A brief appearance

Probably a bit like Halley's Comet, you may not see me again for a considerable period.

Life at Chez K&K has been flolloping along. T. is growing like a weed, which is to be expected, and is enjoying great-grandmother knits nowadays instead of motherly ones as I'm still running around like a headless chook attending to work, household and mothering duties. I've managed to knit two pairs of pre-schooler gloves and one ipod sock so far this year. Pitiful. H.I. continues to hold the fort for 50 hours/week as a solo parent and does a wonderful job at it.

Project 2012 has commenced. We're going to relocate to Canberra around February 2012 to give my career a bit of a kick in the pants so that when I retire my superannuation will be of sufficient value that we'll be able to have hot showers at least once a week. At least that's the plan. We'll probably be live in Canberra for about 2 years and then we'll see what divine comedy awaits us after that. Of scarey import is that this move will signal our efforts to become filthy capitalists and buy a house. On one hand it will be a relief not to have 3 monthly house inspections (!) but then we'll have to do all our own repairs. Swings and roundabouts.

In which I realise a may have a reason for being a bit tired.

Happy New Year and I hope all my dear friends in the north are drying out. I'm thinking of you in the terrible aftermath.

I think the two worst aspects of post-flood period down here were the mosquitoes - horrible - and the stench. There was one point in my car trip to Can'tberra where I always had to switch from 'the air without' to the 'the air within' as the air was full of rotting vegetation, etc. Happily, I noticed both problems had disappeared by the time we returned from the coast, even though the water was still present in many places.

Not much to do

Yesterday was a day of waiting. Not my strongest characteristic. Firstly, off on foot (car in garage being serviced) to a hearing appointment. The Tilster's last hearing test (post grommet removal) showed a slight mechanical deafness. She had a head cold at the time and we were hopeful that this was just transitory due to fluid in her ear canal and not another bout of glue ear. It proved to be so. Now when she's ignoring us we know she's doing so quite deliberately... how comforting.

After a brisk walk home and eating our lunch on the back step (constitutes a picnic in Til's lexicon), we then waited for cleaners to arrive. Not their usual day and so I had to have diversions on hand to distract Til from bailing up the cleaners every 5 mins. The cleaners are a source of joy to me. After about 5 months back at work I finally got tired of spending every minute of my non-work hours doing housework and not getting any time with Til or Philip that didn't involve interruptions, snarling and general whining about how much I had to do. Cleaners have resolved a very boring situation for little outlay. H.I. was reluctant but has conceded that a sweeter Kate has arrived since their advent.

An hour after the cleaners left our new dishwasher arrived. Our old one was on it's last legs - the bearings had gone (whatever that means) and after a period of persuasion, our landlords decided the January sales afforded a good opportunity for replacement. It's SOOOOO quiet! And my suspicions that the old one was pretty pathetic at actual cleaning has been confirmed. The real test will be seeing if it can get peanut butter off knives.

After H.I.'s early arrival at home, I organised bikkie icing materials (assemble one pot of pink icing and another of purple, sprinkles, silver cachouts and mini marshmallows) and left father and daughter to decorate plain, sweet biscuits for school lunches while I picked up the car from the garage where it was having it's service.

After organising dinner, I made and froze into portions one batch of beef stroganoff and another of honey soy chicken.

Then I went to bed.

Have a mentioned that I'm glad I don't have to clean house?

A kind of happy exhaustion.

We're back. Wagga to Newcastle via Sydney for a 7-day, three stop, whistle tour of the rellies. 1322km (821 miles) round trip and covered all the required bases: family, friends, playmates and good takeaway.

You couldn't get us away from home with a crow bar again for at least a week!

Our Christmases have a 3-year cycle: 1) my family 2) H.I.'s family and 3) staying at home. This year, in Newie, we had a fabulous times and felt really privileged to be able to get 4 generations under one roof for the Christmas celebration again. Him Indoors' grandmother has had a lot of illness this year and had us all worried for quite a while but she seemed to be in much better health now the weather's warming up. I got to meet a new fiance and we all got along as cheerfully as one can when surrounded by many more people than one would usually encounter during the course of a single day and two semi-hysterical little kids.

Til got to play with her 5yo cousin for three whole days, which helped her understanding of all things cars, particularly V-Dubs. She can now park, wash, fill with petrol, do donuts any car (with the exception of the beloved V-Dub collection) and make a truely wide variety of car-related noises not previously in her lexicon of weird sounds. She asked for her cousin for the rest of the car-trip home (2 loooong days) and was more than slightly put out to learn that he wasn't hidden in the back of the car somewhere.

We also got to catch up with friends visiting from Rome and some old family friends of mine that are close enough to be called 'family', anyway. Surrogate families are a great marriage of friends, loyalty and default kindness.

Back in the land of Wagga, floods have receded now but there are stagnant pools of water all about generating concerns about Ross River Fever spiking this summer and autumn. Poor Til's coming home from daycare with at least 5 bites/day. This is on top of all the bites we're suffering around the house, particularly at night as we're not getting good coverage with both barrier and insecticides, although we're obviously hesitant about the use of the latter. We'll just hope for the best.

At least we haven't had any ants in the house so far this summer!

Have re-potted a zygocactus that a friend gave me when she moved house. It's a glorious hot-pink one but was a bit root-bound so I've tried to give it a boost with new soil and a more free-draining pot. I've also taken some cuttings from my jellybean cactus (sedum rubrotinctum) and a few others I've not got names for. I'm hoping to put together a dish garden - we'll see how I manage as I'm not exactly at home dealing with plants that are happy to not be watered! After 10 years of drought, I water almost reflexively.

That's the news from the back porch. I'll try to be a bit more rivetting in my next post!

Raindrops keep falling

Do you remember me occasionally commenting on the state of drought in my part of the world? Drought's over. Welcome to flood. Who'd be a farmer? Apparently Hanrahan wasn't a dour pessimist, just a optimistic realist. You'd have to be an optimist to stay a farmer!


On Thursday I was entertaining the delightful Becky et al and so missed all weather reports and warnings. We decided to take a stroll with the kids down town. We dodged one downpour, which passed through in about 5 mins and made it to town before another downpour. We'd finished our various errands and Bec and the kids pealed off to travel to Coota (hope you got there safe!) and then Til and I, with inadequate umbrellas and a stroller, started home just as the rain started to get really heavy. After crossing one intersection and poor Til getting v. wet from below (water was about 3" at the intersections) I waited for the rain to die down before I tried to cross another and go home. After 20 mins of futile waiting I called Philip and he picked us up. Turned out to be a good move as it didn't stop raining for 4 hours and 38mm later! The state of the town in the morning was astonishing; much worse than the flash floods last February, which drained away within hours, or the floods in October.


For those who watch the news concerning Australia, you may be aware that Wagga Wagga is on a major flood alert. The last time North Wagga (north bank of the Murrumbidgee River, which runs through the east and north of Wagga Wagga) was flooded was in 1991 at 9.61m. The 'big one' was 1974 at 10.74m and this is the height that the levee bank for the south bank of the river has been build to hold back floodwaters. The river is expected to peak in 2 days' time at around 10m but another large storm system is coming through and is expected around Monday/Tuesday. Houses in the lower lying areas on the north and east banks are being evacuated in anticipation of the failure of the north-side levee bank. Where we are should be fine. If we're flooded, most of inland Australia will need canoes!

Hey, maybe I won't be able to get to work on Sunday night. Woot!

A new hope...

I was listening to Is it Just Me (last episode, I think) and Wendy Harmer was commenting that she'd miss the requirement of remembering to take note of stuff happening around her and making sense of it or reflecting on it through conversation with Angela Catterns.

And that's what I've missed here.

So, K&K is re-jigged. No longer a pure knitting and social group calendar, it's more about what's happening around me. And probably a few bits'n'pieces of knitting. If I ever get back to it!

DONE!

Very silent but for good reasons. As this is a knitting blog, it doesn't work if there's no knitting! Instead, H.I. has been overseas for two fortnights, Til and I drove 900km to and from Adelaide (not sure I want to hear Justine Clarke sing the swinging song ever again), we've had lots of lovely houseguests and spent the inbetween weekends cleaning up the house and garden.

The Tilster is very actively 2 at the moment with all the attention demanding that goes with this. On top of that, she's giving up naps. Woe is me! Still, she's bright, bubbly and doing all the right things toward toilet training.

None of these activities are conducive to knitting. So today I went to my LYS to get some concentrated knitting time in to finish off the edges of this...

(photos to be added when flaming batteries for camera have charged!)

Hurrah!
Deets: Spring Garden Tee by Alana Dakos of Never Not Knitting
Needles: 4mm x 60cm circular; 3.75mm x 40cm circular; 4x3.75dpns
Yarn: SWTC Bamboo 2x 100gm balls
Notions: sitch markers essential; yarn needle for sewing in ends

Notes on the pattern:
A beautiful knit but the pattern was difficult to read. This may not be the writer's issue but probably more about me. I was always trying to knit this at night when I was usually pretty tired and couldn't concentrate very well on the increases. Third time proved to be the charm. The pattern worked better for me when I wrote out the stitch count between each marker for all the increase rows. After that there was several centimeters of soothing working-in-the-round to calm me down.

In the version of the pattern I have the sleeve edging/finishing states:
"Return left sleeve sts to size 5 needle. With RS facing, join yarn and purl 1 row. Bind off all sleeve sts. Repeat for right sleeve."
When I did this it became obvious that there was about 10 stitches that needed to be picked up under the arm for the sleeve before joining up the stitches on the waste yarn. Either I completely buggered up the underarm bit (not impossible!) or picking up the stitches was left out of the pattern instructions. Not sure which!

Now, on with the socks!

The calming effect of going round in circles

Apparently I was missing the point of socks. They go round and round and round... you get the picture - and importantly they're as complicated or as simple as you choose them to be.

I have a swap going with a girlfriend. She'll sew me a couple of handbags if I knit her a pair of bedsocks - 1 sock per bag. "Cool!" says I, contemplating my knit list, "but it may be a bit delayed".

What I didn't realise was that a plain pair of bedsocks that have been knitted before are as a balm to the frazzled brain. I've sailed through the picot edging and am charging downwards toward the heel. I have Bells to thank for this suggestion of plain knitting to intersperse with the fancy work. She was right. I've knit down to the ankle on the first sock and am likely to whip through the rest of it in right good style.

The other helpful thing is my decision to buy luxury sock needles to knit with. The last (i.e. only) pair of socks I knit were on steel needles and they fought me every stitch of the way. I'm now using Knitpro (formerly Knitpicks) Symfonie wooden dpns and ab-so-lute-ly loving them. I got them from my LYS, Simply Stitches, as with the yarn. The yarn slips very easily across them, far more so than any of my metal needles.

Stats:
Yarn - Jo Sharp Alpaca Silk Georgette 4ply in a cinnamon colour
Needles - 3mmm Knitpro dpns
Pattern - Jo Sharp Picot Edge Socks

If you want to see the end result, check out my pink ones here. H.I. took the camera with him to Roma. Fancy that!

It's a good thing I decided to start on the sock as there's no way on God's
green(ish) earth that I'd manage anything more complicated at the moment. Him Indoors has gone overseas for 12 days (not that I'm counting) and poor Tilster is missing him rather badly. Subsequently we're both short on sleep, which makes us both short on pleasantness, particularly toward each other. Oh well, only another week to go. Groan