S.E.X. in Wang; Or, the Chilling Conclusion!

OK, we’re about to leave Canberra. Did you know, you can hide.. sorry… carry 2 packs of Zara and 10 balls of sock yarn in the front zip pocket of a medium sized case? Just in case you ever need to know (Yes, Georgie, I’m looking at you!)

We hit the road and by dint of stopping at a certain American fast food place and the judicious application of lollypops we survived the drive to Rutherglen – where we stayed at a wonderful unit complex in Corowa.

It was substantially cooler, so we immediately purchased some wine (in fact we stopped at 2 wineries on the way) and scouted takeaway food options. Settled in, got tired kids asleep, and I plotted.

Thursday was winery day, including lunch at a wonderful place called The Pickled Sisters Café (which just happens to be smack next door to a very nice winery – gosh!) and then we visited a couple more – and the children fed turtles at Pfeiffers winery.

Friday was my day – I have been in training for this one for a while! I organised lunch at Brown Brothers at Milawa, a quick trip to the Milawa cheese factory, and planned a route which led past Australian Country Spinners at Wangaratta!! They sell wool there for a bit over $27/kilo!!! And some is cheaper! (and some a bit more expensive!)

I planned our stop there for pre-lunch – because I am not totally insane! I have a very real appreciation of what happens when I have a few glasses of wine and am let loose in the vicinity or yarn!

I had a lovely time (if the place hadn’t been nearly full, especially of lovely grandmotherly ladies, I would have rolled in it all!) I bought lots and lots of Jet and Country Silk, Shadow Tweed and Country Prints, and Patonyle, Patonyle, Patonyle!! Including a 600gr monster cone (Patomonster) of printed Patonyle (heelllloooo, Baby Surprise Jacket!). And some Velvet Deluxe. It almost didn’t fit in the car, but when I suggested we just tag the kids and freight them home so there was more room in the car for wine and wool, the Accountant wasn’t impressed!

The Princess offered to sit on the wool, and Destructoboy is only short, so there’s lots of room under his feet. Besides, packs of yarn are flat and squooshy. You can used them to pad wine bottles.

So after spending most of the day drifting around Rutherglen, we tootled Melbourne-ward and back onto the ferry for the trip home. I still find myself chuckling over my not-stash (sale wool does not count – nor does gift wool, or wool you’ve almost forgotten buying). I occasionally hug my Patomonster.

And you all know my secret now. That’s right – Yarn magazine issue 9 came out while I was away – and it has my article in it!!!! Woo hoo! (Happy dance, happy dance!)

And the winners are.....

And the winners are:

Melinda,

and

Georgie

Georgie, I have your address, but Melinda, I need yours – please email me and next week I’ll get something nice away to you both!

Thanks everyone for your lovely comments on both my 100th blogpost and for your birthday wishes! You are all very kind! We went out for dinner last night with children at the local pub and, apart from a decided willingness on my part to swap either or both children for a puppy by the end of the night, we had a nice time!

We’re off for a long weekend to Hobart tomorrow, an operation which requires the advanced logistical skills and roughly the same amount of gear used by the 5th brigade when invading Iraq. In a couple of months we’re invading – sorry, Freudian slip there – ummm – visiting Canberra, via Echuca and Bendigo and Rutherglen and Wangaratta – wine and wool – Hey! Who does the trip planning for these holidays anyway? And the two and a half week trip will need almost exactly the same amount of stuff as the 4 day trip. Gone are the days when we used to throw a couple of things into an over night bag and take off with no preparation whatsoever!

There has been knitting happening.

I have finished the first Vog On and am doing the gusset of the second, and am up to the heel flap of the first Noro spiralling rib sock. I’m trying to organise things so I’ve got fairly straight and mindless knitting to do on the 3 hour drive in the car tomorrow – I prefer not to be picking up stitches to create gussets in a moving vehicle – one DPN always seems to fling itself loose during the process and end up under the seats in a position where it is impossible to retrieve until the car has come to a complete standstill!


We seem to be planning to spend most of the time catching up with friends we haven’t seen for ages, but I have rather sneakily organised to slip off to Salamanca Market with the Knightly Knitter, followed by an SnB. This is while our respective husbands mind our collective children!

It’s the first step in my master plan for world domination, folks, leaving the kids with Dad!

Talk to you again after the weekend folks – and will have a pile of blogs to catch up with on Tuesday!

You Might Be An Obssessed Knitter If.......

Yup. You might be obsessed when:

- you decide on your projects and pack them first for a trip

- you take 4 knitting projects, despite the fact you’re only going away for 2 nights (after all, there’s quite a lot of driving involved)

- you visit a new town. You visit the thrift shops – and ask if they have yarn. Or patterns. You look for yarn shops. You visit the only craft shop in town. It has one small stand of Patons wool in a very large space. They stock Country, Baby, Jet and Patonyle sock yarn. You actually stand there thinking about buying some – despite the fact that your stash is greater than the GDP of Outer Mongolia and you don’t use much Patons. Your stash is WAAAAAYYYYY bigger than this entire yarn stock.

- you go out to dinner, drink lots of red wine and attempt to design and knit a lace pattern in kid mohair. After spending the night knitting, you have to frog the lot, but YOU FEEL OK ABOUT THIS!

- you finish a sock, but have forgotten darning needles for grafting. You work out a method of grafting which takes another, finer double pointed needles and three times as long. It works. You are happy about this.

- you get five minutes of quiet time all to yourself. You use this time to tink back 4 rounds on a sock to where the count went funny, instead of relaxing or drinking wine.

- you wake in the middle of the night, in a strange room, and can’t get back to sleep. You spend the rest of the night working out 2 sock patterns, a reversible scarf pattern and a blog entry for when you get home.

- you miss your pattern books

- you worry about what blogpals have been doing while you haven’t been watching

- your queue of ‘want to knit this’ is so long that you are unlikely to make much of a dent in it before your 70th birthday. You feel OK about this.

- your stash has become so large that it now lives in 3 places. You seriously consider moving out all the sheets and towels in the walk in linen press, just so all your stash can be together

- you see a new sock yarn. You become rather anxious because you realise all the sock yarn in the world can’t be yours.

- you see a gorgeous DPN kit. You begin to scheme about ways to obtain one.

- your blog pals and fellow knitters occupy the first places on your Christmas list.

- you look forward to fellow knitter’s birthdays and Christmas, because you get the joy of buying yarn without actually adding it to your stash

- there are very few waking moments when knitting doesn’t occupy your thoughts. It is occasionally supplanted by thoughts of children and food. And wine. And books. But not as often as would be healthy.

- you wonder how this obsession crept up on you – but you aren’t all that bothered.


We had a road trip at the weekend, up to the North East of our beautiful state. We visited the town of the Accountant’s childhood and looked at the house where he lived. We drove about. We went to Mt William National Park and saw wombats and Bennett’s wallabies with joeys in their pouches. We went to the place I camped on a trip with the girls many years ago (it’s still a very nice spot and right on the beach).

We went out to a very nice dinner. Our waitress was a knitter. She liked my socks. It was a lovely break, except for the fact the weather was very windy and wet and quite cold. The place we stayed was great and the swimming pool was inside and heated (the Princess thought it was wonderful).

I had lots of time to knit in the car and finished one Feather and Fan sock and got halfway down the cuff on the other. I forgot a darning needle and missed my patterns.

I enjoyed not cooking for 2 nights. It’s not that I don’t like cooking, because I do. I just don’t enjoy the pressure of coming up with something that everyone in the family will think is wonderful every single night. Last night was 2 minute noodles for the kids and bruschetta and antipasto for the adults. This involved virtually no cooking. It’s a break that feels like a holiday.

I think I may be just a little knitting obsessed. I came back to Juno like an old friend and got 2 repeats done, so it is very likely (all knitting goddesses permitting) that I will finish the collar this week. If all goes particularly well, I may also block, sew and complete Juno this week. Then I can concentrate on socks. And Christmas presents. And Tea Cosies (for the swap) and the Swing Jumper. And Bella. And more socks.