Evidence of effort

Well as you can see we having been busy bottling chez "Redumbrella". Robert is thrilled with his pickled onions and has been helping with the lackey work in the kitchen! At the moment he is skinning, coring and chopping 2 kilos of tomatoes because they were only $1.99 a kilo in Aldi and brown onions were only 99 cents. The great goddess in the sky is obviously telling me to make more Tomato Relish!

There has been some knitting as well. Robert doesn't help with this but he did sit around for quite a while at the shopping centre in Geelong while I checked out the Lincraft sale. I got a mixed bag of acrylic novelty stuff plus some "Zhivago". The plan is to make a poncho and a throw and add some new stuff to the stall for winter. The next market is not until Thursday 13th July so there may be time. This picture shows some zhivago and rosetti in beges and some himalaya and gypsy in dark red and some heather in silvery grey and last but not least some turino in the combo colours.
In fact, I have turned a lot of it into the makings of a poncho already. It is one of those ones made out of two rectangles. I was very pleased with myself for having no left over wool after the first half( which I used half the wool for!) and I used some stash in some of the stripes to extend it a bit and so that the fringe can be made of that same, stash-yarn and co-ordinate with the body of the poncho . I just did random stripes and shall match them for the second half. I used 8mm needles. They seem to cope well with chunky weight stuff that needs to be loosely knitted. I tried 6mm needles and the fabric was too stiff.
I thought I had finished the main parts of the sleeveless vest I was knitting for a friend of my Mum's in England, but by following the pattern, it has ended up an inch or so too long from the armholes, so I will have to undo the tops and re-size it to go with the measurements I had from his worn-out favourite one. He wouldn't look very good with the armholes half down to his waist. This was a lovely yarn to knit with. It is "Persian" by Bendigo and is in a colour called Teal. They have discontinued it but there was plenty left for this top and tons left over from just two balls.
Last but not least is the merino/silk from Andyle's
It is being knitted into the "Here and There Cables" scarf by Norah Goghan from the Scarfstyle book. I'm doing it with one less pattern repeat and I wish I had used 4.5mm needles instead of my favourite pair of 3.75mm short anodised ones. The fabric is a little stiff but maybe blocking can work some magic. It's a lovely pattern because it's reversible, which for a scarf is ideal and you only have to cable every seventh row. I must make a big decision about the size of the needles before I go any further. Perhaps if Lois at the LYS has some needles just like my favourites but in the 4.5mm size it would be worth re-starting. Perhaps I shall go down now and have a look. It's only ten minutes walk and it's not raining.
Cheers Gillian