Birds, a blossom, and a beanie

Mum and Dad's house is excellent for incidental birdwatching. They have plenty of trees in the garden, including a big camellia which is always tui-infested! Here's my list of species I have seen today: sparrows, goldfinches, waxeyes, yellowhammers, fantails, tuis, and one great big kereru.

Dad let slip that there was a spare birdhouse in the garage, and we eventually found a good spot for it... right below the first birdhouse. Hopefully the sparrows who've been setting up their nest won't mind having neighbours. They're in a big prunus tree which we can see from the house (all the better to spy baby birds). The first few blossoms appeared today, like pink popcorn...

Sparrow apartments

The first blossom of spring! *pop*

I finished a hat I've been working on - a Lapwing, in Vintage Purls Sock. It's a lovely slouchy beanie, with the purl side outwards. The wide rainbow 'pooling' on the brim happened totally by accident! I wasn't sure about it at first, because I really liked the yarn as it looked in the ball (with the colours totally mixed up) - but I got that effect at the top of the hat anyway, once I started decreasing stitches. And happily, I have half the ball left over to make something else with. :)

My new Lapwing hat, with broccoli plants

I'm nearing the end of the 'body' of my honeycomb cardie - only a few rows of ribbing to go, and then on to the sleeves. Hazel has decreed it cosy enough to sleep on, which I suppose bodes well!

Old haunts

I've been relaxing in Whakatane for a week now! The cat remembers me (phew), I can still play the piano (kinda), and I'm making slow but steady progress on my honeycomb cardigan. :)

This weekend my brother and his entourage came to visit, and we went exploring at the beach...

(click the photos to enlarge)

A feed of excellent fish & chips at the Ohiwa Oyster Farm

A stroll at West End, Ohope's traditional surf spot

West End has the best climbing-rocks!

Rocks covered in baby mussels

Wet sand with air holes for hidden shellfish

It sounds like Willie's having a fantastic, busy time in New York, and he's promised lots of photos when he gets a chance to sit down and sort them out.
I will just have to be patient. ;)

A little flying music

This time tomorrow I'll be on the plane!

I'm not scared of flying, luckily, but I don't like airports one bit. I just keep thinking of all the different things that could go wrong to make me miss my connecting flight, lose my luggage, etc etc. Hopefully as I get more practice with international travel I'll be less stressed about it.

I'm packing a range of amusements in my carry-on bag to keep me occupied, as it'll be a whole day of travel. So far I've rounded up a book (Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird), my kindle, some knitting, and my mp3 player.

A few days ago I loaded some new music onto my mp3 player that will make nice comforting/familiar/distracting travel music. I went for Beethoven piano sonatas, which I used to really enjoy playing back when I was still in practice. I'm looking forward to dusting off my old tomes of sonatas in Whakatane.

This is my 'official favourite' bit of Beethoven: the finale of Sonata No. 32. It's a long series of variations on the initial simple theme, and there are some lovely surprises along the way - starlike trills and other beautiful moments, but also a section around the 7min mark that sounds suspiciously like jazz, a hundred years early! Enjoy...

This week in absurdity

I knit a bunch of strawberries, green caps and all, and attached them to a teacosy in the shape of a pavlova. Why? Because this year the Royal Melbourne Show is holding a 'Great Tea Cosy Swap', and some Yarn Corner crafters are getting involved. I figured the sillier the better!

My strawberries (which took a surprisingly long time)

The finished cosy!

For the body of the teacosy, I used a pattern for a beehive teacosy, which I've used before. My beehive one has a little bee on top, naturally. 

I am sorely tempted to keep this one for myself, so I may end up making another for the swap... ;)

In other news, we're moving again! Just across town this time, to a suburb called Brunswick. It'll be a change from the CBD, and we're looking forward to having cheap fruit and veg shops and bakeries nearby. I'm also excited about being able to grow a few herbs and flowers again - our current apartment doesn't have so much as a sunny windowsill, but our new place has a deck and a balcony that should be great for potplants. We'll also have air-conditioning this summer, which will be a huge deal for me (heat is not my friend).

The big move is in mid-August, but we're running around madly organising it now because... we're both going overseas for a few weeks first! Willie will be off on a dream trip to New York City, and I'll be heading back to New Zealand to visit my family in Whakatane.

We bought some very necessary suitcases yesterday, a medium-sized one for Willie and a little carry-on case for me. I yarn-bombed them forthwith.

Phlegmatic

I've been sick with a disgusting chesty cold for the past week and a half. Ewww. I don't recall ever having a chest infection before (usually my colds are all sore throat and runny nose), and I lost my voice almost completely, which was also a new one for me. At least I got some novelty with my misery. :p

I finally started feeling more normal this morning, and even got to leave the house (woohoo) for a gentle stroll over the river and back. 

I did get lots of knitting done, in between cups of tea and coughing fits. I took a break from the cardigan, and had a go at knitting my first pair of toe-up socks. I used Morag's Basic Adult Toe-Up Sock Pattern, and her Vintage Purls Max DK-weight sock yarn (to speed up the process, and because I wanted extra-thick wintery socks). Four sick-days later, I have a pair of socks! They fit pretty well, but are a little roomy in the heel. I've made notes for which tweaks I want to make in the next pair. I have two more skeins of Max to play with.

The colour is called 'Teal Death Do Us Part' :)

Apart from knitting, I've been watching a lot of documentaries in an attempt to stay somewhat sane. David Attenborough's Africa series is full of stunning visuals, and a bit easier on a foggy brain than Wonders of Life (which I'm going to save for later). We also discovered an amazing series called Great Artists in their Own Words.

Honeycomb

I've started a new cardie! A toasty warm one, in thick fuzzy wool. The pattern is Iðunn by Ragga Eiríksdóttir, and for once I'm actually using the yarn specified in a pattern: Ístex Létt-Lopi. It's a little prickly, but I generally don't mind that unless it touches my forehead - only super soft hats for me! Icelandic wool is supposed to be very warm and not prone to pilling, so I'm giving it a try.

Knitting with thicker yarn like this is so much speedier, especially compared to my last cardie in 4ply. I've already finished the whole 'yoke', put the sleeve stitches on hold, and have made decent progress on the 'body'. In one week.

I was partly drawn to this design by the honeycomb pattern around the yoke. I'm not quite sure whether it's embarrassing or awesome that I have two other honeycomb-patterned jerseys in my to-make list: Stasis Pullover and Honeymaker. I think Honeymaker would be great in a warmish pale grey, if I can find suitable yarn... maybe Little Wool Co 12ply would work?

Stasis Pullover by Leila Raabe

Honeymaker by Leah B. Thibault

The draw of the honeycomb doesn't stop there either - I have my eye on these:

Apis Dorsata Mitts by Anna Sudo

Raxtur by Stephen West

As for bee-inspired projects I've already succumbed to, the big one is of course the beekeeper's quilt. I've completed 150 of the hexapuffs in total, but they have yet to be joined together. When I visit Whakatane soon I'll get them out of storage and see what I want to do with them. I think a wall hanging of some sort would be neat.

A batch of my hexapuffs, in rainbow shades (video courtesy of Dad):

Bees, beer, and blooms

On Sunday Willie and I went to some drop-in classes/talks at the 'Sunday Spectacular' run by Laneway Learning. You could join in with the casual classes for only $2, so it was a good chance to dip our toes into some new things. There were longer book-able classes too, but they had mostly sold out. It was all held in one little lane in the CBD, in galleries and coffee shops.

Outside in the lane (it was a bit of a drizzly day)

When we arrived we went straight to the beekeeping talk (I'm still pretty bee-obsessed). It was great! I found out some cool new things I hadn't read about, and got an idea of how much it would cost to get set up with a hive one day. The beekeeper had brought a frame from a hive in a double-sided glass case, so we could see the honey cells and brood cells, and all the bees doing their thing. The queen had been left at home, as it would be too disruptive to take her out of the hive for the day.

After that we went and talked to a lady who was making jam, and found out about a really handy tool: specially-shaped tongs for handling the hot jars when you're sterilising and filling them. Will keep my eyes peeled for some.

I spotted a few Yarn Corner people (who I recognised by their pink hair!), and had a brief hello before staking out a good spot for the beer brewing demo. I am totally keen to try brewing soon - it sounded fairly easy to make something drinkable, with lots of scope for getting fancy later. I have a list of websites and books to investigate. I might have to twist Dad's arm to have a go with me when I'm in Whakatane soon! Or else get set up over here.

Having a very nice coffee while waiting for the brewing talk to start

The folks in the background are checking out the bees

In crafting news, I finished a small batch of knitted flowers and I'm really pleased with how they came out. I used this Petunia pattern, and while it was a bit fiddly, I now have a much better handle on exactly how short-rows work in knitting. The lovely folks at Holland Road Yarn Co need more flowers and leaves to spruce up their 'tree' outside the shop, so I posted these off to prettify a Wellington street...