Live Below the Line

I just spent about 2 hours browsing the supermarket, late at night, notepad in hand, and then 10 minutes collecting and buying this:


The Global Poverty Project is raising awareness about the 1.4 billion people in the world who live on the equivalent of $2 Australian every day. So I am joining in (see here) to live on ten bucks of food from Monday to Friday next week. No room for luxuries, let me tell you! I couldn't even sneak in a little pack of tea. I pondered my list for a while. No cereal was cheap enough. No way could I afford meat. I got full-cream milk with the intention of watering it down. Stock cubes were 10c cheaper than salt. Yukky cheap marg was cheaper than butter. I haven't got a menu planned out, but it's going to involve homemade bread with no yeast, pancakes with no egg, and NO MILO AT ALL.
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Only 5 days, though. Imagine eating like this every day, with no full pantry to fall back on. Don't know how I'd keep my kids healthy.
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I'm down to the bottom edge of Picovoli, doing a little 7x1 rib with a smidgeon of lace. Because I'm bored of stockinette... It's just Wool Ease, but I'm loving the tweedy green.
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Also I'm spinning a bit of blue and green.

And I used some soft handspun to knit a felted moebius bag. I'm planning to give it to Mum, though I'm unhappy with the long handle. Perhaps it will entertain my math-minded Dad. I'll tell him it's knit in one piece with no seams, yet it's a moebius strip (one edge, one side)... so how did I do it? He'll like that :D

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Some wool may also have fallen into the dye pot. This is actually Rit dye, which I apparently should not have used a cooking pot for, but Oh Well. This was BWM Rustic in "Aran". I think it wants to be slippers...

And now I must put my meagre groceries away and get into bed, as it's 1am :) Goodnight.

Bendi 2010 PICTURES

The Bendigo Sheep and Wool Festival was on this last weekend, and Kelly and I, having saved our money for a bit, headed up on Sunday to buy all the leftovers! Wonderful Dear Hubby looked after the babies all day, and I only saw them for about 15min before I left and 15 minutes when I got home, which was weird for me, but a nice holiday, too. (I bought Nathan some fluoro yellow explorer socks as a thankyou.)
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We left Kel's place in my shakey old car and headed up to Bendi, stopping at the Daylesford market on the way. We arrived at the showgrounds a bit before 10am, and left a bit after 4pm. Lots of shopping time :D
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Here is Kel, learning to spin from the guy who hooked me into it last year. She got the hang of it, but I don't think she's hooked.



I think she's hooked here instead. The felting lady (check out the umbrella!) showed her how it works, and Kelly left Bendigo with quite a bit of merino and silk fibre!



There was fibre galore. More fibre than yarn, I think.


We sat and watched the fashion parade. I stood behind the "T" to try and get some photos, but the models wouldn't stand still! This girl makes me want to knit shawls for Jasmine.


When I sat down with the crowd, I was next to a little girl, about 5 years old, who kept going "Ooooh! Ahhh! Wow!!" every time someone colorful came out. It was hilarious! There was a lot of great stuff this year, particularly felted clothes.
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Kelly found some good chai tea after we left that shed. (I was satisfied with my Kahlua Fudge.)

We checked out the competition display shed. (This felted seahorse was one winner.)

I've heard a lot of bad press about the Sydney show's poor displays. The displays here were fantastic. They even had a massive cabinet just for handspuns. Hard to take pics through the glass, though, with the light reflecting. Anyway.

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Here are some beautiful felted scarves at Garments and Gadgets. I've been particularly saving for this shop (though you can get their stuff online)

I wanted some more of the merino that my brother and sister-in-law bought me. Here are the lovely ladies who unwound 150g of 6 different colors off the big rolls of merino for me. It took a while. And filled a bag. Kel got some, too.

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WHAT I CAME HOME WITH:

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Three new bobbins for my wheel, and a handful of buttons,

a stitch dictionary and a book about Moebius bags by Cat Bordhi,

a little fibre from G and G, in colors Nutmeg, silver, ice green, mocha, manganese and natural (with some blue mix and green mix on the left) and some blocking wires,

some merino/tussah silk (80%20%) (300g), a cute little spinning wheel keychain and some dark green semisolid sock yarn from EGMTK,

one tiny skein of Noro in this beautiful jewelly color (for $10, but sadly the only one left in that colorway)

and a 68g skein of dusky pink cashmere/merino (30%70%) from Ixchel. It's the first laceweight yarn I've ever bought, and I'm just impressed that it's 750 meters.

My feet were sore, and I had to drive home in the rain (which started at 4pm!) but it was a such a fun day off! I'll be back to Bendi next year!

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P.S. Here are a heap more pictures :D

July 8

Here's a little bag I made my birthday girl. It's a little bit of cheating in the destash department, because the cabled handle was already done (from this bag) and accidently weighed with the stash. All I did was a rectangle of garter stitch, sewn in, with some crochet inside the top. It's just the right size for the little doll in there :)

Here's a bit more cheating. An easy 100g, almost. This little scarf for Byron is made from that bizarre pompom stuff ... I lost the ball band. It took me a while to figure out how to get going, but then it flew along. I get rid of some acrylic, to be replaced by nice stuff soon!
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So today was a long day for me. We went to Macka's in the morning, Mum and Dad's for a short hour, then home for the afternoon. Sounds like nothing much, but I was very glad that Kel turned up to distract them while I did some cleaning and present construction. Here she is checking out a long-distance present from her U&A in Sydney.

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She wore her birthday jumper all day, except when I pulled it off her hot little self when she was tearing around like Samson's foxes at Macka's. My hubby also kindly removed it before she got into the birthday cake!

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Happy second birthday, my little sugared-up chicky.

Dyed with jelly

This is a bit of 10ply merino with some nylon that I got "from" my brother and sil (who gave me a spotlight voucher). I dyed it with a panadol dropper, three types of jelly (berryblue, mango and blackberry) vinegar and a microwave.
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Socks for me! Almost finished them last night, sitting in the theatre waiting for "Eclipse" to start, but the lights dimmed. At least I entertained the nice old bloke near me for ten minutes.

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As to the vest, I'm thinking Picovoli. Not sure what color. For all that stash, I don't seem to have enough of any one yarn. LOL. Might have to go stripey :D