Weaving with the Ice Yarns

I've been very happily using the Ice Yarns in every possible combination, and with random things from the cupboard. Scarves are great - they take enough time to get a feeling of accomplishment, but not so long I get bored. And then on to the next one! I will no doubt get sick of it soon but not yet. 

Here's the random few balls on the sewing table. I wind the bobbins up in my sewing room and it is getting covered in fluff and bits of wool. The orange and the green at the bottom of the picture are the same wool in different colours, so I put them together in a straight houndstooth.

The grey is a similar weight but has bobbly bits hanging off it, which gives an interesting texture. I put that with the orange in a log cabin style (yay! quilting term!) that is more subtle than I thought it would be but still quite nice.

The green on the top is a lovely fluffy wool / cotton blend and the colour seems to go with everything. I used the 'zucchini' colours that I dyed ages ago on the warp, with the fluffy green on the weft, and it turned out really pretty. It is super soft as well.

I wanted to keep using the fluffy green so I put a very random collection on the warp of bits of left over green. It is different but I still like it, and of course nice and fluffy. What is the point of a scarf that isn't snuggly?

We had a great weekend once I'd recovered from the week and had some naps. Lovely, lovely naps. I did the 16 km walk again (anti-clockwise this time! quite a different experience) which was easier than the first time. We went out for a fancy lunch with friends and I even managed an hour or so of gardening before it got too hot. 

Such a busy week

 Parliament is back sitting and this week has been busy ... interesting, but busy. And raining still! The garden looks unbelievably lush, this photo is from a week ago and it is already different. The roses are out for starters. 

I did end up getting the new job here I applied for, so I finished up with my current team this week and today I'm wheeling the trolley full of unecessary stationery to my new digs. My new, less salubrious digs ... but I am still next to a window so can't complain. Natural light is a very unusual thing in today's battery hen public sector cubicle farm. 

We are going to do a weekend away with a bushwalk later in the year so I went for a 16 km trial walk to see if I could do it. I could ... just. My little legs were very weary at the end. Here is a completely lucky photo of a sulphur-crested cockatoo on the wing - I startled him as I walked up.

Another cooking fail

We had a work afternoon tea on Tuesday to watch the Melbourne Cup. Normally there's an organisational party but not this year, so our little team sat in the tea room with some snacks and watched the race. Very strange not to have the crowds at the course, and most of us hadn't put any money on it. I thought I would make a lemon drizzle cake ... and it failed.

I forgot to put baking powder in - it needed self-raising flour and I used ordinary flour. Which of course I didn't discover until it had been baking for 45 minutes and I went to check it and found this lumpy rubbery disaster. And I'd made the drizzle too. It was completely unsalvageable so I binned it and made a chocolate brownie instead. The worst thing was I was just about to put the brownie in the oven and thought 'the texture of this is a bit strange' and I'd forgotten to put the eggs in. I think I was a bit tired. 

It has been a tiring week - lots of work on and the US election of course, and even though you know it's not your country it's hard not to watch. The thought of another Trump presidency was deeply depressing - even though it looks like that's not going to happen there will probably be a fair amount of bullshit to go through before he goes away. What a nasty piece of work that man is. 

Wet weekend

 We have had the wettest October in Canberra since 1976, which is very welcome but not much fun. The weekend was predicted to be 100% rain but I went to the beach anyway. Saturday just bucketed and bucketed but Sunday was only showers. 

I didn't swim at all - and the easterlies had brought in the bluebottles. They had to move the nippers on Sunday morning round to the sheltered beach, luckily the winds had made enough waves to do a bit of rescue practice. The parents were huddled in jackets and coats but eight year olds are pretty unstoppable. 

I made a shirt and didn't do much else productive, except buy a vacuum cleaner and a new iron. I had lifted my existing iron from my dad's cupboard (thanks Dad) where it was still in its box and un-used  but it had given up the temperature control ghost and started randomly melting things. The only problem is I deliberately bought an auto-off iron in case I forget about it - turns itself off after 30 minutes. I have one at home and it's great, but the new one doesn't just turn itself off it beeps angrily until you turn it off or use it. What is the point of that? I just want an iron that will quietly go to sleep, not something else in the house that complains at me. In all other ways it is an excellent iron though, so I'll keep it, but nowhere on the box does it say that it has the most annoying beep of any appliance I've heard, and we have a very irritable fridge. 

Swooshy skirt

 Here is the skirt I made last month - it is plaid and swooshy and I wore it to work.

I used McCalls 7022 again because I know it fits, but view F this time so nice and swirly. The material is a fairly boring brushed cotton but I like the plaid and I like that it is a medium weight. In my head it is Alexander McQueen circa 1995 but in reality it is probably more overgrown schoolgirl. It was slightly too short so I hand-sewed a bias binding hem, which looks better anyway, although it seemed to take forever.

Swooshy, swooshy.

Weekend walk

 It rained both days on the weekend, so I mostly sat inside and wove. Weaved. Woved? Sunday I needed to stretch the legs so did a 10km walk and only got slightly sprinkled on. I decided to stick to pavements and parks rather than bush tracks to avoid the mud ... it was lovely but the scenery is looking most un-Canberra like. All the green!

This is very unusual. It is good for bushfires but bad for grass fires - the lush greenery will be brown and crackly dry by Christmas, and the Canberra government is not well set up for prompt grass mowing. Or any grass mowing really, we are not used to it growing beyond ankle high. The storm front came through Friday night when we were happily tucked up in an Indian restaurant with friends. Dining out twice in one week!!!! Hedonism.

My walk took me past another Floriade mini garden, with roses. Our roses at home are starting to bloom, which is a bit later than usual, but that might be because I pruned them so late. At least they are looking very happy with the rain, and not sad dead sticks. Speaking of, the pittosporums are covered with little bumps that look promisingly like new growth ... not actual new growth of course, but potentially they could come back. Or they could be covered with a bizarre fungus, who would know.

Yarn!!!

My Ice Yarns order arrived in record time! I have no idea why, I thought shipping was taking ages at the moment, but I am not going to complain - according to the label it came via Istanbul, Liege, Dubai and Sydney. From my Postal Industry Ombudsman years I retain some interest in international postal hubs, mostly because they are often places you wouldn't expect. And, given 2020, they all sound ridiculously exotic at the moment ... I would be delighted to have a week in a three star hotel by a commercial airport in Belgium right now. DELIGHTED.

And this is the haul. Mostly I went with no-fluff lace weight or fingering weight wool that would sit nicely on a warp. However that blue is a self-striping alpaca blend, and the pink is the beautiful silk-merino blend that I've had before. The light blue is also alpaca and very soft and fluffy so only wefts I think. The cream is an interesting wool-cotton blend that I had hoped to be able to dye for warps but on closer inspection I don't think it's strong enough, so will use for wefts.

That cost me just under $200 Australian including shipping, which is a bit of a bargain. Certainly enough to keep me quietly weaving for many months - I am still mesmerised by putting together different yarns and making them into a length. And yes, I know have dozens and dozens of scarves. I am justifying this by deciding (in my head) that when we retire and move down the coast I will have a stall at the Moruya markets where I will sell them. This may never happen of course, but it has nicely moved my frame of reference from "pointlessly making more scarves I will never wear" to "industriously building up stock for my future cottage industry". Much better.