Bookwyrm's Lair

Tomorrow is the QLD Spinners Weavers & Fibre Artists Open Day!

For those of you in Brisbane and interested in crafty stuff, come along! 9am-2pm at 12 Payne St, Auchenflower.

There will be yarn and fibre and books and equipment (new and second hand), as well as all sorts of handmade goodies for sale. And a fibre fashion parade at 11am.



I'll be in the Emporium (the big shop in the old church) most of the day, make sure you say hi if you come!

Oh my goodness, I'm tired.

I spent today at the Spinners stall at the Textile Arts Fair. It's a new show on at the convention centre, and I must say it was pretty fantastic. Shows like Stitches & Craft are good fun, but at this one there was no beading, no scrapbooking, just textiley goodness. Don't get me wrong, beads and paper are wonderful too, but fibre arts are where my heart is, and it's nice to have an event just focused on that.

It was amazingly busy this morning! So many people coming up and asking us about our spinning, weaving, felting etc. I spent most of the day working on my dropspindled turquoise silk cap, which is always good for demonstrations - people love to hear about and see silk. We had a little loom set up, and some wheels, and all sorts of yarns and garments around the stall.

Several people commented that it was such a friendly show - I really did notice that. Lots of people hung around and chatted with us. It was great.

What was also great was seeing some fibrey friends I don't see often, as well as seeing some I'd never before met in person! There are a few people who have fibre/yarn shops who I've become friends with throughout my crafting career, and it's always great to get a chance to say hi to them. And today I met three people I know from the various Australian boards on Ravelry but had never met in person before! What a day.

And I was very well-behaved, too. I only bought three things. One 50g pack of white alpaca/cashmere tops to spin, one 50g ball of the brand-new Morris & Sons Empire in a nice spring green laceweight, and a few buttons to go in swap presents.

What a day. I talked so much my throat got sore. If it wasn't for the tea and lollies and chocolate I don't know how I would've gotten through the day! But it really was fantastic. I'll definitely be there next year.

Next up: assignments. Two big ones for next week.

And on Sunday, there's Open Day! I'll do a proper post about that later tonight.

I've started catching up on several weeks' worth of journals and blogs, and I found this meme that aurillia did, and thought I should do it myself.

( Reading survey )

I just got a letter from Guides Queensland telling me I'm now a Qualified Youth Leader!


I sent in the forms in January, I've been rather worried about whether they got them for the last month. But it seems they did. And there was nothing wrong with the forms. And they're not withholding it because my membership expired in March and there's been a delay renewing it. And it's all good.

So now I officially am what I've essentially been for the last four years or so - a Guide Leader.

I went to the UQ Alumni Book Fair today. I came home with 19 books. Guess how much I paid for the lot? $24.10. I'm rather happy with that. Want to see what I got?

( Books! )

As if I don't have enough things to do with my time already.

Now, the biggest question: what shall I read first? It's good timing, I've finished both the books I was in the middle of (Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the third book in the Soldier Son trilogy by Robin Hobb), so it's time to start a new book. Hmm, so many choices...

PS. Over a quarter of the books I got were non-fiction. Wow. I'm rather proud, really. Actually, it reflects the availability at the fair - it is a university book fair after all, it's mostly non-fiction. Which is good, as I ought to have more non-fiction in my life. Not too much, of course - fiction is terribly important. But a little more non-fiction would do me good.

What am I spending this Easter Sunday doing? Not much. This week is mid-semester break, and I have to get started on my two big essays for the semester, so I spent yesterday doing nothing uni-related, and I intend to do the same today.

I've been working on my shawl as much as possible lately. I really want to finish it so I can block it and see what it looks like!

I'm up to row 128 or so, and at the moment there's about 640 stitches to each row - and it's only getting bigger. I have 40 or so rows to go - not exactly sure, as I've misplaced the last page of the pattern and haven't reprinted it yet. This is what it looks like now:



See why I can't wait to block it? You can only see the further-out lace with the assistance of a knee:



I also took advantage of the rainless morning (a rarity in the last week or so) to take pictures of some of the more recent additions to my fibre stash that I hadn't photographed yet:

( Wool, wool, beautiful wool... )

Oh - happy Easter, everyone! Hope you're all having a good long weekend :)

The first two weeks of uni are going pretty well. It took until Tuesday afternoon to get my timetable all finalised, but things are all good now. I have no classes Mondays and Wednesdays, which is nice. It looks like my three linguistics courses will be tremendous fun, though they'll have constant work for me to do. I'm still not as clear as I'd like to be on what will happen with my year-long IT project, though.

I've been reading Robin Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy for the last few weeks. I'm not going to say much about it now, as I've taken some time off in the middle of book 3 for I am Legend (by Richard Matheson - for bookclub, which I couldn't go to because I wasn't feeling well enough to get there :( ). Suffice it to say that I'm finding the Soldier Son books quite intriguing, though not as good as the Farseer Trilogy or The Liveship Traders.

I've been knitting and tatting a lot these last couple of weeks, too. I tatted a pendant for katrina_splat, which was fun. I got good practice in designing a pattern, and good practice in tatting small shapes, as I had to make it twice! The beads I used the first time around turned out to be dodgy, and I didn't notice until after I'd finished it. In knitting, I've been working on my circular shawl. I can't remember if I posted about having to frog it - at about 50 rows (out of 160) I had to pull it all out because I'd mis-read the pattern. But it's going again! It's big enough now that you can't really see the full thing, but here's a glimpse:



I've had a pretty good couple of weeks - settling back into uni, knitting, going to Movieworld, Katrina's dinner, and the opening of a new yarn store. I'm sorry for being so slack about posting about it :)

Hope you've all been having a good couple of weeks too!

Oh, I almost forgot! I got a postcard from the Roman Forum! Thanks, Eleanor :)

Also forgot to mention that I saw Watchmen last week. Thought about the same of it as I did of the graphic novel - really good, but... This morning I found this through metaquotes - it may amuse Watchmen fans.

There was the paprika about a year and a half ago.

There was the bull last August.

In October there was a llama.

Two weeks ago there was a crocodile.

Did I miss any good ones? What do you think will be next?

Finalising my courses for this semester has been unbelievably complicated.

( Long story. )

Yesterday afternoon Mom and I played with dyes.

I dyed 118g of wool/silk (15% silk) sliver for a fibre swap, and 68g of kid mohair to keep for myself. I'm really happy with how they turned out!

Wanna see?



( Colourful fibre fun )

I think I need to play with dyeing more often.

I had fun yesterday :)

Dessert aside, though, we hit our internet download quota, so our connection at home is impossibly slow. I can read check email and read LJ, mostly, but I can't access some other sites. So I won't be online at home much until February. Hurray for university computers and the fact that UQ doubled student monthly download quota this year!

My parents and I are sitting in the airconditioning, watching the Australian Open. I'm reading stuff in the Ravelry forums in between points, and working on my circular shawl:


(old pic - I've done about 40 more rows since then)

When the tennis is over (or when I get too tired to watch any more), I'll read a bit more of The Lady and the Unicorn by Isolde Martin (one of my Bookfest finds), which I started last night. It turned out not to actually be fantasy - I'm not too far, but I believe the 'unicorn' refers to the French crown - it's historical fiction, and characters are being exiled to France. It's reasonably accurate, and what little of the plot I've seen so far is good. My only real problem with it is that I'm sick of hearing about how much the lead male character likes the lead female. I got the idea, you can move on now. Fortunately, I can laugh at it.

The knitting calls me back now, and Jelena is down two games in the second set, so I think I'll say goodbye now. To the Aussies - hope you're all having a good long weekend :)

I'm trying to make meringue. Everyone talks about it like it's hard, so I was rather wary. But making it all seemed easy enough. An electric mixer with a whisk attachment is helpful. It really did develop 'stiff peaks'. It was all shiny and nice with the sugar mixed in. Next step: making the meringue pieces on the baking tray. Uh oh. If there's one thing I've learned tonight, it's that I cannot pipe to save my life. Clearly I need more practise. If I tried to make cupcakes, would anyone help me eat them? Mom and I really don't need to eat a batch by ourselves. Anyway, the meringues are now in the oven. Hopefully they'll taste fine. They'll just look like they were painted on the baking paper in really really thick white acrylic paint by a five year old with poor dexterity.

Meringue update: Looks weird, tastes nice. Actually, possibly a little too sweet. Next time a tad less sugar, and maybe some vanilla instead. For reference, I used something between these two recipes, with no flavouring or filling.


A&R's top 100 Books

( Book meme! )

Went to the Lifeline Bookfest (massive secondhand book sale in the convention centre) this afternoon with ittykat, katrina_splat, zenni, and sir_cumspect. For a grand total of $42 I acquired the following:

Driving Blind by Ray Bradbury
High Society by Ben Elton
The Lady and the Unicorn by Isolde Martin
Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier
Aurealis #27/28 (Australian SF&F periodical with short stories)
Stories for Girls edited by Leonard Gribble (first published 1961, titles varying from 'The Kitten's Garden' to 'Holiday with a Thief'. Also, how awesome a name is Leonard Gribble?)
Adam Bede by George Eliot (old children's edition, but appears unabridged)
Torchon Lace for Today by Jennifer Fisher
Two vintage Semco tatting pattern booklets

That's four novels, three anthologies (counting the Aurealis issue), a craft book, and two pattern booklets. Not a bad haul at all.

Shortly after I woke up this morning, I was sitting on my parents' bed talking to Mom when we heard this splashing in the pool. We assumed it was a bird having a bath - we've watched kookaburras swoop down, splash, and fly away several times in the past. I went to have a look. It was a bird, and it may have intended to have a bath, but it'd obviously gone a little deeper than it meant to. There was a noisy miner flapping like crazy in the water at the edge, trying to hop out onto the ledge but obviously not able to get out of the water. It was keeping its head above water alright, but it was stuck, poor thing. It was squeaking like crazy and there were a couple other noisy miners flitting about twittering. I got one of the pool scoops, and lifted it up onto the ledge, where it proceeded to hop up into a low bush and sit there shaking itself off, while the two others came over and chattered over it. I didn't stay to watch, but it must've dried itself off enough to fly again fairly quickly, because they were all gone later. Noisy miners are such funny little birds.

Mom and I spent the middle of the day today cleaning out the kitchen. We've had ants find the cat's bowl lately, and the pantry moth situation had suddenly become dire once again, so it was time for a good clean-out of the pantry, and general clean-up of the kitchen. We found stuff in that pantry that was best before sometime in 2007, which will tell you about when we last did this. It looks amazing now! The whole kitchen isn't spotless yet, as there's a big load of dishes (mostly empty containers from the pantry) that I need to deal with, but all the rarely-seen corners have been cleaned out. Don't ask how much we had to throw away, you don't want to know. Also, next time we do this we really need to try and remember to do it the day before bin day, not the day after.

So now I'm taking a break - tatting while catching up on Ravelry forums. I've been looking at a lot of knitted lace shawls. Have I mentioned how much I love lace? I'm starting another shawl myself, but more on that later. I'm tatting a prototype for a bracelet I'm trying to design. The final bracelet will be part of a swap present. It's a good thing I'm prototyping, because it's curling just too much to be tolerated. The way this is constructed is I work along the length doing the centre and one side, then when I get to the end I turn around and work the other side. I'm turning it right now, I hope when I've done the other side it'll be less curly. I want to finish this today, so I'd best get back to it!

It was an exciting day at the lab today. We're in the Axon building at uni, and our lab (on the third floor) looks out over the alley in between Axon and Hawken. As usual, I went in through the door that doesn't face Hawken. I walked in to the lab, and the people who were already there asked me if I'd seen the people filming.

Until about 3pm, a scene from the upcoming K-9 series was being shot outside and under our window. Depending on where they were shooting and what was going on, sometimes we could see it well, and sometimes not at all. We heard them when they yelled, though. And they repeated the same thing over and over again. I only noticed three distinct scenes all day. There was the "get your hands off me!" one in the morning, then the one around the corner with the dog (we could use the door facing Hawken during that, and a bunch of people from our building were standing out there watching and talking to someone involved in it for a little bit), then the "no!" one, which they repeated many many times and filmed from at least two directions. Apparently they were there from 7am. I think the lady said it would total two and a half minutes of screen time.

It was heaps of fun, really. Every now and then we'd hear a crash, or a "no!" or "action!", and between bits and pieces of my work I went and peeked out the window.

These are the same people who borrowed all the good-looking robots from our lab. Perhaps they'll be back sometime (the lady said they wouldn't finish filming until April).

'Cause it takes me at least two weeks to get a photo off my camera and onto the internet.

Back in early December, if I remember correctly, nupatinga, Miss B. and I spent a lovely day putting this together:



Yes, that's Waterfall City from Dinotopia. I love this puzzle :) So does Ash, apparently.

And to fulfill any cat-fur-photo cravings any of you may have:



We didn't take many photos at Christmas, but we had to take a few of Ashie enjoying her present. We got her a pet stocking from Big W. Possibly one of the best $4 I've spent for some time. She's not generally a toy sort of cat, but when she gets into them she goes absolutely mad. Also, despite the look in the photo, she isn't overweight - her fur expands enormously when she rolls around on the floor.

Last but not least, my grandmother has now received the shawl I made for her, so I can post pictures!



It's the Swallowtail shawl, in the same alpaca and silk blend yarn that I made my Moonlight Sonata shawl out of. It did drive me crazy for a little bit there, but overall it was fun to make and I'm very happy with it. And my grandmother likes it too :)

I was going to hold off on posting about Christmas until I'd uploaded a photo of Ash playing with her present, but I think I just have to quickly say that I got Doctor Who season 1, and Alan and I have now watched it all except two episodes (Dalek and the one after that) which we're going to watch with Dad tonight. And we've just arranged that tomorrow morning we're going to go get season 2.

Oh, I also got Dreaming Again, an anthology of Australian fantasy stories. I've been eyeing it for ages, it has six stories by authors I've read multiple novels by (including Isobelle Carmody and Garth Nix). Haven't started reading it yet as I'm still in the middle of the Liveship Traders. And Alan and Dad and I have been playing a lot of Age of Empires.

Time goes so fast. And I still haven't arranged my Canberra trip beyond getting plane tickets...

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas!

I've developed a talent in the last month for getting on the bus just as a thunderstorm or big rainstorm starts, and then having it finish just as I get off the bus near home. Of course, today the rain picked up again when I was halfway home from the bus stop, and I got minorly drenched. I didn't have an umbrella, but the books in my bag stayed dry, so it's all good.

This evening Dad and I played chess. I don't know whether I've ever beaten Dad at chess, except maybe many years ago when he gave me ridiculous handicaps. Tonight my only handicap was being told when I was about to do something really stupid (which is a pretty good one). It was epic. At one point, I just had my king and queen, and Dad just had king, queen and three or four pawns. Then we both lost our queens. Then he managed to get a pawn turned into a queen, and so since I only had my king left I resigned. I'm very impressed with myself. I've never been a good chess player at all, but I want to try to improve.

I'm reading A Christmas Carol for brisneybooks on Sunday. Won't say much now, except that I keep getting songs from the muppet movie in my head. It amuses me. But it's a problem, because muppet songs insist on being sung aloud.

Right. I've been very antisocial this last week, so I have to make up for it.

Of course, when I say I've been antisocial I'm leaving out not only my being at uni for research but also the four Christmas parties I had between last Monday and Saturday. Three of the Christmas parties were for Guides - the brownies had pizza and ice-cream, the guides went bowling, and the guide leaders had lunch out. Spinners also had their general Christmas break-up. So it's been a week of excitement, even though I haven't spoken to any of my non-Spinners non-Guides friends.

I'm getting into my research project at uni. I'm past all the reading and much of the familiarisation (which was fun too), and now I've been seriously thinking about what it is I need to do and starting to play with things. There are a bunch of students all working on our own projects in the same lab with the same research group, and I'm the only one who isn't an engineer. Most of the projects have something to do with robots in some way or other. It's really neat just being there and seeing what everyone in the area is doing.

I never got around to talking about the Christmas Fair last Saturday. It was good fun, and I understand fairly successful. I spent most of the day helping MissVicki with the morning tea stall, with a little helping the Emporium people to bag fibre beforehand and a couple of breaks to wander around. I had a lot of fun giving ittykat a tour of the fair. I hardly have to put any effort into this whole corrupting her into knitting thing - she's doing it all herself!

Mom and I have been spending an hour each morning the past couple of days working in the garden. We'll be doing it for a little while yet. Our yard has a bit of a tendency to be a massive jungle, especially since we've never really done anything with it. We'd been clearing out the weeds, but we lapsed for a while. And then came the rain. People who don't live in Brisbane may not know that we've gotten a lot of rain the past few weeks. So, our yard is a jungle again. We've cleared a surprising amount these last two days, and we've spread out mulch so hopefully it won't turn jungle again before we have a chance to decide what we want to plant.

In crafty news, I started one of those tatted dragons in NZ. Haven't touched it since we came back, but there's only one wing left to do. I should try to finish it before brisneybooks on Sunday so I can show people :) Also, I've made significant progress on the shawl-which-is-no-longer-evil. By this time next week I could be almost done with it!

And now I think I'll get back to working on the shawl. Have a good evening, everyone!