CrumpArt

It’s been a tough week. Many happenings, both good and bad. First, the bad.

Mr Crumpet is still unemployed, and Centrelink are still completely frakking us around with his payments. It seems that they think we can both survive on my casual retail wage, so they’re paying him next to nothing. I may have to use my savings to pay our rent and the car registration on my own, both due in the same week, which is always fun. And yes, that’s the money I’ve been saving so I can afford to go back to university this year. At this rate, I highly doubt that Centrelink will give me any Austudy payments, so this year is going to be a tough slog. I haven’t been able to post all week because I’ve been busy exhausting myself with extra shifts at work. Well, that and the rest of the goings on in this post… so, onto the good.

Speaking of uni, it’s now official. I spent around six hours enrolling on Monday, and got this for my troubles:

Luckily all the classes that I’m doing in first semester — Hybrid Media, Art History and Theory, Printmaking: The Multiple, and Printmaking: Process and Concept — all condense into three consecutive days, leaving me four days of availability for work. After enrolling, I caught the tram to St Kilda and dropped of my two entries for the Linden Postcard Show. I forgot to take pictures though, so you’ll just have to go to the exhibition to see them. It starts on the 4th of February, but Mr Crumpet and I are going to lunch with his mother at my parent’s place that day, so we won’t be able to go to the opening.

I also completed another thing this week that I can’t show here, because it’s a gift, but I can show this:

It’s the soysilk sample that I spun up earlier in the week. I attempted to dye it blue with some food colouring, attempted being the operative word. It’s so lovely and soft, and I really enjoyed spinning this fibre. Plus, it’s made from tofu production waste, which makes it even more awesome.

Along with that, I got something in the post this week that cheered me up immensely. My package arrived from Yarns Online, a new online Australian yarn shop that sells Cascade and Lamb’s Pride Yarns. These are the yarns in all the American pattern books, and up until now they weren’t available anywhere in Australia. And I know I’ve been whingeing about having no money, and I’m just about to show you the mother lode of yarn deliveries, but I justify this by the fact that I bought it before the latest round of Centrelink crappiness, and it represents my entertainment for the next month and a half. Yes, instead of going out and spending my fortune on alcohol, coffee and food, like “normal” people, I buy yarn and knit like there’s no tomorrow. So, onward:

The yarn in this photo serves the double purpose of getting my order up to free shipping status, and will keep me from fulfilling the urge to cheat in the Knitting Olympics by starting now.

I’ve wanted that shade of Lamb’s Pride Bulky ever since getting the first Stitch’n'Bitch book and seeing the Sparkle Hat pattern. And who can resist Noro Kureyon, especially in shade 88?

And now on to the Knitting Olympics…

The yarn has landed.

It’s Cascade 220 in the burgundy colourway, and it is divine and beautiful and gorgeous. So far, I can’t say enough good things about this yarn. It’s smooth and soft and bouncy, and the two 200 metre skeins that I’ve wound into balls so far have been completely knot free. It knitted up perfectly to gauge, and I know already that I’m going to love knitting with it, and wearing the final product. I’ve been heavily into training for this event, completing the gauge swatch and swatches for the two cable charts in the pattern.

And no, Giz and Kym, that bit of green that you can see in the last photo certainly has nothing to do with you or the impending Gosling. Nothing at all. Move right along. Nothing to see here.