It's time.

What a day, what a night, what an Election Night it was!

After watching Honest Johnny concede, and Kevin '07 accept, we decided it was time.

Time to get into the T-shirts (Fight Workchoices for me, and an "It's Time" reprint for Mr P).

Time to go into the city.

Time to go to the John Curtin Hotel (which was, unfortunately, shut).

Time to look across the road to Trades Hall, where the big chalkboard said "Election Night Party! Bar Open Until 3 a.m.!) and the bar was packed.

Time to dance in the revolution.

Time to be part of the mighty crowd, to sing:

There is power in a union.

I am still on a great wave of high. Thanks, Australia.

Because nothing says Xmas like ....

ROBOTS!




All I want for Xmas is a robot.

A snip, at only $4 or so, from Big W at Eppink Plaza.

Self-editing: good or bad? Discuss.

(Essential background information: I have really long hair - about down to my knees when it's out, halfway down my thighs when it's plaited, which is usually)

Okay, so I didn't self-edit the gibberish coming out of my gob when I went bookshopping last Friday. My excuse? A week of overnight shift, followed by a four hour nap, and I'd forgotten what I had and had not said. I may have sounded like a loon but only a small one - just ranting about how I don't like film tie-in editions of novels and having completely forgotten that the background to this was still tucked away in my non-transparent head.

The woman I encountered in the public loos at Northland on Sunday also did not self-edit. And here is my message to her:

Dear Highly Curious and Unnecessarily Frank Person,
Next time, before you ask the complete stranger with the very long hair how she "manage(s) to go to the toilet with all that hair", consider two things: firstly, how would you do it if it were you? And secondly, is this really a question you want to be asking anyway? And when this complete stranger gives you the demonstration, by bringing her hair forward over her shoulder, perhaps next time you should just end the conversation there by thanking her.
And never, never again should you mention that one weekend, you wore a top with really long ties in the back, and you went to the toilet, and ..... Because that complete stranger you're talking to has just filled in the blanks and didn't need to know any of this.
Now if you really want a good question to ask, try this one: which one of us was more embarrassed?

It's an odd world.

Yarn + cat = happy

The birthday yarn, in some of its glory, plus a little bit of The Small:

Yarn: Jamieson's 2 ply Spindrift.
Clockwise from top left: 562 Cyclamen (subbing for Ivy), 3 balls; 180 Mist (subbing for Sand), 3 balls; 1300 Aubretia (subbing for Yellow Ochre and Old Gold), 8 balls; 1290 Loganberry (subbing for Peacock), 3 balls; The Small a.k.a. Hobbes; 615 Hyacinth (subbing for Mooskit/White), 4 balls; 610 Purple (subbing for Mooskit), 4 balls; 596 Clover (subbing for Rosemary), 3 balls; and in the middle 598 Mulberry (subbing for Pine Forest), 4 balls.


Lots o' fun will be had with these balls, baby.


And I've finished the first Normal Histology. I'm not 100% pleased with it. There's some combination of purl fabric + tight socking tension + circular knitting + me (probably) that's made it ladder quite nastily in places. Places I'm not going to show you :)

For the second sock I'll be implementing a few tricks to minimise this, short of a) knitting it inside out (i.e. with the knit side facing me) - I know this would help but I don't know if I can deal with working bobbles from the wrong side and b) knitting in on two circs - never change horses mid-stream and all that. If I make another pair I will definitely use two circs.

And now, a detail shot:

See my ducts? See my lobules? See the heel?

I'm about 85% happy with them, and will be using this instep/heel combo again.

Note: the ducts and lobules are NOT anatomically correct. I got a bit artsy with them.

Belated birthday present #1 arrives!

It arrived on Monday - the yarn to make me a Venezia!



I love this pattern, and the colourwork design for it, but I am left completely numb by the colours Eunny Jang worked it up in. Not so good if you have blue-pink skin and high colouring in yer cheeks; I'd look like I was on the waiting list for donor kidneys and/or liver.







So quite some time ago, probably not too long after I got the Winter '06 Interweave Knits issue, I had a play with graph paper and colour pencils to see what my preferred colours would look like. Then I got out the shade cards for Jamieson's and for Jamieson and Smith, both of Shetland. I wanted to stay with Shetland wool, because the colour ranges are amazing, and also because I'm going to give the steek thang a crack.









While J & S is cheaper per ball, I prefer the Jamieson's colours. So I invested some dosh, for swatching. I wanted to have the colours I like, and keep the pattern visually balanced, and not have it look like a mess.






So here are some pix!

The first one, at the top, is the six swatches I did. The second is my three favourites - the top row of photo #1, and the one on the left of the middle row. The third one is a colourway I just didn't quite like enough (from the left of the middle row of photo #1), but notice how the horizontal striping effect is really minimised? I'll keep it in mind for 'ron.

And the winner?


I'm a sucker for purple!

My list of substitutions:
Aubretia (#1300) for old gold and yellow ochre;
Mist (#180) for sand; Loganberry (#1290) for peacock; Hyacinth (#615) for mooskit/white; Clover (#596) for rosemary; Purple (#610) for mooskit; Cyclamen (#562) for ivy; and Pot Pourri (#603) for turf.




I actually prefer the colours in the top right of photo #1 (lavender blues on purples), but the horizontal striping was really pronounced, so no go.

But first, a Southern Summer of Socks and a top to make.

NH in progress, right side, #1

NH in progress, right side, #1
Originally uploaded by darrowthegirl

Back at work week.

And it's been a bit of a shi!t week too.

We've consolidated our clinical lab information system with the Mother Ship's, and went live on their system on Thursday. There were a few things we'd forgotten about (eg for our location on their system, we had no electronic tracking set up for donor blood units ("virtual blood fridge") much less anything in said virtual fridge) and a few things that went all surprising on us on the day.
While patient histories for histology and blood bank were migrated onto the new system, none of the patient results for other disciplines were, so Thursday in haematology land was very, very tedious as whenever I had an abnormal result in the new system, I had to refer back to the old to see if this result was an ongoing thing that had previously been commented on. Plus, for whatever reason/s, the new system was running extremely slowly.

Friday would have been better, but the interface for (mostly) biochem results fell over. To cut a long story short, this meant things in biochem-land were running over 4 hours behind schedule (for stuff that should be finalised within 1 hour) and we were getting a lot of angry phone calls.

So today, Mr P and I went to Bundoora Farmer's Market (Bundoora Park on the first Saturday of every month). To be honest, the market wasn't all that great - as markets go I prefer Preston Market, and as farmer's markets go I like St Andrews). So here's some pix from the market:






Here is Mr P making a friend in the back of a ute.















Buying some curry sauce from the bloke that makes his own. We got some korma sauce.













Buying seeds, and seedlings. This seller was all out of basil, but he had some coriander, and lots of seed packets.









But wait - there's more! Unfortunately, no more pix, because this was the point at which the camera's memory card said it was full.

We went for a drive in Bundoora Park after the market and went to the children's farm. Man, do I love children's farms! There were sheep, and cows, and sleeping pigs, and rabbits, and chooks, and ducks, and goats - yay! I love goats! - and alpacas - double yay! - and guinea pigs. Mr P is now known by three kids as "The Guinea Pig Man" after he caught them one each so they good have a photie taken with gp's by Mum. Unfortunately there were also geese. I am not fond of geese.

I got some more done on Normal Histology.