A New Year!

I know it's the 2nd day of 2012 already, but I just wanted to say Happy New Year anyway, to all the visitors of my humble little blog.

With the new year comes new, or in my my case, additional, resolutions, and one of them is to try to keep this blog up-to-date! My excuse for not blogging for the last few months is that I've been on a hiatus from knitting and (a lot of) cooking, due partly to work, and partly to the intolerable Summer heat. It's still so strange to me how we Southern Hemispherers grow up reading about White Christmases and people snuggled up in warm blankets next to the fireplace at this time of year, when, in reality, here, most of us spend our Christmas and New Year holidays splashing around on the beach, or around the barbie. For this reason, I stop buying magazines in Summer, because I feel hot just looking at the covers, which feature models all wrapped up in big scarves and wearing thick clothes, beanies and boots. Nonetheless, I managed to finish making up my Gatsby Dress on New Year's morning (I know, took me long enough!). I'm sure I would have finished it ages ago, if I didn't leave it for so long, untouched. I'm blocking the picot edging on the back of the neck trim again - it's almost dry now - because it was still forward-inclined after blocking it from the front yesterday. I will post pictures once it's all done. I'm keen to model it too and take pictures, but I have to buy a nice white cotton skirt, or similar, first to wear underneath it. There's no rush, I guess, since I probably won't be wearing it until closer to Autumn, when the weather becomes cool enough for woollen garments!

I went for an afternoon run/brisk walk today, which made me feel good afterwards. One of my New Year resolutions is to increase my fitness level, be it one baby step at a time, so perhaps I'll try to make the walks a regular thing. I'm afraid to do it alone though, because nowadays, it's not 100% safe to be out and about alone on foot, even in your own neighbourhood. Gone are the days when people didn't even have to lock their doors at night. Heck, I don't even know the folks living on my street, besides one of my immediate neighbours. Yes, ONE. I know of the man living on the other side of the fence, but never speak to him, because he's a nasty man (very nasty, for someone who is like, 80) who, in his middle-aged days, threw eggs against our door and walls, and buried dead chicken with their feet sticking out of the ground, and in his old age, does nothing but ask people to do things for him, and in return, reports your pets (whatever we have at the time (we've had ducks, chicks and dogs over the years)) to the city council for anything and everything (eg noises that are not heard by, or don't bother, anyone else).

In brief, my other New Year's resolutions, include:
1. Doing all the projects that I've bought yarn for already (7 that I can remember off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's plenty more to add to the list!); working on 1 WIP at a time; use up my hefty stash, or at least reduce it to a reasonable size (considering the amount of money I spend on yarn every year);
2. Starting an etsy shop, after talking about doing that for the past year or 2;
3. finding out about Winter charity knits programs abroad before submissions deadline, so that I can actually participate in them;
4. finding another local hospital to knit premmie beanies for; one that doesn't tell you the beanies go directly to the premmies in the ward, but in reality actually gets sold to people for like $8-10/hat through the hospital foundation, and you aren't informed of this until the second batch is donated, and wouldn't have been, if they didn't need to make a special request for a certain design to be knitted, as they sold better. *breathe* Seriously, if I knew this to be the case, I'd rather donate money to the hospital, than have my effort - love and well wishes in each stitch, with so much thought put into each design - wasted and put together with a dollar value. and $8?? Really???
5. Sleep earlier (11.38pm already, so that's not going well);
6. Try my best in my studies, and not forgo opportunities to do so when in the presence of others, just because I'm too afraid of failure; failing when people know how much you've tried and want to succeed;
7. Have the courage to try new things; learn as much as I can, without the need of a known use for it;
8. Turn tears into pearls of wisdom.

Have a happy, prosperous 2012, everyone!

Of pies and dresses

Having finally managed to find a supplier for Australian bush spices and get my hot little hands on quite a few of them, I decided that today was the day I tried them out. I also wanted to improvise a dish, rather than spend ages (which I tend to do) flipping through recipes books and getting distracted by every yummy picture I come across. For lunch, then, I made a vegetarian pot pie, which consisted of a creamy potato mixture, mushrooms, and a tomato relish with a bit of spice and tang. I don't know why the puff pastry (shop bought) didn't puff up fully, but the dish was otherwise quite alright. While the individual elements tasted good, I think they probably didn't go extremely well together, since they have their own characteristic flavour, and the tomato relish was quite robust in flavour. Next time, I'll either omit some of the spices from the relish, or make the potato mixture more plain. Here's some piccies to tickle your tastebuds:

No cheesie toasties for me, coz I'm sick at the moment, and didn't want to exacerbate my cough.

Back to my knitting, I finished knitting the whole back of my Gatsby dress last night :D I only have 3.5 balls or so left for the front half of the dress, and frankly, having started with 10 balls, I'm a bit worried.. The online yarn store, from where I bought the yarn originally, doesn't even stock Rowan yarn anymore (if I am remembering the name of the shop correctly), and even if I can find the yarn from a different shop, the dye lot will be different, so I may potentially end up with a dress of 2 different hues of blue :'(






The bind-off instructions for the neckline was a bit weird.. Normally, patterns just ask to BO stitches at the centre and then decrease along the neck edge thereafter, but this one called for 2 lots of BOs at the neck edge after the main centre BO, which requires yarn to be cut and joined a few times. Of course, in my case, I just left a long end and secured this through a few stitches at the back, before bringing it up to use again for the next row.






The little lace details keep the design an interesting knit, except I'm not sure of the value of having the eyelets under the bust line. The knitted fabric is most certainly opaque enough to be worn on its own, but I'm not sure it would look that good with a spotty row of naked skin showing through... I guess if it looks bad, I could thread a matching ribbon through the eyelets or something.





I actually did knit a gauge swatch this time (haha, I know, surprise!), but....don't you reckon the dress is looking a bit narrow? Even the double-rib waist band, when manually stretched across my waist, reaches its elastic limit when thus manipulated. I hope I still end up with a wearable dress when I finish the whole thing!!

Sick days = more knitting days

So I've been sick since last Thursday, and the fact that I've been sick in bed/moping around the house for the past few days means that I've been able to get more knitting done (not that I'm glad to be sick or anything, but it's nice to know that I can still be doing something productive/fun when I'm too sick to do much else). It's good to be able to catch up with my knitting, as I've had done a few errors here and there at the start with the hem, which sort of put me off a bit. Of course, I promised myself to aim to reduce WIPs and UFOs, so perseverence is the key. Anyway, I took a few pics, so you can see what I mean:

Back Hem Take 1:

Spotted an error (dropped stitch or incorrectly corrected dropped stitch - a ghastly huge loop that stuck out like a sore thumb, either way) while I was knitting the st st section above the ladder stitch lace panel. Tried to create a "life line" and rip back, but didn't quite work out, and the yarn was all twisty and knotty when I was unravelling, so I ended up having the use my sewing scissors to cut the knitted fabric, which took ages to do (mainly because I've been watching dramas while knitting), to remove all the yarn until I got back to just the hem bit :( I think I wasted at least 1 ball of yarn, which is worrying for me right now.

Take 2: I focused this time, without watching dramas, and made sure I kept my wits about me.

...et voila! Parfait!

I've almost finished knitting the full back of the dress now *phew!*. This is where I'm at:

I shall continue this tomorrow, after I see the doctor, and hopefully get this baby finished soon!

Good thing before my cough and overall health got really bad, I attended Bill Granger's instore book signing for his latest release, Bill's Everyday Asian last week. Lugged 2 books from my Bill collection with me to get signed too! I would have liked to take my whole collection along to get signed, but the books (8 altogether, excl. newest) are wayyyyy too heavy for my one man band. Oh well, I'll eventually get it all signed, a few books at a time!

As always, Bill was very chatty and lovely, and this time round, I actually got over my nerves and started a foodie conversation with him :) It's so nice to be able to exchange opinions on things with one of your fave cookbook writers, and to get cooking ideas from him, that aren't from the books. Got a pic with him too, which was great :)

I eat Asian food often enough, but I don't dabble in Asian cooking much myself; however, I will definitely dip my toe in, just to try out Bill's interpretation of various Asian cuisines :)

Go, go, go!

FINALLY finished knitting the other hem! It took me longer than expected to finish, because I realised I had knitted 2 pattern repeats too many for the back hem. I must have lost count, while mindlessly knitting away.... Then I noticed that for a 'corrected' stitch in the middle somewhere, I had looped the stitch on the wrong way and it stuck out like a sore thumb (even my non-knitting sister could spot it!) *oops*, so I had to rip it back to half way and go from there again.

I'm about to pick up stitches along the top of the back hem to knit the next lace panel for the back skirt. I'm a bit confused about the wording - "pick up one stitch in the space, then pick up a second stitch in the purl bump adjacent to the space" :S. Wish me luck!

More pics..

Just finished knitting the back hem for the Great Gatsby dress! :) I think I will knit the front hem now, since my 4mm interchangable circulars, which are called for for the rest of the skirt, are buried beneath my clothes somewhere, with a WIP...

Great Gatsby Dress

I finished knitting the tension square for the Gatsby dress today, and as usual, (when I could actually be bothered knitting one - I know, I know, but bad habits die hard) the vertical length seems a little longer than 4", so I have to keep a mental note to tighten my tension. Indeed, the pattern does specify that the design is knit with negative ease. Anyway, I am knitting the back hem at the moment, and thought I'd post a picture of my progress :)

On a roll!

My poor, sad little neglected blog! Here I am now to provide some little updates before the blog closes down on me from a prolonged period of inactivity!

I finished knitting my Belle wrap, by Louisa Harding (Source: Knitting little luxuries), tonight! I didn't keep track of how long it took me to make it, as I started it last month-ish and did little bit every now and then between other things. I even took it with me when I went interstate for a little holiday, and did manage to squeeze in a few rows of knitting there! I'm sure, altogether, it wouldn't have taken that much time though.

I knitted this using Classic Elite Duchess (a bulky weight yarn) in the colourway, Blue Blood. I have used this yarn to knit 3 previous garments and love it to pieces, because a) it knits up fast, and b) it's so thick, soft and warm, and well spun, without having any 'halos' or splitty-ness. I normally like to use the yarn recommended in the pattern, but Louisa Harding yarns are so hard to source outside of the States, and even online! I did manage to buy some of her yarn on an online store for another project in one of her other books, so I'm looking forward to knitting with that.

Back to this garment. It is a lovely little design, and although I'm not the biggest fan of cables, probably more due to the fact that I manage to always get gaping holes in my cables, than because of their look, they just *work* as main design elements, and I simply adore the cable edgings! They add tactile as well as visual impact. If there is anything I'm not 100% happy about, they are the 2 rows of double yarn-overs running alongside the central panel. They create HUGE, somewhat uneven, holes, and the twisted yarn that forms the holes aren't very neat and 'clean'. I used circulars to knit this piece, so maybe the holes would be more even had I used straight needles? I didn't think it would matter though, since people knit whole sweaters on circulars, with lace patterns and what not.

The fit was also something that I wasn't totally happy about. At first, I thought the fit would be a bit restrictive, as it's a pretty short length, but it ended up being loose (in the picture in the book it fits snuggly around the model). As it's a 'one-size-fits-all' type of garment, I suppose it was designed for the average American woman, but, unfortunately, I do not fit in that category. When I find a 6th M-O-P button at Spotlight/Lincraft, I might untack all the buttons and attach them further in. I might actually attach another button or two on the reverse side of the buttonhole band, so that I could wear the wrap in different ways, using the buttons and yo holes to secure it. hummm it is Spring now though, so I probably won't get to wear it until next Autumn anyway...

Now that I'm on a roll, I thought I should start another knitting project, before I get lazy. I know I really should be commiting more time to finishing off my other WIPs and UFOs, but my stash is really getting out of control, and projects which I haven't start, but have bought yarn for, are taking up wayyy too much storage space. Hence, I have decided that I will start working on the Great Gatsby Dress by Mari Lynn Patrick, to coincide with the movie adaptation of the book that is coming out soon! I have a funny feeling that I have already posted something about this design before, but I suppose that just gives you an indication of how slack I am with my knitting projects. For this dress, I am using the recommended yarn of Rowan Yarn Classic Silk Wool DK in Denime.


It's almost 1am now and I have decided to knit a tension square (well, before getting distracted by this blog post!).

and can I just say, this yarn is smooth to handle, feels so wondrously soft, and, as you can see, it has a beautiful, lustrous sheen, due to the 50% silk component. I'm sure I'm going to enjoy knitting with this yarn!