oh no, she’s not a secret now

Last night my new found love, my bamboo 9inch Hiya Hiyas, snapped.

There it is, the crime scene photo, all it’s gory detail captured on my phone. And ever since, this song has been stuck in my head.

It’s the first pair of needles I’ve ever broken, and in true sod’s law fashion the breakage didn’t occur where the swathes of stocking stitch were, but right where my column of yarn overs lay... Thankfully I only lost a couple of stitches, and it wasn’t too difficult pick them up, but I still swore enough to make a sailor blush. Dark yarn + bad lighting does not make for a particularly easy stitch rescue. Still, at least they didn’t break over the cables!

More cursing followed my frantic search for the steel tipped needles I’d bought in the same order as the bamboo (so that I could see which tips I preferred. Pack rat mentality comes in handy sometimes!) but the crisis was eventually averted, and I’m now 1.5 pattern repeats and a toe away from the finish time.

If I’d had these needles for a few months longer and if they’d been well used I would have just sucked it up and forked out the cash for a new (steel!) pair, but I’ve only had these since the end of January/beginning of February and this is only the second time I’ve used them, so I emailed the vendor I bought them from straight away at about 9pm, certainly not expecting to get a reply until at least the next day. A little over 2 and a half hours later at almost midnight(!) a reply landed in my inbox apologising for the breakage and offering a replacement. How’s that for customer service?! So thank you Linda at Tall Yarns ‘n Tales for such wonderful customer service!

She did say that this is only the second time she’s been informed about a broken needle, so I certainly don’t want to put anyone off buying the bamboo Hiya Hiyas. They’re fabulous little needles, and bamboo will always remain my first love in terms of needle material. However, the steel ones do feel a little sturdier, so when I stock up (and I will be stocking up on a few more of these 9inchers, I’m head over heels with them!) I’ll probably stick with the steel.

In other news, the Boy and I are off to see Doug Stanhope tonight. I don’t find him quite as amusing as the Boy does, so my plans for this afternoon include sorting out a sock project to bring along so that I can clickety click the night away…

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if the sock fits

It’s been a hectic week round these parts. I had a volunteer job interview, my Mum booked a very last minute trip back to Singapore, there was baby sitting, and there was a long overdue catch up with friends, but at long last sock 1 of my mystery socks is finally off the needles! It turns out that all that fretting was for nothing. Although I think I could probably have gotten away with making the medium size, the large still fits nicely, and the cables really pop along the foot. I did have a bit of a toe issue – the two pattern repeats I did of the foot pattern didn’t quite give me the length I needed, and as I just wanted to get them off the needles I thought I could just work an extra few decrease rows. Er, not quite. Three extra decrease rows did give me a sock that fit, but it came at the cost of  a ridiculously pointy toe. I decided that there was no way I could live with a toe that stupid looking so I unpicked the kitchener, ripped back the toe and knit five plain rows before starting the decreases. Perfect.

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lazy days

I’m having a super lazy Saturday. I spent some time catching up on some Playful Day podcasts whilst I painted my nails, and I LOVE how my nails turned out! They’re gold scribbles on a baby blue base.

I have a heel for my mystery sock.

And I’m thinking of casting on for another mystery sock, despite being so woefully behind in the other one, in some of my hand dyed yarn. This skein is a complete experiment. I was dyeing a semi solid grey when I accidently tipped a whole pot of grey dye stock all over the yarn. Luckily the darker section doesn’t look too bad, I dunked it in water immediately so it’s blended out somewhat.

I did then decide to dot some orange dye around to see what it would look like, but I’m not entirely convinced that it’s going to knit up too well! I’ve a feeling this would have looked better with yellow instead of orange, but I won’t know until I try. The pattern I have in mind for this has quite a few cables and travelling stitches, but now I’m in two minds about whether to knit this up as plain vanilla sock instead. I probably shouldn’t because I’ve already got a vanilla sock on the go, but I’m just so indecisive!

And just because I love my nails so much right now, and I really like the way the gold looks in the sunlight!

Hope you’re all having a great weekend!

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more lovelies

I’ve already bombarded you with a couple of posts on my dyeing exploits, but I’m far from done.

Beautiful purples and blues, bright sunshine yellow with splashes of orange, a multitude of browns, and a seafoamy, vintage inspired duck egg blue dotted with pale grey.

This is my favourite. Multi tonal purple with flashes blue and and even hints of green. Love.

I absolutely hated these browns when I first pulled it out of the dye pot, but I kind of love it now. It has wonderful depth.

This one is another favourite of mine. The colours are so soft and lovely, it’s definite spring colour. The hints of grey are much more apparent in this photograph. I inadvertently contaminated this skein with a few dots of red and yellow dye, but I should be able to use my notes to recreate it.

And a slightly better picture of the grey that I posted the other day. The blue and the grey are the superwash 2ply BFL that I’ve already mentioned, but the other are a lovely soft superwash wool blend.

There was also an organic merino that I dyed, but it almost ended in disaster as I forgot it wasn’t superwash and almost felted it!

Thankfully it reskeined beautifully so it wasn’t too disastrous. I must remember to be more careful with non superwash yarns in the future!

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versatility

The lovely MissHSoo contacted me to pass this award on to me a few months back, and more recently it’s been passed to me by KiwiPurler so it’s high time that I blogged about it!

I’m so so sorry to MissHSoo for not blogging about this earlier, but the thing is, I’m rather a shy person. Anyone who knows me in real life will know how ridiculously shy I am around people I don’t know. I open up to people after a while, but I’m really very introverted, and I’m usually unbearably quiet around people I don’t really know. KiwiPurler articulated my feelings towards blog awards so well in her post, and I’m so glad to see that I’m not alone in how I feel about them.

Being given recognition for my little home on the internet is a wonderful thing, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling and makes me feel as though people do like what I’m putting out there and I’m very appreciative that these two people have passed this on to me. I understand that to accept this, the rules are thus - I must share 7 things about myself and then pass the award onto 15 other blogs. I think the reason that I shied away from blogging this award was the passing it on part. I subscribe to so many blogs that choosing just 15 to pass it onto was a big task in itself (not only am I shy, I’m indecisive), and then when I did decide on my 15, would they think me silly for passing it on to them? Which is a completely ridiculous thought, because I certainly don’t think that MissHSoo or KiwiPurler are silly for passing this onto me.

So I’ve decided this: if KiwiPurler can break the rules then so can I. Therefore I’m tagging all of you. Share 7 things about yourself, either in the comments below, or on your blog and post the link in the comments so that I can read all about it, because not only am I shy and indecisive, I’m nosy too :)

So without further ado, here are my 7.

1. I’m left handed, or as my other half the Boy likes to call it, cack handed/a southpaw. Isn’t he nice to me?! I very much like being left handed, it makes me feel a little bit special (apparently, only 10% of the world population is left handed!).
   
2. I was taught to knit at a fairly young age (I’m not sure how old exactly, but I think around 5 or 6). My Mum asked her friend to teach me because she was also left handed and for some reason my Mum thought it’d be easier for me to learn from a fellow leftie. I’m not sure why she thought that because I knit the same as a right handed person. I remember that back then I used to think that “purl” stitches sounded wonderfully exotic, and I still have the orange plastic needles that I used to play around with back in the day, although I’m glad to say that the hideous acrylic tangles that I used to make are long gone.
   
3. I’m an English style thrower, and the idea of backwards mirror knitting gives me a headache. I have tried Continental knitting, but my stitches end up too sloppy and I get frustrated with how slow my knitting is going so I never make it though a full row. I’d like to master it one day, but I’ll have to overcome my impatience first!
   
4. I’m half Chinese, my Mum is from Singapore and my Dad was English with a tinge of Scot. It’s an endless bugbear of mine that I barely look Asian at all, and I’m always envious of other hapas who looks far more Asian than I. Alexa Chung, Maggie Q, Kelly Hu, I’m looking at you girls.
   
5. When I talk to my Mum my English usually end up descending into Singlish. This is not something that is consciously done, and it can get a bit embarrassing when I’m in public on the phone to her and hear myself drifting into it! I can’t speak Chinese though, although I did have Mandarin lessons last year but I haven’t been practicing (naughty!) so need to get back into that. I can speak a teensy bit of Hokkien, which is my Mother’s dialect. Incidentally, the first Hokkien words that my Mum taught me were swear words (classy family!), but I pretty much only know enough to know when my Mum is speaking about me.
   
6. I was obsessed with Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew books when I was younger, and spent much of my childhood with my imaginary twin solving ridiculous imaginary mysteries. (As an aside, in linking to the Wikipedia entry for Nancy Drew I've only just discovered that Carolyn Keene isn’t a real person! The books were ghost-written! I’m in shock.)
   
7. At school I was an army cadet and I almost joined the Royal Navy. I was considering being sponsored through university to study engineering and then going on to train as a naval officer after graduating, but I chickened out. There’s a part of me that hugely regrets not following through with it. Other childhood regrets: not following through in a career in either astrophysics, marine biology or archaeology. These were all dream careers of mine, and if money and time were no object I’d still love to study any or all of them. It’s never too late for a career change, right?!
   

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