Knotty Knickers

Santosha Swap Special Delivery

It's swap package show off time once again!

Silk and Stainless Steel handknit earrings! With what look like Connemara marble beads to me.

5 sock wools to add to my blanket!

70% Dark Chocolate bar and two milk chocolate roll candies from Norway.

Earl Grey Strong tea - squee!

A soft, warm, lovely green lace scarf - I would probably not knit such a thing for myself but I’m so in love with it already…that I think I might wear both it and...

a...

blue…

lace…

beaded…

shawl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It would be a gorgeous shawl without beads but the beads make me about want to faint from fantasticness.  Love times a million. 

All this and two letters from NZ Biosecurity - one telling me they’ve kept the tea with citrus peel and loose lavender with ‘contaminants’ which I can have back, after heat treatment for a fee or I can return to sender for, breath in - $74.47. Now, breath out hysterical laughter with me. Tea. Shipped. For 75 bucks. NZ post is really ridiculous. Or the Biosecurity people using NZ post are making a small killing off overcharges.

The other letter totally makes all this alright though. It reads ’ Dear Madam, Due to the enthusiasm of one of our Biosecurity Detector Dogs, the exterior of your mail item/parcel has been damaged during our Mail Screening Process. I apologise for this and would like to suggest that you contact us should you have any concerns.’

Attached is a card of “Chilli” the cute detector dog I assume is responsible for the damage as his ‘favourite smells’ listed are ‘flowers and seeds’ which makes sense if there was lavender present. The card also states that Chilli’s weirdest sniff out was a ‘fresh crow foot’. Riiiiight.

 

On Not Wearing A Handknit Jumper

I am telling everyone this story.  You might understand why.

Early last week I was at work.  Tights under a jean mini skirt, and a tee shirt under my organic cotton velour hoodies.  Lace shawl on as a scarf, leg warmers (100% cashmere, thank you very much) supporting the tights for lower extremity comfort, and fingerless gloves.  All my own handiwork.  

I took the gloves off to do dishes or seam or something small and fiddly like that and had them off when all the below transpired.

A woman came in the shop and I was showing her our things.  

Part way through a sentence she seemed to think of something.  Her next sentence was, 'you aren't a big knitter are you?'

Me, 'uh, yes, actually I am.  I've taken my gloves off, but lace shawl and leg warmers created by me' - a smile with limb extension to highlight the fact.

Her: 'but you aren't wearing a handknit jumper.'

That was her sentence, full stop.

No handknit jumper = not a knitter.

Me: 'well, this is organic cotton from my days as a yoga teacher, I like to mix textures.'  

Which I do.  And a smooth, shiny fabric like the organic cotton velour is pretty awesome to put fingering weight lace against, in my opinion.  Or coordinate with hand-dyed semi-solid gloves in a lighter shade of the top's colour (grey).

While I was thinking all this she'd pretty much wandering off and out of the store.

The hag.

I mean, really.  

We've Been Adopted

By two cats who lived here over a year ago.  They moved up the road a good ways after living here.  And then, around the time we moved in, they were taken to their human grandmother because their owner was heading to Australia.  

Human grandma has a little barky dog that chased them.  Human granma did not know about keeping cats in a new house for several days after moving and let them out.  Human granma looked for two weeks for them.  At least one of those week they were at ours hanging out.  Well, the girl/mother cat was.  The boy looked so scruffy when he showed up, and I was feeling so crazy cat lady with a silent cat beacon, that I wouldn't give and let him in.  It was good weather, don't look at me like that.

Anyhow, human grandma came to our house after that first week we had them in our radar and told us what was going on.  Alex was away on his block course in Wellington.  I sent the cats with their human grandma and made no promises that we'd take them.  

Even though it was simple math.

Cats in need of a human.  

Girl in need of cats.  

By the next day I'd gotten a green light from Alex and we had the cats inside our place.  

That's the boy, Little One, above, attacking the laundry that's been hanging on the clotheshorse this week.  He alternated his washcloth attacks with tail chasing - his own tail of course - and I found it very funny.  Less funny was a night or two later when he was trying to kung fu my new Sunshine Yarns Worsted Merino from Tava.  The yarn escape.  And the dishcloths don't really mind (they are from the bach in Kaikoura and plenty abused as is).

Here is a close up of Little One's mother, who came to us named Odys - 'uuuudees' - the stupidest kind of cat name, and obviously granted by the little person who lived with the cats before.  We've changed it to Cordelia, in honour of the Buffy character because she really is a bit of a bitch.  Nice, but extremely uppity.

I'd like it noted that tagging this post 'Furry Babies' is very hard for me.  I miss Anthemis everyday and while these two soothe my ideal that a house is not a home without furry bodies, they aren't actually my babies presently.  Maybe someday, maybe at not.  Miss you Mr. Moo, and hope you remember in your fat head that I love you most in all the feline world!

I Say THANK YOU

After a slow meander through the market for groceries and the annual used book sale that supports Founders Park, we returned home and I had a package waiting.  A GOOD package.  A beautiful, kind, generous package from indigodragonfly - the clever Joss Whedon-loving handdyeing company.

I'm told it was all down to Otis, but I suspect that Kim and Ron had a good deal to do with it as well.

Apparently there was a first plan to send over some mini sock skeins alone.

Two Merino Sock, one Merino Silk Sock, and one MCN Sock mini skeins - just perfect for working into the sock blanket.  I'm excited to try the three bases one after the other and report on my findings.  I'm getting more into learning about the different bases and sussing what they are good for.

Happily, for these four plane-phobic travellers, they, like Diane Court, had the handsome and attentive Lloyd Dobler to keep them calm for the journey.

See:

hehehehehehe - that makes me smile to no end!  

What doesn't make me smile is that the wonderfulness that is Say Anything doesn't seem to have filtered here to NZ.  The...not heathens, I like them...but something like that.  Philistines!  That's right.  (You can't put a check next to a word you look up in an online dictionary, sad.)

This FULL SKEIN of gifted fantasticness is a MCN Lace - that's 526m/575yd of delight.  Truly.  How did Otis know that I'm enjoying my first true lace project and looking forward to doing another?  Or that I've several patterns that I make mean eyes at because I want them but haven't the meterage to do them?  

Tonight will include pattern shuffling for sure.  I want this on the needles as soon as the Fleece Artist Suri Blue (sadly discontinued) Ishbel is off.  (That's going well, by the way.)

Okay, one more photo and then we must be off to help the family.  

Admission: I may try for a indigodragonfly club slot next year.  They have things like this: AWESOME!