Vintage Purls

Whoosh! Winter is almost over and it’s August already! I remember my grandmother telling me when I was a little girl that time seems to pass faster when you’re older, and one day I’ll think 5 years only a very little time (as compared to then when 5 years was ages and was a good proportion of the time I’d been on the planet). Bless my Granny, she wasn’t the wisest person I’ve ever known but she wasn’t wrong about that. And when you’re busy time just passes even faster.

Winter Sock Club has finished (the last instalment went out earlier this month), three new sock patterns, three special colourways and lots of goodies to find. It’s still good fun and I’ll be doing it all again in Summer (January). The lineup:

From left to right: Mandorla, Nightingale and Taimi.

I managed to squeeze knitting camp into the start of this month too. I love camp, it’s so relaxing and this year we looked at bead knitting. Yarn + sparkly things = awesome. My project (a toddler’s cardigan with beaded yoke) has been halted because I’m short 12 beads in the current colour. I’m sure I managed to spill at least 12 beads into my work box and on the floor so I’m trying to find them. I could concede that I need to buy another string but I’m not quite there yet.

With sock club over it’s time to clean up and deal with the things that get neglected whilst that’s in play. Mostly it’s boring paper work and trying to get more dying for the site done. I know I have an office under all this paper and yarn somewhere. I’ve got a sign now, in case I loose my way en route to the front room:

A good friend grabbed it from a building scheduled for demolition for me.

In other news: I’m now a proud Majacraft dealer. I’ve got demo wheels coming and I’ll put details on my website when they are here and I’m ready to serve Dunedin spinners.

I know that Dunedin does not have the best reputation weather wise. This doesn’t actually bother me, people think it snows all the time and that it’s miserable here on a regular basis, I know better and I smile to myself thinking how wonderful it is to live in such a charming city that isn’t overcrowded or overbuilt. But, every now and again Dunedin lives up to it’s poor weather reputation and the last few weeks have proved every weather stereotype right.

But today, at last, I can see the hills again:

That’s the view from my office – sucks doesn’t it. : )

Normally we have a pretty low rainfall (lower than Wellington and Auckland) and I’m hoping all the water we’ve had in the last wee while is it for the winter. Everything is thoroughly soggy.

Such weather does not motivate me to dye – my dye room is in our outside laundry. I like this fact on many, many fronts – it keeps the mess away from the house, I can keep my pots set up all the time and everything is within convenient grasp. Problem is that the laundry is a simple brick structure with a tin roof and a concrete floor (all built in about 1925), there is no insulation, the power to it can’t support my pots and a form of heating, so I’ve get to freeze if it’s cold out. That’s life of course and you can always lean against a simmering dye pot for a little warmth.

Sock club was all sold out the day after it opened, and I’m busy working on all the little bits and pieces that go into that, I’ve kept the numbers at 45 again since I’m not sure I can cope with too many more when it’s just me to dye and reskein everything.

I have a million knitting ideas whirling through my head but at the moment my master is sock club knitting. Mr K’s Model T is still not done, though I think I’ve worked out a way to get the neckline and armpit depth he likes without guessing – the jersey as it stands is knit up to the armpits (body and two sleeves in the round). I’m going to knit the rest from the top and then graft them together. It’s a plan and I’ll make it happen (one day). My poor niece (who has just turned one) has little proof that Aunty M knits but if she could only see what I dream of making her.

The winter sock club is about to kick off again. I’m excited and a little nervous. I like sock clubs; I enjoy making up little packages to send out, I like designing new sock patterns but I’m always a little concerned about time management and coming up with new things. Some things get easier – I’ve done this twice already and I well understand the logistics now. Some things get harder – coming up with new ideas for goodies in particular always keeps me on my toes.

The patterns from the sock club last winter will be released soon too (staring with Toasty), you’ll be able to buy them electronically on Ravelry and if you’d like a paper copy you can buy one of those on my site. I’ve been cleaning the patterns up and getting them ready for electronic release, I’m so tempted to tweak things, but I know I should really resist. It’s hard to be fully satisfied with a pattern in hindsight – I often think that this might be a little nicer like that, but if I let myself change little bits of the design before you know it it would be a totally different sock!

Sign up for the Winter 2009 Sock Club (that’s winter in NZ if you’re from the Northern hemisphere) starts on Monday at 9am.