Miss Click Clack

Why, look! A product card!

2012-02-05T13:38:00.006+11:00

Please be patient with me while I work through this obsession.

Oh, look, it's more variegated yarn

2012-01-19T17:41:00.004+11:00

Yeeee-eees!

Kind of went all air-punchy with this one.

Edwina Dye-Pot Hands

2011-12-18T08:50:00.003+11:00

I am in aesthetic crisis.

I cannot stop dyeing variegated yarn.

To know me is to know that I am natively, resolutely monochromatic.

Help.

Your Dad's camera, your Nan's bad taste in colour #2

2011-10-17T18:51:00.000+11:00

Smith Street Kamera Gurt

So kooky.
Now at Lost & Found.

Your Dad's camera, your Nan's bad taste in colour

2011-10-16T12:35:00.003+11:00

Smith Street Kamera Gurt
Available shortly at the new Lost & Found Market location 1-5 Perry Street, Collingwood

Read about my some of my stuff here.

In my bestest Veruca Salt: I WANT AN URCHIN POUF NOOOOOOW!

2009-12-02T12:10:00.006+11:00

Christien Meindertsma - urchin-pouf

To my friends and family at Christmas

If you rooly and trooly love me you will buy me a room full of these.
And we'll put the World Vision child on hold until next year.

Affectionately

Clack

Possum Magic

2009-08-01T06:16:00.014+10:00

I'm always so busy banging on about the Lost and Found Market and the Smith Street Beret yada-yada-yada that I've managed to overlook the fact that Bonnie has been plying her hand-knits over on Stall 17 for quite some time.

Or perhaps I chose to overlook Bonnie's skills, and perhaps it was because I was jealous. Afterall, I only knit hats, and Bonnie knits real individuals who not only keep you warm, but also offer companionship. You don't find many people talking to their hats (unless, of course, you're Oliver Sacks, so it's not an activity I like to encourage).

This is 'Diana'. She's a pink and white ring-tail possum looking for a home, and, like any true princess, the crown is her own. And as you can see, Diana is cute beyond cute.

Bonnie names each of her possums, and the blokes come in gender appropriate shades of brown and fawn.

I was particularly fond of one named Raymond with his strong, chocolate-coloured jawline. And I think he liked me. It was lucky for us both that the frisson came to a natural conclusion when Raymond was re-housed. Mr Clack was starting to get suspicious - why was I spending so much time in Bonnie's stall petting Raymond, stroking Raymond, arranging Raymond around my body when my own berets were in complete disarray? :O

But, unlike me with my obsessive catatonic circular knitting, you're unlikely to find Bonnie holed up in some dark room on a couch beneath a (insert collective noun for possums here) with spittle dripping off her chin and crazy nystagmatic eyes. Bonnie's not your OCD kind of gal and takes time to create her individuals, so you need to check Bonnie's stall regularly for these little fellows if you want one all of your own.

Now should you have searched and called but to no avail try looking a little harder. Possums are, afterall, shy nocturnal creatures, and there may just be one tucked up somewhere in Bonnie's stall curled up fast asleep....

Pocket Billiards

2009-05-24T14:19:00.005+10:00

OK, so there's been a lot of 'oohing' and 'ahhing' within the knitting community over the recent Ray Ban Never Hide advertising campaign that uses a REALLY, REALLY big ball of wool.

Sure it's big (yawn) but it's not any bigger than those Tourism Victoria used three years ago:

Or what The Chaser used taking the piss:

What goes a-round, comes a-round.

Honey, Honey, how you thrill me

2009-05-23T18:00:00.005+10:00

Oh my God I'm so excited - I'm nearly famous!

Cross my heart and hope to die but I think Lisa is wearing a Smith Street Beret! I'd know that baby anywhere: Rowan Pure Wool DK shade 033 Honey.

Check out more of Melbourne's Velo Chic on The Vine.

Thumbelina

2009-05-10T10:13:00.007+10:00

I have a theory about the inheritance of artistic talent/an eye for space and form (I'm a geneticist so I'm allowed to). You either get it, or you don't just the way Mendel worked out the genetics of black and yellow corn kernels back in the days when entertaining yourself with a corn cob seemed like a good idea.

This is my cousin T2's Maryanne Shearer, and these days it's getting hard not to pick up a glossy and find some reference, nay, feature article showcasing her wonderful tea emporium or wonderful house or wonderful family. And that's because Maryanne got the Super 66, Lotto, Willie Wonka Gold Pass gene pool jackpot in our family.

On my paternal side there are those that are smart (the splendid, but distant, branch of dizzyingly OBEed/MBEed opthalmologists, for example); there are the artistes (yo, Maryanne, as well as a cohort of painters); and then are the Spectacularly Unremarkable. It is into this lineage that I (sniff) appear to have been born, a new lineage, which was, in all likelihood, the result of a mutation that arose in the section of my grandfather's gonad (for all this specialness is from his side) that gave rise to my Dad.

Let's look at my Dad - I mean my Dad's great at using (and surprising us with) paint: silver-frosting the jack and tyre lever in my first car (surprise! it comes off on your hands!) or touching up the black and white number plates on my first and second cars (surprise! now it's completely illegible - twice!) The letter-box got quite a lot of abuse (it couldn't run), and we had the brownest oxide-stained fences in all of Epping, making the four of us the brownest oxide-stained kids in all of Epping. As were our clothes. And the cat. But not even the Leader Newspaper Group wants to do a feature on him (I asked).

When my mother saw this photo of Maryanne she said "Oh, you've got her thumb." Feck. Like, what is it this? She's suddenly gone all telescopic-vision Steve-Austin-Six-Million-Dollar-Man on me and can see Maryanne's thumb?

This most recent article featured in a Chadstone Fashion Capital magazine and expounds all of the above as well as some previously unpublished insights into her hair (glossy black), eyes (blue) and wonderful complexion (porcelain).

Well I've got... blue eyes.

Oh, yes, and let's not forget that thumb.

Kneko Knits

2009-04-26T08:21:00.004+10:00

Source: youtube Some People Got a Lotta Nerve

Well there you go, Neko Case knits, too!

Hello. Is that Craftanistas Anonymous?

2009-04-18T07:50:00.011+10:00

Lately I've been obsessing about this shot of Jessica Alba in Paris.

Photo source: celebrity-gossip.net

I just love the black ensemble with its single colour accent, and confess to harbouring cliched dreams about riding scooters or bikes through the streets of Paris (once again), with baguette tops peeping from a crumpler full of stinky cheese en route to the Bois de Bologne.

But sadly, these are not the things I am obsessing about. Those of us in serious pursuit of craft (fixation! - enter not mine lexicon!) won't be seduced by the romance and frippery of this Gay Paris! evocation. They won't be calling their travel agent or plucking a well-thumbed dusty tomb of Lonely Planet off the shelf and harking back to a time when their bodies were young and life was easy.

A serious craftanista will instead be shuffling through her shadecards and internet surfing for a backview of Jessica Alba because they want to make that beanie.

There are no images of the back. I've looked. A lot.

Do I have a problem?

I don't mean do I have a problem because I can't find an image of the backview. I mean do I have a problem?

Meet me at the corner of I Dream a Highway and Smith Street

2009-04-05T07:08:00.002+10:00

On Ravelry you know me as Miss Ohio. So when Rhiannon approached me to outlet my hand-knitted berets through her shop - also named after a Gillian Welch song - I had an immediate sense of synergy.

I dream a highway - now stocking the Smith Street Beret.

One day I'll tell you the story of its birth.

Edited: to correct torturous language/logic

Saturated Snake Oil

2009-03-07T08:56:00.000+11:00

Here's a recent excerpt from the Sydney Morning Herald:

'...Too many shops, too little money. Collingwood is the place for vintage everything. Start at Lost and Found (12 Smith Street) for a bedazzling array of vintage clothes, wigs, art and especially furniture featuring such inspiring price tags as "way cool '60s blue leather jacket" or "gorgeous silver shoes, says 5 1/2 but more like size 7....'

Wanna check it out?

We're calling it the Paris end of Smith Street.

Wanna read the whole article?

I said Hello, Doily....

2009-02-22T10:16:00.001+11:00

We've all seen the humble doily make its comeback in various morphs over the past little while: the layouts in Frankie magazine, those (controversial) tree-wrapping installations and the ensuing IP debate, and Miss Pen Pen stitching up a mean tea-cosy around the corner at Cottage Industry.

But it wasn't until I saw Ardalita Srsen on a recent episode of Rockwiz that I knew that I, too, could get the doily into my own life without the need for surfaces.

New Idea circa 1965 had one solution: take a ball of crochet cotton, a teeny-weeny crochet hook, and crochet until your fingers bleed and fecking eyes implode.

But I had a better one: go to a garage sale, buy a fistful of doilies for 50 cents, and shove them down your front.

Now hand me my air guitar.

Danger, Will Robinson!

2009-02-07T07:15:00.000+11:00

The temperature will hit 44C today and I plan to ride it out at home.

But with tomorrow's mercury plummeting to the low 20s it reminds me of the Lost in Space episode where John or Don does the maths and works out they're on a planet with an elliptical orbit and about to get crunchy crispy fried. Danger, Will Robinson!

Could Melbourne be on an elliptical orbit? Do you suppose anyone's checked lately? I know I've been a bit busy, but there's gotta be someone out there with an old school protractor and a plum bob keeping watch.

John or Don's solution was to lie everyone in the shade of the Chariot covered by an alfoil blanket.

Well Mr Clack and I have other plans!

Photo Courtesy: Arndw on Flickr

See you on the other side!

Scheherezade, tell me a story

2009-01-18T15:04:00.000+11:00

Do you ever wonder about the story behind each of the yarns in multicoloured afghans?

I like to imagine that they're made from the detritus of Great Knitting Moments - jumpers for a husband, cardigans for the family, a scarf for little Harry who was off to the snow - and that each yarn carries with it the story of an owner, a garment, and a time. How many stories in this rug?

When I was a young adult my parents sold our holiday home fully furnished. I was a big sook about it because the afghan I'd crocheted in year 7 was in that house. That rug held the history not only of yarns my mum and I had used over the years, but also of wool that I'd traded (Jenette Harvey - my first Totem(!)) and memories of welcome (and some not) friends who had wrestled the crochet hook from me (yes, you cow, Mrs May, in Needlecraft, with your crap tension and squared-off shells, I could always find the section you did) to do a round or two.

Anyway, my folks got the rug back, so it's a story that ended well. (Except for the life of me I can't tell you where that rug is now.... :o)

This is one I recently picked up at a garage sale with view to adopting it out through Lost and Found. But it was so pretty... oh please can I keep him.... Alack, alas the anguish and torment of buying and selling things that you love.

I did (eventually) harden my resolve. It eagerly awaits a new sofa or bed companion.

(And perhaps if you look and listen hard enough you will find within it the story of my own surrender....)

Five Go Off

2008-12-28T12:54:00.000+11:00

I was a bit of an Enid Blyton junkie as a kid, and I loved the Famous Five series best of all. I thought Enid Blyton was the smartest author in the whole wide world! I read and re-read them (but, I hasten to add, was never so OCD that I was a candidate for The Einstein Factor), covered all my editions in plastic, and stored them in safe and secret spots with view to giving them to my own children.

Fast forward coughetty-cough years and things didn't go quite to plan, but this Franck Juery polaroid of a little caravan reminds me of all things Famous Five and of my collection of hardbacks (still) in the roofspace.

How sweet is it? It may well be a toy caravan (?) but it makes me want to make a flask of sweet tea head off on holiday.

I love Paris in the Springtime

2008-11-02T19:37:00.000+11:00

My recent Father Ted bender has come home to roost. For the title of this entry I couldn't get I love Paris in the Springtime out of my head. Unfortunately it's the version that Ted sings to Mrs Doyle in the Season 2 episode A Song for Europe, and not one of the more evocative covers of the '53 classic.

A sweet handful of Modes et Travaux from the 50s. They make me feel all creme caramel inside.

But it's a shame it wasn't a swag of horse magazines - that way I could link to My Lovely Horse, the song that gets Ted and Dougal to Eurovision.

lost and found

2008-10-29T13:22:00.001+11:00

Behold! Foyer art at the new Lost and Found. The artist is our very own Neryl Walker.

Grand Sale Grand Sale

2008-09-06T16:31:00.000+10:00

Of course, the Grand Sale Grand Sale humour is lost on you if you weren't living in Melbourne during Franco Cozzo's reign of Rococco terror during the 70s and 80s. Megalo Megalo, etc, etc.

But it's time for our own Grand Sale - Lost and Found is moving. This Saturday and Sunday are our last days of trade at the former Club on Smith Street before the site is redeveloped. Collingwood gentrification by stealth. Monday week we'll re-open a little further along at the city-end of Smith Street (numero 12). The new premises was most recently a cane emporium. It doesn't pack the same street-cred punch as being in the old Club where baby-boomers/gen Xers still fall in off the street and reminisce about old gigs in the old days. But I'm sure I can do an empathetic tear-up about a first cane lounge-suite or laundry basket.

Farewell, adieu.

My (yellow retro Jetliner) bag is packed, I'm ready to go.... I'm standing here outside your door....

Over the next week two floors of this (avec friendly folk)

will be used to colonise this:

Ground Control to Major Tom, take your protein pill and put your helmut on.

Man, I hate lugging shit. I just like to sit and knit while it happens around me.

Check ignition and may god's love be with you.

His wife could eat no fructose, lactose, or wheat

2008-04-13T14:41:00.001+10:00

Each of these things she chose to completely ignore when she went to the Essex St Organic Wine Bar Cafe in Fremantle. Twice.

I loved this place! Great shared starter plates (cheeses, pastes, fruit, dip, bread, crackers). Nom nom, nom! Followed by mains with ingredients that make you think you're doing yourself a favour: lots of high fibre words like lentils and wholemeal. Of course I wasn't, and I didn't, but gastrointestinal distress needn't enter the lexicon of this blog too often.

We ranked Essex St equal winner with Ocean Blues in Esperance in our Best Restaurant category. The menu at Ocean Blues looked so good we shared five or six entrees just to max the experience. There are no pics. I think we'd lubed on a few too many Hahn Premium Lights in the motel room beforehand. Well you try to drink the freakin' water.

And just to make sure it was a controlled study for Essex St we toured the microbreweries in Fremantle beforehand. Man, I asked for a glass of something somewhere and got a glass as big as my forearm holding about as much beer as would fit inside my head.

I can't tell you how many times this happened.

When too much mercury isn't nearly enough

It was our last night in Adelaide, and the last night of our holiday and by now we had inflated significantly the national seafood consumption per capita average. I'd already thrown back a pallet of oysters, ripped the heads off a trawler of prawns, chomped through bodies of countless calamari, eaten King George whiting and tuna steaks with chips and mash, and slurped my way through a risotto marinara or two.

Let's go Japanese he cries. I may well die of mercury poisoning I cry (but to myself).

A thought comes to me: a long, long time ago, in a distant university far, far away I seem to recall something about eggs and their ability to chelate heavy-metals. Dang! I say to myself. I have the solution! My mental shopping list for home begins. Eggs. Lots of eggs.

Jack Spratt could eat no fat

2008-04-13T08:59:00.000+10:00

My partner calls me a good eater. Despite a couple of food intolerances I never seem to go without. My mouth is often moving and it's not for talking.

While away we came up with a list of "bests." Most of these winning contestants couldn't be photographed because, of course, by the time we'd determined them to best we'd, errr, eaten them :)

Best Hamburger
They do some mean things with eggs and bacon on the Nullabor. When there aren't any vegetables to distract you you learn how to do it right. Throw these into the Border Burger at the Border Village Roadhouse and you've got yourself Best Hamburger of the Trip. I even slipped one past the Wheat Police by slithering the contents around the bun and eating the bits sliding out the back. OK so maybe a bit of bun went in :) I like to live dangerously.

Best Chips
God I love chips. I love chips when they're crisps, I love chips when they're chips. The winner is Mocean at Streaky Bay, SA. The two fillets of King George whiting obstructing access to the chips weren't bad either.

Best Pastie
It wasn't until I got back to Melbourne that I discovered that South Australia is the pastie capital state of Australia. As it happened we'd eaten the odd pastie or two and had already picked a winner: the bakehouse at Ellerton on the Eyre Peninsula. It was a sloshy, slurpy bundle of pastry-encased taste sensation! No dry cubes of diced vegies in this baby - a nice amount of wetness from pumpkin (I heart pumpkin!) and a teeny touch of spinach. My eyes cross! But hurry - the business is up for sale.

Best Sashimi
When we hit Port Lincoln we expected restaurants serving tuna sushi on every street corner. Silly billies. The people in Port Lincoln don't want to eat tuna, they just want to sell it to the Japanese! Duuuh. After an extensive hunt we found one place doing sashimi - Moorings. It was worth the hunt. Possibly the best tuna sashimi we've ever had. And we're good at shovelling sashimi.

My partner also gave Moorings equal number one Best Chips ranking with Mocean. I had mash so his opinion doesn't count. This is my blog.

Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been?

2008-04-13T07:13:00.000+10:00

Nah, mate, no queens where I was.

A 26-day driving (and knitting!) holiday from Melbourne to Adelaide, across the Nullabor, down to Cape Le Grand, Esperance and Albany, then up, up, up to Fremantle, Perth, Geraldton, Monkey Mia. Inland to the "outback": Cue and Kalgoorlie. A second traverse of the Nullabor before a circuit of the Eyre Peninsula: Streaky Bay, Port Lincoln, and a ferry across to the Yorke Peninsula. Easter in Adelaide before heading home. Ten and a half thousand kilometres - woo hoo!

It was big, it was awesome. I could take a big bite of a travel dictionary and spit it back out at you. Some trips are epiphanous. This was one of them.

Ungial phalanges take your ease

2008-02-19T14:41:00.001+11:00

One of the more shitful things about working in a laboratory is a code of footwear that just sucks at your creative sole... I mean soul (sorry - couldn't resist). During winter and the flanking months I wear knee-high boots - and just modify the above-knee load as required. But there is nothing more soul-destroying to a lab-locked fashionista than the prospect of glorious summer's day wearing a beautiful summer frock with. sensible. shoes. It's ugly, it sucks, and I won't lower myself to a frock with the fully covered foot. Once or twice I've endeavoured on a Mary-Jane, but could never cross the line (note that the following content might offend some readers), as done by many, of a frock and (I clutch at my throat as I type it) runners. So as summer and my long service leave approached my excitement about footwear (or lack of it) escalated.

Since it began the little guys at the end of my feet have been celebrating each day in either black diamante thongs (for 'best'), or red Havaianas with their look-at-moi red nails.

Which is the colour of my current knitting. And also the colour of the last three berets I've knitted - because I've had a red beret stockout. Man, I tried to ply them with summery shades because, like, duh, it's summer, but the Lost and Found Market crowd know no seasons. They are vintage, they are retro, they are urbane, and mostly their tastes run to serious shades. And red is the most serious shade of all.

But knitting red all the time does my head in (and for those curious: Bendigo Woollen Mills, Classic 8ply, Holly, a particularly gutsy and great shade of red despite my ranting). So today, in protest (and because thirty other colours can never be enough) I bought more other colours and will shortly be knitting those. Like, so passive-aggressive.

Is that a banana in your pocket?

2008-02-13T10:10:00.000+11:00

OK so the humour is obtuse, there are no pockets, and if you've never seen the original you won't know about the banana. Check out Jean-Francois Martin's work (image 12) and all will be revealed.

But when it's fig jam you're making, you need a fig, not a banana, so with a little nip and tuck Photoshop the banana became a fig, and I had this nifty little label for the Figgity Jig Jam.

Distribution to friends, and sisters with projectile grabby hands will commence shortly. Gratuities by way eg. pedicures, or 8ply wool, graciously accepted.

You know you're in trouble when you lose 4 dozen bottles of wine

2008-02-10T16:04:00.000+11:00

And this is precisely what happened to me this afternoon.

One of the problems with being 1) disorganized; 2) a collector; 3) disorganized; 4) dabbling in the secondhand market; and 5) disorganized is that you wake up one day and realize that you have become a sort of antipodean Steptoe and Son (albeit cool and urbane and wearing black, but, hey, some things are not transmutable), and that you no longer have surfaces. In fact, the situation has become so dire that we now require an influx of new items to become the new 'active' surfaces.

Which is how four cases of wine went 'missing'.

My friend Jude talks about the phenomenon of 'geriatric squalor' where folk (and that would be geriatric folk) acquire so much stuff that trails have to be forged through their homes. She talks about this often, mostly when she visits. Equally as often I tell her not to worry. Afterall, I'm not even nearly geriatric.

I did (eventually) find the stash, and then ripped the cap off this little baby to glug a good quantity of it into the spaghetti bolognaise (huh!) that we'll be having for dinner this evening.

Huh? Did I say 'Huh'? Tell you more about that some other post.

Not a bad little wine. Choc-mint bouquet, daahhhling, a typical Coonawarra cab sauv nose.... Noice wine, very noice for the proice ($9.95) picked up on Burnley Street Richmond (on the stretch between Ikea and Bridge Road) at getwinesdirect. Great tasting set-up. You grab a glass and please help yourself. Perhaps 40-50 reds on tasting on the floor, with whites in the fridge. Then you hand over some plastic, a loaded hand-trolley appears, and some strapping lad loads it into your car. An easy and inexpensive way to stock up on some pleasant quaffers. And at the same time get completely off your tits.

Gotta whole lotta love....

2008-02-10T07:30:00.000+11:00

Humour me. This could be my last Koolhaas for a while. Popped into Lost and Found yesterday and had I already sold six berets for the week (with a day and a half of trade to go). Two grey ones made their way to the desk while I was there, and then a tall Irish girl with cascades of red wavy hair (ala early Nicole Kidman) bought a spectacularly in-your-face shade of teal ('Ming', Bendigo Woollen Mills). Showstopper. Scene-stealer. Red carpet contender and the winner is....

Thank you, thank you kind beret buyers for all your support, believe me I'm chuffed - but folks, this is February in Melbourne and this wasn't supposed to happen.

So here is possibly my last Koolhaas for the while as I turn my circular needles back to knitting berets.

The Iitalla vase is having the morning off so I engaged the services of a 60s fabric (dekoplus 100% baumwolle) as today's prop. And you, Studious Audience that you are, should be familiar by now with the anatomy of Koolhaas to not need a shot of it looking like, well, a beanie. I've used an 8ply Jo Sharp wool ('Embers') and love the little fibres of colour (red, yellow) which run through this product. I cast on 120 stitches, a size which should circumnavigate the crania of even the mightiest of men.

And how good is this fabric? It makes me happy. I feel like tripping down a flower-strewn yellow-brick road. Except mine is brown-brick.... I'm off...you know the rest.

Two things about the Finns

2008-02-09T16:57:00.000+11:00

There are only two things that I know about the Finns and Finland: 1) they have a language with 15 cases; and 2) at some point (1960s-70s) they made a shitload of crockery/kitchenalia which is collectable today.

I've seen (and sold) a number of Finel kettles, but these two red enamel mugs are the first Finel mugs I've seen. The decorative style is distinctive, so when I spotted them (from a stall away) at the Bentleigh Market last Sunday I powered the legs up and was onto them faster than you can say Marimekko (ahh...three things....).

Their fate is uncertain. For the moment they are bonding with my Pyrex mug collection (did I mention in my 'About Me' that I also collect Pyrex mugs...? I smile: my list of collections has been tempered by embarrassment... there are still many more collections to be divulged....), but at some point I may have to 'release' them to the general public.

Speaking of the general public: Lost and Found got top billing on the M List in the Metro section of The Age on January 30. Go us!

Liked it so much I did it some more....

2008-02-03T15:53:00.000+11:00

Who sang that? Was it Tiny Tim when he sang Tiptoe through the Tulips?

But you all know what I'm talking about. My love affair with the Koolhaas continues. This time I found an aran weight wool/silk blend wool (Naturally's Merino et Soie, shade 115) and worked the band (again) on 3.25mm circulars, and the body (again) on 4.5mm circulars/DPNs.

The camera hasn't captured true wool colour - it looks like a greyed-out khaki here. Up close and personal it's a true green, identical to the green of the scarf (above) that the vase is resting on. Yet scarf and vase are each resplendent in true colours! Go figure!

This one has been fattened up for market: check it out on my stall at the Lost and Found Market in Collingwood. I do my stint there on Mondays.

Now I wonder what I should knit with this nice Jo Sharp heathered 8ply I seem to have found in my possession....

Figgity Jig Jam

2008-02-03T11:30:00.000+11:00

I love figs. I love fig jam. Unfortunately I have a wee problem with fructose malabsorption and figs are right up there as a star culprit capable of bringing me to my knees before you've even got the chance to say should you be eating that....?

Nevertheless it doesn't stop me from going all Mother Earth if the fauna at Chez Darling have left enough for a jam batch or two. My three sisters all develop projectile grabby hands when they know it's on its way, and my mum stockpiles little glass jars for me. She never asks for jam herself, but always looks to me for reassurance that I'll do the right thing; and you know it's not for me it's for your father.

My second batch for the season is marinating now. I use a recipe by Andrew McConnell (The Age Good Weekend magazine February 2006) which is high in spice (allspice, cinnamon, ground ginger), and zest (I use both lemon and lime) which appeals to my savoury tooth. I also make a peach jam with lime zest and Amaretto (Maggie Beer) which, strangely, appeals to my alcoholic tooth :O

The sisters' grabby hands do not discriminate between the two. Some teeth, I guess, are genetic.

Too Kool Koolhaas

2008-01-31T10:45:00.000+11:00

What a neat little beanie the Koolhaas is! I first saw it on Jared Flood's blog Brooklyn Tweed and knew I had to get the pattern! I love the uniformity of the main body, and the fluidity of the decreases - the way the pattern just drains to the centre. It's also fun just to squeeze! - the 3D stitch definition gives it a high squishability quotient!

The pattern uses Aran weight wool, but that's not so easy to come by. I've used Paton's Totem Merino DK, colour 4285, with 3.25mm circulars for the band, and 4.5mm circulars/DPNs for the body. To compensate for thinner wool I've added 8 stitches (->112) to the girth with 5 pattern repeats. It fits me (a chick) really well. For the macrocephalic I'd play around with another 8 stitches, and ?yes/no 6th pattern repeat.

Acknowledgements:
Upper image: special thanks to my model - green Iittala vase; spectacles - knitter's own (visibly different eye wear 'Phester')
Lower image: cranium - knitter's own
Shot in location in Miss Click Clack's bathroom, cast and crew flew nowhere by no-one, and would choose to stay somewhere flash with a house-cleaner

How much is that doggy on the chocolate tin?

2008-01-28T06:47:00.001+11:00

I love chocolate tins, especially the older robust variety with their daggy photographic images - just like this Macrobertson 'Playmates' one with these two puppies reduced to half price near close of business at the Camberwell market last Sunday. It felt a little like I'd stumbled upon death row at the RSPCA. One more price reduction = death. Who wouldn't have paid $5 to give these guys a home?

Needless to say they have both become working dogs housing some of my button collection - but only my favourite special buttons because tins like this are meant to house treasures and special secret things.

I still have tins of letters in the roof of my house from the late 70s -early 90s from my US pen pal (Michelle Zook nee Lynch last sighted in Arlington, Va where are you? Sorry I stopped writing but I just got busy with life). They were special things. My pen pal was so cool with beautiful cursive writing (which I would spend hours trying to emulate, as I came from a generation that was taught featureless and characterless joined print). My roof-space is an archive of treasures.

When Bretodeau finds his tin of childhood treasures in the phone box in the movie Amelie I'm up there doing the nostalgia/pleasure/wistfulness trip with him.

But a sense of treasure can come in many ways - a carefully thought out gift can also create a sense of treasure. I still have a little lidded cardboard box from a few Christmasses back that was filled with lots of little things for me, all shrouded in tissue paper. Some of the items still "live" in this box until needed (a bright, stripey pair of undies, an aqua Bond's singlet, a cake of scented soap, the gift-tag) but the perishables (hand-cream, chocolates) have moved on. It's not so hard to make special moments for people.

The Summer Livin' Slouchy Beret

2008-01-17T18:08:00.001+11:00

Just what should I call my slouchy berets? They lack the jauntiness of a felted beret, have a little more class than a beanie, but have not quite enough slouch to be a 'slouchy' beret. My most recent labels don't call them anything at all yet still they're popular - despite this being the height of summer. Two friends played with them for half an hour one stinking hot Melbourne day because they both wanted the single beret I'd knitted in Bendigo Woollen Mills 'Tuscan' and they had to find a second one for whichever the Tuscan least suited (they settled on one I call 'Cinnamon' which also looked fantastic on each of them because they each had golden skin and dark blonde hair). Of course, this caused a bit of a crush in my beret section because (I've learnt) people are always curious to see what other people are doing. Those two girls generated three further sales while outside on Smith Street it was 38 degrees. An aqua one sold for the cool evenings of a Tasmanian music festival, and a yellow one to a girl heading down the coast for holidays.

Fabric

2008-01-17T17:40:00.000+11:00

Shopping around for stock for my stall can be a real emotional roller-coaster. But sometimes you come up with a few bits and pieces to make it all worthwhile. These four pretty cotton fabrics make me smile, and I'm sure they'll be snapped up fast, perhaps along with a vintage pattern or two:

I have a huge number of vintage patterns but I like to check them all for completeness before offering them for sale.

Choosing colours

2007-12-29T12:00:00.001+11:00

My partner thinks that when I knit I am having one long, extended blonde episode. He sees my eyes flicking vacantly around the room, and sees me not hearing him speak, and thinks that I am in cognitive shut-down. But I am touring an inner landscape of colour. I am thinking about the wool colours I have, and thinking about the colours I don't have (does the perfect shade of green wool exist?) and what my girls like, and what my girls need.

They all want red, but I often have other ideas. So I'll throw in a citrine, or something very Orla Keily. I give them just enough Kelly green to keep them happy (so hard to find), and this blue because it was very 2007. And for summer they're all snapping up white.

These are some of the things I think about when I'm knitting.