than pleasure!

In other news, I dragged (yeah, right) Wafflehouse ( I really have to update my sidebar!) to a yarn shop in the city at lunchtime yesterday. She bought more sock yarn. Mwahahaha! We were looking around the store and she asked if it would be wrong to pull all the yarn off the shelves and roll around in it. *Sniff* I'm so proud of her! She obviously has the right instincts!

Good thing for the day: Looking forward to the weekend. There will be yarn buying on both Saturday and Sunday.

Bad thing for the day: I forgot to bring any knitting to work.