The joy of homemade

This year I'm making all the clothes that I can, rather than buying them. My aim is to make something to wear - either for me, or for someone else - once a fortnight. I love making things. I love fabric, texture and colour. I love bargains - who doesn't? - and when I can make a tube skirt with bright, eye-popping turquoise spots for $3.00 I am extremely happy.

So far this year I have made the aforementioned skirt, a pair of palazzo pants, a pair of striped leggings, a turquoise sleeveless linen shirt and a small kimono/throw over in weird, but nice mesh-y material. I'm waiting for cooler weather to wear the leggings, the perfect cardigan to wear with the linen shirt, and to tidy the ends of the kimono thinggy, but the palazzo pants and the skirt have had numerous outings. We're quite blessed in Melbourne with great fabric stores. Both the pants and the skirt were from the Cleggs remnant sale - an event that happens twice a year.

Skirt, with handmade shawl.

Dear You - Sundays

I remember when Sundays had a certain melancholy attached to them. Before I was old enough to appreciate nights by myself, it was the night a long-ago boyfriend worked. It also heralds the end of the weekend, of course, and one prepares, as best one can, for the onslaught of the working week. As I work largely from home, this hasn't been particularly relevant for many years. The Accountant has retired and Mademoiselle Rouge works in hospitality, so Sunday isn't weighted with any significance (except that Miss Rouge may be welcoming her weekend!)

Despite this, I still feel as though there needs to be something to look forward to on Sunday evening. For a long time we had the fam bbq. But with most of the fam moved out, that's no longer so relevant, either - although we do announce one every so often and they are always fun in a stressful kind of way.

Today I worked at making my room more ordered and more habitable, but before I did that I marinated a chicken - in orange juice, chermoula, honey and mustard to roast this evening. I knew we'd be gardening up at the Mothership's so I wanted something easy I could fling in the oven and forget about. I also cooked sticky ginger parkin - my go-to cake which is darkly delicious and not quite cake-like.

So I felt I could take an hour and shop for suitable chaos-ordering objects like lever files, a box file ( who knew they still made them!) and the like. I'm going to work over the next week at filling these with appropriate printed material. But the best thing I purchased? A roll pencil-case, for storing knitting needles when I travel. Seriously good!

Little compartments for needles. And my Knit Kit fits in the larger zipper section. I just love the sound of velcro!

The Tuesday Poem was rudely interrupted...

Mademoiselle Rouge departed for Spain last night. It's her first solo trip overseas. The first trip was a school exchange visit to Japan - very different from going to Spain by yourself and planning to walk 100 kilometres of the Camino de Santiago, not to mention couch surfing. It was all too stressful to think of poetry - although that might have calmed me down! But I was busy completing these:

Fingerless mitts to keep her hands warm. A good pattern from Ravelry - sized so you can make it for most gauges and for most sized hands. I shall be making more of these!  The yarn is Colinette Jitterbug sock  yarn. I bought a grab bag of odd yardages from the Colinette mill shop - not enough for socks, but plenty long enough for mitts.

When you've admired these and before you whisk out your double-sided needles to make your own, hop on over to the Tuesday Poem blog where you can read three intriguing poems from a debut verse novel, Bird Murder,  by Stephanie Lash, brought to you this week by Helen Rickerby. When you've put your order in for your own copy of Bird Murder, check out the sidebar for other Tuesday poems.

The week in things borrowed, knitted, sewn and written....

Books actually read will have an asterix. 

Cooking books:
 Rick Stein's Spain
Poh's Kitchen
Gingerboy Creative Street Food

Poh inspired some banana bread/cake I have made and I have used Rick Stein's book. Have yet to use Gingerboy, but I want to. Now that The Accountant is back and there are more people to cook for, I might check it out more thoroughly.

Books on, or related to, Virginia Woolf:
Virginia Woolf, An Inner Life,   Julia Briggs
The Romantic Moderns, English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper, Alexandra Harris.
Virginia Woolf Diary, Volume lll
Virginia Wool, A Writer's Life, Lyndall Gordon
Snapshots of Bloomsbury, The Private Lives of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, Maggie HUmm
Virginia Woolf and Her World, John Lehman
Moments of Being, Autobiographical Writings, Virginia Woolf

So much Virginia Woolf because I am teaching a class on To the Lighthouse at the CAE. Her diary is wonderful - I love reading diaries, particularly those of writers I admire.
Others:
Red Mandarin Dress, Qui Xiaolong (not yet read as I thought it might be a little too scary to read while The Accountant was away.)
Pray for Me in Santiago, Theresa Burkhardt-Felder (actually forgot that I had borrowed this! oops - borrowed because Mademoiselle Rouge is going to Spain and walking part of the Camino)
Bitter Greens, Kate Forsyth (which I haven't read yet because I haven't quite finished my own Rapunzel project.)

E-books:
Unzipped , Nicki Reed * - loved the Melbourne setting and the glimpse into the mysterious world of bike couriers in Melbourne. Who knew they named their bikes?
Mindful Knitting, Tara Jon Manning
Knitting Old School, Stitchy McYarnpants

Knitting update: Rowan sock yarn socks nearly finished. I love them - they are wonderfully soft, fit beautifully and I know they will be a winter staple. Just hard to get super enthusiastic about socks when the weather here was in the 40s the week before last and will no doubt escalate again.

Sewing update: One top made from beautiful mesh - I wore it on Thursday. I'll take a photo and post it tomorrow. The kaftan pattern was easy to use and although it's a slightly different top to the one I envisaged making, it's actually better as I can wear it over stuff, rather than just under stuff.

Writing update: Downloaded Scrivener - like it. Wrote stuff for the Rapunzel project. Started Chapter Seven of the novel. Not a great working week, but not a hopeless one, either. 

Movies seen: Inside Llewelyn Davis and The Wolf of Wall Street. Loved the Coen Brothers' melancholy take on being an artist. Also loved Scorsese's over the top tale of Wall Street. The two worlds couldn't be further apart!

Two King Parrots have come and visited almost every day this week. One perched on the washing we'd left on the deck and Mademoiselle Rouge was worried her work apron would be bird-sullied. I approached it carefully and the bird, head on one side as though he was seriously considering my actions, hopped back a rung, allowing me to slip the apron off the washing horse. They're such lovely birds. We've also had lots of wrens around the bird baths in the hotter weather. I had no idea that I would love birds this much and I've been thinking about when all that started. I think it stems from seeing my first Friar birds. They were so odd and wonderful.

It's interesting that you can walk through a huge part of your life completely unaware that an enduring love for something is going to unfold. So many of the things I do, I have done for most of my life. I've written for most of my life. I learnt to knit when I was, maybe ten? and then again later. I started spinning when I was about fifteen or sixteen. I learnt how to use my mother's old Singer sewing machine when I was about nine and then later did dressmaking at school. But birds - really actively looking at them, noticing them, identifying them and loving them is recent.

New knitting - and a picnic!

On New Year's Day, despite the rain, we went on a picnic. Fortunately the rain held off until after we'd eaten. It was a lovely afternoon with great food and coffee later in a cafe. We noted our Aims for 2014, discussed ways of achieving them and I even managed to get The Accountant to agree, in theory, that we might go to New Zealand this year. I have witnesses!

And now - knitting! Nearly one sock down, one to go. This is knitted from Rowan sock yarn and feels absolutely beautiful on.

 

I also cast on for a scarf, using the lace-weight natural yarn I bought in the Shetlands. I could try for a more ambitious lace pattern, but I like the little scallopy bits and I haven't a huge amount. Sometimes simple patterns are satisfying. And also user-friendly. I like projects I can do while I talk!

Aims for 2014

This year we had a casting off and bringing in on the Solstice. But I still made some Aims for 2014. I've given up calling them Resolutions. It feels too set in granite. Aims feel more flexible.

1. An hour of French every day.
2. At least an hour's writing every day.
3. Knit the Rowan leopard print jumper. (But knit more boldly in general and try new techniques.)

4. Cook one beautiful meal a week - and utilise my huge collection of cookbooks.
5. Only buy clothes I can't a) make or b) that are so reduced in price it would be a crime to pass them up.

They aren't exactly earth-shattering aims, but they'll do. They are concrete and achievable and will enrich my life. I have other mindspace things I'd like to accomplish, but I know that it will be a stop/start process with most of those.

The New Year - a time of hope, optimism and renewal. Looking forward to broadening my horizons in 2014, consolidating what I have learnt and strengthening relationships.

In lieu of a knitting update - which should be coming to you soon!

Look at what I've seen! These pencil cases were made by some of the girls at Fairholme College in Toowoomba where I spent yesterday as part of the Voices on the Ranges line up. This is such a great idea that I'm planning to make one for as a knitting bag. I had a lot of fun running a writing workshop for Voices on the Ranges and also doing two presentations. The girls were terrific and the young writers I worked with in the workshop session came up with some great ideas. The whole gig ran very smoothly and it was a pleasure to be in Toowoomba - I once lived there for nearly a year.

Just in order to justify the 'catty knits' part of the title:

Hand-knitted socks in a yarn gifted to me in a swap. Hand-kintted short-sleeved cardigan in French mohair bought on ebay. The latter was simple pattern I made up, sleeves knitted last (which I discovered I had enough yarn left over.) The sleeves were made up with the help of the book, Custom Knits, Wendy Bernard. She has very clear instructions about how to knit a sleeve in the round and the sleeves I made for my cardigan were the cap-part of these - I was too concerned about running out of yarn to contemplate anything longer.

Borrowed P D James' Time to be Earnest, a Fragment of Autobiography from the library the other day and have finished over the weekend. It's a charming book - partly because James, born in 1920, is very much of her time. She is a courteous writer, consciously avoiding any scandal or gossip in the diary she keeps in her seventy-eighth year. She's conservative, but she's also a philanthropist and sharply aware of  her duty and responsibilities to the larger community. She's a church-goer with a great respect for church literature. The book doesn't chronicle her writing process as such, but it does provide interesting glimpses of the post-publication work a writer with the status of P D James undertakes. In one week she signs more than  2000 books! Her reflections on crime writing make interesting reading but she also talks about the books she reads throughout the year and books she has read.

Here are her own four pieces of advice to aspiring novelists:

The first is to read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognise good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infections and should be avoided.

Practise writing in whatever form; the craft is learned by practising it, not by talking about it. Some poeple find that writing courses or local writers' circles are a help, but they are not for everyone.

Increase your vocabulary; the raw material of the writer is words and the more we have abailable and can use effective and with confidence the better.

Welcome experience. This means going through life with all sense open: observing, feeling, relating to other people. Nothing that happens to a writer need ever be lost.

From: P D James, Time to be in Earnest, A Fragment of Autobiography, Faber & Faber, 1999, p. 187.

I think it entirely appropriate that the first real entry under my new blog banner should include P D James and knitting - although I'm not certain that P D James knits (and I rather think she doesn't), her autobiography often harks back to a time where women knitted out of necessity.

Autumn resolutions

I think maybe one should make seasonal resolutions. Today I decided to move my knitting and fibre adventures back to this blog. I think it will make me feel happier.

This is one of the Ixchel angora bunnies. I've just knitted my daughter a variegated grey cowl from pure angora - it's unbelievably soft. I think this bunny was giving me the evil eye. It's name is Kabookie. Who knew they had fluffy little feet as well?

I learnt to spin when I was about seventeen - on an Ashford wheel. I learnt to spindle first - using a drop spindle. We bought them in Melbourne - we'd driven through from Queensland, my mother, her partner and me in the old Dodge Ute. We bought the spindles from the Spinners and Weavers Guild, Victoria - it was then in the city, from memory.

I can remember standing on a table in order to get enough drop for my spindle - and being totally frustrated when the yarn broke, time after time.

Shortly after that I learnt to spin on a wheel. It's a very relaxing thing to do. I loved brown fleece in particular and spinning in the grease.

I sold my Ashford when I left Brisbane years ago. I was given another Ashford by a woman at a Warrugul writer's retreat years later. I gave that away sometime back and now I own a Majacraft Little Gem - which is an upright wheel - and an unknown Norwegian-style spinning wheel which I bought secondhand from the Spinners and Weavers Guild, which is now in Shakespeare Street, Carlton.

I feel much happier when there's time in my life for spinning, knitting and sewing. One of my autumn resolutions is to keep this time and not be overwhelmed with work demands. Quite frankly, I'm not paid enough to be overwhelmed!

On the Needles

  The loveliness which is the Woodland Shawl made in Rowan Bamboo. Rown bamboo, thy beauty is to me like those stately Chinese temples of yesteryear...seriously, it's beautiful yarn. It's very matte somehow. No real sheen but great drape and silkiness. It seems to swallow the light.

I bought it at the Cleggs sale. It wasn't on sale, of course. Just ten percent off, which was something at least. I didn't like the pink they had - well I liked it but it wasn't going to like me at all. This charcoal was the best colour for a wrap-thing - and it had to be a wrap thing because there was only six balls left. However, they also had Anny Blatt yarn including Trianon - a wool, mohairand polymide mix. This has charcoal accents mixed in with silver and gold sparkly bits and some rather lovely plum.

My original idea was to use a ball of this either side of the charcoal bamboo and create a deep ruffley flounce. I'm not so sure now that this will work, given the nature of the pattern and the contrasting yarns. I'm still thinking about it. What's definite is that this bamboo is delicious and holds the patten like cotton would but with a silky drape. I love the definition of the little leaves. Also, and this is a huge plus for me - the lace pattern isn't difficult. Partly this would be because it's not increasing the way a triangular shawl does and partly it's because I can actually see what I'm doing. Unlike the Shetland Shawl.

The year so far....

Cooked: Pasta-made-from-scratch with pesto from our own basil, made with oven roasted garlic (just because I had some) and lemon-infused olive oil (ditto).
Roast lamb with fresh rosemary and sage from our garden and roast potatoes. That's for tonight, but I cooked it yesterday. I'm going to roast some zuchinis and pine nuts to have with it and, while I have the oven on, I'm going to cook a curry. I hate putting the oven on for just one thing these hot days.

Knitted: Have begun my Cat Bordhi new directions sock - The Foxglove. It seems a little too big to me though my guage is unexpectedly right. I messed up the beginning of the fountain pattern - went against my instinct and followed what I thought were the pattern's instructions. Totally messed up the provisional cast on that's supposed to be so easy by somehow having the garter ridges on the outside - but I can live with that. I think I can also live with the size. I'm going to keep going anyway. I'm flying by instinct but I figure I'll have a better grasp on how it all works by the end, even if I do make some mistakes.

Spun: I've been working on spinning samoyed hair (donated by the girlchild's boyfriend's mother. I've mixed this with English Leicster for sock yarn. The samoyed is very fluffy - like angora, but with guard hairs. The spinning is very slubby. The colours - white and brown - look good together. How resilient it will be as sock yarn is another matter - and as to the felting possibilities, I couldn't say. I imagine it will felt well - dog hair tends to matt. This could be a good thing if I make socks that are big enough. Which is my intention.

Reading: Stephanie Alexander's Journal, The Historian and this morning, started Janet Turner Hospital's Orpheus Lost. I've been meaning to read this ever since I read a review of it in Good Reading. I like Turner Hospital's work and I'm always intrigued by her ideas. Had to wrench myself away from the book to do some ...

Writing: Magenta - not only am I close to finishing the first (second and completely different draft) chapter, but I also dredged up the first draft I'd done which turned out to be more than I thought, which is a good thing. Also - but this was last year (just) so does it count? another Rapunzel poem.

Movies: Darjeeling Limited at the Cameo Cinema, outdoors. I do love the outdoor cinema. The trains cruising into Belgrave station just add atmosphere and I love the way night falls. I also love the way men of a certain generation and older help their partners with their deck chairs. The Accountant does, of course. That may be an act of self-preservation - I do tend to wave them around wildly, trying to find out which way is up. I like eating a choc top under the stars. I like sharing The Accountant's coat when it gets cold.

I also loved Darjeeling Limited - it has a random kind of feel to it, even though the narrative was shaped - we never really find out what is shaping it. The alliances between the three brothers shift, their relationship with their father is hinted at but never revealed, their mother, although sighted and heard, disappears, their partners remain largely off screen. I enjoyed that mysteriousness. The Accountant, I think, felt it a little frustrating. Visually the film was superb - a lush, obsessive attention to detail. Also, how can you not fall for Adrien Brody? Well, okay - perhaps The Accountant can't.