Needle's Edge

Fun.

2009-06-26T16:10:00.010+10:00

[fuhn]

-noun

1. something that provides mirth or amusement: a picnic would be fun.

2. enjoyment or playfulness: She's full of fun.

To do something fun.
At least one thing.
Was my mission today.
I went to my osteopath for what I've come to regard as my fortnightly panel-beating session.

After this I came to the conclusion that I have my own personal differential subsidence.

I had my coffee in a cafe playing the flight of the conchords soundtrack which cheered me up no end.

I bought the latest Idn, where someone infinitely more credible and cool than me is out there thinking of ways to inspire design students to be ‘hands-on’ with old fashioned drawing, which excites me no end.

I watched something very very amazing and wondrous

And finally I had a little ritualistic ceremony in which I burnt a drawing done by someone who made my life hell for 3 years and beyond….nothing like a bbq!

So if you'll excuse me, I need to go lie down on top of a hot water bottle.

Saurday wrap-up : the wildlife report

2008-12-13T10:05:00.014+11:00

I started the weekend with my own personal wildlife.Only people with working dogs are silly or desperate enough to be out in the dog park at 6.30am on a rainy Saturday morning.

We exchange bleary, resigned monosyllabic exchanges or simple nod

s of recognition with one another.

The secret special club.

We are the ones with the high maintenance dogs that after about 36 hours indoors with no exercise (it's been raining non stop here) greet you at dawn like a chorus of deranged Muppets on crystal-meth.

And out you must go.

Now, by popular demand

(and by popular what I actually mean is one person . . . well she is popular, so I guess that counts)

needle's edge brings you . . .

Marsupials!

Asleep!

specifically some Tasmanian devils

who I've gotta say are pretty damn cute when they're still babies like this little guy and their heads aren't covered in gouges and open wounds from where they've savaged each other over a bit of food.

These guys are vicious.

Maybe not as vicious as, say, a funnel web spider which will punch it's way out of a plastic container if it's in a bad mood*

But put it this way, I would not be picking a devil up and giving it a cuddle, unless I really wanted to lose my arm

They seems so genetically hard-wired into them to fight one another over food even in this conservation park** where food is plentiful.

Yet once it's nap time there they are happily snuggling in a big post-prandial pile.

And . . .

some Eastern Spotted Quolls.

Asleep

(note the feet : squee )

And . . .

a Tawny Frogmouth.

Half-asleep

All images you can clicken to embiggen of course, or see more here.

*Apparently this is true! Andrew says so, so that's good enough for me.

** more on the plight of the Tassie devils later. What I found out about the disease that's threatening the population of them would make any caring person's blood boil, but considering my current state of sleep deprivation-addled mind best not written about right now lest this post dissolve into a polemical/political rant.

oh, and Blogger? fyi you are currently giving me the right royals. Note to self must change blog service pronto.

Departing from the usual

2008-12-04T18:53:00.007+11:00

Thank gourd.

No really, thank gourd

that finally .... yes, finally! some of my friends have got themselves organised to have a baby girl.

Because now I can finally cast aside all late twentieth century heteronormative gender fascism dogma aside ... and unleash a sudden and profound urge to make something very small, very pretty, and very pink.

Y'know... old fashioned adorable?

Burn me at the stake if you will, but this fairly irresistable urge was brought on by by my holiday knitting project I'm sure of it; repeat after repeat of grey lace (yes I know I love grey, I've banged on about it plenny. But seriously that amount of yarn-overs would send anyone into a torpor after a while).

So now i'm finding inordinate amounts of pleasure in knitting up a small pink inverted triangle masquerading as a cardigan [rav link]

The yarn feels like a little bit of spring as I work it, like the smell of freesias.

So it's a pity in a way that it's now officially Summer.

I'm doing many mods as I go, but I'll write those up when it's finished for anyone interested in the project. So far? Fun, easy, recommended; however we'll see what the finished product turns out like ( I may have to eat my words! no matter I'm used to this and I always make sure those words are tasty and low GI).

And now some more choice shots from Tassie (yes there's no getting away from them I'm afraid)

I fell in love with this place.

Words, or ... my words at least, are inadequate at conveying the spirit of this little beach in Great Oyster Cove.

Somewhere in that midden of shells and twigs is a brand new pair of designer sunglasses which I managed to misplace somewhere between shot #2 and #3.

By now they have been washed out to sea and are on their way to Antarctica.

So . . . if there are any Antarctic seals out there reading this right now and your neighbour has been sporting a new look in accessories lately, could you please pop me an email, I'd really appreciate it. We can work something out, no questions asked!

oh...and the yarn? it's Merino Slim Sock from the Knittery, in Daisy.

I was there, but now i'm back here.

2008-11-28T15:04:00.009+11:00

Back in the city.

Work.

Work means ironing.

Proper shirts again.

No more bushwalking clothes.

And definitely no more going out to dinner wearing your bushwalking clothes with a scarf oh-so-insouciantly tossed around your neck to feel 'dressed up'.

Like any one notices.

Or if they did they don't care.

It's that sort of place.

Very'laid-back'.

& oh yes I do wish I was back there.

That's the problem with holidays.

Especially really really fabulous holidays like this one.

The getting back.

Is the hard bit.

Incidentally, since this is meant to be a *ahem* 'special interest' blog, I did get loads of knitting done while away, on this.

I mean loads.

Repeat after repeat with no distractions apart from the occasional need to put another couple of logs on the fire (yes it is late spring ) or maybe check on the progress of the stewed pears. (How else does one travel with a few kilos of Beurre Bosc you got from a roadside for a couple of bucks?).

And I made some inroads into documenting my backlog of finished objects.

I must admit I may have been just ever so slightly inebriated with the "Holiday Spirit" (wine with lunch, now that's when you really know you're really on holidays) when I took these. Hence the slight, err crappiness.

It's going to take me a while to finish uploading all my pics to flickr (I took 719, and that doesn't even include the ones that were brutally culled when I realised how many gigs 15 seconds of movie ate up . . . no computer to upload to! Talk about roughing it! ) but for those rugged and foolhardy individuals that can take as many "holiday slide nights" as I can dish out:

here's some more.

countdown to . . .

2008-11-03T17:14:00.004+11:00

Flights? Check

Dogs vaccinated and booked into [jail] Summer camp? Check.

[Prison Guard] Pet Taxi service booked to take them to [jail] Super Fun Summer Camp? Check

Human accommodation booked? Almost

Assignments marked and graded? Almost (Five down, two to go)

Giant Rubik’s Cube that is the draft timetable for 1st + 2nd Year ‘09 submitted? Check

Ideal travel knitting project? Check! ravelry

Double the recommended daily dose of Vit C so I absolutely Do. Not. Get. The Virus. That is Going Around. Check

Draft Subject Outline for Brand. New. Subject for ’09 submitted? Almost

Car registered, finally? Check!!!

Deep denial about coming down with The Virus. That is Going Around. Check

Rental car booked? Check

The perfect Holiday Novel? No! (v. nervous about this one)

Dogs very aware that something is about to happen that they might not necessarily like? Check

Approximately one gazillion loads of laundry done despite tumble dryer suddenly on the fritz? Check

New sunglasses to replace ones I managed to snap in half last week bought? Err…not check.

New rechargeable batteries for my mouse? Not check either! (slack!)

Bags packed? Not yet, that’s probably on Friday night after I’ve graded my last pile of assignments

Lovin’ iCal on my new computer? Are you kidding? Without it I’d be reduced to writing on pieces of paper! So…Check!

Room left on the credit card? Check

New hiking boots bought? Check

Big tub of Vaseline to ward off blisters from said hiking boots (and hopefully leeches too)? Check, Check..thankyou pro hiking-type person who recommended this

Almost everything ticked off the
“Things that must be done before we go to Tasmania” list on the kitchen wall? Check Checkey Check.

Waiting for the moment when I’m sitting here and all I can hear is birdsong, no mobile phone coverage, no internet reception, no people and definitely NO more excel spreadsheets? Check check checkidey check check CHECK ! ! !

PS For my American readers: do I have my fingers crossed for you guys in the election tomorrow? Check.

2008-10-12T23:43:00.003+11:00

34 years ago I bought my very first record (a vinyl LP!) with my pocket money.
It was called something like Whopper Hits 74 and I think -although this detail may just be wishful thinking- it featured a giant rainbow-trailing star on the cover
Anyway it had this song on it by the Hues Corporation

And I'll be damned if it's not still funky! Plus Ann Kelley really knows how to work a jumpsuit.

One year ago today we were up at the farm in Uamby

and first met a sheepdog who was to be called Harper and who we would end up adopting into our family.
What a great birthday present that was
Happy birthday to other October girls, you know who you are.

Oh, and I made this little owl

for another birthday girl.

It looks much better in the photo than it does in reality, because you can't see the messy bottom, or his -like all the toys I make it seems- wonky asymmetry (my fault not the pattern's) but it's the thought that counts right. . . right?

You can find the tutowrial for this quick project at moonstitches.

Looking backward + forward

2008-09-11T17:34:00.007+10:00

Looking backward to Melbourne
On my last afternoon there I saw this in the window of a bookstore and fell in love with it.

Into the fold : by Tricia Dijkers Kidd
for vessel wednesday

Looking forward to a load off my mind.
This afternoon I went again to a specialist who is happy to interpret from the evidence so far that the mass on my thyroid that first showed up 5 months ago and which I've had biopsied multiple times is probably more than likely not cancer.
So that's good.

While we looked at the scans on the lightbox she kept going on and on about what an unusual shape it was, how she'd never seen one that shape before and what exceptionally clear images they were. After a while of this I felt like I was in some sort of highly interactive conceptual art gallery rather than a Doctor's rooms.

And it is indeed very much like a sculpture by Jean Arp

Fruit de Pagode 1949

Tate Collection

What can I say but that at least it's gratifying that my mass can organise itself into a complex shape evoking early seminal Modernist sculpture.

In fact I'd be rather disappointed if it hadn't.
You know, if it had just formed into a regular old lozenge or boring old sphere or some such.

So that's also good.

Incidentally there's a charming little story about a small herd of backyard cashmere goats on the knittingdaily blog here.

The Absentee Blogger

2008-08-31T18:46:00.003+10:00

Another title could’ve easily been AWOFAD*

Did I even go to Melbourne?

Did I even get back feeling stimulated, buoyant, refreshed?

Evidence tells me that is so but I already don’t remember.

I know that I spent an interesting afternoon here.

This is my 'Monument' cover shot ;)

And I’m in love with the work of David Trubridge.

His background is in naval structural engineering ( I think?), very evident in the complex curves of his work. It also has an exquisite artisanal quality about it too: hand-sanded ply, disarmingly simple pop-rivet joints. His pieces sit so comfortably here with the display units (concrete block topped with a grey industrial felt crust), the finely selected mid-century furniture and narrative expression of the space (peeled back paint layers to 19^th century, mechanical hoists left in situ), delicious late afternoon autumn light streaming in, that it’s very hard not to be seduced. I am already on the savings plan for one of his Nikau lamps.

Just as soon as I’ve paid off the credit card after going modestly mad in Martas Yarns and various other wonderful places (pictures soon I promise). To the Melbourne hostesses with the mostesses, I salute you all with an appropriately delicious glass of red.

Goat is in Geneva and I’ve just had one of those weeks where you end up so overwhelmingly frustrated by obstructions preventing you from doing a good job that you’re at the point of tears –never a good look crying in the workplace- that you have to stay in the loo or just go home. You know those weeks. Thank god for Scout, Harper and the levelling, grounding camaraderie of the dog park is all I can say. That and the fact that woolly objects have been finished. Pictures of those soon too.

*Week of fucking awful days.

Getting nice things in the mail makes you better

2008-07-24T15:39:00.005+10:00

First of all thankyou thankyou you lovely readers who left such nice comments on Wee Tweedley. I'm honestly relieved that it's not a total disaster as there was so much winging it going on.

Those of you in my neck of the woods will know that a great cloud of papists descended last week and in their wake they left the Great International Stretching of ~~Hands~~ Viruses Across the Oceans. Thanks guys.
That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
I have been so sick with flu all week- and what's left of my mind so addled- that I've barely been able to get past Row 11 in a straightforward cabled beanie I'm making without making the same mistake ~~twice thrice~~ so many times the fibre has almost ceased to exist.
And speaking of existence, I've been extant in parallel universe of Deadwood (all 3 seasons) on DVD. I have to be very careful now not to walk around calling everyone a c*^$@+^$~r . I had to see a specialist this afternoon, can you imagine how that would've been received? Hilarious.
Still, there's always nice things arriving in the mail to cheer us up.
No, not opium or gold nuggets but almost...

A skein of Koigu KPM in dark chocolate (mmmm.. num nums) and a book of cunningly folded and pleated Japanese skirt patterns awaiting post-flu deciphering

A huge apology to everyone whose blogs and flickr photos I usually comment on, I've been missing what you've all been up to! Back soon.

Wee Tweed-ley O (& a bit of baking)

2008-07-18T09:57:00.007+10:00

My friend with the -now 3 year old- son hinted to me last Christmas of sepia visions of Enid Blyton-esque boyhood: side parted hair, baggy serge shorts, brown T-bar sandals and of course the fairisle vest.
Well, seeking to not only facilitate this romantic vision, but also to make as much of it from leftovers as I could this is what I came up with

Wee Tweed-ley

The first attempt was a more 'Norwegian' chunky snowflake motif until I got about 80% finished and realised the tension of my floats (yes! I am au fait with the lingo now thankyou) was, well, tense. Do the words tight and bottleneck mean anything to you?
A world of ripping and re casting on later, we cut to a smaller, fiddlier pattern with much shorter floats. This time I am so consciously getting loosey goosey with them I'm starting to fear they are just going to be positively dangling and drooping down the back! But no, a good stretch in the blocking takes care of that.

Pattern: Adapted from Blank Canvas Childs Vest by Cari Luna
Modified to knit in the round and with a round neck. (The first ill-fated version I worked with original v-neck. Lots of dangling bits of yarn either side of a v neck? OY! All I can say is now I know why steeking was invented).

Yarn: Grignasco Tango (discontinuted? thanks Grignasco!) Leftovers of dark grey/blue from my Here and There Cables Scarf, plus a few grams of green, pale blue and cream. Love this yarn.

Motif: From Inca Hat by Zoe Mellor (on ravelry)

Verdict: Colourwork? Yes I think I've had my experience now. No, I don't need to do that again thank you kindly sir. But cute vest though even if I do say so myself.

It's very rare that I come over all Nigella Lawson -like but when I do I tend to go a bit berserk. Not only did I finish, block and photograph this little vest, I also -in between dishes and laundry- simultaneously baked up a batch of cupcakes.
Oh let's face it I was really just avoiding the final really boring bits of a freelance job I'm about to deliver.

Voila, or indeed "Hup ho" as habitual would say. I love that and I'm going to walk about saying it for the next few days just watch me.

Recipe: Adapted from Donna Hay's Carrot Cake

1 1/4 cups brown sugar

3/4 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bi-carb powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 knob grated fresh ginger (a knob = how much you like fresh ginger or not)
2 1/2 cups grated carrot
1 cup roughly chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 180 C.
Beat sugar and oil for 3 mins.
Add eggs gradually , beat well
Sift flour, baking powder, bi-carb, cinnamon and ginger over sugar mixture
Add carrot and walnuts, mix until just combined.
Pour into muffin pans lined with baking paper circles or those little pattycake things
Bake for 25-30 mins.

ICING
250g softened, unsalted, cultured butter (or you may prefer 250g cream cheese)
1 cup sifted icing sugar
Juice and zest of 1 orange
Splash of vanilla essence

Beat butter in a mixer until light and creamy, then add icing sugar, juice, zest and vanilla. Continue beating until combined.

Makes approx 1 dozen cupcakes.

Henry Fool

2008-07-08T18:09:00.004+10:00

Ok, you poor sods that googled Henry Fool hoping to find perhaps a synopsis or the cast list for Hal Hartley's -by then sadly hackneyed- film of the same title*
Surprise! you follwed the wrong link here buddy. Sorry 'bout that.
However if you film students/1990s indie existential arty movie buffs also happen to be interested in fine handcrafted neckwear, well keep reading because we may be able to interest you in this:

Pattern: Henry by Marieke Sattler
Yarn: Sublime Yarns cashmere merino silk DK ravelry link
Mods: adapted for a DK yarn. See post.

The title Henry Fool kept springing relentlessly to mind as I tried to finish this taskmaster as a birthday gift. Mainly because you would have to be ever so slightly on the foolish side to attempt it.
That or extremely patient. As patient as the fabled turtle.
This scarf is knit sideways (between this and the Woolly Wormhead hats I'm currently obsessed with this sideways is the New True Paradigm for me).
Adapting the pattern for a DK yarn, I cast on 180 stitches.
That.
Is a long row.
And while I'm very pleased with the fine herringbone patterning, the cast on and cast off? Oy, don't get me started. If you do want to make this, I'd recommend your regular cast on and the K2tbl cast-off. I spent an entire afternoon unpicking 10 centimetres of Elizabeth Zimmerman's sewn cast-off which I'd tried as an alternative to the pattern. The yarn? Well she is a delicate delicate thing and does not take kindly to that sort of maltreatment.
Silent gnashings of teeth towards the end I tell you.
Blocking: Henry was subjected to the Patent Needle's Edge Flatten-Out-You-Bastard-Thing! System TM (with which I'm generous: if you want to trial this at home take one (by now empty after unpicking 10 cms of sewn casting-off) bottle of wine. I recommend a nice Sauvignon Blanc but if pressed then any dry white will do, and one thick beach towel. Wrap thoroughly damp scarf and beach towel layers very tightly around bottle sushi roll style in a commanding 'take-charge' manner. This will really show the scarf who's boss.
I have to admit though that even after this punishing Treatment TM, Henry stills curls at the sides.
Worn doubled, however it's less of a problem I think.

And I have to say looks pretty swell teamed with this Ted Baker coat.

*Outraged Hartley fans, I am more than happy to engage in a learned discourse vis a vis the conceptual devolution of his filmic career, you know how to contact me!!

Heaven

2008-07-02T15:43:00.007+10:00

it turns out,
funnily enough,
is a sunny, warm, spacious, well-appointed suburban somewhat 70s house.

Well it is for a chronic urban dweller such as myself.
People who know me will appreciate how hysterically funny that is.
Of course it does help that the house is on the beach.

And not just any beach but 7 miles of isolated, pristine coast with just the odd local doing a bit of line fishing or a pair of retirees in comfy pants and floppy hats out walking their golden retrievers before breakfast/cocktail hour.
Does this make me sounds old?
Yes it probably does but I'm with Elly Varrenti (excerpt here) in that now I'm on the other side of the big 4-0 I realise things really do change. And it's not necessarily about decrepitude, conservatism or boredom.
Just, change.
Change and different needs.

Yes, I've been away on holidays

We rented a beach house down the coast for a few days, where if you could rouse yourself away from the soporifically comfy couch nestled between sun-trap floor-to-ceiling windows and hypnotic wood-fuelled fire, all you had to do was slip on a warm coat, some (by now utterly impregnated with sand) Birkenstock flipflops, usher the dogs out the door, pad a few metres down through the Casuarina canopy and into a tunnel of dense, cool Melaleuca scrub with its clean, resinous smell, yielding to an utterly glorious expanse of beach.

And oh how 7 mile walks twice a day on wet sand works muscles you never knew you had, I tell you if you did that every day you would have buns of steel.
That and the fact that my ever-present 'drafting back' -you know that awful knot of tension between your shoulder blades-? Miraculously melted away people! Along with the neurotic solipsistic mental chatter that fills my mind back in the city.

Hurling yourself into wintertime surf in your underwear (it's Winter; it's not like I packed my cossie and I didn't want to scandalise said fisherfolk/retirees that much) -if you survive the cardiac arrest-?
Makes you feel Really. Alive. So. Very. Very. Alive.
Last thing you'd expect at 8 oclock on a Sunday night in the middle of winter in Orient Point?
A lovely Lebanese extended family cooking you some beautiful fresh perch for dinner and making you eat their home made Baklava.

I should go on holiday more often.

Pattern: Marrow Joe by Woolly Wormhead's Going Straight, in my new 'desert island' yarn: Trekking XXL Degrade. Mods: omit slip stitch detail; 9 repeats rather than 10 (no matter how tight I try to knit, it's still loosey goosey) Instructions: Team jauntily with Icebreaker jacket, pop on head, go on long beach walk. Feel warm.

Six Words

2008-06-13T18:09:00.004+10:00

Stiff hemp,

like gauze.

Inspires care.

Nourish Me kindly invited me take up the 'six word' challenge about, oh ... 28 years ago.
Thanks Lucy.

Wormhole

2008-05-28T18:06:00.007+10:00

Or...
This Blog is Rated P for Perturbed.
Yes that's right...there's a fair amount of perturbation going on around here.

On the weekend I was waiting for a takeaway coffee and while I waited I happened to glance at the front page of a certain Sydney tabloid rag.

What caught my eye was the headline which screamed something like
"A Victory for Decency" accompanied by a shot of the burly butts of some police officers disappearing up the stairs of what I recognised to be a highly esteemed art gallery.
Well, of course my interest was piqued. (They don't call the gutter press sensationalist for nothing).
Turns out that the cops had raided an exhibition of Bill Henson's work after "complaints" it was "child pornography".

Now... censorship in the Arts is nothing new, so the fact that this had happened was only part of what saddened me, no what truly disturbed and depressed me was the language of moral outrage that was being used:

"Victory for decency"? ?

What the?

For a moment I thought I had slipped through some awful wormhole in the space/time continuum and had reconstituted in the early 50s with J.Edgar Hoover as head of the Australian Police Force heading up the good old Vice Squad.

I would like to think as a supposedly civilised society that we are beyond such reactionary rhetoric, but apparently we are instead going backwards.
It really does depress me. Bill Henson is undeniably one of the finest artists currently practicing in Australia. His profoundly intuitive grasp of highly charged emotive imagery coupled with his sheer technical brilliance is beyond comparison. I can only hope a good civil rights lawyer steps in to protect his freedom of speech.

More here for the interested.

If you've just joined needle's edge after Lucy very kindly awarded me this . . .
well, you're probably feeling horribly alienated by now!

I don't usually get up on my soapbox and rant about such issues, but in this case I felt moved to.

There's probably some rules associated with this award thingie, but I'm not sure what they are (like which way to wear the tiara and sash, and so forth...) so if anyone knows, fill me in and I'll be happy to oblige.

A big thankyou to everyone who commented on the dog bed.

As I was making it a low-wattage light bulb did indeed begin to dimly sputter above my head. I'm considering this one a prototype, so even a modest production run would be a while away yet. Until then I'll be looking at a few elements including how it stands up to wear and tear, and most importantly how it copes with repeated laundering. I'd love to hear back from anyone who would seriously think of buying one (in the future). Watch this space while the R+D continues...

- a belly button in the rock, or worm-hole, taken at a harbour rockpool a few minutes before it started raining. For vessel wednesday. Yes it's still going!

Dogeteria

2008-05-22T17:38:00.005+10:00

It's impossible to buy a decent dog bed.
All the pet stores, both of the online as well as the bricks-and-mortar variety, are resplendent in pet kitsch. Piles of day-glo paw-print polar fleece, or would madam prefer the plaid 'Country Kitschen' look?

Muttropolis do have some nice ones, but upwards of $160 Australian seems a tad excessive even if it does include shipping.

Then Martha had to go and introduce us all to the Hepper range, oh yes indeed she did and I found myself ignoring my previous financial reservations and feeling a dangerous credit card click-ey click-ey through the checkout-ey moment coming on. But a quick whip-round with the tape measure revealed that (luckily for my bank balance) they only come in chihuahua size! Nothing for real-size dogs, and certainly nothing large enough to accommodate two real-size dogs that like to sleep snuggled up and sprawled out together (yes Scout and Harper* are BFF now).

But things were getting critical, the current dog bed in a state of aromatic decay, and funky as a ripe rabbit. What to do? Get on the Janome of course.

A few metres of cotton drill, 200 metres of quilting thread, several layers of dacron and much fun free-forming on the sewing machine later**...

A 100% machine-washable dog donut.

As soon as I put it down on the floor Harper gave it her seal of approval by hopping in and promptly going to sleep in it.

She gives it 10/10 for snugglability.

*If you've just joined us, Harper and Scout are my two dogs, one we've had for four years and the other is a rescue and recent addition to the family. And yes, I am a crazy dog lady.

** The Janome -a relatively recent purchase- also gets a 10/10. Six layers of thick cotton drill plus wadding without a hiccup.

Spice

2008-05-07T13:41:00.004+10:00

It was a perfect Autumn morning earlier today.

Bright, sunny, chilly, an autumn wind but not too strong.
A morning full of promise.
Just like those mornings when you were little and most days were full of promise.
Before you became a grown up and were ground down by responsiblity and disappointment.

Speaking of ground, let's talk about spice shall we?

After taking the dogs out on a gallivant, I realised I still hadn't bought any brown tea for breakfast. The cupboard holds nothing but herbal as far as the eye can see.
So it's back up the street to the local spice market: purveyors of all things aromatic. Except I think they operate on Sri Lankan time. Despite official trading hours printed on the sign, they're still closed.

I amuse myself for a while documenting one of the shop cats who appears deceptively meek and mild soaking up the morning rays nestled into her basket of dried curry leaves surrounded by suitably armour-like glinting stainless steel cookware and bowls of Chinese dates and Star Anise.

In reality she has cahones and guards the stoop of the shop ferociously. Scout is respectfully terrified of her and would rather cross the street than risk walking past on her footpath.

But all this window-gazing is reminding me of the aromatic spices I used for dinner last night; a quick braise of eggplant and sweet potato delicately spiced with ground cumin, freshly grated ginger, honey and lemon and served on a bed of saffron-infused cous cous.

Proper saffron brought back from Spain by a friend. Oh, the aroma from just one or two strands of this! Simple and delicious.

How bland would our lives would be in the West without the discovery of all these ingredients we now take for granted. It's not hard to imagine how colonialism and empires were won and lost over the spice trade and how valuable a commodity they were.

Now all I need to complete the spicy picture is a skein or two of this.

But it's so scarce and desirable a commodity that I think it's up there with saffron and gold on an ounce-by-ounce scale and could usher in a new age of the Spice Wars.

Wishing you a spicy week.

Chunk

2008-05-05T17:49:00.006+10:00

is my current word du jour.
Or even du mois.
I've been using it a lot to describe space.
I think some of my students are starting to think of me as Miss Chunk.
As in "You know, the one who describes everything as a chunk of something".

Fittingly, and in a not entirely different sense of the word, I stumbled upon...

Eat your heart out Wenlan Chia. This is Estrelita* ! ! !

Photo by permission Ms Charm + Poise (whose birthday is incidentally coming up this Friday, I think you should all rush over there and bombard her with birthday wishes, and while you're in a giving mood, rush straight from there over to flintknits to offer some much-needed cheer).

* Brought to you with an IQ (Irony Quotient) of 99.9%

Blogging is the new Art

2008-04-23T18:58:00.005+10:00

A form of Performance Art, and one that must be documented constantly.

What other community other than the blogging one happily carries on their conversations over lunch while seamlessly photographing their coffee, their lunch, their feet, all without skipping a beat as if this is completely normal social behaviour.

Today I had the very great pleasure to show Danica around my neck o' the woods.

out of focus blue water glass for vessel wednesday

Now...yellow is not a colour I'm usually drawn to, yet after a day in Danica's charming yellow-seeking company, I too found that my eyes were honing in on all things yellow.

This prose painted on a back fence seemed particularly apt.

Cosy

2008-04-21T11:49:00.006+10:00

We interrupt our scheduled broadcast of the Festival of the Neckwarmers to bring you a short visual treatise on small white objects.

A cake of Sandalwood soap

A net of garlic

An envelope

And a stitch sampler with a ball of wool

(Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran to be precise). So far we've tried a couple of Fabric stitches and some Raspberries! But we may yet return to First Principles.

In other small white object news coverage, we found this via dogged's flickr favourites.

The autumn rains are upon us, all is pretty much perpetually soggy and chilly and so we are confined indoors with nothing to do except knit a hot water bottle cover, drink cups of tea and listen to a BBC audio-book: Kate Winslet reading Sense and Sensibility.

Which of course is sheer agony, but we struggle on, thanks for your concern.

The Sequel

2008-04-14T15:21:00.010+10:00

You may remember I knitted one of these last year for a friend to wear as she bicycled jauntily around Amsterdam. I love the pattern so much I had to make another one for myself,this time in a cotton.

Pattern: Bainbridge by mintyfresh available here.
Yarn: Filatura Di Crosa Millefili Fine. A taupey-pewter colour.It's a testament to the fineness of this yarn that the Bainbridge was its' third incarnation and all without splitting! Take that as a highly recommended from me.
Mods: This time I left off the ties and after some fudging about with an idea of cunning buttonholes a la sumidity, I heeded the words of wisdom and opted instead to make a button-brooch.
Verdict: If you haven't already made one, what is stopping you?

Thanks everyone who left such lovely encouraging comments on my Clapotis, every one a heartwarmer. I hope I've inspired some to re-engage with that classic also.

It just wouldn't be Monday without a mosaic now would it?

1. Twigs, 2. tm-0391, 3. Tendiendo pequeñeces, 4. Old wood, 5. dishcloths, 6. 08-04-2008, 7. Confection Cups, 8. beaker, 9. Untitled, 10. She was buggered...., 11. i don't dust the tops of my bookshelves (232/365), 12. Jean Seberg, 13. Espiguette-056-0522, 14. floating, 15. schneckentreppenhaus, 16. Dive in the Unknown*

Sadly, both Di's dishcloths and Kirsten's beaker are mystifyingly blank, which is sad. Make sure you clink on the links and have a look!

Adventures in sinewy drape

2008-04-07T14:43:00.005+10:00

I seem to have momentarily given up on garments and instead gone down a rabbit hole of textile creation. I'm enjoying the process of swatching; really, really long swatching.
And engaging in a repetitive, satisfying process of pouring out lengths of just pure texture, off the bottom of the needles, then over the knees and eventually onto the floor. 'Course the beauty of this is that you can always wear it as a scarf, as either serious wind chill prevention or just ornamentation, so does that count as a garment?

This week, gentle patient readers, promises to be a Festival of the FOs here at Needle's Edge.

And I've enlisted the help of a recent addition to our household: Audrey the Impossibly Tiny-Waisted 1960s Mannequin. Named after Goat's impeccable Auntie Audrey, the fountain of all wisdom pertaining to grooming, deportment, correct undergarments, impossibly tiny waists, hairdos and all things utterly Audreyish. (sadly, needle's edge would get an F for Fail in all subjects). No matter, on with the neck-coverings!
First, I am the proud nine and a half thousandth person to do a

Pattern:Clapotis by Kate Gilbert.
Yarn: Trekking XXL Degrade 76.
(which is going on my shortlist of Desert Island Yarns I love it so much).

I can't help but wonder if Kate Gilbert now wishes she'd charged for this pattern. She'd be able to afford a nice little kitchen and bathroom reno on her quatrième arrondissement apartment* by now surely just from Clap downloads alone!
At least she's charging for her other creations.

What can I say? I'm hooked and plan on making another. Let's face it nine thousand, four hundred and ninety nine Clap fans can't be wrong.

Because it's Monday and I've been such an absentee blogger of late, I thought I'd also bring you some mosaic gorgeousity

by this bunch of fab flickr people:

1. warmth, 2. sketch: teeth, 3. Final curtain, 4. today, 5. Untitled, 6. Untitled, 7. beach fence, 8. marks a lot drawing, 9. House of lost souls, 10. "I am what I am because I am my mystery", 11. out like a lion, 12. rua da boavista, 13. rooflight, 14. Crackle, 15. Untitled, 16. Wellington sky, 17. African dwellings turned dress, 18. When the night falls, 19. politics, 20. Typography: Principles of Business Data Processing, SRA, 1970, 21. Suðurey (Southisle), 22. The crane, again, 23. emptiness, 24. Untitled, 25. lines, 26. wednesday {41} white, 27. through the window, 28. leaves and wood, 29. lines, 30. there's a fox on my back - 022308, 31. Untitled, 32. take the "A" train, 33. pola.a.day: mar15a, 34. leftover the bunny is sad, 35. pallets, 36. my working desk

*no, I do not know where Ms Gilbert actually lives, please don't ask

Chapter 2

2008-03-30T15:22:00.009+11:00

In which we learn that chocolate makes you better, we fret about row count and old skool faces off against new skool.

\Delicacies from Caketown:
Hedgehog (mudcake core protected by cocoa-dusted ganache spikes:
best enjoyed via a process of deconstruction),
Brownie Tart (with a surprise nugget of pistachio nut in the filling, need I say more?
"die" and "happy" are two words that spring to mind)

It's a sign of how traumatised we were by another morning of househunting yesterday that the goat and I managed to eat almost our own body weight in dark chocolatey fat.
I can report with some confidence that it does, in fact, make you better.

Just in case you thought needle's edge was morphing into a "How much does Real Estate suck"? blog, think again

Inspired by heideland's lovely creation - drawn to its comfortingly traditional cabling; a marriage of yarn and pattern if ever I saw one, its pleasingly generous proportions and its general handsomelyessness- I painstakingly charted up a pattern and flew into my version (left). But then something stopped me in my tracks.

Firstly I was displeased with my proportions -I really needed to fatten up my side travelling cables- but I also knew that the fiddlyness, the non-rhythmic nature of the stitches worked simply would not sustain my interest over the necessary kilometres of yarn.

So I switched tack and remembered Norah Gaughan's take on cables that I first spied here, and flew into that.

Tip: do not attempt even this cunningly simple design which requires concentration on only every 7th row when you are so very tired that you don't trust your row counter, or ability to reliably operate said row counter, resulting in a tweedy dog's breakfast pictured above right (trust me this is not Ms Gaughan's vision) on too-small needles.

\It's interesting how much more yarn the H+TC (right)
gobbles up to produce the same width and length
of scarfage.

There is a happy postscript: cabled scarf #2 is underway with rigorously correct row counting and larger needles, Goat is playing Satie's Trois Gnosiennes on the piano and I am a happy camper.

Speaking of pianos, this is one of my favourite photos at the moment.

Newness + Absences

2008-03-11T12:30:00.004+11:00

Even though I proudly display the blogging without obligation button on these pages, I nevertheless feel beholden somehow to explain my absence from said pages of late. Let's face it, my blogging has been far from avid. It's not for lack of material. I have finished no less than three projects since I last posted (yes, three!), have had all my hair cut off (lots of fodder there) but for some reason I just cannot get it together to document and wax lyrical.

Even this post started out as a reallllly long series of tags accompanying a photo on flickr, until I realised if I was writing that much it pretty much qualified as a blog post, and so here it is:

New boots.
I bought new boots.
A simple sentence.
Oh so simple.

And yet those of you who are similarly paddle-footed and view the very notion of shoe shopping with a level of apprehension akin only to trips to the dentist, will know the truth that lurks within that sentence. Never. That. Simple.

So on Sunday I went shopping, determined to buy a pair of boots that fitted really well. On the first browse, I thought I'd accidentally stumbled into a drag queen outfitters.
Why is everything so sparkly?
By the end of the second store and several $1,500+ price tags later, I was already hitting a mild desperation level , and I'd only been looking for less than an hour.
Third store: The first pair of boots I laid my eyes on were almost perfect and I clutched the sample to my chest so that no one else could get their greedy, unworthy little hands on it while I perused the rest of the floor. A little something inside me died as I slid inevitably towards the "Kumfy World" end of the store. There's no two ways about it, those shoes just say "Me and Style? We agreed to part ways a long time ago".

But there is a happy end to this story, as the photo can attest. Incidentally, what does a webversion2.0 gal do when she gets a pair of boots out of the box? Wear them outside? No! Take a photo of them and put it on the internet of course! What a strange universe I inhabit now. Friends who know me well would argue I've always inhabited rather a strange universe. I guess this is just a new and peculiar brand of strangeness.

But back to the one (by now quite warm) boot I was clutching. Yes there was a pair in my size (miracle) and as I slid it on (slid?! when was the last time a boot just actually slid on without a fight? I tell you this is just like butter as they say in Joisey) the saleswoman told me they were made in Austria.

"Is that a good sign"? I asked.

"Best boots come from Austria love" she replied as if I was silly to not know that, and I swear she winked at me, knowing once a customer had been bitten by the Austrian Boot Bug, there was no looking back.

And she'd be right. Best boots I have ever bought. Ever. They're by Kennel und Schmenger, and I'm wondering if I plug them enough whether they will start sending me free boots in an endorsement deal. I can see the letter now:

Marketing Department
Kennel und Schmenger
Austria.

~~Dear Sirs~~ Liebe Herren...

No, perhaps I shouldn't. I can see a mangled David Sedaris-esque 'deutisch' coming out of that.

Speaking of which have you seen this pizza delivery service? Normally we would order a pizza once a months or so, but if I knew that Sedaris was going to deliver it, I would be tempted to order one almost every night just to get the monologue.

The laziest

2008-02-29T14:41:00.002+11:00

blog post ever.

But this mosaic of flickr favourites is to remind me that there are people who know what they're doing.
Not only that, but they do it beautifully.
And silently. Yes, I was teaching today. Now I finally understand why when I was little and my mother would come home from Prac Teaching and the first words out of her mouth would be

"Make mummy a gin and tonic,would you"?

before repairing to a horizontal position with 'the vapours'.

Credits here.

Have a good weekend everyone.

On being a grown up

2008-02-19T10:00:00.003+11:00

Sometimes it just sucks being one.
Take right now for instance.
What I should be doing is calling the solicitor and the broker and asking some very important questions that arose out of a conversation Goat and I were having last night.
Also semester starts in just over a week and there are some areas of my knowledge I need to take a refresher in before attempting to impart it to the Youth of Australia.
Instead, I find myself here uploading some photos of the dogs.
Yep.
I'm the girl making dandelion chains in the middle of the battlefield while the armoured soldiers clash around me.
La la land?
Me?
Never.

Stick chewing is a serious business. Scout likes to get them right back to the molars for maximum leverage.
Apologies for supremely ugly fence in the background -it really breaks the aesthetic rhythm of the blog- curse you Marrickville Council for not being considerate enough to provide more attractive backdrops for dogwalking photo opportunities! If you could put some Art Direction into it guys, I'd be most apppreciative.

But maybe I shouldn't be so tough on myself. After all, I manage to be a responsible dog parent; I can measure incrementally how much Harper has improved in the three and a half months she's been with us, from a damaged and dull-coated pup into a happier, calmer, shiny-coated girl that doesn't wee when she's in trouble and actually plays with toys.

And I manage to keep my human family well fed (perhaps too well fed in my case). Even more so since I discovered the treasure trove that is Lucy's blog : nourish me. The name says it all really.
If like me you're feeling jaded by overwhelming flavours and overly fussy recipes *cough* jamie, bill *cough*, and so over-stretched and fragile by dinnertime, that you really need to quickly whip up some nutritious, delicious comfort food with barely more than the canned legumes in the pantry, then you are going to love Lucy's take on food. (No, you actually don't have to spend a day and a half traipsing about searching for organic thyme-infused puy lentils for this one!). So far I've made her Thai Chickpeas (makes great leftovers!) and her Banana Leaf Snapper Parcels on the barbie, courtesy of our lovely neighbour's banana tree that hangs over the fence. You can almost pretend you're on a (gourmet) survival course on a desert island with this one.

And while I'm on the shout-out trail, if you're also like me in wondering about the gendered nature of craft/design blogging, then nina's post may also tickle a different kind of taste bud and perhaps echo your thoughts on the topic as well.

The Purple Story

2008-02-14T14:06:00.005+11:00

Clockwise: Clap,
juniper berries in a dish,
black grapes (in a dish),
plums and pods...yes you guessed it - in a dish!

Martha, you may need to avert your gaze for a while; I know how you feel about purple.
I'll let you know when it's safe to look again.
Although the title just may have tipped you off.

Regular readers may also be keenly attuned to the sudden and uncharacteristic quickening of my posting.
You should know that I'm deeply enmeshed in the horror show that is tax returns and Imminent Mortgage Freakout (IMF), and as we all know, in these situations it's best to just pretend it's not happening.

Yes, sometimes blogging = procrastination.

And for someone who vowed not to bore the pants off you with clap updates, I'm certainly going on and on (and on) about it, aren't I?

When I went fruit shopping yesterday I didn't consciously select fruit that echoed the colours in the yarn I'm using -basically I just went for everything that was $1.99 a kilo, and these days my very good friends, that means tomatoes, plums and grapes, grapes, grapes!- but this morning the colour echoes were hard to deny.
Outside the fruit market, there's a fascinating leguminous tree that is weighed down by these fantastic seed pods, so I had to pick some of those too.
They start out half brilliant green and half bruise-brown, but after a week the green part turns into a deep burnished copper. Quite beautiful.

The Great Valentines Day Bleach Stain
on the knee of my trakky pants.

Happy Valentines Day
With an irony quotient of 98.78%.

Just because

2008-02-11T18:38:00.000+11:00

it's Monday.
And just because I can.

Credits here.

Incidentally, try staring at "Just because" for a while, and see if it doesn't start to look weird and lose all meaning.

Read a book, do something different ! !

2008-02-10T15:57:00.001+11:00

is what a vehemently, bitterly angry and thoroughly pee-ed off young lady just yelled as she walked past our house just now. Not to me (I think anyway).

Whoever you are, thank you for the title -and indeed it's not bad advice in general- although by the sounds of it I hope I never get on your bad side or run into you on the street late at night.

Speaking of which I just cannot wait to move out this suburb (I'm getting too old for this particular brand of urban edginess) and finally the Great Australian Dream aka home ownership looks imminent

It's simultaneously very exciting and profoundly stressful.

And like bugheart, what do I do when I'm stressed out?

Knit, of course.

It really calms me down.

You know you're really just a knitter when you're traipsing through a house for sale that's been professionally styled right down to the tshatshkes and baskets artfully tossed in the corners to give it that homey feel, and all you hone in on is one particular basket in one room. The one that is just the right dimensions and proportions, sturdy yet yielding, leather with a nice buckle on top. Just right in fact for a chair-side knitting basket. And you're tempted to tell the agent "I'm really not interested in buying the house, but how much is that basket"?

By the way, I am knitting a clap-oh-tee, and I know I'm only the 6000th person in the world to do so. I won't bore you with double entendres about 'the clap'. But one thing's for sure it's absolutely curing my knitting ennui that had set in after months of knitting with cotton, which was starting to feel like a chore rather than a pleasure. Time for some soft and sproingy, some gently unfolding colour and some slightly chunkier needles.

Pure loveliness.

Kung Hei Fat Choy

2008-02-07T19:41:00.000+11:00

I really wanted to make a rat toy for Chinese New Year.

(reject : too much like ratatouille)

I knew there was no way I was going to get it done in time, but I've been doodling anyway.

(maybe he should be wearing buttoned pants?)

Then I started thinking about all the other signs in the Chinese Zodiac as well.

monkey : definitely

Twelve toys from scratch is a big ask isn't it?

I will have a go at some.

ram : super shaggy yarn

But in the meantime I'm happy just doodling frivolously in my margins.

Monday

2008-02-04T15:03:00.000+11:00

Thank the gourds for Mosaic Monday, otherwise I would still be unable to post.
Y'see.. Goat is away on yet another conference and I am rendered camera-less. I simply can not summon the chutzpah to post without an image, it's just not in me and so good ol' flickr has come to the rescue.

This one started out with a definite theme: curvy, swirly, soft, pretty, then it started branching out, quite literally, then closed with some interconnectedness (is that even a word)? -That'll send some of my readers *cough* martha *cough* to dictionary.com-

I honestly don't know how I ever survived without flickr, in a similar vein to how I'm amazed how I survived without a photocopier and gaffer* tape!

Which brings me to the point (trust me, I do have one) of this:

from suse at pea soup.

Thank you suse! I can now step up and join the assembled throng on the (slightly chipped now from all the shoes tripping on it as they ascend) podium of bloggy award-iness (another one for the dictionary!)

I'm quite chuffed that suse slaved for hours, people! to compile her fabulous list and I'm on it. Even more chuffed that someone who makes me laugh feels likewise.

And as I don the glittering tiara, I have to nominate 10 others for this award also.

Now, this is where I may be ignominiously shoved off the podium for being disrespectful of the rules. Shocking iconoclast that I am, I'm nominating four people (and only two of those blog) whose web presence truly makes my day every day, because ten -ten-! is just too hard (you should see my bloglines, seriously you all make my day, otherwise I wouldn't subscribe! ) so I'm choosing to go with some wonderful folk you may not be aware of.

First up are three people whose tireless whimsy and wit make me giggle, often to the point of snortling my morning beverage out through my nose (note to self: get coffee out of the way first). Granted, this is not an attractive image for you, but conveys why I love them so much.

Stephen at Coelacanth Diaries.
One seriously talented illustrator, his insights into the freelancer's working experience gets my vote every time.

Andrew at firstdogonthemoon.
Ok, so he doesn't blog, but man, can the guy cartoon! The subtlety of expression that he can convey in just the nuances of a dot in the eyeball are genius. Plus he tends towards the surreal, which also gets my vote.

Sharon aka Ms Charm and Poise.
Imagine a mid-century buffet table at the Algonquin Hotel round table, and you've pretty much got her stock in trade. The wit! The wisdom! The canned-product hors d'œuvres !

Next is
Danica at slowprogress.
Danica's blog has such a quiet authenticity and charm to it you can't help but feel invited in. And she takes such exquisite photos that I just want to move into her house. Thoughtful and keenly observant, her little guys are pretty cute too.

Lastly but not leastly, I nominate every single one of my flickr contacts,whose daily visual offerings truly make my day, especially when they line up in a spooky way.So much so I had to start a group.(thanks for the gee up on that one Alison)

How's that for a bookend?

*duct tape

(lengthen) or shorten here

2008-01-29T13:03:00.000+11:00

Black Mimosa is shaping up to be a satisfying finished garment, soon.

I'm almost at the end of a marathon of finishing.
Or is that more of a long jump?
Well it's certainly not a discus throw, I know that much.
But it's a pleasant phase of marathon finishing; I've cleared the slate clean of not only work, but work detritus and so now I have a nice clear desk to really spread out without colliding with bits of work-related crap barging into my mental space as well as physical space.
And I'm learning some new skills along the way and it's it's not going disastrously wrong.
Unlike the gigantor hat I knitted up over the long weekend, but that's another story.

I'm also itching to get started on a few sewn garments and ploughing through my stash of black cotton jersey, voile and denim. Some simple silhouette shapes with a soupçon of detailing.

Black Mimosa is actually black with a pale umber trim and not navy with a mid blue one like it appears in the photos...tungsten lighting does make everything appear very cool.

New! With extra added fibre!

2008-01-20T12:33:00.000+11:00

First of all thank you to all you readers who shared in my Careless Whisper pain.

Those of you who expressed concern for my welfare can now rest assured that it has abated, and those of you who swore to hunt me down if and poke sharp things in my eyes if after reading my post you were similarly infected with the GM* virus, know that my number is unlisted and I intend to move to Guatemala just as soon as I've pressed Publish.

Now..on to the next thrilling housework installment. No, no music this time, just dust bunnies.

Lots of dust bunnies.

Seriously, the dust bunny situation around here is getting out of control.

I'm thinking that combined with the amount of yarn ends and model making materials lying around the crevices, this spanking-new injection of bumper material courtesy of Harper's constantly-shedding undercoat, I could start my own Universe via the matter accretion theory (brought to my attention by Bill Bryson in his A Short History of Nearly Everything) which is pretty much the opposite of the Big Bang Theory.
If I just stop cleaning them up, pretty soon (and by pretty soon I mean in a few billion years) I might just have my own system of planets right here in my very own house!

Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk along the river in the rain and afterwards, Harper chose to wipe herself dry on the walls and cupboards so now we have a shaggy red dado line as a delightful addition to our decor.

Oh Harper, it's a good thing you're so cute.

Country girl's first visit to the beach

I'm managing to squeeze in some knitting, in between fur collection of course.

Not Quite Straight Scarf by Nicole Hindes. A very simple and clever pattern and it seemed an immediate match for my Filatura di Crosa Millefili Fine cotton.

clicken to em-biggen

The pewter-like sheen of the yarn certainly does lend itself to the corrugations of stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch and I'm also liking the chain mail feel of it; just the thing for my new Joan of Arc look. I can team it with this

Very early suit of women's armour.
Detail of a scan of a (very poor) photocopy from my archives.

But the truth of it is I'm just getting bored with it.
I feel I have fallen into a sort of knitting ennui.
Maybe I've just got me a hankerin' for some chunky, plump, colourful merino on my needles.
Something heavy.
With cables.
In the middle of a Sydney January.
Yep.
That'll do it.

* That's George Michael, not genetically modified.

Whispers

2008-01-11T12:48:00.000+11:00

I was awake at 6.30 am and taking advantage of the relative coolness of the air at that hour by pootling about the place getting ~~all.~~ ~~most of.~~ some of the more crucial of my housework done before the entire house was transformed into a terrarium (man, I can not get out of this house soon enough I tell you). And I found myself sweeping the floor, with -what Goat refers to as the jukebox of my mind- playing a little soundtrack. This in itself is no surprise readers, but what really alarmed me was that the track playing was George Michael's Careless Whispers*

Now, when the hell did I become a middle-aged housewife? Just when exactly did that happen? I ask you. I tried to reassure myself with "Oh, it's not that bad is it"? To which I answered myself with "Are you crazy? Of course it's that bad"!

Careless.
Whispers, people!

And as if that wasn't bad enough in itself, but how on earth do I actually know enough of Careless Whispers to have it playing in my head in the first place?! It boggles and disturbs the mind.

So I'm trying to work, as much as one can in a sweatlodge, doing a lot of gazing at my office wall, and I am knitting, really I am! Look at me knit!

I have nothing against George Michael per se, indeed he seems like a perfectly lovely, intelligent and charming man (as much as I can glean as a chat show guest anyway and leaving aside all public toilet innuendo for now), but let it be said I am no fan of his vocal histrionics and leave it at that eh?
* The video is hilarious and for the intrepid few who can actually make it through to the end without laughing hysterically or breaking out in a saxophone allergy rash, there is some choice 80s sleeve action on the Lady Di lookalike.

Blurred memories ; sharp dreams

2008-01-07T10:08:00.000+11:00

I don't know about you, but the beginning of a new year makes me a bit internal.

And so to start 2008, howzabout an internalist collage : an unconscious assemblage of imagery that signposts dream and memory.

Please check out the credit list here to see all the beautiful photos in their original contexts.

Presenting Percival

2007-12-27T14:05:00.000+11:00

I think it must be some chronic adrenaline-junkie habit of people in my business. We crave that last-minute mad dash to the finish line, the last fiddle, adjustment, addition while running, sweating after someone just as they're about to get the shot, or get pushed on stage.
Then as soon as it's all over, it can fall to bits.

Ephemerality junkies perhaps.

And so it was with less than 15 minutes to go before we had to wrap biscuits and pile in the car to Percival's recipient's house on Christmas Eve, that I finally secured the last button shank eye and said:
"I think I'll just make him a little garter stitch scarf"!

Anyway, we got there.
And Percival now has a very loving home, resplendent in a generously-proportioned tweed scarf.

Pattern: Fairy Penguin by Barbara Lennon. From Cleckheaton Wildlife in 8 ply. (no link, sorry)

Materials: Jo Sharp Classic DK wool, in Nasturtium and Lichen -I used just under one ball of each- on 3.25 knitpicks circs. Tight, but it needs to be a dense fabric especially when you're as keen on stuffing as I am. Hence Percy looks a tad more like a heavily pregnant Emperor Penguin after a second helping of Christmas Pud rather than the actual Fairy Penguin model.

The fact that he turned out rather asymmetrical I think adds to his character and rakish charm, rather than alluding to the fact that I somehow managed to stitch his front panel on wonkily.

Seeing as this will probably be the last Needle's Edge for 2007, I want to thank all you lovely readers for taking the time to visit, read, think, make useful suggestions, comment wittily and generally be full of support and encouragement. Hope you all manage to get some replenishment in and see you in 2008!

" Merry Christmas "

2007-12-21T09:39:00.000+11:00

- said the Buddhist to the Atheist.

No, this is not a lame bar-room joke, this is actual documentary.
Yesterday as I was having a chat with my lovely and trusty local printer, she wished me a Merry Christmas as I was leaving.
And out of pure reflex, I wished her one too.
It was only seconds later that I realised how slightly absurd this was and yet more seconds later that it would be churlish, nay perverse to not ignore socio-politico-religious qualms and simply join in the general festive cheeriness that's swept over just about every shopkeeper in my local area.

The thing is -and this is installment #3 in the ongoing Further Fascinating Factoids- I don't really do Christmas. (Or Chrimbo as a friend of mine calls it, does anyone else? I like it for its silly and secular appeal).

Not in a Bah-Humbug-Scrooge kinda way. No, it's more that I am atheist, not particularly close to my family, the commercialism of it (which I hate). But mostly because I have strong and buried negative associations around it; a close relative of mine having a psychotic episode usually on or around the day, which was our family tradition.
Yes, some people do turkey, some people go very wrong in the mind tank.
Diversity is what it's all about.

But I did want to do a post about Christmas, not least because I know a lot of people genuinely love it and also because it would give me a good excuse to share with you my yarn-ey Xmas tree. Working up the front body of Pengy, the tapered panel of stocking stitch just zipped into a conical shape and did somewhat resemble a tree

et voila!

* in the window of a local eco-paint shop. Regular readers will know how much I do love a good paint swatch!

gumnut

2007-12-19T21:46:00.001+11:00

vessel wednesday

Lately, each time I take the dogs to the park I bring back one of these gumnut/ poddy things and this is how many I've collected so far.

Installment #2 in the series of Riveting Randomness - favourite smells:

freshly sawn timber
freshly poured concrete setting deep inside a dark, cool building site
hot bitumen hit by rain
freesias and gardenias (there, I had to throw a girly one in).

like a shag on a rock

2007-12-12T21:20:00.001+11:00

is how the saying goes. An explanation here - if you scroll down a bit.
Or in this case like a shag on a pontoon.
The Cormorant, or shag, spreads its wings and cools its pits.
I wish this were socially acceptable behaviour for humans in this humidity.

And I did indeed feel a bit shag-like as I put my knitting down and crouched down to photograph it against the view.Another day at the office.
No, I'm not a fisherperson, I was taking a break from the darkness of the theatre opposite. I particularly like the texture of the weathered timbers along the wharves and thought it made a nice foil to the black garter stitch.

It's an area which was known as the Hungry Mile back in the '30s, an area rich with history, but which is now basically the tjushed-up playground of the rich, with all the fabulous old wharf buildings mostly refurbished into Primo Real Estate with only the merest nod to its narrative. It's inevitable I suppose, but part of me thinks it's a shame that there's not a more democratic access to the harbour side. But then those vaguely socialist sentiments are probably genetic, which brings me to:

Installment #1 in the Seven Rivetingly Random Factoids about me.

My grandfather was a card-carrying member of the communist party in the 1950s, so it's a good thing the long arm of McCarthyism didn't reach as far as Newcastle (a tiny little town in Australia), and as far as I know Arthur Miller did not write a play about witchcrafting Plumbers set amidst the blue-collar burghers of Newcastle either, which come to think of it, could be hilarious.

Hooray for readers who've made it this far! You deserve a vessel wednesday. Thinking back to my delicious pho bo on Monday night, I hit upon the jar of dried Vietnamese rice stick noodles which are so diaphanous and delicate, and here they are:

As always, hardcore enthusiasts can see more glimpses here.

Some months go like that.

2007-12-11T09:26:00.000+11:00

1. a fleet of ghostly ships, 2. Stepping Stones, 3. Teselación de base triangular, 4. foxtail, 5. DSCN0134b, 6. IceCrystals, 7. Untitled, 8. Elisabeth Bergner, 9. fallen leaves - shalechet 2, 10. Sublimely Kool, 11. Sunflower II, 12. IMG_7503.JPG, 13. Shades of White, 14. Untitled, 15. Untitled, 16. Untitled, 17. remnants · the exhausted book, 18. knot skirt i, 19. "But how do they erase their footprints?", 20. Secret Invocations in a Closed Room, 21. faucets, 22. needlecase, 23. DSC_0006.JPG, 24. November Path in North Florida, 25. SCRABBLE, 26. scoutphoto5-2, 27. for caroline t., 28. Bound, 29. Rainy Day Leaves, 30. Untitled, 31. show me the way .., 32. Untitled, 33. neck warmer, 34. Fabric Doll #3, 35. stuffed, 36. Zebra

A (late) Mosaic Monday.
Late for the Southern Hemisphere anyway.

I meant to post this last night.
Except I got home about 9.30, ate an enormous bowl of Pho Bo and fell asleep.
Not actually face-first in my Pho bowl, but I tell you it was a close call.

So here it is today.

wednesday : day of the vessel

2007-12-05T14:54:00.000+11:00

white blown glass

It undulates, or does it ululate ? This is a fabulous new word I've picked up and intend to use as much as possible from now on. I could look it up in the dictionary I suppose, but I don't want my Pollyanna-ish notions about it dashed just yet, thank you.

Also thank you everyone who left such nice comments on my last post about connections past.
I'm glad others find some resonance, inspiration or diversion from my observations.
Thing is, for some reason I just couldn't get it together to do a decent bit of writing that would do the whole experience justice. But it was a long overdue post, and sometimes you just have to get it out there even if it is half-baked.

So ... my itch about wanting to knit nothing but mile upon mile of plain stocking stitch after the cable-ing contractions of Clessidra?

mimosa blocking

Let's call it well and truly scratched.

Finally, Al poked* me for a meme. Ordinarily I'd say I've already done two of these, surely there's no more to be dredged?! But strangely I'm in the mood to do this one, with a few modifications : I'll share one fact per post (since 'weird' is such a subjective term, I'll ignore that one, but random? I am always up for random), starting from next post.

I tag Eero, because I know she likes it, and anyone else who just can't stifle the urge to share, please consider yourself tagged.

The "Rules" :
Link to your tagger, and also post these rules on your blog.
Share 7 facts about yourself (random or weird) on your blog.
Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
Let them know they are TAGGED by leaving a comment on their blog.

*Wait! That's the wrong verb, silly! That's facebook! I'm getting my version 2.0 terminology confused!

Flashback Friday

2007-11-30T19:47:00.000+11:00

Of a different kind.

A little while ago Martha wrote a post on green.
Then Loraine asked me about the colour of the walls in my house.

It seemed right to post about green walls.

This is my old studio in inner west Sydney which I shared with another designer (still a great friend long after both of us have moved on from the studio).

It was situated in a three storey warehouse of uncertain vintage.
But what I do know of its narrative is that during the 1930s it functioned as a Speedo factory, back in the day when Speedos were made out of wool. (Imagine that! What springs to mind for me is memories of those Swimming Medallions we were all made to do at school which often involved jumping full clothed in to the deep end of the pool, staying afloat and 'saving' classmates).

I know this because one day a middle aged man and his rather older mother came in to our studio and asked to look around.
Turned out that this lovely little old lady had worked in the building in the 1930s, making swimming costumes, at a machine which stood in the very spot my desk stood. She looked out at the same view as me - the same church spire- all those years ago, except back in those days it was still a cemetary. These days the cemetary is banished to much further back, clinging to a scrap of land around said church, leaving a grassed over parkland which fills with dogs each afternoon.

By the time we moved in, our floor had been reduced to nasty 60s-era boxy offices, and we did much DIY renovation. The walls facing out on to the park we painted Wattyl Florida Palm -a dark complex olive- which were a perfect foil to the clean white of the other walls and the raw timber of the impressively massive beams.

Post Election

2007-11-26T14:22:00.000+11:00

... puns fail me.

You're probably breathing a collective sigh of relief at that.

For my non-Aus readers, there was a Federal Election here on the weekend, and after eleven (was it only eleven? It feels more like eleven million) years of Conservative government, we have a change of leadership (to slightly less Conservative).

I feels somewhat of a hollow victory, as I was really looking forward to seeing Howard cry in some candid capture of an unguarded moment on National Television.

Just the smallest quiver of that protuberant bottom lip, just a hint of mucous running down from that smug nose -with Janette leaning over with a maternal Kleenex- would've sent me into a giddy celebratory dance through the house let me tell you.
Mere schadenfreude you might say. And you'd be right, but remember Nietzsche said something like

Never trust those of whom you must stifle the urge to punish.

Or something like that.

Last election, I woke the day after, capsizing somewhere between "Wanting to cut my own throat"Land and "Planning immediate emigration to New Zealand or Canada as a political refugee" Island.
But this time,I woke feeling relieved and that perhaps everything wasn't quite so intractably grim.
So that's good.

Goat, the girls and I celebrated the Downfall with a sit in the park eating Golden Gaytimes* (which would've been more appropriate if the Greens had got a seat in the Senate).

And now...the part you've all been waiting for...is the Post Downfall Celebratory Knitting!

I only managed to sit through about an hour of the blow-by-blow accounts of the vote itself, but I did manage to power through almost the entire back of Mimosa!
Hard Core enthusiasts can see action shots here, but I warn you it's so exciting that you may need a couple of Qualudes to calm you down when you get back, and a sit down in the Ambient Knit Room**

Now this is seriously celebratory, in colour at least:

Rike Feurstein's long scarf.
From Australian Vogue October '07.

*An icecream with a certain retro appeal, yet yummy!
** I'm wondering what the Ambient Knit Room would look like? Lots of crochet in pastel angora, maybe?

I couldn't decide

2007-11-22T14:54:00.000+11:00

whether to call this post The Dining Table, or The Exchange Department, or A Whole Lotta Stuff, or even Massive Clearance (to catch all those christmas online bargain hunters, oh the disappointment when they got my blog . . . nothing here for you shoppers! )

Because in a sense all these titles are apt.

Lately there's been a lot of packages arriving in the mail (and don't we love that)? Some from just around the corner, some from interstate and some from much, much further afield. So I took a brief pause before marking student work to ~~carefully art direct, array,~~ randomly pile everything on the table and photograph it.

From top, L to R.

My backcopy of IK summer 06 arrived, so I could finally cast on for (Black)Mimosa;

The very wonderful and spontaneously generous Mari sent me some Marimekko fabric (way off in the background) that I'd been casually eyeing off a while ago (along with some other little Portugese goodies.. alas no tarts but maybe the Customs guys ate those on the way through, bastards!) Thank you Mari ;

Thanks to Di, who sent me some of her stash Rowan Cotton Glace, I can shortly bring you the definitive findings on the Great Cotton Swatch Off. The colours of the swatches tone nicely with the cover artwork on the novel I'm reading The inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai ( a great read);

Great steaming cup of coffee (a belated vessel wednesday by the way);

Veronik Avery's Knitting Classic Style. Oh the loveliness. Her style is very eclectic but at the heart of it lies simple shapes and understated, interesting textures. This will be well thumbed soon I'm sure;

Merino/silk DK from the Knittery. Just like Jaggerspun Zephyr only Chunk-eeee (you have to do that last bit with a silly accent a la the old Cocoa Pops ad, trust me it's better);

Plate 12 from an exquisite collection in (wait for it) The Documents from the Bar-Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic, Nabatean-Aramaic and Greek Payyri. (I'm currently researching Aramaic script for a job, as you do) ;

Lee Miller : A life by Carolyn Burke. Loving the B+W photos so far (I always look at the pictures first) and can't wait to get stuck in to the text (after Desai);

Last but most definately not least is a flashback from when Ele was still hanging out with us.

There he is, hanging out in the fruit bowl, with the fruit and the balled up yarn. Oh yeah, and that's a much better shot of Mari's marimekko print. I'm going to have to make another Ele. For our vet, who has a bit of a fetish for elephants. Oh, the torture! How will I ever cope?

** I'm 'upgrading' my Blogger, so if there are any glitches in the next few days, please bear with me.

2007-11-16T21:53:00.000+11:00

A long-overdue dpn roll in progress.

Some plain indigo linen and cotton stripe to offset the screen-printed Cloth linen.
I got about two thirds of the way through this afternoon, when the Singer -which is the same vintage as me- exploded. Okay, not technically exploded, but certainly made a really loud pop, followed by that delightful electrical burning smell and the main power fuse to the house tripping. Some machine shopping is in order tomorrow morning.

I've decided sewing machine shopping is a similar experience to mobile phone shopping, in that there's not much between your Beginner Basic, and your SuperComputer 2,500 Stitch (2, 497 of which you'd never use) that also burns DVDs and makes you a cup of tea while zigzagging.

What does it all mean?

2007-11-14T17:32:00.001+11:00

What does it all mean?
Originally uploaded by carson.a

I particularly like the resonance between #4 and #10,
but there's a few resonant juxtapositions there.

( That's right: Max and His Resonant Juxtapositions will be playing their very special Acid Jazz stylings for you in the Emerald Room tonight Ladies and Gentlemen).

When good experiments go not so much bad, as slightly awry.

2007-11-12T14:51:00.000+11:00

Here's the thing: I bought the most perfect piece of headwear in Montreal a couple of years ago. A simple cotton beret. Not huge, floppy or fussy, but just the right scale with a devil-may-care roll up hem. The ultimate all-purpose, bad-hair-day-rescue, roll-it-up-and-stuff-it-in-your-pocket, stylish (I like to think anyway but then I have major powers of self delusion) chapeau.

Now I'm obsessed with being able to knit myself a hat that is equally up to the task. This is about my second or third attempt, but I'm afraid the jury is still out on this particular one. It's certainly not the fault of the design, which is clever, fully charted, and easy to memorise. In fact the gently undulating cables remind me of Minoan wall painting motifs.

No, I think where it went awry was in my yarn choice. I was attracted to the idea of the silk/cotton mix of Summer Tweed in which to work up this hat so it would be cool, soft and breathable in hot weather.

So much for the theory.

Here I am apprehending the large grey lump on my head.
Moi? Je suis une Stunned Mullet, or La Mullet Stunne.
Regardez! Les dark circles !
(No, it's not snowing here, I have a very dirty mirror it seems).

In practice what I ended up with was a slightly harsh, rope-like yarn that doesn't have the necessary elasticity or body required for the pattern. And don't get me started on stitch definition! What I will say though is that it smells rather nice - that lovely raw silk aroma (so I'm a weirdo, what are you going to do about it? ) I've also found that I love the look of the fabric it makes in reverse stocking stitch and in fact it may be reincarnated that way, in a more 'pure' form.

And I think ol' PBB is definitely worth another round but she may have to wait 'til the weather starts to cool again and I can start reaching for the merino instead.

Pattern: Parisian Beanie Beret by Tina Whitmore available here.
Yarn: Rowan Summer Tweed. Hurricane. About a skein and a half.

Both PBB and Summer Tweed are destined for other, better things.... just not together.

Contemplating the Broadhurst, or just falling asleep?

The Coping Scale : Some quantitative data

2007-11-06T17:29:00.000+11:00

Lace. Work by Cecilia Heffer

On a scale of one to ten, where ten is a Queen Boudica-like
"Bring it on, bring on your slings and arrows, for I Am Indomitable" !
and one is
"Please institutionalise me now" !
I am teetering around a 1.5 to a 2.

These 5 am wakeup calls may be the death of me.

Work to be done, but instead there's lying in bed in the middle of the afternoon clutching eye mask, chamomile tea and hot water bottle to the soporific sounds of Harper eating the floor. No, not something on the floor, but the floor itself. Then another, different sound, one which pulls me from my deathbed to investigate. One of my shoes is in the process of being deconstructed and eaten. And not any old shoe either but only my most comfortable shoes EVER.
(I know, I know...I have been through this puppy thing before and I know I shouldn't have left my shoes lying on the floor especially with a young dog with an exceptionally low boredom threshold. Momentary lapse of judgement brought on by sleep deprivation). Walk through house to hurl remains of shoes disgustedly into closed-off room only to step in giant puddle of piddle, even though the back door to the yard is wide open. Try not to cry in exhausted exasperation while mopping up.

Ok, enough of that.

Right, knitting.

Knitting, knitting, knitting.

I have almost finished a hat.

[Huge round of cheering and applause]

Exeunt.

It is 5 am, and you are listening . . .

2007-11-02T08:24:00.000+11:00

Don't you just love waking up at 5am?
Harper woke me.
(Thanks chickadee: half 15kg kitten, half kangaroo)

And you know there's no getting back to sleep at 5am.

Now that the car alarm outside on the street has stopped (!), it's oh so quiet, it's oh so still, as Bjork said.
Goat has taken Scout to the office so it's just me + Harps today, and she's (surprise surprise) chilled out.
It's overcast and cool, lightly drizzling outside.
I did a black wash this morning, and I was in the bathroom noticing how sculptural the clothes looked against the white tiles and the soft light.

So right now I should be researching Arameic typography and graphics.
But you know what, I think I'll just keep coveting books and blog. Don't tell anyone.

Does anyone else miss Flea Bites? Especially the weekly fauna updates.
We don't live in any where near the same level of leafiness as Grandma Flea does, or rather, used to, but amazingly we still get some biodiversity.

A neighbour's gum tree is in full flower right now, great boughs groaning with beautiful creamy white blossom. By day the Rainbow Lorikeets flock in by the dozen and feed on the nectar with much trilling and squawking. By night the Fruit Bats do the same, with even more squawking.
But the smell, oh the smell.. on a really warm breezy day, a deliciously strong honey aroma wafts over from the flowers. Heaven.

And, oh yeah, I made an elephant.

Well, you could say it's a construction in spheres, cylinders and semicircles.
Or, indeed the most impractical child's toy in the History of the World.

But did I ever have fun making it. And I learnt a new increasing technique; the M1R, shown here at the fabulous KnittingHelp.com.

I'm not used to assembling objects that are so soft and yielding and so my sewing techniques (ahem) are a tad wonky, but I hope secured firmly enough.

Pattern: Elefante by Susan B. Anderson available here.

Yarn: Eki Riva baby alpaca in grey for the main body. Naturally off white merino for the paw /trunk pads and ear lining. Mohair eyes, which I hoped would fuzz, giving the impression of eyelashes.

Mods: Such was my glee at starting this fun project, I didn't realise until I arrived at that point in the pattern, that the ears are in fact crochet. I did attempt to teach myself crochet but let's face it, I had no idea what I was doing, so I found help in Cleckheaton Wildlife in 8 ply (which seems to be no longer available). I adapted Barbara Lennon's Tasmanian Devil ear shape and it worked out rather well I think.

Stuffing: I used poly fill, the kind you get in cushions.

General fun + Cuteness Factor: Pretty damn high.

off he goes...waddle, waddle.

Misc.

2007-10-31T09:40:00.000+11:00

Tales of Butthead & Gooseberry*

Readers can guess which one is which.

Thank you to everyone who offered name suggestions for our new girl, I was somewhat overwhelmed!

But the prize for Instigating, Winning and therefore Closing the "Name that Dog"! competition goes to Ashley with her genius thematic choice of Harper. A little something is winging your way Ashley.
No, it's not a Plasma screen or even some skeins of Koigu in the newly-commissioned dogged colourway, so don't get too excited.

The title: don't you just love Miscellaneous as a catch-all filing category? Synonymous with "That load of paper in that box under there", or "That particularly bulging hanging file right at the back of the filing cabinet containing Mystery Contents to be taken out and marvelled over once a year".

It's my favourite all-time over-used genre. Not that I'm as disciplined with filing as I used to be. When I had an actual office/studio outside of my home, I was a bandit for prompt filing, but these days I seem to end up with more of what I call Denial Piles rather than actual filed stuff. And when you're a freelance designer working on multiple jobs, and you teach as well, you end up with a lot of Denial Piles. That's on top of your personal administration, otherwise known as "Misc."

This is a "Misc.-ey" sort of post.

Yesterday I was reading a very interesting essay by Christine Rosen (via Arts & Letters Daily); a sociological take on the flipside of web version 2.0 that I was banging on about earlier. No conclusions drawn but some very interesting observations.

Further adventures in version 2.0 swappiness and knitting coming very soon! Just as soon as the recipient receives her package safe and sound.

* Four days in, and Harper has already developed a small fan club in the dog park. Last night I was walking her and I heard someone behind me yell "Is that Harper Lee"? When I turned round, it wasn't anyone I -or to my knowledge Harper herself- had ever met before. She'd obviously already been getting some serious loving-up on walks with Goat. There was some debate with this particular lady's friend about whether she was 'just like a hot chocolate', or 'a bit of a latte'. It was decided finally that she was indeed a 'Moccachino'.

Welcome to city life, Harper Lee!

Excuse the appalling pun, I think I've been reading our free Community Newspaper too much lately. Its' Sub Editor really goes overboard with truly groan-inducing pun-age in the headlines.

New

2007-10-27T12:11:00.001+10:00

We have a new member of the family.
A lot sooner than we planned.
She's 9 or 10 months old.
Part Kelpie, part Border Collie.
Failed sheepdog.
Now to become city dog.
Member of our household for 24 hours.
Name... ?

She and Scout are still sorting themselves out.
Unsettled night last night.
Not much sleep for anyone.

Scout doesn't like to share, so this is good for her.
Great playmates though.
This taken during a brief uneasy truce in which she desperately wanted to snuggle up to Scout who in turn grumpily condescended to share her blanket with her.

version 2.0

2007-10-24T15:37:00.000+10:00

The buzz phrase I've kept hearing for the last week is Web Version 2.0

Blogging, flickr, ravelry and Facebook (although I haven't gone there despite invitations, I barely have time to maintain a meaningful connection to the first three. That and the fact that I don't like the idea of being poked).
They're all part of this wave.
Finally, perhaps for the first and only time I feel like I'm in the avant !

The village green with a digital interface.

And I'm sure I'm not the first to observe the irony of disseminating handcrafting this way.

Perhaps I should call it the Trading Post with a digital interface, because there's no doubt about the sharing side of this phenomena:

Michele at knitsane and I recently made a yarn swap.

You'll remember Furry Goodness from ages ago.
Well, turns out I'm allergic to alpaca. ( I can knit it, just can't wear it).
Oh the humanity!
Then I noticed how partial to this particular fibre Michele seemed, and idly suggested a swap if she ever felt like taking it in and giving it a good home.

Well, to cut a medium-length story short, this arrived:

Only about an entire goat's worth of delicious mohair!

Beautifully dyed by Michele with natural dyes. Very difficult to capture in a photo, but it has a subtle warmth from Logwood and a silvery blue undertone from Indigo peeking through.
In crude terms, the overall effect is one of warm brownish grey.

Immediately it said to me

Weave me..

Weave me into a fabric of gossamerey warmness that I may be thrown casually yet artfully across your couch (yep, that's right, the one that is currently gutted and awaiting its new upholstery and may very well be grounds for divorce from the other Goat in my life if it's not finished soon! ! !... but I digress) where I may lie resplendent and my subtley variegated hues may cheer you and we will all live happily ever after...

So I've been eyeing off the weaving classes and wondering if I can possibly squeeze another hobby into my life.

Thank you Michele.

How much do we love version 2.0?!

^
still from Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man '95

Bits

2007-10-22T11:22:00.000+10:00

of Cloth ,

from the weekend.

I've run out of ideas,

so I thought I'd just shamelessly rip off Alison's fabric piles and hope she won't notice.

By Julie Paterson. Printed hemp and linen.

PS : thanks everyone for your birthday wishes, they were much appreciated.

Window break.

2007-10-19T12:55:00.000+10:00

Stress line.
Fault line.
Fracture.
Scar tissue.

I could be getting all Buddhist, but the surprising connectedness of most living things strikes me afresh sometimes.

I knew about tree rings; that the story of an entire tree's life is written there, but until last weekend I had no idea the same was true for a sheep's fleece.

In the shearing shed, where the freshly-thrown fleece is assessed for quality while it's literally still warm from the sheep's body, a swift and brutal criteria is applied to small tufts of fibre pulled from it, not just for micron measurement, but for tensile strength. Basically can it be pulled apart? If it tears it's a disappointing day for the farmer and it's designated to the lower grade bins.

This fleece is not destined to be a Zegna suit.

The gaps that appear in this ignominious tuft appear as window-pane like, hence the name, and indicates a point in the fleece's growth where the sheep was stressed, albeit briefly, which physically affected the follicle, and ditto affected the wool growth at that point.

Or, as Daniel Kiely (sheep farmer, shearer, Extreme Sports enthusiast and Host extraordinaire) would say - assuming the sheep's inner monolgue:

Geez, anythin' 'd stress a sheep right out...

"Ah!, I've fallen in the dam!
Ah! there's me own shadow"! ...

And then the wool's shit, mate !

You may remember that just before last xmas, I adopted a sheep called Bob.

Bob lives with approximately 2,500 odd of his mob on a drought-stricken property Uamby, in north-west New South Wales. A recent invitation to all Adopters to a barbie on Uamby happily coincided not only with my birthday, but also a simmering hankering to get out of the City, so Goat and I took a long weekend off to make the four hour trip.

The fleece that the Kiely's sheep produce (the stuff that passes the window-break test, that is) is super fine merino, and ultimately destined for Italian mills and fine suitings. No yarn, and certainly nothing for spinners. Michael Kiely tells me it's "too fine" for the local spinners, who prefer something with a higher micron range that they can "grab a hold of".

It was a fine day: bush bashing in the back of a splintery old ute for a
mini-muster (really just an excuse to show off some highly skittish lambs and their protective mothers), the dry, dry prickly land palpable underfoot.

Much alcohol and enormous lunch in the shade at the back of the house attended by thousands of the most tenacious flies ever. (These are tough bush flies mate, none of this sissy City 'just-brush-them-away' rubbish here. No, you have to forcefully manhandle them right off your beef).

Followed by some shearing up in the shed.

Oh, the shed, the magic, magic light of the Shearing Shed which imparted its' magical glow to every under-exposed, ill-composed photo I could snap.

Built around the turn of last century, it's a gem of pragmatic, vernacular architecture.
Corrugated iron, raw sapling posts and gates, smoothed down to a golden satin patina by ninety years of lanolin-coated shearers' hands.

Incidentally, none of the wool that was shorn that afternoon passed the strength test, which speaks volumes about the kind of stress the sheep are under at the moment. If you're interested in adopting a sheep (it is coming up to xmas, like you need reminding), you can read more about it here.

The final humiliation of the day for Scout who had been hanging out with Lucy, Ravi and Kodie the sheepdogs all day (actually 6 month old puppy Kodie is not shaping up to be that good a sheepdog, but that's another post), was having to be physically lifted into the back of the ute by Farmer Daniel. She is indeed a "soft paw dog".
A city dog.
This is more Scout's speed when it comes to bush bashing.

A room with a view of it.
Preferably from the comfort of a soft cushion.
In some nice shade.
With snacks provided.

Poor Scout. It's tough I tell ya, mate.

As many photos of the Uamby/Mudgee experience as you can handle here. I only took, oh, about 150. I did edit them down, really I did.

So

2007-10-10T18:12:00.000+10:00

We're at the end of our walk in the park and I'm thinking "What is that noxious pong"??
My first impulse is to check the bottoms of both shoes: sometimes the dog park grass is booby-trapped.
Nope, all clear there.
Smells like someone's put down a load of Blood + Bone fertiliser on some garden bed close-by.
But there are no garden beds close-by.
Really smells like something's dead, and not freshly.

Then I'm wondering where Scout is and of course she has not only located the source of said pong, but is busily rolling around in it, joyously grinding it in.
I don't know what it was, and I don't want to know.
So not in the mood for this on this particular afternoon.

Straight back into the yard, Scout held firmly between clenched legs, she gets thoroughly shampooed and hosed off. I know, I know, water restrictions! Let that just be between you and me, dear Reader. ( I only used a bucketful and I'm very water-wise elsewhere, really I am Officer!! )

Scout does her best to look sheepish and hardly-done-by ... alas she will never ever make the abstract connection between this particular Cause and Effect. Yeah, it's funny now.

Speaking of abstract, someone asked me during the week

"So, what's the difference between a concept and a theme anyway"?

Put simply, I can illustrate not only the answer to that, but also vessel wednesday in one fell swoop! Talk about efficiency!

I came across this object design company today . . . check out Ron Gilad's amazing work, particularly his fruit bowls like this one:
(And it's a beautifully designed website too by the way).

photo: designfenzider

Now that is pushing abstraction further.

Thankyou everyone for your lovely feedback on the Clessidras (I'm really going to take better photos this weekend) and for your kind commiserations on the feet thing.
It's truly amazing how quickly posting a photo of your feet in socks and shoes on the internet brings out the foot fetishists! Why am I not surprised? On the Disturbing Factor Scale, I'd only rate it about a 4.5 - 5 but still, it's enough.

Now, we all know how wildly popular sock knitting is in the blogosphere and how much we all love to document, pose and publish our socky creations.
So I'm left wondering . . . has anyone else experienced this?

* pong = really truly offensive odour

FO: Clessidra

2007-10-08T15:47:00.000+10:00

I was so excited to finish these I haven't even bothered to weave in the ends.
I'll have to take some better photos of these during the week.

Pattern: by Gabriella Chiarenza for Knitty, Spring 2007.

Yarn: Rubi + Lana 3ply Merino in Charcoal. 160 grams (just over one and a half large balls)

Notes:
There have been screeds ruminating through my mind as I made them, but not having taken scientific notes (that would mean putting down the needles to write), I find now that my mind is strangely blank. I will say that I did find the pattern difficult to follow in some parts, but I will hastily qualify that with the observation that I just think my mind works quite differently to the author's. For the second one I pretty much ignored the pattern and just copied the first sock. Aside from my equivocal relationship to the cabling (let's just say getting to the stockinette part feels like being released from a medium security detention centre), it flew off the needles, relatively speaking.

When I took them off, my feet looked like this

cless scarification

And I decided to photograph them.

I thought "Bloody hell, am I really going to post these shots, or is this simply for my own idle amusement"?
However, I was inspired by Ashley's bravery in a recent 365 days series and even hannabirke's recent refreshly honest self portraits to take a deep breath and include it.

My feet are my unloveliest part. Good ol' German Peasant root-stock; good for keeping yourself sturdily upright while you milk the cows I guess. (Maybe that's why I've always loved Botticelli's renderings of the human foot.They make the roundly, palely bulbous seem so aesthetically pleasing).

And before my sisters howl me down that I have betrayed the Feminist Ethos by admitting this, I base this purely on objective aesthetic grounds. I'm sure even our Germaine probably secretly loathes her left elbow or somesuch.

And so I do find it strange that I should invest so much time and effort into an adornment for my feet, knowing what an ambivalent relationship I have to them, or even that I want to knit socks at all considering they are summarily stuffed into shoes and hidden away from view.
All that angst over toe shaping!

It is curious.

G

2007-10-04T17:39:00.000+10:00

is for Gadget,
Gizmo,
Gocco

A borrowed one.
Which is calling out to me (in an accent just like Sen from Spirited Away)
But which is also safely stashed out of my sight until I get my wee deadline out of the way tomorrow.
But come the weekend, I suspect I will be printing like there's no tomorrow.

But right now it's time for...

( to the tune of Heart from Damn Yankees, in a cha cha tempo preferably. I wish someone would come up with a little widget so you could put a 'sing-a-long' bouncing ball across the blog page)
In honour of the increasing temperatures in this hemisphere and the dropping ones in the other but with the sweet anticipation of toasty knitted goodness...

You gotta have warmth!
[cha cha cha, cha cha cha]
Miles and miles and miles of warmth!
[etc...] *

Or 217.41 yards of it to be precise.

Cake of Qiviuk all the way from Banff, via the Wild Canadian Arctic Muskox no less, and of course the Inuvialuit People who harvest the fibre. Thanks Goat!
The women who sold it said

"You're going to make someone verrry happy", and guess what, she was right.

Move over Cashmere, you are so last year!

This stuff is unbelievably soft; quite hairy with a delicate halo and reputedly thermal-warm (it does have to keep the oxen alive in the Tundra). I think it will have to live in its own little bag until just the right project comes along. I've noticed on ravelry there's a whole book devoted to Arctic Lace , and it seems to make intuitive sense to marry the two, but then I could just be going through a Purist phase.

And while I'm still banging on about warmth (I was thinking tonally warm, but I guess it's also materially warm), I'm fascinated by this from Prada.

The fabric of the coat seems to ombre down from a black/dark chocolate brown wool into a soft umber silk (I'm guessing at the fibres here) actually in the weave, and I just can't stop thinking about how it's done. I really want to learn weaving so I can explore the world of the weft and the warp.

* it's even better with props. I use Peter Allen's old maracas, which I won on ebay.**

**I wonder how many people will believe that's true?

Memo to Self:

2007-10-02T18:30:00.000+10:00

Blog more frequently.

I mean it's not like I haven't had ample opportunity. Uni's been on Semester break, Goat's been away so I've been slobbin' around the bachelor lifestyle. No camera to distract me.

Actually, I think that's it.

This morning, after photographing piles of yarn for absolutley no good reason, I realised not only how much I missed the camera, but also how fresh visual stimulus drives my blogging. Without it I just grind down til mute.

So:
an homage to the Queen of the Pile.
From top to bottom: Rowan Summer Tweed, Rubi + Lana 3ply (Clessidra), and Eki Riva Sport baby alpaca (Furry Goodness).

This alpaca scarf was one of the first things I knitted. I still love the yarn. It may be unparalleled in sheer drapeyness, softness and general lusciousness, but my god!, am I allergic to it or what?
As of tonight, it's frogged -reminding me all the while of all those ends painstakingly wound in while watching Mildred Pierce- (if you ever need motivation for steely-nerved pains-taking, that movie will do it! ), wound and then sent sailing off to a much deserved loving home! Which I'm very glad about.

Stay tuned for some rare Qiviut sightings! (link to Knitters Review...info is halfway down the page).

ravelry

2007-09-24T20:59:00.000+10:00

Really really keen observers will notice there's been some subtle changes in my sidebar.
I've removed the "On the Shelf" section where I logged my combo Project-Graveyard/ ICU/ Covet miscellany for a while now.
But now that I'm in ravelry, that sad old grab bag finally has a proper home, and one that appeals to a certain OCD side.
Fellow ravelers, my username is carson (I know! My imagination ran riot there... like Franklin, I toyed briefly with the idea of a silly one. Like MarzipanNeedleBrain, or BunBun LaFluffBag, you get my drift. Plus I guessed there'd already be a few takes on the "Needle" theme already).

And ooh I sense another vortex of procrastination possiblilities opening up there.
It's already spurred me on to cast on a new project.
I'm getting pretty close to the heel flap on ol' Clessidra and as I get close to the finish line I vacillate wildly between a zen-like trance and teeth-grinding ga-ga ness.
And so you'd think by now I'd be completely sick of cables and grey yarn, but nope I'm casting a hat design by Tina Whitmore in Rowan Summer Tweed: Hurricane.
More cables.
More grey.
But I'm fond of a bit of beret. They are just so handyto pull on for bad hair days, and the summer tweed is perfect; a silk/cotton blend that should still be wearable in the warmer months.
Alas, still no camera but it bears a remarkable resemblance to some other Rowan tweed in my stash so let's just pretend:

The post.

2007-09-21T11:51:00.000+10:00

You could be forgiven for thinking I have a laissez faire attitude towards my blogging commitments.

Blithely ignoring the needs of faithful subscribers who are holding their collective breath, hanging on to find out just how many more thrilling centimetres of Clessidra I've produced!, to hear of the latest spine-tingling adventure in the dog park!!, to access the riveting insights into the minutiae of my world!!!. Any old twaddle that randomly pops out of my consciousness in the last few hours will do!!!!

"My readers, my readers! I have an obligation to my readers"! I think as I leap out of bed and frenziedly write, still in PJs, an inspired, provocative and brilliant post to much relief and acclaim

Or not.

No, instead I give you a Flashback Friday.

Did someone say " Rabbit caught in headlights"?

circa 70

Trawling through my box of photos, it seems my parents were pretty keen on the old photo booths. I have no memory of this being taken, but I do remember the top I'm wearing.
Vividly.
It was a densely, calligraphically patterned bronze-coloured silk, with self covered buttons -very 60s-, one of my mother's old blouses ( I was a fiend for raiding my mother's old clothes) which I was obsessed with wearing to the point of refusing to take it off. I wore it backwards, as a dress, or as a smock over jeans. (I was a nascent deconstructivist and fashionista light years ahead of her time, people!)

The camera may be away being put to better use documenting Rocky Mountain High at the moment, but I still have my scanner! So I'll be mining the archives for a while, in order to bring you the latest, freshest, most verdantly obscure randomness for a while.

Happy happy joy joy!

Flight Two Two is bound for Honalulu

2007-09-17T18:09:00.001+10:00

or rather it was.
Goat flew off to Banff via Honalulu on the weekend.

I've been keeping my eye on the long term forecast there and there were some minuses, plus raindrops and dare I say even one snowflake toward the end, so I decided a last minute trip to a2b was in order.

The Icebreaker range is pretty fab, and we also picked up an umbrella that packs away to practically the size of a pencil (Ok, so a chunky pencil) made by a Melbourne manufacturer Boston Umbrella Co. The Winter range in Pocket is particularly nice, and they include some helpful and sage advice with their products:

*scanned from Trademarks of the 40s & 50s.

A mnemonic

2007-09-10T13:43:00.000+10:00

or, the Politics of Cabling.

There's no beating around the Bush (boo!) [local readers: glad APEC is over?] here... Clessidras are fiddly.
Each row of cabling is slightly different from the last, and difficult to memorise. Early on in the proceedings my mind hit upon a mnemonic for the simple twisting cables either side of the main business of Hourglass and moss(seed) stitch vertical slabs.

It's straightforward if you're on the same side of the political fence as me, or as my colleague says "I'm assuming I'm amongst friends here".

Vis a vis how the position of the cable needle affects the slant of the twist:
The Right goes to the back, and the Left comes to the front.

Well, it works for me. Never let it be said knitting is not a political act. More on a different political (yarn-orientated )issue here.

Spring is Sprung

2007-09-05T11:59:00.000+10:00

De grass is riz.
I wunner where de boidies iz.
Dey say de boid is on de wing.
But dat's absoid.
I always thought
De wing was on de boid.

- contentiously attributed to Ogden Nash

It's been on my mind ever since the weekend, which was the official start of Spring here in the Southern Hemisphere, and I've been wracking my brains trying to identify the childhood book I remember it from. Possibly Children's Book of Nonsense Verse or somesuch , with illustrations by Ralph Steadman? Or I could be conflating it with something else. Entirely possible.

Spring = warmth and growth= about two more centimetres of Clessidra #2.
Yep, that's right, it doesn't look that much different from the first one does it?
Except this one is slightly less inept as I know what I'm doing this time around.

Thanks everyone who contributed to the linguistics debate on a "good" 45 minutes. I don't think we got to the bottom of it, or ever will get to the bottom of it, but it was fun exploring the nuances.

Saw Home Song Stories last night. Well worth seeing. Melinda (production design) did a fantastic job of evoking the quiet desperation and ugliness of early 70s suburban Melbourne as well as the severe austerity of pre-Cultural Revolution Northern China. I remember Melinda came to me years ago and asked whether I thought she should go to NIDA or to Film School. I said Film School with no hesitation. I'm glad to see I gave her the right advice!

Happy vessel wednesday. I'm celebrating .

Just

2007-09-03T12:54:00.000+10:00

to prove that I'm still knitting, and still making sideways connections, I give you:

Nautilus forms:
staircase, City of Sydney library /
one from the archives:the nascent beginnings of a Clessidra atop a ball of rubi + lana yarn.

Which is spookily similar to my current knitting. Yes, I'm up to Clessidra #2.
Long socks.
Just in time for summer.
Or for a bit of bagpipe playing perhaps, as a fellow knitter recently referred to my Clessidra #1 a kilt sock.

My car battery was dead this morning (I looked for a way to more naturally segue from knitting to batteries but I couldn't find one) which should come as no surprise to loyal readers familiar with my recent spate of the blerghs.
After he's started her up, the NRMA guy told me to drive my car around for a "good 45 minutes".
As I did so, I was wondering what exactly a "good" 45 minutes was.
Was it in fact more like 50 minutes?
An hour?
And what would a "bad" 45 minutes be?
Or even a "not so good" 45 minutes?

These and other probing questions will probably not be answered in upcoming posts of Needles Edge.
But I do appreciate that some of you hang on anyway.

I blog therefore I am ?

2007-08-29T13:51:00.000+10:00

So I haven't been blogging much.
Ever have one of those weeks [months, years, lifetimes.. Please circle appropriate choice]
where you feel like you have the Midas Touch in reverse?

I have spray paint nozzle spit issues.
I have broken two teapots.
We are reduced to preparing beverages in a chipped old one from Chinatown we usually reserve for emergencies.
Call it exhaustion induced klutziness.

Seems like almost anything I touch snaps off, combusts or just dissolves into undesired unruliness.

You know the ball of small calamities that rolls along forming one giant...well, dungball really.

photo: CSIRO

And so I am way too nervous to handle anything breakable at the moment let alone photograph it, so this week's vessel wednesday is brought to you by a perdurable source: the Conde Nast Archives! via design sponge.

photo: Hannel Cassidy. 1944

Knitting follows suit; I can't remember the last time I held yarn and sticks in my hands.
Seriously!
The one constant truth of freelancing is: that August is the crazy month and JanuaryFebruary are the quiet months. So one must make hay while the sun shines.... as they say in the classics.
And at least the sun is , in fact, actually shining.

A special shout out to Michele who has gone above and beyond the call of duty in her sleuthing out Banff yarn opportunities for me, and who incidentally also has the Habu Love and is doing some very lovely things with it.

The many moods of mohair

2007-08-21T11:09:00.000+10:00

Long time readers will have already surmised that I like mohair. In fact some may think I have a bit of a fetish for it. And they would be right.
It's just one of those deeply irrational, subconsciously driven attractions that govern most of our choices in life. But if I was forced to analyse it, I guess I would say it say all stems from a couple of plaid mohair rugs my mother had when I was little. There was some quality about those rugs that I -clearly- found profoundly comforting. A sort of fuzzy bulwark against a sea of angst and uncertainty.
And why thank you Dr. Freud, yes I would love a cup of tea thanks. Lie down on the couch? Don't mind if I do, I am feeling a tad peaky.

On the weekend I was on the Upper North Shore and so I thought I'd pop in to Rubi + Lana for another ball of their fine house brand 3ply in Dark Charcoal so I could finally start Clessidra #2. (For the record: one Clessidra singular takes 80 grams). No Dark Charcoal left! Serves me right for never buying enough. Thankfully they have some 'in the warehouse' , which is the story of my life at the moment. Which means Clessidra number two should be underway sometime in September.

But back to the mohair... Maybe it was because I was feeling so blue at having my plans for casting on another Clessidra at that afternoons SSK so cruelly foiled, that my eye was drawn to this colour: Lorna's Laces 'Glory'. Mohair blend (blended with what?) in Navy (huh? ?!! I would call it Periwinkle). I found myself actually petting it right there in the shop. So...I had to buy it. I really don't need a single skein of yet more mohair. But it makes me happy. I think it's destined for neck wear of some kind as Goat assures me it "brings out my eyes". Out of what, exactly, is unclear.

What is crystal clear however, is that I have no readers in Antarctica

see? no markers!

I'm even more disappointed to see I have no (regular) readers in Canada.

Reason is, Goat is off to a conference in Banff soon and I'm wondering if anyone has any tips for indigenous yarn goodies around there that I should know about so I can 'get my order in'? Initial googling reveals Qiviut, but I'm not sure whether Sydney is ever, even with global climate change and all, really going to get cold enough for Musk Ox.

Oh, and thank you Heather. Apparently I rock.

Which is nice.

Edited to add: A shameless plug for my friend's latest show.

Soul Candy

2007-08-17T19:38:00.000+10:00

Remember when you'd stop at the milk bar on the way home from school, rummage through the linty coins in your uniform pocket and hand them over to the shopkeeper behind the glass-fronted counter that held all the lollies?
And the very drawn out and considered ritual called: "How much do I have left"?
Since most of the items cost around 2 cents each (back in the day when we had 2 cent pieces), this could and usually did, take quite some time. You'd select, say 3 cobbers (my favourite) then ask the shopkeer:

"How much do I have left"?

Then another agony of decision in which you'd opt for say, four milkbottles, followed by:

"How much do I have left"?

Then two honey bears, and so on and so on, with the shopkeeper keeping a patient tally until your 20 or so cents were all used up. Then you'd get handed a small white square paper bag that was sealed with a deft flick of the bag, twisting it at the corners ( a pretty smooth move I used to practice a lot at home with any bag I could get my hands on. I liked to call it the Grocer's Flick). It may have been hell on the teeth but it was quite good for the mental arithmetic.

Very early this morning I was conducting a similar transaction via phone and email with a lovely old guy called Roman (who I shall probably never meet, but who I will always be indebted to) working out of a warehouse somewhere in Illinois.

Except I was trying to sleuth out some obscure and out-of-stock architectural model parts instead of cobbers and honey bears.

What is it about people in the mid west? When I was there in 2005 everyone I met went out of their way to be polite and helpful. Perhaps the fact that I find that noteworthy says more about life in Sydney.

Of course Illinois has more to offer than politeness and model parts.

Mies' Farnsworth House in Plano for example. I have this vague recollection of seeing, when I was still in school, a black and white photo of it which infatuated me. Flash forward twenty or so years later and I find myself in Plano walking through blossoming woodlands, crossing babbling brooks, smelling cedar chips in the air - half expecting Bambi to come scampering through the scene- when suddenly I catch a glimpse of the House through the trees which takes my breath away.

This very deliberate, directed, slow revelation of the house reminded me strongly of the Buddhist temples I'd visited in Vietnam and China that were sited similarly.

So thanks Roman, not just for the help, but also for prompting me, in a very roundabout way, to finally upload some of my Farnsworth pilgrimage.

I was wondering...

2007-08-14T17:33:00.000+10:00

if anyone else had noticed that in West Wing Season 4, Abi is starting to look alarmingly like Robert Smith. ** And I can't work out why. Maybe the regular makeup artist and/or lighting technician was away that month. Whatever it is, Stockard Channing is no slouch in the attractiveness department, yet they've managed to make her look like a drag queen.

** Warning: explicit high hair and saxophone solos.

K, nothing else to report so you're getting a completely gratuitous shot of Scout.

Or Scout's crusty ass to be specific.

She'd just had a bath and was all clean, shiny and sweet-smelling (oatmeal dog shampoo) then we went to the Park to finish drying off.
One slimy, muddy, boggy creekbed, one crazy yellow Labrador, and one very funny frenzied game of 'Chase me and Wrestle' later, Scout was thoroughly 'ochred'. Well she was dubbed The Most Holy Dingo by our Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at Fair Day, so I guess it's only fitting.
Needless to say she was on second bath detail when we got home.

Hockney-esque snapshot

2007-08-13T13:08:00.000+10:00

of my life at the moment.

From L to R:
diagrammatic structural sketches, trace, sundry pencils, diary, tissues, SydneyDesign brochure, Sudafed, Butter Menthols, a (now battered) stainless steel case I got from Muji in HK ages ago, and in which I keep my mini-dogclips, calculator,disks, more tissues, water, pile of course notes and marking (trans: grading), pens, Thandi and Season 4 of the West Wing.

Or:

The Microbes are Taking Over the World.

We may think we're on top of the food chain, but let's face it, microscopic organisms are definately giving us a run for our money.

Yes, I'm sick with flu. Again. I blame the increasingly Tokyo-style commuter trains, thanks CityRail!
A friend just passed his Physician exams and I missed the party (thanks again CityRail)
and so my life is reduced to this view with occasional evening forays into the living room to watch a couple of episodes of WW and get about one pattern repeat done on Thandi.

The Sudafed certainly makes thinking a little more possible, but it also leaves feeling a little wacky.

Thanks everyone who commented on my last post. I'm glad it sparked some resonance with others, and that's what it's all about isn't it?