I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the ACT, the Ngunnawal people. I acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region.

Monday, October 09, 2006

The post with no name

Too tired to come up with a cute post title, sorry. Things are happening at work that make life pretty crap but I can't blog about it.

Mum had cataracts removed from one eye last week which left her pretty wonky on the health front because she had to come off all other meds to have it done. She's not back to speed yet, but she's looking better ;) .

ALL of the teams I supported on grand final weekend lost, including my beloved Newtown Jets (go the Bluebags) who lost by a golden point in extra time. So devastating.

The long weekend, however, was not a complete bust. The generous and talented The Shopping Sherpa made me the most gorgeous knitting bag. Check out the photos on her blog . It's absolutely fantastic! I'm calling it my ANZAC tote because it was made by a Kiwi for an Aussie and has a digger knitting socks on it. It's also made from NZ frugalled denim and AUS frugalled sheeting and rick rack. Did I mention I adore it? Well I do. It's also just the right size for small projects like socks (it came with it's very own sock kit and a book on spinning and gorgeous red needles). It is also just the right size for my current knitting obsession, wash cloths.

Yep, I know I've been a little scathing sceptical about the usefulness of knitted wash cloths but both Jejune and Gillian have convinced me to give it a go. Made one for Jejune for her birthday and haven't stopped since.

During the clear up of stash (and there has been more than one go at this in the last month), I found rather a lot of 8ply cotton lying around. So I'm stash busting washcloths for Christmas. 36 are needed - 11 for boys, 25 for girls. That's one for each volunteer, one for each member of staff and a couple for "oops I forgot" gifts. Current accumulation - 10 wash cloths. Current rate of production - about 2 every three days. I'm well on schedule, but if you see me and I'm not knitting cotton wash cloths, please mention it.

Busting is also happening in the reclaimed and 12 ply stash. Hats for the homeless are on the needles and I'm doing about 1 a week just in the daily little gifts of time that modern living provides - like walking to and from the car at work, walking around shops at lunch time, standing in Medicare queues and waiting for meetings to start.

Operation Wipeout in September saw some gains. I unravelled, washed and skeined 4 jumpers and there are pieces of several more waiting to be skeined. Skeining takes away from knitting time, though, so they may wait for a bit longer. The back of the Celebate Vest is finished and during the football grandfinals, about 2/3 of the front was done, too. Err, other stuff was done, but certainly not all of it. Beyond the Christmas knitting, though, no new projects have been started.

Cannot get any pictures to load, sorry. More later in the week.

4 comments:

Margie said...

Warshcloths surely fit a perfect need with being stashbusting, quick and simple(ish) and useful. As well as much more impressive to the recipient than they necessarily are to make.

I wouldn't really bother to make one for myself but I can see that they would make nice gifts.

This too coming from someone who has previously had a very low opinion of them.

I have only committed to knitting one more christmas gift and already I'm finding it overwhelming. Your effort deserves a gold star (or two).

Hope yo mama's eyes are doing well. My grandma got hers done a few years ago and then had to rethink some of her recently aquired clothes. A few of the things she thought were lovely subdued colours were actually rather garish.

This could explain a lot of the fashions in the senior set, methinks.

Gillian said...

I think it's the 'finishing something so quickly" that gives me great satisfaction. My favourite wash cloth patterns are in The Knitters Stash book.
Must admit that I've not got the knack of walking and knitting at the same time. I trip over a line drawn on the path as it is.
Cheers Gillian

Denise said...

I'm highly impressed by your stash-reduction activities, and incredibly generous knitting for others... knitted washcloths are SO much nicer than those yukky scrubby gloves or pedestrian towelling ones (but since you're knitting them while you walk around, maybe they ARE pedestrian?).

You know I'm thinking of you with all the horrible work nasties... hope it improves soon!

happyspider said...

glad to hear from you again, was getting awfully quiet around here.. hang in there babe.