At last I have a mostly working pc. Yaaaay! I can download and crop images. I can upload them to blogs. But I don’t yet have working email.

There are at least nine knitblog entries I want to make. I figure I’ll work backwards through them, mainly because I still have a lot of photo sorting and writing to do for some of them and this one is going to be easy…

A few days before I finished and delivered The Book and headed off to New Zealand, I wrote a list of things I had been putting off because of lack of time and weekends. It was rather large – about 80 items. Some of the items on it were serious, like getting my passport renewed or painting the fence. Some were fun, like taking a weaving class and having an extension-warming party.

One was to try out my new local s’n’b. At last one had started locally that wasn’t held during work hours. So I hopped on over to Ringwood East yesterday morning, and was stunned by the number of knitters who turned up.

The two hours went in a flash. I took the socks I’d started when I arrived in New Zealand, and finished them but for the sewn cast off. (Then, like the ditzy brunette I am, I left one behind.) In fact, the sock knitting seemed to intrigue and I can see there are some potential sock knitting converts to be made…

One of the group is a spinner, and she brought a plastic tub full of handspun dyed with eucalyptus to give away. It’s a bit to harsh to knit into clothing, but would make nice woven placemats, table runners and may even be robust enought for floor rugs.

The beau observed that the oranges were the colours of our cat. All that was missing was white. Then I remembered that the first handspun I’d made had been in a harsh white fleece, so I dug it out. So the oranges and white are going to become the Peri Peri rug.

The shop lighting wasn’t great, and I’d thought the pale yellow matched the lighter parts of the dark brown-grey, but it doesn’t. The pale coffee coloured yarn I bought as warp for the Gum Tree Blanket was a good match, though. That’s going to become place mats.

I asked the spinner if she spun on commission. Of course, she was concerned immediately that I wouldn’t realise how time-consuming and therefore expensive it would be, not realising I’d learned to spin and knew. But I’d like to know how much it would cost, before I sell, give away or do anything funky like felting with the fibre stash. Could be the finn fleece is worth spending the money on, but not the rest. We’ll see.

There’ll be another meeting next week and I’m looking forward to going. I’m tempted to warp up the loom and make a placemat to show off. But that would add yet another item to my enormous list of thing to do. Best stick to more urgent crafty tasks.