Merry Christmas and Happy Stitching

It's probably a bit silly posting Christmas greetings on Boxing Day, but I thought I might as well peak a bit late rather than never. So Merry Christmas to you all, and happy stitching!

I have been working extra days this month, the uni students have been gearing up to move out from under our roof, and we have been preparing for the mama and the dadda with the bubba to take their place in this homely half-way house. We have also been planning our Summer holiday, stockpiling camping gear and essential items for a 4WD trip into the Victorian high country, oh, and in between times, wondering how on earth we were going to manage to fit in Christmas.

There was a half-hearted attempt at Christmas decorating; a small tree up on a side table, away from the marauding Watson, a small collection of Santa Claus figurines, and an arrangement of red and white china on the wine cabinet. 

My dear Anna-Lou shopped and cooked up a storm to try and save me from the usual post-Christmas meltdown. She bought the ham, cooked two Christmas cakes, made salted caramel macadamia slice and Rocky Road. She prepared the summer pudding for breakfast, baked frittata, churned a rich and delicious apricot ice-cream and peeled and baked all the veggies. An angel she is. :)

Christmas is done and dusted now, and Boxing Day has been lazily spent drinking tea and eating cake, taking naps throughout the warm afternoon, and imbibing in a spot of knitting (finally).

The mumma and the dadda and the bubba have come to stay, ensconced in their rooms at the other end of the house. The warmth of the day has given way to cooling rain, and all is at peace.  I am working on a knitted dinosaur for baby R (six months old now!).

I am working with this gorgeous Morris & Sons Empire 8-ply 'Arcadia' yarn. I haven't used it before, but it knits up into a beautiful even fabric, and the variegated colours are very appropriate for a prehistoric reptile methinks.

But I am off to make tea, eat chocolate and watch an episode of Foyle's War with my beloved. I hope that your Christmas season has been filled with peace and joyous things.

Evie :)

Three Peachy Chickens

Organic peaches, a gifty from the farm at Cobbitty. I sliced them all up this morning and threw them into the slow-cooker with a goodly splash of Irish Whiskey. Doris, Doreen and Augusta had a terrific feed on the scrappy left-over bits, helped out here and there by Rosie the Wonderdog.

I don't usually eat ice-cream, but I just had to have a wee bit this evening, scooped into a bowl of olde fashioned peaches; the creamy ice-cream melting into a beguiling juicy soup. Delicious. It is surely the best taste of Summer, don't you think?

The best end to a happy day. :)

Goodbye Vice-Chancellor (in my blue lace dress)

When an invitation to a formal event arrives in the post, my first thoughts quite naturally turn to oh-my-goodness-whatever-will-I-wear. I am one of those 'keep it simple' kind of gals, and my wardrobe has been kept deliberately spare. I have never been able to wear bold prints or blousy florals, and I so often seem to gravitate toward block colours of black or red.

But lately I have discovered that I can wear lace with reasonably good effect, and so when the invitation to attend my University's grand farewell to our long-serving Vice-Chancellor [President or Rector, to those in the UK or US respectively], I dismissed the boutique-de-frock and went searching for lacy fabric instead.

The blue was a considered choice spanning two trips to my local Spotlight store over the course of a week. With time getting down to the wire I landed back there on my way home from work on Wednesday and decided that it would likely do as not. Imagine my joy at the checkout to discover that the price had been reduced by 75% by deem of a mega-sale, and that pretty blue lace had serendipitously become more than ridiculously reasonable.

I had cut a pattern from a mesh sheath in my staple wardrobe, and fudged the hemline so that I was able to take advantage of the scalloped hemline. These things are so quick and simple to whip together using a rolled-hem on the overlocker [serger], and if not for my decision to add a border of flower motifs around the neckline, it would have been an evening's work. As it was, the neckline bit got a bit tricky, and getting it to all sit nicely nearly had me in a lather! I downed needle in just under two hours before it was time to slip into my dress and buckle up my shoes. But I did really feel quite lovely with my little home-made lacy number over a black ruffled-hem dress. Too easy!

And it was a truly wonderful evening spent with colleagues with whom I am the very best of friends; catching up with University chums of old, sharing memories, reminiscing, enjoying a rolling collage of photographs that document a long and prosperous chapter in the life of our Institution. And of course, commemorating the incredible contribution of a gifted, dedicated, warm and generous woman. She will be well-remembered, and remembered-well.  Goodbye, farewell, Professor Reid, I have loved you well.


Evie
xxx

Little Santa and the Etsy Store

Last week I was working on getting my little Santa pattern knocked into shape, with a view to FINALLY getting my Etsy Store up and running. Making my own patterns has never been a problem; so many times I just sketch something on paper, cut it out and stitch it into existence. But taking my fudged-together paper bits and taking them through the transformative design process has long proved to be a stumbling block.

But this time I was determined to push through the pain barrier and work it through to completion. And I did. It took my entire weekend to tweak the pattern, produce the sample (thereby testing my own instructions), tweak the pattern again, take a thousand dodgy photographs, and finally get to the point where I thought it was done.

And then we come to opening an Etsy Store ...

There is no such thing as just-opening-an-Etsy-Store. Fair dinkum, it felt like writing a job application for a position for which I was ill-qualified! I confess to being quite the novice, and not exactly possessing a head for business, it became a long, drawn-out, and tiresome exercise. But I was as diligent as I could possibly be, and I now have my shop up and functioning, complete with polite little policies, a few pretty pictures, and a PDF pattern!

It is hopefully the first of many. A meagre offering perhaps, but it does feel so very good to have put a drop in my bucket of dreams. I have two more little Christmas projects nearing completion, and the patterns are already a good way through the design process. At the moment I'm just having fun and enjoying the satisfaction of making sweet little things.

Wish me well my friends!

Evie xxx

Watson and the devil of a day

Poor Watson has had a day of it. We had a 45 minute drive to the groomer this morning; a bath and blow-dry and then the dreaded clippers. He has once again been transformed from a scruffable bundle to a handsome poodle-dog. He sits so beautifully tall and proud (not that he is that tall). But then we had the trip to the vet-doctor this afternoon for annual vaccinations and the heart-worm needle. She also plucked his ears out and checked to make sure all was well deep down in his ear canals. But I think the thermometer up his rear end was the final indignity. He is asleep at my feet now. It's all been a bit exhausting.

I find it best to go off and have a coffee, leaving the groomer to do her business. I spent a whole hour with my knitting, a big cappucino and an almond friand. It was busy, but not so busy that I felt guilty in taking up a whole table and two chairs. It was a wonderful panacea to the hurry of life; knowing that I had the simple pleasure of time to sit and knit and think and let my mind wander wherever-it-will.

I am on to my second entrelac sock, and have almost completed the trickiest bit. It's nearly time to work the heel and knit on down to the toe. I'm thinking of trying something a little more complex for my next set of socks; Farmer McGregor, a pattern from my Socktopus book by Alice Yu.

It's good to have aspirations ... but I might be calling on my knitting gurus for this lot! Be warned y'all. :)

Vintage finds

Sadly, one of our local vintage thrifty shops closed it's doors last month. It has long been a favourite haunt; just the place to pick up old lace doilies, odd buttons, embroidered pillow shams and old ladies gloves. They have also stocked an excellent range of vintage hats, shoes, frocks, and ties, and usually enough daggy pre-loved gear to outfit one for those dress-up-parties-of-the-unmentionable-birthday variety.

 

Apart from the beautiful blue French embroidery cotton, I was able to pick up a silk kerchief, a couple of fine lace doilies, a string of pearls, some vintage buttons ...

... lots of assorted triangle cards of old press-studs, and a box of fine crochet cotton.

I also scored a whole bolt of scrummy chocolate-coloured braid. I can see it now, stitched around the collar and cuffs of a future Regency Spencer jacket creation ...

I spent an entire hour sitting awkwardly on the carpeted floor rifling through knitting patterns that stretched back some seventy or eighty years at least. I could have bought so many, but it was the quaint Paton's knitting booklets from the 1940s that came home with me in the end. There were baskets full of odd balls of wool, tins of knitting needles and crochet hooks; boxes of old dress patterns, magazines, and other strange assortments of ye-olde-things.

I can't help but be captivated by the ephemera of the past. Perhaps they are the things that link my modern-day life to the whisper of my grandparents' hand-me-down existence; the time when a woman's handiwork was valued and cherished, when remnants were hoarded up to be repurposed, when a reel of thread was eeked out sparely and gathered resources were conserved. I still feel as though I have one foot on that polished linoleum floor, as though I could rest my head upon the velveteen cushions in the dimly-lit front room, and listen to the steady rhythm of the wind-up clock.

I love to dip my hands into the tin of old buttons, to thread a fine needle, to make tiny stitches and slowly create something useful, or even something beautiful. 

These are the things that help to ground me when I feel overwhelmed by a pace that is not of my making.

It helps me to breathe.

Evie 
xxx

Secret Socks

Knitting + Spare Moments = Secret Socks

Knitting + Spare Moments + Thinking = Rambling Thoughts

        

Pondering the rhythms of life

That aren't really rhythms

But are more like waves crashing on the shore

Sometimes a raging sea; wild and uncontained

A swirling, churning, bruising, swallowing, dragging swell

I bet you know it all too well

+ + +

Yet other times held soft and warm

Afloat, becalmed; Anchored by some sturdy means

Imperceptible 

The waves are waves no more, than ripples on said distant shore

+++

I cannot find a rhythm here

The tides will come

And tides will go

There will always be ebb and flow

The constant thread that I hold to

Is all I make and all I do

+++

Though some may think it all is dust

Need drives me on - create I must

+++

Still knitting ... happily

Nearly there.

Crazy Zauberball by Schoppel-wolle in Herbstwind 1507

Purchased at Morris and Sons, Sydney on Bushfire Thursday 2013

Secret Socks are a secret because they are a gifty for someone who won't expect them :)

WARNING - KNITTING CAN BE ADDICTIVE