ravelry

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.

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

*

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

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

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

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.