Double knitting

Yes, the Australian Sheep & Wool Show is long over, but it’s worth mentioning that I found it to be the best show they’ve yet had at the Bendigo venue. There seemed to be a far better range of yarn/sheep/wool related vendors than in previous years, and far fewer of the trashy stands that serious knitters have little desire to see. From a traders point of view, one of the nicest aspects of this show is that we vendors all get along so well together; it’s really like a reunion of old friends each year, and there’s always a lot of laughter and chit chat as we catch up on eachothers news and gossip.

The Woolcraft Competition organisers also had the grand idea of opening up the Woolcraft display after hours, just so the traders could have the opportunity for a leisurely browse. Most of us are normally unable to get away from our sites during the regular show hours, so the chance to see the competition entries at leisure on Friday evening (with wine & cheese in hand!) was most welcomed. Hope they can manage that same arrangement again – and I must remember to take my camera to the show next year.

Speaking of woolcraft, I still don’t think there’s as much interest shown in this competition as there was back in the days of it being displayed at the Melbourne Showgrounds. Whether or not it’s my memory playing tricks on me, but I think there was a much higher level of participation during the Melbourne era (ie, many more entries in each of the various classes), as well as a higher degree of technical excellence, coupled with more creativity and originality. Don’t get me wrong – there were certainly some well earned place getters at Bendigo this year,  but some of the entries were a little ho-hum, and would possibly have been more suited to an audience at the local village fete, rather than at a show of woolcraft excellence.

However, that said, the Woolcraft Competition can only ever be as good as those that enter it, and I know the committee work hard each year to attract new participants. There are pages and pages of people who put their name on the list to receive the next years’ schedule, but I wonder what deters them from actually entering?  Are we too shy to compete alongside others, and have our work put on public display? Do we undervalue our own ability – feeling that we’re ‘not good enough’? Or do we simply find it impossible to make the time to put together an entry that meets the given criteria? There could be many and varied reasons, but I’ve put my name down on that list to receive a schedule for the first time, so it will be interesting to see whether I can get my own act together in 2008!

On returning from Bendigo and, with the cumulative effects of a hard slog at the Darling Harbour Craft Fair a few weeks prior, my vision decided to go wonky. Not an unusual occurence, not alarming – but very annoying. For a couple of weeks or so I had a bout of double vision, meaning a computer keyboard  with a QQWWEERRTTYY layout and, seemingly, a rather horrifyingly large number of stitches on my knitting needles. Not the best time to copy all those sheets of new subscribers to my e-mailing list, nor the best time to attack my Parisienne kid mohair knit.  Instead I got down to some BIG knitting:

The yarn is Point Five, the colour is Pharaoh (think along the lines of those Egyptian tomb paintings) and the knit is the Celtic Jacket. It’s the third one I’ve knitted! Over the June Long Weekend we spent the weekend at the Daylesford Photo Biennale and, at some point unknown, one of the handmade wooden buttons fell off my knit jacket and was lost. I was so disappointed and was faced with the choice of replacing all the buttons (as I possessed no spare) or knitting another jacket. It may sound ridiculous, but I opted for the latter. I guess it’s one of those simple, timeless designs and the style lends itself well to dressing up or down. And I rather fancied the Pharaoh colourway as a change from the Copperbeech of my other version. I’m actually nearing the end now -  just a sleeve head and collar to go. It’s so quick to knit AND quick to make up as the body is in one piece to the armholes, and the button/hole bands are knitted at the same time as the body, so there’s no picking up stitches or sewing on bands!

And now my vision is just blurry (blurry enough to walk past people I know in the supermarket without recognising them, and blurry enough to be a nuisance when trying to watch TV) but good enough that I have started transposing those sheets of email addresses into my Subscribers List. And good enough to know that I won’t see double knitting when I go back to that Parisienne/Tao project.

A blogger’s retrospective

Okay, I know that one of the important aspects blogging is to make regular entries; the writing of events and thoughts as they happen. But what of when life gets in the way of blogging ? Is it permissable to do a retrospective?

Probably not – but I’m going to anyway!

My last blog entry was way back in June, so the next few entries are going to be about things that have happened between then and now…….