You Spin Me Right Round

Every year in the month of December, the local Wood Turning Guild takes over the Community Gallery with a massive Expo and Sale on behalf of it's members.

I absolutely love going there to see all the wonderful things, smell the woods they used and very occasionally, if I'm feeling rich, pick up a pretty for myself.

Last year I went in with a mission: Upgrade from a Spud Stick to an actual, honest-to-goodness spindle.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for a pretty piece of wood!

I wasn't terribly hopeful to begin with, and my fears were confirmed after my initial browse. Lots of lovely bowls and candlesticks, the inevitable salad spoons, chopping boards and children's toys, but no spindles.

As a child I was painfully shy. I have attempted to grow out of it, but initiating social contact is still more than a little difficult for me. Screwing up my courage, taking my metaphorical balls in both hands so to speak, I approached the people chatting behind the register and asked if they might know someone who would possibly be interested in making a drop-spindle for me.

Blank looks.

Nobody knew what I was talking about.

However one old bloke was nice enough to give me a pen and a piece of paper. I drew a vague picture of what I wanted, affixed ma name and cellphone number and wandered off to work.

Two weeks later, on New Year's Eve, I got the best voicemail EVER!

A wonderful man had made me my spindle, and wanted to know if I could please come and collect it?

This is what the wonderful guy made. He has been turning wood since the 1940s, well longer than I have been alive and kicking, but had never made a spindle before! The Internet had not turned up any helpful references for him, so to the trusty local library he went for reference material to create this wonderful top-whorl drop spindle for me:



He made it from beautiful native Kauri wood and it smells AH-MAY-ZING! I can't wait to see how the colour changes when the wood absorbs lanolin from the wool fibers.

Happy crafting!

~Topaz

The "Long Thing"

I have a ongoing project that was inspired by a friend of mine.

She is taking all the random bits and bobs of yarn from her stash and knitting them into a "Big Thing".

And when she says "Big" she means it!

Her tag-end-eating monstrosity was well over 200 stitches per row the last time she was brave enough to attempt a count. Each row is so long that it takes multiple sittings to complete, and sometimes the old yarn runs out and new has to be brought in at least twice midway.

I wasn't quite brave enough to attempt something of that magnitude, but I did need something to up all my tag-ends of yarn on since I'm too lazy to turn them all into Magic Balls. The situation in my stash was getting a little desperate, with an entire shoebox full of bits and pieces far too short for a project of their own, but too long to be shredded for stuffing.

From this crisis, the Long Thing was born.

I took a pair of knitting needles that I inherited from my Grandpa, some shorter bits left from one of his post-clip-dog-vest projects, and cast on.



The Long Thing has accidentally become a kind of history of projects and people. A few sections come from donations from people in the Knitting Squad, many stripes are left-overs of my own. A precious few come from my Grandfather's stash and quite a few sections were purchased at Op-Shops specifically for inclusion in the Long Thing.

Hmmm, I guess it kinda defeats the original purpose of the Long Thing if I go and get yarn specifically for it ^.^;

~Topaz

My Very Own Beanie

I liked the hat I made for Mum so much I decided to make myself one!

Using the same pattern, which has become known in the NEV Knitting Squad as the "Boyfriend Hat" (Aren't those decreases absolutely divine?) and some utterly adorable Magic Garden Classic Prints baby yarn that essentially started dancing a little cabaret on the shelf singing "You want me, you know you want me!" when I saw it. (You know that feeling, when you see a really pretty ball or skein and you ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE IT, right?)

It is warm and bright and cheerful, the perfect pick-me-up hat for a walk to work on a cold winter's morning.



Yes, that's me at 6:30am on a chilly Saturday morning. There is a good reason why I dislike having my photo taken!

~Topaz

The Many Stages Of My Mother's Hat

So, for Mother's Day last year I decided to be nice and make my Mum a hat. I figured that winter was just around the corner, and she'd probably need something to keep hear head warm whilst walking the animate mop she calls a dog.

(Mono is a wee white West Highland Terrier. Cute, but a little on the short side for full 'Dog' status in my books)

Mother's Day happens to fall near my paternal Grandmother's birthday, and we were planning on driving up to Christchurch to celebrate with her. My partner was driving, so this guaranteed me five or so hours of uninterrupted knitting time in which to make Mum's hat.

I wasn't entirely sure what colour to make Mum's hat. Naturally all her clothes are different colours, and I didn't want to get something that clashed horribly with 90% of her wardrobe. I found a nice shade of grey to execute the project in, and then I consulted Ravelry for a pretty beanie pattern I could pull off in the car. Something that looked nice, but wasn't too complicated in execution.

I fell in love with this pattern. The decreases are wonderful and make a monotone hat into something a little special.

After disturbing some poor hitchikers with the sight of a young female happily knitting and talking away a long car trip, I presented Mum with her hat.

She liked it! *Smug face*



(That's her 'I like my new hat, but why do you need a photo?' face)

At Nana's party we caught up with one of my many Uncles, who had come over from Australia for the Birthday Festivities. Canterbury is a darn sight cooler in climate than Queensland and my uncle was as bundled up as he could be without getting hassled by his brothers and he STILL looked cold. Mum very kindly leant him her brand new hat for the night, since a grey beanie is a "manly" way of staying warm.

The hat is now in Australia, probably stuffed in the glove box of his massive B-Triple truck.

Mum was a little bit pissed off by this hat-theft, so I offered to make her a replacement hat. Mum agreed, on the condition that SHE got to pick the yarn.

You know what happens when a non-knitter is allowed an unsupervised yarn-buying trip? You get a ball of overpriced, inferior quality wool yarn that has KNOTS halfway through which COMPLETELY CHANGE the colourway and provide a point of potential unravelment during hard wearing.

Oh well, it was a very pretty colourway. I would have been all over it if it was on sale too ^.^;

The placement of the knots in the ball of yarn Mum chose for her hat meant that it was about 5cm too short for Comfortable Ear Coverage, so I picked up around the bottom seam and added on a few extra rows of ribbing with some Barbie-Pink yarn to give it a bit of a boost.




There, now she can walk Mono in stylish comfort. You'll definitely see her coming at the dog park!

~Topaz

Told To Go Get Twisted

Yes, another knitter has been learning how to spin!

The lovely Vivian of the NEV Knitting Squad, a lady who is multi-talented when it comes to handcrafts (She even stocks a Craft Store on Baldiwn Street!) has been endeavouring to teach me how to take the various fibers I have somehow acquired over the last few months and transform them into a knittable state.

We have begun with the basics: Making singles on a drop spindle.

This is my very first drop spindle:


Yes, you are looking at a potato impaled upon a stick.

Yes, it is THAT easy to make a drop spindle!

THIS is my Very First Ever yarn.


I span it at Vivian's house under her watchful eye, and she plied it on her spinning wheel and showed me how to set the twist before turning me loose to get the basic hand motions so ingrained that I don't have to think about it any more.

She sat me at her (Yarn-less) spinning wheel while we were waiting for my first efforts to dry with the deceptively simple order to "Keep it going in the same direction" for a few minutes while she went to boil the jug.

I'll tell you this now: It's blasted difficult!

My record was about 15 seconds before I lost the knack and it started reversing itself. I think I'll stick with my nice, safe spud-stick for a while. At least it's easy to fix if I accidentally break it!

~Topaz

Stash Bash: Round One!

Hello, Blogosphere!

Long time, no see.

Again!

I could sit here and make all these excuses about it being first NaNoWriMo, then Christmas, then New Years, and then having people at my workplace quit or go back to their home towns leaving lots of lovely extra shifts for me to work and eating all my blogging and crafting time; or I could just leap back into things and pretend that those horrible long months of silence and non-activity never happened.

Yeah, leaping into things is definitely a lot more fun than making excuses. Especially if you're leaping into a bouncy castle! But I digress.

Like many knitters, I am an inveterate collector of yarns of all colours and descriptions. There are currently a suitcase, stilt box and several 'Eco Bags' full of yarn scattered around my flat. It is probably a very good thing that I live alone and am not irking my partner or any flatmates with the continued expansion of my collection!

Another thing is that I am in no way at all a yarn snob! I am just as likely to go for some glorious Merino or Alpaca blends as I am to grab some deliciously coloured acrylic. Ah, gotta love all those 'crylics who selflessly give their lives to make those wonderfully bright and affordable yarns! ;)

As well as collecting yarn myself, I also love having a perv at other people's stashes. Logic leads me to assume that since I'm not the only person who drives my non-knitter associates slightly mad with my compulsive yarn buying, then I'm not alone in loving to have a peek at other people's collections.

So: Here are a few things I picked up over the course of 2011. Inevitably most of my acquisitions are sitting in my stash waiting for that 'Aha!' moment of inspiration to hit before they are turned into something truly magical, so I shall show you some of the few lucky items that have definite futures awaiting them :)

This is a hand dyed Cotton-Rayon blend I picked up at a Craft Open Day in Milton. I think it will become a nice, absorbent cowl for summer rides on my motorbike:





From the same Open Day, a wee bag of Merino/Gotland cross lamb fleece to force me to learn how to spin:




These I picked of for specific Christmas presents. Sadly none of the planned presents were actually finished in time, due to extra shifts popping up like rabbits out Central. This year I fully intend to gain some time management skills in order to avoid making a habit of gifting "IOU Hat/Scarf/Socks/Mittens" notes!

(Lol, we'll see how well I go with THAT!)



I also stuffed a fill-your-own bag of random wool laps at the Milton Wool Mill Factory Shop, so I don't ruin my really nice fleece while I learn!




There we go: First Post of 2012 done, dusted and out of the way.

Onwards and upwards to greater things!

~Topaz

Please Forgive Me. . .

. . . For being absent of late. This is a very busy time of year for me, and it is taking a toll on my ability to blog.

(Basically annihilating any time for it, I mean!)

I had my LAST! EXAM! EVER! in October, my 25th birthday on Guy Fawkes day, and now I am taking part in NaNoWriMo with thousands of other literature loving masochists from all over the globe.

If you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, go to www.nanowrimo.org to find out.

I'd better get back to writing, this story won't tell itself!

Happy crafting,

~Topaz