I forgot to add: I will try to get to a computer to post in the next week. I’ll at least try to post text, but I imagine posting images might be a bit of a challenge. Still, that means a big feast of pictures when I get back.

Hope you all have a good long weekend.

After a session with the osteo yesterday I felt much, much better. Suddenly I can think clearly. Amazing how pain and pain-killers can reduce your brain to wimpering, gabbling mush.

I cast on another pair of socks. To my surprise, they aren’t made of the luscious Sunshine Yarns, Lisa Souza or Yarniverous wool. They’re not even made of the Regia I have at the bottom of the stash (ah, remember the days when Opal and Regia were irrisistably exciting?).

No, they’re plain old olive tweedy St. Ives socks. You see, I’m making my beau his first pair, and since I expect these to be the ones I’ll make all the mistakes with (and he turned his nose up at the Regia) I’m using the cheaper, more robust St. Ives.

It was a bit of shock to the sytem. I’m not used to knitting for sane, normal-sized feet. As I was knitting the toe – using the figure 8 cast on and then increasing to make the toe so it would be easier to rip back if I made them too big – I kept thinking my calculations must be wrong. These socks can’t be this big. Even the osteo commented on the size of them. (Though when I said what I’d knitted was the toe, I think he had a moment’s mental image that it was for one, single toe and I would have to go on and knit four more. That would be a big sock.)

But the beau tried it on last night and it fit perfectly. He doesn’t have huge feet. Just normal blokey-sized feet for a guy his height. It’s just that my feet are ridiculously narrow. I placed the toe of a Jaywalker sock next to Beau Sock #1 and it was about 2/3 the size.

Bizarrely, the beau’s socks are knitting up amazingly fast. I’m already up to the instep shaping. I’d post a pic but Blogger’s image importer isn’t working today.

So it looks like I can justify taking another ball of sock yarn with me to Canberra. I’ve narrowed the choice down to three: Lynne’s stripey yarn, Lisa Souza’s mahogany or the Mega Boots Stretch. The first and third have the advantage of containing blue, so qualify as June’s Project Spectrum project.

Decisions, decisions.

Despite feeling rather sick this morning, I managed to drag myself over to the show. Amazing how effective the pain-killing side-effects of stash enhancement is.

My bargain purchase. I went looking for the Busy Bee shop last time I was in Bendigo and when I found the shop it was empty, having recently closed. But they were at the Expo selling off stock cheaply. I bought these:

Bargain Yarn: 8ply for socks for my Dad and ex-neighbour, and the pack of four is royal blue Perendale by Naturally, a New Zealand yarn I haven’t tried before that apparently felts well.

Treat Yarn: Handspun and dyed silk and wool in blues and purples and handspun and dyed mulberry silk in blues and greens with a thread of silver. The former is a present, the latter a treat for me. Both are deliciously soft.

An extra set of 2mm dpns for when I’m knitting two socks at once, adorably big wooden buttons, black shiny thread (only $1!) and my favourite purchase of the day, Colour: Making and Using Dyes and Pigments which is more a history book than a how-to and will be even more useful to me as an artist and a painting teacher than as a dyer.

I bumped into Peeve and Lynne and Kylie and Darrow and people that they knew and people who remembered me from the Fed Square KIP day last year. I probably mentioned that I’m going to the Australian Country Spinners shop next week a few too many times. I felt quite light-headed and couldn’t seem to stop myself.

I’m sure I wouldn’t have bought so much if I wasn’t feeling frustrated with the Jaywalkers socks. After having knit 2/3 of an ankle I discovered I couldn’t get the sock onto my feet. I’d tried it on after the heel was finished and it was fine. It’s the ankle/leg part that doesn’t stretch enough. Finding out I’d have to frog a whole lot of zig-zag again… I came very close to stuffing the darn socks in a bag and burying them somewhere. And with the way my back yard is at the moment, I have a whole lot of holes and pits and trenches to choose from.

To save my sanity I’m going to cast on some plain soothingly simple socks from the lovely yarns I’ve bought lately. The trouble is, I can’t decide which to start. The stripey yarn Lynne dyed? The Lisa Souza mohagany colourway? The Sunshine Yarns neopolitan? The Mega Boots Stretch from my Secret Pal?

I’ve been very busy lately. Firstly with work. I’ve got two weeks and two days to do two weeks worth of work. That sounds okay until I add that I’m going away for half of that. So my butt has been well attached to my office chair.

You’d think this would mean I was getting no knitting done, but the truth is quite the opposite. This work is all ‘brain work’ so I take frequent short rests so I don’t get ‘brain fatigue’. Half an hour of work = five minutes brain rest. Knitting is the perfect activity for those breaks. Easy knitting, that is, not anything that requires brain work as well. Since small projects fit nicely on the desk beside me, a sock is a good rest break project. As a result I’ve been making good progress on the Jaywalker socks:

When I finished the heel of the first sock I tried grafting on the tube left over from my first attempt. I discovered pretty quickly that grafting any kind of pattern was a fast road to madness. I gave up and frogged the tube.

Which wasn’t as disheartening as I expected. By this point I’d come to realise that if I hadn’t kept the tube to graft on later I might have just given up on the Jaywalker socks completely. The thought that I might graft it on helped me stay keen enough to begin again.

Though I have to say, the zig-zag pattern has now gone from interesting to memorised to ‘gosh, I can’t wait until it’s over’.

In the meantime, have you seen the back of my house?

This is what happens when you (ie. not us, but the former owner) use the side of the house as a retaining wall so that your paving can be nice and level. You install it over the original primitive drainage system (which appeared to funnel water into leaky pits from which it evaporated) to which you have added plastic tubing that isn’t meant for the purpose (and as a result became clogged with dirt and roots).

By doing this you create the perfect conditions for termites. Not only do you create a nice moist wall, but you give the little rotters easy, hidden access to it. The building inspectors called in when the beau bought the house never noticed they were there.

As a result, the roof and all the framework of the garage has to be replaced. On top of that we know some of the walls of the ensuite and bedroom next to the garage need to be replaced too, but we have yet to see how far the termite damage extended into these areas.

Oh, and if you want to be really sure you get termites, build a planter box right against the wall of the house. It’ll be a penthouse for your little tenants, providing moisture and access that they only dream of, and they’ll be safely hidden away from sight.

But really, we should thank the previous owner. If it weren’t for the termites, we might not have decided to explore our ideas for building a new floor above the garage. We might have decided to sell and buy a house more suitable. But they saved us from the stress of selling, since (unlike them, it seems) we can’t legally sell a house with a garage that was so close to falling down that the builders were too scared to walk on the roof.

Now we have the reassurance of knowing that it’s going to take ten or twenty years before the house value has increased enough to cover the repairs. They’ve saved us from the hassle and stress of moving house for a couple of decades. And I may as well decorate in any kooky, artistic way that I fancy, since I don’t have to worry that future buyers might not like, say, the colours I choose. In twenty years anything I do now will be old fashioned and in need of an update.

I’m getting very good at looking on the bright side.

The Vic Handknitters Guild is running its Mini Wool Expo this Sunday, 4th June, at Coburg Town Hall, 10am to 3.30pm.

I highly recommend this expo. Last year it had more yarn-related stalls than the Stitches and Craft Show and perhaps even the Bendy Show, but without all the non-yarn-related stalls getting in the way, crowds, extortionate entry fees, or difficulties parking or finding people you arranged to meet.

The only down side last year was that there was no coffee shop at which you could meet up and knit at. Oh, and that it’s only on the one day. But in my opinion the plusses far outweigh the minuses. This show is good value for money.