Warning.. it is quite possible this will be a somewhat long and rambling post…

As anyone who may still occasionally check this blog has probably figured out May and June were rather hectic. I am now in my second year of the new career choice: High School teacher and although this year is easier in some respects I am coming to realise as with most things the situations we find ourselves in are often of our own creation.

My days are crazy busy and I am still working 12+ hours a day most days. Why? Sometimes it is the demands of the school sometimes it is simply the demands I place on myself. I am to some extent a perfectionist.. at least I would like to be but I often fall short of my own expectations. When you add in an aspect of potentially letting someone down I can turn into a rather neurotic basket case.

So although my job is highly demanding especially of my spare time around reporting I am also clearly aware that I am my own worst enemy. It is something I am continually struggling to find balance with and while not always successful I think I am making progress. What does this all have to do with my blog, crafting and the like.. well really not a lot other than finding that balance I hope will allow me to spend more time completing some of the many projects I have on the go and the many more I dream of doing one day.

The past couple of months haven’t been all work though, there was a three week break from school which allowed me to finally get well following a long illness and spend some time catching up with friends.

Friends… such a tangled topic in my mind. For all intents and purposes I have loved the move to Melbourne but I miss many of the friends I left behind. I am used to having a fairly sizeable group of friends and regularly entertaining, it is something I miss and while I have met lovely people and developed what I hope and consider to be close friends at times I wish there was a way to move all the people that make me smile when I think of them to the one place.

I guess in ways my brian has been a little nostalgic lately…

To that end I have decided to try and knock off a few long standing wips that are destined to be gifts. Over the break from school I set my mind to working on the trusty 3 x Dr scarf and probably one of the oldest wips i have laying about “Rose of Sharon”. I managed some good progress but have no pictures at this stage due to some horrid lighting and persistent battles with my camera. There will just have to be pictures next update, along with some pictures of my latest finish.. the sleeveless cardigan.  Yep you read right… a finish!

I do have a few pictures to share though, first up the haul from this year’s Bendigo Wool Show.

It has now become a tradition for the usual crafty suspects to get together and head on up to Bendigo for a day of stash enhancement, eating and good company. Walking around the show is a great way to see some beautiful finished projects and gather inspiration too. If you look closely at the photo you will notice no yarn! Yep not a single skein, this year was all about spinning, I have built myself a good collection of fibres, hand dyed tops and semi-processed fleeces to play around with on my wheel. Having had the wheel for a year now I figure it is time I started to really learn how to use it. I would like to try for 20mins a day but at this stage will be happy if I can just manage 20mins three times a week. Even that little time at the wheel should see my skill improve and the yarn build up.

One great thing about getting together on a semi regular basis to chat and craft? Plenty of people to help you sort out the great mystery’s of knitting.

For q while now I have been convinced there were a few things not quite right in the way I was knitting. Jane at Morris and Son’s S&B was the first to pick up on one of the issues, my purling. That dilemma is corrected now, though truth be told I do often have to check each time I start a new project that I haven’t slipped back in to bad habits. This fix didn’t seem to solve the whole problem though and there was a hole problem. My yarn overs have never seemed truly balanced when I’ve knit lace and as you can guess this leads to some distortion of the pattern. For the most part this has never really seemed like an issue.. maybe just a tension thing? who knew? But I decided to have another go at Woodland Lace Shawl, thought about picking up my last attempt and continuing on… but then I looked closely at it and although I could see that there were yarn overs (three pairs to be exact) the holes just weren’t really visible, I had previously convinced myself that blocking would fix the irregularity but I was becoming less and less convinced of this.

So started the great mystery of the holes and with a lot of help from Sharon and Nancy and a bit of you tube investigation it is all sorted. My yarn overs were incorrect, well at least the YO from K to K my YO from K to P were fine it turns out. In essence the way I wrapped the yarn was causing the stitch to tighten rather than open constricting the hole I had just deliberately created. The ends result now though is that 2 repeats into the pattern I seem to have re-trained myself and what has seemed like a project cursed to never progress , now has a hope for the future 😀

Holes! glorious pairs of holes, balanced and symmetrical. With this finally sorted out I may yet get around to all those lace designs I’m itching to try.