Witty knitter

Australia Day

That'd be today. Sandra and I are at Ettalong, a beach north of Sydney, for the weekend. We're into peace and quiet as a form of celebration. There may be photos later, as the resort does have the internets.

But if you're in Sydney, here's two things to think about:

Knitting in the Park

Sorry Day on Google Earth

I hope all you Aussies out there have a good Australia Day weekend.

Interesting quiz

This quiz is about your position in the Australian political system. It seems that I should vote for the Greens - my views are very strongly aligned with their policies. Cool.

I found this a really interesting exercise. It is well set up and worth spending ten minutes on, if you're an Aussie voter. Now, where did I put that citizenship application?

Thanks to Steven for the link.

Home again

Nice to be home, with my sweetie and our cats and the house and all. The flight was delayed for three hours, but that wasn't too bad for us. It was much worse for the return flight - they weren't going to land in back NZ until 2.30am local time. Ugh!

I've been catching up with blogs, and I had a thought. (See, it's not true that your brain turns to mush after 50.) Why do so many bloggers (and most of the offenders are women and some of them are really famous) put themselves down all the time? Obviously a lot of readers (also mostly women) really like this self-deprecation, because some of these put-me-down women have hundreds of subscriptions in bloglines where I have dozens. (No, I'm not telling you who they are. You have eyes and a brain. Think about it.) It's a mystery to me. It's clear that one of the reasons I'm not world-famous in the blogosphere is because I have a healthy ego and I'm not scared to take pride in what I do. And no, we won't be discussing the other reasons, which may include my lack of interest in popular knitting culture, cuteness and celebrity generally.

In case you interpret this post as sour grapes, it's not. I was astounded with my rating in bloglines when I finally noticed that figure on the top right-hand side of the screen. It constantly amazes me that so many people are interested in what I write here. I even approach that unfamiliar state of mind called, I believe, 'humility' when I think about it. Of course, I think I do know why women are attracted to funny self-deprecation (I do have a MPhil in Womens' Studies, after all), and in truth I'm more surprised that so many people are attracted to my sharper, sometimes rather acerbic prose.

Returning to knitting, I have come home with some projects for this year that will enable me to reduce the stash. My daughter admires this, and i have quite a lot of browny tweedy yarns, some of them very mature indeed, that I can use for it. I have some interesting single twist yarn from my 2000 trip to Los Ojos (you'll get the idea here) in 4 colours I would call south-western: denimy blue, sage green, dark browny-red and soft gold. That will make jackets for the little girls. I found this, which will be perfect for the last bag of cotton that didn't know what it wanted to be. Plus I have the ethereal fichu, which I am going to make bigger than the pattern, Cleo, which is chugging along nicely, and the additions of some more stripes to Hannah's cardi. I have the kit for Rosarie, and some thick-n-thin cream merino that's going to be an Elizabeth Lavold-style sweater. And socks, always. That's the plan for the first part of this year, I think.

Blogger meetup

Just back from lunch with James and Ian, who drove for over an hour to get here. The knitting gossip flowed and we had a great time. No pics - the camera battery turned out to be dead and James didn't have his. When I offered to take one with my phone he turned all shy. So you'll have to take my word for it - he's lost weight.

More cuteness

My holiday is winding down. Two more days...This morning I got snapping.

Rob is painting the house an elegant shade called 'Tea'. Liz is sanding and washing ahead of him. She is busy busy busy. Here you can see her leaving her pantry after setting up the breadmaker so we can have sandwiches for lunch.

Rebekah and Hannah showed me their pet snails.

Rebekah likes to have them climb on her (yes, gross. I think so too)

Rebekah's pet lamb, Waiwai, is presently cutting the front lawn.

Hannah needs to put sunblock on, so she can be a glamour girl on the deck.

And it wouldn't be a family without a cat. Two actually, but I can't tell them apart. They're called Blackie and Midnight. One of them kindly posed for me.

Apparently WaiWai was too slow and has been declared redundant. But he had his revenge. Here is Lizzie inspecting a garden bed after WaiWai decided he didn't want to eat cropped grass, no sir, he wanted some juicy rose shoots.

Cutest grandkids in the world

What can I say? Cuteness being hereditary, and passed down through the female side... evidence the first:

Rebekah            and Hannah

Evidence the second:
Rebekah's new cardigan    

 

Hannah's new cardigan (yes, she grew. I will have to add to it)

And complementary views of the garden from my daughter's living room:

Gotta fly

The past is another country; they do things differently there. That'd be NZ. Where I'll be by midnight. Next post will have pictures of cute grandchildren wearing original handknits.

Sock it to 'em!

Stephanie reports on an astounding situation that has arisen between Blue Moon Fibres and their bank. It seems that the bank, in their much-less-than-infinite wisdom, can't believe that so many people could possibly be interested in joining a club to be supplied with sock-knitting yarns at regular intervals; it had to be a scam, so they closed the account.

Ah, the power of the knitternet. They probably don't know how lucky they are that Blue Moon have very professionally not divulged which bank it is.

Update - Whoa! Hang on folks... some of the commenters on Stephanie's site seem to have this matter a little out of proportion. It's retail, people. It's a little decision by a big bank that affected you hardly at all. It affected Blue Moon much more; they dealt with it efficiently and professionally and let you know what they had done. To me the interesting thing is that a bank can do their research so badly, but why would they have any idea that sock knitting is so popular? It's a big world out there. If knitting is so important to you that you'd change your bank over this (if you've ever changed your bank you'll know why it's something to avoid) I'd suggest a reality check.

Wow!

Whole lotta de-lurking goin' on! Yay comments!

I have been a bit distracted this week. I've had a big job to do at work, which I had to get through because I'm taking two weeks holiday from tomorrow. I'm going to New Zealand for a week on Monday, then having a couple of days lounging about, finishing with a five-day weekend with my sweetie at Ettalong, a beach town about an hour north of Sydney.

I am knitting slowly away on Cleo - it's four-ply and the cotton yarn is very unforgiving. I'm not the world's most even knitter, so I just hope that a damp press will sort out the bumps and lumps.

In PhD news I have had a very fruitful meeting with one of the key thinkers in my area, who wrote and asked to meet me. I've mentioned this on my PhD blog. For once I'm going to mention it here, because it feels really important. I've been reading her work and thinking about it for more than a year - she started writing about what it means to 'do' a PhD in the mid-90s. I'd written asking to meet her some months ago, but she'd been travelling and had somehow missed the email. She'd then heard about me from Jim, someone who's also working on the PhD in ANU in Canberra. It feels as if there are a group of us now, all working toward understanding more about this PhD process in our own ways. It's a good feeling.

I'll say no more

Picture, thousand words. Speak up, dammit!