Life can be such a strange beast. Our life journey generally operates on auto-pilot and we rarely thinking about nasty things happening to us. I have always had migraine headaches. They began in my teens and always with full bells and whistles. By this I mean migraine with aura – visual problems in the form of wavy lines and flashing …
Recently, granddad Pete and I spent the week looking after Manaia, his big brother, Jackson, Rocky the Rottweiler and Piper the cat for a week while their parents enjoyed a short holiday in Fiji. The week was very busy with child related activities – the school run, soccer, karate practise and swimming. I had forgotten just how quickly the day …
I love the creative element of designing knitted cardigans. As such, I am always on the lookout for different stitches and how they can be joined together to make a pattern. A lot of thought and swatching go into creating a new pattern and this post shows the evolution of a pattern. The first step is deciding on the yarn. …
Hannah Thiessen’s book Slow Knitting: A journey from sheep to skein to stitch (Abrams NY 2017) is a new book on my knitting bookshelf. I have to confess it was the title which drew me in; I wanted to know all about this thing called ‘slow knitting’. In her introduction, Hannah laments the constant movement of timelines, deadlines and other …
A few weeks ago, I came across Lyn Slater’s blog The Accidental Icon. A professor in Social Welfare at Fordham University in New York, Lyn loves fashion and this is what her blog is all about. Yet, it is so, so much more than fashion. In one of her latest posts, Getting to Know Your “Red”: Here’s Mine she asks her …
Mentioning the word swatch to knitters elicits many reactions – from the ‘what is that’ to the ‘never do them’ right through to my favourite ‘I know my gauge’. Yet, many knitters DO swatch every time before they begin their new projects. Gauge is critical if the knitter wants the garment they are knitting to be successful. Gauge, as Shirley …
I have been re-reading Jill Ker Conway memoir trilogy: The Road to Coorain (1989), True North (1995) and A Women’s Education (2001). For those who do not have the foggiest notion of who she is, let me give you a short overview. Jill Ker spent her childhood on an outback (read: isolated) farm in NSW, Australia. It was an unusual upbringing …
I want to introduce my first knitwear collection. Featuring a casual but elegant theme, the Merino Collection is a small collection of cardigan designs linked by yarn, texture and design. The yarn I have chosen to use is Australian Superfine Merino by Cleckheaton. Incorporating textured stitch-work into a design is important to me. In this collection, I have used the Trinity …
As a Kiwi living in Australia, I struggle with this idea of place. The sunburnt country I now inhabit has its own beauty but on the whole, it does not enthral or capture my imagination or sense of place. My roots are in the four seasons of New Zealand and a relaxed way of life, of lush green and NZ …