The last couple of nights I’ve been trying to remember that trick with the Knitters Loom the lady at Wondo told me about. Except I’ve clearly left it too long and my memory had gone all hazy.

Eventually, after rewarping the loom about ten times, I gave up and tried another method where you select warp threads you want to skip over by pushing them down as the shuttle takes the weft through, creating a pattern:

There’s been a bit of unweaving and reweaving, but I seem to have the knack of it now. Next I want to try getting a herringbone pattern with two colours. And I have a strange and unexpected itch to weave a tea towel, which I suspect is the weaver’s version of the washcloth – a good simple gift for friends and family.

I picked up some dpns at The Wool Shop today. The second sleeve of the Diagonal Stitch Cardy is nearing the cuff and I didn’t want to wait for the needles I won on ebay to arrive. I doubt they’ll be here soon, since the seller still hasn’t contacted me to confirm the price and they live on the east coast of the States.

And now, a lilium:

Growing among car parts:

A while back I photographed the nasturtiums that had sprung up in a pile of rubbish from the house renos. The pile is gone, but an idea has been lurking in the back of my mind, brought to the fore by these flower pots that were put among the car bits for want of space.

With the beau’s interest in cars, I suspect there’s always going to be a few piles of ugly, oily bits around the yard that could do with some flowery concealment. Probably best to use pots than have the beau discover his engine has become entangled with plants, though. Hmm.

A few nights ago I got to the point on my Diagonal Stitch Cardigan, knitting toward the cuff of the sleeves, where the tube got so small that it was too awkward and slow to use Denise circs to knit them. Once it was no longer possible to knit in the round I had changed to the magic loop method. But the thing I love about Denise needes – the thicker cable that doesn’t allow stitches to tighten up and become harder to push onto the needle part – also makes magic loop a bit slow and inclined to produce a ladder where the loop is positioned.

It would be much faster and easier to just change to dpns, but I didn’t have any in that size. Am I the only one who, faced with trying to buy even simple knitting tools like needles, cringes as the illusion that I’m part of a great global shopping community crumbles into a reality of high US postal charges and limited local availablity?

So I started searching. Metal needles make my hands hurt, so a trip to Lindcraft or Spotlight was out. While I like bamboo, I know my gauge can be a bit different between bamboo and plastic, so it would be better to get the latter to match the Denise needles. That meant ordering online, and rather than have just one set of needles sent to me I may as well get a few sets to match the Denise needles I used most often.

That meant an internet search. I googled. I visited Aussie yarn shop sites. I checked the manufacturers sites. I ground my teeth. Why? Metal, wood and bamboo needles everywhere. The only ‘plastic’ needles I could find were Swallow caesin. Now, caesin is fine with me. After all, Swallow is an Aussie company and I like to support local manufacturers. Trouble is, I then couldn’t find a good range of sizes in dpns at a single shop.

So I went to the Swallow site, to their ‘where to buy’ page. And most of the Australian shops listed no longer had Swallow needles available. Lots of Knitpicks Options, however.

I had another option in mind, however. Perhaps if I bought a second set of all the different size needle tips of the Denise set I could use the 2 circs method. So repeated my search and found that no shops in Australia sold the needles separately – which isn’t too surprising, actually. But what disturbed me was that many of the shops listed on the Denise ‘where to buy’ page, like the Swallow page, didn’t list the Denise sets at all. Just lots of Knitpicks Options.

At this point I sat back and wondered if I was seeing a pattern. Knitpicks Options are the latest thing. If the market wants Options that’s what they’ll get. And if (from what I’ve read on Ravelry) shops have trouble ordering Swallow needles from the company then it’s no surprise if they become hard to find.

It’s ironic that Knitpicks, who won’t ship their yarn to Australia, may end up dominating the needle market here so completely that a local product, and a rsi-friendly alternative, no longer become available. If the popularity of Options ever diminishes, will the other companies return or will they have been forced to shut up shop in the meantime? Maybe it’s a good thing Knitpicks don’t ship their yarn here. It’s possible we might lose Bendigo Woollen Mills or other local yarn manufacturers, something I’d hate to see.

Anyway, I found I could buy Denise needle tips from the Denise site, but it may end up costing as much as a whole set. So I may as well buy another set. Just out of curiosity I popped into ebay to see if any of those multitudes of knitters buying Knitpicks Options might be offloading their Denise sets. There was one set, which I bid on but lost. There was also a pile of Swallow dpns up for auction in the US, which I bid on and won.

So the second ironic moment of this whole needle hunting saga is that I had to go to the US, via ebay, to find me the Aussie-made needles I need. They’re going to be well travelled needles.

Enough about needles! I have pics for you. First, a completed Hedera sock:

And some gin & tonic cup cakes:

And a pic I found on my camera, perhaps taken while under the influence of gin & tonic cup cakes:

Which certainly made me pause for thought.

Yesterday I intended to ease off on the house reno pace a bit and take the time to blog. I took these photos then, before I could sit down to post, the painter turned up to sand and varnish the stairs, which effectively cut off access to my computer for the rest of the day. So instead I took my knitting out onto the back table and drowned out the sound of the sander by listening to podcasts for a while.

Mum and Dad recently holidayed in New Zealand, and both as a souvenir and a birthday present they got me some wool – some lovely soft Touch yarns in an aqua and green colourway, and a rustic purple-blue 8ply called Charisma from Manukau Yarns.

Mum had asked for a guide to what sort of yarn I’d like. I’d said no acrylic, but no mohair either because it makes me itch. She decided she better be on the safe side and stick to 100% sheep wool, so passed up on the possum blends she saw. Doh! The yarn is lovely all the same and I’m already thinking of possible projects to make.

Here’s my first Quick and Dirty Sock:

I’ve been playing with shaping. First I placed the instep increases at the top of the foot as they were on the Flow Motion socks. Then I tapered off the slip stitch rib at the heel to a point. Now I’m anxious to do the second sock before I forget what I did for the first one.

They look better on the foot than flat:

The first Hedera sock is going well. I’ve got the simple lace pattern memorised now and can just cruise along. I lovelovelove this Crystal Palace Panda Cotton. It’s soft and springy, though a little splitty at times. I have to stop wearing wool socks in favour of shop-bought cotton ones around this time of year as the weather heats up but I reckon I could wear socks made out of this yarn. I definitely want more of this yarn!

Here’s the body of the Diagonal Stitch Cardy.

Last night I picked up stitches around an armhole and knit the sleeve cap, then continued in the round down to the point where the decreases begin on the arms. Then I left the stitches on the wire (I so love Denise needles) and repeated the process for the other sleeve. Now both sleeves are at the point where they involve stocking stitch with occasional decreases, so I have near-mindless knitting to pick up when I need it.

When I spread out the body yesterday to take photos, guess what had taken up residence inside?

A white-tail. And I’d squished one just that morning. We seem to be having a bit of a plague of them right now. I don’t mind huntsmans and will just release them outside because, for all their size, they’re fairly benign. But white-tails have a nasty bite AND like to live in the folds of clothing. They get squished. And I can tell you, there’s been a lot of nervous shaking out of clothes before dressing lately.

Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a long gap between posts before, aside from when I’ve been on holidays. We’ve been busy. Very, very busy. For three reasons. Firstly, we’re ‘sacking’ our builder, which means we have to finish the last bit of work ourselves. Yep, I’ve been wielding a housebrush or three. Secondly, since we’re nearing moving into the rest of our extension there’s been more shifting of stuff out of storage, then sorting, culling, cleaning and finding a place for here. I swear, we’ve moved more stuff since this began than we would have if we’d just bought a house and done one big move. Thirdly, there’s the meetings and paperwork involved. Urk.

If ever you consider extending or building a house, email me. I’ll tell you the name of our builder so if it turns out you’re considering the same one, you can avoid going through the hell we had to go through.

There hasn’t been much knitting. I’ve been too tired to knit most of the time. So tired sometimes that I just sit and stare at the tv. And the other day I had to finish up three podcasts I’d been interrupted in the middle of, and relisten to those I’d fallen asleep during.

At first I wasn’t bothered about the lack of knitting. I was a bit unenthusiastic – probably because I was too tired to get my head around the wips I have. Now I’m missing it terribly, but still too tired to get my head around my wips. I think I need to start a garter stitch scarf. Just to get a fix.

Hopefully life will settle into a knit-friendly routine soon. All this has gotta end some time.

Did I back away from the crochet? No. I went and crocheted the hat again.

You see, I decided to search for the pattern in Ravelry, and found it. There was a link to a different errata page which belongs to the designer. Now, the two corrections on it didn’t reveal why my hat was wonky, but in reading them I discovered I’d been missing a chain stitch in the rounds of the top. So, of course, I had to see if this fixed the problem I’d been having, so I picked up the hook and another two balls of yarn and tried again.

It did fix the problem… though I ended up with a weird bump around where the rounds joined…which I didn’t get the first time around but as far as I can remember I did exactly the same thing. Well, I figured I could just push the bump in to become a dip and nobody would notice, it being on the top of the hat and me being relatively tall.

Then I found my second oopsy. I had missed the “continue in a spiral” instruction for the sides. This is almost as bad as missing the “at the same time” instruction in knitting. Of course there’ll be no wierd round joining distortion if there’s no round joining. Silly me.

So, boosted by the knowledge I’d fixed two problems and the third wouldn’t be visible, I ploughed through to the brim.

Then I tried it on. That’s when I discovered two things: that I’d missed three rounds on the sides and the hat was too shallow, and… well… it looked wrong.

This time the wrongness wasn’t wonkiness. The hat was working out okay (if you ignored the wierd dip on top and I frogged back and added the missing rounds). What was wrong was that it didn’t looking right. As a cowboy hat it just wasn’t convincing, and I don’t think adding the brim would have made any difference. I suspect that a) the yarn doesn’t suit the project, and b) cowboy hats look stupid on me.

So it’s frogging time again.

But, to be philosophical, it kept me entertained for several nights, I got a bit more practise in reading crochet patterns, and now know to avoid cowboy hats. I haven’t lost the itch to crochet or to make quirky hats, either. And there’s this cadet style hat I’ve had my eye on for a while that would work well in a tweedy denim cotton…