First best swim

The first swim of the year and it was soooooooo good! Big swells because of the winds we've been having, no clouds, no wind and lovely big clean waves. Aaaaaahhhh I had forgotten how much I missed being in the water and how relaxed I felt when I got out. Numb, bloodless, and frozen... but relaxed. Very relaxed.

This photo is from Saturday morning when I had no intention of swimming (because in Canberra on Thursday night we had had the fire on! It was winter again) but it was surprisingly calm and warm. After lunch the wind got up and the clouds came over but Sunday morning was fine again. So I didn't even check first, just got into my swimmers and headed down with my boogy board for the best swim EVER. The sand seemed very white and the sky seemed very blue. Maybe I was just happy to be at the beach and not at work, which isn't getting any less crazy.

I also made two dresses on the weekend, one of which I am wearing today. It's a bit of a sack (like all my dresses) but super comfortable, and looks smart enough with a jacket and heels. I have a dress code (dark suit, white shirt) when I'm rostered to actually be in the chamber so non-duty days it's nice to wear something with a bit of colour! The black/white thing makes me look like a waitress.

Mohair number two

This is much better! Despite the serious expression, I really like it. That is just the way I look most of the time. Plain cream wool on the warp, and plain mohair on the weft, set at 7.5 dpi so much looser. And I tried not to beat it too hard as I wove.



Still not as fluffy as the balls, which is a shame because they are SO FLUFFY, but light and soft. I went as wide as I could on my loom, and it makes a nice shawl width. Well, quite narrow for a shawl, but close enough. I was tossing up buying an even wider loom and I'm glad I didn't. It would have been quite bulky, and I can't see myself weaving anything wider than this. It's probably an OK width for a baby blanket.

Speaking of fluffy, the dog got groomed on the weekend. How good would a dogtail shawl be? Do you think I can spin the balls of dog hair that tumbleweed down the hallway?

The weekend and Melbourne

I had to do a day's work in Melbourne yesterday so I went down earlier on Sunday and took the opportunity to have a slow wander around. It was a beautiful warm day (but not too hot) and Melbourne was looking very glossy and sparkly. There were community festivals and hand made markets and generally people just slowly meandering places and enjoying themselves.

I went to the NGV and saw a couple of exhibitions, including the Julian Opie one. I quite liked it, but I'm not entirely convinced. I don't know if people will still love it in 100 years, it just seemed too simple to me.

I also caught up with friends for coffee, which was lovely, and had a good day's work on Monday before coming up last night and back to work today ... I'm tired. It seems like the last few weeks have been a lot of racing around and it might be starting to catch up with  me a bit. The weekend before we had had visitors and my husband was 100% involved in the scale modellers annual exhibition (he is chief judge), and the weekend before that he was away so I feel a bit like I haven't had much time to scratch myself! Bring on Christmas.

Mind you we did go out into the countryside for a nice winery lunch on Saturday, so it's not like my spare time is being sucked away by boring things. We had lovely food in a very pretty setting. This is probably the only photo of my husband and me taken in the last six months. It is not very flattering (I am standing uphill from him, he's not a midget) but it is THE ONLY PHOTO so we are stuck with it.

Mohair number one

So Ice Yarns delivered me some mohair blend and some alpaca blend ... the white is mohair and the blue is alpaca. The white is 70% mohair and 30% wool and it is amazingly soft and fluffy. And it smells like goat!!! So strange to open something from across the world and sniff full Turkish goat. That sounds quite unpleasant, it wasn't. Just agricultural and vaguely foreign.

I put a plain wool warp on (the mohair was far too fluffy to think about using as a warp, the threads would never have separated properly) of mostly white but with a wide black border on each side. I'm not sure why - I thought plain would be too plain. It looks like old fashioned mourning note paper. It wove up very nicely but all the fluffiness has gone! Look at the wool on the stick shuttle, fluffy like a little baby goat, and then look at it once it's woven. It is very interesting, and slubby, and soft, but not at all fluffy.

This is the finished product. I'm going to have another go to try and get some fluffiness back - maybe a looser sett? This was 10 epi and it might be a bit closely woven. Even after washing in eucalyptus wool wash it still smells vaguely goaty. In a good way.

Made from Celeste

This scarf is another one with Bendigo Woollen Mills wool - this is "Celeste" and it's 85% wool, 10% alpaca and 5% silk ... and it's lovely. A bit denser than the 50/50 bamboo wool, but soft and drapey and very warm. And delightful to weave being a smooth 8 ply (a lot less of a struggle than the very furry variegated wool).



This is three red three blue on the warp, then one red one blue on the weft. It creates different patterns on each side, which is interesting. I think I prefer the one on the left that looks like little boxes. The colours in the photo below are much more true to life - the one on the chair is a bit dark.



On the weekend I visited two of Canberra's wool shops (the only two I think) and had a good rummage around. There are lots of very lovely things, and I bought a skein or two, but not nearly as much as I could have! Look at this lovely wool....

See-through walls

I had a day in Sydney yesterday in a tall building with too much glass ... it was all very light and bright and sunny but terrifying for someone scared of heights. Like me. There was a big central atrium going up 30 odd floors with glass high-speed lifts (the men in the bottom right are in a lift).

And on every floor there is an open meeting space with floor to ceiling glass windows onto the outside and low glass balustrades out into the atrium. The corridors are on the atrium and even the hand basins in the ladies back onto floor to ceiling glass windows. On the 21st floor! I had to wash my hands gingerly, from a distance. I have a very low-rise life normally.


My older son is scared of heights too but I tell him you just have to suck it up, and not let it rule you because one day a client will want to meet on the roof, or a girl you want to impress lives on the 30th floor ... and you have to be able to do it even if your palms and sweaty and your heart is racing and you feel like you're going to lose control of your bowels. I try to practice what I preach and I'm still alive to talk about it, although there were times yesterday when I felt hideously uncomfortable! Weirdly, I am not at all frightened of flying, and happily look out the window of the tiniest planes.



But back in my comfort zone I have temporarily gone back to wool dyeing. I had a heap of skeins tied up from last time and ready to go, so I made some blue and black skeins. I might keep going with it (and actually buy some proper wool dye and not use food colouring) or I might just keep weaving with all the different yarns in the world. Such choices!!! The wool I dye looks lovely but is quite scratchy once woven .... although I did do it on a 12 dpi with the borrowed rigid heddle and I'm doing this lot looser, on a 10 dpi. It might be softer? Who knows, I will report back.

Felting

I had a number of balls leftover of the variegated wool from Ice - because you can only buy them in 8 packs and I generally use about three or four 50 gram balls in a scarf. And given how fluffy and 100% wool it was I thought it would be great for an experiment in felting! I wish I'd taken a before photo, but I didn't. You'll just have to imagine it. I also put wool on the warp, but because of the breaking warp threads I used shades of blue and cream merino three ply that I had in the cupboard. It didn't felt, so I suspect it was superwash.

And this is the result. I used a variety of methods - much of the internet recommends using your washing machine but even on the "hot" setting my machine puts in quite a lot of cold water and I can't adjust it manually. So that didn't work, and I went to a bucket and hot water and agitation. But that didn't really work either (and I was getting tired arms) so I put it in a pot on the stove and boiled the shit out of it for twenty minutes.

There is something about a felted product that is very feral and hippy. The edges were all over the place even with blocking. When I took it out of the boiling I tried to shape it so the edges were even - which works really well with just ordinary wet finished weaving - but this had felted firmly into major wobbles. And the superwash warp hadn't felted so you can still see vertical stitch definition.

I do like what happened with the variegation. It is a lovely gentle blend from one colour to the next. And it is super warm (but not very bendy). I am not thrilled with it to be honest, but I had to have the experiment. And look how much colour runs when you boil the wool! This warp (the fringe) was cream and light blue, and now it is purple and pink.

Recreational shopping

After being cooped up all week, on Sunday I did something I don't do much anymore - took myself off for some recreational shopping. I had some boring chores and things to buy, but otherwise it was a few happy hours trying on clothes, peering at makeup, looking at pretty homewares things and seeing what was new in the bookshops. I stopped at a cafe for lunch by myself when I got tired, and generally looked at all the people for a while, and it was lovely. I even bought a couple of shirts ... no books or makeup though. I don't need any.

It is hard to describe how snoozy the middle of Canberra is on a late Sunday morning in spring. It was originally designed with central pedestrian areas with lots of trees and seats - they are all still there but the shops are inside a giant unplanned mall that has taken over most of the middle of town. I like the mall and spend a lot of time there but it does mean that the outside areas are almost completely unused. At night there is a bit more life with cafes and bars (and drug dealers and homeless people to be honest) but in the morning it is very tranquil.

I did a small test swatch of the peculiar microfibre I got from Ice Yarns. It is quite nice to weave with (this is on a 15 dpi) and looks very pretty, but it is very rigid. Not entirely plasticky, but definitely not a soft drape. I think a whole piece just from the microfibre would be very unyielding, but perhaps mixed with another yarn? Or for something like placements that didn't need softness? I will ponder it more.

Out for the count

I've been down and out with a nasty virus for the past couple of days - just some kind of cold but a real knockover one. I made it to work today (coughing and sneezing) but spent Tuesday and Wednesday feebly on the sofa. I started to get bored Wednesday afternoon and may have ordered some more yarn online ... time to get back to work when that happens.

The weekend was fun though; I went and saw Kitty Flanagan (Australian comedian, very funny if slightly sweary) with some friends and we went for dinner first ... had drinks with other friends and heard all about their three weeks in Europe ... went to the movies with another friend as a last minute fill-in to see Ladies in Black which is an Australian movie that was very sweet. Both of the boys went to separate Halloween parties on Saturday night which they both enjoyed - they didn't really dress up much. I believe number one went as "existentialism" which went over as well as you might expect. Number two said the highlight of his party was a guy dressed up as a strawberry with a needle inside (cardboard tube covered in tinfoil). You kind of had to be here for that one, but if you were, HILARIOUS.



This was the big moon when I came out of the movies. Very spectacular (terrible photo).