I’ve just written a great big post over on the new blog. Have a look! (And if you have a link, or a bookmark, please don’t forget to update. See you over there.)

No, it’s not just that I’m finishing off a couple of pairs of socks, or that I’m soon to put some prints on to my (neglected, cobwebby) Etsy store. I’m fixing up the domain and setting up house in a proper blog.

Back soon…ish…

I knitted through the heatwave. Yes I did. Only socks (small) and my shetland lace shawl (light), and I finally sewed up a project (flat on table, no skin contact). So, no sweat! ; )

Two of those project are done, and what landmarks they are for me. The first one is the Wine and Roses bolero, which I cast on in December 2005 (yep, you read that right) in the car on the way down to Aldinga for a holiday the week before Christmas, about two weeks after Yarn 1 came out. I was test knitting for Yarn 2. Fortunately there was another one in the works, finished on time by another tester (Sophie, who reluctantly served as the garment’s model in Yarn 2, with absolutely lovely results. Take a look back and see what I mean — she looks every bit as elegant as Cate Blanchett). Getting this one off the needles was a real memory ride and a boost to the confidence (Except that I’ve gained/lost/gained again a few kilos that mean I’m not real comfortable wearing it. Ah well, maybe after Easter — chocolate! hot cross buns! — I’ll do something about it.)

The other project was cast on a year later, in January 2007, during a holiday at a beach house on Lake Alexandrina. I was in a very different state of mind, probably already thinking how well over my head the whole Yarn thing was getting. I carried an entire flock’s worth of wool in the car and then couldn’t decide what to cast on when I got there. I don’t know why I thought a large, square, lace shawl was the thing, but I cast on, and carried on…and on…and on…until I finally cast off last week during my daughter’s swimming lesson — one day after the heatwave broke. She was able (and willing!) to wrap up in it and model straight after drying off. With a different dress on, she’d look just like a wee little Scottish sprog, too.

So the knitting dam has burst, I think — I’m so close to finishing many projects, and no longer feeling pent-up and anxious about casting on anew. Maybe now I’ll finally get to some of those knitted gifts I’ve wanted to do for so long…

Installation art bugs me, but I’m aware of this preconception. I’m fully prepared to be surprised and delighted by an installation, but it’s going to need to do more than make me nod my head at the artist’s sheer effort in bringing the thing to life.

The photo of Thomas Rentmeister’s installation in the Adelaide Festival Artists’ Week Guide looked for all the world like the last day of a scratch n’ dent sale at the Good Guys outlet. Why would the festival organisers ask a European artist to come over here and park some fridges in a room and smear them all over with cream when we’ve got a whole city full of perfectly good blokes with hand trucks (and probably dead fridges in their sheds) who would have been happy to lend a hand. (Although I’m not sure what they would have made of the cream bit.)

But then, I guess we still would have needed an Artist to say, Hey, let’s stack up these fridges in the corner of a gallery! And by the way, my airfare invoice is attached below.

So I went to see what kind of a pile we were talking about here. It wasn’t quite the pile I expected:

As the title says, Nearly 100 fridges stacked in a corner. Aaaaand?

Visually, it’s definitely interesting. I can see there’s order here, that the ‘forms’ are arranged with care and consideration. Plus, as a bonus, they’ve all been coated in some kinda cream that looks like spackle but remains soft. (Yes, I know this first-hand.)

But the only difference between this and using a bunch of white foam core to achieve the same effect is that the fridges more or less are passing judgment on us privileged gallery-goers for living in a society where fridges themselves have a use-by date.

But didn’t you know that before you even heard of Thomas Rentmeister? Most people I know are already consumed with worry about the world, the environment. I’m personally kind of tired of art that requires an enormous amount of effort to make a very small statement (if it can even be said to do that) and still doesn’t do what art is really, really good at: being beautiful, giving us hope, optimisim, glory, joy.

I think it’s wonderful that even a small piece of decorated paper in a little frame hanging humbly in a kitchen can do that, and yet the best a towering stack of high-art whitegoods in a gallery can do is echo the daily newspaper’s confirmation that the world is messed up and it’s all our fault.

The Adelaide Festival and Fringe have wrapped, which is just as well — between them and the heatwave I’ve got nothing left.

It was a little tough to get babysitting organised for everything we’d have liked to see. In the end, we wound up seeing mostly comedy events, interspersed with exhibits and installations. The last two days we squeezed in two performances each night, and I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Kitson, who was more funny  monologist than comedian, and David O’Doherty, who had that really good blend of insight, IQ and class.

I’ve never reviewed a comedy show before, and I think I probably won’t start now (”…observant, sharp, funny! Look out Steve Carell!”—The East Outback Rag) but it was a very smart, funny set. (And where would he have been without negativity, may I ask?) The audience may owe him an apology, however: after a brilliant segment about childhood nightmares and the adult inability to get up in the middle of the night to investigate noises which demand investigation, we neglected to offer some extra applause beyond a bit of polite ‘nice golf shot’ hand-patting. I was too busy weeping with laughter to applaud, actually. (I think he forgave us—we got a half hour encore.)

Anyway, I think the Melbourne Comedy Festival is up next, so if he’s on the bill and comedy’s your thing, give it a go.

I have tomorrow set aside for visiting the major arts exhibitions of the festival before they close — and thank god it should be cooler by then. Still have to get in to visit those Rentmeister fridges…

People say it’s easy to be negative, but they’re stupid.

Ha. That’s a funny. Seriously, though, you try being negative, and see how many positive thinkers don’t (rather negatively, it must be said) instantly rain on your parade.

I use negativity as my humor, my shield, my way of defining what’s wrong with things. I’m not actually a pessimist. But more and more lately, there’s just no place for negativity. People are so freakin’ positive all the time that you can’t crack your own sorta joke without somebody pointing out, ‘But that’s so negative.’

Without negativity, no science, no debate. No logical way to pick things apart to find out how they work—or why they don’t. Without negativity, no Seinfeld. No improvement.

I don’t wanna go all yin and yang on ya here, folks, but (and here’s where we go negative) without negativity, no criticism. No criticism, it’s all good. But is it? (You know it’s not.)

And sometimes it is (Yarn 8: knitting, crochet, spinning, felting — it’s all good). But sometimes? Somebody needs to say, “Wow, what a load of crap!”

What’s prompting this? Oh, my almost complete inability to refrain from commenting on things. My lifelong battle with learning to shut up. (Publishing Yarn was a real crash course in shutting up.)

Maybe it’s some recent discussion on Ravelry. It’s hard to make a joke anywhere online without having to winky wink wink or LOL to let people know that’s a joke, son, which I find personally rather frustrating.

Or maybe it’s the fact that there’s a large-ish installation of refrigerators and other discarded white things in a gallery in Adelaide and somebody got paid to come over from Europe to install it here for our viewing pleasure.
I’m going to go look at it this week just to make sure it is what I think it is. I’ll let you know.

I have so much to post here. At least three, no four, big old posts just waiting.There’s:

1. A weekend away down south, paddling in a sea-kayak with my neglected spouse
2. The end of an era, in which I finally cast off and sew up my Wine & Roses bolero, cast on in December 2005 as a test knit for Yarn Magazine Issue 2
3. The stunningly soft and beautifully coloured 8 ply yarn recently received from Biggan Designs, and the updated Hailstone jumper (which I plan to offer for individual sale soon) have begun to knit with it. Or—wait—does it actually want to be a vest?
4. The recent trip to Melbourne, in which I

a) sat through two exceptionally long meetings during which I needed to listen and not talk and therefore knitted a lot, nearly a pair of boot socks now andb) was blessed for once by good timing and got to meet up with

1. Mandy Crane and her new knitting group night at Trunk (reviewed that very morning in the Age)… This last one is possibly a novel, except due to the champagne flowing liberally I can’t actually remember enough of it, although there are photographs… and
2. Mandy, Jennie and Kylie the next day for lunch, and then shopping hijinx around Melbourne in which wondrous retail establishments were visited and copious amounts of printmaking supplies were procured.

Can you tell which one I want to do? I think I actually kind of summed up the first three pretty neatly, actually, though I will come back to them. So, what about I do No. 4? It was the first time in AGES I got to go out and just be a girl and not have it be anything to do with work.Although I have begun to think Mandy and I were separated at birth (by several US states, really) because we did talk rather a lot about fonts, magazines and, um, Amy Winehouse’s teeth, which are all related to my career in one way or another, true. I mean, anyone suckled at the breast of Billboard was encouraged to know all about things like British hip-hop brats and to gossip incessantly about them as a means of coping with the stress of being an editorial assistant at a large weekly text-heavy magazine.But I digress. (What else is new?) Have some photos. Yes, it’s the easy way out. But you know you want them.I finished meetings on Tuesday, thus ending my knitting time. I finished one spiral boot sock and got halfway through the second. Would that all meetings were so productive.I collapsed for a short time and then hied myself down to Fed Square in 33C heat (turns out the concierge was wrong and Trunk is nowhere near there) at which point I collapsed again and had a rawther nice little chilled Riesling from Geelong (of all places) before hoofing back uptown and finding Mandy awaiting at Trunk, practically standing there with cc in hand ready to go buy the first of several bottles o bubbly (Do you sense another collapse coming on?)Kylie and many other showed up in short order. I met a lot of very swish new gals (now, lessee if I can find my notes, yes, here they are):Handan, Ele, and Bonnie (who was not five hours off the plane on a visit to her sister in Melbourne, and hey, I wish I were that put together when jet lagged…or anytime, really)Bonnie (Cheryl’s mum, also very together despite just getting off the plane), Penny (Cheryl’s sister), and yours truly not terribly put together at all, actually looking rather sun-addled after that kayak adventureDenyse, Mandy, Larissa, bubbly girls that they areAnd of course miz gusset, who brought along her Babette blanket in progress, eliciting much high-pitched squealing around the tableSquee! It’s Babette!On the morning of my free day in Melbourne, I woke up to weather that made my heart glad. RAIN LOOK LOOK ITS RAINING AND GREY (collapses again). Surprisingly feeling pretty good despite the bubbles.There was lunch, at Benito’s, with Jennie, Mandy, Kylie, during which I did not bring out the camera. It was a good thing. (Both lunch and lack of camera.)And there was much on-tram/off-tram activi-tay all over Melbs. St Luke’s, Neil’s, Melbourne Etching, various shoe stops (though no shoes to bring home), the ubiquitous chocolate break (at Cafe du Soleil) for the largest bowl of milky lovely chocolate, and then a trawl through the Nicholson Building including Kimono House (some damage there) and a stop at the beautiful Button Mania on Level 2. How beautiful? I leave you with these pictures, including one of owner Kate Boulton’s button alphabet, which she oh-so-carefully laid out on the counter of her lovely little shop.Sigh. I’m the first one to sing the praises of Adelaide…but I love Melbourne.

The good news: Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing really is pretty. I’ve made two projects out of it already. The bad news? I’m getting really shitty about books that emphasise the style(ing) over the substance. I’m two for two in terms of pretty pictures that don’t accurately depict the project.

Example? The tool roll calls for twill tape to encase two raw edges—and the one in the picture very obviously doesn’t use twill tape for this at all.

I didn’t notice this until after I’d struggled and fought with Hulda to make her stitch through—please don’t laugh at me here—three layers of folded twill tape and two layers of fabric when that’s clearly not possible without some kind of massive industrial sewing machine with a needle like a BHP drill.

OK, go ahead, laugh. But the instructions told me to!

Maybe it’s because I’m a knitter, or a (former) publisher, or because I’m a crap sewer—but I’m thrown when a picture doesn’t match the pattern. I looked around a few blogs to see other versions of this project (hello, Ravelry, do you have a sewing sister?) and the sewers don’t seem bothered. One even commented: ‘I modified the pattern to use less twill tape — I mean enough is a enough, even if your name is LOTTA’.

The thing that really bothers me is that the tool roll as pictured is nice, functional and would have been very simple to write up. So where did it go wrong? Whatever. I learned how to get along, I will survive, hey hey.

Next! The chequebook cover. Very appealing, and no twill tape in sight. Just some lightweight cotton, a button, some bias tape, and a bit of elastic to hold it all together.

But again with the tape around the raw edges to encase them. I’m skittish. Do you blame me? Clearly, the instructions say to pin elastic under bias tape opposite button. I take this to mean I’m creating a functional loop. And yet, look at the picture. Do you see what I see? The loop doesn’t actually go around the chequebook cover and seems to be stitched on right next to the button. It’s pretty, but…

Maybe Lotta’s chequebook doesn’t look like mine. Maybe hers is all streamlined and Swedish and doesn’t require a working bungee cord to hold it shut because it isn’t crammed full of receipts and expired tram tickets and old lollipop sticks and shit. (OK, I admit, mine isn’t either. I don’t really even need a chequebook cover, frankly.) But still, is it too much to ask that the project photo match the instructions? That the editor might have suggested the word ‘optional’ in reference to the button and the elastic?

Harrumph. I’m going to shut up and go stitch on my bias tape now (with instructions from another source). And then, maybe I’d better move on to Francesca Denhartog’s book and see how things go there. And maybe I’d better stop expecting so much out of my how-to books. I guess pretty, inspirational pictures are supposed to be enough.

Late last week my order arrived from Book Depository (in 8 working days!), and there was also some surprise hand-dyed Patonyle from ms gusset. The gusset yarn colourway absolutely has me over the moon: semi-solid yarn in beautiful autumn reds, russets, cranberry colors. And the name? Why, Little Red Hen, of course! (How flattering is *that*?)

I’m also very excited about the books, which are three sewing titles. I still find sewing very mysterious — new terms, new techniques and the seductively steamy smell of warm fabric. So I needed some guidance, and for that, I inevitably turn to books.

Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter looked like a stunning book, and it is. Lovely simple-looking projects, and so far, the instructions seem clear to me. Some of the reviews I read also liked the fact that it included full-size patterns where patterns were necessary.

Francesca Denhartog’s Sew What! is full of no-pattern skirts, and since I still love and wear the one skirt I ever made, I thought this title was a good bet. It is a fun book, well organised, and has good basic info on garment construction, so I’m excited about that one too.

Lastly, there’s Vogue Sewing, which struck me as possibly the Montse Stanley of sewing books, and upon perusal, it may just be. (It also has an unexpectedly lovely watercolour illustration on the cover!)

I’m really happy with the selection. What sewing books and magazines do you like (all seven of you*)? Books? Mags? Websites? Are you one of those lucky people who grew up sewing at your mamma’s knee? Tell me. And don’t worry, I’m not going to start a sewing magazine, so all your secrets are safe with me. ; )

Did you think I’d gone away? No, just a little busy. I don’t really know if I could go without blogging anymore, so I hope I didn’t seem too ‘tell me you love me’ last post. It’s just, y’know, once you start cleaning house and getting rid of things, it’s tempting to just keep it going.

But I am a lifelong journal-keeper, and while my blank books generally stay that way, I still need that outlet. The benefit of being public is that it keeps me from getting too interested in gazing at my own navel (not that it’s all that easy to see anymore anyway).

In the interim since last post, I finished a Shawl Collar from Knitting New Scarves (and woo hoo, check out those muffin tops or better yet, don’t), cast on a new Hailstone jumper, and am plugging away still on a shetland shawl and assorted other ufos.

In other news, I also got myself into the printmaking grad degree at Uni SA, so that will bring a new facet to the blog come March…