Woo! New fibre (fiber?)

Just finished making an order with Crown Mountain Farms. They had some sweet looking hemp top, as well as some plain tussah silk and I caved and got myself a silk hanky. Oh, and then I got some sock yarn. *sigh* I have no self-control this month. Anyway, as of Monday I’ll be at my new job and will be too busy to spend all my hours trolling the internet, ordering things I can’t afford and updating my blog with such regularity.

It’s Thursday and I’ve got one more day here at work before I finish up. Things have really got hideously boring lately, what with handing over all my tasks to other people, and now I am stuck with nothing to do but answer the odd question.

Yesterday, after work, pissed off at the crap job I had done dyeing some merino earlier in the week, I tried Hello Yarn’s oven method. Even though I didn’t even bother to mix up any new dye, and instead of adding vinegar to the dye I just sprayed it with my spray bottle of white vinegar, it really came up fine. Quite vivid, even though the fuschia/brown combo had quite a bit of dye come out in the rinse. I put it on the clothes rack to dry and spent the rest of the night working away on my über fine lime green number that has taken what feels like forever to complete. I still have no idea what to do with it once it’s done. Socks? Who would want lime green socks? Even if they were some rad pattern? Still thinking.

Speaking of Fuschia, I want to go here. I went to Doolin when I was living in Ireland, and it was the most mad place I think I’ve ever visited. There was one pub, and it was totally crowded with everyone from town, all drinking and playing music. It was one of the most freeking awesome places I’ve been to. And I’d love to go back to Connemara while I was there too.

Sigh.

Interweave hurt sale

So I only heard about the Interweave Hurt sale when I came into work this morning, and being all out of whack compared to US time, I think I missed out on at least a half day’s worth of frenzied purchasing. There were actually a few books left, so I was able to score:

• Design Collection 18: A treasury of towels (OK, so I don’t weave….yet. But I reckon a book like this will inspire me)
• In Sheep’s Clothing
• Folk Socks - score!!
• The Soap Book - soap making’s another thing I’ve been wanting to try out for ages.

In addition to all of that, the last of my Amazon order arrived yesterday:

• Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
• Favorite Mittens: Best Traditional Patterns from Fox & Geese & Fences and Flying Geese & Partridge Feet

These are so brilliant. The Ball book has over 400 recipes, everything from strawberry jam to pickles, chili sauces, juices, and some really inspired combinations (raspberry and chipotle - if my memory hasn’t weirdly distorted that one). The huge garden and the glasshouse were two of the things that made me fall in love with our new place, so of course I’m dying to plant as many veggies as I can this summer, and hopefully there will be a lot of preserving as a result as well. The Favorite Mittens book is one I’ve had my eye on for a while now, and includes some awesome traditional (US east coast, and Canada) mitten patterns, for everything from thrummed mittens, to fishermen’s wet mittens, which are shrunk so the stitches get so tight that nothing can get through them.

Tender and Secret Pal

So last night the real estate agent came over to discuss the whole tender thing. Steve and I had a figure in mind, after talking with the valuer, and I was ready to just sign the papers and be done with it, but there was so much else to talk about: what percentage do we offer as a deposit, do we let them pick a settlement date earlier than the standard month, do we offer to take the rest of the stuff from the house (save them from cleaning up), etc. etc. etc.? It was surprisingly more difficult than I’d imagined - Steve’s conflicted about really wanting the place but not wanting to spend a ridiculous amount just to get it. I figure if it’s in our budget, and somewhere in the vicinity of what the valuer suggested, then we should go for it. In any case, of course the real estate agent had to talk up the price, and then left us with the papers to “think about it overnight”. A cunning ploy, if ever there was one.

I hate this closed tender crap.

What else…. oh yeah. I finally signed up for Secret Pal 11. I’ve been wanting to do it for ages but always heard about it when it was too late. Thanks to the very cool Google Reader, I subscribed to SP10, and caught the recent announcement about the next one. It’s not starting for a good while yet, but hey, I wasn’t going to miss out again! I hope I get a good pal.

I finished Nicola’s “fetching“s (pictures to come) and have finally got back to working on Rowan’s “Hike” (see here) that I started back in 2005. Once that’s done I need to finish my “Rosa” by Louisa Harding (here) that I also started a while back (in green, not pink).

Then there’s more spinning to do, the new Harry Potter game to review, a research essay to write……

Spinning extravaganza

…and I don’t think I’m exaggerating. Today I bought 8 oz of alpaca from Spunky Eclectic, and also joined her Fibre Club. Then later this afternoon I rang Jo Reeve (who also wrote this very good book), and have put my name down to join her spinning group! She’s going to email me all the details, and with a bit of luck, I’ll be going to my first meeting in a couple of weeks!

On the house front, today we met Valuer Tim at the property, walked around listening to him talking into his dictaphone, then waited for the Real Estate agent to disappear before we could ask him what he really thought…….

We get the report tomorrow. That’ll be the final hurdle before we get on to the actual offering of the tender.

Big time catch-up

Jeez, it’s been a little while. Things have been so busy, it’s not funny!

Steve & I have found a place that we’re going to make an offer on. It’s up for tender and we’ve no idea what anyone else is going to be bidding, but we’re going to go for it. So we’ve been going back and forth to the property (with the real estate guy, Noel) to go through it with a builder, Steve’s mate Scott (the plumber), the valuer (tomorrow) and a trip to the open home with Daph & Graeme. We’ve also been back and forth to the bank a couple times but have got our pre-approval sorted out now. The tender’s next week, so we’re gonna be crossing our fingers till then!

I’ve been trying to find a new job for ages, and finally got one! It’s with a software company in town (Intergen), doing software testing. They’re a really cool, young, growing, go-places sort of place. It has a really good vibe and some of my friends (Brent, Simon & Nathan) already work there and say it’s a great place to work. My last day here is the 20th of July, which is weird, but also feels really really good.

I’ve been doing a little bit of crafty stuff lately, including spinning, knitting, and making lip balms! The spinning and knitting are my own hand-dyed (and hand-spun) stuff, which always feels wonderful, while the lip balm making is pretty new. I read up about it on Majestic Mountain Sage but then found out they don’t ship liquids overseas. So then I went back and ordered some basics off TradeMe, and got the rest (flavour oils, cute little containers) from Escentials of Australia. They were really good to deal with - they rang me from Aussie when I had typed in my credit card details incorrectly, and the goodies arrived in only a couple of days.

I’ve also got my research essay I have to complete as soon as I can (especially if the house goes through, cause we’d be doing a fair bit of renovating before we moved in) - 10,000 words by October. Ideally I’d like to get it done before then, so naturally I’ve been spending all my time reading the Robin Hobb Assassin books (nearly through book number three!) which are totally compulsive reads.

I really do need to get through my huge stash of fleece and wool that’s threatening to take over one corner of my little study. I’ve got one big bag in particular, that I was hoping to spin in the grease. I haven’t been able to find a lot of information on the net about it, cause most people tend to like spinning white fluffy fleece. I just want to try it out and see what it’s like (though I hear it clogs up your spinning wheel’s orifice just a tad)! Plus I see the listings in my Etsy shop have expired. Whoops. Better get spinning again.

Nearly Easter

So, it’s nearly Easter. It’s 5:05pm, and I’m just about ready to hit the ground running and get the hell out of here. Today’s been crazy at work - crazy! - and I’m so ready to go home now. I was thinking of heading home for the nice long four day weekend, but traffic heading north from Wellington will be insane, and I don’t fancy sitting in a car all weekend long.

Instead, Steve & I are going to relax tonight, go to his sister’s for dinner on Saturday, and maybe have Ben and Tash, and Jeremy and Megumi round on Sunday to drink and eat and maybe watch a movie or play backgammon or something. Then more recovering on Monday.

Already people down on the street are scurrying off home, already it’s getting dark outside.

:::

I’ve changed the comments settings for this blog, as for the past few weeks I’ve been inundated with spam comments. So now, if you’d like to leave a comment you have to be registered. Sorry. It’s just been such a hassle with total randoms bombarding me with creepy blank comments.

:::

I’m also hoping to complete my latest spinning project: hot pink wool blended with black alpaca. It’s quite lovely. The alpaca is just so soft, I’d forgotten how wonderful it feels. I think I’ll wind up putting it in my Etsy shop.

I’ve also got my old drum carder that I think I’ll put up on Trademe soon, as well as a copy of Harvest Moon: It’s A Wonderful Life for the PS2 that I just can’t get into. It seems to take so long to get anywhere, and the game’s not really that responsive to the controller. My Game Boy Advance version played on the DS is by far more enjoyable. A pity.

Nothing much more has gone up on NZGamer after my huge wave of reviews that all came through at once. I’ve got one preview to do for Friday - Revenant Wings (FFXII) for the DS, and that’s it. Nice.

Well, I’m 30 now.

And to be honest, I don’t feel all that different. I’m back at work, after a nice long Christmas break up in Taupo, and flew back to Welling-town this morning. Steve picked me up from the airport. It was so wonderful to see him again, I couldn’t believe how much I missed seeing his smiling face, after just three days away.

It’s a terrible day today. Grey, windy as hell, wet road and sidewalks out the window. I’ve been scouring the net for any interesting organisational software, etc. and didn’t really find that much. Something called PageFour, but I’m not really sure how good it is. I was reading about some dude on the net, a published writer, who uses this outlining software, but I really wonder how much of it is bunk and avoidance, and how much of it is useful. (I thought it could be a good way to do some brainstorming and general information gathering at work.) What I really need is some sort of note organiser. My desk is covered with notes - notes everywhere, stuff that I don’t want to throw out because it all seems important somehow. If I could compile everything together in one place then maybe I could clean up the mess a little.

Speaking of mess, Steve and I moved into a new place at the start of the month. There are still boxes everywhere (all my junk) and even though I have my own study now, I really don’t know where to put anything. I need some filing cabinets, I think. (Organisation, again!) Maybe I just need to get hard and throw everything out. I don’t know.

I’m really looking forward to getting home. Having a look around. Giving Sooty a wee tickle (O yes! My new cat! He is awesome!) I want to look out the dining room window out at the backyard, at the wet, dewy grass and dark green trees. I want to sit in my study and look out the windows at the next door neighbour’s huge ferns growing up and past the house. It has huge fronds as big as my fist.

I’m also really looking forward to trying out my new drum carder that Steve got me for my birthday! Yes, it’s an Ashford one! The drums are covered in this soft pink rubbery material, and the teeth are fine and shiny (even though it is a coarse carder, it’s nothing like the one I bought on TradeMe a while ago. Ye gods, that thing’s a monster!

I’ve also been lucky enough to find a notebook of morning pages from when I was living in Dublin. I started reading them last night in bed, but because I had to get up so early (5:30) to get my flight down to Wellington, I didn’t get the chance got have a good read. I was so organised, so creative, so hopeful about the future! I want to tap into that somehow. I’ve become…placated somehow.

(And I was also lucky enough to find in archives.com, some of the missing diary-x entries that I was never able to recover. Nowhere near all of them, but something small to remind me of what I was doing back then. I’ll try and add them to this blog, so I can at least have everything all together in one place.)

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Sold my first wool

I nearly forgot to mention, I sold my first wool in my etsy shop! It’s the most recent one I put up (you may remember it from this post).

So cool!!

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urgh

Not feeling the best today - actually, I didn’t feel that great yesterday either. I hope I’m not coming down with something. Apparently there are a few people around at work who have been off sick. I can just see it getting piped through into all the different offices and rooms around the place. In particular, my eyes feel really dry and painful, even when I use eyedrops - the regular kind as well as my prescription ones. Maybe there’s just a lot of pollen in the air now that it’s finally spring.

It’s been a gorgeous day, and I’ve been stuck inside, very unhappily. Sunny, warm, people walking around in non-office clothing, wandering around doing non-office things. Who are these people? How do they make their money? I ask myself that every day. Like the old Talking Heads song - “how did I get here?” It all feels like some sort of slow car crash that I’ve been watching in slow motion. Work, that is. Everything else is so great at the moment that I almost feel selfish complaining about my job. I have to just keep reminding myself that I originally took it as a temporary thing when I first came back to the country. I have no idea what possessed me to stick around for so long.

One thing I did do, was finish reading Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was a funny sort of book, a lot less dramatic and compulsive than I expected. Mind you, I’ve never read any of Ishiguro’s other books, so maybe it’s just that I’m not familiar with his style. At the same time, thought, it had a bittersweetness about it, a schoolgirl’s innocent commentary about her sheltered life. I found I put it down when I was somewhere around the middle, as I grew a bit bored hearing all about Kathy and her ongoing battles with Ruth, and finding about what made Tommy tick. I guess I kept waiting for the punchline, the decisive moment, the minute when all of the details would come to have a fuller meaning, but they didn’t… That said, I found when I finally returned to the book, there was something about it that made me continue. I guess I wanted to find out whether Kathy would finally become a donor, and what would happen to her. But you never find out, though Ishiguro does let it slip that Kathy will stop being a carer by the end of the year. Somehow despite my dissatisfaction with the novel, it had a lovely wistfulness and sadness about it that has stayed with me.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of spinning lately, not writing much though, not studying, just spinning and watching movies in the evenings. It’s nice but makes me wish I had more time to myself. The weekends just wash away, and then I’m back at work again. I wish I could work from home.

Maybe I’m just feeling a bit flat from Saturday night. We stayed up really late, drinking vodkas and looking out Alex’s window over all the lights and the ocean. But it is nearly home time - at last!

Saturday stuff

Today started out pretty slowly - Steve woke up early and cooked us both breakfast (scrambled eggs and bacon on top of English muffins, with yummy curried zucchini chutney and tabasco sauce on top), then headed out to meet Alex T for a bike ride. I took some photos this morning, of my latest yarn, and put it up at my new shop. Yeah, I’ve got a shop! I didn’t want to mention it earlier as I only had a few things posted, but now I feel that I have enough there to actually point people to it. I haven’t sold anything yet, but I’m of the opinion that if your stuff is of reasonable quality (and I do think it’s good) then you shouldn’t have too many difficulties in the long run.

I love the yarns I have posted; I’d keep them all myself, but there is something really fun about going through the steps of selling something you’ve made. Taking photos, figuring out length, wraps per inch, writing an interesting description, then posting it all up on etsy.

Here’s what I put up today:

I also spent a little bit of time on Photoshop, playing around with creating a little logo. I know Photoshop’s really old hat for most people, but I’m really only starting to discover it now. I guess I never had a use for it before (or never thought I did), while now I want to try out things like creating a banner for my shop, and all of a sudden I’m messing around with layers, backgrounds, fonts, etc. etc.

Here’s the logo I finally came up with. (Let me know what you think.)

I think it’s pretty damn cool.

I then spent the rest of the morning carding some of Galadriel’s fleece in my drum carder (that I bought cheap off Trademe). It’s so fine and black - it’s gorgeous. But hard to get out some of the bits of grass and things that have gathered in there too. The carding seems to get out a lot, but because the fleece is so fine, it makes picking stuff out nearly impossible. I did about five or six batts in all (takes quite a few layers passed through the drum carder to make those though, the teeth are quite short) and then got a sore back from leaning over it all.

Anyway, we’re off to Alex’s for dinner now. No doubt we’ll be talking about Vietnam (his brother works for the embassy there and Alex went over earlier in the year)… should be good. I should go get changed though, I’m covered in fluff and fleece… (fluff from the massive cleaning frenzy we both got into later this afternoon.)

Alpacamania!

So on the weekend, Rochelle, Nicola and I went and visited some of Nicola’s friends, Stephen and Tamara, a couple of awesome people who came all the way over to NZ to live the green life and raise Alpacas.

Their farm and house are so pretty, tucked up a valley that’s only about twenty minutes north of Wellington. And their alpacas are gorgeous:

Ooo, we had a great time! (I’ve only got videos of Nicola, so unfortunately there’s no pic of her here…)

In the end I wound up being able to buy about 600g of beautiful black fleece from a gorgeous girl named Galadriel (who I was able to watch spitting a couple of times). She’s the black one in three of the photos above.

Masterton Spin-in

Woah, I feel completely blown away today!

Steve and I got up early this morning and drove over to the Wairarapa for the Masterton spinning guild’s annual spin-in. I’ve never been to anything like this before, so I had no idea what to expect. Well, the town hall was filled with people, and there’d been a fierce morning tea that we were able to get in on too. Oo, and it was just the sort of morning tea one dreams of - everything home made, scones, slices, little tarts and biscuits.

There was so much wool - it was incredible. I didn’t know where to start, and realised I hadn’t brought any cash with me either. So we did a round, looking at everything, touching silks and merinos, talking with people (is it just me, or are older people just so much more friendly than people my own age?) and making a mental list of what I wanted to get. There were so many stalls, filled with raw fleece, sliver or carded batts, books on spinning and dyeing and little plastic packets filled with brightly coloured silks.

We quickly rushed back outside and found a money machine. Steve made a beeline towards a man selling his own cheeses (there were actually a few other types of things for sale), while I tried to make up my mind where to start. I first bought a bag (about 1.2 kilos, I think) of clean Polworth sliver. Then I decided to get a little bag of Merino that I’d seen a lady selling as we came into the hall. After that it was a kilo of Corriedale in the brightest orange you’d ever imagine.

(So it’s a bit shiny, but you get the picture!)

Later on, I was able to meet up with Lynette Teehan, who I had contacted earlier and asked about spinning groups in the area, and she introduced me to some lovely people who spin in the Onslow area, and meet in Johnsonville once a month, in the evening! Johnsonville’s not exactly my neighborhood, but it’s close enough to zip over one night after work and have a go. I’m really excited!

Finally, one of the very nice ladies (I can’t remember her name) took me over to a woman selling greasy fleeces, and helped me pick one out. I’ve always wanted to take the more natural approach to spinning (rather than starting with white, commercially prepared sliver), but never really knew where to start, or what would be a good way to approach it. She helped me pick out a nice soft Romney, not too fine and tricky to spin, and said she usually spins her fleeces “in the grease”, which means she washes it after she’s spun them. Guess I can prepare myself for stinky (though wonderfully moisturized) hands! The nicest thing of all of it is the woman who sold me the fleece said she knew the exact sheep it came from on her farm.

Anyway, it’s been spin, spin, spin, ever since I got back (what a suprise).  More on all of my other projects (and field trips!) coming soon…

Heading up north

Yep, heading up north in an hour and twenty minutes. We’re leaving work an hour early and driving up to Taupo for a nice long weekend - the world mountainbike champs are on in Rotorua (Steve’s got the link on his blog), and we’ve got tickets! Forecast is for rain though, and the Desert Road’s been closed for the past few days due to snow and ice. It’s only just re-opened today, so here’s hoping we can get through without too much trouble.

I’m taking books, some pretty wool and alpaca I’ve just spun recently (just to show off) and some socks that I’ve started knitting from this wool I dyed and then spun myself. It’s really an incredible feeling to make something from scratch, no matter what it is. I love it. Taking polyprops and my raincoat too.

Feeling sleepy. Had a nice kebab from this great place on the Terrace called Daniel’s. I don’t know a lot more about it, aside from the fact that their felafels have mint and other fresh herbs in them, and the food tastes a lot more…real than other places. Poor Steve and Brent got suckered in with an email Simon sent out this morning about how Chow Main Cube was having their first birthday, and were celebrating with $5 lunches. They both queued up and got their cheap lunches…an hour later! I got a kebab instead, and Simon, coming down the road from Unisys, saw the queue and made the quick decision that maybe Chow Main Cube would be better for dinner after all, hehe.

Last night we went back to Flying Burrito Brothers for dinner (and frozen margheritas). We had the pork crackling and salsa verde again (heart attack food! but so good!) and some pretty little tortilla and mole chicken starters. Steve had the enchilladas and I had more Mole Chicken that in the end I couldn’t finish. It was beautiful though.

Oh my god, I forgot to mention this earlier. Colette and David are going to be taking part in this year’s supercar rally. Even though they’re the official photographers, they are still getting a Maserati to drive! Lucky bums!