So here we are again...

I've taken the past week off knitting - I've been working on mum's birthday present (She Wears Seashells) and last Tuesday, my hand went on strike. It was nice enough to go on strike when I got to the SnB. So there has not been much knitting happening around here.

And I'm feeling a bit ill - I ate probably two and a half muffins worth of muffin batter while making chocolate chip muffins this afternoon. Whoops.

The SnB was great last week - nice and relaxing, just listening to new people talk. And smooshing yarmmy. Err... yummy yarn! :D So I'm heading back tonight! I've also scored a great project basket from the Ferny Grove markets on Sunday - only $8, and it's huge (and lined). I've started work on my Meret again too, after finishing it last time and it being ridiculously too small. I finished off my Monkey Socks as well, last week. Or the week before. Here's a pretty picture:



I am very proud of them! And one of the first projects for a while that I've made for me. I actually don't remember the last project I made for me. Whoops. My meret is the next project just for me too. Other than that, it's everyone else :) Nevermind, not to worry.

Swappy goodness!

Ok, so the Australian Swappers group on Rav have had a Orange swap going on for a while, and I got my parcel today!!! :D The lovely Mooska, also known as Deb, spoiled me good!

Firstly, a before shot:


accompanying this wonderful parcel is a card, which made me feel loved (and squealed a little during reading):


Some Vintage Hues:


A lovely star cloth:


*wiggles excitedly* my very first owning handspun. O_O


And the particulars:


A lovely, bright tea towel, foldable scissors (which rock), 8mm orange knitting needles, and some orange beads:


Foodstuffs! Orange dark chocolate (which is in the freezer atm :), orange tic tacs, orange mints and Ceylon Orange Pekoe tea.


And the little things :) Orange sequins, two beautiful beads, some cute buttons, a little kitty figurine playing with yarn (eeeek! :D ) and some lovely kitty stitchmarkers!


And finally, group shot!


I had been a bit worried about this, seeing... well, you can't help it. But I am sooo happy and pleased with my parcel, especially after the love and orangeyness I put into my parcel for Shan :) I looooved putting that together too! Oooh it's just full of swappyness! :D

I'm off to my first SnB tonight at the Three Monkeys in West End. I'm quite excited about that as well, but a little nervous, with the whole meeting new people and all that jazz. I'm sure it will be fantastic though.

Before heading off to that though, I shall be going for a walk with Christine - we're making the decision and going walking in the afternoons. We'll see how we go for how often we'll do it, or how far we'll go, but I need to get out and do some exercise. We're also going to bellydancing classes
that start next week over at Wooloongabba. Hooray for being active ;)

Some dyeing...

I did some dyeing the other day - I put four balls of Cleckheaton Country Silk 8ply together to make a 200g ball and dyed it similar to what I had already done with it last time - blues, reds and purples. And then I'd bought a ball of while Sullivans Sock yarn a couple of weeks? ago, and dyed it blues, purples and greens. They both turned out quite nicely, especially seeing I upped the amount of vinegar I soaked it in. Need to buy more red food colouring, as that's what I tend to use up first. That, or pink. Anyway, my next lot, I want to do reds, purples with yellow, so I think it will be best to dye (or buy) yellow wool first, and then go from there with the reds and purples. Not sure how the purples will turn out though with the yellow base. Maybe I'll dye yellow and leave white patches, so the purple turns out purple and not brown.




Been a bit down yesterday and today, seeing yesterday is normally pay day. And freaking out slightly on the money front. I never really know how I survive when I have no job, but I do somehow... except the other times I've had no job, I've had ParentLink helping out. This time, it's just me and the boy. But I guess it'll work out somehow. Have been cooking and (attempting) to clean (although a lot of it has been sitting in front of the tv, watching NCIS and knitting) and trying to brainstorm what I do want to do with my life. I am going to a career councellor (when I get around to finding one) but I thought I should probably do some reasearch about where I want to take my life on my own, before I start paying someone insane amounts of money to tell me. I wonder if Griffith offers alumni councelling. Something to look at.

When I was up in Mackay while Dad was sick, I went with Mum to MADEC. I am thinking that I could see myself in that sort of enviroment. Not working with the disabled though. I have enough of that in my personal life - not so much now, of course, but that could change. But I have an understanding of what can happen at home, so I can empathise with others. So an admin side of it? Who knows. But at least that's something to think about.

To do list

• finish cleaning lounge room that I started doing on Wednesday
• go and buy cat food - done
• do not turn on tv
• clean up kitchen
• fold washing
• figure out how to connect ipod to tuner and listen to something boppy and energising.
• DO NOT SIT IN FRONT OF LAPTOP ALL DAY - wip
  
  Stuff that shouldn’t have been on the list but did anywya
  
  
• go to sortoflys and buy some Silk Garden to see what all this fuss is about, and some 4.5mm dpns and some pretty green beads (that were cheap! $2 for a string of about 45) - done
• go to cute scrapbooking place near there and buy some pretty paper and some stickers - done

You sell every kinda meat here except human!

So, a blog. And stuff.

I've been to the library three times in the past two days - yesterday Chrissy, Kaylee and I went to Mitchelton, to pick up Geisha of Gion - the Memoir of Mineko Iwasaki, who is the basis of "Memoirs of a Geisha". It was a book offered on the Rav Book Karma swap a week or two ago, and I was very interested - of course, I came too late. There was an extreme lack of knitting books there, so we toddled off to Ashgrove, where I found "The ABC For Kids Book of Knitted Toys" (Rav link) which has Raggy Dolls and Postman Pat, and Inspector Gadget! I am looking forward to making things from that. And then today, I visited the Brisbane City library, and got a bookc on Vietnamese cooking, a Jamie Oliver cookbook, One Ball Knits (rav link), a book on needlecraft, one on weekends away, and one on organisation in the home :) So I've got some nice reading material happening.

Other than that, today involved putting the car in for her 5000km service. It only hit 3000km on the way to the dealer. Whoops. Anyway, everything is wonderful. I went in and fixed up Targetness. Seeing Head Office overpaid me - for some reason they decided to pay me overtime for six and a half hours in my termination pay *sigh* so, I fixed that, and caught up with Jan. Ended up spending almost three hours there... and then went to the library, and continued my second Monkey sock (rav link) I've finished my heel decreases, and now just a few more repeats and I'll be finished my first grown up socks.

And now... I realy should finish clean up the lounge room. Seeing I've been doing that for the past three days... but I'd like to not do that too :)