New toys

Well, there has been talk around here of knitting - and its true. Somehow the knitting has overtaken the photography, so there is a bit of a backlog, but here are my Monkeys! (apologies to Esmerelda for taking so long!) I really don't need to say anything about them, being the ubiquitous internet-knits of the season. However, they were great fun to knit, and a good first lace project. (Sorry about the indoor pics - limited sunshine for the last few days!).

The yarn is lovely hand-dyed stuff from Fearless Fibers, in the Chocolate Pink Cherry colourway (it really does look like a mashed up Cherry Ripe!), and I had a fantastic time knitting with it. The variability made me want to keep knitting, but it was subtle and with very little colour pooling. This is a great yarn! I held off knitting it for a bit as it was a huge skein of yarn, enough to make knee socks, but I just really liked this pattern, and I think the yarn works with it really well (although S thinks they are better named 'inside out Monkeys') . There is enough for some baby sized treats left too.

The yarn was a generous gift from my Sound Swap pal Chris, who also introduced me a heap of new music - we actually just took possession today of a CD by The Builders and the Butchers, which was one of the bands on the CD she sent me. My new favourite driving music.

Another gift that I received today was from my Dad! I am waiting for some needles to turn up so I can start a Jo Sharp cardy/jacket, and I would like to have a pin/skewer thing to fasten it (rather than leaving it open as per the pic in the pattern). But I couldn't find many online, and none really that I liked. So I asked my dad, pointed him in the direction of some similar things I liked, and look what arrived in the post....

Aren't they great! Yay for clever dads. They are about 15-20cm long, and work really well. They are made of (from top to bottom in the picture above) teak, celery-top pine, and Tasmanian myrtle. The last two woods are indigenous to Tasmania, and the pine is actually from an offcut from their kitchen benches! The colours are pretty good, although the myrtle is a bit 'pinker' in real life - a wood I really love. He is thinking of making some to sell - any suggestions from you folks out there? Are they too big, too small, too plain? I will put some photos up soon of them in use so you get a better idea of size.

And finally ..... the gorgeous Esmerelda nominated me as:

How cool is that! And I nominate Tikrimari! I love reading her blog - if only she would write more! So here is my nomination for her (hopefully, she will post some more pics of her new puppy!)