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wave back :)

So apparently it is National (does that mean only in the USA? If so when is the Australian one?) scratch that, let us just call it International Delurking Week. I know some of the people who like to poke around here you know those people who possibly know more about you than you know about yourself (family and buds), yeah but back on track, just imagine, you can see me waving at you and saying hello.

What do you do?

  1. Say to yourself is she waving at me? must be that person behind me but I’ll wave back anyway.
  2. Wave back and say Hi Helen.
  3. Ignore the wave and go about your merry way.

What did you answer? Option 2 is the cool one but if you go the others, I will cope, after all I can only wave my hand so many times in one week 🙂

Back to more content driven posting sometime soon.

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Crocheted Bag

Erins' bag

Well to the right, you can see the completed bag, my first real functional piece of Crochet, done on a 3mm hook using Anchor Magicline Cotton, the pattern comes from Judith Swartz’s book Hip to Crochet. Mum is currently also making this bag again from Magicline but a different colourway and a 3.5mm hook.

This bag is going to the daughter of a family friend, well the main present are the dolls you see below (click on either picture to see them larger), which we purchased at the Salamanaca Markets and the bag is just serving as a tote for them. :):)

Now I just have to decide what my next project will be…..
dolls

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most of my loot

Tassie Loot (click the image to see it larger)
1. 1970’s and earlier Wool Kimono Fabrics from a must see store in Tasmania called Wafu Works at Kinsgton Beach (20mins south of Hobart). It is harf to believe these are wool, they are so light 🙂
2. Modern Japanese Quilting Cottons
3. Ultra Funky and Bright Wollen throw/snugle/picnic rug from the Waverly Woolen Mills outlet store in Launceston
4. Knitted blanket from the Glen Orchy Tip Shop/Recyling Centre – Perfect to felt
5. Little roll of Japanese wrapping paper from the 50’s or 60’s
6. Modern Japanese quilting cotton FQ picked up from the Salamanca Markets
7. Patons Alpaca Yarn – for a beanie of my very own
8. Panda Myth Mohair Blend, an utterly gorgeous colourway and weight which was reduced to clear at $2 was $8-10ish, I have… 14 rolls of the stuff to make a cardigan
9. Vintage Kimono Cotton, with the most gorgeous print on it 🙂
Other Loots
10. A bottle of South Country Cyder
11. The new Interweave Knits Crochet magazine
12. A copy of Yarns, a brand new Australain mainly knitting magazine but it does have a nice smattering of Crochet in 🙂

I think that is about all I picked up along the way, well other than all the gorgeous cherries that we were gorging on 🙂

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home

Mum and I are now home, four days earlier than expected and minus Grandad who flew home from Melbourne on the 10th.

Short Story is:
Grandad knocked a piece of skin off his leg, which resulted in us trekking our way through, under and round Melbourne, visiting a mainly Russian medical centre in South St Kilda, two hospitals in Heidelberg, Tullamarine airport, Spotlight in Box Hill and the house of a dear friend in Glen Waverly who wasn’t home.

It was decided that the best thing for Grandad was that he go home to his own doctor who knows exactly how well and how long Granddad’s skin takes to heal, so he flew home something like 8hrs after we had driven off the ferry from Tasmania that morning. As life goes my aunt who lives across the turf from Grandad also has some family health issues of her own which meant that she may not be able to look after him if he did indeed need a skin graft. With all this under wings, Mum and I embarked on the trip home spending the first night just out of Melbourne in Seymour before driving 1045km yesterday to spend last night in Narrabri and then driving the final 592km home today, arriving home in the early afternoon. We found out halfway through our 1045km jaunt that Granddad’s doctor had said that the wound was fine but would take a couple of weeks to heal, so if we wanted to we could take our time to get home, however we were already way past the Sydney turn-off on the Newell Highway and it would be nice to have some extra time at home before Mum goes back to school next week.

So here we are, at home, sleeping in our own beds again, unpacking our luggage and our treasures, which I will post about in the morning when I get a good photo of my trove 🙂 and preparing to wade through the photos…..

And the for the grand total, 6127km driven in our car between 25/12/2005 at 7:48am and 12/1/2006 at 1:30pm.

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cro, cro, cro, crochet

As a kid when I remember sitting at the table after tea with a ball of number 10 crochet cotton in a purple I think and just making a very, very, very long chain.

Fast forward ohh ten years and I have started to actually crochet. I had started playing with different hooks and whatever cotton, yarn, wool that I could find round home a month or so ago but not really with any luck as Mum had told me to try to figure it all out myself.

Fast forward again to getting ready for the trip, I picked up some crochet books from the library, packed up the hooks and yarns etc into a workbasket and said I am going to be able to crochet by the end of this trip.

So whilst on the ferry across the Bass Strait, I sat down with the Crocheting for Dummies Book, a hook and some number 10 thread and started practicing, of course Mum couldn’t her hands off it and helped me getting started and showed me tips etc etc.

Since then I have done a lot of my own experimenting, figuring out different stitches based on how others are constructed, making fillet crochet etc, etc. Just playing with things to see what I could discover.

About ohh five days ago, I decided I was now up to following a pattern to see what I create, so I made a free-form basket from a quite hip book called Hip to Crochet and I am nearing the end of my second project from that book which is a drawstring bag, which I had the idea this morning that the basic idea of a crochet drawstring bag could be easily adapted to be a rock-climbing chalk bag for those climbers in my family 🙂

Having lots of fun and crocheting everywhere, in bed, at cafes, walking down the road, in the car and walking through busy street markets either with a ball of yarn in my pocket or in my handbag. This is of course resulting in some very cool photos which Mum is taking for the Helen’s Extreme Crochet 🙂 similar to the Extreme Ironing

I also had to go into spotlight today to get some of the yarn I am using for the bag and not only walked out with the yarn I was after but some balls of this gorgeous mohair and some alpaca as well and Mum knew that as soon as I got into it she would get back into crochet and knitting so she of course picked up some balls of yarns at the same time :):)

Till some time 🙂

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really just hello

Mum and I have just spent the last 3 days taking in the some of the not-so classic iconic sights of North-East Tasmania as well as coming home via the Great Lake and Derwent Valley.

Biggest thing to note is that we came across 2 Echidnas in the space of probably 1.5hrs today!!!!! 2 in ONE day!!!

I think I have seen 3 in the wild before in my short 20 year life and Mum has not seen that many more – we are relatively speaking quite lucky in our sightings.

Loving the fields and fields of Opium Poppies with all the signs and fencing as well as the processing plant that looks like a prison.

Having a picnic lunch in the car-park at Lake St Clair whilst batting the giant Mozzie’s away who whilst large were quite slow fliers.

Walking along the northern end of the Bay of Fires Beach on the NE Coast on sand so white it looked like bleached sheets.

Staying the night in the coastal holiday town of St Helens …. and of course taking photos of myself with St Helens sign 🙂

Walking and taking in the sights of the largest Lavender farm in the southern hemisphere at Bridstowe Estate and sampling some Lavender Coconut Ice, Lavender Cheese and Lavender Fudge.

Visiting a Seahorse Farm at Beauty Point – really quite cool to see how they farm them for the aquarium and Chinese Medicine trade.

Heaps of other things and many more from before we went on our jaunt.

Photos will of course have to wait till I get home to have computer time and power to process the RAWs.