Or maybe I just need a system fullstop. Apparently what I do have at the moment isn't working for me :( I just received a disconnection notice in the mail from the electricity company :( And it would seem that we are now on a shorter payment cycle until we pay a certain amount in a row, because we've apparently had three late notices in a row! The good news (for me) is that the account is not in my name LOL
It's not like we can't pay our bills. I just completely forget about them, and then bam... a late notice arrives and I remember, and I pay it. I never used to be like this. In fact, this is DH's game. He doesn't like paying bills... so he doesn't pay them. Which is why I manage all the finances around here. I've always payed things on time. But these days bills come in, I note them in my head, put them on the desk and then they disappear into the abyss. Until a late notice arrives. I even bought myself an organiser system where you can put the bills into a folder and stick them in the week that they are due. But this requires me to actually do that - stick them in the folder and put them in the week they are due, followed up by actually checking the folder each day/week/whenever. That's the part I seem to be having an issue with.
So anyway, we have electricity until the next billing cycle comes around, at least LOL But does anyone have a tried and tested system that works and they want to share? I know part of my problem is being pro-active, which I seem to not be. I'll work on that one. Might start with cleaning up this desk.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Instant art
Cheap canvas frame + fabric from IKEA + staple gun = Inexpensive artwork for the wall.
The spot above the TV in the lounge has been empty for YEARS. We've never been able to find the "right" thing to hang there. And I don't like looking in print stores. So I decided I'd make something myself. I have enough fabric left to make a cushion cover too. All up about $20 for this. Maybe less actually, since I can't remember how much the fabric actually cost, but I only got a metre of it.
Looks pretty good, and it's nice to finally have the blank wall gone!
The spot above the TV in the lounge has been empty for YEARS. We've never been able to find the "right" thing to hang there. And I don't like looking in print stores. So I decided I'd make something myself. I have enough fabric left to make a cushion cover too. All up about $20 for this. Maybe less actually, since I can't remember how much the fabric actually cost, but I only got a metre of it.
Looks pretty good, and it's nice to finally have the blank wall gone!
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Knitting and other news
Sadly, the green sock in my last post is definitely going to get frogged :( I thought I'd just live with the dropped stitch and fix it somehow, but then I tried the sock on and it's too tight around the ankle. So, I have to frog it back anyway to make the heel flap longer to fix that, so I might as well go all the way and fix the dropped stitch properly anyway, right? This means that the project has been relegated. To the back of the line. I was going along so well with it too :(
And note to self... next time I decide to make a striped v-neck vest.... DON'T. Doing stripes on shoulder straps is extremely annoying and fiddly. If I ever feel like doing that again I should read this post to stop myself.
In non-knitting news, my littlest big boy, M, started pre-entry kindy yesterday. Yes, I know it's week 5. He's missed half the term. He's not actually supposed to start until next term, but he's recently been diagnosed with a severe speech delay :( SEVERE. Apparently this qualifies him to get an early start at kindy. He's been going fortnightly anyway to occasional care, which he loves. He was initially sad that he would no longer be going to the OC room, but got over that pretty quickly. When I went to pick him up yesterday he burst into tears crying "I don't want to go!" So I'm guessing he liked it. He'll do two session of kindy next term and then start fulltime kindy as planned next year. Hopefully this will help him along a bit more with the speech thing. We are now doing a pretty intensive speech program with him and seeing a private speech pathologist for it (just as an aside, if anyone is looking for a new, lucrative career, then speech pathology would be my suggestion). The biggest challenge for me has been trying to get a 3yo to sit and focus on saying sounds and words correctly for more than a few minutes at a time. It's exhausting! But he's going well.
Hopefully I'll have an FO to show off one of these days. It's slow going at the moment.
And note to self... next time I decide to make a striped v-neck vest.... DON'T. Doing stripes on shoulder straps is extremely annoying and fiddly. If I ever feel like doing that again I should read this post to stop myself.
In non-knitting news, my littlest big boy, M, started pre-entry kindy yesterday. Yes, I know it's week 5. He's missed half the term. He's not actually supposed to start until next term, but he's recently been diagnosed with a severe speech delay :( SEVERE. Apparently this qualifies him to get an early start at kindy. He's been going fortnightly anyway to occasional care, which he loves. He was initially sad that he would no longer be going to the OC room, but got over that pretty quickly. When I went to pick him up yesterday he burst into tears crying "I don't want to go!" So I'm guessing he liked it. He'll do two session of kindy next term and then start fulltime kindy as planned next year. Hopefully this will help him along a bit more with the speech thing. We are now doing a pretty intensive speech program with him and seeing a private speech pathologist for it (just as an aside, if anyone is looking for a new, lucrative career, then speech pathology would be my suggestion). The biggest challenge for me has been trying to get a 3yo to sit and focus on saying sounds and words correctly for more than a few minutes at a time. It's exhausting! But he's going well.
Hopefully I'll have an FO to show off one of these days. It's slow going at the moment.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
WIPs
I seem to have accumulated a few of them. I have been trying to keep them to a minimum, focusing on one project at a time, but somehow I've managed to get two socks, a vest and another shawl on the go at the same time. And actually that's not all - there are a couple of longtime WIPs still hanging around also :(
And the green sock in the bottom left hand corner even has a dropped stitch that I only discovered last night. I'm not really sure how I managed to get so far with it with a dropped stitch right back on the leg. It's a chart pattern too, so something weird seems to have happened. Anyway, I've decided that one will get fixed as is, there's no way I'm frogging it back to before the heel flap. I'm on the home stretch!
The shawl was an impromptu cast on after a visit to my LYS which is having a 30% off all yarns clearance sale! Found out about that one by accident and promptly headed over there and picked up some Noro. The colourway is so beautiful so I was straight back home looking for something suitable and couldn't wait to cast it on. It is certainly addictive watching the colours emerge.
The vest is fast becoming an annoying niggle in the back of my mind. I powered along with it to start with. All I've got left is the front shoulders, then to seam it and do the neck and arm bands. Oh, and all those ends to weave in because of the stripes :( I don't know why I can't get motivated to just get it finished. I need to make some time for that this weekend I think.
I blame Ravelry for all of this. If only people would stop favouriting and queuing lovely things, I might actually be able to get some projects finished!
And the green sock in the bottom left hand corner even has a dropped stitch that I only discovered last night. I'm not really sure how I managed to get so far with it with a dropped stitch right back on the leg. It's a chart pattern too, so something weird seems to have happened. Anyway, I've decided that one will get fixed as is, there's no way I'm frogging it back to before the heel flap. I'm on the home stretch!
The shawl was an impromptu cast on after a visit to my LYS which is having a 30% off all yarns clearance sale! Found out about that one by accident and promptly headed over there and picked up some Noro. The colourway is so beautiful so I was straight back home looking for something suitable and couldn't wait to cast it on. It is certainly addictive watching the colours emerge.
The vest is fast becoming an annoying niggle in the back of my mind. I powered along with it to start with. All I've got left is the front shoulders, then to seam it and do the neck and arm bands. Oh, and all those ends to weave in because of the stripes :( I don't know why I can't get motivated to just get it finished. I need to make some time for that this weekend I think.
I blame Ravelry for all of this. If only people would stop favouriting and queuing lovely things, I might actually be able to get some projects finished!
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Better Ishbel Photos
Managed to get some half decent photos of Ishbel in the daylight this afternoon. Unfortunately I had to take them myself, so it was an interesting photo-shoot, to say the least. Lots of photos of the garden behind me with the shawl barely in the pic, and lots of mostly my head and not much shawl. Lots of cropping during editing! The colour is much more accurate in these pics.
Liesl
And here is my other Ysolda knit - Liesl. Again another popular pattern, and I know why! Before I even cast this off I had the next one planned.
This took 2 and a teensy bit skeins of Melody from The Yarn Cafe. The colourway is "Ivy". I love, love, love this yarn. It has held up so well. It first became the DIC shrug. I ripped that out, started something else. Didn't think I'd have enough yarn for the other thing, so ripped it out again, rewound and cast on for Liesl. And it still looks fantastic and feels divine. When I was knitting this I really felt like the yarn was made for this pattern. I've just now blocked it with a steam iron for the photos, and sits really nicely when on. I was a bit disappointed that blocking it lost all the squishy-ness that the it had due to the pattern, but it did open up the lace really nicely and it fits well. I knit it two sizes smaller than I measure, for a few reasons - I knew my bust size was going to shrink as I wind up breastfeeding F and after reading a bit on Rav I felt that it might end up too big if I knit my size at the time. So far it's worked out perfectly, but time will tell!
I did the capped sleeve version of this, with the picot bind off on both the arms and bottom. It looks so pretty. And after all I've read about attaching the arms on Rav, I think I'll just stick to the cap sleeves in future. Makes a nice vest-type thing over a short or long sleeved top I think. I put two buttonholes in this (I meant to do three but forgot to do the third... doh!) but I'm starting to think it would look good held together with a lovely shawl pin. Will have to see if I can find buttons I like or not.
Can't wait to wear it out somewhere!
This took 2 and a teensy bit skeins of Melody from The Yarn Cafe. The colourway is "Ivy". I love, love, love this yarn. It has held up so well. It first became the DIC shrug. I ripped that out, started something else. Didn't think I'd have enough yarn for the other thing, so ripped it out again, rewound and cast on for Liesl. And it still looks fantastic and feels divine. When I was knitting this I really felt like the yarn was made for this pattern. I've just now blocked it with a steam iron for the photos, and sits really nicely when on. I was a bit disappointed that blocking it lost all the squishy-ness that the it had due to the pattern, but it did open up the lace really nicely and it fits well. I knit it two sizes smaller than I measure, for a few reasons - I knew my bust size was going to shrink as I wind up breastfeeding F and after reading a bit on Rav I felt that it might end up too big if I knit my size at the time. So far it's worked out perfectly, but time will tell!
I did the capped sleeve version of this, with the picot bind off on both the arms and bottom. It looks so pretty. And after all I've read about attaching the arms on Rav, I think I'll just stick to the cap sleeves in future. Makes a nice vest-type thing over a short or long sleeved top I think. I put two buttonholes in this (I meant to do three but forgot to do the third... doh!) but I'm starting to think it would look good held together with a lovely shawl pin. Will have to see if I can find buttons I like or not.
Can't wait to wear it out somewhere!
Totally addicted to shawls
I haven't really been that into shawls until now. Not sure why all of a sudden I am. Well, I should say I like the way they look and some of them are incredibly beautiful patterns, but I could never see myself using one, so never thought I'd actually knit one. Maybe it's the way that everyone seems to be wearing them as scarves that swayed me? Not sure, but I do think they look a lot prettier as a scarf than most scarves do!
So I jumped on the bandwagon too. But as Sam says, popular patterns are popular for a reason. This is Ishbel (Rav link), and I'm in love! This is actually my second Ysolda knit. The other one needs buttons and blocking, so no pics of that one as yet, but soon. I am in love with this shawl. the finished object is so pretty, and it will work well as a scarf I think. I knit the large stocking stitch and small lace, so it's not a huge shawl. But that's a good thing since I really have nowhere to block something really large. This was my first time blocking lace too. I'm not entirely happy with the end result, so I'm going to do it again. I think I can probably get it a little bigger with another blocking. I used DIC Smooshy for this and it's lovely and soft.
Anyway, since casting this off I've been scouring Ravelry for another pretty shawl pattern. I'm really itching to get one on the needles! This is despite all the issues I had with Ishbel. Not that it was a particularly hard pattern, but me and double-decreases don't seem to mix well. I will say this required quite a bit of concentration, and lifelines. Thank goodness for lifelines. But I think this one is a good prep for more lace in the future. Not too hard, not too easy. The photo is of it blocking. I'll get a better pic and put it up soon.
I love it.
So I jumped on the bandwagon too. But as Sam says, popular patterns are popular for a reason. This is Ishbel (Rav link), and I'm in love! This is actually my second Ysolda knit. The other one needs buttons and blocking, so no pics of that one as yet, but soon. I am in love with this shawl. the finished object is so pretty, and it will work well as a scarf I think. I knit the large stocking stitch and small lace, so it's not a huge shawl. But that's a good thing since I really have nowhere to block something really large. This was my first time blocking lace too. I'm not entirely happy with the end result, so I'm going to do it again. I think I can probably get it a little bigger with another blocking. I used DIC Smooshy for this and it's lovely and soft.
Anyway, since casting this off I've been scouring Ravelry for another pretty shawl pattern. I'm really itching to get one on the needles! This is despite all the issues I had with Ishbel. Not that it was a particularly hard pattern, but me and double-decreases don't seem to mix well. I will say this required quite a bit of concentration, and lifelines. Thank goodness for lifelines. But I think this one is a good prep for more lace in the future. Not too hard, not too easy. The photo is of it blocking. I'll get a better pic and put it up soon.
I love it.
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