the Bainbridge

Pattern: By Pepperknits. Clever and deceptively simple.
Yarn: Lana Liza Merino Diamond, which doens't seem to have any web presence. I got it from Rubi + Lana. Love this yarn, it's beautiful to work with with great stitch definition.
Needles: 3.5 bamboo circs.
Recipient: Sly Jatzman*
Mods: None, except next time I think I will adjust the position of one of the tabs just slightly rather than placing them symmetrically.
Verdict: This was officially a hit with the recipient who is about to go to Paris and Amsterdam. The weather's been quite balmy in Paris -mid 20s celcius- but cooler in Amsterdam so you never know, she may find a little bit of light, elegant warmth comes in handy.


*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Global wrap up

Figure i.
A roughly forty metre square plot of Inner West backyard with a charming view of a factory's brick wall.
Scout the English Staffy chases away possums, Myna birds and the occasional neighbours' cat. (No, she doesn't want to eat them, she just wants to be their friend and really doesn't understand why they don't want to be her friend: a breakdown in cross cultural communication).

Figure ii.
Here (scroll down)
A rambling, Moomin-esque cottage in Upper Finnish Lapland with a sweeping view of a pristine lake.
Tina the Finnish Spitz chases away..... Reindeer.


Meanwhile in Michigan, Ashley's sloggin' through her Rhiannons and I can empathise.

I've completed one Clessidra and now just waiting for a good excuse to get back over to the North Shore to get another ball of yarn from Rubi + Lana so I can start the second. Needless to say I'm obviously not exactly champing at the bit to get over there otherwise I'd have cast on by now.

The Interminable Long Sock Doldrums (ILSD) may not be as arduous or insanity-inducing as ,say, unpicking hemp rope like poor Oscar was made to do in Reading Gaol or indeed Franklin's Christening Shawl.

But close.
Let's just say it's fiddly and leave it at that.
Does anyone have any tips for incorporating elastic? I knitted that band as snug as the proverbial bug, but it still makes me feel nervous.




Back in Sydney's Inner West, there's a lot of procrastinating going on.
Mainly on flickr.
I was telling Al that I may need to ban myself from flickr just so I can get some work done. Thing is, I was only half joking.

Never let it be said that nothing good can come out of procrastinating however as I was inspired by Sophie Grebe's wrapping paper on flickr to translate my Bainbridge Instructional How To drawings into a wrapper of sorts for a gift.
I worried that a decontextualised Bainbridge arriving in the mail might baffle even the savviest of origamially-minded individuals, including the scarf's recipient.



Ink on drafting film, tissue, yarn, paint chip as tag.


Finally in Los Angeles, someone in blogland whose desk is as messy as mine. Thanks Ah-yi.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Chilli Edamame: mmmm

Vessel Wednesday:

Last week we had dinner with Amsterdam friends at Toko

All the food arrived in beautiful vessel after beautiful vessel.
I was thinking documenting this dinner would set me up for a couple of months worth of vessel wednesday material, but I gave up photographing after the pre-dinner snack as the boys were hungry and asked me pointedly whether I was planning on shooting every course? Whereupon they fell upon the food like ravenous wolves.
So the Edamame bowls will have to suffice.
Food and service are great, it's actually worth a visit just for Reni Kung's light sculptures (no website to link too alas).

I think it was walking around afterwards in the literally freezing cold however that gave me the laryngitis.

HP-free zone

If anyone else feels like a salmon swimming upstream against the tide of popular opinion when it comes to the HP phenomena, then you've found a safe enclave here.
I've nothing against JK personally (in fact I say "Good on her"! ), or indeed the legion of people who find enjoyment in the books.
It's just that everyone needs a quiet place away from the ubiquity.

What do you do

when you have laryngitis?

Pair: white textures

details here

Apart from knit & read of course.

Watch old episodes of The Mighty Boosh, renovate your blog and play with your flickr favourites of course!

A phase

The gift I sent off last week made me realise it is possible to go through a green and orange phase.

Some flickr faves
Details here

Baby Kimono

Pattern: Clementine's Baby Kimono. If you go here, you'll find the downloadable pattern in pdf, and don't forget to say Hi.

Recipient: Baby C.

Yarn: Grignasco Bambi. Colour 184.
Can't rave enough about this yarn; soft, sproingy and spun not too tight, not too loose, it's juuuuust right to quote a certain yellow-haired porridge-stealer, and Easy Wash - surely necessary for baby garments.
Two 50g balls was more than enough for this cardigan as well as 2 matching pairs of booties. The first were ridiculously huge, I have a knack for ginormous footwear (maybe because I have big feet), with a walnut-sized ball left over.

Needles: Knitpicks 3.25MM circs. Gotta say, a marriage of needle + yarn. Smooth 'n' fast

Mods: Di helpfully provides guidance for most mods you might desire. In my case I went for a buttonhole / single button on the outside with an I-cord tie on the inside, which seemed more ... boy somehow.

Strange and subtley nuanced is this heteronormative gender fascism (thanks Ashley).

Just as an aside, I get tired of people referring to Scout as "He" sometimes to the point where I think of getting her a pink sequinned fluffy collar which screams "I'm a girl dog"! So I can truly empathise with parents wanting to slap a big pink bow or a big blue Tonka Truck on their babies to codify. Then again there are parents who seem genuinely deeply disturbed by anything vaguely gender bending.


More on the topic here.

Thanks everyone for your input on the button issue. Most of you plumped for the small tube, some for the ladybeetle. Some even raised salient issues of ladybeetles' flatness being more conducive to baby sleeping comfort., something I wouldn't have thought of. You can see cast on cast off's Kimono here.

Booties: Sole-up. 42 st, knit in the round, K2tog decreases for instep, stockinette topped of with a 'devil may care' roll down top. Easy peasy. I highly doubt there's anything more satisfying or entertaining than knitting booties.

Minutiae of Domesticity

Finally I have time to enjoy it.

Time to do about ten loads of laundry.
And love it.

To go to the movies, even curiously unsatisfying one like La Vie en Rose. At least there's some interesting knitting in this one, as there often is in French cinema.

To make up for being a crap friend lately.

Like making a humungous Shepherds Pie for a friend in need of a little help right now.

recipe for Shepherds Pie, yarn, grated nutmeg pod

Time to make a scarf for another friend's birthday.

Coffee, Bainbridge Scarf in progress: Lana Liza Merino Diamond- bought a while ago while mooning around in Rubi + Lana's grey corner-, Scout's bum.

Sitting in the sun on a Sunday morning and knitting instead of working.

I appreciate it, oh how I appreciate it.

FO: tofubooties

You've sort of seen these before. They're based on a pattern for Simple Mules from Crafts Beautiful Online UK, 2006. If anyone knows the project, and had the foresight to save the pattern in Word instead of just bookmarking the webpage like me, please let me know. Sadly, the pattern is no longer online or in their archives and emailing the editor chasing the pattern hasn't yielded any joy (yet).

So I've used the basic shape and done a 'cheat' version. Not as good as the original, which uses short row shaping to give a little fullness at the top of the instep. So it's back to the drawing board, but in the meantime, these little quickies make the perfect accompaniment to a gift for a soon-to-be-mum (is there something in the water?)

Yarn: SWTC tofutsies- verdict? Chitin, schmitin...
Yes it's soft soft, but also splitty splitty. Don't think I'd use it again.
Needles: bamboo 2.5 dpns
Time: coupla hours, tops.
Recipient: wee Ms. Selkie J. Jacobsen (whose birthweight one is usually meant to quote [here] but, well, she's baby-sized ok?).

Done like a Dinner

Last night I made Reya's Rosemary Focaccia.

First, set the dough to rise.
Then take Scout for a long walk and pound the pavement.
Next, come home and pound the dough.

When it's finished baking serve with grilled eggplant, fresh tomato, mozzarella and rocket and you're on the Express train to Yumsville.

Next up I have to make Ashley's Strawberry Shortcake for complex geopolitical reasons which are best explained later.

The last of the baby gift knitting is done, mailed and delivered, hurrah!

I'm really behind in responding to people's comments and questions, sorry folks!. So if you're one of them I'm not ignoring you I'm just trying to catch up.

vessel wednesday

small spoons: a la Abba's Mamma Mia

Little handcarved spoons from Estonia.
I've been wanting to post these for a while because the underneath reminds me of a ship's hull or the bellies of old string instruments like this one:


Pala di S.Ambrogio (detail)


And this is what the sky looked like while I was photographing spoons.


Wild + Woolly.

Yes there is knitting going on, but it's all gift knitting and hence all happening offstage. Hopefully I'll have some FOs to show soon.