My Florentine

Craftfest is on this weekend in Sydney and I will be checking it out with a uni friend and my sister, hopefully not spending too much money. That might be a possibility because I don't feel like I actually need that much and have been pretty good at resisting the urge to buy spontaneously lately! Maybe this economic climate is rubbing off on me! But I have set aside some money to spend on whatever my heart desires! I'm hoping to get a nice hand dyed and spun aran weight yarn for the "My So-Called Scarf" - something with lots of colour changes would be really nice, so I'll see what I can find. And I'm saying a bg no to sock yarns! I still have a heap in my stash. Most are plain colours, but I might over dye them if i feel I need to vary the colour.

As for other crafting supplies, I have no idea what I will get. Maybe a jelly roll. I want to make a quilt for myself in my break between semesters later this year, so that will definitely come in handy. And I might get some fat 1/4's if they appeal to me. But I am excited to see what there is at Craftfest as it is a new craft show. I will update you with how the show was and my purchases!

Anyways, I'm off now. No picture today to brighten up the page.

I finally got around to taking more photos yesterday of my current knitting projects and the latest yarns that I have bought (none recently, I swear!). The weather hasn't been really good around here lately. Lots of overcast days with sporadic bursts of sunshine, which does not lend to great photo taking. I had to use the flash so these photos aren't the best that they could be.

Anyway, here is the latest yarn that I bought from Yay for Yarn! It is the ever-so-lovely Kaalund Yarns Enchante in Wisteria. It is beautiful cultivated silk. Enjoy!

And, I am making the Fern and Waves scarf from Ravelry with the yarn!

I can't wait to finish it and wear it!

I started back at uni on Monday. After surviving an 11 hour day, I discovered that I have a) no exams in the exam period and b) I don't have to buy any textbooks this semester (I either already have them or will be provided with the readings). Now, this means that all of my marks will come from my work in the next 12 weeks. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. But either way, the next 12 weeks will be full on :S

Anyway, I'm putting my knitting and sewing on the back burner for now while I concentrate on my major work for textiles this semester. Hopefully it will turn out as good as I it looks in my head.. but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. The final product will be posted in about 12 weeks.

A new craft show, Craftfest will be in Sydney in two weekends time, which I'm looking forward to. I'm gonna try and be good as possible. I'm hoping to get some nice fabric and possibly a jelly roll to make a quilt for myself in the middle of the year. Knitting yarns will have to be pretty special for me to buy them.

It took me 17 days into 2009 to realise that I really should make some resolutions and try and keep them this year. I usually don't make New Years Resolutions, mainly because I never keep them - but I feel that these are really important and worth keeping.

So here are my New Years Resolutions for 2009:
* To knit from my stash
* To sew from my stash
* To give away/sell some of my stash
* To loose some weight - I'd be glad if I loose 5kgs, but even happier if I lost more. Anything to indicate that my fitness and health have improved.
* To get more sleep. My aim by the end of the year will be to get at least 8 hours of sleep most nights of the week.


Now I will try and keep you updated throughout the year to show the progress that I will make. I'll post photos of things I make from my stash, tell you how much weight I've lost, if I get rid of any of my stash and if I get enough sleep in a week! So, wish me luck - I may just need it!

And here is a photo from a recent day trip to Sydney - it's of the Harbour Bridge taken from near the Sydney Opera House just before a storm. Enjoy!

The rain has it out for me I swear! The last few times i've wanted to go out for a walk as a bit of exercise, it decides to rain of me. I decided that it was only raining very lightly today so I would brave it,but no, I got five minutes away from home and the rain gets much heavier. Not happy.

Anyway, I've had a busy two weeks with work, my birthday party (which went well), christmas shopping and well, just enjoying life. I'm almost finished my Christmas shopping. Well, I've probably done only about half, but it feels like I have done more! I just wish I knew what we we're doing in our group (well, if you can call us a group anymore...it's complicated). We usually do secret santa, but who knows what we're gonna do this year. But I will find out tomorrow!


But anyway, I found this really enjoyable video, so I urge you to watch it!


Hip Hip Violin And DJ - Funny home videos are a click away

Well, until next time!

Like today! I was able to sleep in, catch up on some quality TV viewing, do a bit of shopping and a bit of knitting. My Branching Out scarf is coming along slowly but nicely and I only have 3 legs left of my sisters elephant before it's finished! As the elephant's are quick and easy to make, I think I will do the pattern in 2 more colours before Xmas as part of her present. I'm also hoping to have the scarf finished by the end of the year so I can start on the knitting for my textiles major work and get the majority out of the way before I go back next year.

I'm also pretty happy that I have a pretty good idea of what to get each person of my family for Christmas. It's usually a last minute forced decision for their presents, but I can start a bit earlier this year and get them what they really want. But I still gotta figure out what to get my friend's once we choose our secret santa's!

Well, I'm off for the night. I will leave you with this lovely picture of the nice blue ocean - somewhere I wish I was right now. The weather is not being nice at the moment, going from hot to rainy to being cold (like it is now) I wish the weather would figure itself out!

Yay! The year is almost over which means in two weeks I will be finished all things uni related for almost three months and I'll be free to do what I want!

Looking back at the year, I bought a s#!tload of yarn and fabric/craft related stuff that I have yet to use and wonder if I ever will. So I need to resist the urge to buy new fabric/yarn/craft stuff and use what I already have. It's gonna be tough, but I know I can do it! So that is challenge number one...

Now onto challenge number two...
I would say that I have put on 5 to 10 kilos over the past year. Something that I'm quite frankly ashamed of. So the challenge is to get rid of it. And then lose at least another 5 kilos after that. So yes, that is 15 kilos in total. I'm not going to set a short time frame because I don't want to fail this so my time frame to lose this 15 kilos is one year. So by next November I will 15 kilos lighter, a lot healthier and a lot fitter. I will be able to fit into some cute clothes that I no longer fit into and buy new clothes that I have never been able to wear before.

And how will I achieve this? Well, there is eating healthier. Must resist the urge to buy chocolate, chips etc when going food shopping. Cooking meals to take to work for lunch and dinner that have less pasta and rice and more vegetables (even if they do come from the frozen section of the supermarket). Also I will need to cook less meat to put in there, choose leaner cuts of meat and have smaller portions. That should help (lets hope so!)

Now to the exercise - I have been walking a little bit lately. I know one route that takes about 25 minutes at a brisk pace (for me at least). I'm wanting to extend that to 30 minutes soon and keep increasing it by five minutes as it gets easier till I get to 40 minutes. This should also help.

So let's get started.
Starting weight is: 75 kilos.
Next weigh in : 2 weeks

Hopefully this will be the start of something good.

I will now leave you with a photo from my trip to Canberra :)

So I went away to Canberra for a few days for Floride. It was great, so may beautiful flower displays. We did a heap of other things including going to Cockington Greens - a miniture display village and Canberra Zoo, where I got to feed a bear and lions & tigers. It was fantastic. Photos will be posted to my Photobucket account soon.

I've noticed that my journal is really boring with all these words and no pictures, so I'm gonna incorporate a picture in each post from now on.

So, heres one to start


Tulips were a huge feature of Floriade and they are also my fave flower!

If you do get a chance to visit Canberra whilst Folriade is on, it is well worth the visit!

I bought more yarn (Whoops is the first word that comes to mind). About half is for the 12345678987654321 pairs of socks I plan to make and have enough yarn for. And the other half is for charity. My mum & I make squares for Wrap with Love - which makes wraps for 3rd world countries so people dont go cold. My only problem is I don't have enough room to put it!

I need to impose a yarn and spending ban...I have spent soo much in the last week. Some of it has been for school and life's necessities, but soo much more on wants. Damn receiving my tax return.

But, yes the point of this blog is to inform the world that I intend not to buy any more yarn for knitting until I've made a decent size dent in my stash...and this includes selling off some yarn if I feel the need for it!

Wish me luck... I'll need it!

I love Addi needles. So much more comfortable than Knit Picks and really nice to knit with, which makes them worth the prices ($12.95 for 4mm circulars). Knit Picks are too sharp and my finger gets sore after a while. So hopefully I can figure out how to knit my first pair of socks using the magic loop alright.

In other news, I bought my first ball of Noro sock yarn! Now I just have to finish my first pair of socks and find a pattern to complement the colourway :D

Yesterday I got my first Addi circular needles! Everyone seems to be raving about how good they are and when I went into my LYS to look for some 2.5mm DPN, the very helpful lady suggested I try using 2 sets of circular needles instead - she even sent me a link on how it all works. They did have 2.5mm DPN, but only in bamboo, and I don't like knitting with wooden needles so I wasn't very keen on using them. And what turned me off even more was that they were more expensive than the Addi needles (I paid $11.95 for Addi - the Clover bamboo needles were $15.95).

The reason why I wanted the 2.5mm DPN's was because I am knitting my first pair of socks using the magic loop technique and am really quite scared that I will stuff up the heel flap, gusset etc when it comes time to do so. So hopefully this will work **fingerscrossed**

In other news, I got my uni semester reults yesterday - and I got 3 credits and a distinction! I was so glad that I didn't fail anything because I really thought I might. But yay!!!!

I am determined to knit a pair of socks despite the fact that I'm so afraid that I'm going to stuff something up! It is my first pair of socks and I'm going to use the magic loop method too! So far so good, but I've only really cast on and knit the first few rows! Wish me luck!

I started two new projects today (because one simply isn't enough!) It will be my first attempt at knitting in the round and cable knitting. The pattern is called Fetching from knitty.com - so far I am impressed with how easy it has been so far :)

My second project is a self designed cabled headband :D My first pattern that I drafted failed miserably but my second one is working well so far. I had had to change the needle size suggested (I went down 0.5mm) and changed my increase method from M1 to KFB.

I will post images as soon as I finish my exams on Thursday and and have taken some decent pictures!

... On myself buying anymore items craft related unless it is desperately needed. My stash is growing quicker than I am using anything! The new Spotlight moved right near my house - within easy walking distance. This could prove to be very dangerous, actually it already has. I went over there to check it out today because I had my doubts that it wouldn't be as good as the old store (they just moved locations), but I was highly impressed with the layout and good use of space to fit everything into a smaller venue. It was extremely busy, so I'm glad I walked because driving and finding a car space would've been an issue due to the traffic.

So here's a quick run down of what I bought and what I have planned to do with it.
- 2 balls of Cleckheaton Country 8ply in a really nice olive green. I plan to make a pair of fingerless gloves from it. The pattern is from Knitty.com.
- 1 ball of Cleckheaton Country hues to make a cabled headband from my own pattern. This would be my first cable and design project so it will be interesting to see how it turns out!
- Lots of DMC embroidery thread/floss. I want to embroider some baby jumpsuits for a friend who is pregnant. And I also have uni holidays coming up so I will have some time to work on them.
- An embroidery hoop - you can figure out what that is for.
- An iron on transfer pencil
- Some needles for my sewing machine
- Some cable and double pin needles for the project mentioned above.

So you can see how this could be an issue. I'll keep you updated on the damage sustained to my savings!

The local big crafting store is relocating (closer to me!!!) so they were having a massive sale to help get rid of a lot of stock. Everything was a minimum of 20% off and items that had a yellow clearance sticker were 75% off!!! I got a knitting book for 25 cents! Woot! I spent so much money though (and surprisingly none on wool!)I bought a Olfa rotary cutter and cutting mat and I've been messing around with it to find out what it's capable of and I think I'm in love with this thing! It is so easy to use and cuts without much pressure at all. I cant wait till I finish exams and can start on my crazy quilt!

So I've decided to try my hand at my very own Pidge scarf. They look awesome and different to your everyday scarf. Today I went and picked out my yarn for it. It was my first time buying from my local Yarn store. I usually buy my yarn from craft/sewing places like Lincraft and Spotlight. For my Pidge scarf I wanted a yarn that had a higher natural fibre content than I usually use. Because it is a small project, I could justify the price. It's beautifully soft and looks fabulous. It's Cleckheaton Merino Spun in white (looks more like a cream) and charcoal. It's 80% merino wool and 20% acrylic. I'll update with pictures as I go along.

So I was slightly naughty last week and bought even more yarn! But on the not-so-naughty side of the argument, it was from The Smith Store and 3 balls cost me $3. And I had seen this yarn in the store I had previously been in and decided not to get it because of the price. I did have to buy new needles to knit with, but they will serve me for future projects too :D

I wanted to do something different than a scarf, so I did a search on the internet and came up with the pattern: http://need2knit.blogspot.com/2007/04/bulky-rib-beanies.html




Enjoy

So it has been months since I last posted here. I'm hopeless, I know! Whilst there will be no pictures in this post (they might come soon), they will endless ramblings! So let's begin...

... Last week I decided it was time to move my yarn into a new home, as many of the balls were still in the shopping bags they had come in. I went out and bought a new container (one of the flexible toy containers). I got it home (along with some new yarn...oops)and began to transfer over the balls of yarn. Not only did my yarn almost fill the new home all the way, I discovered that I have a lot of yarn I have no idea why I bought it. So I have decided it can go to a cause where it is needed. I've begun knitting 10"x10" squares for wrapped with love. A charity that sends wraps to 3rd world countries. I thought this would be a good way to get rid of unwanted yarn. Progress will be slow because I go back to uni in a weeks time, but I will make progress!

Onto the next topic of business, Spotlight had a massive yarn sale over the holidays. Of course I couldn't help myself when all the summer yarn was on sale for $1 per ball! I bought about $20-$25 worth of yarn, some of which I will be using to teach myself crochet with.

And as for the baby blanket I was knitting... Well, seeing as the bub it was intended for is know a month old and there is no chance of it being finished in time for winter, I will now be knitting it for another friend who I just found out is pregnant! Hopefully it will be finished in time!

So there are my ramblings for today...

So here are some pictures of my first attempt at lacework form the pattern I posted in the last post. It wasn't a hard pattern to follow, but somehow I managed to keep making the right side of thw knit into the wrong side of the knit!

Enjoy!