H is for Hoosier ...

I had wondered what Hoosier meant, but found out when this package of goodies arrived at my door from Kathy of Indiana, winner of the prize from the knitting trip around the world on the magic shawl. But where does the word "Hoosier" come from?

I can't wait to try the sweet and sour popcorn, but thought I'd keep it until the biggest Flea comes over again, as she had a year in Atlanta as an exchange student and is still very interested in things from the USA. The wool from an Indiana sheep, no less, feels soft and lovely and I feel a beanie coming on for Master 7 - one with earflaps and pom pom trims in the two natural colours. My fingers have all split from too much getting-the-house-ready-to-move -. I seem to be washing my hands all day long, so I'll be interested to see if the lanolin soap helps - it smells beautiful. But wait, there's more! The James Whitcomb Riley Cookbook, described on the cover as "A cornucopia of delectable delights from the turn-of-the-century world and the great Hoosier poet AND MORE". "AND MORE" is piles of information and illustrations from the "olden days". Wonderful! Thank you so much, Kathy. I am so lucky. I'll have to have a few more competitions if I receive wonderful goodies like these in return! I really enjoyed the knitting trip around the world, and we might repeat it again one day.

If you get a chance, pop over to Kathy's blog and look at the socks she knitted from the sock wool in her possum parcel. She calls them a "Homage to the possum"! They are so pretty - a wonderful match of colour and pattern.

There must be a flea plague in the northern hemisphere at present - I seem to be getting LOTS of hits from Google seaches for pictures and information on flea-bites.

Being a non-technical nerd, when Ravelry started asking for Beta Testers, I assumed that BTs would be technical wizardy type people (maybe you are!) but as people started to fret about being thousands down the list, I thought I'd sign up too - the worst they could do was reject me. So slowly, ever so slowly, I'm making my way up the waiting list - it sounds almost as long as the waiting list for elective surgery in this crazy country of ours.

You signed up on July 20, 2007
You are #18956 on the list.
10335 people are ahead of you in line.
5461 people are behind you in line.
34% of the list has been invited so far

One day ..... I'll find out what it's all about!

Confessions of ... cont'd

Well, the long socks saga (try saying that quickly when you've had a couple of glasses of wine!) is nearly over. All that remains to be done is to pass them on to their new owner. Grandpa Flea very obligingly modelled the socks for the photo - can't you see why I married him? Such a shapely pair of legs! Sorry about the photo quality - not helped by the dark colour of the socks. They are a Patons pattern in a 3x3 rib, knitted in Patonyle. I astonished myself by grafting the toe on the first sock with no trouble once I found a book with clear how-to illustrations. Unfortunately I couldn't manage it when I tried to follow Montse Stanley's directions. But I have a couple of old multi-craft encyclopedia type books and the illustrations and directions in one were very clear. However (my knitting always has a sorry end!), when I came to graft the second toe, I had uneven numbers of stitches on the two needles. Being absolutely sick of the socks, I grafted the first two stitches on one needle to the first stitch on the second, and it made a little bump in the side of the toe. It would be annoying if the socks were worn with shoes, but the recipient lives in slippers, so I think it will be okay.
True to my word, I am confessing to another UFO which I have just come across in my clean-up. I have knitted this pattern a number of times and it always works well. I started this at the beginning of last summer for the Littlest Flea but it somehow got to the bottom of a pile of knitting and I forgot about it. Fortunately I was making a size 5-6 as Little Flea is rather sturdy, but she has had a recent growth spurt and shot up so she is slimmer and I think this will still fit her come summer as she only turns 5 next Saturday. When the knitting is finished, Little Flea and I will make Fimo buttons to match. I did this with Ms 11 when I knitted her the same pattern at about the same age and we had a wonderful time. The buttons looked a bit wonky after little fingers had prised them up off the benchtop and put them on the baking tray, but that only added to the charm.
So this will be a UFO that is finished.

Somehow, confessing them publicly seems to make them get finished. I wonder why?

I had lunch with Janette today - lots of good knitting talk and general gossip. Janette is a beautiful knitter, plus designer plus teacher. I did a workshop with her at Virginia Farm a couple of years ago and her instructions were so clear that I amazed myself - I still haven't mastered Dorset buttons though. She published a knitting book about three years ago (it only seems like yesterday) but has since been waylaid by the arrival of three beautiful grandchildren - two of them twins. Have a look at her website http://www.styk.com.au

Lesson No. 4: You can't knit socks while you watch SBS ...

SBS is our multicultural TV channel, and it has some great movies and series - most of which are sub-titled. Our current favourites are: a gory Argentinian detective series, shown late on Monday night, called 'If the Dead Could Speak'; and our extra-favourite 'The Eagle: A Crime Odyssey', a Danish crime series set in Copenhagen with little sidetrips to other parts of Europe. We particularly like this show as we spent some time in Scandinavia a couple of years ago, and it's wonderful to look at the action and recognise the places. It brings back a lot of memories.

However shows on SBS have the disadvantage, for us monolingual knitters, of being sub-titled. Grandpa Flea is very well trained now and gives me a running commentary if I'm distracted by the dropped stitch or frogging-in-progress, but I have learnt this week, after many aborted attempts (five in total!) to turn the heel on the second of my first ever pair of socks that I cannot watch SBS and do the sock thing simultaneously. This poor pair of knee length socks has already been dragged all over New Zealand, to and from various other places, been frogged once already from the ankle back up to the basque below the knee (because it is a K3 P2 rib and on my return from three weeks sightseeing in NZ I discovered many purl stitches where I had dropped back into the habit of K2 P2 - damn!) and they are looking quite old and pilled (it's Patonyle). However, I have at last turned the heel and whilst I'm not proud of the quality of the knitting and the turn, I'm ecstatic that I have managed to do it! I think I'm about to develop a sock knitting habit. One more FO to send out into the world. I'll add a photo to this post as soon as I can pin Grandpa Flea down long enough to wrestle his shoes and socks off so he can model them for me!

Lara has started coming to the Cherryhills knitting group, and at a recent meeting she had some hand-dyed Patonyle which looked great. I think I might have to give it a try. Lara used food dyes, and I have just bought a pile of extremely toxic looking food dyes to make cup-cakes a la Yarnstorm for the littlest Flea's 5th birthday next weekend.

Stash ....gulp ..... enhancement ....

You know how it is - one minute you're vowing that you'll reduce the UFO pile, that you WILL NOT start anything new until you have finished more than one UFO - and then, across a crowded yarn shop, your eyes see - someone else, holding THE most beautiful combination of yarns that you have ever seen .... all the good resolutions run out the door. You feel the silver tongued devil sitting on your shoulder whispering in your ear - go on girl - you KNOW you want it - what harm can come from a little bit of wool? - the little Flea will look bee-ute-i-ful in those colours - you know she's been asking you to knit her a pink shawl FOR MONTHS - and you haven't even started one - how can you look into those big brown eyes again and tell her that?? And if you're careful, Grandpa Flea need never know!!

Five minutes later, you're walking out the door, bag heavier, purse lighter - justifying yourself, as the guilt slowly creeps up to meet you - it wasn't very much - less than $50 - only $49.99! - of course I'll need to put some other yarn with it - but little Flea will LOVE it - she'll be so pleased - I hope Grandpa Flea doesn't see the bag ..... he'll say "I thought we were decluttering" - "you've already got more wool than you can ever knit" - "you could knit all day, every day until you die and you'd still have wool left over" ....."where are you going to put it in our new house - it's smaller, REMEMBER" ... "you should be selling it, not buying it". Who needs self generated guilt when Grandpa Flea's around? But he does have a point .... just a small one, but a point, nevertheless.

Once home, a quick flick through the SMALL amount of stash that has not been packed away during the house sale, and the yarn for the prospective shawl has grown to this.
An hour or so later, and a shawl is on the needles. What happened to the UFOs? I hear you ask - ah, well, um .. it's like this - the squares for an indeterminate purpose have been hastily put together for a doll's blankie - and the remaining yarn returned to stash. The long socks - half knitted in New Zealand last year, have made some progress - one is finished and the other is up to the heel. It would have been finished except that two balls of Patonyle were not enough! and I had to join another ball in, half way along the instep, so I decided to frog back and make the join before the ankle. The last sock should be finished very soon and it can then go to the elderly gentleman with cold legs who lives near my daughter (I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I did buy him a pair of long possum fur and wool socks while in NZ as it was clear the socks wouldn't be finished last winter. Possums are a protected animal in Australia, but they are an imported pest in NZ and cause a lot of problems for the NZ wild life - destroying the native habitat with their voracious appetites, and breeding like fruit flies because there are no natural predators to keep the numbers under control).

Speaking of possums, there has been a lot of fighting going on over the last couple of weeks, and the shy possum who nested in the tree house opposite our deck disappeared and there was quite a lot of possum fur around on the ground all over the yard. I'm not sure if the possum was taken by a cat or fox, or vanquished by a superior possum and gone off to sulk somewhere. The possum box is inhabited again, but I think it is a newcomer - it's a bit hard to tell. The other night the inhabitant of the second box, who is REALLY shy, was making its appearance, well after dark and I managed to catch part of it with the camera. It's hard to take photos at night as I can't see anything on the little screen, and just have to point and click and HOPE!