Post 643 Mainly Music and Knitting.

Another enervating ASO concert, the second this year in their Matinee series. From my seat in the front row l’ve recovered from examining the shoes of the performers and moved to watching body movements and facial expression. It’s really interesting that most violinists  really move their bodies into the music. Elizabeth Layton in particular uses every muscle in her face as well as her body, to signal both her joy and signals to the other players.

I enjoyed the program, especially the first item. It's a pleasant way to spend a morning, with and easy ride each way on the city loop bus.

It was raining enough for me to carry an umbrella, something I rarely need to do in Adelaide.I didn't need to use it. 

Rather than compete with those heading to the Art Gallery for lunch I headed for the bus and when I got out stopped at A Prayer for the Wild at Heart for Yellow Fin Whiting. It was warm enough to sit outside. The rain returned with a vengeance around 5pm.

I had been up early that morning to finish the Berwick cardigan, so I could wear it to the concert. At the last minute I decided I  would be too hot - a wise decision. You can read all about it in my embroidery blog if interested.
The temperature has dropped and I have worn it almost every day since. It's very big, wraps around, is easy to take on and off, and stays with the help of a brooch.

I was, however, determined to use up the left-over wool, which included a full 50gm ball of the dark green, 43 gm of Pale Oak and around 25 gms of Blossom and Russet. I figured that might make two JusticeNet beanies so began with the full green ball. 

It worked well, using up all but about 60cm of the green yarn, which went into the pompom. This result meant I would need to improvise to use the Pale Oak for another beanie. 

                          

I managed it by knitting the band in the contrasting Blossom. As you can see, this is a subltle contrast and will only appeal to someone wanting to blend in! The pompom is made from some 4ply in the same colour that I had left over from a previous project. The scales are clearer in reality than the photo - but they don't stand out boldly.

To further the clean-up of left-over yarn, I finished the beanie from the yarn spun for the first Chapter and Skein Book Club. There is still a bit of yarn left which I am working that into a small bag. I'm now thinking that this set of items might make a raffle prize for a charity.

In the early part of last week, over three nights, there was a close alignment of Venus, Mercury and the Moon, visible to the north-west just after sunset. I looked out for it but each night there was complete cloud cover. As I parked for dinner on Saturday evening I glanced up and saw it! They had moved farther apart but were in a straight line. Venus is just disappearing towards the horizon over the roof of the house on the far left (a tiny dot level with the top of the pink marker line), Mercury is the clear dot about an inch above and to the left and the blurry moon is in the top corner. It's not a spectacular photo, but I'm very pleased to have seen it. 

On Sunday Katherine and I had an Adelaide Chamber Singers concert, a program of folk music at Ayers House. I caught the City Loop bus there and back.  We had front row seats in what proved to be an intimate experience with the conductor within touching distance. 

Much of the early program was familiar, although I hadn't heard Gravedigger. The Ingrian Evenings  nor Three French Chansons. We both enjoyed the concert. I liked the liveliness and sense of fun as the program progressed. A lot of work had clearly gone into creating a very integrated presentation.

I have kept up the antiseptic spray on my re-opened ear piercing and refrained from swimming. I'm considering going to the pool on Friday to walk up and down a lane, which I can do without getting my head wet.  

Today, in the time I would have been swimming, I visited the Mac Centre at Norwood to discuss replacing my iPad Mini which is on its last legs. A Book Club member had said they offer trade-ins. They were very helpful, but I left in a quandary.  They are carrying no stock of Minis, because there is a new version due in September. They will offer no trade-in. I can go to the main Apple Store in the city and buy a current same-capacity model, with trade-in, or I can wait for the new model (the Mac Centre staff recommendation). I could probably get higher storage if I do that. I doubt my current one will last another three months. I do have a regular size iPad as well. Thinking about it.

Later in the day I walked to the Post Office and back rather than waiting to call in when I was out driving tomorrow. A small gesture of exercise replacement. Ironically, the parcel I picked up is a cake of shampoo and one of conditioner, which I bought to use when showering at the pool!

These evening I have given myself a break from knitting and begun stitching a Corinne Lapiere mouse.  It's nice to hold something completed in an evening. There are, however some accessories to come.

There's more music to come this coming weekend - and, no doubt, knitting! 

Post 637 The sky clears a little

On Wednesday I had an optometry appointment, the first with the replacement for the brilliant optometrist I’ve been seeing for around 5 years, who has recently enrolled full time in a Doctor of  Medicine course. To my relief, her replacement promises to be as good. He was thorough, thoughtful, knowledgeable and listened. My eyes are stable, I’ve now added a non-steroid cream to the nightly regime and will see him in six months time. 

Rather than rush home and change for swimming. I stopped at the wetlands on the SE corner of the parklands, and went for a walk. I haven’t been for a long time and a lot had been done - plenty of fallen timber arranged for animal visits and habitat.       

Most of the birds can be heard rather than seen, but the lorikeets were in view, as well as a wandering noisy miner. I managed 23 minutes before the rain came. I didn’t stop to photograph the magpies strutting in the rain.

Before Pilates on Thursday I had an appointment with my orofacial pain clinician to do the preparation for a new night mouth guard.  We had agreed on the timeline 12 months ago. The technology has changed significantly. Instead of biting into goo, creating a plaster cast, on to which the plastic is  moulded,  the clinician used a laser pointer to scan the inside of my mouth in great detail, projecting an image on to a computer screen. It took a while until she was happy with the scan. She is now using that to print me a 3D mouth guard! I'm very impressed. I return in 2 weeks to fit the guard.

Although I went to bed at a reasonable time, I made the mistake of reading another chapter of R. L. Marsay's A Christmas Shadow.  I had enjoyed the first 5 in the series, then set them aside. I've now returned.  My Kindle dropped out of my hand just before 2am. 

That left me a little tired on Friday, but, after running short of stitch markers for the Berwick cardigan, I ventured to the Needle Nook. Their online listing of  packets of stitch markers proved wrong. I selected 50 of these pins from a paperbag on the counter, handed over $5 and had a conversation with Hugh about steeking before taking myself determinedly to the swimming pool to swim laps. The markers do have the advantage of being wire rather than plastic.

The City Council had given notice of a road closure this weekend to remove a crane - the one that has appeared in my sunset photos for at least 2 years, and which curious readers had asked about. 

On Saturday I photographed the sunset towards the northwest at ten past five (above). Ten minutes later, directly west,  (right) the crane was still moving.

By the time I left for dinner at 6pm there was an additional crane in place (left) - clearly the move was on.

Dismantling a crane is evidently a major work. All day Sunday the cranes were slowly moving, 

Structures appeared above and below and only occasionally could tiny human figures be seen, dispelling the sense of a giant robot.

No wonder there were road closures!

At 3.15pm on Sunday. the cage that had evidently been inside the building supporting those tiny figures, was lifted out and manoeuvred to the street below. At that point I lost track, focused on finishing another book and progressing the Berwick cardigan. 

It was dark when I next looked - and there was no blinking light to warn planes. The job, I guessed, was done. When I checked in the morning, for the first time in recent memory, there is no crane on the grey building. The smaller one on the Credit Union building next to it is now the only one currently in view. 

I doubt it will be long before more appear.

We had a jolly crew of eight for dinner on Monday. I wasn’t happy with the crackling on the pork but everything else I deemed successful. I either need to buy from a different butcher or adapt to the way the current butcher is now cutting.

I slept exceptionally well last night and got a couple of rows of knitting done this morning before heading out to swim.

The Berwick cardigan has, as I hoped, stopped curling now that the pattern contains both knit and purl stitches. The edge will straighten when the band is added - and I will also block it.  Progress is still slow. I'm far enough into the 40 line pattern to see where it is going but I need to constantly check, and frequently have to undo several stitches. With 405 stitches in each round, it takes a while. It is, however, progress!

Post 636 Look to the sky - or the pattern.

One of the joys of living on the third floor is sometimes being treated to flocks of birds wheeling and calling around sunset. It doesn’t always, or even often, happen, but Thursday was one day when it did. I took a few photos, but most, while capturing more birds, were blurry.

I had been out all afternoon - at Pilates, then to the Yarn trader to renew my supply of fine gauge knitting needles, to Bunnings for a lucky bamboo (still no sign of the ones on tubes, but plenty in pots), to the Guild to drop off a Piecework article for a friend of a friend, Officeworks to pick up some printed merchandise and the local IGA for milk and fruit. 

At home I managed to separate one of the bamboo stalks and put it into the glass vase that came with some flowers a few weeks ago. It looks as if both might survive.

It was lovely to reheat some Osso Bucco, pour a zero alcohol Margarita and watch the birds. Oddly the latest Piecework was in my letterbox - an interest issue focused on blue and white.

I had spent Wednesday embroidering an aide memoire for my neighbour. I’m not sure if it will help her remember her keys, but it’s worth a try. It also gave me a small embroidery break from knitting!

The weather has remained warm. I had lunch in the CBD with friends on Friday, getting the city loop bus a bit early so I could call at Myers for some of the Narciso Rodrigues for her perfume I had settled on in March last year, which now seems has been discontinued. Myers still had stock, so I took the opportunity to stock up. I now have enough for a couple of years. 

The lunch lasted three hours, with excellent food and even better company. The restaurant wasn’t crowded and we could hear our conversation!

That morning's red sky had certainly not turned out to be a warning!

Saturday morning's pre-dawn sky, however, was even more interesting, a series of stripes and swirls ahead of two days of largely overcast sky with frequent rain..

Both were upstaged by a rainbow which I just happened to see on Sunday afternoon as I glanced out the eastern door.

Having finished the Chapter and Skein shawl last week, I did embark on a beanie with the remaining yarn .  It is a great grab-and-go project. 

Partly for that reason, I thought it was about time I tackled Marie Wallin's Berwick cardigan, which had arrived in May 2024, so, apart from shopping for food over the weekend, I spent most of it setting up and starting what is a challenging knitting project.

It is knitted in the round from the bottom up and a steek. With 404 stitches on the needle, and two alternating colours, twisting proved a challenge. I thought I had it sorted, but after 4 rows, found I had not one, but two twists. The only way I could get it sorted was to pin it out on the arm of a chair, cut the steek, remove the twists and stitch the cut end together with a sewing needle. 

I have now finished the Fair Isle border.

Annoyingly, but predictably, It is curling as it progresses.  I'm hoping that the introduction of purl stitches as I move into the main grey section will alleviate this. If not, I will have to see if I can block the work in progress. I don't think I can work with a fattening snake!

I haven't furthered the Poppies needlepoint cushion - one major project at a time is enough. For breaks from Berwick  I have been reading Ann Sutton's Saffron Weald series, set in the South of England in the 1920s. From a rocky start, they are improving and providing a welcome diversion. I've almost finished the second in the series. By tomorrow I should be on to #3, Book Clubs can be Murder, which is what attracted me to the series. 

Post 633 Quite a busy week.

1

WES Group was well attended last Wednesday with 16 people to hear Janet talk about Japanese Fukusa. There must have been 50+ varied examples. My favourite were those depicting the Takasago legend of the old couple, Jo and Uba,  who appear from Lake Takesako, to spend time under a pine tree setting the world to rights. She sweeps away the old pine needles with her broom while he rakes in good fortune.  

The Fukusa are beautifully decorated cloths placed over ritual presentation gifts. Most are woven and many embroidered.

In the gap between our meeting and the afternoon help session, Margaret helped me examine and make notes on an embroidery collection belonging to a work colleague of a family member. Most of it will, I think, end up on the Guild trading table.

I was too focused on ensuring the Gallery was left in the condition we found it to remember to check the supply of hoops on the trading table, which had been renewed the day before, so I returned after Pilates on Thursday and indulged in ten small presentation hoops. I may never use them, but my supply is depleted by the Celtic symbols I embroidered for the Early Medieval Period talk, and the hoops have proved really useful for displaying such small items. 

I felt, however, the urge to move to a larger embroidery project, so dug out the needlepoint Poppies cushion I bought last year. 

The only reliable way to tackle it is on my slate frame and Lowery, so I spent a couple of hours setting it up. It takes up quite a lot of room but is not difficult to move. Progress is slow. It’s 18” square and 10 thread count. I reckon this is at least an 85 hour project, given the time it takes to identify, choose, thread and stitch each colour. It’s also a little awkward to work, demanding regular posture adjustment. So far I've stitched a section 8"x 2' which took 4-6 hours. 

I shopped on Friday but couldn’t get lamb shanks anywhere at my local shopping centre. It was a big football weekend in Adelaide, with multiple games being played at several venues, and road closures around the city. The sky turned on a celebratory rainbow around 4pm. 

I tracked the lamb shanks down online at Frewville, fortunately in the opposite direction to the football venues. As most of the family had tickets on Saturday night, Katherine and I enjoyed a quiet meal down the road at The Greek.

Our Book Club met at Magill on Sunday. I plotted a ring route to avoid the many road closures on the more direct route, and got mildly lost. I hadn’t read the books, but there was still plenty to talk about and 62 books added to our database. I’ve ordered a second-hand copy of The Hawk is Dead by Peter James for our May meeting. The other two suggested books are thrillers, which I avoid and I am interested to check out how a fiction book is constructed around living people. I have a feeling I may not get to the meeting anyway, as I have a commitment well on the opposite side of the city later the same day.

The lamb shanks turned out well. I experimented with the vegetables (broccolini and bok choi), leaving them in iced water,  draining and tossing them into the lamb ragu at the last minute and removing from the heat after 1 minute. It worked well. The ragu was still a bit too liquid but no one seemed to mind. There was bread to soak it up.

The books I've ordered to help with my August talk are still arriving roughly on the expected timeline. There are snippets of information in each one, helping me to build the picture I want. Much of it is things I've forgotten from Uni studies decades ago. The Old English word man, for example, is gender neutral, meaning 'person' or 'human' and people are frequently referred to in early texts as 'weapon person' or ' weaving person'. 

This morning’s coffee meeting didn’t happen as my friend was ill, so I took the opportunity to drop into the city and buy a replacement for my kitchen scales.  Recommended by Choice, the new ones are slightly larger than the old and have both a high capacity (10kg) and a precision pad. It still, however, fits in my available storage space. The old one did its work for at least 20 years and is now awaiting the next curb side pickup.

Caleb turned up around 3.30pm to examine my TV, quickly finding a broken aerial cable inside the back of the TV, which, he is sure, must have been faulty. He made a temporary repair with tape and the signal was restored. After consulting with the boss, he disconnected the cable, headed to the wholesaler, returned and replaced it. My TV is now working again! I can now watch South Australian News in Adelaide time, rather than streaming from NSW in Eastern Standard Time! I celebrated with a non-alcoholic margarita.

The Chapter and Skein shawl is coming along nicely. I've used 40%-50% of the first of two skeins.I'm still not sure if I will need to use the second skein. It's relaxed knitting - a 6 line pattern in which only one row isa true patterned row. It's nice yarn to handle. 

Shane, my drip entry-point-finding hero, is due at 8am tomorrow. I have a lot of faith in his skill and persistence. The difficulty may come in getting agreement on an intervention beyond plugging the latest hole. I'm a bit buoyed by the television fix today - and grateful that I have such tradies available to help.

Better get some sleep.

Post 626 Out and About

On Wednesday I had lunch with old work friend, covered a lot of Adelaide politics. I also called at Pink Carat and picked up a necklace they were repairing and I had forgotten about, even though it has been a favourite. The cord had broken and I had left it at a popup shop they set up in the Unley Village while their shop was being renovated a couple of months ago. I'm not wearing many necklaces at the moment because of the heat but it's good to have it back.

Thursday after Pilates I called at the Guild to pick up some Appleton’s thread a friend left for me. I’m about halfway to the threads for the Crewelwork Bluebird linen I’ve ordered. It was a good visit, a pleasure to catch up with a few people.

It will be a while before the linen arrives, so I’m working my way through the remaining Kasia Jacquot panels. Olga is finished (left) and I'm starting on Kylie  

Our  group of Ladies Who Lunch met on Friday at Yakisan, at North Adelaide. The food, a shared 6 course, was good and suited us. We talked and laughed nonstop for three hours. Service, and signage to find the place left a bit to be desired. It was a relaxed and enlivening three hours after which I went to Frewville and bought the ingredients for a roast dinner on Monday.The forecast for was a mere 28C and I was expecting only 5 for dinner, so bought a smaller piece of pork than usual, requiring only 2 hours in the oven. I’ve put off roasting for several weeks because having the oven on for 3 hours heats up the apartment. It worked well.

Later in the afternoon I finished off the shrug. I think it will prove useful. Details in my embroidery blog.

I spent the evening winding my birthday wool into balls. It took quite a while. I also went hunting for patterns, ending up with a wavy patterned shawl.  This is the beginning.

Our Book Club met on Sunday. My favourite of the recommended books was The In Crowd by Charlotte Vassell. I added  another 50 books to our database of books reported on by members. 

By far the best book I've read recently is A Divine Calling. I had no idea of the efforts of Roman Catholic women to achieve ordination within their church. It is an extraordinary account. I couldn't put it down. It is very difficult to find in Australia, so my copy will be in demand. 

Today I swam laps again, managing 750 metres in half an hour. There was no competition for a shower and I got home refreshed, to discover I had left my bathers hanging in the shower! I considered driving staight back, but saw sense and rang them. Ingrid, the receptionist, checked, found it. and hung it over a pipe in their storage area to dry. I can pick it up tomorrow. They are the most pleasant, helpful people imaginable. 

I have been looking for a line dancing group for a while now. Some twenty years ago a work friend and I went line dancing once a week and had a great time. She is now back in her home town, Canberra. The most convenient group meets at the same time as my Pilates group. Another possible group meets on Tuesday evenings. I'm looking for a way to swim, do Pilates and line dance on three different days. Haven't solved it yet, but may have a solution for the middle of March. My focus for the next few days is my talk on Mexican Embroidery on Monday's Guild General Meeting.